ALB
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LBird wrote:Realism gives equal weight to the material and the ideal.
Just as a matter of interest, and without wanting to get involved in a debate (yet) about terminology, is this what "realism" has meant historically and generally even today? As DJP has just pointed out, this view has generally been known as "monism" (as it posits that there is only one "stuff" out there). I thought "realists" were those who argue that the world out there really is as it seems ("naive realists") or that what scientists are doing is gradually uncovering the "true" nature of "reality" ("scientific realists"), a view which has been strongly argued against here. Sorry, I seem to have just joined in the debate about terminology.
LBird wrote:My advice is to leave Bhaskar out of it, for the moment anyway, and just regard him as one proponent of CR.OK. Noted.
LBird wrote:If you can accept that Marx's 'value' is an example of 'non-physical causal powers', then the explanation about CR might be easier to understand and agree with.I can accept that Marx's concept of value is "non-physical" and would say it has "explanatory power" but am not sure about saying it has "causal powers", not least because this raises the long-standing debate amongst philosophers of what is meant by "cause". So I'll suspend judgement on this while awaiting further clarification.
LBird wrote:If one holds to 'materialism' or physicalism, and the suggestion that anything about 'ideas' is 'idealism', then most of what CR holds will be rejected, out of hand, as 'idealism'.I'm not sure that there are any "physicalists" (who say that only what is physical is "real") here but if there were I wouldn't see this as a problem. It certainly wouldn't mean that they weren't socialist/communists.
The 33,000 viewers won't be different people. They'll include us who contribute every time we look at it.
LBird wrote:1) Marx wasn't a 'materialist', in the accepted meaning of that term (everything is 'material' or 'physical'); I've explained this, and think that the term 'idealist-materialist' captures Marx's position far better, if one reads his Theses on Feuerbach.2) The realm of the 'real' includes material and ideas. Rocks and value have the same ontological status.Actually, I agree with the substance of this, i.e (1) that Marx won't have held that everything is material or physical and (2) that material and ideas have the same status. In which case the argument would seem to be about what to call this view, which I'm sure could be eventually settled. But what's all this about "non-physical causal powers" and Bhaskar? Where do they fit in?
Thanks. No I hadn't seen it but it's pathetic and a disgrace, a cruder version of Tariq McAli's argument. Both of them still fighting the 19th century battle of the industrial bourgeoisie against the landed aristocracy and its cultural leftovers today, a battle won in 1911 when the powers of the House of Lords were clipped and Lloyd George imposed heavy death duties on them. Don't think much either of the fascist-like populist talk of the "paedo-State"
I've been searching for anarchist arguments for voting YES but can't find any other than the other comment on the AF article (that a more local capitalism is better than more centralised one). Do you know of any other? Whatever arguments they use can't be the same as Tariq McAli's (that it will help democratise the British state). But then anarchists are a confused lot.
I was responding to DJP's post immediately before and also to the clip he posted by the guru. It seems that "critical realism" is the name adopted by some philosophy lecturers to mean something different to what its name suggests. In fact, worrying, as they seem to, about whether the table behind you exists when you're not looking at it is the typical pre-occupation of the isolated individual(ist) armchair philosopher.
I must confess that at one point I thought that the term "critical realism" might be a useful alternative to "dialectical materialism" to describe the theory of understanding/knowledge/science held by Marx, Dietzgen and Pannekoek and said so in one of the numerous threads we've had on this. It suggests that there is a "real" world that exists outside our minds, with the word "critical" bringing out that the mind places an active role in understanding this outside reality. But now I see it comes associated with a baggage which none of these would accept. So we'll have to stick to "dialectical materialism".
The AF one is not that good. It revealss that some anarchists up there are being tempted to vote YES:
Quote:I’m not going to tell you to vote or not vote. Some anarchists will abstain and focus on organising where they are, others will vote Yes in the hope of at least a few reforms.So, no anarchists are being tempted to vote NO (which I would have thought the better option if someone held a gun to your head and said you had to choose).It seems that some Scottish anarchists have been affected by the nationalist virus. If not, why the need to publish an anti-YES article?The one from the CWO is much better (as to be expected).
I see, so you are saying that "good" people need to win control of the government so as to change the social and economic system. Leaving aside for the moment the question of who the "good" people are, I can see the need to win control of political power but not with a view to reforming the present social system to try to make it work better (which can't be done anyway) but with a view to facilitating a rapid change to a new social system organised on a quite different basis, i.e common ownership, democratic control and production solely for use (instead of minority ownership and control and production for sale with a view to profit).But I can agree with you that do-gooders and reformists won't (and don't) get very far as long as political power is controlled by or in the interest of the minority who benefit from the profit system.
LBird wrote:'Supervenience' focuses upon the 'component', whereas 'emergence' focuses on the 'real' (ie. non-physical causal powers, like Marx's 'value').Is this a clue to what the "reality" in the term "critical realism" means, i.e that "reality" is made up of non-physical "causal powers"? Marx's value is certainly non-physical, but what exactly is a "causal power"?
Why, if Scotland breaks away, should we want to split our party into two any more than the GB-based trade unions will or should? That, both in fact, would be a step backward.
alanjjohnstone wrote:Have we got the text for a special leaflet for the TUC march yet to put on the blog ?We'll probably use the leaflet we printed for the same sort of TUC march two years ago supplies of have not been exhausted. The wording can be found here:http://www.worldsocialism.org/spgb/socialist-standard/2010s/2012/no-1298-october-2012/future-works
