Or maybe they didn't see much point in it?
I can't speak for the rest, of course, but what I see is a very arguable presentation of some historical events, presented as a theory, thanks to a few name-changes.
The first half is a long text about end of feudalism and rise of capitalism, which seems obvious to the point of pointlessness.
A lot can be argued as to the actual impact of the crusades, but the basic idea remains the same so it's moot.
What's strange is how you present the change (which is the growth of new social relations within the old order and the crumbling of the old order when it becomes socially unsustainable) as an "ignoring" and a "return". Return from where? Where did the bourgeosie go? They were certainly snubbed from political power and physically and ideologically opressed, but they were certainly utilized by the then ruling elite, which also had to go to great lengths to control their merchant class. Later on, governments had to appease them, incorporate some of their demands, to maitain social stability (just like the bourgeois governments today appease the proletariat).
I think you are taking the word "ignored" in one sense and then applying in a different meaning. They were "ignored" as in disregarded, snubbed from power, but they weren't "ignored" as actually existing and even being a potential threat.
Would you say the bourgeoisie "ignores" the proletariat? Well, in one sense, when they ignore our pleas, or suffering, yes, but if you look at their police, their courts, their newspapers and how they react to us, can you really say they "ignore" us?
And so, you say that what is ignored grows, and then "returns"... from where? What is the actual practical application of this, beyond being a witty phrase?
I don't see any goings and comings, they bourgeoisie don't return when they vie for power. What we can say is that you have conflicting modes of production, and this spawns mutually exclusive ideological frameworks, so that you have the feudal order with its ideas about social stability, duty, honor, etc., and the bourgeois order with its ideas about liberty, equality, and so on. One lens, one filter is switched with the other and everything is seen in a different light. But nothing went away or came back.
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What I perceive to be the second part of you post is the idea of farce as the celebration of the end of the old order, as a reenactment of the initial conditions to once again make it seem as you are fulfilling your ideals.
Yes, agreed on this point.
I would add, though, that this reenactment would happen regardless if you fulfilled the promises made or not, because any social order will wish to ideologically assert itself and one way of doing this is by celebrating its origin, the reason that gave birth to it and that therefore justifies it.
There's a degree of social catharsis, for sure, of channeling frustration with the system through the retelling of the destruction of the old enemy, but even without frustration, without unfulfilled promises, it remains an affirming action aimed mainly at generating agreement with the existing order and closer identity between subjects though a common past and struggle. I'm sure that even if we were in a socialist order where things were going more and more our way, we would still reenact the revolution that made it possible through celebration, education and arts.
To say that it is a strategy devised because of the lackluster nature of the new order seems erroneously one-sided.
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Thirdly, we get an (almost?) metaphysical view of history with the final days of mankind already existing as a homunculus present from the dawn of our species. This to me is a gross exaggeration of the dialectical presentation of the seeds of the new being present in the old.
Marx and Hegel presented this by showing the progression of something that is posited, something that is affirmed from without, assuming its own existence and then finally asserting itself and then swallowing or becoming the basis for its predesessor. Commerce, from being an activity done with the surplus of feudal production, of being dependant and explained by the first, becomes the reason for production, it robs production of its purpose.
But this doesn't mean that all of history is contained in the actual. It reeks of metaphysics and doesn't seem to answer anything or to be useful to anything except, again, for witty postulates.
Finally:
Quote:That historical momments when people recognize the necessity for change, the times when the system exhausts itself, they are the tragedies of the eras. And those momments when nothing changes in the facade, those are the farce.
This seems a needless name-changing for revolution and social stability. For what purpose? Didn't you say that farce was the reenactment of revolution? Now it's the entire historiical period? Doesn't that confuse things?
Quote:But you cannot say if it was farce then tragedy or tragedy then as farce, because the farce of the previous era becomes tragedy, and that tragedy becomes farce and vice-versa. Positions are exchanged, by the exchange of political power. What is tragedy now, becomes farce. Farce until the change cannot be avoided, then a new tragedy, and so on.
So social stability becomes revolution in hindsight?, or the reenactment of revolutions become revolutionary? What are you saying? That revolutions follow each other between periods of stability? If that's the case, then why the long post just to arrive at this banality? I don't understand.
Quote:But why the current is always a farce ?
Because history is not allowed to flow in a single thrust from the injustice of former eras into a kingdom of freedom and liberty, a fraternity of mandkind.
By whom? God? I take it you mean material conditions? Are you sure that fraternity of mankind was the purpose from the begginning, or is this something that has only envisioned lately? For example, did the Romans strive for a fraternity of mankind, or was it the thriving of their elite and the spread of its ideals? I think that you are taking Enlightenment ideals and spreading them ahistorically as our eternal goal.
Quote:Because we cannot know what is to be what we are not already, we cannot want (or choose) to be simply the best we can. We want and chose what seems to be best right now (under certain uses of the world "best", the best now is trully the best, but not the uttmost best).
We strive to be just what right now seems best, we become that, we detect its failures, we want something even better, and so on.
So there are no classes in history, just Mankind with a capital M, evolving through time thanks to its own becoming. How Hegelian...