[lbo-talk] Caudwell on on language's inability to reflect the...

[Charles Brown]

On Tue, Jan 7, 2014 at 10:11 AM, Arthur Maisel <arthurmaisel at gmail.com> wrote:
> I knew there was something specious about the molecular argument (all new
> molecules = all new person), but I only just thought of a good analogy.
> Every four years we get a new President; every two and eighteen,
> respectively, we can have an entirely new House and Senate. Anyone here
> want to say that we would have an entirely new government once those sweeps
> were completed?
>
> Of course the government analogy is actually much fuzzier than the
> molecular person argument, because when you get a new molecule of some
> amino acid in your liver, it is presumably identical to the old one,
> whereas a new senator is only substantially the same---given the tolerances
> of the system---but naturally not identical.

^^^^^^^^
CB: I agree with you on the molecular change. I just kind of put it
out. The relationship between the new molecules is the same pretty
much. , Aging of the individual . like a baby who can't walk or talk
then a toddler than a child then teen etc. to old age is a little
better.one.

I kind of feel like change over in personnel of government can be a
better example of change. Maybe not in consecutive terms as much. But
from FDR to Reagan , yes. or LBJ to Reagan.


>
>
> On Mon, Jan 6, 2014 at 5:47 PM, Charles Brown <cb31450 at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>> On Mon, Jan 6, 2014 at 3:29 AM, James Heartfield <james at heartfield.org>
>> wrote:
>>
>> >
>> > In the 1970s Caudwell's work was in print with Lawrence and Wishart, and
>> was by default the first port of call for anyone interested in Marxism and
>> art. I spied a copy of his Art and Illusion on the shelves of the fantastic
>> poet Tony Harrison when he was being interviewed on the TV.
>>
>> ^^^^^^^^
>> CB: I have a copy of the Lawrence and Wishart edition right here.
>>
>> ^^^^^^
>> >
>> > Lastly, Charles makes the argument that we are not the same people we
>> were. This same argument was made by the reactionary Joseph Barker,
>> defending slavery and himself against charges of inconsistency, as recorded
>> by a contemporary, the Chartist Adams:
>> >
>> > At one meeting, Barker was challenged from the audience, a letter in his
>> name of some years earlier, against slavery was produced. Was he the Joseph
>> Barker who had written it? ‘No,’ was the astonishing reply. ‘It is, as
>> everybody knows, a physiological fact that the particles of the human frame
>> are all changed in the course of every seven years. More than seven years
>> have elapsed since that letter was written; therefore I am not the Joseph
>> Barker who wrote it!’ W.E. Adams, Memoirs of a Social Atom, 1968, p 400
>>
>> ^^^^^^
>>
>> CB: Good point, James , although in this case, don't have to go to the
>> molecular level. Evidently, Joseph Barker had changed in that he had
>> changed his opinion on slavery.  He had turned into his opposite.
>>
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