The Thoughts of Chamsy
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I don't know if people have read this critique by a guy called Chamsy Ojeili who i have never heard of where the SPGB is mentioned but i found the essay an interesting read and i think related to all those threads on ideology.
http://www.democracynature.org/vol7/ojeili_intellectuals.htm
Quote:intellectuals intervene with the aim of generalising socialist consciousness because they must, even while insisting that “revolution is not a party affair”. These libertarian socialists have diminished the authority of intellectuals, while continuing, as intellectuals, to enter the battle…If the anarchists made a rather early and clear break from the notion of liberation as the rule of intellectuals and parties, such a turn was slower emerging within the Marxian tradition. One does find early expressions of such perspectives in Morris and the Socialist Party of Great Britain (the SPGB), …
Chamsy Ojeili wrote:This second tendency posits Marxism as a hard science in line with the natural sciences ― complete, objective, and able to unproblematically guarantee the truth of its theoretical propositions. This science is developed and expounded by the communists, “the most advanced and resolute section of the working-class parties of every country”. And, because these communists “have raised themselves to the level of comprehending theoretically the historical movement as a whole”, because “they have over the great mass of the proletariat the advantage of clearly understanding the line of march, the conditions, and the ultimate general results of the proletarian movement”,[12] they appear to have an independent authority over the working class.This 'second tendency' is the one followed by those who are arguing with me, here, alan. That is, the 'materialists'.On the contrary, I've argued for reorienting 'hard science' as a 'social science' (and so achieving Marx's aim of methodological unity, not on the basis of 'physics' (as for positivism), but of sociology and history; that is, seeing 'physics', as did Einstein, as not dealing with 'hard truth', but with the social and historical production of a series of 'relativistic truths': this fits with Marx's schema of modes of production).And, rather than 'Communists' being 'over the mass', and having 'an independent authority' of elite experts, like scientists and academics, I've stressed the necessity for the proletariat to take democratic control over the means of production, including scientific knowledge and truth.
C O wrote:Today, no one believes that theory can escape ideology and that we might someday achieve closure and scientific certainty on social matters.Quite. Let's hope the 'non-ideological' anthropologists are reading, eh?
C O wrote:If the anarchists made a rather early and clear break from the notion of liberation as the rule of intellectuals and parties, such a turn was slower emerging within the Marxian tradition. One does find early expressions of such perspectives in Morris and the Socialist Party of Great Britain (the SPGB)…Sadly, now lost in the SPGB, if YMS, robbo and their 'elite, expert, academic' cadre, who will tell us dumb workers the Truth, are anything to go by.
C O wrote:In a similar vein, though turning to Joseph Dietzgen rather than Hegel, Pannekoek accepted the relativistic view of human knowledge that followed the collapse of faith in naïve positivism.[101] In this vein, Pannekoek claimed that Marxism, though a science, was not outside of evolution and regression. Marxism’s importance lay in its partisan nature, as the ideology of the revolutionary working class movement.Ideology and relativism in knowledge. Marxism as an ideology.
C O wrote:Korsch wanted to save Marx from his scientistic Kautskyite and Leninist interpreters, denying that these interpreters had described the real Marx. Simultaneously, however, Korsch periodically found Marx too positivist and too uncritical of bourgeois science.We've examples seen this positivism in Marx, but the opposite strand is far stronger.
Hi LBird,If you remember, no that long ago several SPGB/WSM members argued that socialism/communism was not an ideology.
C O mentions Inclusive Democracy and Fotopoulos, alan! I think we (and Adam) had a debate with him on LibCom. That's where I got to follow you two, here, for better or worse.
SocialistPunk wrote:Hi LBird,If you remember, no that long ago several SPGB/WSM members argued that socialism/communism was not an ideology.Yeah, it baffles me, SP!Of course it's an ideology – ideologies distort, and distortion is inevitable in science.There is no 'copy' of reality, or absolute Truth, produced by science.To know is to distort.
C O wrote:Libertarian socialists have been forced to tread an uncertain and difficult path. Consistent critics of representation (viewing it, like Marx, as “something passive”), libertarian socialists have eschewed directorial pretensions, while nevertheless finding themselves propelled into political contestation by their own commitments. At numerous instances, then, libertarian socialists have tended to go beyond the bind of the fetishism of party and intellectuals versus the fear of party and intellectuals. The political path for libertarian socialists could, then, be described as an “advance without authority”.Such an advance entails a scepticism towards the vanguardist tendencies of intellectuals and a realisation that, in Castoriadis’ words, “the great majority of men and women living in society are the source of creation, the principle bearers of the instituting imaginary, and … they should become the active subjects of an explicit politics”.[my bold]Spot on!
C O wrote:The enlightened modesty and libertarianism demonstrated by some libertarian socialists does not, however, mean that these thinkers are interesting merely for approximating currently fashionable post-modernist positions. By avoiding the anti-political, particularistic, and romantic-individualist tendencies of post-modernism, libertarian socialists have something more to offer. All traditions cannot be of equal value for the intellectual committed to extending democracy in all directions. That is, strong evaluations must be made.Like it!
Chamsy Ojeili seems to be influenced by Inclusive Democracy, and we've had our differences with them, but, on the whole, a good article.Thanks, alan.
"Chomsky and Kropotkin, for example, both display an immense faith in rational thought, Enlightenment values, and science."What's the alternative to such "faith"? Surely not all that continental theory twaddle?
stuartw2112 wrote:"Chomsky and Kropotkin, for example, both display an immense faith in rational thought, Enlightenment values, and science."What's the alternative to such "faith"? Surely not all that continental theory twaddle?"Faith" in the proletariat, organised democratically, stuart?And by 'continental theory twaddle', do you mean Marx's ideas?
I think Marx would have been very surprised indeed to hear that his ideas – including those to do with the proletariat democratically organised – constituted an alternative to rational thought, Enlightenment values and science. I think he would very quickly have reiterated his insistence that he, for one, was no Marxist.
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