Knowledge

[twc]

Your forced confession of false engagement to maliciously “throw a spanner in the works” is childishly contemptible.  Henceforth no-one can trust the intent and integrity of your posts.When your “bad mood” mellows, calmly read over your last paragraph

wrote:

Socialism … is about passion, anger, righteous outrage …or it should be

and consider its implications.That’s not the socialist case as codified in the Declaration of Principles, which you openly agitate to change, hopefully not into “passion, anger, righteous outrage” and “might prevails”—“as it should be”.I have not sought to thrust my views on the Party, but I will always defend its avowed case against anyone, including cantankerous irrational you.Your gleeful fomenting of anti-socialist blood sport—you know exactly what I mean—is dangerous and foolish on a site that attracts it without your incitement, and has limited resources to defend itself against specialized attack. Your questionable actions sink you in my estimation.

[robbo203]

Having attacked Alan for being "cantankerous " and "irrational" – the words "pot" and kettle" spring to mind – note  the "passion, anger, righteous outrage" with which TWC  himself seeks to condemn precisely these qualities that Alan (correctly) sees as being integral to a socialist outlook. Nope,  I fully and wholeheartedly side  with Alan in this dispute. Of course a clearly thought out rational argument is essential to the struggle to establish socialism.  But so too is a burning sense of outrage at what capitalism does to us. One without the other is useless Everyone here –  barring TWC it would seem –   would, I imagine, understand that this was the point that Alan was really making.  Sorry TWC but your post is way way over the top and you should know it.

[twc]

No, that was not the peeved miserable point Alan was making.He knows precisely what I mean, even if you don’t.

[alanjjohnstone]

TWC, I'll wear sackcloth and ashes and self-flagellate in penitance for my crimes against socialism and the Socialist Party and this WSM forum. I'm a poor unfortunate sinner deserving the wrath of the Great Marx in the Sky…  Get a grip and get some perspective and realise your own unfounded sense of self-importance… I'm not of the view the D of P are the 10 Commandments and any contravention equates blasphemy.We are emotional beings and we have to tap into that. I could have easily have said that socialism is all about hope, aspirations, inspirations, confidence, faith, pride, courage and strength and other such subjective factors. Objectivity is for those who sit in judgement of others and daren't dirty their hands with actual practice of their theory. There is a story of an SPGB speaker who declares that the SPGB is not perfect and it has in the past made mistakes…which led to the obvious question…and what mistakes were they?…and he stammered and stuttered and for the first time a SPGB speaker was speechless. Maybe it is time to have a good hard look at ourselves and just discover where we could be wrong and when we could have taken a different course. … Robbo is right…we cannot separate our objective mind from our subjective heart…In the past perhaps we have given undue prominence to the brain than to our gut-feelings. We have pushed away potential comrades because we proclaimed objectivity above all. We find ourself terrified to use words such as justice or morality or ethics in our case because of objectivity. Because we are objective our language is not that of those we seek to talk with. And we wonder why no one listens or heeds.I accept the SPGB has an educational role but we have a lot to learn ourselves about how to teach(now you got me in an even darker mood)  

[Anonymous]

error Misinterpreted everything.

[robbo203]

twc wrote:

No, that was not the peeved miserable point Alan was making.He knows precisely what I mean, even if you don’t.

  In that case, would you care to outline what that "peeved" and "miserable" point was that Alan was supposedly making.  It seems to me that the point he was making was a pretty reasonable one and your reaction to it was both overly cantankerous and irrational

[alanjjohnstone]

Your post and many similar messages from others on related threads has made me angry, maybe even a bit irrational from fury …but it is from frustration that we cannot discuss the immediate problems that socialists face and simply compound them with meaningless disputes that do have their place for those interested…but not at the expense of what is really needed, a serious challenge to capitalism and the so-called alternatives and all the time spent contributing to threads such above is time wasted that could be better aimed and re-directed to all those discussion forums on politics.

[twc]

Alan, your barely repressed anger reveals that it is you—not me—who may need to get a grip.You express anger at alternative consistently-socialist approaches that deviate from your own prescriptions and preconceptions. If they are consistently-socialist approaches, even if not yours, what consistently-socialist right have you to curtail them?Maybe, learn to accommodate them, and live and let live, without seething with hostile anger.  Vive la difference.You want socialism in your special emotional way—socialism of your “truly human” kind—and yet you feel justified in reverting to overt emotional blackmail to persuade others into it. Just re-read your mock-pathos “me culpa”.What sort of consistently-socialist approach is one that confers upon you alone—the emotional socialist—the special privilege to twist emotion to your immediate needs?  What consistently-socialist response do you have to opponents who resort to the same emotional ploy as yours but turn it against you?  It takes two to tango, with emotion.Unfortunately, the irresistible temptation to emotional duplicity is precisely what becomes so easily justified on emotional grounds. Take the expert emotional evangelicals. Appeal to emotion has always been the ploy of dishonest rogues, which a consistent socialist like you is the exact opposite of.Emotional suasion works for a while, but backfires catastrophically [e.g., the Bakkers and Swaggarts of the world].As you well know, violence is just around the street corner from “anger, emotion, etc.”  If the Party has learnt, and consistently taken to heart, one lesson of practical street politics, it is that violence is the enemy of cooperative Socialism in a world where the ruling class monopolizes the generation of “emotion, anger, etc.” and monopolizes the means of violence.One intellectual thing the Party has learnt, and held consistently, is that uncontrolled “anger, emotion, etc.” are enemies of rational thought and thought-out action—the very qualities on which the Party’s cooperative Socialist case and world crucially depends.On the other hand, it is the bourgeoisie who need to manipulate “anger, emotion, etc.” in support of its class rule precisely in order to annul rational thought and thought-out action.The Socialist Party will soon enough find more than enough “anger, emotion, etc.” in its support, involuntarily out of the nature of capitalism.  It has no need to foment it in order to create socialists.Rational conviction in socialism to cure the ills of capitalism will motivate socialist action and remain long after artificially drummed up “anger, emotion, etc.” has gone to bed, or to jail.But, above all, your “anger, emotion, etc.” trump card is that you want socialism the ethical way—now what scoundrel could dare argue against that?Well, you just argued against it several posts ago—that in order to achieve your conceived variety of socialism, by your conceived variety of propaganda, you stand ethically quite prepared to stoop to unethical practice, when you feel it’s justified by your variety of aroused “anger, emotion, etc,”—the very qualities of your variety of socialism.But to argue against ethics myself.  Ethics are the soporific of capitalism. They are its essential sham veneer. That’s the only ethical case we have under capitalism.For the rest, capitalism’s ethics are appropriate to and perfectly adequate to capitalism, and there’s little we can do about it that our capitalist politicians can’t, and they have the virtue of being in a position to legislate those necessary legal aspects that changing capitalism demands.For our part, ethics is a distraction.  More important than ethics is moral integrity.Integrity is the fount of the Socialist Party’s survival in the face of the enormous odds stacked against it.  The integrity of our rational case for socialism is our only rock-solid foundation.  Integrity, if one were needed, is our moral trump card.  Not insipid ethics.I now find it hard to see what specifically socialist essence remains in your Socialism of “anger, emotion, ethics, etc.” that distances it from any other political movement, since they all rely on it, and play this card like professional experts.We can only stand in awe of the nationalist regimes that played the “anger, emotion, ethics, etc,” card with overwhelmingly brutal genius.  Playing games with “anger, emotion, ethics, etc.” is not, and never has been, us.  Not for Socialism!  It doesn’t work!For the sake of rational discussion, accommodate the fact that all of us, who adhere to the Party Declaration of Principles and seek to realize its Object, contribute to socialism with integrity in our own limited but complementary ways.

[alanjjohnstone]

TWC, i am sure what you say is true enough. As i said, you caught me at not my best…the heart was speaking louder…but who would want to always hold that part of us down, which i think Robbo was trying to sayBut lets be honest …we have accuratey described capitalism and we have accurately described the solution – socialism. But what we have not done, and our present situation is proof of this, is to connect both of these sufficiently to convince others to become active. One ex-member suggested to me that the SPGB has no real process of politics in that it can make change happen. Lets be again honest, we have the socialist standard that no-one buys…in fact, we no longer try to sell it! We have website and blogs that fail to attract visitors (oh, i am sure the internet committee will swiftly quote traffic figures that say contrary but just how long do the stay for reading the content) We have a relative non-existent on the ground presence. Some people actually do think we have disappeared like the SLP and the ILP, and your own SPA did. Our works are rarely quoted or cited in any literature.,, i could gloom and doom go on …I think we forgot that it is not ourselves, nor our D of P, that is going to do bring socialism but the working class through-out the world.What you or I or the SPGB do or say, really isn't going to be make much difference. Perhaps those who rely on spokespersons such as Russel Brand may reflect on that. If i become a rabid anti-socialist, if i resign, or depart this world, nothing is going to be seriously affected. The same for yourself and above all,  it is the same for the party, itself. We can fade and disappear and the world will go on without it. That's what the MCH really says. We are involved in forces that are beyond our influence until we do become an actual real material force ourselves…and that is why we should keep a sense of proportion….we are a long way from achieving that…a trillion million miles away.But saying that, the only reason that socialists should be in the Socialist Party is because they believe that it has the potential to play a part, no matter how small or large, in building the mass movement of working people which is the only agency capable of rebuilding society.Anyways a few quotes from Pannekoek. “The class in struggle isn't a regiment of identical puppets marching in step and accomplishing great things through the blind force of its own movement. It is on the contrary a mass of multiple personalities, pushed forward by the same will, supporting itself, exhorting itself, giving itself courage. The irresistible strength of such a movement is based on many different strengths all converging towards the same goal.”“The Marxian conception of history puts living man in the center of its scheme of development, with all his needs and all his powers, both physical and mental. His needs are not only the needs of his stomach (though these are the most imperative), but also the needs of head and heart.”“Marxism is a new way of looking at the past and the future, at the meaning of life, the world and thought; it is a spiritual revolution, a new view of the world. As a view of life, however, Marxism is real only through the class that adheres to it. The workers who are imbued with this new outlook become aware of themselves as the class of the future, growing in number and strength and consciousness, striving to take production into their own hands and through the revolution to become masters of their own fate. Thus Marxism as the theory of the proletarian revolution is a reality, and at the same time a living power, only in the minds and hearts of the revolutionary proletariat.”“Marxism itself is a living theory which grows with the increase of the proletariat and with the tasks and aims of the class struggle.”There is the cliche that the role of a socialist party is to "Educate, Agitate, Organise"…these three things we must examine in ourselves because in all three we exhibit weaknesses yet fail to make the most of our strengths. We have to address this trinity, this trio of stategies. However, i have taken advantage of the moderators tolerance a bit too much by de-railing this thread, so i better stop now and let you get back to your knowledge

[twc]

In case my point is not obvious…If this 2008 Keck Observatory near-infrared adaptive optics photograph doesn‘t refute TV presenter Delano’s claim that “no experimental evidence has ever been obtained that unequivocally proves Copernicanism to be true” then nothing will.On the other hand TV presenter Delano seems ready to swallow the line that near-ecliptic anisotropy of the cosmic microwave background implies that we humans are thereby special, presumably (without having seen the TV program) to God.

[twc]

Yes, Pannekoek is correct to recognize that class-consciousness is the essential ingredient.That’s precisely why I gave a Marxian explanation of the incomprehension of the world’s non-Marxian cosmologists and commentators when they try to explain the—to them—inexplicable rise of Copernican heliocentric-consciousness.I hoped, apparently against hope, that readers (if any there be) might pick up on heliocentric-consciousness as the astronomical equivalent—the type specimen—of Socialist class-consciousness.That’s precisely why I concentrated on the natural and ineluctable growth of heliocentric-consciousness as the exemplar of the natural and ineluctable growth of class-consciousness.That’s precisely why I described Copernicus’s scientific methodology in strict Marxian terms that you might recognize from Capital. His methodology is essentially Marx’s, with one significant difference, that Marx (coming much later) was in a position to justify his own methodology, as described in the Grundrisse and Capital.That’s precisely why I focussed on the fundamental contradiction that drives Copernicus’s science—the contradiction between “sensuous” appearance, as the necessary form of appearance of essence, and the conceptual essence itself, which forms the logical basis for reproducing that appearance conceptually.That's why I pointed out the trap that those of a philosophical mindset fall into when they get hung up over the contradiction in content between appearance and essence, whereas Copernicus, Hegel and Marx see this as a necessary part of human comprehension.I considered it crucial to demonstrate Copernicus’s practical resolution of the contradiction, for that seems to have been the key to establishing both Copernicus’s and Kepler’s heliocentric-consciousness.  This is surely significant for us.Copernicus was first to travel along this road, and his experience of it is clear to us because the conditions of his problem are now clear to us. The necessary relation between heliocentric essence and its appearance to us from an orbiting Earth, involves clearly understood mathematical transformations.  It is therefore no accident that modern science begins with the development of heliocentric-consciousness.  Whatever the case, Copernicus’s problem parallels the Socialist’s.  I wanted people to perceive the similarities for themselves, rather than have my interpretation thrust down their throats.I comprehend, for a number of reasons, why you thought the article, which I contributed as an “essay in historical materialism”, was way off beat.  Firstly, people are ashamed to write and read “essays in historical materialism” anymore, and secondly the parallels with socialist consciousness are masked but implied, and not made overtly explicit.That’s my veiled point in concentrating on the logic of the emergence of heliocentric-consciousness by documenting its dawning in Copernicus and Kepler.  That’s why I emphasize their scientific conviction—the analogue of socialist conviction.Heliocentric-consciousness prevailed when astronomers suddenly realized it made sense of the entirety of their hitherto inexplicable astronomical world.  This is the prototype, archetype, progenitor, exemplar of class-consciousness prevailing—it makes sense of our hitherto incomprehensible world.  With class-consciousness our social life becomes rationally comprehensible.There’s no role for moral suasion, emotional bullying, or might is right. They only impede comprehension. Conviction comes from comprehension. Heliocentric-consciousness prevailed mentally—rationally—because it made rational sense of the world it was mentally abstracted from.The same course awaits class-consciousness.  Until it makes sense of our social being for the majority, it cannot prevail.  But make sense to the Party it already does, and make sense to the majority it certainly will.Meanwhile our task is to rationally convince the majority that Socialist consciousness makes sense of their world.Our road has been travelled many times since Copernicus. He arrived.  So will we.

[robbo203]

twc wrote:

.But to argue against ethics myself.  Ethics are the soporific of capitalism. They are its essential sham veneer. That’s the only ethical case we have under capitalism.For the rest, capitalism’s ethics are appropriate to and perfectly adequate to capitalism, and there’s little we can do about it that our capitalist politicians can’t, and they have the virtue of being in a position to legislate those necessary legal aspects that changing capitalism demands.For our part, ethics is a distraction.  More important than ethics is moral integrity.Integrity is the fount of the Socialist Party’s survival in the face of the enormous odds stacked against it.  The integrity of our rational case for socialism is our only rock-solid foundation.  Integrity, if one were needed, is our moral trump card.  Not insipid ethics.I now find it hard to see what specifically socialist essence remains in your Socialism of “anger, emotion, ethics, etc.” that distances it from any other political movement, since they all rely on it, and play this card like professional experts.

 Sorry TWC but this is a very weak argument. Others may well rely on "anger, emotion ethics" but your suggestion that we should not do so ourselves,  since that will mean we will be unable to differentiate ourselves, or our  "socialist essence",  from them,  is frankly ridiculous.  The anger of the nationalist is directed against other nations or ethnic minorities that he or she perceives as diluting the purity of the nation. Our anger  by complete constrast is directed against the capitalist system and what it gives rise to.  I dont think there is any danger of people not seeing the difference, do you?Actually, it is absurd to even talk of "anger, emotion, ethics" in such voluntaristic terms as though these things are something one chooses  to employ as a matter of deliberate strategy.  Rather,  you become a socialist precisely because you are angered by what you see around  you,  by what you consider to be morally offensive about capitalism.  You dont  just coolly and intellectually consider the case for socialism, and in a detached manner,  decide that it makes "good rational sense" and then opt to become a socialist, having beeen swayed by the labour theory of value or Marx's prognistications on the falling rate of profit.  These two things – emotion and reason- go inextricably hand in hand .  One without the other, as I said,  is utterly uselessYou say:The Socialist Party will soon enough find more than enough “anger, emotion, etc.” in its support, involuntarily out of the nature of capitalism.  It has no need to foment it in order to create socialists."Foment" means to instigate or stir up. Foment is, I think,  the wrong word because it implies that the anger is not there to begin with but has to be artifically induced by socialist propagandists which, of course,  is nonsense. "Express" would be a more appropriate.  We should be tapping into the anger both we and our fellow workers feel. If socialist propganda means any thing it means helping to sharpen the focus of workers' anger and directing it against the system itself rather than against immigrants or politicians or other nations or whatever.  It certainly does not mean disassociating  ourselves from such anger in order to sustain the illusion that we are  somehow objective, value-free "scientific" socialists.  Cue for L Bird methinks  You also say: The integrity of our rational case for socialism is our only rock-solid foundation.  Integrity, if one were needed, is our moral trump card.  Not insipid ethics.I'm not quite sure what you mean by this.  How does sticking to our "rational case for socialism" constitute a "moral trump card"?   Morality, if it means anything at all, is based on an altruistic concern for the wellbeing of others; it is essentially other-oriented.  Nor am i clear about what lies behind your implied distinction between morality (which you seem to endorse) and ethics (which you find "insipid").  I suppose you have in mind the notion that ethics is about the theory whereas morality is about the practice, yes? In any event,  I endorse and enthusiastically recommend to you, the notion of a "proletarian ethics" which is a form of "ethical particularism"  (as opposed to the "ethical universalism" of philosophers like Kant).  I don't really see how the socialist case cannot but embrace a proletarian ethics; it is implied in the very appeal to working class unity.  The argument that the case for socialism is based on nothing more than "self interest" strikes me as absolutely ridiculous.  That is not an argument for socialism at all but, in the final analysis,  for the amoralism of a completely atomised market economy in which each pursue their own separate and selfish  interests.  It thus reinforces "actually existing capitalism" Self interest has a place in the case for socialism but alongside, and not at the expense of, our socialist and moral concern for the wellbeing of our fellow workers.  If the only thing that concerns you is what is in your own self interest then why bother trying to achieve a socialist society?  It would be preferable from your point of view to divert all your energies into enriching yourself at the expense of everyone else in the here and now, quite frankly

[twc]

So, the Party must embrace your notion of “proletarian ethics”—a form of “ethical particularism”.Who’s in and who’s out of “proletarian ethics”, and why, particularly?Incidentally, this is very late news for the rest of us, who’ve apparently been, until now, only groping blindly for a working-class emancipation that will involve “the emancipation of all mankind, independent of race or sex” [DOP 4].Previously, socialists saw “ethics” as socially rational behaviour, a natural outgrowth of social practice, and not something that could successfully be imposed upon it—which is the fundamental problem with the recalitrant “ethics” of class societies.Capitalist “ethics” may stink, but they’re rationally social behaviour under capitalism, a natural outgrowth of capitalist social practice, and something that the capitalist class—despite enormous coercive powers expressly aimed at enforcing them—is ultimately powerless to enforce.  Capitalism’s prisons, law courts, armies, and acceptable commercial malpractice are testaments to capitalism’s inability to impose its impossible “ethics”.  Capitalism’s signature institutions and practices are the capitalist system’s self critique, that even the un-emotional observer of capitalism can see.Presumably your “proletarian ethics” emotionally condemn capitalism’s signature institutions and practices as “ethically” wrong from a proletarian particularist point of view.Either way, Socialism seeks to transcend all such “ethics”, whether “right”, “wrong” or “indifferent”.Instead, Socialists aim to escape forever from such ideal impositions upon our rational social behaviour.  We seek to give rational social behaviour free social rein.Socialists see class-society “ethics”, as materialist Marx saw them, as Feuerbachian reifications of unrealizable ideal social behaviour; the badge of man’s social alienation; the terrible ideal he is powerless to honour; the creation of his mind that dominates him; the necessary illusion of a society that needs illusions.We want to overthrow the capitalist society that needs and breeds such illusions.A Party like ours that has no material leaders, is not going to saddle itself with ideal ones, in the guise of a Party-dominating “ethical” principle. “Ethics” have always functioned to render social control, and their legacy—as Christianity proved—has always been social impotence.  They do not free men.  Your pre-Marxian philosophical mindset can only conceive a notion—an idea—to solve a practical problem. You desire the imaginings of men’s minds to enforce their behaviour.  You have no confidence in man’s rational social behaviour issuing naturally from his social circumstances themselves.Materialist Marx saw rational social behaviour as the natural consequence of rational social conditions.  And that’s how the Party sees it, and what its DOP commits it to!It’s you who should reconsider your pre-Marxian socialist idealism. It’s you—the would-be philosophical imposer upon the Party from above—who should desist from imposing a notion upon its rational political practice.How about having a genuine attempt at comprehending a Marxian explanation of social practice—an explanation of the consciousness that drove an extraordinary scientific practice, which actually freed mankind from the coercion of ideas that formerly controlled its social thought and behaviour.  See post #9, above.It’s you, not I, who should embrace your ethical notion, your reification of impossible rationality, but only to acknowledge what it actually is for you—the social comfort a stridently emotional socialist like yourself apparently needs at present.

[robbo203]

twc wrote:

Incidentally, this is very late news for the rest of us, who’ve apparently been, until now, only groping blindly for a working-class emancipation that will involve “the emancipation of all mankind, independent of race or sex” [DOP 4].

 In case you hadn't cottoned on, TWC,  the emancipation of all mankind etc is something that is supposed to  only materialise after the socialist revolution not before it.  Before the revolution,  the working class continues to exist and with it the need for – nay, the inescapability of – a working class ethics . Unless, of course,  you no longer see the working class as the primary agent of socialist revolution but then again trying to decipher what you are trying to say  – most of which, incidentally,  as far as the above post is concerned, seems to consist in a quite outlandish attempt, to the point of sheer gibberish,  to attribute to me views I dont even hold anyway  – is, as per  usual, no easy task so I wont even attempt  it.   Much of the time I havent the foggiest notion what you are warbling on about and I strongly suspect Im not alone in thinking that.My position is much more straightforward then you seem to want to portray it.  A working class that does not consider it to be morally reprehensible to cross a picket line  or inform on "cheating" benefit claimants to the authorities or to proudly support what "our boys" are doing in places like Iraq, etc etc is quite frankly, a working class that is a million miles away from effecting a socialist revolution.  And you think ethics makes for "social impotence", huh?.  You should descend from the clouds, TWC.  The view may be inspiring but you need to plant your feet on the ground sometimes

[twc]

wrote:

A working class that does not consider it to be morally reprehensible to cross a picket line  or inform on "cheating" benefit claimants to the authorities or to proudly support what "our boys" are doing in places like Iraq, etc etc is quite frankly, a working class that is a million miles away from effecting a socialist revolution.

 These are not specifically socialist issues, and should be evaluated rationally according to circumstance.Most socialists don’t need an “ethical” crutch to be motivated to perform acts of working-class solidarity, and many anti-socialists act this way without socialist prompting.The worst of what you are saying is that the Party should mandate that all proletarians should:always obey the dictates of each and every Union boss, independent of whether he runs a scab Union, or whether he calls a strike for anti-socialist reasons with anti-socialist outcomes—like corrupt Union officials in cahoots with the bosses.always condone or encourage welfare fraud, independent of its punitive consequences. Why not always the same for criminal theft?always reject working class solidarity with our fighting boy and girl proletarians who put their lives on the line. What about those proletarians whose non-frontline labour safely supports the war effort, or those whose labour actively supports capitalism?

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