democratic discussion about having ‘science’ under ‘a system of common ownership
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Dear L Bird
In order to have this discussion you first need to define what is meant by science. What are the boundaries of science?
Do all ideas come under the heading of science? For example where is the boundary between philosophy and science?
Similarly with psychology would for instance Jung’s three part model of the human psyche be classified as a scientific or a philosophical concept?
Unless we know where science begins and ends how can we know where your proposal of democratic control begins and ends.
Can’t see the point in 7 billion people voting to decide whether or not String Theory is correct. Completely different matter if you want to make a practical decision about whether to allocate resources to a road bypass or to build a local hospital instead but if one were to generously allow that 100, 000 people out of 7 billion voted on whether or not String Theory was correct and of these 51K voted that it was correct, what exactly is supposed to happen with the other 49K? Will they be compelled to relinquish their heretical views? If not why bother with a vote?
A contribution from Gilbert McClatchie:
https://www.marxists.org/archive/mcclatchie/1972/materialism_vindicated.htm
ALB, thanks for the link to yet another ‘materialist’ dismissal of Marx’s theories.
McClatchie doesn’t mention:
- Worker’s democracy;
- Marx;
- Social production;
- Theory and practice;
- Modes of production;
- Socio-historical change;
- Socialism;
- Doubt;
- Debates;
- Bourgeois physics leaving behind of ‘matter’, and move to ‘mass’, and then ‘energy’;
- Philosophy of science (eg. Einstein, Bohr, Schrodinger, Heisenberg, Kuhn, Feyerabend, Lakatos, Smolin, Rovelli, etc.).
Of course, in a short text, one couldn’t expect all of these issues to be covered, but in an account by a ‘socialist’, surely just one of the above would have been mentioned?
McClatchie’s account seems to be a bog-standard bourgeois account of a ‘politically-neutral’, ‘objective’,’disinterested observer’ form of ‘science’ (individuals and their brains, rather than the socio-historical production of social mind) . It seems to be a liberal account of the ‘onward march of progress’. He doesn’t address the issue of ‘matter’ as the ideological form that ‘private property’ takes within the physics of class societies, since the Ancient Greek thinkers, or that ‘matter’ has been long regarded as simply another name for ‘god’, which is the ‘active side’ within ‘nature’. Of course, this simply regards humanity as the ‘passive side’ of a world which already exists, and so can’t be changed (handy for the conservative ruling class and its status quo, eh?).
Put simply, McClatchie’s account is a religious account of ‘nature’, one that Marx rejected, and replaced with a revolutionary account of humanity as the active side, as the ‘social producer’ of any ‘nature’ that we know, an ‘organic nature’ which is a ‘nature for us’, and thus can be changed.
Why the SPGB allies itself with the Trotskyists’ ‘materialism’, I don’t know (and have never been given a political explanation).
You state:
“He doesn’t address the issue of ‘matter’ as the ideological form that ‘private property’ takes within the physics of class societies, since the Ancient Greek thinkers,”
Can you please expand on this statement, can you point to exact texts and references where any other person has come to a similar conclusion.
also
“or that ‘matter’ has been long regarded as simply another name for ‘god’,”
If matter has long been regarded as another name of god, it should be fairly easy for you to point out examples of this taking place.
Bijou, I’ve been caught out and merely insulted by you, too many times, after making long, detailed posts, containing references to Marx, Pannekoek, etc., etc. (I can’t even be bothered any longer to list yet again the extensive background authors and texts for you to learn from) for me to go through that charade again.
What I will say, is that if you can ever be bothered to read the Ancient Greek thinkers on ‘matter’ (hule), I’d recommend that you pay especial attention to the concepts of ‘the underlying’ (to hupokeimenon), ‘qualityless’ (apoios), ‘undefined’ (aoristos), ‘shapeless’ (amorphos), which offer modern democratic communists and Marxist idealist-materialists, a set of concepts suitable to the democratic control of the social production of our world.
I know that you’re a Religious Materialist, centrally concerned, not with ‘social production’ by ‘active humanity’ (as was Marx), but with the elite concept of ‘matter’ and its impression upon ‘passive humanity’, so I don’t expect that you’ll get anything from these potentially democratic concepts, which require us to openly state who or what creatively gives ‘quality’, ‘definition’ and ‘shape’ to our world.
Marx argued that the creator was ‘humanity’; ‘Materialists (like you and the Trots) argue that it is ‘matter’ and that the majority have to passively accept that ‘fact’. Of course, as Marx warned, the Leninists/Trotskyists, as elite ‘Materialists’, will simply surreptitiously place themselves as the ‘active side’, and will expect us workers to passively accept their creation of a world which suits their elite interests, needs and purposes, whilst pretending that they are merely obeying the dictates of ‘matter’, which is a god of their own making (and their changing, when it suits their purposes).
There is no place for ‘democracy’ within ‘Materialism’.
I see L Bird has (predictably) still not bothered to provide an explanation as to why he thinks, scientific theories – tens of thousands of them – should all be subject to a democratic vote by the global population in his view. Never mind how he thinks such multiple referenda are going to be practically organised amongst a population of 7 billion plus – what is the point of the exercise? Assuming even a tiny fraction of the population would be interested in the validity of a particular theory does a vote mean that the minority, holding a particular opinion in opposition to the majority who voted, will no longer be permitted to expound their view? If not, why a vote in the first place? Why can’t people just agree to disagree?
Of course a socialist society will entail democratic decisions being made but there are limits to how far you can, or need to, adopt democratic decision-making as a procedure. L Bird seems unable or unwilling to recognise this point. He seems to think that because something is socially produced it must therefore be subject to democratic decision-making. But that doesn’t follow at all. Democracy should be about practical matters that concern our practical interests, not abstract theories.
After all, if we follow L Bird’s logic why stop at scientific theories? Why not philosophy or cultural expressions which are also socially produced. Will minority cultures be banned in L Bird’s Brave New World. If this forum voted to reject L Bird’s absurd ideas will he graciously accept the majority verdict and desist from expounding them?
Over to you L Bird!
robbo203, On the power of ‘science’ and its elite scientists, when it destroys workers’ lives:
To the Jewish kids experimented on by the bourgeois scientist Mengele: “Why can’t people just agree to disagree?”
To the black men experimented on by the scientific Tuskegee Experiment: “Why can’t people just agree to disagree?”
To the disabled people sterilised by scientific Eugenic Programs: “Why can’t people just agree to disagree?”
robbo203 wrote “Democracy should be about practical matters that concern our practical interests, not abstract theories”
Good job robbo has appointed himself as the definer of ‘abstract theories’, as I’d expect from an anti-democrat, who constantly tries to hide the social power of ‘science’, and pretends that its ‘practitioners’, like Mengele, can be trusted to appeal to ‘practical’ results.
robbo, mate, it’s the ‘abstract theories’ that require our democratic control. The ‘abstract theories’ of ‘science’ have a habit of becoming ‘practical disasters’ for humanity.
I’ll let you into a secret – there really isn’t an elite group of disinterested scientists who have a politically neutral method which simply discovers ‘practical’ affairs. That idea is a ruling class idea.
The building of a self-conscious revolutionary class requires the challenging of ‘abstract theories’, and a democratic method of us deciding just which ‘abstract theories’ should be put into ‘practice’ as beneficial to our needs, interests and purposes. ‘Science’ is a class battlefield, not the preserve of a ‘clever elite’.
Finally, Marx’s method was ‘theory and practice’ – not robbo’s ‘practice and theory’. The ‘abstract theory’ always comes first – ‘theories’ do not just ’emerge’ from ‘doing stuff’, although that’s just what the Trots insist to workers.
The method of ‘practice and theory’ is intended to keep workers passive, and to keep the development of necessary ‘abstract theory’ in the hands of a self-proclaimed elite who claim to have a ‘special consciousness’ which is not available to the vast majority. That’s why these elitists, like robbo, won’t have even any talk of ‘democracy’ in their ‘elite science’.
The ‘Cadre Party’ does robbo’s ‘elite science’.
The ‘Democratic Class’ does Marx’s ‘revolutionary science’. Any ‘science’ has power. Any democrat sees the needs for any social power to be democratically organised.
But not robbo, who’s had all this patiently explained several times, but just doesn’t get ‘democracy’ in social production. Political power seems to be a mystery to robbo, who places his hopes in ‘scientists’, not in workers.
Which is fair enough, if one doesn’t want the democratic control of social production (world socialism).
L Bird
As per usual you get it completely wrong. I have already stated that democratic decision-making will obviously be a key feature of social production in socialism. Your problem is that you dont understand that there are limits to democratic decision-making even under socialism or where these lie. Hence your absurdly impractical suggestion that scientific theories – tens of thousands of them – should be subjected to a democratic vote by the global populace. You dont explain how this can be accomplished in practical terms or even why it is necessary. Why cant people just agree to disagree assuming they are even interested in a particular theory
Since I inadvertently incorrectly responded to your comments on the ‘world socialist movement’ forum (which you also incorrectly made on that forum), as ALB noted, allow me to copy and paste on this thread which is the more appropriate place for them:
“Whilst I agree with what ALB and the SPGB say here, I’m never quite sure why they don’t apply the same political analysis to ‘science’, but instead, in effect, in relation to the political power of ‘science’, adopt Lenin’s method.This political method assumes, of course, that an elite minority of specialists have an ability, prior to the proletariat, to know something that the proletariat can know only after a political revolution, then being taught by the ‘revolutionary elite’.That is, ‘science’ is not a socio-political activity that the proletariat must school itself to be able to take power over, but is an activity that must be left to specialists. This is clearly an anti-democratic political method. Why can’t the SPGB answer this political criticism of their ‘science ideology’ (even if it’s not yet an openly declared party ‘science policy’)?”
To become a competent molecular biologist takes years of study. Of necessity that involves specialisation. Is LBird seriously suggesting here we should all become trained molecular biologists before we can have socialism? And what of those who are trained in molecular biology? How many of them are, say, competent mechanical engineers as well? Though they may be specialists in their own field, in relation to mechanical engineering their position as no different from that of any other worker – they are non specialists. How does their specialist knowledge of molecular biology give them any more power over their fellow workers than a mechanical engineer skilled in that branch of science but lacking in knowledge of molecular biology?
LBird’s position is completely indefensible. Either he is saying that all workers should become competent scientist in every conceivable branch of science, which is obviously absurd, or he is saying no one should become specialists in anything which equally absurd. The development of science requires specialisation in the sense of some people having to spend years of the lives devoted to mastering a particular branch of science.
You can call those who have undergone the necessary training in this particular branch of science a technical “elite” if you so wish. But you cannot transpose this understanding of the term “elite” to the idea of a political elite or vanguard to which the SPGB is opposed. These two things signify quite different things. The latter implies an asymmetrical power relationship; the former does not
robbo203 wrote “You can call those who have undergone the necessary training in this particular branch of science a technical “elite” if you so wish. But you cannot transpose this understanding of the term “elite” to the idea of a political elite or vanguard to which the SPGB is opposed. These two things signify quite different things. The latter implies an asymmetrical power relationship; the former does not”
robbo, who determines ‘the necessary‘? The technical elite itself?
robbo, who determines what can or ‘cannot be transposed’? The technical elite itself?
robbo, who determines ‘this understanding‘? The technical elite itself?
Further, on ‘elites and political elites’, many do argue precisely that – that the SPGB is confused and contradicts itself, when it separates out, according to you, a ‘social elite’ (or a ‘production elite’, or an ‘abstract theory elite’, or a ‘technical elite’, or a ‘scientific elite’, or a ‘specialist elite’ – use whichever term suits) from a ‘political elite’.
It is a political assumption (based upon a non-democratic ideology) that ‘these two things signify quite different things‘, and it’s a political assumption that democrats don’t share, never mind democratic socialists and revolutionaries.
Again, there is an asymmetrical power relationship – any ‘science’ within any class society will have this political characteristic. That’s the whole point of Marx’s argument about revolutionary science – the political need for workers to control all social theory and practice. We’ll democratically control the universities, so just who will teach this elitist stuff, that you argue in support of, to the succeeding generations?
Or are you really going to argue that there wasn’t an asymmetrical power relationship between Mengele and his selected?
“Mankind thus inevitably sets itself only such tasks as it is able to solve, since closer examination will always show that the problem itself arises only when the material conditions for its solution are already present or at least in the course of formation.” – Marx
https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1859/critique-pol-economy/preface.htm
Is LBird only being premature with his concerns and that perhaps later when his aim is actually achievable we will set about solving the science Vs. democracy conflict
L Bird
You ask who determines what is the necessary amount of training to be undertaken to become a competent molecular biologist in a socialist society. I dont mind at all in saying that probably is is those who are competent molecular biologists themselves who are in the best position to say what is required. I know sod all about molecular biology myself so am quite happy to defer to such folk in these matters. It’s no skin of my nose.
One thing is for sure – and you cannot deny this – to become a competent molecular biologist requires training and we can’t all become competent molecular biologists. Some of us need to be trained in other occupations. There are thousands of such other kinds of occupations needed to operate an advanced system of production which also require training, which training we would not be able to undertake if we were all busily training to becoming molecular biologists. In other words, there are opportunity costs involved in training people which for some reason you dont seem to understand. Choices have to be made in the real world. It you want to become particularly competent in one branch of science that most likely means abandoning any thought of becoming particularly competent in another. True, you do get the occasional polymath relatively competent in a number of sciences but these are far and few between
Your whole position is premised on the idea that everybody should be able to vote on the “truth” of scientific theories of which there are multiple thousands. Setting aside the logistics of such voting (which in itself completely rules out the idea anyway) it should be obvious to you that in order to vote on the “truth” of a theory, you need to know what the theory is about. Since most of us know little or nothing about most scientific theories in circulation – even the most accomplished scientist amongst us will have huge gaps in his or her understanding – how is this remotely possible?
It seems that either you want everyone to have a specialist or competent knowledge of everything or no one to have a specialist knowledge of anything. Neither of these positions are tenable. The only practical option is for some people to be knowledgeable in some things and others to be knowledgeable in other things – over and above any body of knowledge that is common to most of not all people
Yet you reject this option. Without specialist knowledge of the workings of the brain (which you can only acquire by not specialising in, say, mechanical engeneering) how can you become a competent brainsurgeon? Presumably according to you, anyone should be allowed to perform the job of a neurosurgeon in a socialist society regardless of what training she or he had undertaken. But that is ludicrous. Would you, LBird, place your life in the hands of a stranger randomly pulled off the street to perform a complex operation on your neocortex. Of course not. You would want to be reassured that person doing the operation is reasonably qualified – that is someone who is part of technical elite trained in this procedure
Your basic problem is that you dont understand what the issue is and that there are clear limits to democratic decision making. It is not the SPGB that is ‘confused’ on the question of technical elite vis a vis a political elite but, rather, your good self
You claim:
“It is a political assumption (based upon a non-democratic ideology) that ‘these two things signify quite different things‘, and it’s a political assumption that democrats don’t share, never mind democratic socialists and revolutionaries.”
But actually you are the one making a political assumption here which democratic socialists don’t share. What give you the right to assume that in a socialist society there won’t be a group of people called molecular biologists who can be differentiated from the general population by the fact that they have undergone a significant amount of training to become competent molecular biologists? It is in that sense and only that sense that we can talk about them comprising a “technical elite”.
There is nothing wrong with having such a technical elite in a socialist society – a group of people who have undergone significant training in the science of molecular biology. On the contrary, we need such people. In fact in that sense there will be multiple technical elites corresponding the different branches of science. Contrary to what you claim, these elites would have no power over the population in general any more than they would have each other and, to an extent, probably most people would belong to one such elite or another.
Because you don’t seem to understand what the basic structure of a socialist society would look like and how it would operate, you conflate the concept of “technical elite” as described above with the concept of a “political elite”. But there can be no political elite in a socialist society because the very class basis of political power itself disappears in such a society. In a society in which there is a free access to goods and services and labour is performed on a completely voluntary basis, there is no leverage any one person or group can exercise to force others to act against their will.
The example you cite of Mengele shows precisely where you error lies. You are confusing the development of scientific theory with the practical application of scientific knowledge to the world around us. No one is saying that the latter will not be subject to democratic control but there is absolutely no reason whatsoever that the process by which scientific knowledge itself comes to be built up should be subject to such control. To do so is ludicrous and in fact totally against the spirit of scientific endeavour. A few hundred years the great majority of people believed the sun revolved around the earth and not the other way round. If you had your way this would still be the case and Copernicus’ ideas would never have seen the light of day. A democratic vote would have ensured his perpetual silence.
Of course, there was an “asymmetrical distribution of power” in the way Mengele used science to experiment on Jews but here again we are talking about application of scientific knowledge to certain social ends. Science is never value free in this sense. It is conditioned by the kind of society we live in. In a socialist society the application of science to the kinds of ends Mengele had in mind would of course be inconceivable for the reasons stated.
But all this has nothing to do with the truth of otherwise of scientific theories themselves. The abomination of Mengelian experimentation did not arise because German workers did not have the opportunity to vote on the validity of the scientific theories Mengel made use of. It arose because the nature of German society at the time and the influence of Nazi ideology.
It is one thing to subject the practical application of scientific knowledge to democratic control; it is quite another to suggest that the very process by which society acquires that knowledge itself should be subject to democratic control.
You need to understand the difference….
alanjjohnstone wrote:
“Is LBird only being premature with his concerns and that perhaps later when his aim is actually achievable we will set about solving the science Vs. democracy conflict”
This is obviously a possibility, alan.
But Marx has been dead for 135 years, and if I’m still being ‘premature’ about the conflict between bourgeois, elite, science’s undemocratic methods and Marx’s views about the need for the proletariat to adopt a revolutionary science, and the need for us to at least start discussing how we can define this ‘revolutionary science’, then we’re all going to be long dead before these ‘concerns’ mature.
If your view plays a part in the SPGB’s official reluctance to discuss ‘democratic science’ (not even the why this is necessary), then I think that you might have some answers regarding some cause of the irrelevance and decline of the SPGB.
I personally can’t see any reason why nearly 200 years after Marx wrote his Paris Manuscripts it could be held to be too premature to discuss the issues Marx raises in them.
alan, the ‘bloody obvious’ has just dawned on me, just as I posted the above and logged out!
‘Materialists’, like you and the SPGB, are passively waiting for the ‘material conditions’ to mature.
In the hope that, one fine day, ‘matter’ will say its piece to robbo’s ‘technical elite’, but the mass of the proletariat will never hear its whispers, and the ‘elite’ will merely assure us all that it was the case, that ‘Material conditions have arrived!“.
Marx would be weeping at the passivity of it all.
“alan, the ‘bloody obvious’ has just dawned on me, just as I posted the above and logged out!
‘Materialists’, like you and the SPGB, are passively waiting for the ‘material conditions’ to mature.
In the hope that, one fine day, ‘matter’ will say its piece to robbo’s ‘technical elite’, but the mass of the proletariat will never hear its whispers, and the ‘elite’ will merely assure us all that it was the case, that ‘Material conditions have arrived!“.L Bird
Since when has the SPGB been passively waiting for the ‘material conditions to arrive‘? ‘Material conditions’ in this context, I suggest, relate to the technological potential to produce enough to satisfy the reasonable needs of the population. The SPGB is not ‘waiting’ for this to arrive but, on the contrary, assert that it has long been around. All that is lacking is the desire and understanding on the part of the mass workers to make this happen and in that respect it is certainly not “passively waiting” for this to happen. If that were the case why would the SPGB undertake any kind of activity at all?
You can assert that this consciousness too forms part of the material conditions which in one sense is true but by convention this is called the subjective preconditions of socialism distinguishable from its objective preconditions in much the same way as we might distinguish between the software and hardware components of a computer system.
A further point of clarification. I dont actually say there would be some kind of a single homogenous or unified “technical elite” in a socialist society vis a vis the rest of the population; in my view that would be a sociologically meaningless concept. There would only be “technical elites” (in the plural) corresponding to the multiple branches of scientific endeavour. So trained and competent molecular biologists, to use my example, would belong to the technical elite of molecular biologists but not say , a technical elite of mechanical engineers.
If you deny that such multiple technical elites would exist, what you would be denying is that would not be any degree of occupational specialisation or training in socialism whatsoever. In effect, this would be tantamount to saying that anyone should be permitted to do the work of say, a neurosurgeon without having undertaken the years of dedicated training and study that this requires.
Which needless to say is completely bonkers!
A member of a technical elite in socialist society would have no more power than anyone else for reasons that I have already given and, in any case, I suspect most individuals would belong to one or other technical elite by virtue of pursuing a primary (though not necessarily exclusive) occupation. Its would be a matter of degree
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