ALB
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Your are right. That thread has become toxic. We managed to stop it for about 24 hours the other day and discuss something else (anything) but then someone posted on it, not something new and relevant, but a direct question to our resident opponent there and it kicked off again.
Your argument that if something didn’t happen it couldn’t have happened is an amusing paradox (the corollary of “what will be, will be” — “what was, was what had to be”) but a bit pedantic if insisted on.
What is wrong with that saying socialism could have been established 150 years ago? As you pointed out, in the first post introducing your paradox, an if clause is implied, in this case “if a majority of the working class had wanted it.”
Presumably, you accept that it is not illogical to say that “socialism could have been established 150 years ago if a majority of the working class had wanted it”.
Also, that it is acceptable to say that the material conditions for socialism existed 150 years ago since this is a question of fact not logic.
Then there is a question of at what time the statement about when socialism could be established was made. If someone, say Engels, in 1880 said that socialism could be established in the coming years, would that have been a logical fallacy (in 1880)? In other words, was the future establishment of socialism in the coming years an open question in 1880? Was its non-establishment in, say, 1890 predetermined by events up to 1880?
Finally (of course) is this still the case: if someone says today, in 2022, that socialism could be established in the coming years, are they wrong? If not, why not?
Will socialism only be possible when it is established?
If states were to be banned from hosting or playing because of their records on human rights, war etc there might only be Costa Rica, Faroes and a few south sea islands left to compete.
The whole boycott idea is illogical because where do you draw the line will always be an issue. Either boycott them all or boycott none of them.
FIFA reportedly redeems itself a bit after originally giving in to pressure from NATO countries to mix politics with sport and ban Russia from the World Cuo:
https://www.teletrader.com/amp/news/details/59152836
This would be the first rebuff this war leader has had to drum up support for his side in the war.
I have read Shelley and Godwin and other materialists from that period. But also Marx’s criticism of 18th materialism as one-sided as, for instance, in his Theses on Feuerbach — because it sees humans only as the passive creatures of their environment without taking account that what humans do is part of the environment and can affect it and so the the experience of other humans and what they do as a result of this.
In your reply, you seem to be conceding that, while the past could in principle be explained by a particular combination of circumstances (in fact a long chain and wide network of them), the future is still open to some extent because what humans do, intentionally or otherwise, will have an effect on what other humans do, as can unexpected or uncontrollable natural events (like your asteroid on its way to hit Earth or some massive volcanic explosion or even a hurricane or an earthquake).
This is not the same as saying that people have “free will” in the sense that theologians understand it. It is saying that the exact course of the future cannot be predicted because we can’t know what is going to happen (can’t know your future “chain of causation”). This means that what some humans do today can have an effect on what happens. If some humans decide,because of their experience and reflection on it, to get together to propagate socialist ideas this will change the experience of other humans.
Of course this won’t have much effect unless the development of the productive forces has made socialism a possibility and in fact the only solution to the material problems confronting the vast majority of humans. All propagating socialist ideas can do is hasten people coming to realise this and acting on it.
Maybe that’s what you mean by “motivated will and the chain of causation”.
You cannot think or do other than you think or do at any moment..
Very profound!
But the implication seems to be that what happened in the past could not have been otherwise. And that what happens in the future won’t either?
If so, Buddhism won’t be the only religious view that you will have secularised. There will also have been “predestinarianism”, as espoused by some Christian and Muslim priests, that all past, present and future events have already been decided by their god from the start (I realise that on your view you would not have been able to have helped taking this view).
Què serà serà. Whatever you will think will be what you will think. The other very profound corollary of your view. Or, as you have also put it (and couldn’t help putting it):
“We may bring about socialism or we may not. But whatever we do or not do, we will do what we do.”
In which case, what are we doing in arguing the case for socialism, why don’t we just wait and see if happens?
Obviously they couldn’t, because they didn’t. “Could have” is like “if”. “I could have bought some paracetamols in the shop.” No you couldn’t, because you didn’t.
I think this is one for Wez and dialectics. Does “could” imply “did” and “is” imply “ought”? Or is the real rational or the rational real?
To say that “supreme arrogance is a characteristic of the human species alone” is a silly statement since only humans are capable of expressing any degree of arrogance. In any event, arrogance can only be an attitude of individuals not of a species.
It is true that the leading thinkers and traditions used to teach that humans were the most important life-form, that the Earth had been created for them and was the centre of the Universe, etc, etc but that is no longer the dominant view (even if religion still preaches it).
I would think that today the dominant view amongst thinkers other than obscurantists priests is the view expressed by Sagan in that clip that we are life-forms living on a planet on the outskirts of one of many galaxies where particular circumstances happened to permit us to come into being.
And it is only in the formal sense that humans are destroying the planet and extinguishing other species in that this is the result of actions by humans. But, as you know, what humans can do is constrained, even dictated, by the capitalist economic system they live under.
Of course, if you wanted to, you could argue that humans are at fault for not having established a world of common ownership and democratic control as they could have done for some 150 years. But what’s the point of being a self-loathing human?
That would be awful. And would apply to your animal friends as well. They would be annihilated too and, presumably, as just as insignificant as well. And which is the only species that could at least try to avert such a catastrophe (and in fact is already looking into how might it be able to do so) and save them?
Another article, from 1932, added to the MIA Gilbert McClatchie archive. At the end it sets out our view of what workers and socialists should do in countries where workers don’t have the vote or not enough of them do:
“Workers in India, therefore, should unite on a basis of Socialist principles and organise for the establishment of Socialism. They should take what steps are necessary to secure a franchise for this purpose, but they should not unite with any other parties or give adherence to any other bodies, even those masquerading as pure and simple franchise organisations, as by so doing they would lose independence.”
https://www.marxists.org/archive/mcclatchie/1932/backward_countries.htm
Well, if nobody can tell me what “awe” is or is like I’ll have to have recourse to the dictionaries.
Here are some definitions I found:
“a feeling of reverential respect mixed with fear or wonder.”
“an emotion variously combining dread, veneration, and wonder that is inspired by authority or by the sacred or sublime”.
“an overwhelming feeling of reverence, admiration, fear, etc., produced by that which is grand, sublime, extremely powerful, or the like”
Sorry but I have never felt that and don’t particularly want to. It seems too bound up with religion.
It strikes me that we are being asked here, with talk of awe, wondrous, nirvana, etc to take the same attitude to the universe as christians take towards their god. They sing “O God, how great thou art”, “I am weak but thou art strong”, “when I survey the wondrous cross I pour contempt on all my pride”. We are being asked to sing “O Cosmos, thou art vast but I am but a speck of dust” “when I survey thou I pour contempt on all my pride” (I feel all ‘umble). You won’t catch singing that.
In other words, we are being asked to take a religious attitude towards the universe. But why? What’s the point? The most you could say is that in worshipping the universe you are at least worshipping something that exists, not a figment the imagination.
Personally, I don’t understand what “awe” is or what it feels like to experience it. Perhaps someone can explain but I doubt it can be done without being either poetic or pretentious.
You are writing as if you don’t consider yourself a human, addressing the human species as “you” !
I am not gloating over the inability of other species not being able to do what humans can. That we can and they can’t is a scientific fact. In fact it places a special responsibility of humans which only we can carry out. There was a discussion about human “stewardship” at our autumn delegate meeting.
You still haven’t explained what “the realisation of cosmic reality” is or is supposed to be.
