“Religion free of old and new dogmas.” Catholic Bishops are worried that evangelical sects, ritualistic sects, and New Age beliefs are winning adherents from the Church. These movements promise a more immediate and involving form of religion. The bishops envy the spiritual uplift the new groups provide. They feel the Church has neglected spiritual questions. One problem I see is that both groups derive spirituality from dogma. True spirituality should be founded on human reality, not baseless and antiquated superstition. Both groups also neglect the necessary social dimension of spirituality, as, e.g., in Kant. One group seeks spirituality in crystals, the in rosaries and votive candles – all “idols.” The concentration on dogma and ritual to a large extent focuses on the exterior of the region, rather than its interior. It only takes away from true religiosity. Results include hypocrisy, ranging from finding religious reasons to do evil, to a complete unawareness of the ethical dimension of religion.

During the recent Ontario election campaign, it was surprising to see that the letters to the editor in the Toronto Star and the Globe and Mail in in each case opposite to the respective papers' editorial position.  The Globe's letters were consistently opposed to and critical of Harris' plans; the Star's were on both sides, though perhaps the majority were in one way or another supportive of Harris' "ideas."  It has been said that you can't fool all of the people all of the time.  But perhaps you can fool most of the people all of the time, if they happen to be foolish and uneducated to begin with.  It is quite likely that the average Globe reader is more highly educated than that of the Star.  So although one would expect the Globe reader's "objective interests" can be better served by the Harris agenda than by the Liberal or NDP ones, it is probably simply a lot more difficult to fool the Globe's average reader.  He or she is not going to fall for a foolish political platform, no matter what.  Compassion and doing the right thing are not simply subjective "liberal" bleeding-heart emotionalisms.  They also have an objective side, which is intelligence and higher education.  The intellectual elite, out of a kind of "good" snobbery, will not go in for plebian right-wing stances that repudiate high human ideals, which, after all, the elite imagines itself as having created.  Of course in fact another class' struggles created those ideals, but they are a bond between some of the lowest and highest classes.

What used to be "negative opinion of women" is now "misogyny." "Dislike of Blacks" is now "racism." "Dislike of foreigners" is now "xenophobia." and so on and so forth. What used to belong to the realm of personal attitudes (whether feeling or opinion) now has an objective impersonal interpretation. It has been removed from the socially-defined and/or sanctioned (either as allowed or as encouraged) personal realm to the social realm of psycho-socially defined ideosyncracy. A similar phenomenon has taken place in what is more strictly the realm of morality. In some cultures, it is considered a father's duty to avenge a "dishonoured" daughter. To us moderns, however, such an idea of moral duty seems rather farcical. The process is again the same as in the other case. In the case of the avenging father, the social sanction coincides with the personal attitude; society and the father agree on what is the right thing to do. In the modern situation, society has taken the decision as to what is the right thing to do out of the father's hand. However, what may at first seem like a loss of freedom is an increase of freedom. The old father was given no alternatives. The modern father has alternatives, including personal revenge.

The contemporary changes in the nature of the forces of production (the social content) have destabilized the relations of production (the social form) to the extent of destabilizing the liberal democratic political system itself. On the issue of the electorate's "loss of faith" in politicians, it should be remembered that this is in fact a "good thing," because, when translated out of the language of liberal democracy and into the language of revolutionary Marxism, it signifies a partial liberation from the constraints of capitalist ideology. Capital is inehrently incapable of justifying faith.

Jack London describes an England where crimes against property received far harsher penalties than crimes against persons.  The current economic outlook defines economic prosperity as increase of profits, rather than declining unemployment.  There is a connection here, because "the new economy" and "reinventing government" are attempts to return society to the way things where prior to the creation of the welfare state.

If we call ourselves human beings, we must act accordingly.  Being human means giving, and wanting to give.  Having too much when one's neighbor is starving is inhuman, immoral, and, ideally, illegal.

This type of argument, applied to the question of immigration, implies that citizenship confers legal privileges, but no moral ones.  As Canadians, we have a right to keep others out of this country.  As human beings, though, we have no such right.

The line one usually hears these days is: "There was some form of socialism in the Soviet Union because there was nationalized property.  But now has been capitalist restoration, and the nationalized property is more or less gone.  Now we have to wait and hope that through some process the nationalized property will be restored."

Doesn't this line of argument put the cart before the horse, in that it stresses the forces of production at the expense of the relations of production?  Wouldn't it be appropriate to move away from this non-dialectical form of thinking, and towards a more Hegelian form that revolves around class struggle and relations of production?  Such as line of thought would see the Russian situation as a dialectical development.  In other words, it would see the current state of matter as a continuation, not of reversal, of the social developments in Russia during the 20th Century.  plane MOIS show during the 20th century.  It could be based on the idea that forces of production are almost an epiphenomenon of the relations of production.  In other words, the condition of the forces of production is a response to changes in the relations of production, and therefore that the "defeat" of socialism in Russia may in fact indicate an accelerated phase of development in the relations of production, and not the reverse.  Such a seemingly farfetched idea can be defended if one remembers that that in the relations between capital and labour, labour is the reality and capital the epiphenomenon.  In other words, whatever action capital takes is a reaction, not an action, and therefore when it takes a really drastic step, such as dismantling a social system, this may be taken as a sign of the strength and vitality of class struggle at that conjuncture.

In the same way that materialism is a necessary foundation for any social science, existentialism is a necessary foundation for materialism.  Materialist explorations help take incoherencies and inconsistencies out of ordinary explanations.

Left politics applied to social issues, i.e., political correctness, was originally an attempt to show that values are situation dependent, i.e., "relative."  The right, however, may try to turn left values, such as anti-harassment, on their head by making them into absolutes.  The response to this should be, e.g., that if someone does not feel harassed, then he or she is not being harassed

Custom mediates between class consciousness and cultural development.  Casual "friendly" conversation between persons of unequal rank and socioeconomic status, for example within an organization, can be construed, on the one hand, as an unconscious admission of the injustice of the current arrangement, and, on the other hand, as a step toward a more advanced arrangement.