[DJP]

LBird wrote:

So do you. You're a 'physicalist'. Or are 'physical' things not true? If everything is 'physical', what about Marx's value? He categorically denies that it has anything 'physical' in it. 'Not an atom of matter', he insists.

Marx also catergorially and undeniably said "I am a materialist". So how could he say the below without contradicting himself?

Marx wrote:

 The value of commodities is the very opposite of the coarse materiality of their substance, not an atom of matter enters into its composition. Turn and examine a single commodity, by itself, as we will, yet in so far as it remains an object of value, it seems impossible to grasp it. If, however, we bear in mind that the value of commodities has a purely social reality, and that they acquire this reality only in so far as they are expressions or embodiments of one identical social substance, viz., human labour, it follows as a matter of course, that value can only manifest itself in the social relation of commodity to commodity.

Because phyiscalism (or materialism) means that "everything is physical, or as contemporary philosophers sometimes put it, that everything supervenes on, or is necessitated by, the physical"Of course social relations aren't physical in the sense that you can weigh them or observe them under a microscope, but they are neccessitated by, or supervene onto, the material world.There is no problem here…

[DJP]

LBird wrote:

DJP wrote:

LBird wrote:

'Objective Truth' leads to Lenin, Stalin, Mao, Pol Pot, etc.

Is that really true?If so what makes it true?

The deaths of hundreds of millions of workers and Communists?We've listened to the 'Objective Truthists' for far too long. But, we're learning, slowly…If only we'd listened to Marx, rather than Engels.

So..1. 'Objective Truth' leads to Lenin, Stalin, Mao, Pol Pot, etc.2. Hundreds of millions of workers and Communists died under Lenin, Stalin, Mao, Pol Pot, etc.3. Therefore 'Objective Truth' leads to Lenin, Stalin, Mao, Pol Pot, etc.I don't think you've yet got a valid argument there yet.

[DJP]

LBird wrote:

DJP wrote:

LBird wrote:

They always argue that they have a method which gives them special insight into 'really what reality is'

This is pure strawman repeated for the umpteenth time. Almost no-one would claim this today.

'Almost no-one'?What is it they say about 'ruling class ideas, DJP?Or have you ditched Marx as well as workers' democracy?And it wasn't me who used the phrase 'objective truth', but your party comrade ALB.ajj, should you keep listening to these fellow party-members, because they have the best interests of the working class at heart? That's not sarcasm. They really believe it.Me? I think that the working class should decide its own interests, by a democratic vote, and reject 'objective truth' for the bourgeois myth that it is. Parties are not god, and they don't have an access to reality which is denied to the proletariat. No party does. They always claim to have this access to 'objective truth'. Lenin, Stalin, Mao, Pol Pot, the comedy duo 'DJP & ALB'…

You where previously talking about "bourgiose scientists" and that was what I was talking about. The rest of this answer is just hot air..Go and speak to some scientists, you'll find none of them believe in naive realism or think they are uncovering the absolute unmediated "Truth".But I've said this to you before many times…

[DJP]

alanjjohnstone wrote:

How should our magazine, leaflets and blogs be themed to capture the imagination and sympathy of workers who presently reject our ideas but who on the plus side also increasingly reject the status quo and the left's and the right's too and are searching for something that reflects their own outlook more accurately and currently unable to find it

I think we jsut have to go to the mountain a bit more rather than expecting the mountain to come to us.These days that's probably things like Youtube and Twitter..Look how many views this guy gets for example, and it looks like he's just one lad with a camera..https://www.youtube.com/user/ElectricUnicycleCrew/videos

[DJP]

LBird wrote:

They always argue that they have a method which gives them special insight into 'really what reality is'

This is pure strawman repeated for the umpteenth time. Almost no-one would claim this today. (Accept perhaps followers of Ayn Rand) http://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Objectivism

[DJP]

LBird wrote:

'Objective Truth' leads to Lenin, Stalin, Mao, Pol Pot, etc.

Is that really true?If so what makes it true?

[DJP]

LBird wrote:

Trouble is, my returned insults are accurate insults, whereas yours just suggest that any worker who dares to argue for democracy is an oddity and alone.

Surely the proletariat have to vote on that to determine if it's an objective fact or not?

[DJP]

So, in other words "I'm the only communist in the village, everybody else are dumb and ignorant Leninists"

[DJP]

I wish I where able to make animations like that.

[DJP]

ALB wrote:

It's also got stuff in other languages than English (which I don't think the /spgb site does, does it?):http://www.worldsocialism.org/othlang.php

Yes, one of the improvments is that the foriegn language section is much more obvious and less buried away. Hopefully it will be up after the weekend. I'm almost done.

[DJP]

LBird wrote:

Those who think that them touching a rock exhausts our scientific knowledge of rocks are employing an individualist, empirical, method. This was, indeed, thought to be the basis of science, but Einstein's ideas on relativity blew that myth apart.

How does the fact that the laws of physics are the same for all non-accelerating observers, and that the speed of light in a vacum is independant of the motion of all observers (that is what the theory of general relativity is) prove your point here or even have anything to do with it at all?

[DJP]

Not too bad, but not too great either.Like the graphical idea though.

[DJP]

SocialistPunk wrote:

DJP The implication came from your poorly worded statement, asking how capitalist ideology affects the findings of non social sciences. I gave some examples of how capitalism drives science in certain ways.You asked how we sort out the bad science from good science. I provided some examples.Now you bring boiling water into it. If you had asked how ideology affects boiling water, I wouldn't have answered your question in the way I did. I might have said, it would if they used my kettle.My appologies for any confusion. 

Sorry. I think the problem is that 'ideology' and 'science' can mean different things in different contexts and we're getting crossed wires..

[DJP]

SocialistPunk wrote:

Vin,I know it isn't what LBird is saying, although it does have some bearing.  

To be clear. I don't think *everything* LBird says is wrong. It's just the strong cognitive relativsm that doesn't cut it…

[DJP]

SocialistPunk wrote:

DJP, I know you don't deny the affect capitalism has on science, but what you said implies that science is neutral when it comes to research and findings etc.

If I don't deny the first how can the second be implied? It doesn't follow.

SocialistPunk wrote:

Well for starters a socialist society would rule out the bad science that was falsified, deliberately slanted etc because of money. If the article in the Economist is to be accepted at face value, there is a lot of it about.

But what exactly is it that made the science false in the first place?

SocialistPunk wrote:

To say it would be the same whatever the society is wrong.

But what is this "it" you are refering to? I'm refering to the criteria for something to be true. Of course journals can produce articles that are false, no one denies this.

SocialistPunk wrote:

So like it or not"ideology" does affect science and as such is surely impossible to separate. The question to ask would be do scientists know this?So it's either science for communists or science for capitalists. Take you pick.

So presumably a free marketeer and a communist observe water boiling at different temperatures and light travelling at different speeds?What is this "science for communists" and "science for capitalists"?Who's doing either and where are they doing it?Pannekoek was a communist and also an astronomer that worked for the Dutch state, was he doing science for communists and capitalists at the same time?You see, it doesn't appear to be that simple unfortuately. 

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