[LBird]

alanjjohnstone wrote:

i think part of my understanding is that during the revolution i begin to relate to my fellow workers, not as "class comrades"  but to use that cliche..people…individuals…friends …and neighbours …who have come together in solidarity….we recognise one another as human beings first and foremost…that is our commonality that we come to realise …we dump all the previous identities…class ….nationality…race…gender..all the other etceteras…

All sounds a bit '60s, hippy-ish, 'love and peace, maaaan', to me, alan.I'm inclined to think you're underestimating how much 'people…individuals…friends …and neighbours', as well as 'coming together in solidarity', will also have to develop their detestation and hatred of anything that smacks of socio-economic exploitation, and develop their conscious determination to smash their class enemies…So, peaceful change if the bourgeoisie submit and allow it, but…Let's hope they come to realise just how much of a mess their system is making of our world society and environment… I won't be holding my breath, though…I think Communism will come through class war, not 'love thy neighbour'. Some wars are short and sharp, relying on shock and awe… Let's hope the bourgeois fifth column is strong when the time comes, and betrays its origins…

[LBird]

robbo203 wrote:

I didn't say that LBird.   Stop misrepresenting my position!

Don't take things too seriously, robbo.Although I'm pretending that you've said things that you haven't, the purpose is to illustrate where what you are saying leads.So, it's not really 'misrepresentation', as much as 'clarification'.It's like when I 'misrepresent' the 'materialists' as them claiming that "The rocks speak to me!".It's a way of clarifying where their ideas lead, and why we should disregard their 'leadership'.Have a nice afternoon, comrade!

[LBird]

Capitalist Pig wrote:

and my view of science is just a collection of knowledge and the pursuit of a greater knowledge in a multitude of subjects in the physical world.

That's so naively cute, CP!You clearly haven't read my link to Dr. Mengele's scientific activities.Have you heard of the Tuskegee Experiment, perchance?http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tuskegee_syphilis_experimentYou probably won't read that, either.Isn't the innocence of youth frightening, comrades?

[LBird]

alanjjohnstone wrote:

….then we relate to one another not as fellow workers and comrades but as neighbours and friends…just thought i throw that in without expanding on it.

I'll 'expand on it': you must have some unusual 'neighbours and friends', alan.All mine (and my relatives and enemies, too, funnily enough) all sell their labour for a living, since they don't own any of the means of production.In fact, some bloke called Charlie something-or-other pointed out that taking control of the means of production that they labour at is the key to workers taking control of their lives.No doubt you and your 'friends and neighbours' will just throw a little soiree during the revolution?You'll have to change your tag to abigailjjohnstone.http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abigail's_Party

[LBird]

robbo203 wrote:

LBird wrote:

robbo203 wrote:

 the point is how did they FEEL about  it.

Yeah, individual feelings.Not an analysis based on socio-economic exploitation, ie. 'the point is' class.

Is that the best you can come up with, LBird? 

For those who can't understand what a 'relationship' is, yeah.You'll be telling us next that, as long as a slave or a worker FEELS 'free', they ARE FREE!Individual feelings, eh? 'They can't imprison our minds!'I suppose if bricks in a pile 'feel' like they are a wall, then they are!I recommend some structural analysis, long before the rabid wolf comes into sight.'Pilist' robbo versus 'Wallist' LBird? Hmmmm…. Who's advice will other workers follow?Any individualists will clearly follow Pilist robbo, and the wolf will be served dinner on a plate. Their arses might be in the wolf's stomach, but as long as the individualists 'feel' that their bum cheeks are still attached to their backsides, then they are.Yeah, right!

[LBird]

robbo203 wrote:

 the point is how did they FEEL about  it.

Yeah, individual feelings.Not an analysis based on socio-economic exploitation, ie. 'the point is' class.

[LBird]

Richard wrote:

However, in order to analyze our society it's necessary to focus on economic classes and the exploitative relationship between the capitalist class and the working class, not on individuals.

This is why, if we are going to use 'class' to understand our society, we need to ideologically identify the members of the two main opposed classes as 'workers and bosses', not as 'individuals' (which just emphasises our biological similarity with bosses).This is politics, stressing exploitative socio-economic relationships and the ideological concepts used in the relational struggle, not a discussion about biology.If we're serious about it being a political, not a biological, discussion, we should call ourselves 'workers', and denigrate the ideological confusion caused by calling ourselves 'individuals'.To call oneself 'an individual' is to line up with the bosses' view of our world. One made up of isolated, autonomous, uncaring, 'free', individuals.We're workers. And we'll never be 'free' of society. That is a bourgeois myth and aspiration.

[LBird]

Richard wrote:

Individuals obviously exist and have existed since before capitalism.

You're wrong, Richard.You're making a common mistake, based upon your socialisation/education/brainwashing, which we all suffer from, and have to fight, of equating 'biological existence' with 'ideological concept'.The universal statement that 'I'm an Individual', which everybody is taught to repeat like a mantra, would not be made in other societies in the past. In a slaveowning society, for example, all the slaves did not go around declaring that 'I'm an individual'. It was as clear to them, as to the slaveowners, that they were the property of someone, not 'an individual' (an concept which contains the belief in autonomy, which they knew that they didn't have).To the Romans, a slave was an instrumentum vocale (a speaking tool). An agricultural implement was an instrumentum mutum (a non-speaking tool), and a farm animal was an instrumentum semi-vocale (a noisy tool).In this society, many people were 'tools' not 'individuals'. We can analytically separate out them as 'biological individuals', and still understand that this is nothing to do with the bourgeois belief that everybody holds of being 'an individual'.Within this socio-historical framework of understanding ourselves as humans, we can see that only with the dawn of Communism will a society exist which aims from the start to produce all-round 'individuals'.

[LBird]

Capitalist Pig wrote:

the outcomes of experiments can have a certain bias toward the interests of the investors of them, this is true, but I don't believe it would be productive to classify all science as bias toward the interest of the capitalist class because they were funded by its members. I think this would be like burning books simply because almost all science today and in the past was funded by the ruling class

You're entitled to follow the what the bourgeoisie have told you, CP, but since you haven't answered my question about your view now about 'all science', after my previous post, I'll leave our exchange at this point.All I can say, to you as I've said to the others, is that, if you don't have any worries about 'science' and you think it has a non-political 'neutral method', and it produces 'The Truth', why bother to ask me to explain?You have to already have come to have serious doubts about those premises before asking for clarification of your doubts. All I can do is to deepen your existing worries, and propose an alternative that you already know is necessary, even if you don't yet know what that alternative is. That is, the discussion has to be about 'what alternative?', rather than 'There is no alternative!'.I've said this before, too: I find it strange that comrades who have already come to see through 'capitalism', 'the free market' and Thatcher's mantra of 'There Is No Alternative' (hence her nickname, TINA), and realise that the alternative can't be explained through the premises of neo-classical economics, but has to be explained by revolutionary ideas which undermine capitalism at its roots, can't see that similar problems exist, which requires a revolutionary and critical approach, and which also applies to 'science'.Sorry, CP, it looks like you're going to have to wade through several threads here, and dozens of books and articles quoted therein, to get to the point of being critical of 'science'.Perhaps there isn't a shortcut, and I've been entirely wrong in that premise.Whilst you think that my views "classify all science as bias toward the interest of the capitalist class" and that they entail "burning books", we're not going anywhere soon.If you do believe that, it's no wonder you want to stick with 'science', the non-political sort. The fact that this is a 19th century belief, a myth still propagated, and widely believed today, shows to me the power of ruling class ideas.Whilst the 'atom' is non-political, the 'commodity' will remain non-political.

[LBird]

You're a tenacious bleeder, CP!OK, I'll take the bait.

CP wrote:

I believed all science was 'science' regardless of the social background of the scientist but apparently this is untrue?

What about Dr. Mengele?http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Josef_MengeleBy all the definitions of 'scientist', he was a scientist.As a scientist, he was employing the 'scientific method'.Yet, we regard his 'social background' as playing a massive part in his science, and condemn his science for that reason.So, here is an example of 'science' of which it is 'untrue' to say we are 'regardless of the social backgound of the scientist'.Do you still believe what you thought about 'all science'?

[LBird]

Capitalist Pig wrote:

metaphiysics dealing with the nature of being and epistemology which has to do I guess with the interperatation of solid beliefs and opinions. so this thread isn't actually about communist theory but epistemology and ontology?confused… 

So is everybody else, CP, and I'm clearly not helping!All the things that you mention are interlinked, and the several threads on 'science' here discuss it all in great detail.

[LBird]

No offence, CP, but I've been through these issues on a number of threads, and if you want to believe, from what you've read so far by my 'interpreters', that I think that 'everyone can specialize in all branches of scientific study' and that I desire 'individual uniformity', then I'll have to let you continue to hold on dearly to those myths!If you want to know what I actually think, you'll have to read those threads, and take account of what I actually say, rather than what others tell you that I say.If you're interested in ontology and epistemology, and do some background reading (of which I've done decades' worth), then you might be able to ask some questions to tempt me into further discussion. I started these threads simply to help other comrades avoid that long toil, and hopefully, help myself to develop further. But, on the former, I've failed. On the latter, I've advanced by leaps and bounds, but under my own steam, rather than collectively, as I wished.But, if that's not your bag, and you don't really want to understand why I don't argue that 'everyone can specialize in all branches of scientific study' (and the answer involves ontology and epistemology), then just pass over this thread, too.I'm sure that you can think of far more interesting things to do with your time! I can!

[LBird]

Some food for thought, for those opposed to ‘politics in physics’, on the context of the emergence of this longstanding bourgeois view of the relationship between science and politics. This is a view which Communists should replace with one that argues for the democratisation of all science and truth-production.

W. Schafer(ed) Finalization in Science (1983) pp. 252-3, wrote:

The traditional relationship between science and politics was based upon a historic compromise worked out in the mid-seventeenth century. The New Science of “experimental philosophy” relinquished all of the moral, political, educational and social aims established for it by Bacon, Comenius, Winstanley and many others in the early-seventeenth century. The absolutist state rewarded the renunciation of the ideals of science as a radical project for socio-political reform with the offer of wide-ranging privileges for “pure” natural science; the founding of the Royal Society in London(1662) and the Academie Royale des Sciences in Paris(1666) formed part of this process. Royal support for the New Science was paid for by separating science from politics.

[my bolds]http://www.bokus.com/bok/9789027715494/finalization-in-science/

[LBird]

One fine day, robbo, you'll actually read what I write.Meanwhile, I hope Richard is getting some benefit from all this, and has grown in his understanding of the relational aspect of 'class'.It's not 'individuals' but the relationship between them, that is the focus of 'class'.If one stresses the 'individual' existence, and think that enquiring closely into that reveals what we want to know, then we will miss the most important factor: not the individuals, but the nature of their relationship.Think of a vampire and its victim: of course, both exist in a biological sense, but to talk of their 'individuality' (which exists, of course), is to miss their exploitative relationship.One is a individual vampire, and sucks blood from the individual victim. The fact that two individuals are involved is not only the least important aspect of what there is to know about them, but focussing upon them as individuals actually detracts from an examination of their relationship.The key is, one is a vampire, and the other is a victim, and they have opposed interests. The vampire cannot exist without the victim, but the victim can exist without the vampire. So, their relationship is an exploitative one, and the vampire inescapably exploits (the individual vampire can't choose to stop sucking blood), whilst the victim is told that the vampire actually injects 'lifeforce' into the victim, so the victim comes to believe that the victim is also dependent upon this relationship, and that it is mutually beneficial. That is, the vampire takes blood and gives lifeforce, whilst the victim takes lifeforce and gives blood.You'll notice that their is no mention is this explanation of the individual characteristics of either vampire or victim, but the whole explanatory stress is upon the nature of their exploitative/exploited relationship.While we spend our time discussing the individuality of the relationees, we are not discussing the essential factor of their relations.We aren't really concerned with how either dresses or speaks, their hobbies or tastes, their likes or dislikes, the sizes of their houses or income, their nationality or sexuality, their sex.A tall, well-spoken and educated, opera loving, straight male vampire IS IDENTICAL to a small, poorly-spoken and educated, bingo loving, gay female vampire.A small, poorly-spoken and educated, bingo loving, gay male victim IS IDENTICAL to a tall, well-spoken and educated, opera loving straight female victim.Looking at these four as individuals, and focussing on their own personal characteristics, will only obscure the relationships involved.It's the exploitative relationship, comrade!No one is saying that individuals don't have their own characteristics, but that the most important factor in analysing our society is not their various specifics, but that it is their exploitative relationship.The vampires know it, and when necessary, drop all pretence of being 'individuals' and band together to maintain their bloodsucking.The victims don't yet know it, and so far in history have always sided with 'their' vampires, which the vampires have persuaded them that they have a real connection.We need to bring to the fore the relational aspects of society, and not the 'individuality' of all.'Individuality' is a bourgeois ideological concept, which keeps us victims separated into our own little world of one.

[LBird]

robbo203 wrote:

But then conveniently you don't exist, you are not an "individual".

I predicted to Richard that you'd say this.As long as Richard, and any other comrades trying to get to grips with 'class' and why it should be used for analysis of our society, and want to find a better way of explaining it to other workers, so that we can help develop our consciousness, I'm happy.You stick to 'individuals', robbo. And you keep helping to explain to others, whilst using a bourgeois concept.Ooooo… I know what comes next: "LBird says individuals aren't real, He says we're all just a concept!"

[Author]

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