LBird
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robbo203 wrote:…totally impractical and unrealisable utopia…complete and utter destruction…
So, that's your ideological take on "workers' democracy"?Why you don't just say that you don't share my ideology, and have done with it, I don't know.You don't want workers' power (you're an individualist), you don't want workers' democracy (you want elite expert control), you're not a Marxist (you haven't read, and certainly never quote, him), and you're not a Socialist (you're some sort of Liberal).You seem to think 'science' is an ahistoric and asocial activity, rather than regarding even physics as ideological, and you have faith that 'scientific knowledge' must be 'true'.I don't think you've even ever mentioned the bourgeoisie or proletariat, but then you don't recognise classes and exploitation, either.Like YMS, you seem to think physics, maths and logic are not human creations, with a social origin which changes over time, but passive reflections of 'reality'.You don't seem to have a radical thought in your head, never mind a revolutionary one, and why you're arguing with me about these issues beats me.If you want 'physicists' to run 'physics', I don't. I want workers to run physics.If you think 'physics' is a activity outside of politics, I don't. I think physics is political.If you disagree with me, then you don't share my ideology. Whatever concepts of class, revolution, democracy, science, knowledge, truth and socialism you have, I don't share them.
robbo203 wrote:…or even explain why it is necessary…I've just done this very thing, in my measured reply to SocialistPunk.If, If, If, [read it, for once], one is a Marxist and wants to see the democratic control of production by the producers, then control of all sources of 'power' is necessary.Now, read carefully, you */$£%, YOU ARE NEITHER a Marxist nor want "workers' democracy", so from YOUR IDEOLOGICAL perspective, you won't agree with me.This ideological disagreement of yours with me is entirely different to me supposedly not explaining.You just don't like my explanation.What can't your tiny mind grasp about this issue? You are not a democrat, nor a Communist. I am. That's the answer.
For anyone who's interested, a link to a PDF of Marx's The Fragment on Machines, from the Grundrisse. As discussed by Mason in his article.http://thenewobjectivity.com/pdf/marx.pdf
alanjjohnstone wrote:Don't we already do much of this democratic " truth" to the distaste of scientists, SP.We are rejecting their consensus on the safety of GMO, on fracking and nuclear energy through parliamentary legislation.We accept the truth of climate change but don't act upon it. We accept by majority decision the scientific position on other issues…vaccination and evidence based medicine …much to the distaste of some alternative health quacks.People vote with their feet, as often as not as irrationally as rational. Yes to a degree we choose what is scientific truth.Quantum theory is still basically little different from magic to me …And as one quantum physicists said …if you say you understand it, you don't — i apply that scientific principle to a lot of things !!!Don't forget the context of my discussions about 'democratic truth production', alan, when talking about the present vogue for the 'irrational'. The context is mass ignorance.We're talking about providing a 'theoretical approach' which can only be 'practised' given certain social conditions. They include complete openness with ideas, knowledge, data, etc (so that all information is openly published on the internet, for any interested workers to read), the provision of completely free education from kindergarten to post-PhD research to any worker on the planet who desires it, and a culture of democracy, as much in education as elsewhere, where the 'teacher' is subject to the control of the 'pupils' (the bourgeois world of 'experts' telling us 'The Truth' will be ended), and the world discussion would be the vernacular of those workers discussing (no so-called 'explanations' in Latin-maths – to allow that would be tantamount to publishing research only in Latin), and so much more.Underlying this would be a critical approach to 'knowledge', not just the ideological assumption that the bourgeoisie in the last 300 hundred years have been engaged in objective production of The Truth. They've had their reasons for their science, and we'll have ours.Finally, much of so-called 'physics' is magic – any reading of the history of science shows this. That's why many physicists, who I've quoted – Einstein, Bohr, Rovelli, Smolin, Cox – have made their doubts about 'physics' very clear.But… those still brainwashed by 'bourgeois science' at its height (19th century positivism) still cling to its so-called 'certainties'. Just like robbo and YMS. And those good comrades who, unfortunately, follow Engels.
SocialistPunk wrote:LBird wrote:Does anyone else have any comments to make, about Marx's views, or about how the democratically-organised proletariat should approach these issues?Hi LBird,I previously asked whether you could put some "meat on the bones" of how knowledge, scientific "truth" etc, can be democratically controlled by a global, socialist population.I'd still be up for some ideas on the practicalities of your position?
As I've said before, SP, if we regard 'science' and 'the production of truth' to have 'power', and we espouse an ideology/philosophy which stresses 'democratic control of power', then the issue of workers' control of science and truth production is precisely the same as any other issue regarding workers' power (ie. Socialism).So, the same approach applies, if we look to Marx, that the provision of detailed accounts of 'how' workers' power will actually operate is best left for the consideration of the organised proletariat, as it develops its class consciousness.So, on your question about 'practicalities', all you need to do is outline (even just to yourself, rather than in a public post) how you think workers' democracy will control the production of a widget. Then, apply that 'practical' method to 'truth'. Put simply, both widgets and truths are social products, and their production processes have a history, and if we re-theorise what we mean by a 'widget' and then change the process of its production (theory and practice), we find the 'widget' will change.Now, to non-Marxists like robbo and YMS, this 'explanation' is entirely useless, because like the good bourgeois that they are, they are 'practical men', who demand 'practical answers', which can be implemented now, in this society.But, to anyone who, like me, looks to Marx for inspiration, then this explanation about 'practicalities' being an issue for the future class conscious proletariat, is usually acceptable.Finally, I suspect that the real issue going on here, is that bourgeois science has brainwashed this society into thinking 'truth' is different from a 'widget'. Now, that's a philosophical question about the production of 'knowledge', and the 'objectivity' of 'science', and frankly I've done that discussion to death.The point, however, is to change the world (not to 'discover' it, or unfold 'The Truth'). Changing widgets and truths must be in our power. The alternative is not disinterested, objective 'science' (the bourgeois myth), but control of production by an elite of so-called experts.I hope that this helps, SP!
Given the replies from you and YMS recently, and the absence of any other discussion from democrats, workers, socialists or Marxists, I too really am beginning to wonder.Certainly, critical thought, and indeed any socio-historical perspective on science or knowledge, seems to be notable by its absence.But, there you go.
Look robbo, we inhabit totally different ideological worlds – I want to see "producers' democratic control of production", and you don't.I'm a Marxist, and you're not.I'm not even sure why you're on this site – of course, you have every right to be, as far as I'm concerned, because I'm not a party member – but… what's the point?Your ideological basis has nothing to do with collective ideals, or with anti-authoritarian science.I'm baffled as to why you bother visiting the site, because you're not trying to learn anything.You seem to have a completely negative purpose.
robbo, you're neither a Socialist/Communist, nor a democrat, nor a Marxist, so why don't you just ignore my posts?You're never going to agree with someone who has a social, historical, class-based, critical-of-bourgeois-ideology-and-science, approach to these political questions.If you dislike my views of workers' democracy as the basis of social production, why not just ignore them, and let the thread die a natural death?You're an individualist, elitist and a liberal, so we don't have any ideological basis for discussion, never mind agreement.Does anyone else have any comments to make, about Marx's views, or about how the democratically-organised proletariat should approach these issues?
Mason refers to the 'Fragment on machines' from the Grundrisse, pp. 690-712Here is an extract:
Marx, Grundrisse, p. 706, wrote:Nature builds no machines, no locomotives, railways, electric telegraphs, self-acting mules etc. These are products of human industry; natural material transformed into organs of the human will over nature, or of human participation in nature. They are organs of the human brain, created by the human hand; the power of knowledge, objectified. The development of fixed capital indicates to what degree general social knowledge has become a direct force of production, and to what degree, hence, the conditions of the process of social life itself have come under the control of the general intellect and been transformed in accordance with it.[my bold]https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1857/grundrisse/ch14.htm#p704Here we have it all: Marx's 'idealism-materialism', social knowledge and 'things' produced by humans, by 'theory and practice', in which human purpose and will determine the production (not passive reception of 'nature', as bourgeois science alleges) of 'organic nature', 'under the control of the general intellect' (which, if it doen't mean "democratic control of the production of 'truth' ", doesn't mean anything at all).
Perhaps a history of ‘materialism’ within science will help to explain its emergence, successes and demise.‘Materialism’ (the belief that ideas can be reduced to ‘matter’, and so that ethics plays no part in the production of knowledge) emerged with the establishment of the bourgeoisie as an important productive force in society.This can be dated to the mid-17th century, with the creation of institutions of bourgeois ‘scientific research’ across Europe. Some of these were:Accademia del Cimento, Florence, 1657Royal Society, London, 1662Academie des Sciences, Paris, 1666The key ‘change of concept’ that underwrote these creations was the alteration of the very meaning of ‘science’ itself. Prior to the bourgeois colonisation, science had meant, since ancient times, the building of the good life for all of humanity. This was called by the ancient Greeks eudaimonia. So, the purpose of science was making the world a better place for everybody. As part of this, thinkers just prior to the bourgeoisification of science, like Francis Bacon and Comenius, stressed: (a) the need for education to be available to all, not just to those able to pay; (b) for education to be conducted in vernacular language, not Latin which most people did not understand; and (c) the social and ethical content of human knowledge, rather than a disembodied, non-political understanding of nature.As an example of the new rejection of third belief, that is, the new bourgeois view that ‘politics should be kept out of physics’ we have Robert Hooke’s draft for the Royal Society, which makes this change very clear:
Hooke, quoted in Mendelsohn, p. 18, wrote:This society will not own any hypothesis, system, or doctrine… (not meddling with Divinity, Metaphysics, Moralls, Politicks, Grammar, Rhetorick, or Logick).This new view of ‘science’ dealt a death blow to the science that regarded knowledge as a human product, inevitably entangled in ethics and politics, and ensured that concepts like the ‘good’ life for the many, and the ‘betterment’ of all, fell from consideration by the new ‘practical men’ of bourgeois science. Clearly, since ‘good’ and ‘better’ are entirely ethical concepts, and thus amenable to social discussion and voting, the bourgeoisie made the democratic control of science an impossibility by the new nature of ‘science’. The myth that science produces ‘objective knowledge’.In a nutshell, the bourgeoisie wanted a science that dealt with ‘things’, hard items, a world reduced to individual components, which could be identified for profit. ‘Matter’ played the same role in science as did the commodity in political economy. Both were outside of ethics or relationships: the atomisation of the material mirrored the atomisation of production (and the atomisation of society itself). From this ideological perspective, neither a rock nor a commodity was ‘political’: they were both amendable to individual understanding (the weighing of a rock in one’s hand under one’s own eyes, as an estimation of ‘what it is’, is matched by the psychological theory of ‘value’, in which the ‘value’ of a commodity is estimated by the individual buyer). Relationships between rocks and the society that tries to understand them, or between commodities and the society that produces them, are ignored.This ‘bourgeois science’ had its greatest successes during the 19th century, with the method of positivism, and Engels was so impressed by the technical advances made by ‘positivist science’, that he either forgot or never understood Marx’s ‘idealism-materialism’, which by its very nature places ideas and matter on the same footing, and thus can allow humans to control their social knowledge, a knowledge that is inherently ethical.With the 20th century, after the deaths of both Marx and Engels, the development of physics started to undermine the ideological basis of physics. We are still living with the discussion of what ‘relativity’ meant, in both narrowly scientific, and wider philosophical, terms. But one thing is clear for workers: Einstein’s theories provided scientific support for Marx’s epistemological views, and completely undermined the positivist science which is the basis of Engels’ views.If one is an Engelsian ‘materialist’, and thinks that our understanding of ‘matter’ is outside of consciousness (that scientific knowledge is ‘True’ eternally, and is not social and changes over time), and which is fundamentally based upon the bourgeois ideological belief that the purpose of science is to produce ‘objective knowledge’ (ie. physics outside of politics), then one will disagree with Marxian ‘idealism-materialism’, which looks back to pre-bourgeois science and the production of ‘The Good Life’ as the purpose of science.Science is political, the production of knowledge is ideological, and the purpose of science is a human choice, not a self-defined, self-evident practice just ‘done’ by physicists.Religious Materialism denies that science and knowledge have ethical content, a content which can, and must, be voted upon. Truth can be elected, and thus the good life for humans can be established, by active humans employing social theory and practice. That theory and practice must be available to all, so that it must be conducted by everybody, educated to a suitable standard, in a language which all understand, for the purposes of eudaimonia.We must reject the bourgeois science of the priest-physicists, conducted in Latin-maths, with the mythical aim of knowing ‘matter’ outside of social consciousness. We must democratise science, which includes determining what science actually is, how it is conducted, and how we ‘know’ ‘truth’.Further reading: Mendelsohn, Weingart and Whitley (eds.) (1977) The Social Production of Scientific Knowledge Reidelhttp://catalogue.nla.gov.au/Record/2184192[edit]just another link to a copy of the paperback for just under £16http://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/offer-listing/9027707766?SubscriptionId=AKIAIWBZRQIIPF7IKQPA&tag=bookbutleruk-21&linkCode=xm2&camp=2025&creative=12734&creativeASIN=9027707766&condition=used
A whole post on the development of the ideology of 'science', and its role in class understanding, and a recommendation for further reading, and you two blather on, as usual, about nothing in particular.I don't know why I bother.
Young Master Smeet wrote:Quote:You play with your 'logic' and 'words',Logic you are unable to refute. To retiterate, if the only way to know the validity of a ruth claim is to vote on it, how can we know the result of the vote?
Is that 'bourgeois logic' or 'True Logic, as given to us by God himself'?Back to the playpen, YMS.
Young Master Smeet wrote:Lbird, have done. So, bourgeois science throew off the shackles of feudal superstition, and cleared the way for us to understand the world clearly, and it is the job of socialism to put that understanding to use. Cheers, glad to know I was right all along.[my bold]At least you now openly admit your reverence for the bourgeoisie and their supposed 'clearing' of the way for us workers (although, as usual, you don't mention classes).So, nothing left to be done, eh?So much for your passive message to workers – but some of us think that the bourgeoisie mystified the way for us to misunderstand the world as opaquely as possible.Take 'political economy' for example – who was that guy who wrote a critique?But that's not your method, is it, YMS? For you, 'the way is clear!'Do as you've been told, YMS, and keep listening to teacher, and don't ask daft questions, like those naughty socialists.
Young Master Smeet wrote:Quote:Truth can be elected, and thus the good life for humans can be established, by active humans employing social theory and practice.This is demonstrably untrue.A) A truth claim can only be verified by a vote.
The polity votes on the truth claim.C) The result of the vote is itself a truth claim.D) The result of the vote can only be discovered by a further vote.That's why you're not a Democratic Communist, YMS.Your method cannot provide a 'truth' for the producers.At a guess, you seem to be some sort of post-modernist, focussing on language, rather than the politics of production in a class society.I don't know why you and robbo don't form a new party, dedicated to 'elite-experts not knowing truth'.I can't see its political appeal, to workers in struggle, trying to defeat the bourgeoisie by democratic methods of production, of factories, goods, services and knowledge.But, the 'truth' is, isn't it YMS, is that neither you nor robbo have this concern as a focus of your discussion?You play with your 'logic' and 'words', and robbo can stay on his knees to Hawking, and the workers who wish to understand Democratic Communism, to help them change the world in which they live (both mental and physical), can continue to explore issues of great concern to them.Have a nice day.
