ABSTRACT This paper analyses the underlying conflicts between the principles of education and the market. After identifying an international movement towards justifying excellence in education in terms of a goal external to education, namely “to compete effectively in the international marketplace”, the paper shows that: (i) this justification of education has been increasingly presupposed or prescribed by corporate, government and educational leaderships, and (ii) education as a social institution has been correspondingly subordinated to international market goals, including the language and (...) self-conceptualization of educators themselves. The argument of the paper demonstrates that there are fundamental contradictions between the market and education models in terms of (1) Goals, (2) Motivations, (3) Methods and (4) Standards of Excellence. Counter-arguments to this analysis are presented, and replies are given. The article concludes that the long-term development of education and of civilization itself requires the autonomy of education from market command. (shrink)

Almost all of us have entered or will one day enter a specifically standardized form of monogamous marriage. This cultural requirement is so very basic to our existence that we accept it for most part as a kind of intractable given: dictated by the laws of God, Nature, Government and Good Sense all at once. Though it is perhaps unusual for a social practice to be so promiscuously underwritten, we generally find comfort rather than curiosity in this fact and seldom (...) wonder how something could be divinely inspired, biologically determined, coerced and reasoned out all at the same time. We simply take for granted. (shrink)

This paper analyses the underlying conflicts between the principles of education and the market. After identifying an international movement towards justifying excellence in education in terms of a goal external to education, namely “to compete effectively in the international marketplace”, the paper shows that: (i) this justification of education has been increasingly presupposed or prescribed by corporate, government and educational leaderships, and (ii) education as a social institution has been correspondingly subordinated to international market goals, including the language and self-conceptualization (...) of educators themselves. The argument of the paper demonstrates that there are fundamental contradictions between the market and education models in terms of (1) Goals, (2) Motivations, (3) Methods and (4) Standards of Excellence. Counter-arguments to this analysis are presented, and replies are given. The article concludes that the long-term development of education and of civilization itself requires the autonomy of education from market command. (shrink)

Almost all of us have entered or will one day enter a specifically standardized form of monogamous marriage. This cultural requirement is so very basic to our existence that we accept it for most part as a kind of intractable given: dictated by the laws of God, Nature, Government and Good Sense all at once. Though it is perhaps unusual for a social practice to be so promiscuously underwritten, we generally find comfort rather than curiosity in this fact and seldom (...) wonder how something could be divinely inspired, biologically determined, coerced and reasoned out all at the same time. We simply take for granted. (shrink)

This analysis maps the deepening global crisis and the principles of its resolution by life-value analysis and method. Received theories of economics and justice and modern rights doctrines are shown to have no ground in life value and to be incapable of recognizing universal life goods and the rising threats to them. In response to this system failure at theoretical and operational levels, the unifying nature and measure of life value are defined to provide the long-missing basis for understanding the (...) common interest, human rights and social justice—that is, the universal life necessities of humanity across cultures and the evolving civil commons infrastructures to ensure them. In contrast, the treaty-imposed corporate rights system miscalled “globalization” is structured to predate life means and support systems at all levels with no accountability beyond itself. Only the logic of life value, human rights and life-protective law, it is concluded, can comprehend or govern this inherently life-blind and cumulatively eco-genocidal regime. (shrink)

This analysis maps the deepening global crisis and the principles of its resolution by life-value analysis and method. Received theories of economics and justice and modern rights doctrines are shown to have no ground in life value and to be incapable of recognizing universal life goods and the rising threats to them. In response to this system failure at theoretical and operational levels, the unifying nature and measure of life value are defined to provide the long-missing basis for understanding the (...) common interest, human rights and social justice—that is, the universal life necessities of humanity across cultures and the evolving civil commons infrastructures to ensure them. In contrast, the treaty-imposed corporate rights system miscalled “globalization” is structured to predate life means and support systems at all levels with no accountability beyond itself. Only the logic of life value, human rights and life-protective law, it is concluded, can comprehend or govern this inherently life-blind and cumulatively eco-genocidal regime. (shrink)

“If thou go on the left hand, thou shalt in this way be soon essayed.”Words on the Cross to Sir Galahad, The Holy Grail, by Thomas Malory, Chapter XIIWords on the Cross to Sir Galahad,The Holy Grail, by Thomas Malory, Chapter XIIThough left and right are fundamental terms of our social and political vocabulary, perhaps indeed the ultimate dividing concepts of ways of life on the earth today, their meaning seems to be as obscure as their application is ubiquitous.

It is generally believed by governing political parties, economists, business people and other believers in global market doctrine that those who oppose "free trade agreements" are misled, uninformed and "do not really know what they are protesting against". At the same time, the opponents of these transnational trade-and-investment restructurings have diverse concerns ranging from loss of democratic sovereignty, labour rights and environmental protection of majority-world oppression, the growth of poverty and inequality, and global cultural homogenization. The following analysis integrates the (...) growing multitude of critical attacks on these extra-parliamentary agreements into a systematic anatomy of the latter's underlying structure whose regulating principles are not yet recognised or debated in business, political or economic circles. (shrink)

ABSTRACT The article begins by identifying a set of hitherto undisclosed contradictions of meaning and value attributed to a basic structure of our existence—competition. It seeks to resolve these contradictions by showing that there are two basic forms of competition not previously distinguished: (1) the dominant model of competition in which pay‐offs extrinsic to the activity itself are conferred on one party at the expense of others; and (2) the submerged, spontaneous form of competition in which no structure of extrinsic (...) and exclusionary pay‐offs is imposed on the action. Illustrating in terms of a paradigm example, ice‐hockey, the analysis shows that the well‐known and systematic pathologies of competitive conflict—violence, cheating, authoritarianism, sexism, drug‐taking and so on—are a law‐like consequence of the dominant structure of competition and not a problem of competition as such. (shrink)

Volume 24, Issue 3-4, May - June 2019, Page 446-453.

Title: The Nature of Love, Volume 1: Plato to LutherPublisher: University of Chicago PressISBN: 0226760952Author: Irving SingerTitle: The Nature of Love, Volume 2: Courtly and RomanticPublisher: University of Chicago PressISBN: 0262512734Author: Irving Singer.

Man must prove the truth i.e., the reality and power, the this-sidedness of his thinking in practice.As individuals express their life, so they are.Karl Marx.The idea of a Marxian personal morality is in some ways irresistible. It strikes a personal chord in us, as most Marxian ideas may not, and it brings us close to the heart of the Marxian vision, its concern for the welfare of oppressed others.Yet Marxist theory, with its emphasis on classes, social laws, and historical determinism, (...) seems to rule out the domains of the personal and the moral in principle. And this standard theoretical preemption is reflected in practice. Marxists rarely examine, or seek to revolutionize, their individual lives as they do societies. Indeed they may be inclined to be disdainful of any such venture as a sort of ‘bourgeois individualism.’. (shrink)

Perhaps no doctrine in our intellectual history has received more attention—critical, puzzled and celebrative—than that of “economic determinism”. To adequately catalogue the literature on Karl Marx’s epoch-making theory would require, no doubt, a considerable tome.I am not, therefore, going to attempt such a task here, illuminating though it might be as a study in the history and sociology of ideas. Rather I am going to outline an interpretation which will—if I am successful—be both faithful to Marx’s texts and immune to (...) the standard philosophical criticisms which have been hitherto advanced against the theory. (shrink)

The article begins with an overview of the historic moment of ?the end of the Cold War?, and of the paradoxically deepening moral, social, and environmental problems posed by the military system. It demonstrates that historical and contemporary analyses of defence and war have dogmatically presupposed the military paradigm, and have therefore failed to recognize the self?reproducing structure of covert premisses and inferences upon which it rests. In laying bare this underlying system of unreason, the analysis demonstrates that the military (...) paradigm's ultimately self?contradictory concepts of ?security? and ?defence? repose on unstated interests of social and political rule. Proposing new distinctions between pathological and life?enabling forms of war, and between guilty and innocent combatants, the argument develops alternative, non?military principles of war to guide rational and moral agency. (shrink)

This paper begins with an explanation of the "life sequence of value," which is defined by the formula Life->Means of Life->More Life. The analysis then contrasts this general sequence of value to the "money sequence of value," which is shown to have three autonomous forms not before distinguished: Money->Means of Life->More Money ; Money->Means of Life Destruction->More Money ; Money->More Money->More Money. I explain how the first money sequence of value, analyzed by Marx in his classical formula of industrial capital, (...) has mutated so that the standard sequence of assumed by economists has, in fact, been increasingly displaced by sequences and. The argument shows that these sequences of economic "growth" increasingly dismantle environmental and civil life-fabrics, but remain unproblematic to the dominant economic paradigm whose measures of value do not register life-losses in their value accounts. It is concluded that a regrounding of economic understanding in the life sequence of value is required to avoid a cumulative breakdown in the conditions of social and planetary existence. (shrink)

David Leopold positions this work as "for a new generation of readers who no longer feel obliged to swallow Marx whole." He does not mention the more powerful and widespread pressure—to ignore or distort Marx. This is an antidotally meticulous, if somewhat Talmudic, study of the young Marx. Its first chapter is a historical introduction to the corpus of Marx's early work and its complex history of posthumous publication. Its second and third chapters situate his ideas within the German philosophy (...) of the period, spelling out its differences from Hegel and Bruno Bauer . The fourth chapter entitled "Human flourishing" is very much the most interesting. No concept is so widely incanted by contemporary philosophers and so lacking in principled ground, while no work is more suggestive here than the early Marx's. The fifth and final chapter is Leopold's "Epilogue," which usefully reviews the book's general argument.The young Marx has long inspired interest because his critique of capitalism and political economy is so dynamically emancipatory in its naturalist humanism. Leopold is not moved. To give a paradigmatic taste of his treatment, he excoriates a very famous passage of the young Marx—"Communism . . . is the. (shrink)

This study examines the system-deciding principle of economic rationality for its logical soundness and effects in global practice. Analysis demonstrates the fallacious structure of the underlying assumptions of homo economicus across theories and institutions, and explains how cumulative destruction of global economic, social, and ecological life systems follows from its life-blind mechanism. Higher-order concepts of life-capital, life-value efficiency, and life-good supply and demand are then defined to bring economic rationality into coherence with terrestrial and human life requirements.