DJP
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LBird wrote:To hold that opinion, DJP, is fair enough. But it's an individualist explanation, and so is likely to be anathema to Communists.
No it's a brief shorthand answer which you've read too much into.
LBird wrote:The opposite viewpoint, that the mind is social, suggests that the mind lies in relationships between 'brains'.That is "the concept 'ghost' or 'father christmas' are just the result of a certain configuration of relationships outside the brain"."Meaning aint all in the head", as Putman said and I agree. Read Wittgenstiens 'private language argument'. This is all pretty much mainstream stuff these days….I'd put it this way though "The meaning of words and concepts like 'ghost' or 'father christmas' are the result of certain relationships between brains"I don't see how meaning or concepts can exist outside brains.
LBird wrote:Whereas, I'd place a single 'x' between our two nearest ears, in the middle of the photo.Wouldn't that entail you having to explain how consciousness could exist free floating in space?
LBird wrote:DJP wrote:All that 'materialism' means, in the philosophical sense, is that "all that exists is physical stuff", clearly Marx never rejected such a view once he accepted it. No quotes can be found to show the otherwise…Sounds similar to the 'pragmatism' expressed by YMS on the other thread, DJP.Matter is tangible. And consciousness is god.
Pragmatism (in philosophy of science) is a standard of "truth". It means other things in other contexts…Materialism / dualism / idealism are metaphysical assumptions about the way things are.Lets not mix meanings…
LBird wrote:As to 'matter', if it's 'everything', is it also a 'ghost'? Isn't that just an idea, with no 'material' content? But if humans thoughts are real, they must be outside 'everything', because only 'matter' gives 'thingness'.Well we're into philosophy of mind here…If we are to presume mind-brain identity then the concept 'ghost' or 'father christmas' are just the result of a certain configuration of grey matter inside the brain.That does lead us to the 'hard problem' of physicalism, the problem of 'intentionality' or 'aboutness' but compared to the other alternatives dualism (mental and physical as separate 'substances') or idealism (it's all mental) it really is the only game in town.You'll get better answers to these questions if you logged into a philosophy forum..
LBird wrote:What's the point, DJP? I've done this all before for you, and you ignore them.All that 'materialism' means, in the philosophical sense, is that "all that exists is physical stuff", clearly Marx never rejected such a view once he accepted it. No quotes can be found to show the otherwise…
LBird wrote:It's just strange, isn't it, that comrades should use the term 'materialism', which Marx rejected…Did he? References please.
jondwhite wrote:Remember the idea that private commercial banks can lend more than they have in reserves? lol.They can do that. They borrow it from other banks on the wholesale market.
Well I tried to have some fun with them on their facebook page but when it turned out I wasn't some naive nationalist they deleted my comments. LOLz
People, by nature, want to please other people and if you interupt someone in there daily to-ings and fro-ings they're not going to be paying full attention. I don't think you can really pull any super deep conclusions from this type of thing.See this one:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yi3erdgVVTw
Ozymandias wrote:A Socialist Revolution? Never in a million years. It's about as likely as the 2nd coming. The masters will be in power forever…or at least until they blow the planet up to fuck or let it roast in an irriversable environmental catastrophe. "Humanity" is just a horrible virus polluting this Earth and Capitalism is its face. The planet will eventually get rid of us in its own way.Well, if you really think that why bother to post on here? This kind of semi-concealed self loathing does no favours to anyone including yourself.
alanjjohnstone wrote:Just to clarify that the LTFRP cannot predict a crisis for i always assumed a cause of a crisis can only be assigned in retrospect…i.e we can only view the cause of a crisis in a rear view mirror as someone once put it.If you're looking for predictions in the sense of when, where and for how long then no
Tim Harford wrote:Prediction is very difficult. John Maynard Keynes (yet another genius, different character to Maynard Smith)… John Maynard Keynes, the father of macroeconomics, once said that it would be splendid if economists could get themselves thought of as a humble useful profession such as dentists. I think that’s very quotable, but also he’s onto something there. We don’t expect dentists to forecast how many teeth we’re going to have at the age of 75. That’s not what you think of dentistry as being about. That may suggest we don’t fully understand the human mouth and teeth, but it wouldn’t be the first place that we would demand an improvement. Instead, what we want from dentistry is “can you give us good advice on how to prevent our teeth falling out or how to prevent toothache, and if we do have a problem, can you help us fix the problem”? That’s what you expect from a dentist. I think that’s what we should expect from economists – not forecasts, but good advice about how the economy works and how to fix problems when they arise. I think economists don’t necessarily stand up to either of those standards, but the forecasting standard, I think, in a very complex world, is not a very helpful one.LBird wrote:Here's a link to the last time I tried to explain value. My hesitant attempts to get a group of Communists to discuss a way of explaining 'value', in terms that workers unfamiliar with Marx's language could follow, soon ran into the sand. And it wasn't the first time: LibCom was the same.http://en.internationalism.org/forum/1056/derek-lorenz/6074/capital-best-way-read-itThanks for that. It is an interesting approach you suggest but I think it unecessarily complicates things, especially at an early stage. I think comment 21 in that thread sums up my personal feeling about that quite well…
LBird wrote:Yeah, I think you're right, ajj. Most people become Communists because of influences from family and friends, I think.Well for me it it was at least partially through reading the Situationists and one of those Marx compilations from penguin books…
LBird wrote:I've tried a number of times (on LibCom and the ICC site) to try to do this, to build an explanation of 'value' in simple terms, but it seems to be frowned upon by those who claim to have understood Marx's ideas, that there should be an 'easy way' given to newer comrades rather than by the 'hard labour' they've obviously put in, over years, to come to an understanding.Quote:Value. A social relationship between people which expresses itself as a material relationship between things. The value of a commodity is determined by the quantity of socially necessary abstract labour time needed for its production and reproduction. Price is the monetary expression of value.Value can either be thought of as the socially necessary labour embodied in a commodity or, as social relations are mediated through commodieties, command over labour (See Rubin for the latter).As distinct from "use-value" and "exchange-value"Simples?
ALB wrote:Let's not get wires crossed or duplicate work. Two or three comrades are already working on the election video (and, contrary to what has been suggested, they do have experience of film-making and sound recording and access to animation). The script has been finalised and work has started on the story board.I can confirm that this is a pretty accurate description of the present situation regarding the film production. Though we are actually finalising the wording on Monday….Some of the bodies on the team have changed but the skills set remains adequate.FWIW That Google clip would cost thousands, stock footage like that ain't free and we are bound to copyright laws…
alanjjohnstone wrote:I be grateful if someone can explain what practical application the TDRP has or the consequence of rejecting it. I have always simply assumed that it was some sort of theoretical justification for the inevitability of capitalism's end. But either way how does acceptance or rejection affect our propaganda and activities? Anyone care to put me wise?No, the law of the tendancy for the rate of profit to fall properly understood is not an argument for the inevitable downfall of capitalism. There is not a single passage in Marx where he makes such a claim.The LTFRP does not mean that we should expect to see a forever downwards fall in profit rates. It can be seen as an indirect cause of crisis. When profit rates are low more businesses are prone to failure and so the likelihood of crisis is increased. When profit rates are high there is less chance of business collapse. Therefore we can expect a period of low profit rates before the onset of a crisis followed by a gradual restoration of them afterwards as business are able to buy capital stock at depreciated prices and so get more profit per unit of capital acquired. The more value that is destroyed / devalued in the crisis the more the rate of profit will be restored. This can be empirically observed.The LTFRP is central to the dynamic of capitalism in that competion requires individual capitalists to increase their investment in constant capital (machinery etc) and decrease in variable capital (labour power). But as labour power is the ultimate source of profit this leads to a fall in the proportion of capital that is profit creating. This trend is periodically overcome by the purging effect of crisis, the expansion into new markets and various other factors (see chapter 14 of Capital Vol III).So the LTFRP shows that crisis are inevitably built into the functioning of capital and to reject it would be to deny that this is so, as well as to accept the often levelled charge that Marx's theory of value is internally inconsistent (and therefore false).
