[ALB]

Here's the exchange we had with the Electoral Commission in Scotland about this.We wrote to the Electoral Commission on 14 January:

Quote:

DeclarationWith regard to the Scottish Referendum of 18 September 2014 and with a view to being designated a “permitted participant” in it, the Socialist Party of Great Britain hereby declares that it will campaign for the outcome to be “Neither YES Nor NO” on the grounds that whether or not Scotland is an independent country is a non-issue for the majority as whether they are governed — and austerity imposed — from Edinburgh or London is irrelevant.

and received the following email reply on 20 January:

Quote:

As discussed if you want to register your party as a permitted participant in the referendum for independence in Scotland there is a range of information you have to give us. You can do this in two ways: * You can fill in the form that is available in our guidance and return it to us. You will find it here http://www.electoralcommission.org.uk/__data/assets/word_doc/0006/164472/form-ris-ris1.doc The link to our whole set of guidance is http://www.electoralcommission.org.uk/i-am-a/party-or-campaigner/campaigners-in-referendums * You can register using PEF online which I know you will be familiar with. As a registered party you should be able to do this using your party log in details. Link is here https://pefonline.electoralcommission.org.uk/Default.aspxIn your letter you declared for neither Yes or No. The legislation requires that a permitted participant identifies the outcome for which you are campaigning. In the referendum there are two outcomes Yes or No.

We replied:

Quote:

Are you saying that we can register as "No" and then campaign for "Neither Yes Nor No"?

Over the phone they indicated that this was the case, but didn't put it in writing.We interpreted this to mean that we had to register either for "Yes" or "No" but could campaign for what we wanted (even for "Yes" if registered as "No" or vice versa).In the end we didn't proceed as you only needed to register if you were planning to sprend over £10,000 (as the CBI found out over their recent banquet) which we weren't.

[ALB]

In fact, the files on the yahoo groups Spintcom and Spopen can only be accessed by those Party members who have signed up to the group and only members can. But, as DJP has just explained, that's yahoo not us.

[ALB]

LBird wrote:

ALB wrote:

Of course all knowledge, not just science but what we need to know for everyday living, involves selection (or, as you put it, there can be no "complete" appropriation of "reality"), but does selection have to involve mystification and distortion?.

[my bold]I'm glad that you've stated clearly, the text that I've bolded. This gives us some basis on which to proceed. But, be aware, I'll refer to that statement in the future!

My pleasure.

LBird wrote:

I completely agree with it, but I'm not sure the other posters will.

I'm sure they will. EH Carr's What is History? is recommended Socialist Party reading and members interested in the subject are encouraged to read Dietzgen and Pannekoek (as most of those taking part in this discussion will have done). I don't think there will be anyone, outside the party let alone inside it, who will think that Absolute Truth (as the complete appropriation without selection of all reality, as you've defined it) is possible. It's an absurd idea. Of course humans select, name and classify parts of reality to survive in it.

LBird wrote:

For me, I'd rather call 'a spade a spade', and openly proclaim to all workers that my method (and Marx's) DOES NOT LEAD TO THE TRUTH.

I don't think anyone has claimed otherwise, have they?The objections raised here to your method (but not to Marx's) have been to certain of the conclusions you've drawn from it, in particular:that it was valid at one time to say that the Sun went round the Earth.that the validity of scientific theories should be decided by a democratic vote of everyone.that it is not possible to have any class-free knowledge today in class-divided society.on the meaning and use of the term "ideology".

[ALB]

I was just challenging your view that a science free of "mystification and distortion" would have to be committed to one particular theory of "Truth" and was merely listing, without endorsing. other possible theories about "Truth" to the one you mentioned, i.e that Knowledge is Absolute Truth. Of course all knowledge, not just science but what we need to know for everyday living, involves selection (or, as you put it, there can be no "complete" appropriation of "reality"), but does selection have to involve mystification and distortion?.If you had talked about the impossibility of a selection-free science that would have been ok, but — and this is what I meant by you exaggerating — you talked  instead about mystification and distortion. Is it not possible for the selection to be based on "rational" grounds, e.g. what is useful for some human purpose, and for this to be clearly understood and accepted? In fact I thought that this was what you say will/should happen in a socialist/communist society.While you look forward to pgb's answer to your charge of him making Marx an "objectivist", I'm still looking forward to your explanation of your claim that Marx was a "realist" (I'm not sure I have understood the difference between an "objectivist" and a "realist") and in what sense.

[ALB]

Yes, Ronnie died in 1994.  He was an academic jurist and because of his father's proclivity to take legal action changed his name to Ronnie Warrington (after the town where Gerrard Winstanley was born) and wrote articles both for his work and for the Socialist Standard under that name as well as as RAW. For instance, this one on Miliband's father:http://www.worldsocialism.org/spgb/socialist-standard/1970s/1977/no-871-march-1977/open-letter-professor-milibandAfter he dropped out of the Party he ended up as a post-modernist:.http://www.amazon.co.uk/Books-Ronnie-Warrington/s?ie=UTF8&page=1&rh=n%3A266239%2Cp_27%3ARonnie%20WarringtonA sad degeneration from his earlier work, when still a Party member, on the legal theory of the Russian Marxist Evgeny Pashukanis, as in R Warrington: `Pashukanis and the commodity form theory', International Journal of the Sociology of Law, 9 1 1981.For more just type "Warrington" + "Pashukanis" into a search engine.I think his brother became a Jewish patriot and went to live in Israel.Ah well.

[ALB]

Why would a "science free of mystification and distortion" have to be one committed to arguing "Knowledge as Eternal Truth"? Another one of your typical exaggerations and non sequiturs. It just doesn't follow. Couldn't it be committed just to "Knowledge as Relative Truth"? Or even dispense with idea of Truth altogether?. And what about science in socialism/communism ,would it also be mystified and distorted? And if it was, how would society be able to use it to provide plenty for all in an efficient and ecologically sustainable way?Anyway, over to you, pgb.

[ALB]

You're a brave man, Alan. These Nats can be nasty:http://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/2014/09/01/paul-mccartney-scottish-independence_n_5746322.html?utm_hp_ref=uk-entertainment&ir=UK+Entertainment

[ALB]

LBird wrote:

The days of 'naive realism', and Lenin's 'reflection theory', that knowledge is a 'copy' of reality, are long gone.How any comrades think that this sort of 'objective truth' stuff can serve as a basis for Communist thinking, baffles me.

I don't think any comrades here are — except for comrade Strawman of your creation. All that has been claimed is that some statements can be said to be "true". This does not imply any general theory of Truth, or any theory of general Truth. In fact, such statements could be expressed without using the word "true" at all, e.g. to say "it is true that London is the capital of Britain" is no different from saying "London is the capital of Britain".Or are you saying that it can't/shouldn't be said that London is the capital of Britain? If so, how would you express this?

[ALB]

LBird wrote:

Many of the thinkers I refer to for some points, I disagree with on others, because I'm a democratic Communist, and they aren't.

Same here.So no more nonsense of the kind:Some instrumentalists favour "market socialism"Therefore anyone who says something favourable about something they say favours "market socialism".I even agree with some of things you say, but that doesn't mean I agree with the rest.

[ALB]

I think we need to go back to basics and learn what "non sequitur" means. Here's an example:Bashkar says he is a critical realistLBird says he is a critical realistTherefore LBird agrees with everything Bashkar says.or (different wrong conclusion)Bashkar says he is a critical realistLBird says he is a critical realistBashkar talks gibberishTherefore LBird talks gibberish.

[ALB]

LBird wrote:

We continue to go in circles.

Yes, we don't agree and are not going to. But the thing is we don't need to. We are both socialist/communists and it doesn't really matter which particular non-theistic theory of science we adopt. So this exchange is just an interesting side-show allowing those of us interested in philopsophy to clarify our respective ideas.

LBird wrote:

I'm a realist (and so too, I'd argue, was Marx).

Interesting. After all your criticism of Engels, Lenin and naive realism you are saying that Marx was some kind of "realist"? Maybe he was, but I'd be interested in what sense you think he can be so described.

LBird wrote:

I bought that book we talked about last year, during our previous discussions: George Novack's Pragmatism versus Marxism: An appraisal of John Dewey's philosophy. Given the amount of books I've bought and read on this subject in the last twelve months, at least I'm learning something from this process.

Here's a couple more books for you to read:http://www.solidarity-us.org/node/1818The appraisal of pre-WWI US Marxist thinkers in Lloyd's book seems interesting. Maybe I'll get a copy. I don't know if it's significant but it seems to be hard-line Leninists who say that Marxism and Pragmatism are  not compatible and wishy-washy social democrats who say they are. Incidentally, what was Novack's (the Trotskyist) main argument ?

[ALB]

Actually, I've no objection to DJP's schema as one possibily, even probably, useful way of understanding the passing world of phenomena. What we are arguing about is not the content of the theory (and of theories in general) but their status: are they uncovering  "the Truth" and representing the world as it "really is" or are they simply useful ways of describing and understanding the world? You're the one that has described the schema, mentioned by DJP, as purporting to represent "the Truth", not him.Yes, I know that "instrumentalism" was a term introduced by Dewey and that he wasn't a socialist/communist in our sense (though he is said to have regarded himself as some sort of "democratic socialist"), but the term has since acquired a wider meaning that can be applied to people both before and after his time who held the same general view of the status of scientific theories, eg:

Quote:

The instrumentalist position is that scientific theories are calculating devices that facilitate the organization and prediction of statements about observations. It is statements about observations that are true or false. Theories are merely "useful" or "not useful".

I thought this is fairly close to what you have been trying to argue but, for some reason, you have chosen to place yourself, at least in name, in the opposite "realist" camp which holds that scientists are seeking

Quote:

to formulate true theories that depict the structure of the universe.

Actually, Dewey seems to have been an interesting person. See this article on him and "dialectical materialism". He was a bit of a fellow traveller of Russian state-capitalism but defended Trotsky against Stalin's accusations against him.

[ALB]

LBird wrote:

But 'instrumentalism' is individualist and inductive (ie. individual practice leading to theory). Marx is 'social' and stresses 'theory and practice' (ie. social theory leading to practice). So, Marx is not an instrumentalist.

But why is instrumentalism necessarily "individualist"? (Apart, that is, from you calling any view that differs from yours "individualist"). Why does the usefulness of a theory have to be judged by its usefulness to an individual rather than to society (all individuals) or even to a class? Maybe Marx could be described as a "social" instrumentalist?

[ALB]

LBird wrote:

So, then, according to this statement, the 'non-physical' can 'supervene' on the 'physical' (DJP's position) but also (because they have 'the same status') it must mean that the 'physical' can 'supervene' on the 'non-physical'.

I'm getting confused as to what is the common usage of the term "supervene" but, once again, you are confusing two things: the "ontological" status of the physical and the non-physical (which are the same) and descriptions/explanations offered of physical and non-physical phenomena. Of course some physical phenomena can be usefully described as being the product of the non-physical. What do things that human civilisation and culture are if not the outcome of purposeful, i.e idea-driven, human activity?

[ALB]

LBird wrote:

Why won't you reveal the ideological basis to 'current usage'?'Current usage' seems like a synonym for the dominant 'ruling class ideas'

That's a silly point. As if you yourself haven't relied on "current usage" too in some of your definitions.

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