#marx erections

[inbabylontheywept]

My job involves a lot of pulsed power applications. The number one way people get pulsed power is from these structures called Marx banks, which are basically huge walls of capacitors that charge up in parallel, then arc and add their voltage in series. So, you get like... 60 capacitors at 45 kV, and then they turn into ~3 MV, which is enough to shock the shit out of Zeus. I have had the privilege of seeing someone throw a fridge off a fifth floor balcony into a dumpster, and the noise is makes is comparable to that. It's very mad science. This is what a baby one looks like.

Anyway: I'm reading a lot about these things, because they explode a lot, and that means I have to fix them. And that thing where you get the capacitors to all add up in series is called "erecting the Marx."

So I'm trying to read this dry ass fucking text book about pulsed power, and these textbook writers - they don't realize how crucial it is to say "erecting the Marx" instead of "Marx erections" and now, the most common phrase in this entire book is "Marx erection" and it is killing me. Even literal communist manifesto fanfic would avoid using the word erection this many times. At some point they'd have to call it a penis, or a dick, or something besides this relentless litany of erections.

I have not been this salty since I took thermo, and every fucking problem with melting ice used M_i for mass of ice, L_f for latent energy of freezing, so I'd have to rewrite a legtimate equation of E=M_i L_f like Albert Einstein if he had mommy issues. Can I make a pun about that? Relative-ity? Fuck it, it's here, and you're reading it. k rant done. thx.

[rosasappho]

lief i think i’m winning most annoying mutual

[noor-kazem]

حاربت المحو الجدلي الداخلي الذي اختلطت به، بقيت بعيدة عن اليوم الأخير، متناسية قيمة عمرية مستمرة من حواجز الطرق الصدئة التي أقيمت منذ فترة طويلة، أجول في الطريق حتى أجد تلك العلامة المناسبة قائلة (لا بأس في الوقوع بفكرة أخرى).

Fighting the inner polemical erasure I've mixed with, I stay out of the last day, forgetting a lifetime's worth of long-erected rusty roadblocks, scooting down the road until I find that appropriate sign that says, "It's okay to fall for another thought."

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Karıştırdığım içsel polemik silmeyle mücadele ederek, son günün dışında kalıyorum, bir ömür boyu uzun süredir dikilmiş paslı barikatları unutuyorum, "Bir başkasına düşmek sorun değil" yazan uygun tabelayı bulana kadar yolda hızla ilerliyorum. düşünce."

que de vida existe o mar e é onda espertando: encontro e pensamento outra barricada para loitar polémica oxidada das marxes sen entrega interior sen tempo fuxindo do pasado presente en que só está amor

@manoelt-finisterrae

[diaryofaphilosopher]

But the monster also makes us realize that in an unequal society they are not equal. Not because they belong to different ‘races’ but because inequality really does score itself into one’s skin, one’s eyes and one’s body. And more so, evidently, in the case of the first industrial workers: the monster is disfigured not only because Frankenstein wants him to be like that, but also because this was how things actually were in the first decades of the industrial revolution. In him, the metaphors of the critics of civil society become real. The monster incarnates the dialectic of estranged labour described by the young Marx: ‘the more his product is shaped, the more misshapen the worker; the more civilized his object, the more barbarous the worker; the more powerful the work, the more powerless the worker; the more intelligent the work, the duller the worker and the more he becomes a slave of nature… . It is true that labour produces … palaces, but hovels for the worker… . It produces intelligence, but it produces idiocy and cretinism for the worker.’ Frankenstein’s invention is thus a pregnant metaphor of the process of capitalist production, which forms by deforming, civilizes by barbarizing, enriches by impoverishing – a two-sided process in which each affirmation entails a negation. And indeed the monster – the pedestal on which Frankenstein erects his anguished greatness – is always described by negation: man is well proportioned, the monster is not; man is beautiful, the monster ugly; man is good, the monster evil. The monster is man turned upside-down, negated.

— Franco Moretti, "The Dialectic of Fear."

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[papillon-de-mai]

Interpretation in our own time, however, is even more complex. For the contemporary zeal for the project of interpretation is often prompted not by piety toward the troublesome text (which may conceal an aggression), but by an open aggressiveness, an overt contempt for appearances. The old style of interpretation was insistent, but respectful; it erected another meaning on top of the literal one. The modern style of interpretation excavates, and as it excavates, destroys; it digs “behind” the text, to find a sub-text which is the true one. The most celebrated and influential modern doctrines, those of Marx and Freud, actually amount to elaborate systems of hermeneutics, aggressive and impious theories of interpretation. All observable phenomena are bracketed, in Freud’s phrase, as manifest content. This manifest content must be probed and pushed aside to find the true meaning—the latent content beneath. For Marx, social events like revolutions and wars; for Freud, the events of individual lives (like neurotic symptoms and slips of the tongue) as well as texts (like a dream or a work of art)—all are treated as occasions for interpretation. According to Marx and Freud, these events only seem to be intelligible. Actually, they have no meaning without interpretation. To understand is to interpret. And to interpret is to restate the phenomenon, in effect to find an equivalent for it. Thus, interpretation is not (as most people assume) an absolute value, a gesture of mind situated in some timeless realm of capabilities. Interpretation must itself be evaluated, within a historical view of human consciousness. In some cultural contexts, interpretation is a liberating act. It is a means of revising, of transvaluing, of escaping the dead past. In other cultural contexts, it is reactionary, impertinent, cowardly, stifling.

— Susan Sontag, from "Against Interpretation"

[catgirlanarchist]

What is your opinion on Marxist-Leninism, Tankies, and is Left Unity between Anarchists and Marxists is a good idea?

truth be told i haven't read as much theory as i would like to or familiarized myself with the persuasions of various schools of thought to the extent that most online leftists have, both due to my collection of syndromes and disorders, and due to the fact that i'm admittedly pretty young as far as leftist theorists go

that said my understanding of marxist-leninism is that it places a lot of focus on the idea of erecting an explicitly leftist state (if such a thing is possible) to replace the capitalist state?

as an anarchist i think that idea kinda sucks, not going to lie. i think there is no way to form or maintain any kind of state apparatus without constant, egregious abuses of power and of people, even if those running said apparatus have collectivism as a value/goal.

i think leftist organization is good, i vibe with a little syndicalism sometimes, i'm an iww gal, but that all has to come with a heavy dose of free association and that is not something that a state apparatus seems capable of providing.

obviously if i'm wrong in my understanding of marxist-leninism then correct me, but that's how i see it.

i think "tankie" is a fun perjorative that some leftists, mostly anarchists, use to describe (and decry) leftists that they perceive as too authoritarian, people who have maybe killed the boss in their head but not the cop, or people who claim to be leftists but end up being really classist/ableist/generally shitty and uptight about it. i don't think it's a specific or serious enough term to use as a definitive label or to have debates about, it's just a funny insult.

i haven't read much marx yet but from what i have read i liked. he seems to have generally correct analyses of economics and i think his theories aren't too incompatible with anarchism. i don't think any theorist is required reading because a lot of the things leftists agree on is pretty self evident, it just gets beaten out of everyone, but i do think marx is pretty good.

i don't think anarchists should have solidarity with people that hate anarchists and want to throw them in jail, but i don't think that's true of most marxists, so

[partly-hueman]

B.H.E.

I head the term Big Haindmaiden Energy from a friend of mine over coffee yesterday. I haven't had a Starbucks in years and when the woman in front of me ordered a drink for her and two friends and it came to $19.00 I burst out in a laugh. You gotta be fucking joking. I'm half Brazilian and have grown up drinking coffee but I'll be damned to eternal hell if I pay anything like that for a drink.

I digress. B.H.E. She was pointing out that there are "feminists", think Meghan Rapinoe, who are supporting "Transwomen" in women's spaces and sports while a 16 year old girl was banned from a YMCA because she complained about a man in the locker room. There is a 19 year old woman in jail right now for taking the "abortion" pill and she is serving 90 days.

Joe Biden has referred to "Trans" rights, special rights in reality, as the "civil rights fight of our time". Rape and domestic violence against women are on the rise as is discrimination against them in the courts.

Marx called people like this "useful idiots." I can't think of a more accurate term.

The female foot soldiers propping up this misogynistic gender cult really don't like when you call them 'handmaidens' but this picture perfectly encapsulates their BHE (Big Handmaiden Energy). That is a group of ostensibly sane, probably self-described "feminists" smiling and clapping like trained seals while a grotesque man with an erect penis - wearing an outfit made up of fetishized female stereotypes that has "Male Gaze" written all over it - stands watch over them. These clowns want to talk about "fighting the Patriarchy"? Open your eyes you fools, that's the Patriarchy literally looming right over your heads, making a mockery of you and the supposedly progressive ideals you claim to hold.

I look forward to all the apologetic tweets and posts when this social contagion passes for the next new fad.

Remember, if you don't like what I posted Cope and Seethe.

[howieabel]

“A spider conducts operations that resemble those of a weaver, and a bee puts to shame many an architect in the construction of her cells. But what distinguishes the worst architect from the best of bees is this, that the architect raises his structure in imagination before he erects it in reality.” ― Karl Marx, Capital: Volumes One and Two

[azspot]

As Musk changes the platform, he’s also killing what most people enjoyed about Twitter. A growing number of interesting users are leaving or posting less as Musk opens the floodgates to white nationalists, spammers, and other disruptive forces. At the same time, he keeps adding poorly considered features that show he doesn’t understand how users engage with Twitter, all while erecting a paywall that further degrades the experience.

Paris Marx

[beguines]

One of the paradoxes of Foucault's analysis of biopolitics is that it tends to re-erect the kind of state-centred analysis the concept of discipline was meant to dispel with. To be sure, Foucault does make the point that biopolitical measures take place not only on the level of the state, but also "at the sub-State level, in a whole series of sub-State institutions such as medical institutions, welfare funds, insurance, and so on". However, in a fashion typical for him, he simply mentions this in the passing, without specifying what institutions he has in mind, and how they are related to the state. The biopolitical techniques, measures and institutions most often mentioned, such as housing, public hygiene, statistics, migration, rate of reproduction, fertility, longevity, are all issues which have traditionally belonged to the realm of the state. Seen in connection with Foucault's description of biopolitics as "state control of the biological" and a form of "governmental practice", I think it is fair to conclude that biopolitics in Foucault's sense refers to a form of state power.

Foucault draws an explicit connection between discipline, biopower and capitalism. The connection between disciplinary power and industrial capital is quite obvious, and Foucault actually goes so far as to conclude that it was the "growth of a capitalist system [which] gave rise to the specific modality of disciplinary power". He also holds that there is a close connection between biopower and capitalism:

"This bio-power was without question an indispensable element in the development of capitalism; the latter would not have been possible without the controlled insertion of bodies into the machinery of production and the adjustment of the phenomena of population to economic processes."

The problem is that Foucault is very unclear about what he means by "capitalism". He occasionally refers to "accumulation of capital" and "profits", but generally it seems that he identifies capitalism with the industrial capitalism emerging in the late 18th century. The only place where the logic of capital really appears in Foucault's analyses is when he examines the factory as a disciplinary space. He seems, in other words, to identify capitalism with a specific work-regime defined by a certain technology and the concrete character of the corresponding labour process. What he misses is the social logic which governs these processes. Here we see the consequences of Foucault's refusal—discussed in chapter one— to take property relations into account in his analysis of modern forms of power. Because of this omission, he artificially separates the expressions of the power of capital in the factory (discipline) and the state (biopower) from their underlying cause: capitalist property relations. Federici appropriately notes that Foucault "offers no clues" as to what led to the emergence of biopower, but that "if we place this shift in the context of the rise of capitalism the puzzle vanishes, for the promotion of life-forces turns out to be nothing more than the result of a new concern with the accumulation and reproduction of labour-power". This is why it is fruitful to combine the insights of Foucault and Marx. What Marx's analysis of capitalism tells us is why the life of the population had to become a central concern of state policy. In this light, biopolitics can be seen as an answer to the radical separation of life from its conditions at the root of the capitalist relations of production. Capitalism introduces a historically unique insecurity at the most fundamental level of social reproduction, and for this reason the state has to assume the task of administering the life of the population. Since the aim of capitalist production is the accumulation of wealth in its monetary form rather than the fulfilment of human needs, capitalist production frequently leads to the undermining of the life of the workers on whose lives it ultimately depends on. A good example is the struggle over the length of the working day in mid-19th century British industry, which Marx narrates in chapter ten of the first volume of Capital: the capitalists' "voracious appetite for surplus labour" threatened the reproduction of the labour force to such a degree that the state had to step in and impose legal limits on the length of the working day. Other historical examples could be given, for example the way in which public hygiene, housing, education, poor relief etc., had to become a concern of state authorities as a result of the rapid urbanisation brought about by the advent of capitalist industry.

Søren Mau, Mute Compulsion: A Theory of the Economic Power of Capital

[nikator]

I’ve had boiler problems recently, which has made me cherish each shower, each relaxing bath much more consciously given the prospect of randomly losing hot water for a while. It’s made me think how significant a proportion of all human endeavour—of what we might call civilisation—is motivated by the fact that our bodies become dirty even if we do nothing with them, i.e., simply by existing. The passive excretions of the body—sweat, hair, odours, flakes of skin…—motivate a frenzy of activity in the hopeless hope of one day being able to rest without interruption. By constantly reproducing themselves, these excretions drive us to reproduce our conditions of life, conditions which include as sub-conditions the ability to remove them; hence, they act as a kind of perpetual engine for civilisation. Imagine the counterfactual: Rome built by robots. Perhaps this is reason to think civilisation is an essentially biological phenomenon, and that a race of machines would spend their time in passive inactivity. Maybe otium (leisure, inactivity, idleness, philosophy), that dream of all precapitalist classes, might only be realisable in the transcendence of the flesh which they valued so highly. But this is just to say that their dream is not realisable at all; the fate of all ideology. At the beginning and the end of all intercourse, to use Marx’s language, is the mundane need of humans qua animals to perpetuate themselves. The entire historical mess is erected on top of this foundation.

[pablolarah]

Eduardo Guinle Park, also popularly known as Parque Guinle, is a public park located in the Laranjeiras neighbourhood, in the South Zone of the city of Rio de Janeiro.

Originally, the park area constituted the gardens of Eduardo Guinle's mansion (1846-1914), erected in the 1920s. They were designed by french landscape architect Gérard Cochet, and later received some specific interventions by Roberto Burle Marx.

[famousinuniverse]

Lenin Statue Takes a Tumble After Dictator’s Ouster

The large statue of Lenin stood only for a few years in the Ethiopian capital of Addis Ababa. The bronze monument was erected on the central Meskel Square in October 1983 – and was removed again in May 1991 after the Dergue regime was overthrown. The Communist Party was banned and many of its leading functionaries were arrested and convicted at that time. However, only a few memorials in Ethiopia commemorate the victims of the regime.

Vladimir Lenin

Former Chairman of the Council of People's Commissars of the Soviet Union

Vladimir Ilyich Ulyanov, better known as Vladimir Lenin, was a Russian revolutionary, politician, and political theorist. He served as the first and founding head of government of Soviet Russia from 1917 to 1924 and of the Soviet Union from 1922 to 1924.

Born: April 22, 1870, Ulyanovsk, Russia

Died: January 21, 1924, Gorki Leninskie, Russia

Influenced by: Karl Marx, Friedrich Engels, MORE

Spouse: Nadezhda Krupskaya (m. 1898–1924)

Party: Russian Social Democratic Labour Party (bolshevik)

Full name: Vladimir Ilyich Ulyanov

Ethiopia

1991

[stonewallsposts]

September 2024 Reading

L'inferno- Dante  (1321)  Finished the inferno, this month Cantos 33-34. 

Canto 33  Ninth circle- Antenora: Traitors to country 

So the guy we left gnawing on someone's brain at the end of the last canto, is introduced here as Count Ugolina della Gherardesca. His victim is the Archbishop Ruggieri degli Ubaldini. Both betrayed each other in a political play, but Ugolino ultimately lost, was imprisoned with his four sons, and then starved together, for which Ugolino now eternally eats Ruggieri's head. 

Virgil and Dante move on and pass into Ptolomea, the region that holds those who betrayed guests and friends.  In Caina, the imprisoned looked down, in Antenora, straight ahead, here, they look up, and their tears freeze in the eye sockets so a glassy visor settles over the eyes. Dante speaks to Frate Alberigo, who invited his in-laws to dinner and had them murdered. The interesting thing about this region is that souls are taken at the point they commit the betrayal, even before they die. A demon then inhabits their body until their death. 

Canto 34  Ninth circle- Judecca: betrayers of benefactors.  As they approached the center, Dante noticed a wind, and Virgil told him in the last canto that he'd soon see the reason for it. Virgil tells him now to arm himself with strength. In this region, the condemned are completely buried in the ice: some lying, some erect, others bent over. In the center is Satan, buried halfway in the ice, with his chest and arms free. He has three faces: one red, another light yellowish, and a third black, and six sets of wings, which continually flap and make the wind that freezes hell over. Satan is huge, much larger in comparison to the giants than the giants are to Dante. If the giants were estimated at 70 feet tall, Satan must be nearly a thousand feet tall. 

In the center mouth, Satan chews on Judas. In the right and left mouths, he chews on Brutus and Cassius. 

At this point, Virgil tells Dante they've seen everything, hold on, and then they climb down Satan's hide until they flip over and continue climbing up. This confuses Dante until Virgil explains that Satan was at the center of the earth, and now they are ascending up on the opposite side. They make their way through the cave and out on the earth's surface again to see the stars. 

This is the end of the canto, and the poem about hell.    

Ten Days That Shook the World- John Reed  (1919) 

The book chronicles the 1917 Russian Revolution, and how the Bolsheviks took power in Russia. 

The author, John Reed, was an American Socialist, and sympathetic to the Bolsheviks, so he doesn't pretend to write a completely unbiased account, but his sympathies gained him access to the Bolsheviks, which wouldn't have been granted otherwise.  

The Tsarist regime had been overthrown already in March 1917, and in the meantime, there were political battles fought over who exactly would take control. The most ideologically communist of the parties was the Bolshevik party. The Menshiviks were socialists, but they believed that communism could only truly come about at the end of capitalism (per Marx himself), and that therefore, attempts to bring it about by revolution would end in failure and setback. There were smaller groups of Monarchists, Liberals, and other versions of Social Democrats- those that believed in reforms to capitalism, rather than complete overthrow. The Bolsheviks had gained the following of the working class and peasants, particularly with promises of free land and better wages, but had alienated those in society that actually controlled the means of production. 

The Bolsheviks did manage, by the end of October, to organize an armed revolution to take over the oust the old leadership of the government. But they found that those in actual control of the various institutions were uncooperative, which plunged the entire country into a grinding halt. 

The book did give insight into a question I've had for a while: why do revolutions tend to "eat their own"? When revolutions happen it is often those that helped bring it about who end up being killed by those who have taken over power. Why is that? 

It starts with the basic recognition that any functional society is comprised of many interdependent parts, that can only function when there is a high degree of order in that system. Order comes first, and when order is largely established, freedoms come after.  

Overthrowing a political system requires people who agitate that system and create instability, so that the greater mass of people will be open to a new system. Systems that work, don't require change, so if revolutionaries want change, they must cause disfunction in the system, so that people will want the change being suggested by the revolutionaries. 

Once that shift in power has been obtained, order must be restored. But the very tools used to break down the system (Agitators) so that power could be transferred to the revolutionaries, are now the opposite of what is needed. Agitation and destabilization are not only useless once power has been transferred, they are counterproductive. The new power needs stability and order. But those actors that are capable in destabilizing and agitating don't become the opposite once the power is transferred. The very capabilities that made them useful in destabilizing a system, make them liabilities and criminals in the new order. Hence, they are, before long, eliminated after their usefulness has served its purpose.  

Here’s an example from the book, where Lenin:   "explained the revolution, urged the people to take power into their own hands, by force to break down the resistance of the propertied classes, by force to take over the institutions of government. Revolutionary order. Revolutionary discipline! Strict accounting and control! No strikes! No loafing." 

"No strikes". This was one of the tactics used by the revolution to force their will on the old order. But once power had been shifted- it was no longer allowed. Likewise the freedom of the press. The revolutionaries used the press to foment agitation and instability. But once they had the power, they shut down opposition press, so any questioning of their orders was not allowed. 

It also explains why the new order tends to be even more repressive than the old order it replaced. 1) Revolutions, almost by definition, occur when there is a minority taking power. If they had an actual majority, they could take power naturally through democratic mechanisms. But, as happened in Russia, they, didn't have the support of much of the class of people that runs things, and so they had to implement very repressive measures to force compliance with their objectives. 2) breaking down institutions unleashes a nasty set of social dynamics that are hard to get back in control once they've been unleased. Repression will almost certainly be needed to contain those unleashed social dynamics once again.

Stalin: Paradoxes of Power- Stephen Kotkin (2015) 

This biography attempts to capture a whole range of internal and external events that led to Ioseb Jugashvili, Stalin, becoming the dictator par excellence he turned into. It's a fascinating look at the internal politics of Russia leading up to the 1917 revolution. It covers Stalin's early life, as well as the politics of the day. It covers the political mood of Europe at the time, and how these events all played some part, along with Stalin's personal strengths and weaknesses, to produce the man that led the Soviet Union. In listening to author Stephen Kotkin, he said he wanted to avoid reliance on voices who only provided "insight" after the fact. Those voices tend, so he says, to read too much back into isolated instances, which at the time were ignored, but later revitalized with significance. Relying on the more recently declassified Soviet archives, Kotkin aimed to see what people were thinking and saying at the time, to get a more accurate picture of how the man got where he did.  

Perhaps surprisingly to some, a dictatorship didn't arise in the Soviet Union because Stalin hijacked communism and turned it into something it wasn't supposed to be. In fact, Lenin, the leader of the revolution, demanded that nearly all decisions went through him. His vision of Marxism necessitated some changes in the orthodoxy, but he, and Stalin after him, faithfully tried to implement Marxism in the Russian state, and they hoped, the world. The problems Stalin, and Russia, experienced in the 10 years after the revolution were driven by the straightjacket of their Marxist ideological solutions. In fact, they were somewhat mitigated by the allowance of small scale markets allowing the peasants to produce food. But they were communists, and markets were anathema to communists, so they were always in conflict with actual production in the country. As has been leveled: Stalin was enforcing his particular view of communism on everyone else. But communism doesn't really allow for democracy, otherwise people might vote out the system. Communism's innate totalitarianism structurally necessitated a concentration of power and decision making in very few hands, and even those had to agree. If they didn't, well, then the power had to be concentrated in one person. Lenin wanted it to be him, Trotsky thought he knew better, so did Stalin. From Lenin on, anyone who contradicted their views, were claimed as 'counter revolutionary', enemies of the revolution, and therefore enemies of the people.  

This is the first of three volumes Kotkin is writing on Stalin. 

The Way of All Flesh- Samuel Butler  (1903) 

The novel was written between 1873 and 1884, but Butler didn't wanted it published until after his death. In it, he satirizes Victorian English hypocrisy, particularly around Christianity, which wouldn't have earned him any friends. The story is multi-generational, but centers around Ernest Pontifex. Ernest is rather gullible, as a result of his upbringing, and meets with continual misfortunes, but manages to learn his lessons along the way.  

I, Claudius- Robert Graves  (1934) 

This is a historical fiction, written from the first person view of the Roman Emperor Claudius, who ruled between Caligula and Nero. It's written very much in the style of the Roman historians of the time: Suetonius, Livy, Tacitus; so much that you'd be fooled into believing the work was actually from that time. The characters and events are actual characters and events, but there is additional material added in to fill out what we know. 

Life of Charlotte Bronte- Elizabeth Gaskell  (1857) 

Since my last read through what has become one of my favorite books, Jane Eyre, I have wanted to find out more about the author Charlotte Bronte, since I had read that many of the novels particulars were directly from lived personal experiences Charlotte had.  

In Book 1, Ch. 4, Elizabeth Gaskell writes about the Bronte sisters' experience at the Cowan Bridge Clergy Daughters' School, which was the model for the Lowood Institution in Jane Eyre. While the headmaster had his faults, he was actually conscientious about providing good food. But.... apparently, the cook wasn't, and the food provided for the students was abysmal. This was eventually dealt with after a typhoid outbreak where the food was found responsible for many of the health issues. The cook was fired, and another took her place. The Sunday routine of forcing the girls to walk a few miles up and back in winter weather with inadequate clothing to protect against the cold was also based on their real experiences.  

Book 1, Ch. 8, mentions an infamous story of a young governess finding a situation with a wealthy family in Leeds, where she ended up marrying a gentlemen there. But the story went south when it was discovered that the gentlemen was already married, but his wife was insane. The story of the unfortunate girl, pregnant by that time with the man's child, caused widespread pity for the young woman. This was, of course, one of the main plot devices in Jane Eyre. 

There is an amusing anecdote that Charlotte had related in the first chapters where Gaskell gives a flavor of the Yorkshire people that the Brontës grew up among. "A man that she knew, who was a small manufacturer, had engaged in many local speculations, which had always turned out well, and thereby rendered him a person of some wealth. He was rather past middle age when he bethought him of insuring his life; and he had only just taken out his policy when he fell ill of an acute disease which was certain to end fatally in a very few days. The doctor, half hesitatingly, revealed to him his hopeless state. 'By jingo', cried he, rousing up at once into the old energy, 'I shall do the insurance company! I always was a lucky fellow!' " 

[gregor-samsung]

" Society can develop creative human powers only so as to make possible, and to stimulate, the development of free human personality. There can be no free society without free personality. But this does not mean that in a free society all are free. Even in a free society the individual may be unfree. By using a relativized terminology: The individual may be less free than the society in which he lives. Society may be organized so as to render possible and to stimulate the development of the free personality, but freedom cannot be given as a gift to anyone. "Given" or "imposed" freedom is a contradictio in adjecto. Freedom is by definition the activity of one who is free. Only by his own free deed can the individual achieve his personal freedom. Just as in a free society not all are free, so neither are all in an unfree society unfree. Even in an unfree society an individual may be free. More precisely, it is possible for the individual to elevate himseif above the degree of freedom obtainable in society. External obstacles erected by an unfree society can make more difficult or limit a free human act, but they cannot completely prevent it. An unwavering revolutionary in chains is freer than the jailer who guards him or the torturer who vainly tries to break him down. If we were to deny the possibility of a free personality in an unfree society, we would be denying the possibility of transforming an unfree society by conscious revolutionary action.

If unfree personalities are possible in a free society, and if free personalities are possible in an unfree society, this does not mean that the freedom of a society is irrelevant to the freedom of the personality. The unfree society endeavors to destroy the free personality, while a free society makes possible and stimulates its flowering. Therefore the struggle for a free society is a component part of the struggle for the freeing of personality. When this part attempts to become everything, it ceases to be that which it ought to be. The struggle for a free society is not a struggle for a free society unless through it an ever greater degree of personal freedom is created. Personal and social freedom are inseparably associated, but the relationship between them is asymmetrical; there is no free society without free personality (which does not mean that all individuals in a free society are free) but a free personality is possible outside a free society (which does not mean that the freedom of society is irrelevant for the freedom of personality or that a free personality is possible outside every social community!). "

Gajo Petrović, Marx in the mid-twentieth century. A Yugoslav Philosopher Considers Karl Marx's Writings; Anchor Books Publisher, Garden City, N.Y., 1967¹; pp. 129-130.