Z A Jordan and Marx’s epistemology
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Lbird,My dispute is entirely that I do not think that your reading of these texts accord's with a sensible Marxist perspective, that's the whole nub of the dispute.Saying, per Ollman, that Marx changes the meaning of some terms depending on context, demands an explanation of the meanings of terms based on evidence, it is not a licence to assume always and everywhere that Marx means what you want him to mean.
Young Master Smeet wrote:Lbird,My dispute is entirely that I do not think that your reading of these texts accord's with a sensible Marxist perspective, that's the whole nub of the dispute.[my bold]No, YMS, not 'me and you', but our ideologies.That's the whole nub of the dispute.I'm a Democratic Communist, whose concern is to use Marx to further the building of the democratic control of social production by the producers (ie., socialism).You're an Individualist Materialist, whose concern is Engels' 'matter', and how individuals 'know matter' by their biological senses.Your 'sensible Marxist' is not my 'sensible Marxist', either.This is an ideological dispute, not a personal dispute.It's about politics and power – you won't have the producers determining by democratic means their own product.You don't accept that 'matter' is a social product, and so you won't have the producers determining whether matter exists for them. This attitude of political opposition to democratic production is itself the social product of bourgeois 19th century 'materialism'. You disagree with this – to you, this is all about individual opinions, rather than political and ideological dispute.And so, you hide your ideology.
LBird wrote:This is an ideological dispute, not a personal dispute.No, it's a hermeneutic dispute, one that can be dealt with with evidence: what do the texts say?
Young Master Smeet wrote:LBird wrote:This is an ideological dispute, not a personal dispute.No, it's a hermeneutic dispute, one that can be dealt with with evidence: what do the texts say?
You're really struggling with the developments of 20th century, aren't you, YMS? Or, at least, your 19th century materialist ideology is.It's a commonplace of even bourgeois scientific thought today that 'evidence' is based upon the 'theory' that 'selects' it. In physics, Einstein argued that 'the theory determines what we observe'. In historiography, read E H Carr's What is History? The 'theory-ladenness of facts'.You're an ideological 'materialist', YMS, who believes (ie., has faith) that 'evidence', like 'matter', simply 'exists out there', and we can passively observe the 'evidence' and objectively discover The Eternal Truth.Apparently, 'texts' talk to you, of their own volition, just like 'matter' talks to the Leninist Materialists, and so the proletariat are simply shooed away, with 'Nothing to see here, or criticise here, or decide democratically here; just leave it to the 'specialists' to use 'hermeneutics' to listen to the almighty text'.Do us a favour, YMS – get an education fit for the 21st century, not the 19th. And an ideology fit for democratic production, too.
The author of a text is dead, it has no meaning beyond that which we give it, but, and our signifiers merely add to the text, they do not alter or change it, discourse is ongoing: there are language games we can play with the text, and some moves are valid/invalid. You can say what you like about a text, butsome claims will have more basis than others. You cannot claim that Marx wrote the Masque of Anarchy, or that the masque of anarchy is about the Boer War, you cannot say the original text was in Swedish.Yes, all readers/users of the text have their own deixis, spacially, temporally and socially. The text is ours, but it has history, and language does not exist for each alone but socially, for others, so to say things about a text one must deal with the accreted social meaning of the text object. We don't need to follow Baudrillard into ob jective irony, but can work with the bakhtin school to observe the polyphony of the text held within it.Ideology does not free us from meaning and history, it draws us within it.
Young Master Smeet wrote:Ideology does not free us from meaning and history, it draws us within it.So, what's your ideology, YMS?
One thing to note about Marx' works, is things like the philosophical manusrcipts and the Grundrisse were not written for publication, so, as a facty of material production, they are hard to take as deifinitive statements: the real value of the Manuscruipts, dioscovered so late, was they revealed Marx as a humanist, to the consternation to the Hard men
Jordan wrote:76. The expressions ‘realer Grund’, ‘wirkliche Basis’ or ‘realer Boden’ occur frequently in the writings of the young Marx to designate what later has become known as ‘the economic base’ or ‘basis’. See, e.g., Fruhschriften, pp. 368, 369. Engels took it over from Marx and used it synonymously with ‘the economic structure’, ‘the material foundation’, and similar expressions.Just a useful footnote on what Marx actually wrote per-translation: I'll just note that 'real' is rearing its head here.
Jordan wrote:In general, Marx could not have accepted an observable part of physical reality as the absolute primary factor of social action and relations, because in his view nature cannot function as a condition determining human consciousness unless it is first defined in sociocultural terms, that is, unless it is a socially and culturally mediated entity. Consequently, Marx could not and actually did not accept any explanation of social activity in any other but social terms. ‘Everything which sets men in motion’, wrote Engels, ‘must go through their minds.’[125] Marx emphasized this fact in The German Ideology to justify the view that not only circumstances make men, as the ‘old materialism’ maintained, but men also make circumstances, as the ‘new materialism’ asserted.This is uncontroversial, but it does explain Marx much better than Lbird does, as looking at socially mediated reality, this would be acceptible to most philosophers, from kant to Russell, so it's hardly Earth shattering. All this means is Marx wasn't a Skinnerite. Man is a natural entity among others and does not hold a privileged position in the universe. Even when man struggles with and tries to secure his control over nature, he remains part of it. Jordan.
Jordan wrote:But the assumptions of naturalism may be conceived as implying materialism. In this case, the difference between naturalism and materialism disappears, and Marx’s naturalistic conception of history is reduced to a materialistic theory.Jordan does emphasise that Marx saw humans as part of a natural system, not apart from the world, or even ruling over it, and per the above, this is materialism by another name (I would dispute reduced, but it suffices in it's current place).
Jordan wrote:While according to Marx, man’s practical activity creates an objective world in the indicated sense, objectification should not be conceived as a spiritual but as a natural act and, therefore, as an act of production rather than that of creation in the proper sense, that is, of bringing something into being ex nihilo. Consequently, man’s capacity of objectifying what gratifies his needs and provides him with enjoyment presupposes the ‘sensuous external world’. This external world is the material on which man’s labour becomes manifest, from which and by means of which external objects are produced.[46]We've been over this before, but I want to emphasise the not ex-nihil thing again, a natural act, but, and I think I quote Marx describing the plant as the object of the Sun (and vice versa) objectification is a result of process and action. Also, objectification is not the creation of substance, but the act of making the sensuous world into our objects for us. A Thing, proper, is not an Object.
Jordan wrote:The world as known to man is a man-made world; it is the totality of ‘things for us’ and not of ‘things-in-themselves’. The only knowable is the world that appears in man’s experience, that is causally transformed by human action, divided into species and particulars, class members and classes, articulated into objects and their relations, into things with a definite form, arrangement, and structure, and cut out from the chaotic mass of the pre-existing world as it persists by itself. This humanized world is knowable because it is a world determined by man, the outcome, as Marx said in the first Thesis on Feuerbach, of ‘human sensuous activity’. As a natural being man shapes the environment according to his needs, and the needs determine the articulation of the world into separate things and their connections. External objects are, as it were, the objectified centres of resistance in the environment encountered by the human drives striving for the satisfaction of needs. If the needs were different, the world would look differently too, as it does to other animal species."As known to man" is an important qualification, we do not make the world itself, we produce our knowledge of the world, the things in it, centres of resistence which set limits on what we can create out of the "pre-existing world as it persists by itself"
Quote:=Jordan]Although sensuous objects are different from thought objects, they do not exist in the form of objects unless they are made such by human activity. Cognition is not simply a matter of discovering or disclosing some entities which exist independently of us. The subject participates in the determination of the objective nature and order of things and, in a certain sense, creates it in the act of continuous world-objectification (Vergegenstandlichung).So not simply discovering implys (and presupposes) it is partly discovering/disclosing. The subject only participates, and not in an absolute sense, but in a certain sense creates, in the sense of moulding order out of chaos, perhaps.
Marx wrote:the work of combustion of some substance used for the generation of heat. This work of combustion does not generate any heat, although it is a necessary element in the process of combustion. In order, e.g., to consume coal as fuel, I must combine it with oxygen, and for this purpose must transform it from the solid into the gaseous state (for in the carbonic acid gas, the result of the combustion, coal is in the gaseous state); consequently, I must bring about a physical change in the form of its existence or in its state of being. The separation of carbon molecules, which are united into a solid mass, and the splitting up of these molecules into their separate atoms must precede the new combination, and this requires a certain expenditure of energy which thus is not transformed into heat but taken from it.https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1885-c2/ch06.htm Just randomly ran across this the otehr day, note how Marx seems to accept there are Carbon atoms and energy exchanges, he doesn't qualify, call them so-called, or hedge with 'what elite scientists say'.
Marx wrote:Ruthlessness –the first condition of all criticism–is impossible in such company; besides which constant attention has to be paid to making things easily comprehensible, i.e., exposition for the ignorant. Imagine a journal of chemistry where the readers' ignorance of chemistry is constantly assumed as the fundamental presupposition.https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1877/letters/77_07_18.htm Just including this again, Marx clearly thought specialist journals should talk to specialists and not to everyone. Also, the implicit assumption is that Chemistry is a valid discipline. The point of much of the above, is it demonstrates Lbird's misreading: for Jordan there is a real world, with real consquences, which delimit the actions of the subject. Marx' anthropological centredness is an interesting and useful way of examining science, and indeed subjecting the thought objects of science to historical criticism. Our ideas have history, and adapt as our being in the world adapts, from the invention of telescopes, to needing to be able to plan railway timetables our abilities and needs shape the way we approach the world, but we cannot change it merely by willing it, but by living within the world, and working together in a conscious association of democratic producers.
Ideology is not a thing, it is a process: you can't simply name an ideology (that's to confuse ideology with creed) necessarilly, it is the influence of power to distort social meanings and disguise conflicts. Democratic communism is not an ideology, for example. It is a set of ideas and a political proposition.
Young Master Smeet wrote:Ideology is not a thing, it is a process: you can't simply name an ideology (that's to confuse ideology with creed) necessarilly, it is the influence of power to distort social meanings and disguise conflicts. Democratic communism is not an ideology, for example. It is a set of ideas and a political proposition.If we are going to have an ideology in communism, that will mean that we are going to have a ruling class, and a society divided in social classes, therefore, it is a contradiction
You have to watch L Bird I believe the actual quote was; "It is the theory that describes what we can observe."Which I think was a sarcastic quip against Heisenberg’s uncertainty principle and quantum mechanics etc that he didn’t like very much.
post 172 ….Also, the implicit assumption is that Chemistry is a valid discipline….. 15 pages into chapter one volume one, Karl uses chemistry to explain form and content of value! To borrow an illustration from chemistry, butyric acid is a different substance from propyl formate. Yet both are made up of the same chemical substances, carbon (C), hydrogen (H), and oxygen (O), and that, too, in like proportions – namely, C4H8O2. If now we equate butyric acid to propyl formate, then, in the first place, propyl formate would be, in this relation, merely a form of existence of C4H8O2; and in the second place, we should be stating that butyric acid also consists of C4H8O2. Therefore, by thus equating the two substances, expression would be given to their chemical composition, while their different physical forms would be neglected. https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1867-c1/ch01.htm
Dave B wrote:post 172 ….Also, the implicit assumption is that Chemistry is a valid discipline….. 15 pages into chapter one volume one, Karl uses chemistry to explain form and content of value! To borrow an illustration from chemistry, butyric acid is a different substance from propyl formate. Yet both are made up of the same chemical substances, carbon (C), hydrogen (H), and oxygen (O), and that, too, in like proportions – namely, C4H8O2. If now we equate butyric acid to propyl formate, then, in the first place, propyl formate would be, in this relation, merely a form of existence of C4H8O2; and in the second place, we should be stating that butyric acid also consists of C4H8O2. Therefore, by thus equating the two substances, expression would be given to their chemical composition, while their different physical forms would be neglected. https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1867-c1/ch01.htmWould that transform Marx into a bourgoise materialist ?
Adam Riggio, reply to Steve Fuller, wrote:One of the most illuminating things I learned from reading some of your earlier works was the fight between Robert Boyle and Thomas Hobbes on how to pitch the new experimental techniques of scientific research that the Royal Society was developing. This was in your collaborative work with Jim Collier, Philosophy, Rhetoric, and the End of Knowledge. Hobbes advocated total transparency: experiments were demonstrations, purposely artificial scenarios whose purpose was public education, not only about the principles and phenomena they helped discover, but also about how scientific investigation actually worked. Boyle wanted scientists to be a new order of mysterious authorities; the public would consider them a special class of people, a priestly order of material truths instead of divine ones. That way, science would be above politics. Ironically for Hobbes' modern reputation as an authoritarian, his conception of science was democratic, even anarchist. Science was a public enterprise in which anyone could participate as best they could or wanted. Boyle's clericalism was a product of the English Civil War, just as Hobbes' openness was. Hobbes was honest about the political power of science. Boyle wanted scientists to stand above the orders of human politics so they'd be left alone while the kings and militiamen killed each other. You can't have a sacred order if the magicians show everyone their strings.[my bold]http://adamwriteseverything.blogspot.co.uk/2015/03/knowing-knowledge-v-honesty-as-anarchy.htmlI think that this discussion about the development of the Royal Society from 1660 displays the opposing sides that I and (the majority of?) the SPGB take with regard to ‘science’.From this, I seem to be a ‘Hobbesian’, whilst the SPGB is ‘Boylean’.I know that I’m wasting my time posting this, because Religious Materialists don’t ‘do history’ (‘matter’ is their ‘absolute god’ and demands faith, not critical thought), but nevertheless I find it fascinating for Marxists, and hope that perhaps even a minority of one might benefit from reading some history of science and its ideologies (which includes, obviously, the Religious Materialism of the SPGB).The SPGB doesn’t want ‘specialists’ to openly discuss ‘strings’, and just who pulls them, for what purposes, and in whose interests. For the SPGB, ‘matter’ is the disinterested ‘string-puller’ (and not their elite 'specialists', god forbid!).Happy New Year!
LBird wrote:Happy New Year!Happy New Year! You incorrigable idealist!
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