Kabir I removed the last comment as it was too pointed at Anan.

I don’t like such personal language..

Anan,

I’m not interested in going down this rabbit hole with you again. I wrote a long comment but it was censored by the powers that be at BP. I do have a few points:

1) I do think you should not compare yourself in the slightest to Edward Said. He was a genius and one of the most important activists and intellectuals of our time. He invented Postcolonial Theory and Orientalism. Unless you have produced a similar body of work in the field, any comparison between you and him is ridiculous. The same thing applies to Marx. Let me know when you write something as seminal as “Das Kapital”. For someone to criticize the greatest intellectuals of the past while not having a solid understanding of them is quite strange. They are intellectual giants as compared to any of us.

2) This thing about the English using Marxism to “culturally colonize” the Indian mind seems like a bizarre conspiracy theory to me. The East India Company and the British Raj were interested in most effectively utilizing their colony for the benefit of England and that is what they did. I highly doubt that Marxism or Freudianism entered into it anywhere.

3) The welfare state is now the consensus in the developed world. Try taking Social Security and Medicare away in the US. These programs would not exist in a purely free market society but it is now generally believed that it is the responsibility of governments to help the weakest sections of society.
4) Marx is not responsible for how some of his ideas were used to justify brutal dictatorships under Stalin and Mao. “Socialism” and “Communism” were used to prop up the regime. Other regimes have been propped up using “democracy”. That doesn’t inherently discredit the ideas. I have no brief for Communism and I personally believe the US model of the mixed economy is the preferable one.

By the way, arguing that Marxism doesn’t work doesn’t automatically make you right-wing. I believe in equality of opportunity not equality of outcome. The welfare state is now the consensus in the developed world. Try arguing that Social Security or Medicaid should be taken away in the US. These programs would not exist in a purely free-market society. However, it is generally recognized that it is the government’s duty to help the weakest members of society.

Marx is not responsible for how some of his ideas were used by brutal dictatorships such as those under Mao and Stalin. “Socialism” and “Communism” was rhetoric that was used to prop up the regime. Other regimes have been propped up using “democracy” or something else. That use of his ideas does not in itself discredit them. However, I am not making any excuses for Communism. I believe that capitalism needs to be reformed not destroyed.

Kabir, a young Marx wrote 50 articles on India. I am not a fan of them. In many ways Marx developed his views by studying India and eastern philosophy:

https://isreview.org/issue/73/when-marx-looked-outside-europe

Note that Said was a huge critique and opponent of Marx. I guess Said’s “obsession with blaming things on Marxism and Postmodernism is very right-wing and frankly not attractive.”

Whatever my agreements and disagreements with Said; they pale before my disagreements with Marx, Ferdinand de Saussure, Freud and the most modernists.

The UK didn’t extract a lot of resources from India, because the Indian economy performed disastrously under English rule. If the English wanted to extract a lot of resources from India (no evidence that they did), they would have facilitated rapid private sector free market capitalist growth in India. That way Indian tax revenues could have been transferred in the form of grants to England.

Instead the English imposed cultural colonization of the Indian mind to create inferiority complex and shatter Indian self confidence (using Marxism, Freudism, Structuralism, Post Modernism and the caucasion intelligentsia). The English devastated the Indian economy, private sector and entrepreneurship with big government big regulation Fabian socialism. The English disrupted Indian product development and process innovation.

++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
Marx didn’t understand economics. Different workers have different marginal products of labor (labor productivity). So far free market countries tend to compensate workers comparable to their labor productivity. The issue today is that inequality in capacity, capability and merit between workers is increasing around the world. As a result the more meritocratic a system is, the more unequal it is and the more the structural poor benefit. In other words poor people benefit from increased inequality if inequality is caused by an increasingly meritocratic society.

Marx had no great ideas for how to boost labor productivity (contribution to product development and process innovation) for the poor and lower middle class. The exact opposite in fact.

Marx wanted to capture some of the labor productivity of highly productive workers and some capital productivity and give it to less productive workers. But his ideas for doing this kills the goose that lays the golden egg. In other words by transferring income earned by more productive elements, Marx reduced the productivity of said more productive elements. Which is why Marxism makes no sense.

With respect to capital productivity . . . I am sure even Karl Marx would greatly hesitate to redistribute wealth (capital) today.

About 70% of lottery winners declare bankruptcy within 7 years (in other words they end up with large negative wealth. And a large percentage regret ever winning the lottery. One reason for this is that many lower productivity workers are not good at productively investing capital (wealth). Many of their businesses and investments lose money. This suggests that redistributing wealth to poor people would likely greatly harm a majority of them; and greatly lower national and global GDP and wealth ceteris paribus.

+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
If someone really wants to help the global poor and global lower middle class; the solution is simple:
—-increase physical health
—-increase mental health
—-increase intuition or intelligence
—-have a generally functional stable system (a collective action challenge that poor and lower middle class people cannot easily achieve through their own individual efforts.) Increasingly countries all over the world are providing this which is leading to the current global economic miracle.

With these things, poor and lower middle class people will then make their own fortunes without any additional help. Of course doing this is not easy.

Marx was probably not even thinking of the “East” when he wrote his works. He wanted to see the proletariat take over in Europe. You are entitled to your views on Marxism but you are painting with too broad a brush.

Your GDP calculations can perhaps be explained by the fact that British India was a colony. Resources were extracted and sent back to the mother country.

This obsession with blaming things on Marxism and Postmodernism is very right-wing and frankly not attractive.

Most “history” is likely inaccurate

that sounds like a very post-modernist sentence! you even used a “scare quote.” what next? history is fiction? 🙂

My suspicion is that many advanced ancient cultures were wiped out by the ice age from 10 K BC (which might have raised ocean water levels by over 200 feet) and a possibly catastrophic disaster that might have ended the last ice age and warmed the earth up.

human effective population size went through a bottleneck 70,000 years ago and then exploded in the last 10,000 years. so probably not.

There is no doubt that the east has been devastated by Karl Marx.

Ancient south Asia (or Hindustan if you prefer that phrase) might have had a quarter of global real gdp in 1700 but only 4% of global GDP in 1950. The very dangerous ideas of Marxism, post modernism, and fabian socialism likely played a very large role. They are devastating for poor people.

Most “history” is likely inaccurate. I think we need to rethink things from the ground up. I believe is is possible that the lineage of Iran/Turan from 9 K years ago might have joined an existing Arya tradition that is far older. I don’t know how old though. Almost all the documentation of that time has been lost in the winds of history.

For example we might still learn that some in the ancient pyramid civilization knew Sanskrit–which would force a major rethink. [As of now there is no reason to believe that the ancient Egyptians knew Sanskrit.]

It is interesting, however, that the ancient Egyptians, Arya peoples, Mayan people all used a 25,920 year cycle in their history (procession of the earth equinoxes) and culture. Plato called it a great year.

If 25,920 is divided by 12, the number 2160 is derived. 2160 * 2 * 10 = 43,200.

The Great Pyramid of Giza would precisely fit into the earth’s northern hemisphere by a measurement of 1 : 43,200.

This number is also reflected in the angle of the great pyramid:

To quote someone else’s calculations:

“In relation to this, it has been pointed out that the possibility may exist whereby the numbers expressing the Precessionary cycle (Approx’ 26,000 yrs), when viewed as fractals may be translated into the 60-based system of degrees (26° 00′ 00″). Modern pocket electronic calculators have a key (DD>DMS) for this function.

The Platonic Year of 25,920 yrs would produce the following numbers:

25.92 (doubled) = 51.84 where, 51.84° is 51° 50′ 24″.

In other words, the angle of inclination 51° 50′ 24″ would express the decimal number 51.84°, which is the fractal expression of double the 25,920 Platonic Year number (25920 x 2 = 51840).

This would mean that the angle of inclination cited by Piazzi Smyth for the Great pyramid of Ghiza of 51° 51′ 14″ would reflect the decimal number 51.85399° or the fractal halved to that of 25,926.995 years (51,85399/2=25,926.995). A number which appears at very least, an extraordinary coincidence considering the astronomical references to the pyramid throughout history.”

http://www.ancient-wisdom.com/precession.html

These sequences of numbers exist in many ancient cultures, eastern and Mayan. Now it could all be a coincidence. But in the off chance that it is not a coincidence–then might languages also be connected in some way that is not now understood?

One of the reasons that Sanskrit’s history is so hard to understand is that almost all Sanskrit texts were kept secret until Buddhism. Buddhism universalized ancient eastern philosophy and knowledge; and forced the other orders to become more transparent.

For example the first widely dispersed Yoga text might have been:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yogachara#Principal_exponents_of_Yog%C4%81c%C4%81ra

Which then forced the public dissemination of Paanini’s Aṣṭādhyāyī and Patanjali’s texts and Shaivite Yoga texts and Vedic texts out of cold storage. However these texts might be many thousands of years older than when they were first publicly released.

My suspicion is that many advanced ancient cultures were wiped out by the ice age from 10 K BC (which might have raised ocean water levels by over 200 feet) and a possibly catastrophic disaster that might have ended the last ice age and warmed the earth up. If this is so, then the Pyrimid, ancient Vedic Arya, and ancient Latin American civilizations might have flourished before the great flood and ice age. Tamilians believe that Agastyar (pronounced Agastya by non Tamilians) and their civilization flourished before the great flood too.

Thank god someone comes to the defense of facts. That needed to be said.

I very much doubt that when Karl Marx came up with the theory of class struggle he was thinking “Hmmm,how can I oppress and harm the east?”

How do we know that Sanskrit wasn’t developed in South East Asia or Africa or somewhere else?

hoipolloi, are you familiar with marxism, structuralism and post modernism?

the first sentence sounds almost post-modernist to me. the fact is we know for a variety of reasons that sanskrit is unlikely to come from SE asia and africa. that’s how we know. there are facts. reasons. it’s not all a big power game.