[DJP]

Vin Maratty wrote:

You can't be sure of the impression it gives. My own opinion is that ideally EC meetings, Conference etc should be shown primetime TV;  show the world what real democracy is!

The general trend has been for visits to the website to go up and up each year, so perhaps I was wrong.Hopefully now everything runs quicker more people will keep coming back…

[DJP]

I don't think it's that funny. What kind of impression has been given to those people who have viewed it?Sometimes I wonder if we'd be better off without a forum, it's not like it draws many new posters in anyhow..

[DJP]

Since we have never really been influenced by the academic "Marxists" I'd say this pretty much matches up with what the SPGB has taught as Marx's theory all along, before the TSSI was even termed…There's a review of Kliman's book here:http://www.worldsocialism.org/spgb/socialist-standard/2000s/2008/no-1248-august-2008/book-reviews

[DJP]

LBird wrote:

… Piketty can logically argue that it can happen again?Can reforms once again reduce the 'top 10% wealth share' to '60%'?If not, why not?

That begs the question. Was it reforms that affected the distribution of wealth, or something else i.e economic conditions?

[DJP]

gnome wrote:

This issue will be discussed again by the EC this coming Saturday and hopefully some decisive action will finally be taken.  Among the various submissions made to the EC is a personal email from myself.

That's presuming "decisive action" hasn't already been taken.Work moving the site over to a new server with a different company has been ongoing for the last two weeks, and is nearing completion. It is a long and complicated process and we have been working on fixing other outstanding issues with the site (i.e search function). No changes in performance will happen until we actually flick the switch.Unfortunately you'll just have to bear with us..

[DJP]

LBird wrote:

Marx wasn't a materialist

Karl Marx wrote:

I am a materialist

Obviously it was Marx that was wrong.

[DJP]

LBird wrote:

If 'ideas' are 'just another part of the material', why don't rocks have ideas? Why don't ideas come from humans, animals and rocks, if the term 'material' is sufficient to cover all aspects?

I might suggest the highly contronversial hypotheisis that this is because rocks don't have brains.Ideas are just the functional activity of the brain. Nothing more and nothing less, just like digestion is the functional activity of the gut.What's your take on it?

Quote:

In a nutshell, DJP, 'materialism' is crude. So crude, that it provides us with no defence against the 'religious', who can also read of the travails of 'science' since Einstein. 

What's crude is your narrow understanding of what is meant by physicalism / materialism. Einstein was a materialist after all!Watch the Dennett or Harris video's I posted. Or re-read the quote by Sokal. All these people are materialists and in no way put forward the kind of two dimensional thinking that you think that "materialism" should amount to…

[DJP]

LBird wrote:

The materialists insist 'ideas' come from 'material', whereas we communists insist ideas come from humans. 

Ideas come from humans (and other animals) yes I agree. But humans and their ideas are just another part / aspect of the material / physical world *because that is all that exists*.Remember I agreed with you about the faults of a crude "base-superstructure" model of "historical materialism"…

[DJP]

LBird wrote:

No argument or debate – just the dismissing of critical views. Bit like 'religion', eh?

Well if you think that having pretty much the same conversation for about a year now amounts to no argument or debate, feel free..I'm pretty sure everyone's bored of it now.

[DJP]

LBird wrote:

Unfortunately, as many thinkers have pointed out, ‘materialism’ is a form of ‘idealism’.

Was that the same guy that said that circles are a type of square? He was friends with the guy that thinks that it was true that the sun used to go around the earth wasn't he?

[DJP]

Actually despite the media harping UKIPs percentage of the vote has actually fallen.http://www.libdemvoice.org/about-that-ukip-earthquake-farage-partys-national-voteshare-down-on-2013-40267.html

[DJP]

stuartw2112 wrote:

When I say knows it inside out, I mean, he knows it inside out. I don't mean he repeats it verbatim for the satisfaction of dogmatists and sectarians. 

i don't think that's a really fair comment about Kliman or Aufheben.Yes it's true they both criticise Graeber, I think there criticisms are sound.Any theory is good if it offers some explanatory and predictive power, if another theory comes along that does both better the older one should be rejected. I don't see Graeber as offering any improvements..

[DJP]

stuartw2112 wrote:

I have read Graeber, who knows his Marx inside out

LOL. I have don't think that's the case at all. But that's probably one for another day!

[DJP]

I was just trying to tease something out of you..FWIW worth these are a few things that I'm running with

Alan Sokal – Defense of a Modest Scientific Realism wrote:

Since no existing theory purports to be a final theory, there is no reason to consider it as literally true or to worry too much about whenether the entities it postualtes "really exist". Or rarther, when worrying about whether the unobservable entities of a given theory "really exist", it is important to distinguish existence as a fundamental constituent of the universe for existence in some course-grained sense. It is a reasonable guess that none of the theoretical entities in our present-day theories are truly fundamental, and that all of the theoretical entities in our present-day well-confirmed theories will maintain some status as dervied entities in future theories.

Simon Blackburn – Truth wrote:

..once we have an issue to decide, it comes with its own norms. Once the issue is the issue, relativism becomes a distraction

[DJP]

What makes a theory beautiful?What is it that makes something seem true?

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