ALB
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Looks as if Prigozhin has suffered the fate some said would bound to befall him. If so, a bit unfair on the others on the plane:
I can see an objection already if it applies to cars (and bikes?) turning right as well as left into a side street (or the other way round for those not living in Japan, Indonesia or the old British Empire). The driver has to concentrate on looking out for oncoming vehicles from their left and not on whether or not a pedestrian is trying to cross the side road.
I look forward to raising this objection when socialism is established.
Looks as if the strikes and threats of strikes have just about managed to keep up with the rising cost of living even if with a lag:
https://www.lrd.org.uk/payline/pay-bargaining-news
Trade union action has its uses, to defend living standards or to slow down them getting worse but is clearly not enough.
To escape from having to run faster to try to stand still the whole wages system — the buying and selling of people’s ability to work — has to go and be replaced by socialism, the common ownership and democratic control of productive resorces so they can be geared to turning out what people need, distributed in accodance with the principle of “from each according to their ability, to each according to their needs”.
Even the mainstream media is beginning to report on draft-dodging in Ukraine:
Here’s something relevant on 19th century German materialism, giving some context to the intellectual world that Marx and Engels (and Dietzgen} moved in:
https://www.3-16am.co.uk/articles/on-german-materialism
This too is interesting showing that science confirms that the brain works to filter and interpret what the senses perceive (in this case, the eye):
It doesn’t make sense to call this “idealist” as it sees the brain and mind as part of material reality, not something separate from and outside it.
That’s good, TM. So you are a dialectical materialist after all. A poet who didn’t know it. Welcome.
I don’t know whether or not you are a naive realist (which Wikipedia says is “the idea that the senses provide us with direct awareness of objects as they really are”). I just thought you might be in view of your seeming rejection of any active role for the mind in understanding the world of reality.
Of course atoms exist but not as separate entities on their own but as part of the whole world of reality which humans have labelled “atoms”.
We are not talking about particular sciences but the theories of what science is, the philosophy of science if you like. Personally, I wouldn’t go along with saying that there is a “Marxist astronomy” any more than there is Marxist physics or Marxist chemistry as opposed to “bourgeois astronomy”. But I don’t think the author meant it in that sense.
I wouldn’t have thought Pannekoek or Marx would have accepted it either.
The author does clear up one thing for you:
“Pannekoek understood material reality to be a ‘continuous and unbounded stream in perpetual motion’”.
Are you saying it isn’t? If Marx is too much for you try Heraclitus:
“He viewed the world as constantly in flux, always “becoming” but never “being”. He expressed this in sayings like panta rhei (“Everything flows”) and “No man ever steps in the same river twice.” This changing aspect of his philosophy is contrasted with that of the ancient philosopher Parmenides, who believed in “being” and in the static nature of reality.”
To return to your original question; What kind of materialist are you: a Heraclitan or a Parmenidesan?
Are you denying material, physical reality, and saying it’s all in our minds?
No, of course not. Where did you get that idea from? Just because I mentioned that the mind has a role in understanding the real world? But even the view you seem to espouse — naive realism — accepts that the mind has a role even if only as a camera or mirror.
Here’s the case for dialectical materialism as distinct from 18th century French and 19th century German mechanical materialism:
Interesting but I notice that the title of the article — “How did we figure out atoms exist?” — is different from the wording in the link. I think it’s better. It assigns a more active role to the mind that “discover” which suggests that atoms were there waiting to be discovered rather than a phenomenon observed that needed to be interpreted.
“Labour partially rows back on workers’ rights pledges
Party amends plan to bolster protections for gig economy as it boasts of ‘pro-business’ credentials”Par for the course.
More on Ukrainian draft dodgers here:
https://www.rferl.org/a/ukraine-men-crossing-romania-border-illegally/32552480.html
There are of course Russian draft dodgers too (about whom we hear more).
Good luck to both of them.
