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RL, Nobody here has defended "diamat". In fact, I think we would agree with your criticism of it. The trouble is that you are arguing not just against it, but also against all "philosophy" (idealism, materialism, positivism, even logical positivism, etc). That's what you've been challenged on here, not on criticising Leninist/Stalinist/Trotskyist/Maoist "dialectal materialism".

[ALB]

alanjjohnstone wrote:

i agree with you that we should strike when the iron is hot and make the most of the opportunity. There is no dispute about that. But on the long term,  we should realise that Brand may well be a flash in the pan

Maybe, like Sinead O'Connor 20 years ago (though she got it right about the Catholic Church and child sex abuse):http://www.worldsocialism.org/spgb/socialist-standard/1990s/1993/no-1061-january-1993/%E2%80%9Cabolish-money%E2%80%9D-%E2%80%93-sinead-o%E2%80%99connorBut, as others (not just me) keep saying, we can and should use the opening to get a better hearing for our case.Twenty years later the author of the Sinead O'Connor article will be writing the one on the Brand interview for the December issue of the Socialist Standard.

[ALB]

Quote:

"This may bring his message to millions but at the same time, I fear, it dissipates its power to effect change.”  http://www.jonathan-cook.net/blog/2013-09-14/russell-brand-half-way-to-subversion/

That concedes the point that his criticism of capitalism and his call for revolution did reach millions. What people will do about it is another matter. But it's an opening for us.

[ALB]

alanjjohnstone wrote:

The MediaLens website is devoted to exposing the BBC and the media's false liberalism. http://dissidentvoice.org/2013/10/launchpad-for-a-revolution/This article supports the argument that the Brand/Paxman interview was not as "revolutionary" as some wish it to be and may have an underlying ulterior purpose.

I think this belongs on the long-dreaded conspiracy theories thread. If radical ideas are not allowed on the media it's a plot, but if they do appear it's also a plot !

Quote:

Noam Chomsky has a cautionary note on high-profile exposure in the corporate media: ‘If I started getting public media exposure’, he once said, ‘I’d think I were doing something wrong. Why should any system of power offer opportunities to people who are trying to undermine it? That would be crazy.’

Sounds like sours grapes to me. In fact Chomsky has been interviewed by Paxman on two occasions.In 2011:  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m_1A8er-bGUand in 2004: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/programmes/newsnight/3732345.stmAnybody remember anything about them?

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admice wrote:

I thought you were a party, just without enough members to run candidates?

Actually we do run candidates, not many true but on a regular basis. See:http://spgb.blogspot.co.uk/

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I remember an anecdote that used to circulate in the party about a visit in the 1930s to our Head Office by an equerry of the then Prince of Wales (later King Edward VIII, who would be Prince Charles's grand-uncle) who purchased all the party pamphlets for his master to read. Apparently he wanted to know the cause of the misery his future subjects were suffering. I thought it was in Baltrop's book The Monument, that book of anecdotes about the party, but can't find it there. Anyway, it made me suspicious of the common view that he was a Nazi sympathiser.

[ALB]

Not just the CBI, according to today's Times:

Quote:

City Votes for Europe.More than eight out of ten senior City professionals believe that staying in the EU is the best option for the competitiveness of the UK as a financial centre, according to a survey by TneCItyUK. It said that the country has to be in the single market to shape how it operates and develops.

So that's finance capitalists as well as industrial capitalists against withdrawal. The dominant section of the UK capitalist class is never going to forgive Cameron if he gets it wrong and in the promised in/out referendum people vote to withdraw.

[ALB]

He's done it again. Here he is offering a materialist explanation for the initial uprising in Syria:

Quote:

"The tragic conflict in Syria provides a terrifyingly graphic example, where a severe drought for the last seven years has decimated Syria's rural economy," he said."Driving many farmers off their fields and into cities where, already, food was in short supply."This depletion of natural capital, inexplicably, little reported in the media, was a significant contributor to the social tension that exploded with such desperate results".

What next? An interview with Paxman in which he calls for revolution?

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Rosa Lichtenstein wrote:

ALB:"I would have thought that by "philosophy" Marx meant the German philosophy of his day (which was both speculative and metaphysical) of which he was once an adept himself, both before and, for a while, after he became a socialist. I don't think he included the English, Scottish and French materialists in this."Well, had he meant this he'd have said :

I am surprised that anyone should try to deny that in his writings of 1844-5 by "philosophy" and "philosophers" Marx meant German philosophy, i.e that of Hegel and in particular its radical offshoots. In fact, your quotes are from a writing which was called The German Ideology. The other work that you ought to re-read is his A Contribution to the Critique of Hegel's Philosophy of Right (the one where he coined the phrase that religion is the opium of the people). Here he uses interchangeably the terms "German theory", "German ideology", "German philosophy of right and the state".Marx began (the italics are his):

Quote:

It is, therefore, the task of history, once the other-world of truth has vanished, to establish the truth of this world. It is the immediate task of philosophy, which is in the service of history, to unmask self-estrangement in its unholy forms once the holy form of human self-estrangement has been unmasked. Thus, the criticism of Heaven turns into the criticism of Earth, the criticism of religion into the criticism of law, and the criticism of theology into the criticism of politics.

and wrote::

Quote:

Even historically, theoretical emancipation has specific practical significance for Germany. For Germany’s revolutionary past is theoretical, it is the Reformation. As the revolution then began in the brain of the monk, so now it begins in the brain of the philosopher.

It ends:

Quote:

As philosophy finds its material weapon in the proletariat, so the proletariat finds its spiritual weapon in philosophy. And once the lightning of thought has squarely struck this ingenuous soil of the people, the emancipation of the Germans into men will be accomplished. […] The emancipation of the German is the emancipation of man. The head of this emancipation is philosophy, its heart the proletariat. Philosophy cannot realize itself without the transcendence [Aufhebung] of the proletariat, and the proletariat cannot transcend itself without the realization [Verwirklichung] of philosophy.

There is no possible way in which Marx's use of the terms "philosophy" and "philosopher" in this concluding passage can be interpreted as meaning philosophy and philosophers in general. In fact it would be absurd to do so (Marx imagining all philosophers of whatever kind uniting to lead the proletariat in a revolution !) Later, of course, Marx abandoned this elitist view of the proletariat as a tool in the hands of philosophers to accept that, rather, the emancipation of the working class must be the task of the working class itself (Lenin, on the other hand, made it the basis for his theory of the supposed need for a vanguard party to lead the workers).This said, I agree with you that most philosophy is useles (I don't even like the word "philosophy" in relation to socialist ideas: "theory" is the more appropriate term). I'm just pointing out that you are historically wrong about what you claim Marx meant by "philosophy". In fact, accepting that Marx meant Hegelian philosophy and its radical offshoots strengthens your case that Marx wasn't a Hegelian (except in his early days, mainly before he became a socialist).

[ALB]

Rosa Lichtenstein wrote:

Well, he didn't add the words 'speculative' or 'metaphysical' to 'philosophy' when he declarded that "philosophy is nothing else but religion rendered into thought…", nor when he said "One has to 'leave philosophy aside'", so no, he didn't mean "speculative, metaphysical philosophy", but philosophy.

I would have thought that by "philosophy" Marx meant the German philosophy of his day (which was both speculative and metaphysical) of which he was once an adept himself, both before and, for a while, after he became a socialist. I don't think he included the English, Scottish and French materialists in this.

Rosa Lichtenstein wrote:

Why do we need a 'theory of science'? What use it is?

Maybe that's why Morgenstern suspected you of naive realism and kicking Dr Johnston's stone. We'll see if this is so after round two.

[ALB]

LBird wrote:

So, scientists accept that they should be caged, and trained, and fed on our whim? Just like a pet bird, and not 'worry'?

I take it this is directed at Rosa Lichtenstein not me since they are the one who is saying that scientists don't need a theory of science.

[ALB]

gnome wrote:

Another one here which struck a chord:http://brokenbottleboy.tumblr.com/post/1241752902/russell-brand-jeremy-paxman-and-the-messiah-complex

This is shooting the messenger and ignoring the message. What the Romans used to call an ad hominem argument.Brand talks about revolution and everybody's talking about it. Ken Loach talks about forming a new Left Party and it's a floparoo (well, a few thousands do but it's not all over the social media). There must be a lesson there somewhere.Once again, it's not Brand or his personality that's important. It's the fact that he's got people talking about revolution. When I was getting signatories yesterday for the nomination papers for us to stand in a local council by-election in Lambeth 2 of the 20 people I talked to spontaneously mentioned Brand and revolution when I explained who we were.Personally I don't see too much point in getting a Socialist Standard to him (but why not?). It's getting to the people he's got to think and talk about revolution that's important.No point in us kicking a gift horse in the teeth.

[ALB]

Surely he just meant that scientists get on with their research without worrying about the theory of what they are doing just as birds get on with their lives without worrying about what ornithologists say about them? Which is probably the case irrespective or not it should be.

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I see you have to be (or are supposed to be) a student to join in, but have we any members who are students of economics? Probably not, as economics these days seems to be a branch of business studies. Not like in the olden days (i.e. the 1980s and before).

[ALB]

I agree that Marx rejected speculative, metaphysical philosophy such as still survives especially on the continent. Although I don't think he says so explicitly, I think he took the view that it had been replaced by science. Certainly the 19th century German Social Democratic movement did. But in this case, a theory of science is needed of which "epistemology" (as the "theory of knowledge" will be a part, science being a form of knowledge).  Or are you agreeing with Richard Feynman's well-known quip that

Quote:

Philosophy of science is as useful to scientists as ornithology is to birds.

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