[LBird]

alanjjohnstone wrote:

Quote:

The RM-ers don't agree with Pannekoek, who claims, rightly, that humans create the so-called 'laws of physics'.

Isn't there a section in the Andrew Kliman talk where he quotes Stephen Hawkings saying …"In physics what you believe doesn't matter " 

I suppose it all depends on where you think we should look for some suggestions which can help us produce the answers that are needed for us to build towards socialism, alan.Pannekoek, a Communist, who knew that classes and exploitation exist in our society, and that our ideas of our world are shaped by classes.Or, mere physicists, like Hawking, who haven't got a clue about our world, its society and history.Your choice is predetermined, of course, if you already believe the bourgeois myth of a scientific method that produces 'Truth', a truth that is outside of social consciousness.Hawking can only believe that statement if he also believes that 'the rocks talk to him, but not us'.It's a 'ruling class idea', alan, and Hawking, according to your quote, apparently has swallowed it, hook, line and sinker.Let's hope you and other comrades dig a bit deeper into this myth, that 'belief' plays no part in human knowledge, and 'scientific knowledge' is a copy of 'out there'.As a pointer, don't forget about Marx's fundamental concept of a 'mode of production'. If 'knowledge' is 'produced', we should expect 'knowledge' to reflect its 'mode', and if the 'mode' is a class-divided one, we should expect competing ideas about 'knowledge' and its 'production'.Or, we could just say 'Bollocks!' to politics, and just let the physicists tell us 'The Truth'.Hmmmm…. does Hawking reject commodities, money and markets, and do the workings of the market, outside of what we believe about it, just simply 'work', for him? No need to read Capital, then, eh?'Forget Marx, listen to Hawking!' should be the motto of those who wish to keep politics out of physics.

[LBird]

Yes, robbo, Engels did write that, amongst other things that contradicted it. He was confused.But, even given what you've quoted, the Religious Materialists still insist that 'consciousness' can be reduced to 'matter'.'Matter' was a hobbyhorse of Engels, not of Marx.When Marx wrote of 'material', he was talking about 'human production', not 'matter'.You've heard of 'theory and practice', I presume.If 'consciousness' reduces to 'matter', then there is no need for 'theory', just passive observation, and thus the revealed 'Truth'.The Religious Materialists claim to be at one with 'matter', and having 'discovered' it, then it is 'known' for ever.The RM-ers don't agree with Pannekoek, who claims, rightly, that humans create the so-called 'laws of physics'. He knows that we can't separate a knowing subject from a known object.Theory is an essential part of 'knowing', which is a creative human act, by a society. And so, 'knowledge' being social, it is also historical, and we can place when science produces 'knowledge' and when it later rejects that 'knowledge'. Thus, we can have a history of 'Truth' and show its creation and dissolution by humans, over time and within different societies.This is all anathema to those RM-ers who follow positivism, and have faith that once 'science' has produced a 'Truth', that it is an 'Eternal Truth'.They believe that 'Truth', once known, is forever 'True'. To argue otherwise, would undermine the authority of bourgeois science and physics, and the RM-ers won't have that.They certainly won't have the producers voting on what they create: their socio-historical truths.'Truth' must be elected, otherwise workers cannot democratically control the means of production, and thus socialism is impossible.

[LBird]

John Oswald wrote:

Consciousness in my view is a property of matter, not something separate.

It depends on what you mean by 'a property', John.If you agree with Marx's idealism-materialism, which regards both 'ideal' and 'material' to have the same status as being 'natural', and that neither can be separated from the other when discussing humans and their knowledge of their world (both ideal and material), then there's no problem.When we're discussing humans and their production of knowledge, both ideal and material are involved.But the bourgeoisie, when they took control of 'science' in the latter part of the 17th century, insisted that they had a method ('induction') that allowed them to 'know' the 'material' without any intervention of the 'ideal'. That is, they claimed that they could produce 'objective knowledge', by which they meant a 'copy' of the 'material'. This ideological belief in the removal of 'ideas' from 'knowledge' allowed them to claim that they were simply 'discovering' nature as it is, rather than what humans actually do (and as Marx pointed out), which is use ideas to change the material.Marx argued for 'theory and practice', which stresses the need to identify the 'theory' prior to the 'practice', because human ideas play an active part in the process of producing 'knowledge'. From this, we can tell, because human ideas are always involved, and ideas are always social, that 'knowledge' can't be 'objective' (in the sense of being identical to 'matter'), but is always a social (and thus historical) product. So, our knowledge of 'rocks', for example, is a social creation, rather than a 'mirror' of something 'out there'. So, different societies understand 'rocks' differently.This is, of course, anathema to bourgeois science, which reached its height in the 19th century with 'positivism', because it is necessary for any ruling class to eternalise its rule, and pretend that its philosophies and practices are 'universal'. Bourgeois science insists that at root 'nature' is 'material', and that their 'knowledge' of the 'material' is final and can't be criticised or changed.Unfortunately for us Communists (and Marxists), 19th century positivism was having its greatest triumph just when Engels was taking an (amateur) interest in epistemology. He forget (or never understood) what Marx had argued in the 1840s, that even our senses are social (and so, different individuals in different societies would 'experience' their 'material world' differently). Engels fell for bourgeois ideology, and started to argue that 'matter' could be understood outside of politics. This is still a battle cry of ruling class ideology, to 'keep politics out of physics'. As if!

JO wrote:

Matter thinks, feels.

No, consciousness 'thinks, feels'.Nature consists of both 'consciousness' and 'being' (subject and object, ideas and rocks, intangible and tangible, etc.) and so to reduce nature to matter (that is, to reduce 'consciousness' to 'matter') is to follow bourgeois ideology.The word to focus on here, John, is 'reduction'. 'Religious Materialists' always reduce 'consciousness' to 'matter', and so end up smuggling in through the back door 'consciousness' is some other form, usually as their own 'consciousness'. The RM-ers are always elitists, like the Leninists who also subscribe to Engels' erroneous ideas on 'matter', and they insist that some elite does have a consciousness which is denied to the rest of society. Thus, the RM-ers refuse to allow democracy in the social creation of truth, because they argue that only they have a special method which only they can employ and which produces 'The Truth'.Marx warned of this in his Theses on Feuerbach, that society would be separated into two parts, the one smaller part claiming to be superior to the other larger part, and so outside of the reach of democracy.If you would like to read the relevent things that Marx wrote about these issues, I can provide them in another post. Just ask.In these discussions, prior to your arrival, I always used to back up what I said about idealism-materialism (theory and practice) with quotes, extracts from passages, to which I always provided a link to the original text, so the other comrades could read the extracts for themselves in context. But I found that the Religious Materialists, as true believers, refused to read and discuss what Marx, Engels, Pannekoek and many others actually wrote, but merely reiterated their beliefs, which they held dear and would not criticise.Be warned, John. 'Matter' plays the role of 'God' in their formulations. Marx does not discuss 'matter', and when he refers to 'material' he is always referring to human production, not 'matter' outside of 'consciousness'. By 'material', Marx means social production, and so is always talking about human ideas and human practice.

[LBird]

John Oswald wrote:

I see nothing wrong for materialists in speculating about "life-energy" (Shaw), "orgone" (Reich), or "ch`i" (classical Taoism), as long as such forces are comprehended – which they are by these three – as material and natural, and not "spiritual" or supernatural…..Is this the "religious materialism" referred to?  I don`t think most SPGB materialists go as far as vitalism philosophically. Most are old-style mechanical materialists, a la La Mettrie, Holbach, etc. (Whose materialism is equally valid, but for me, undeveloped).

Yes, what you're arguing, John, is the Religious Materialism that I referred to, and that Marx opposed.Any 'materialism' which separates nature into two essences (the 'material' and the 'ideal', of which only the former is regarded as 'real') is forced to bring in 'ideas' and 'consciousness' by the back door. Engels was the thinker who brought this 'old-style mechanical materialism' back into socialist thought, after Marx had attempted to unite the two in a philosophy of 'theory and practice', which by its nature requires both the 'ideal' (consciousness, spirit, geist) and 'material' (a 'material substratum' to quote Marx) to be worked upon by human labour (mental and physical).For Marx, both ideas and material form 'nature', so that both consciousness and being are always required in any account of 'reality'. The 'metabolism' between thinking, critical, creative natural consciousness (embodied in humans) and their changing of existing nature, is clearly both 'ideal' and 'material'.The 'materialists' (today, often called 'physicalists') try to reduce 'consciousness' to 'matter', rather than, like Marx and German Idealism (which he highly regarded, as well as French and English Materialism), which refused to separate out 'matter' from 'consciousness', and insisted on a unity of subject and object. This reduction of 'nature' to 'material' (which loses the 'ideal') is the route taken by bourgeois science from the 17th century, and which so influenced Engels (as it did many, by its successes in the 19th  century) that he too returned to pre-Marxian thinking.Marx was an 'idealist-materialist', which can be seen if one reads, for example, his Theses on Feuerbach, or some of his other work. Even Capital contains passages which make it clear that there are things that are real and natural (like 'value', for instance) that are not 'material'.Put simply, it's the 'materialists' who are 'idealists', because they always revert to a 'consciousness' outside of 'matter', just like they always revert to a power outside of the proletariat. 'Materialism' is the philosophical basis of Leninism, not any form of Socialism/Communism, which must of course be entirely democratic.Idealism-materialism can be subject to democratic control, because human ideas are intimately involved, whereas materialism can't, because it argues that 'matter' has the final say. 'Matter', like 'God', cannot be criticised. It just 'is'.Finally, the reduction of 'nature' to 'matter' is mirrored in bourgeois society by the reduction of 'value' to 'commodity'. Both nature and value involve the ideal, but matter and commodity can be touched by individuals. Individualists, who deny democracy in science and truth production, always revert to the tangible, because it gives them succour from a society they wish to remain aloof from, and escape its democratic controls.'Matter' is the child's comfort blanket for individualists, which they can feel and hug. It is a bourgeois category.

[LBird]

alanjjohnstone wrote:

The Budget – A lot of spin with plenty of  smoke and mirrors …

Yeah, and unless we criticise their 'spin, smoke and mirrors' and create our own 'spin, smoke and mirrors', then their version will remain the 'truth' of the budget.I'm, in effect, saying no more than what the SPGB supposedly support, that is, the need for the proletariat to self-educate itself, with the aid of its own worker-communists, by criticising their 's, s & m' and creating its own 's, s & m'.The ideological belief that 'The Budget' will 'materialise' itself to workers is nonsense.If necessary, 'The Budget' will 'explain itself' as being produced by greedy immigrants, who are out to steal from the British, and have done so by the unavoidable budget, which British workers can see in front of their own eyes.Active education, propaganda, agitation and organisation is required, a strategy at odds with 'materialism', which argues that 'material conditions' will themselves remove the scales from the eyes of the proletariat, merely by the passive experience by the proletariat of those conditions.Neither 'The Budget' nor 'matter' talks to us.We must criticise the existing 'material conditions' (matter) and create new 'ideal-material conditions' (theory and practice).Waiting for the 'spin' to cease, the 'smoke' to clear, and the 'mirrors' to break, is to give victory to our exploiters.'The Budget' will not speak of its own accord. And neither do 'rocks'…

[LBird]

Whilst we're at it…'matter' is the philosophical basis of 'private property'.For those who deny democracy in the production of ideas and the tangible, there has to be a final, decisive, philosophical category, which sits outside of collective human control.That 'category', an idea produced by human society, is 'matter'.The Religious Materialists always finally refer their arguments to 'matter', the 'physical', which cannot be argued with or criticised. It just 'is'.Marxists (ie., 'idealist-materialists') argue that every 'category' is created by human thinking, and the categories adopted play a fundamental part in 'theory and practice', in the production of knowledge and the tangible.The 'ideal' and the 'material' have the same status for Marx. We would now call them, collectively, the 'real'. The 'real' includes both being and consciousness, because both are required by humans for their active creativity in their world. Nature is both being and consciousness. Humans are natural consciousness, and our active production is nature attempting to know itself.The bourgeoisie have to separate 'matter' from 'ideas', just as they separate 'property' from 'democracy'. Once they allow 'ideas/consciousness' to necessarily mingle with 'tangible matter', they allow 'matter' to be subject to democracy. Idealism-materialism, the ideology of Marx and Communism, spells the end of 'private property' and the category of 'matter'.Individualists, who claim that they as individuals have knowledge of the world (ie. outside of what they have been told by society, a knowledge that is necessarily historical), cling to 'matter', something they can 'touch', to keep at bay the forces of democracy and collective production of our world.Religious Materialists are always, finally, individualists. At best, they want special individuals, elite scientists, to produce undemocratic 'knowledge of matter'. And to keep this 'elite knowledge' from the masses, they produce it by means of a language alien to the majority – that is, 'mathematics', the Latin of the priest-physicists.

[LBird]

So, what or who tells you what 'objective facts' are, YMS?Does 'matter' speak to you alone, but not our class, so we can't vote on what it 'is'?Do physicists alone converse with 'matter', an elite conversation, a discussion into which the proletariat can never enter, and so can't vote on?You can't imagine, never mind desire, a 'dictatorship of the proletariat'.You want a 'dictatorship of matter', the Holy Truth of 'what is' and will ever 'be'.Unless the producers of their world, both material and ideal, democratically control that active process of production, then socialism is impossible.The Religious Materialists deny this power to the producers: the RM-ers want either an elite of scientists or each individual to produce knowledge.RM-ers won't have democracy in the human activity of science.RM-ers in philosophy are Leninists in politics.All workers should beware the nonsense of 'Materialism': it is a religious worship of 'matter', and its priests arrogate to themselves the right to decide what it 'is'. 'Materialists' will not have democracy in the production of 'truth'.Religious Materialists insist that 'the rocks talk to them', and them alone.I'm a worker, and 'material conditions' have never spoken to me. The SWP claimed that the 'material conditions' spoke to the party, to the exclusion of our class, and all 'Materialists' claim the same.Otherwise, they would accept a vote by the producers of knowledge.Any ideology that claims that all production must be democratically organised (ie. Communism) must argue that democratic production of all human products is the only philosophical basis to Communism.This applies to 'truth', which is a social and historical product, not a 'reflection' of 'matter' (whatever that is – the Materialists will not tell us, and Engels didn't, either).

[LBird]

YMS wrote:

The twin objective facts of the necessity of winning working class votes to rule, and the interests of the working class, have forced the Tories into this.

You love pretending that 'objective facts' force humans to obey them, don't you, YMS? It's another facet of your unshakeable faith in Religious Materialism.The ruling class have themselves actively chosen at this point, firstly, not to install a dictatorship, and secondly that their interests in producing further profits for themselves are best served by these policies.Your own creative selection of 'facts', based upon your own unconscious ideology of science, are bugger all to do with 'objectivity'.Whilst the working class is continually bamboozled by the 19th century thinking of supposed 'socialists' and their Religious Materialism, they'll remain under the domination of the bourgeoisie.Even bourgeois philosophers have moved beyond that guff, the nonsense that Engels fell for, and which forms the basis of Leninism.But… as long as 'socialists' claim to have access to 'objective facts', the 'Material Truth', the lord god 'Matter', they cannot provide any guidance for workers, who require a critical and creative theory, which can provide them with an ideology to help change the world we presently live in.

[LBird]

"Relieving the debt burden on the poor" – a strategy that always regenerates and consolidates private productive property ownership, no matter what its proponents pretend.Seisachtheia, the ancient Athenian attempt:https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SeisachtheiaYou'd think that we'd have learnt something, since 600 years before Christ, eh?

[LBird]

Correction: it's the 4th July.2pm-5pm, apparently.http://www.kurdslist.org/events/589-the-revolution-in-rojava-northern-syria-and-the-kurds

[LBird]

'Acceptance' is a decision, YMS. At the very least, the decision to use passive fatalism as a 'measure'. Another example of 'Religious Materialism'.Christ, I'm having to teach English, now.We're a million miles away from Marx's social activity, theory and practice, and the democratic control of production.Are you a member of the SPGB, YMS?If you are, and you seem to be the most keen to actually, genuinely, engage, I'll stop posting on this site.I'm sure most other readers are sick of me saying the same thing and then the Religious Materialists ignoring me; and I'm sick of being banned, for trying to get the ideas of Marx better known.

[LBird]

Young Master Smeet wrote:

Quote:

someone has to make a decision as to the truth or otherwise of a production process

(my bold) this proposition is false, no-one has to make any such determination, all that is necessry is to accept the veracity of a proposition before initiating action.

1. Society has to make decisions all the time about 'truth'.2. Your method 'veracity then action' is not Marx's method.Marx's method is 'theory and practice'. Veracity is a product of human production. Humans determine veracity.Theory-practice-product-decision. 'Veracity' is a product of this method. This is Marx's (and we now know, science's) method.

[LBird]

Young Master Smeet wrote:

Quote:

And who argues that 'tides are turned by voting'? Talk about straw men! In fact, it just shows me that you haven't got a clue what this discussion is about, but just have a vague idea that the 'mob' are going to destroy science, if that lot are allowed to discuss and vote upon knowledge!

Last I checked, wearily, you maintain that truth is subject to consensus of the people, and by voting we can make something true.  Now, we can, according to that proposition, make it tue that high tide is at noon not midnight.Consciousness is just a part of stuff, not distinct from, apart from, a pale reflection of, but an integral part of stuff.  All thought is comes from stuff doing stuff.

You haven't 'checked' anything, YMS, 'wearily' or otherwise.You keep saying 'by voting we can make something true'.I, like Marx, am saying that 'theory and practice' produces 'knowledge', and that the judgement of that 'product' being 'true' can only lie in a democratic vote. Science often produces 'untruths', and someone has to make a decision as to the truth or otherwise of a production process ('stuff' produced by theory and practice, whether houses or knowledge).So, for us, 'making' is an active social process, controlled by the producers.For you, it is passively observing 'facts', which shall not be gainsaid. By an elite. Marx clearly warned of the dangers of materialism. It produces a two-tier society, the smaller one which 'educates' the other larger tier.As for your 'stuff' explanation, …

[LBird]

Young Master Smeet wrote:

And Stuff is shorter yet: however, I am convinced that stuff existed before consciousness, and the world is not a dream of God, and thought alone does not change the world.  No amount of voting can change the timing of the tides: although ideas, like the Swansea tidal barrage can change them when turned into action.

Once again, we go through the argument that no-one argues that 'stuff' didn't exist before consciousness. But I know you don't read what I write, so it comes as no surprise whatsoever that you're merely repeating yourself in ignorance.The problem is, the relation between 'stuff' and 'consciousness', once 'consciousness' has emerged from 'stuff'.No one argues that 'the world is a dream of God', or that 'thought alone changes the world'.You must have heard of Marx, and his ideas about 'theory and practice'? No? I'm surprised, because only someone who hadn't heard of Marx would think that any socialists think that 'thought alone' will do anything.And who argues that 'tides are turned by voting'? Talk about straw men! In fact, it just shows me that you haven't got a clue what this discussion is about, but just have a vague idea that the 'mob' are going to destroy science, if that lot are allowed to discuss and vote upon knowledge!'Stuff' is your God, YMS. It's been pointed out many times by philosophers that 'materialists' of necessity must introduce a god into their thought, because they won't have human consciousness playing any part, and certainly won't have a democratic consciousness involved.Religious Materialism – Marx would be shocked at where his supposed follower have ended up. But, then again, perhaps not, given his famous rebuttal to the French 'materialists'… "All I know is that I am not a 'Marxist'!"

[LBird]

I'm slow on the uptake, YMS!Why not call your belief 'idealism', rather than 'materialism', if you really believe ideas and matter have the same value? 'Idealism' is shorter than 'Materialism'.I know you won't, because you're kidding both us and yourself about ideas and matter, aren't you?You believe in 'matter', don't you? And you believe that it speaks to physicists, too, which is why you won't have a democratic vote about 'Truth'.You are an elitist, both in epistemology and in politics.

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