Marx, and the myth of his ‘Materialism’
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LBird wrote:Physics, being a social activity driven by social theory and social practice, is amenable to our proletarian democratic control.
How?Explain.Dont dodge the question.How are 7 billion "proletarians" going to democratically vote on String Theory, for example?And thousands upon thousands of other scientific theories…..
Young Master Smeet wrote:LBird wrote:So, anyone who looks to active, talking, matter will deny the democratic role of workers in creating our world (which includes the production of scientific knowledge).I am active talking matter, so are you.
If so, why do you deny that only a vote can tell us what a rock 'is'?The 'truth' of what a rock 'is' can only be decided by us, the 'active', and not by an elite of physicists, who use hieroglyphics to bamboozle us, and pretend only they 'know'.If we're 'active', we decide. Not 'matter', or the 'active elite' who keep us as the 'passive mass'.
LBird wrote:[If so, why do you deny that only a vote can tell us what a rock 'is'?The 'truth' of what a rock 'is' can only be decided by us, the 'active', and not by an elite of physicists, who use hieroglyphics to bamboozle us, and pretend only they 'know'.Once again LBird how are you going to organise this vote among 7 billion "proletariams"Why are you running away from this question?
LBird wrote:If so, why do you deny that only a vote can tell us what a rock 'is'?Well, you have accepted that inorganic nature (the material substrate) is differentiated, that is, A is not B, and that this occurs before (or outside/without) human relations and the transformation into organic nature. Now, that must mean that, at the very least, A ≠ B means that no matter how we vote, we cannot truthfully say that A = B. We can say what we want otherwise, but we cannot say that. Now, it follows that if there are limits on what we can say by voting, then voting does not, and cannot confer truth upon a scientific statement.This is the ineluctable conclusion from the premise that you yourself have accepted.
YMS, you've stopped reading what I write, and are simple repeating the axioms of your own ideology, materialism.If you're happy with the belief that workers can't vote on 'truth', then so be it.You obviously have a method that tells you what 'truth' is, outside of any socio-historical consciousness. You have the key to 'The Truth', an eternal knowledge, once discovered, forever 'True'.Thus, your ideology is not democratic, but elitist.And it's nonsense, according to any scientists working today who take an interest in epistemology, including physicists, from whom I've given many quotes.But then, I've quoted Marx, Einstein, Pannekoek, Rovelli……no reasoned argument makes a dent in the Materialist Faith.You stick to 'matter', I'll stick to workers' democracy, in questions of production, including knowledge.
Lbird #154 wrote:Marx, me, you (and most socialists, I think) agree that 'inorganic nature' exists external to 'consciousness'. [Lbird #163 wrote:No, it's the character of the hurdle in relation to a human that would limit, an individual runner, for example.OK, so, lets call it character, rather than quality. You accept, you accept, I repeat, you accept that inorganic nature exists "external to 'consciousness'" — your own words. That the things in inorganic nature have characteristics (your word is character). These characteristic only manifest themselves to us via our relations, that's fine, but at the very least, you have to accept that A≠B, that is to say, A does not share the characteristics of B, and A cannot relate to a human in the same way as B, else A=B would be true. That is to say, at the least, there are things we cannot truthfully say about an object.I have read what you have said, it appears you have not.
LBird wrote:Thus, your ideology is not democratic, but elitist.Oh, and this doesn't follow, a once and eternal truth could equally be non-elitist.
LBird wrote:…no reasoned argument makes a dent in the Materialist Faith.You stick to 'matter', I'll stick to workers' democracy, in questions of production, including knowledge.LOL No reasoned argument makes a dent in LBird's own belief in the equivalent of the tooth fairy. This is crystal clear from his studious evasion of any questions relating to the practicalities of voting on "Scientific Truth" in his Leninist utopia – a totalitarian centralised society.
robbo203 wrote:No reasoned argument makes a dent in LBird's own belief in the equivalent of the tooth fairy. This is crystal clear from his studious evasion of any questions relating to the practicalities of voting on "Scientific Truth" in his Leninist utopia – a totalitarian centralised society.I too would like him to answer this question.But then there are a few questions he avoids answering.
Young Master Smeet wrote:Lbird #154 wrote:Marx, me, you (and most socialists, I think) agree that 'inorganic nature' exists external to 'consciousness'. [Lbird #163 wrote:No, it's the character of the hurdle in relation to a human that would limit, an individual runner, for example.OK, so, lets call it character, rather than quality. You accept, you accept, I repeat, you accept that inorganic nature exists "external to 'consciousness'" — your own words. That the things in inorganic nature have characteristics (your word is character). These characteristic only manifest themselves to us via our relations, that's fine, but at the very least, you have to accept that A≠B, that is to say, A does not share the characteristics of B, and A cannot relate to a human in the same way as B, else A=B would be true. That is to say, at the least, there are things we cannot truthfully say about an object.I have read what you have said, it appears you have not.
[my bold]"That the things in inorganic nature have characteristics (your word is character)."I DID NOT say this, why don't you read WHAT I WRITE, rather what your ideology wants to see."These characteristic only manifest themselves to us via our relations, that's fine…"No, no, no!The characteristiscs ONLY EXIST as A RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN an active human consciousness in its practice of CREATING those objects that are objects-for-us, ie. 'organic nature'.I wish you'd read what I write, and then draw the conclusions from what I write about my ideology, and stop trying to impose your materialist categories upon Marx's ideas, of the 'theory and practice' of humans creating their 'organic nature'.It's Engelsian Materialism to assume that 'inorganic nature' has 'qualities' or 'characteristics' outside of any relation to a consciousness.If you and the rest believe in 'materialism', that's your choice, but don't pretend it's anything to do with Marx's views, which are concerned with the socio-historical production of our world (and not describing/interpreting the 'inorganic').That is, the changing of our organic world, which is our creation, and thus can be changed.You're concerned with 'matter', a world outside of us and our consciousness. It's Engels' concern, not Marx's.
Young Master Smeet wrote:Lbird #154 wrote:Marx, me, you (and most socialists, I think) agree that 'inorganic nature' exists external to 'consciousness'.So, is inorganic nature, the material substrate, differentiated, or uniform?
LBird wrote:The characteristiscs ONLY EXIST as A RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN an active human consciousness in its practice of CREATING those objects that are objects-for-us, ie. 'organic nature'.A relationship between an active human consciousness and what?
Young Master Smeet wrote:LBird wrote:The characteristiscs ONLY EXIST as A RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN an active human consciousness in its practice of CREATING those objects that are objects-for-us, ie. 'organic nature'.A relationship between an active human consciousness and what?
D'y'know, it's like dragging a dead horse through wet sand.I know I've said this before, and I know it will be ignored by you, again, but, hey, here goes once again, mainly for any curious workers who just might be reading.A relationship between consciousness and 'inorganic nature'.The social product of that relationship, by active humans labouring upon 'inorganic nature', is our object, the world of ideas and things that we create, and, because we are its creators, we can change.Engels mistakenly wanted to interpret 'inorganic nature', to 'know' the 'inorganic', as 'it is', without any human conscious intervention.You want to do the same. That's why you want to 'know' the 'qualities' and 'characteristic' of 'inorganic nature', because that's bourgeois materialism (which Engels ignorantly adopted), which pretends to be able to 'know' a 'reality' that humans have not created. Thus, they claim to interpret, for us dumb workers, the Truth of Reality.You, robbo, and the rest, wish to interpret 'The World' for workers, without their participation, and so you don't need the active democratic participation of the proletariat as they create their 'world-for-themselves'.
LBird wrote:A relationship between consciousness and 'inorganic nature'.Is this 'inorganic nature' uniform, or differentiated?
LBird wrote:I suspect the Engelsist ideology that you hold, but seem to be unaware of, which tells you that there are only two alternatives, materialism and idealism, leads you to always see only a dichotomy, and since Marx stresses 'theory and practice' (which requires both ideas (consciousness) and inorganic nature), you have to ignore this and categorise any talk of 'ideas' as idealism.This is Engels in Dialectics of Nature: "Natural Science, like philosophy, has hitherto entirely neglected the full influence of men's activity on their thought; both know only nature on the one hand and thought on the other. But it is precisely the alteration of nature by men (Engels' emphasis) , not solely nature as such, which is the most essential and immediate basis of human thought, and it is in the measure that man has learned to change nature that his intelligence has increased".These remarks of Engels are hard to reconcile with LBird's view that Engels' materialism makes 'matter' the 'active' side. Isn't he saying much the same as Marx about the "unity of theory and practice" which LBird recognizes as central to Marx's epistemology? Fairly clearly, Engels' remarks are completely at odds with Lenin's view that thought is a "copy" of the real world (the copy theory of knowledge). Anyway, to believe that Lenin's materialism, via Engels, leads inevitably to Leninist politics (elite control over workers, autocratic rule etc.) is one of the weirdist ideas I have ever encountered. When Lenin declared that, left to themselves, Russian workers would never get beyond a trade union consciousness, he was speaking as a realist, not as "Engelsian materialist". Materialism and Empirio-Criticism had zero influence on his political strategies even though it was the one "philosophiocal" work on materialism which he wrote. It may be worth noting that Bogdanov, a major subject of Lenin's hostile polemic, said that the most characteristic feature of Lenin's attitude in M and E-C was its authoritarian quality, embodied in the way he tried to parade his philosophical erudition to impress his readers, and to persuade them of their own ignorance in philosophical matters in order that they would believe him; that they would regard him as an authority. Now who does that remind me of?
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