Rubén Pulido Philosophy Area

Ruben

Lopez Pulido

OLD Political and Philosophical Area

thinking about the Modernity: A Faustian experience

IMPORTANT INFO:

Click HERE to the Brand New Working Page of rlpulido, or go to his BLOG!

I will update this old page ASAP

See the Rubén López-Pulido OLD Home Page for a guide to this website.

Why a Political Area?

Because we are political animals; because we think in political and social terms; because in the world we live in, rebelling is a categoric imperative! Because Marx established that man is a social and historical product. And both history and society depend on the politics.

Why Modernity?

THERE is a mode of vital experience -experience of space and time, of the self and others, of life's possibilities and perils- that is shared by men and women all over the world today. This body of experience is the so-called "modernity."

To be modern is to find ourselves in an environment that promises us adventure, power, joy, growth, transformation of ourselves and the world, and, at the same time, that threatens to destroy everything we have, everything we know, everything we are. Modern environments and experiences cut across all boundaries of geography and ethnicity, of class and nationality, of religion and ideology: in this sense, modernity can be said to unite all mankind. But it is a paradoxical unity, a unity of disunity: it pours us all into a maelstrom of perpetual disintegration and renewal, of struggle and contradiction, of ambiguity and anguish. To be modern is to be part of a universe in which, as Marx said, "all that is solid melts into air."

People who find themselves in the midst of this maelstrom are apt to feel that they are the first ones, and maybe the only ones, to be going through it; this feeling has engendered numerous nostalgic myths of pre-modern Paradise Lost. In fact, however, great and ever-increasing numbers of people have been going through it for close to five hundred years. Although most of these people have probably experienced modernity as a radical threat to all their history and traditions, it has, in the course of five centuries, developed a rich history and a plenitude of traditions of its own. I want to explore and chart these traditions, to understand the ways in which they can nourish and enrich our own modernity, and the ways in which they may obscure or impoverish our sense of what modernity is and what it can be.

The maelstrom of modern life has been fed from may sources: great discoveries in the physical sciences, changing our images of the universe and our place within it; the industrialisation of production which transforms scientific knowledge into technology, creates new human environments and destroys old ones, speeds up the whose tempo of life, generates new forms of corporate power and class struggle; immense demographic upheavals, severing millions of people from their ancestral habitats, hurtling them halfway across the world into new lives; rapid and often cataclysmic urban growth; systems of mass-communication, dynamic in their development, enveloping and binding together the most diverse people and societies; increasingly powerful nation states, bureaucratically structured and operated, constantly striving to expand their powers; mass social movements of people, and peoples, challenging their political and economic rulers, striving to gain some control over their lives; finally, bearing and driving all these people and institutions along an ever-expanding drastically fluctuating capitalist world market. In the twentieth century, the social processes that bring this maelstrom into being and keep it in a state of perpetual becoming, have become known as "modernization".

(Marshall Berman, All that is solid, melts into the air").

Don't you feel like that? Don't you want to know why?

Marshall Berman: Political Tour

A Great Thinker

The things written supra are an excerpt of Marshall Berman's thoughts about modernity.

He is professor at the City Universtiy of New York (CUNY).

Here you can find some articles and archives product of the greater writer and wide-minded thinker Marshall Berman.

Marx and the Future
Picasso
Unchained Melody: the last chapter of his book Adventures in Marxism. (Highly recommended)

The resume of his ideas is included in his fabulous book: "All that is solid Melts into the air", and has now been translated into many languages.

More details: here is a complete lecture of him at the Columbia University during Spring '97.

Something about Spanish Politics

Another Great Thinker: Vicenç Navarro
I'll talk now a little bit about another great thinker, in this case, spanish. As Marshall Berman, Vicenç Navarro is a politically incorrect thinker. He has written some interesting books, but above all, uses to write for the spanish newspaper El País. He is professor of Public Policies at the UPF university at Catalonia. And he uses to write about this (the National Health Service, etc.) and about the last 40 years spanish dictatorship.
Vicenç Navarro has been Head of Department of Political and Social Sciences at the Universitat Pompeu Fabra (UPF), Barcelona, since 1997 and professor of Public Policy, Policy Sciences and Sociology at the Johns Hopkins University (JHU), Baltimore, since 1968. He is also the director of the Public Policy Programme of UPF-JHU. Professor Navarro works in political economy, comparative politics, social policy and healthcare policy. He has written 22 books in English and three in Spanish. Some of his books have been translated into French, Italian, German, Japanese and Korean. Among his works feature Medicine Under Capitalism; The Politics of U.S. Health Care Reform and The Political Economy of Social Inequalities; and, in Spanish, Neoliberalismo y Estado del bienestar and Globalización económica, poder político y Estado del bienestar. He has also published around 250 articles in scientific magazines. Professor Navarro is founder and chief editor of the magazine International Journal of Health Services and forms part of the editorial panel of several academic magazines in the United States devoted to public and social policy, policy sociology and healthcare policy. He was also President of the International Association of Health Policy and formed part of the executive committee of the American Public Health Association. Throughout his professional career he has received a great many awards, including the John Kosa Memorial Prize in 1975 for the best piece of research undertaken that year in social sciences and health. Professor Navarro has been an assessor to different governments in both Europe and the American continent, including the government of the United States of America, in matters of public and social policy. In 1987 the government of the United States chose him from among all the scientists working in the USA as the scientist who had done most to improve the health and quality of life of the American people. In 1993 he was a member of the working group about the reform of the public health system, presided over from the White House by Hillary Rodham Clinton. Between 1994 and 1996, in Spain, he presided over a governmental commission set up to study the social impact of inequalities in health and the quality of life of the Spanish people. He has been a visiting professor at Oxford, at the London School of Economics, at Uppsala University, Harvard University and also at the University of California, Los Angeles and Berkeley. His current research work is focused on the comparative development of the welfare state in the advanced capitalist countries.

Here are some articles product of the one of the bigger critic mind of Spain:

Una victoria del Neoliberalismo

Democracia incompleta

La transición no fue modélica

Excerpts of Modernity

RUN FROM FEAR / FUN FROM REAR
We'll start now another political tour visiting some hot links:

"Si asumes que no hay esperanza, garantizas que no habrá esperanza. Si asumes que hay un instinto hacia la libertad, que hay oportunidad para cambiar las cosas, entonces hay una opción de que puedas contribuir a hacer un mundo mejor. Esta es tu alternativa".

Noam Chomsky:

Can you assume the texts and ideas that contains?

"Debemos reconocer a la clase obrera no solo como objeto de explotación, sino también como objeto de poder, no sólo como sujeto pasivo construido mediante los dispositivos de la dominación capitalista, sino también, y por encima de todo, como el sujeto activo que se constituye a sí mismo y proyecta una nueva sociedad a partir de sus propias necesidades y deseos". Michael Hardt "Si uno pudiera ser piel roja siempre alerta, cabalgando sobre un caballo veloz, a través del viento, constantemente sacudido sobre la tierra estremecida, hasta arrojar las espuelas porque no hacen falta espuelas, hasta arrojar las riendas porque no hacen falta riendas, y apenas viera ante sí que el campo era una pradera rasa, habrían desaparecido las crines y la cabeza del caballo". El deseo de ser piel roja, Franz Kafka.

Anybody knows Toni Negri?

Amnesty

This is the web site of my friend Pete Baumann and is dedicated to Toni Negri. I know Pete Baumann since I was a child, and like he likes to say: "Don't give up the fight". (A tribute to Bob Marley)
"Estoy convencido de que no se toma el poder. Estoy convencido de que se puede expresar un poderío y eso es otra cosa. Pero, sobre todo, estoy convencido de que la sociedad ha superado ya los órdenes políticos y jurídicos que la regulan. Estoy convencido de que las necesidades de la gente van mucho más allá de los ordenamientos políticos y de que la libertad con que la gente se expresa y la capacidad productiva de que dispone van mucho más allá del orden capitalista". Toni Negri

Cada herramienta es un arma si la sostienes con firmeza.