LBird
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BTW, the materialist notion of ‘underlying’ regularities has been around since the Ancient Greeks, with their concept of ‘hupokeimenon’, which literally means ‘underlying’.
But neither any Greek nor modern ever explained how we ordinary people could access this ‘underlying’. It clearly remained a task for a ‘special minority’, like Plato.
Roberto wrote: “Your reflection raises a deep philosophical issue that has existed inside Marxist debates for more than a century: whether concepts like value, nature, and even science should be understood primarily as discoveries about an independent reality or as products of human social activity. ” [my bold]
Yeah, and the fact that Marx focussed upon ‘production’, which produces “products of human social activity”, suggests he was of the latter persuasion.
Marx’s politics and philosophy was focussed on human creative activity, and he rejected both ‘idealism’ (which focussed on ‘divine creative activity’) and ‘materialism’ (which focussed on ‘human passive experience’). Marx unified the two into ‘idealism-materialism’ (rejecting both divine creativity and human passivity). That’s why his method is ‘theory and practice’ (and not ‘practice and theory’, as some would have it).But the key here is understanding what ‘an independent reality’ actually means. I’m inclined to think that ‘materialists’ think it means ‘outside of an individual’s head/mind/brain’. But no Marxist would argue that that is untrue: obviously, ‘external’ to its producer is exactly what a product is.
But if ‘an independent reality’ means an externality that has no relationship to an active subject, how would the subject know this ‘independent reality’?
Clearly, any ‘external world’, ‘natural world’, ‘material reality’ that we humans know, is a unified product of our theory and practice, our active engagement with our own reality. That’s why WE CAN CHANGE ‘it’.
Anything ‘independent’ of humans can’t be known. So, our ‘material reality’ is our active product, and has a social and historical dimension.
Roberto wrote: “Confusing the two risks either scientism (rule by experts) or voluntarism (the belief reality bends to democratic will).”
But this is exactly what Marx predicted that ‘materialists’ would argue. If neither ‘experts’ nor ‘the social producers’ will control ‘science’, who will? It will lead back to an unelected ‘special elite’, as Marx predicted. ‘Materialists’ have a hidden distain for the majority, if the ‘materialists’ believe that most humans in a democratic socialist society would ‘vote for carpets to fly’.
Marxists don’t argue that democratic control of our science means a belief in ‘anything goes, if it’s voted for’, but that the social producers must democratically control their production of their own world, and democratically control its own experts, universities, research, funding, and methods.
The reason that this ‘deep philosophical issue’ continues to ‘exist inside Marxist debates’ is that it reveals the true nature of its competing adherents’ views about ‘democracy’, and views about the potential for a wider humanity.
‘Materialism’ requires a special elite, and that ‘the common masses’ keep their sticky little fingers off the ‘pristine bourgeois science’ of an elite who claim that they know better.
That’s why Lenin was a ‘materialist’, who didn’t understand ‘value’, which is an ‘ideal-material’ concept and power.
Roberto wrote: “When LBird writes, “Where that leaves ‘value’, I’m not sure,” the uncertainty may arise from treating value as something that must either be objectively “out there” in the world or else merely subjective opinion. But Marx’s concept of value does not fit comfortably into that dichotomy.”
Yeah, Marx is very clear in Capital that ‘value’ does not contain ‘matter’. Marx, as you say, does not use the supposed opposition of ‘material’ versus ‘ideal’, but focusses upon ‘social production’ which requires both objects and ideas, both of which are our own products. There is no ‘matter’ out there which we can’t know, and there is no ‘conscious creator’ of our natural world.
As I’ve argued before, Marx is an ‘idealist-materialist’, to use those terms, which is better expressed as a ‘social productionist’. All of his key theoretical concepts involve ‘production’, not ‘matter’: mode of production, means of production, forces of production. We are the active producing agent in our world, both natural and social.
I suspect this next is our main bone of contention.
Roberto wrote “However, the claim that “we make our own laws, whether ethical or physical” needs some qualification. We certainly make our social laws — institutions, norms, economic structures — and therefore we can change them. But physical laws are not of the same order. Gravity does not disappear because we vote against it. What we can change is how we understand and apply physical laws through science and technology.”
No, our ‘physical laws’ are just the same as our ‘social laws’: we socially produce both, historically have changed both, and in the future, in a democratic communist society, need to be able to democratically change all of our socially produced laws. Any study of ‘science’ shows that it has a history, often changes, and has always been controlled by a self-selecting elite (who serve the ruling class, whatever their own supposed individual intentions).
As often happens, opponents of Marx’s democratic social productionism revert to a ‘materialism’ that Marx opposed, and which Marx warned, in his Theses on Feuerbach, would lead to an elite in control of this ‘materialism’, as society was separated into two halves, those who have to remain passive in the face of ‘The Physical’ (the majority), and those, a small elite, who have a special consciousness which allows them to change the laws of science.
In your example, ‘gravity’ compels all – so why do we need ‘science’ to understand ‘gravity’? The vast majority would vote to agree that jumping off a ten storey building would prove to be painful for the jumper. So much for the ‘physical’, which any individual can understand.
But our problem is that ‘gravity’ (ie, the idea, the concept) is a social product, which can be changed. The explanation of why a body falls on Earth could be changed (and the history of science suggests that it probably will in the future), and the name that we give to our experience of falling could change, too. It might not always be called ‘gravity’, with the underlying explanation of ‘why’ we fall.
Roberto wrote: “Marx’s value theory, then, sits at the intersection of structure and agency. It describes a social law that we ourselves produce but which, under capitalism, operates behind our backs and beyond our conscious control. The ethical impulse arises precisely from recognizing that this “law” is neither eternal nor natural, but a historically specific way of organizing social life — one that can, in principle, be superseded.”
I’ll finish on a point of complete agreement, regarding ‘value’. But we don’t need the concept of ‘material’ to have this agreement.
LBird wrote: “Where that leaves ‘value’, I’m not sure.”
Perhaps to clarify, I think Marx’s theories, including ‘value’, have an inescapable ethical dimension.
Furthermore, I think that many of the discussions about ‘value’ are an erroneous attempt to prove the ‘objectivity’ (or, ‘material reality’) of Marx’s ‘value’.
To me, ‘value’ is a human, social, historical, changeable, product, and we can choose not to produce it, if we want to.
We make our own laws, whether ethical or physical. And we can change them.
Roberto wrote: “The debate, therefore, is not merely normative (what is more just), but categorical: is the market a neutral tool that can simply be democratized, or is it a social form that structures behavior and relations independently of who formally owns productive units?
That is where the core disagreement lies.”But if production is democratised, why would distribution remain by a market? Who argues for this, and why?
If distribution is also democratised, doesn’t that remove ‘individual choice’, which is what I suspect is behind the argument in favour of ‘market socialism’. That is, the belief that ‘individual choice’ is the highest ethical/normative/moral/political standard.
It seems to me that democracy does imply the weakening of ‘individual choice’, and I’m in favour of ‘democratic production’.
That is, ‘social choice’, not ‘individual choice’. Collective consumption, not ‘individual consumption’.
Where that leaves ‘value’, I’m not sure.
ALB wrote: “This suggests that the way to end this is for workers to have democratic control over what they produce. It provides a theoretical justification for “workers control” — but of what? Of what is produced for sale. The way out is workers’ cooperatives producing for a market not socialism.”
But couldn’t ‘democratic control over what they produce’ also imply ‘and what they consume/distribute’, and no market sale?
Or does Cohen specifically exclude ‘distribution’ from ‘democratic control’, and specifically argue for ‘market distribution’ and workers’ cooperatives?
So, twc, to put it in simple terms, your answer to my question is ‘No’.
That is ‘serious epistemology’. No knowledge is generated by your ideas.
We’re no further forward in our discussion about economic reform in China than your belief that ‘the end times will come eventually’.
twc wrote: “The actual capitalist system of markets, when put under stress, invariably turns true to its dominant capitalist-class interests, leaving your leftist, working-class beneficent, “Tool Market”, in its wake.” [my bold]
Could you give us any clue as to when this ‘invariably turns true‘ in China, twc?
I’m not asking for a particular year obviously, but just a decade, or even a century?
Surely you must have a finite idea about ‘invariable truth’?
Surely a ‘scientist’ like yourself would make measurable claims?
Surely a ‘materialist’ like yourself would be dealing with ‘reality itself’, and not the mere wishful thinking of ‘idealism’?
‘Bad-mouthing’, twc?
The only bad-mouthing on this thread has come from you.
Although, it always seems to be your response to being asked questions.
If you’re not interested in discussing ‘Economic reform in China’, why bother posting on a thread with that title?
twc, surely the point of a discussion titled ‘Economic Reform in China’ is to discuss economic reform in China?
Have there been reforms? What are the reforms? Who benefits from reforms? Have they been successful? Do they provide a model for others? Must reforms always hit the buffers – if so, when? What is the time frame for this failure?
Discussion is how workers persuade each other, twc.
Thomas More wrote: “How does one begin, given the mass ignorance …to explain…”
It requires organised workers to attempt to introduce a system of workers’ education, including Proletarian Universities, covering a syllabus from philosophy, maths, physics, biology, etc. to history, sociology, architecture, art, etc.
To my knowledge, this has only been tried once at a national level (leaving aside minor schools or individual teachers), and that was the Proletcult movement led by Bogdanov and Lunacharsky, during the initial stage of the Soviet Union.
I’m minded to comment that the dominance of a ‘materialism’ of those supposed ‘Marxists’ who follow Engels, Kautsky and Plekhanov, which believes that ‘the material conditions’ will bring socialism/communism, rather than workers’ active consciousness, is the explanation for the continued failure to build a democratic workers’ education system built by workers themselves.
Even the SPGB won’t have workers democratically controlling ‘science’. As ‘materialists’, they believe that ‘science’ is a social product best left to an elite, and that democracy has no part to play in physics.
I’m not making any ‘allegations’, I’m asking questions.
Are the ‘backward conditions’ the same ‘backward conditions’ as 3-4 decades ago?
If so, you’re arguing that nothing has changed.
If not, can the changes continue to ‘progress’ (as the SPGB said, quoted earlier), and provide a model for other ‘backward’ economies?
If China has ‘fulfilled its mission’, does that mean further ‘progressive’ change can’t happen?
Again, from what I can tell from Citizenofthenewworld’s post, the answer to my question is ‘yes’, that the successful Chinese economic reforms will continue.
You both seem to want to answer a question that I’m not asking.
As for Marx’s views, we’ve had years of debating those, and youse still erroneously regard Marx as a passive 18th century ‘materialist’, no matter what evidence is produced to show that Marx argued for ‘theory and practice’ and ‘social production’, both requiring an active consciousness. There seems to be no point re-visiting those debates.
If you don’t think that China has changed its mid-20th century supposed ‘material destiny’, by its recent active social production, please explain its failure to do so.
