DJP
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“Perhaps this could/should be the theme of a thread of its own?”
Perhaps we’ve already been over this, when LBird used to visit?
Wez, this all seems a bit half-baked.
You do know that Popper’s ideas about falsification have largely been found inadequate and rejected by philosophers of science?
Marx definitely saw his work as a ‘science’, look at the prefaces to Capital Volume One for example. But The German word is wider than the English. The German ‘Wissenschaft’ (which is often translated as ‘science’) directly translates as ‘knowledgeship’ – his critique of political economy is definitely an exercise in that, it’s a body of systematically organised knowledge.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wissenschaft
Even if we do want to hold on to Popper, there are definitely plenty of things in Capital which can be subject to empirical verification.
You also claim that BD has said that “Freud’s work can be discounted because of his historical and cultural context”, where was such a claim made?
I think round these parts the general consensus is that most of Freud is pseudo-scientific and doesn’t stand up to rational criticism. You haven’t been doing a good job of convincing us otherwise.
EDIT: Just for interest I’m adding a link to this talk from the archives. I thought it was good when I listened to it.
“It’s what is being done to them by the producers of junior dictionaries and other internet-obsessed and newspeak-obsessed pundits.”
The function of a dictionary is descriptive not prescriptive. They are just tracking which words are commonly used and how they are being used.
Lack of access to green spaces is not a new problem and not one that the makers of a children’s dictionary are in a position to solve.
It’s too easy to get swept up by moral panics…
I also see someone produced a child’s dictionary that is full of nature words, for those that want to use that version..
If you’re worried about this, the problem mentioned was really more about access to open space than the words changing in a dictionary, why not set up a nature group for kids instead of moaning about it on your computer.
I would go so far as to say that cooperativeness and mutuality are more or less hard wired into us, a bit like a biological version of Kropotkin’s Mutual Aid. I would say there is a “Human Nature argumen”t, but that it supports the socialist viewpoint, rather than the anti socialist viewpoint.
I like this quote, written by Malatesta, which is taken from his obituary of Kropotkin:
At bottom Kropotkin conceived nature as a kind of Providence, thanks to which there had to be harmony in all things, including human societies.
And this has led many anarchists to repeat that “Anarchy is Natural Order”, a phrase with an exquisite kropotkinian flavor.
If it is true that the law of Nature is Harmony, I suggest one would be entitled to ask why Nature has waited for anarchists to be born, and goes on waiting for them to triumph, in order to destroy the terrible and destructive conflicts from which mankind has already suffered.
Would one not be closer to the truth in saying that anarchy is the struggle, in human society, against the disharmonies of Nature?
In short, I don’t think arguments along the nature of “humans are naturally co-opertative / unco-operative” have much use.
Something else I have been toying with is with the Boehm’s idea of an ‘ambivalent’ conception of human nature. In short: Human beings have a tendency to both seek to dominate and to submit. But submission causes feelings of resentment, and these can lead to co-ordinated efforts to enforce more egalitarian forms of co-operation.
You get a similar idea in Machiavelli’s writings on Livy’s history of the Roman republic. When the powerless revolt it is not so much because they want to take power but because they resent being ruled.
What influence, if any, this kind of thinking had on Freud I don’t know.
The trouble with all this discussion about calculation is that there is a background assumption that all that matters can be quantified and therefore calculated. That is a highly ideological position. ‘Efficiency’ is not some kind of neutral or value free measurement.
While socialist society could and would need to make use of some kind of calculations, seems to me that these would be the beginning and not the end of the matter. We are not talking about some hyper rationalised consumer society where producers follow the dictacts of a plan, but a self-ruling democratic commonwealth where what society does is decided through deliberation. Such deliberation involves paying heed to considerations about autonomy, quality of life, appreciation of nature etc.
What could be viewed as “ineffeciant” in the context of a market economy that produces for profit, could well be the most preferable method for a society that produces for need.
Even within mainstream economics departments Austrian economics is viewed as ideological. I don’t think we need to spend too much time with it.
So in other words Joseph has become an Anarchist Communist in all but name? Or does he not call for electoral abstinence?
Like I said, seems to me these discussions about calculation are just besides the point. If you want to talk about the possibility or impossibility of socialism you have to be talking about the possibility or impossibility of free and co-operative self-government.
‘Das Kapital’ isn’t a book about the effective ‘economic’ allocation of goods. It’s a book about domination, about how people end up being controlled and dominated by the imperatives of the market.
Why would it be interesting? I couldn’t see anything new in it and, like the old calculation arguments, it misses the mark about what socialism is (the proponents of ‘cybernetic socialism’ do this too).
It’s true that socialism wouldn’t always end up making the “most economical” production choices, but so what? There are other considerations to be taken into account – for example the quality of the life of the people making the stuff, the environmental impact of the goods produced etc.
You could have a perfectly “economic” allocation of production goods, yet everyone’s life would still be a misery and the planet heading to an uninhabitable hell.
Please correct me if I am missing anything.
The paper tangentially references an article by Tom O’Shea – I suggest you read that instead.
Socialism won’t be about making the “most economic methods for producing goods and services” since productive decisions won’t be made by reducing things to a single metric. This stuff is actually besides the point.
Do these guys say anything in answer to what could be called the “structural domination problem” of capitalism? Or do they not even accept it as a problem?
“There’s a longstanding American left communist sympathizer on Urban 75 who’s currently stanning for Biden in this election cycle – especially doubling-down in the aftermath of Biden’s disastrous debate performance – specifically because of Project 2025.”
I had to Google ‘stanning’. A bit of an embarrassment, since Eminem is from my generation.
I don’t look on Urban 75, but strange that he doesn’t want Biden to be replaced with another candidate since that seems the more likely way of beating Trump in an election.
I don’t think his concerns about Project 2025 and the threat of an organised religious right are misplaced though.
“But George III was not an “absolute monarch”.”
Yes of course, I was trying to imply that the Supreme Court judgment had elevated the president to something higher than the founders would have intended – from a constitutional monarch to an absolute one.
But on looking into this more I’m not so sure about that. If the US president is modelled on how the monarchy works in the UK, then saying that the president is above the law (when it comes to official business) is putting them in the same legal position as the British monarch.
This short blog about what would happen if King Charles killed Queen Camilla was entertaining:
https://uollb.com/blog/law/what-would-happen-to-king-charles-iii-if-he-committed-murder
