ALB
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Here is a recording of a Party talk on Dietzgen from 1982:
What happens is that you and other workers baffled by ‘material’ assume it means ‘can be touched’, that it’s ‘stuff’ (as opposed to ‘ideas’).
Did you notice the sleight of hand here, Alan?
He defines “material” as stuff (which is actually the German word for “matter”) and then accuses us of holding that we think this is the ultimate reality. But just a few posts earlier there is this quote from Pannekoek which clearly states that ideas are an equal part of the “real world” :
“The human mind is entirely determined by the surrounding real world. We have already said that this world is not restricted to physical matter only, but comprises everything that is objectively observable. The thoughts and ideas of our fellow men, which we observe by means of their conversation or by our reading are included in this real world.”
This is what I learned from the Party and from the books by Dietzgen and even Fred Casey that the Party used to recommend. That we are matter-ists is just not true. There is even a quote from the early Marx about ideas becoming a material force when they grip the masses.
It also explains Engels’s remark that matter (Stoffe) is an abstraction, ie a part of the real world of a stream of phenomena that has been isolated and given a name.
Anyway, You must be a bit of a masochist to put up with his abuse!
”It sounds to me that Engels is saying that every major event is independent of any idea that is in anyone’s head.”
No, I don’t think that is what Engels meant. He is not saying that past revolutions are independent of the ideas of those who carried out and supported them. He is saying that you shouldn’t judge them by what the participants say or think they are doing but by what they actually do. Their ideas, however, won’t be completed arbitrary but arise from and can be related to the material circumstances that have made a revolutionary change necessary.
As Marx put it in his summary of the materialist conception of history in his Preface in 1859 to his A Contribution to a Critique of Political Economy:
“The changes in the economic foundation lead sooner or later to the transformation of the whole immense superstructure.
In studying such transformations it is always necessary to distinguish between the material transformation of the economic conditions of production, which can be determined with the precision of natural science, and the legal, political, religious, artistic or philosophic – in short, ideological forms in which men become conscious of this conflict and fight it out. Just as one does not judge an individual by what he thinks about himself, so one cannot judge such a period of transformation by its consciousness, but, on the contrary, this consciousness must be explained from the contradictions of material life, from the conflict existing between the social forces of production and the relations of production.”Of course, as Robbo has pointed out, Engels expected those who established socialism would be fully aware of what they were doing. Engels is talking about past “major events”.
Now you know, Alan, that being Mr Nice makes no difference. Our feathered friend will still shit all over you and denounce us as “general philosophical materialists” of the kind that Gorter criticised – and that Marx, Engels, Dietzgen and Pannekoek did and as we have always done ourselves. Who does he think kept alive the views of Dietzgen (which both Gorter and Pannekoek adopted) in the first half of the last century in face of criticism of the Leninists of the “Communist Party”?
The trouble for him is that Marx, Engels, Dietzgen, etc still regarded themselves as materialists and all of them accepted the reality of the world outside of human consciousness.
In 1937 Pannekoek wrote an article for the journal Science and Society entitled “Society and Mind in Marxian Philosophy” in which he set out his view of materialism simply and clearly.
“Marx’s theory of social development is known as the ‘materialistic conception of history’ or ‘historical materialism.’ Before Marx the word ‘materialism’ had long been used in opposition to idealism, for whereas idealistic philosophical systems assumed some spiritual principle, some “Absolute Idea” as the primary basis of the world, the materialistic philosophies proceeded from the real material world. In the middle of the nineteenth century, another kind of materialism was current which considered physical matter as the primary basis from which all spiritual and mental phenomena must be derived. Most of the objections that have been raised against Marxism are due to the fact that it has not been sufficiently distinguished from this mechanical materialism.”
“Marxism is not concerned with the antithesis matter-mind; it deals with the real world and the ideas derived therefrom. This real world comprises everything observable — that is, all that by observation may be declared an objective fact. The wage-relations between workman and employer, the constitution of the United States, the science of mathematics, although not consisting of physical matter, are quite as real and objective as the factory machine, the Capitol or the Ohio River. Even ideas themselves in their turn act as real, observable facts. Mechanical materialism assumes that our thoughts are determined by the motions of atoms in the cells of our brains. Marxism considers our thoughts to be determined by our social experience observed through the senses or felt as direct bodily needs.”
“The human mind is entirely determined by the surrounding real world. We have already said that this world is not restricted to physical matter only, but comprises everything that is objectively observable. The thoughts and ideas of our fellow men, which we observe by means of their conversation or by our reading are included in this real world. Although fanciful objects of these thoughts such as angels, spirits or an Absolute Idea do not belong to it, the belief in such ideas is a real phenomenon, and may have a notable influence on historical events.
The impressions of the world penetrate the human mind as a continuous stream. All our observations of the surrounding world, all experiences of our lives are continually enriching the contents of our memories and our subconscious minds.”At the same time he had been writing his criticism of Lenin’s version of materialism “Lenin As Philosopher”. In a chapter on “Middle Class Materialism” he wrote:
“Wherein then, do middle-class materialism and Historical Materialism stand opposed to one another? Both agree insofar as they are materialist philosophies, that is, both recognise the primacy of the experienced material world; both recognise that spiritual phenomena, sensation, consciousness, ideas, are derived from the former. They are opposite in that middle-class materialism bases itself upon natural science, whereas Historical Materialism is primarily the science of society. (…) For middle class materialism the problem of the meaning of knowledge is a question of the relationship of spiritual phenomena to the physico-chemical-biological phenomena of the brain matter. For Historical Materialism it is a question of the relationship of our thoughts to the phenomena which we experience as the external world.”
This is materialism we have embraced and propagated. See or instance here and here.
In arguing that the external world of a continuous stream of observable phenomena is entirely the creation of human consciousness, oxymoronic “Marxism-Birdism” (“Marx and I”) is not really a form of materialism, as our guano-producing friend himself tacitly acknowledges by using “materialism” as a term of abuse.
He is entitled to express his eccentric views but there is no justification for him attributing them to Marx and even less for his non-stop lying as to the kind of materialism we embrace.
Why not? I know the anarchist Proudhon objected to filling in forms as he regarded them as hindering petty free enterprise. I don’t know about Bakunin — he liked burning public records. But Marx loved them, citing the censuses of 1841, 1851 and 1861 in Das Kapital.
I don’t suppose there’d be questions on “religion” or “race” (just what was your main language perhaps). As to sex, gender or whatever, this could be useful for the sort of reason Trevor Phillips mentioned.
Incidentally, have you found out if Marx and Engels were registered voters in England? We know Engels voted but did Marx?
The UK government is carrying out a census on 21 March. According to Trevor Phillips writing in today’s Times of London:
“A noisy campaign to persuade the ONS [Office for National Statistics] to abandon the compulsory question on sex almost succeeded, despite the blindingly obvious need to know the likely numbers of people stricken by ovarian or prostate cancer”
adding
“Contrary to the claims of trans-fantasists it really is not possible to suffer from both these conditions.”
(I think that means that he’s going to be no-platformed from giving talks to university students.)
I suppose they could satisfy these people by including another question similar to the one on “race” which, unscientifically, offers over 18 choices plus a write-in box (which we socialists have a policy of filling in “member of the human race”). Or they could go as far as Russia and China which offer a choice of 192 and 56 as these state’s respectively do for “ethnic” (in reality cultural) groups.
Perhaps the whole issue could be settled by not asking a question about which sex or gender you are but simply which type of cancer could you get — ovarian or prostate. That should separate the sheep from the goats.
“Yellow is found between green and orange on the spectrum of visible light. It is the color the human eye sees when it looks at light with a dominant wavelength between 570 and 590 nanometers.”
I propose that this scienists’ definition be put to a world referendum. Is there a seconder?
That what I thought you said and meant, Robbo, not this distortion attribued to you which I read at first as a direct quote from you:
“the specialists themselves should control the social theory and practice of the specialists, not society as a whole democratically“.
Another fabrication from our feathered friend.
And of course the crackpot thinks people should also vote on the meaning of everyday things like “yellow” and “table” not just of “matter” and “energy”. What a nutter.
Don’t worry, ex-comrade, every time “gender politics” raises its ugly here it gets a bollocking (so to speak) as it currently is from comrade Jordan.
The article on Jack Common was written by Brian Rubin(and was signed BR in the print version). He is no longer on the books but, as far as I know, is still a socialist somewhere in the wilds of Surrey (he was a member of the old Guildford branch). Maybe Robbo will know more about him.
This is becoming embarrassing. I don’t think you are old enough to qualify as a grumpy old man. But (or should that be “however”?) you might get a letter in the Daily Telegraph as Disgusted of Tunbridge Wells.
I think thou art being a bit snobbish (or is that knobbish?) I expect you also insist on saying whom and my husband and I. Insistence on ultra-correct spelling and grammar is a mark of the insecure petty bourgeois.
If you understood dialectics, comrade, you would understand that everything changes, including language.
I say u for you in texts. Don’t you? I see there’s a comrade on another thread here who uses cuz for because and he’s written one of our pamphlets. It’s just that there’s different spelling for that medium. Nothing to do with not bring edicated.
