LBird
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jondwhite wrote:'The philosophers have only interpreted the world, in various ways; the point is to change it.'
But… 'facts' can't be 'changed', can they? Otherwise, to this way of thinking, they wouldn't be 'facts'.Marx is correct – 'philosophers have only interpreted the world'.Our task, as worker-philosophers, is to both interpret and change the world.That revolutionary task requires both ideas and something which can be changed, both theory and practice.Changed interpretation of the so-called 'facts' is the guide to actually changing them in practice.In short, new theory put into practice produces new facts.Thus, 'facts' have a temporal origin, in a society's thinking and activity, and can be ended, with the production of new 'facts' to replace earlier, now outdated, 'facts'.'Truth', whether ideal, material, maths or physics, has a history, and a social producer.In a democratic society, as socialism is claimed to be, how can anything produced by humans not be under democratic control?Unless one starts from the presumption that 'workers' are too busy, stupid, uninterested, incapable, etc., to change their world, both natural and social. If that assumption is true, even democracy is a non-starter. And so, we're back to an elite, in science and politics…
alanjjohnstone wrote:…an extraordinary platform for you to full expound on your idea, Lbird…The problem is, I don't have any 'idea' that's 'full' – that's the reason I started posting here, so that I could get some help in developing both my ideas and others' ideas, together, so that we could come to some understanding of 'knowledge', and how we create it, and what that implies for a future socialist society.I've been disappointed though… I've had to do the work as an isolated individual (ironic, eh?), and so critically read all sorts of rubbish, a task that might've been circumvented with some help and direction by other comrades, and so considerably shortened for all of us.I don't want an 'extraordinary platform' (I'm not a religious guru, seeking adherents), just a worker trying to make sense of my experience of 'revolutionary politics' and 'Marxism', both of which seem to end up repelling workers who hold democratic ideals, just like I experienced in the SWP.I've come to the conclusion, after a lot of reading, thinking and arguing, that the 'philosophy' of 'materialism' is the root cause. And those 'parties', like the Leninists and Trotskyists, that espouse 'materialism', can't allow democracy. They won't have it in politics, they won't have it in science. Elites with a special consciousness spouting mystifying gibberish to the uncomprehending masses – cadre-physicists-priests with elite-expert-knowledge talking in dialectics-maths-latin to the class-demotic-reading-laity.
ajj wrote:I may be wrong but you have no right to resign…a resignation has to be accepted by the EC…and sometimes the Form F is deferred….Form X for Expulsion…oh, you are kafkaesque…'No right to resign'? 'Has to be accepted'? 'Deferred'?Perhaps Kafka was nearer the 'truth', and I should stay safely outside of the hands of the party-bureaucracy!
Vin wrote:alanjjohnstone wrote:As i said on the other thread, yes it is a fair criticism and the truth sometimes hurt. Facts are facts and in the words of Burns "Facts are chiels that winna ding” [Trans. – facts are fellows that will not be overturned,/And cannot be disputed]I don't see any contradiction between Burns and LBird. Burns does not say how the 'facts' came into existence. Perhaps Burns meant to say "Facts (as socially constructed and agreed upon) are fellows that will not be overturned and cannot be disputed.
Perhaps he did, Vin.But, that's not what most people think a 'fact' is.For some reason, they think a 'fact' can exist outside of a vote…I'm with the Marxist poet Rabbie Perhaps-Burns, on this one.
alanjjohnstone wrote:For my pitiful efforts…I think my 'efforts' on this site have been a damn sight more 'pitiful' than yours, if the response that they've been met with, is of any measure!
ajj wrote:…our guidelines for new members is surprisingly broad…I'm sure your replies to the new entrants questionaire will not lead to a rejection….The Form A awaits youI'm inclined to think that most members would prefer Nigel Farage, the well-known exponent of 'common sense facts' about immigration, than would prefer my party-wrecking beliefs, about democracy.I mean, 'Truth' is common sense, ain't it? Who'd accept a vote on 'Truth'? Cor blimey, expecting workers to take an interest in their world…What's the expulsion form? Form X? I'm sure that would follow on swiftly, to any Form A!
Vin wrote:I hope this thread doesn't turn into a discussion about the usual.alan expressed an ideological position that I disagree with.You agree with alan, as far as I can tell, Vin.Why can't this ideological belief be challenged, whenever it is expressed?Why should an expression of 'common sense' be allowed to stand, just because it is actually 'common sense' to the majority?At present, 'capitalism' is also 'common sense'.
alanjjohnstone wrote:Facts are facts and in the words of Burns "Facts are chiels that winna ding” [Trans. – facts are fellows that will not be overturned,/And cannot be disputed]It's hard to believe that any socialist who aspires to play a part in a world-changing, critical, creative human revolution, can think that Burns' words are of any scientific or political use to us workers.I'm no poet, and I don't know the artistic context of Burns' statement (which might be ironic or somesuch), but, if taken at face value, it means that we cannot criticise the existing and create the new. Change, when faced with 'facts', is impossible.Any party based upon a philosophy of 'facts' is essentially a conservative party.You should be criticising science, physics, maths and 'facts', alan. But the philosophy that doesn't make these crucial criticisms, is 'materialism'.
jondwhite wrote:You're going to have to put together some sort of reference text on your case, because personally I can't wade through pages and pages of discussion although I would like to understand. Something comprehensive would be good but even a short article would do.I've given references to texts, short, medium and long, to easy, short articles and long-winded tomes, from the 19th century Commies like Marx, Engels and Dietzgen, early 20th century Marxists like Korsch, Lukacs and Pannekoek, to philosophers of science like Popper, Kuhn, Feyerabend and Lakatos.I've done my best to help prevent comrades having to wade through enormous amounts of irrelevant tripe, by posting summaries, and explained using metaphor and analogy.I'm becoming more convinced that any comrades, wishing to understand, are going to have to either take account of what I argue and use that to build their own understanding, or they're going to have to do the same as me, and do the hard, long, difficult work.So, jondwhite, your choice: either build upon what I say, using questions to delve for deeper explanation, or ignore what I say, and go off and satisfy yourself about the issues taking the long and winding road.The simplest way I can put it, is that 'object' can't be separated from 'subject'. In plain English, that means that, if one wants to 'know' what a rock is, one has to look to the society producing that 'knowledge'.If someone wants to argue that they as an individual 'know' what 'a rock is', and that what they 'know' of 'a rock' would be exactly the same for them if they had been raised in a different society, that's fine by me.It just means that they separate 'object' (rock) from 'subject' (the social knower).The latter is the basis of positivist science, and is also the 'common sense' view of physics.You have to choose which philosophical assumption you wish to use as the basis of your explanation. The latter 'assumption' has been given to you already, by this society. A bit like 'money' , 'markets' and 'individuals'.If one starts from money, markets, individuals and separated object, one gets the society we have. I can't make comrades choose their starting point. Either they have become critical of all that the bourgeoisie have told them, or they have only partially done so.It's pointless me talking to the 'partials'; only the 'alls' will benefit, as I said at the start of the thread. I can't make people into Communists. They have to already have chosen that ideology, and ditched their former.
Young Master Smeet wrote:The test of democracy is: who initiates? who amends? who decides? If the executive has exclusive capacity to initiate … that gives the most power to the parts of the constitution further from the electors and the population at large.Its a small thing, but it's part of a pattern of repeated filters and blocks that removes power from the population and into the hands of an elite.But, you'll quite happily have this ideological method applied to the production of 'truth', YMS, as does robbo, and everyone else who posts on this site, as far as I can tell.No-one seems to see the contradiction. Everyone happily separates out 'matter' from 'consciousness', object from subject, nature from humanity, science from politics, rocks from ideas, fact from opinion, theory from practice, truth from democracy.Marx argued for unity. The idea of disunity of these factors is bourgeois ideology, a ruling class idea, not a 'personal opinion', that you all just happen to hold, co-incidentally, of your own volition. Even posters who've never read a single thing, and have only started posting very recently, and so haven't even read the numerous threads here, are all quite confident in 'their own' opinion of these issues.Wake up, comrades, or ban me completely, and then you can all go back to your 19th century slumbers.The myth, that 'sciences produces The Truth', and the scientists have a method which tells them this, and that 'Truth' cannot be elected by humanity, as a whole.
Some more food for thought, on the incorrectness of materialism’s claim to have objective knowledge (being without consciousness) when faced with a famous physicist’s claim (similar to Marx’s idealism-materialism) that knowledge is always social (being with consciousness). Knowledge is a social relationship of object and subject, not a reflection of object, without a subject. Thus, ‘truth’ is a social and historical creation of humans, not a timeless and asocial ‘Truth’.
Rhodes, p. 77, wrote:“It is wrong,” he [Niels Bohr] told his colleagues repeatedly, “to think that the task of physics is to find out how nature is” – which is the territory classical physics had claimed for itself. “Physics concerns what we can say about nature.”http://www.amazon.co.uk/Making-Atomic-Bomb-Richard-Rhodes/dp/1471111237Materialism echoes classical physics; Einstein and Bohr echo Marx.Anyone want a discussion?
robbo203 wrote:Why won't you address these points?Because they are irrelevant.I've tried to talk to you about hunter gatherer society on a thread dedicated to that, but got nowhere.I've tried to talk to you about 'individualism' on a number of threads, but got nowhere.You won't discuss your ideology.You apparently think 'scientific knowledge' is 'true', rather than a social construct, created by 'theory and practice'.I've asked you to say what ideology you use to understand hunter gatherers, individualism, and science. But you won't answer.I've tried patience, comradely appeals, abuse, contempt, fawning, trickery, blackmail, violence, gang warfare…Only thing left is to ignore questions, if only to irritate you as much as I've been irritated.
Capitalist Pig wrote:Quote:That's what those who can't read posts and follow up the implications, and instead avoid those implications and constantly change the goalposts, always call those trying to help. It's almost as if the illiterate and ignorant can't identify their terrible condition…by the way fuck you.
That must be your 'scientific method', eh, CP?I'm just following your method – you call me 'a dick', I call you 'illiterate and ignorant'.But only one of us is correct.It never fails to amaze me, that people think they can hurl insults, then cry like babies when insults are returned.Are you so out of touch with life?Here we go, anyway… fuck you, too.Third warning: 7. You are free to express your views candidly and forcefully provided you remain civil. Do not use the forums to send abuse, threats, personal insults or attacks, or purposely inflammatory remarks (trolling). Do not respond to such messages.This user is suspended for an indefinite period.
Capitalist Pig wrote:wow nice completely ignore all of my questions and call me ignorant.wow nice completely ignore all of my answers and call me a dick.
Capitalist Pig wrote:If none of this is relevant to your idea of science and how it should be carried out and implemented in society then you should be clearer about your own ideological position because i'm stumpedYou still haven't got it yet, have you, CP?You have to be clearer about your own, existing, 'ideological position' about 'your idea of science'.Then, you might have some hope of contrasting that with mine.Come back when you've read the links that I've already provided.If you think Mengele and Tuskegee are fine, we have no more to discuss.
Vin wrote:Capitalist Pig wrote:ok i'll read it but you don't have to be a dick
He does. That's all there is to him.I think 'dick' is putting it mildly.
I rest my case, CP.
Capitalist Pig wrote:ok i'll read it but you don't have to be a dickThat's what those who can't read posts and follow up the implications, and instead avoid those implications and constantly change the goalposts, always call those trying to help. It's almost as if the illiterate and ignorant can't identify their terrible condition…
