From: Annette.Schlemm@t-online.de (Annette Schlemm)
Subject: Possibilities
To: andy@werple.mira.net.au
Hi,
thanks for all discussion. It takes me some time to read and think and answer 
(in English). I´ll try to answer to some aspects of discussion. 

Yes, Marx accepted variants, possibilities, he wasn't a linear thinker (see his 
mail to Vera Sassulitsch). But they/ we (and most modern communists) thought 
so... in "our" Marxism.   It was a hard work to explain other opinions for 
philosophers in GDR. 
- means-and-end
The unity of Means-and-End is typical for biotical development too ! (I use 
"biotical" for the evolution of objective existing organisms but "biological" 
only for the scientifical ("logos") process of cognition). There is the 
principle "change of functions". I assume that this principle has universal 
significance (I've written about this in my book). We find this also in the 3. 
Thesis on Feuerbach: "The coincidence of the changing of circumstances and of 
human activity or self-changing can be conceived and rationally understood only 
as revolutionary practice." 
I think concerned to society that our technologies and technics have one 
function in capitalism. They will have in a future sustainable, humane society 
(socialism/communism/...?) other functions not the same (as they had in our 
sowjet- and GDR-socialism). The "Means" changed themselves  By this way too! We 
needn't the same computers as the capitalism. We needn't the same factories and 
so on. 
This mutually change of mean and end is the "way" of "spirally formed" 
development. 

- to Vygotsky´s and Newman-Holzmans work: 
We can remind the 3. Feuerbach-Thesis. We forgot it in the GDR-socialism. There 
were "leaders" (who knew all "better" than all others), the others had to do 
what the leaders said. They couldn't learn. I think that there were not only 
subjective mistakes. Our countries (GDR, Sowjet-union and so on) had not enough 
possibilities to learn because of the international class struggle. 
Since 1990 I've learned very much from the method of "Future labs" 
(Zukunftswerkstatten). It was set up by Robert Jungk. 

I distinguish three phases of transformation to a new society: first preparing 
the second. Second is the "big bang", the "expropriation of the expropriators", 
and than the third: creating and organizing a new society. The third must work 
in the way of Future Labs. I'm at a loss to say something about the second. 
Preparing needs also Future Labs with many people. They have to understand their 
live, their needs and their possibilities (Leaders can't know it and tell them) 
in order to overcome the alienation. I hope that in this way germs for new 
groups, societies will emerge ... We can see them in the Castor-resistance. We 
have in Germany an interesting "Ecology-youth-movement" outside the 
institutional ecology-movement. Their motto is "Differently work - differently 
live". The workers are often "old-fashioned". They dream of a 40-hour- 
working-week without asking if one need so many cars and so on... 

The "win-or-synthesis"- distinction is important to me. I think that all people 
have to change themselves. Workers can not simply "win" or "overthrow" the 
others if they not change themselves also (see 3. Thesis...). (Yes, Hegel didn't 
use "synthesis", I would shorten the long argumentation about "negation of 
negation"...).
Workers in capitalism are bounded on the capital and profit because they think 
that they need "work places" not another life! Already in 1930 a German 
philosophestress (Simone Weill) recognized that workers are always wheels in a 
gearbox. Marx and the philosophers of Frankfurter School called it "Entfremdung" 
(Alienation). I hope that new production forms ("Toyotism", "lean production") 
need new (creative, flexible) workers and they will recognize more connections. 
But there emerge another alienations and social fragmentations! I think that old 
class theories can't explain this (I often say that Marx and Engels would be the 
first who learned new things!, not hold on to old theories). 

I have learned something from Theories of group organization and management 
methods like Andy. I've written something about it in my self-organization-text. 
The anarchists have some theories about this, and other political movements also 
think about this (left and unfortunately right too). I know many books about 
this, but all in German. 
There were 3 phases in my friend-groups and philosophy-discussion-groups and 
clubs : 1. The "We"-phase. We were happy to meet each other. Than, 2., we became 
acquaint with us and we saw the differences clearly. Each of us emphasized 
his/her own identity - it was the "I"-phase. Than we succeeded in building a new 
synthesis - a whole of different parts. Maybe in our group happens the same... 
It is interesting that the second phase is necessary for a good group. We won't 
be in a differenceless "mush". 
Andy´s question leads me to write more about it (and the aspects for whole 
society; there are several unites: group, community, society, mankind) in my 
second book (If I have time to write it...). (Although I can't promise a 
"correct Marxist approach".)

Mustafa, I have forwarded your mail about possibility to Herbert Hoerz. He is 
the expert in such questions. He (and K.-F.Wessel) wrote in the book 
"Philosophische Entwicklungstheorie" that there exist (distinguished) 
stochastically possibilities ("horizontal" = diversification) and 
probabilistically ("vertical" in time = changing). 
Hoerz´ "statistical-law"-notion contains the dialectic of necessity and 
possibility in my opinion. Maybe he presents an English text about this in the 
WWW. (in German I have written a summary in http://www.thur.de/philo/as15.htm).
 
I also think that the chance, the possibility refers to the Part-Whole-Problem. 
There is a whole with emergent properties. And there are parts of the whole. 
Because the whole has this properties it must be considered as a whole, it is 
not the sum of the parts. And this requires the existence of possibilities, 
chances...(how Mustafa describes: "there are one and many together"). 
Other approximations to possibilities:
· Possibility is the processing contradiction in the active essence (Elke Uhl, 
German philosophestress),
· Matter is the If-possible-being and In-possibility-being (Ernst Bloch)
Bloch distinguishes 3 "layers of the category Possibility", but I can't 
translate them correct.

Reading Andy´s remarks I see that I often use another notion of "possibility". 
There is an philosophical notion in Hegel´s meaning. And there are many 
possibilities in reality... There are different meanings. 1. there are the 
dialectic of actuality and possibility, and 2. there are some/many/much 
different possibilities in reality before and while development-processes. (I 
don't know the exact meanings of actuality and reality in English).
Nevertheless I want to emphasize that in real development-processes exist many 
possibilities/variants for changing. (not only one certain, how in Hegels 
locigal development). Sometimes one possibility asserts itself (selection) - 
sometimes many variants can exist side by side (biotical radiation). It is 
interesting that in biotical development nothing "overthrows" if new organisms 
arise. (Overthrow and win are aspects of life of being organisms, after arising 
of new properties. It doesn't explain the arising of news).

A new time-definition is realized by new self-organization-concepts ("present 
has duration"). They remind on Whiteheads time-notion.

It is late, my daughter waits...
Greetings
Annette Schlemm