L.B. Neill
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L.B. Neill wrote “I…“.
I’m a democratic communist, so I always refer to ‘we’.
LBird, you made me smile with this comment. And I thought of Lacan and his theory of I Function. We discover ourselves in the mirror as an infant. It is a real ‘I’- I see myself, and it is me. We get introduced to language. We lose that sense of I: it is interpolated into we. Thing is, it depends on who says we.
It is about time we asked one another what that we or I means to us all. If I write I: it means I have said or wrote a thing. I am not the Borg- resistance is futile… But I and we must rhyme (selfish altruism). But you really knew me (I) you would say do something nice for ‘yourself’ as there was too much altruism… But you do not know me, nor I you- so we can ask questions of one another (you said it first).
Please don’t let the last retort be an I insult. You have no idea of my lived experience (and I hope you have never experience it).
I know when autonomy is taken away- in all its forms. I and we who have experienced that will say never again- do you comprehend?
L.B.
I don’t think there is any dilemma. Sometimes, inevitably, the interests of government and working class may coincide, as for instance with the establishment of the welfare state in 1948. Should socialists have opposed the welfare state because it suited the interests of big business, even though it probably added 20 years to the lifespan of the average worker? That would be a nonsensical and indeed anti-working-class position to take.
PJS,
Like your comment… it does raise the notion of reform to protect the working class health interests over reformism (impossible for capital to reform its self interest).
We all deserve to stay safe, bugger the costs!
Perhaps we can put an end to the narrative of financial ‘health burden’- look your customers need to stay alive… sounds really morbid.
No money: no deficit.
hope you are safe,
L.B.
He was good at football. Yes… He used gender based violence ‘womaniser’ I think you said MS.
Complex world indeed. I just reflected on society’s need for heroes: it maintains the apex structure of power (work hard and you can be like the hero we generated)- food for thought. So besides the pandemic, it is now rubber bullets.
MS, Think I am beginning to realise the general fluidity! More twists and turns than any rapid flowing river- hang on!
🙂
I think it impossible to build democratic socialism upon uninformed opinion, because part of the revolutionary process will involve the masses becoming informed
LBIRD,
I agree with you ‘the masses becoming involved’ in all aspects of society. And open access to information is critical for social productions, and even notional assent.
I do not, nor will ever hold an opinion that many are thick. And I think you know that. Dividing knowledge into access to betters and lessers: sounds Lockean..
I argue that access to science is a right, and to practice it has a responsibility. To know how to use it, and there are many disciplines- it took some time for me to train in its safe use too. Imagine me using a therapeutic intervention in counselling health without my training- sugar… we need to show ethical practice, know-how, and have access to peer support/review. And I need to know when to refer on to a a person who has very specific issue training outside my field of study. This example is not to make it elite, but to use it safely.
As I said all should have access to it. I can inform myself on physics, and like it, but can I earnestly say I know enough about matter in the study to fire a rocket to the moon? But if I wanted to, I have the responsibility to be informed before I dare it, study and practice.
Can I ask you then: do you believe socialist democracy will have health and safety practices, or do you think we will need H&S guidelines?
It is always good, and as you had said to me in your last post- ask direct questions, and I think I understand your position a little better… and without hurtful dismissive retorts.
I do not mean any negative regard in this question… only asking you to consider your remarks alongside some general guides for safe practice.
Alan,
A great footballer, was he. It is sad that the exploitation of working class athletes ends in this way. He would have still been great without the cocktail of drugs. 🙁
Where we delegate specialisms, scientific, technical, or other responsibilities within particlar bodies they will be subject to instant recall, they will not govern and in any case the people who make the revolution will set the modus operandi.
Matthew,
And that encourages me. I have always countered the arguments from opponents of socialism who think Socialism will lead to non learned scientific remarks and participation in it without technical knowledge. ‘instant recall’ by specialist bodies is so crucial. Putting science to the vote by polling on opinion rather than specialization just propagates the ideological misinformation of capitalism.
Your statement sums it nicely for me.
Correction
“I think what you’re finding is we do support the democraticisation of Maths, Physics, etc.”
The above is not authored by me, but quoted by me, it is from the fine pen hand/keyboard of YMS. Observation is fundamental to all sciences… LBird, I agree with some of your points on human cognitions, some merit to it- in my technical community. But democracy in science still requires learning the concepts of a scientific framework.
My apologies to YMS for creating a little confusion about authorship!
LBird, I see democracy in science as making its study accessible to all who wish to do it, not sure it be based on uninformed opinion- after all Pluto is still a contention… sentimental voting on it won’t make its mass or density increase.
That is, we’d mandate a diversity of views so as to better explore the possibilities we might find. The order to soldiers to “Fire at will (poor Will)” is still an order.
Well said YMS!
Just a note on cognitive approaches in Social Science. Yes, LBird, humans do socially construct their societal/social formations… it is a branch of discursive psych/ and Soc. Sc… Social constructionism/constructivism states we think/cognise in diachronic or language which Lacan centred as the state of consciousness/unconsciousness.
So yes social productions are constructed by the mind/psycho-social and impact our concept of material in some ways, they are social constructs. The problem today, is that access to scientific discourse is hierarchical- in forms of who can say/ not say a scientific remark, which mainstream version is included/excluded from a act of speaking a remark in science… and yes it is still required to limit, close off and what can qualify as a remark having a scientific basis.
Giving knowledge of science to a vote, (and may the best remark trump) is harmful to the variation of postulations. Psychology and soc. sc. has many schools of thought and compliment often, and at times oppose. But it is through this that they do not remain static, but evolve. Hope your notion is not one that would have an apex, one solution only response- science should be accessible to all but should not be subject to a socially constructed ‘singular’ narrative.
And may YMS conclude my remark with a re-articulation of :
I think what you’re finding is we do support the democraticisation of Maths, Physics, etc. but that many here we would vote against mandating any official “truth” save, maybe, the sort of vote the Astronomical Union held to remove planet status from Pluto.
Never liked Pluto- more like a rock that can’t even repel smaller rocks out of its way- now that is based on democratic sentiment for my view of Pluto. Good job I did not attempt to pass this off as a scientific postulation in astro-physics.
We need to democratize science yes, but we need the technical knowledge to shape it, a learnt remark.
The night Diego Maradona’s Argentina came to Australia to play the Socceroos in Sydney – ABC News
The day that Diego Armando Maradona came to Australia. pic.twitter.com/pQ0K3ylOQe
— Subway Socceroos (@Socceroos) October 31, 2020
Farewell Maradona, That goal was the Hand of God- Never handball!
Things are tough with the COVID situation in Argentina…
3 Days of national mourning in Argentina for Maradona…
The SPGB, being ‘materialist’, argues that an elite will change the world.
LBird.
Let us take your above statement, or vague remarks: “The SPGB, being ‘materialist’, argues that an elite will change the world.”
Consider this binary choice: dictatorship by the masses/or of the masses. You seem for democracy- I ‘dig it’… The people decide… Okay we agree- Society decides on socialist modes of production and the meeting of its wants and needs.
I think your problem may centre on the term ‘material’. I know you would choose the mass/ or society assume control over their lived experience. I never asked you to define your view on material, ’till now?
Can I put the question: If by material you mean rock (or even observers of rocks), do you centre the rock as expounding elitist ideas… Or.. Do you put elitism in the observer of the rock?
Do you have rock evidence of SPGB and this site claiming vanguardism/superiority over any mass or masses?
Basic idea of hydraulic power: if it is fluid, it flows to all and it distributes power to all (Society not state governance). If it is sediment[ed] power, it congeals in its form (ruling elites and their apex hegemony: their top down command dynamics). It does not coagulate in socialism- for there are no elites to dam it up!
Materialists do not give all power to the rock in its communication of meaning to us- we develop a science based on causality, cause and effect, observation, trial and error, discovery, repeatability of a test, predictability, P(x) values, and yes an ethics too.
I have only known your posts for a short while, and may have misunderstood.
… But the above statement you made does not exist in the ‘material’ I have read on SPGB: could it be some other organisation writing about it that you can shed some light on- pardon the physical and geological signifiers…
Just noticed my last post was a bit dread- almost a memory of CND.
I am glad I bumped into the SPGB. I had added so much to a pristine Marxist engine, that it seemed to drive all over the place. Good to drive a classic again.
Wez,
Being a socialist without referencing Marx is rather like trying to be a physicist without a reference to Einstein
I have a recollection of this. Think Derrida- ‘there can be no socialism without Marx’ or even Foucault saying he did not have to keep quoting Marx every time he developed an argument as physicists do not keep referencing Einstein each time they talked of physics.
I know Marx can’t morph into Leninism- as I had said: Marx is Marx. But Marx ideas are being fashioned into liberalism, anarchic Capitalism-
So I say again- I read Marx for Marx (writer to reader). No alterations, save time and our immediate understanding. We can preserve it- we can develop it too (if the discipline becomes frozen in time we are stuck in its time, and we need it to keep updated in the here and now).
Einstein and his cohorts used science for the bomb, in that fatal end- Marx wanted change, socialism (and if he got there first: no bomb).
It is out of the bag- and what creativity- Marx for his time, and for our time.
We need to make reference to Marx- I know that. He provided the science of Epochal change, and the end to history, the end to class struggle.
