ALB
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This should probably be in the "General Discussion" as it might get lost here. As to Harrington, I'm sure we will have reviewed his books such ass The Other America and The Accidental Century but they've not be converted into electronic form to go on our Socialist Standard archives section here. The second, by the way, is included in one of our recommended reading lists, here:http://socialismoryourmoneyback.blogspot.co.uk/2011/01/better-read-than-red.htmlThere was an article in the July 1977 Socialist Standard critical of the reformist position he put in a debate that year with an open defender of capitalism. It exists somewhere in cyberspace but I'm still trying to track it down.
LBird wrote:'if anyone wants to employ 'scientific socialism', be my guest'.The fact that no-one can say what it is, seems not to cause any concern.Fair enough but the same thing could be said about "proletarian science". In fact what's the difference between talking about "proletarian science" and talking about "scientific socialism"? Given the choice I prefer "scientific socialism".
I think the distinction you are trying to make is not between "bourgeois" and "proletarian" science, but between a "bourgeois scientific method" and a more adequate method or maybe between how science is conducted today and how it will be in socialism/communism (which of course can't be described as "proletarian" as someone has already pulled you up for suggesting since there will no longer be a proletariat in socialism).Pannekoek was not studying or teaching "bourgeois astronomy" if only because it's not clear what this might be. He was studying astronomy with a different scientific method from that which you call bourgeois" (but which you've admitted on another thread most mainstream scientists don't accept now anyway).You seem to be riding the same sort of hobby horse against "science" as RL does about "philosophy".
LBird wrote:All science is ideological.That and the rest is all very well, but you still haven't said whether you think Pannekoek was studying and teaching "bourgeois astrology"
LBird wrote:There is no 'proletarian science' outside of the workers. 'Science', without any prefix, is a bourgeois ideological construct.I think you must have caught it from RL, the tendency to throw out the baby with the bathwater, that is.In trying to draw a distinction between "proletarian" and "bourgeois" science in general you're on dodgy ground. Ok, yes, there's bourgeois sociology, economics, history, etc but not bourgeois astronomy, biology, engineering, etc. Or is Pannekoek for the chop too for being a professor of bourgeois astronomy?
What has been overlooked in these (in my opinion unfair) attacks on Engels for creating "scientific socialism" is that this was not just Engels's personal opinion or invention. It was the general view of the German Social Democratic movement of the time. Here, for instance, is what Rosa Luxemburg wrote near the end of her 1900 pamphlet Reform or Revolution:
Quote:Some time ago Lassalle said: “Only when science and the workers, these opposite poles of society, become one, will they crush in their arms of steel all obstacles to culture.” … Only when the great mass of workers take the keen and dependable weapons of scientific socialism in their own hands, will all the petty-bourgeois inclinations, all the opportunistic currents, come to naught..Is she the next for the chop and inclusion in some Engels/Luxemburg/Lenin/Stalin amalgam !I don't think anyone will get us to ditch Engels. In fact to link Engels to Lenin and Stalin is a travesty as bad as linking Marx to them.
Here's Cameron making that speech and calling for austerity. From here:http://www.businessinsider.com/picture-of-david-cameron-calling-for-austerity-2013-11
It's not all workers of course, but it is true that a section (those in unions and on council and social housing estates) of the wider working class do continue to see Labour as their party, despite everything. Mind you, when you see the alternatives on offer (Tories and Liberals) you can understand this a bit. That's maybe why, when they feel betrayed by Labour, some turn elsewhere, to the BNP and even, incredibly, UKIP. (Incidentally, when we contest elections we do relatively better in safe Labour constituencies and wards than elsewhere, presumably because we speak the same sort of language of capitalism, socialism, working class as the Labour Party used to in the olden days).Besides being a sociological fact, I think this might also reflect the lesser evil position. These workers know that whichever government is in power is not going to make much difference, but if they are offered a choice they take it without much enthusiasm (even "without illusions") and vote for what they see as the lesser evil. One Party wit used to turn this argument wrong and say that elections offered, rather, a choice between the evil of two lessers.
alanjjohnstone wrote:Even in the UK there appears to be an uneven spread of members. Maybe i am wrong but i would like to see a map of members locations and see where we are concentratedThis has been done and it showed that the biggest concentration of members was in London, followed by Lancashire and then Scotland. It also showed that many Central Branch members lived on the coast in an arc from Cornwall to Norfolk, i.e of retired workers who had moved there after a life of wage-slavery.
This news from Spain should be filed and sent to Clifford Slapper for the debate with Peter Tatchell on 5 March as co-ops were one of the things Tatchell (a Green Party member now, I think) advocated in his talk on "Economic Democracy". Capitalism is continuing to back up our case that it can't be reformed to work in the interests of the workers.
The nonsense spouted by that nutty professor was refuted by Belfort Bax as long ago as 1893 in this essay in The Ethics of Socialism:http://www.marxists.org/archive/bax/1893/ethics/14-immortality.htm
I think it better to leave it to the comrades on the ground, Alan. Denouncing the Dean could led to them being hauled up before the Proctor or even the Master and rusticated or whatever they do to recalcitrant students.Meanwhile Class War is preparing to register as a political party. That's them not getting an invite to next year's Anarchist Bookfair. Or is it?http://ianbone.wordpress.com/2013/11/08/class-war-general-election-campaign-update/
Young Master Smeet wrote:when I say "I" I obviously mean the linguistically constructed retroactive justification for the actions of the meat-bot hitting the the keyboard right now.It looks as if we're all Zen Buddhists now! Here's how the sceptic and researcher Susan Blackmore who says she's a bit of buddhist puts the same idea in her The Meme Machine (incidentally, not a very good book as she tries to develop another of Dawkins's silly ideas):
Quote:Everyday experience, ordinary speech and 'common sense' are all in favour of the 'real self', while logic and evidence (and more disciplined experience), are on the side of the 'illusory self'. I prefer logic and evidence and therefore prefer to accept some version of the idea that the continuous, persistent and autonomous self is an illusion. I am just a story about me who is writing a book. When the word 'I' appears in this book, it is a convention that both you and I understand, but it does not refer to a persistent, conscious, inner being behind the words.She's sort of right about this of course and this has implications for the idea of "free will". We've debated this issue of 'free will v determinism' here before since we really do seem to be the Socialist Philosophers of Great Britain.
For those who might not know of it, there's a yahoo mailing list where member's letters to the press are recorded:http://groups.yahoo.com/neo/groups/spgbmedia/conversations/messages
Looking for something else (Marx's mistaken support for various wars) in Marx Without Myth by Maximilien Rubel and Margaret Manale, and at the risk of waking a sleeping dog, I also found these:24 October 1867: Marx receives a letter from Dietzgen in which "he explained to Marx his own theory of a materialist Weltschauung and remarked that 'science is not so much a matter of fact as it is of explanations for these facts'." (p. 228)May 9 1868: "Already foreseeing the end of his 'Economics', Marx wrote to Joseph Dietzgen that he wanted to undertake a book on dialectics and declared that 'true laws of dialectics are to be found already in Hegel, in a mystic form, however. The problem is to divest them of this form'." (p. 233)1868: "In October Dietzgen sent Marx the manuscript of his work, Das Wesen der menschlichen Kopfarbeit [The Essence of Human Brain Work] for critical appraisal. Marx commented that Dietzgen's writing 'turned in circles', lacked 'dialectic development' and ought to be greatly condensed (to Engels, Oct. 3). Engels found that it showed remarkable instinct and would be 'even brilliant if one could be sure, he had discovered it for himself' (Nov. 6). Marx rejected Engels's suspicion that Dietzgen might have borrowed from other writers, adding that 'it is his misfortune that it was precisely Hegel whom he did not study …' (Nov. 7). To Meyer and August Vogt in New York Marx remarked that, judging from his correspondence with Dietzgen, the latter was 'one of the most genial working men' he knew (Oct. 28). Dietzgen wrote a review of Capital for the Demokratisches Wochenblatt upon Marx's request (Aug.-Sept). In December Marx wrote to Kugelmann about Dietzgen's manuscript, saying that it contained 'despite a certain confusion and excessive repetitiveness much excellent material and—as the independent effort of a working man—is even much to be admired' (Dec. 5)." (p. 239)1875: "In mid-December he [Marx] wrote to Dietzgen that once he had finished with his 'Economics' he intended to write on the subject of dialectics" (p, 300).1882: "On January 5 he [Marx] reported receiving a letter from Dietzgen concerning the latter's recent studies in 'dialectic cognition' and the works of Hegel. To this Marx commented sarcastically that 'the poor fellow has gone forward 'backwards' and 'arrived' at the Phenomenology. I consider the case incurable." (p. 326)
