[LBird]

Vin wrote:

LBird wrote:

 'Truth' in socialism will be decided by a vote..

A vote on competing expert elites? So you now admit that there will be experts in their field? Come on LBird just say it: 'There will be experts in socialism'Not so Easy-peasy for you

What's the matter with you, Vin? Can't you read what I wrote on the other thread, and YMS quoted on this?It's the power that experts have, that we have to control. If you think that I think that there will be no experts in socialism, why would I carry out 18 months of posting to try to argue that we should democratically control the power of experts in socialism, and, indeed, before, if possible?Up until now, I've just assumed that you just don't like me, and that you're conducting a personal vendetta, which is fair enough, as I've been pretty frank about what I think about your intellectual abilities……but this is becoming rather concerning. I'm starting to feel that there is some other problem going on.Could someone PM me, if there's something I should know?

[LBird]

Ball, Serving the Reich pp. 251-2, wrote:

Science historian Joseph Haberer concluded in 1969 that ‘an idealization of science as a superior form of activity remains deeply entrenched in the contemporary scientific consciousness’. One can safely make the same statement today.            The dangerous complacency of this assumption is laid bare by the history of German science under National Socialism. It should be obvious from even a cursory consideration of the matter that the rational and impersonal viewpoint required in science here conferred absolutely no advantage in matters of morality….as Haberer has said,'The real issue is how it was possible for men trained in the sciences, like Lenard and Stark, to become fanatical National Socialists. If Nobel laureates can be so infected, what protection does scientific training and practice provide against the excesses of irrational personal, economic, social or political conduct? Most scientists have tended to assume that they (more than any other professional type) follow the paths of rational, disinterested, and even humane conduct. The evidence increasingly demonstrates that scientists as a whole are no more immune to the ailments of political man than other men'.

This is why our proletarian science must be democratic. We must place more faith in ourselves, than in any elite.

[LBird]

YMS wrote:

He isn't saying, in practice, anything much different from the rest of us.

So, since enlightenment has dawned, YMS, why not just say it, openly, for all to see, just like me?'Truth' in socialism will be decided by a vote.There. Easy-peasy.None of that 19th century bourgeois science nonsense about 'neutral, non-political physics' and 'scientists' producing 'Truth' which is a copy of the 'Real World' and is true forever.Well?I'm waiting, YMS.

[LBird]

Vin wrote:

LBird wrote:

 This will be the proletarian scientific method. It's an issue, at heart, about power.Not that you understand anything about power, authority and legitimacy, in short, politics, apparently.God help us if you're representative of the SPGB's level of political understanding of power.

There will not be a poletariat in socialism. DOH  

No, but there's a proletariat, now, Vin, and it has to theorise its approach to science, now, before the revolution.Perhaps you think that on the glorious day, a divine consciousness will descend upon the producers, who, according to your method, won't have discussed and prepared for their taking of power?DOHPS. I've discussed this so often before, that the proletariat now is the seed of humanity in the future, and that Marx too spoke of 'workers' after the revolution in this context, that I really do know that you not only don't read, but fundamentally don't understand dynamics and change.We'll have to start calling you 'Divine Consciousness Vin', since that's your understanding of the development of class consciousnessSecond warning: 1. The general topic of each forum is given by the posted forum description. Do not start a thread in a forum unless it matches the given topic, and do not derail existing threads with off-topic posts.

[LBird]

Vin wrote:

If you simply mean voting on the 'truth' is voting on the evidence presented by 'experts' why didn't you say that at the start, for fuck sake.

Vin, you, robbo, and a number of others appear to have the visual equivalent of 'cloth ears'.How many times I've talked about 'elite-expert-maths' being 'priest-Latin', and the need for explanation which can be understood by all, I've lost count.You lot have already decided to stop reading anything I write, so I don't see why I should keep trying to explain to you anymore, especially robbo.

Vin wrote:

You have not knocked my opinion or analysis down, you have knocked you own Strawman. You have done it with everyone on the forum.

You haven't 'got an opinion' to 'knock down', Vin. You clearly don't know the first thing about science, knowledge or truth. Or democracy. Or power.Why you don't just read some of the books, articles or links that I've recommended, and then ask genuine questions, I don't know.

Vin wrote:

What is your motive?

My motive is to help comrades circumvent the years of reading required to get to understand these issues, if approached from ignorance, as was the case with me. I wasn't able to ask anyone for help, because all the bloody Leninist/Trotskyists haven't got a clue, either. And I'm talking about their supposed 'theorists', too.I've been shocked by the lack of willingness to learn, listen, read, and engage in an informed debate. There has just been a repetition of mainstream bourgeois myths about 'science' and 'maths', that are taught at school and are reinforced by the popular press, about 'disinterested' academics employing a 'non-political method' to produce 'True Knowledge' about the 'Real World' in a language not open to popular understanding.Even bourgeois philosophers have undermined that cosy, 19th century nonsense, so why it's so difficult to get so-called revolutionaries and socialists to think critically, I'm baffled about.Plus, it's the bloody philosophical viewpoint of 'elite science' that supports the bloody Leninist worldview, so why the SPGB should have so much difficulty accommodating criticism of 'elites' with a 'special consciousness', which is not available to the class as a whole, again, beats me.

Vin wrote:

By voting on an expert you are putting your faith in that expert.

You really don't get it, do you?You are putting 'your faith' in your class, and their ability to smell a rat, which 'science experts' often produce, in physics as much as sociology.Give me democratic criticism, debate and voting (that is, MASS OPINION) over 'faith in experts', any day.The 'experts' contradict each other, all the time, it's our collective job to decide what's best for us, what 'truth' makes sense to us.Only we can decide what is best. It's a social judgement, and an elite can't make it for us.Unless you want the Central Committee to dictate to us all, Vin? No, I thought not – even you are not completely politically stupid.BTW, I vote for alan's explanation, given the reading I've done in the past, and alan's 'expert' opinion. LHO did it alone. That doesn't mean it's a 'Final Truth', but the only 'truth' we're likely to have, unless someone comes up with a better theory and evidence to support it.First warning: 1. The general topic of each forum is given by the posted forum description. Do not start a thread in a forum unless it matches the given topic, and do not derail existing threads with off-topic posts.

[LBird]

Vin wrote:

gnome wrote:

Perhaps LBird has a valid point when he speaks of "individualists" having a preference for trust (admittedly in your case a selective one) in "elite-experts".

I think LBird's point is that there will be no 'experts' or expert opinion to choose between. We will all be experts in everything.

I'm not sure if you're joking here, Vin, or really don't understand democracy.Put simply, the producers elect 'experts', who explain to the electorate, and the electorate decide by a vote between explanations. Thus power lies with the producers, not 'experts'. If the expert can't explain in terms understandable by the producers, there is thus no 'explanation', and the expert won't be elected next time the producers wish to delegate research tasks.The 'truth' is elected. Given further developments in theories, research, presentations by elected experts, and voting, a new 'truth' might dethrone the old 'truth'.This will be the proletarian scientific method. It's an issue, at heart, about power.Not that you understand anything about power, authority and legitimacy, in short, politics, apparently.God help us if you're representative of the SPGB's level of political understanding of power.

[LBird]

Vin wrote:

alanjjohnstone wrote:

I can't wait for that moment when i'm present when all those involved in these several related threads meet up in the pub and have had a few pints to lubricate their throats and thoughts….It will be a dynamite experience, dwarving Marx v Bakunin, Lenin v Martov …I'm serious about the drama and the spectacle i expect to witness when such an encounter materialises 

Only problem with that is that, unlike this forum,  LBird will have nowhere to run when the heat is on

The real tragedy here, is not that any of us pretend to be seriously comparable to Marx, Bakunin, Lenin or Martov, but that they were engaged in fresh arguments, that at the time no-one really knew how their ideas would pan out.In contrast, we're having a debate that could have (and should have) been settled a couple of generations ago. As I've said before, since at least the 1920s, with Lukacs, Korsch and Pannekoek, and many since, the need to clarify 'what science is' has been apparent.Is 'science' a neutral method, which, because it is outside of social and historical influences, can be adopted by anyone (not just small elites, but even single individuals), and which produces 'Truths' which are not relative to the society which produces them, that 'science' produces timeless and contextless knowledge of the external world?Or is 'science' inescapably itself a social and historical product, which produces social and historical context-filled, relative, knowledge, which is always a product of a society (and if that society has a ruling elite, the product is full of elite values)?If the former, democracy is not required; if the latter, and the society is a democratic society (ie. not private productive property), then democracy is required.I've become aware, during my political activities over the years, that the Leninist/Trotskyist parties embrace the former, because they think an elite can 'lead' society. They regard themselves as 'the scientific elite' of the proletariat.I reject this, and reject 'objective science', because since Einstein it has become clear that it is unsustainable to argue that humans produce 'objective knowledge', and every single Leninist/Trotskyist party that I've come across or read about, has refused to allow workers to determine 'their' party's policies by democratic means.Probably the biggest laugh is that Marx's ideas fit with 'relativism', and he was a democrat who thought that workers could develop the capacity to control production, but all this anti-democratic science worship is carried out by so-called Communists, influenced by Engels, and they claim the mantle of Marx.Nearly a hundred years have gone to waste, and most workers still cling to a faith in 'science'. The anti-democratic, elitist, 'Truth'-producing sort, introduced by the bourgeoisie.Perhaps, in another hundred years…

[LBird]

alanjjohnstone wrote:

I can't wait for that moment when i'm present when all those involved in these several related threads meet up in the pub and have had a few pints to lubricate their throats and thoughts….It will be a dynamite experience, dwarving Marx v Bakunin, Lenin v Martov …I'm serious about the drama and the spectacle i expect to witness when such an encounter materialises 

I'm too much of a shithouse to attend, alan…. I'd get lynched!By an overwhelming, nay unanimous, democratic decision, of course!Hoists and petards spring to mind…

[LBird]

YMS wrote:

LBird,Given that Pannekoek was a professor, that means his opinions of professors was a bourgeois lie, and that professors are on our side, which means he's right, and they're on the side of the bouregsoisie, which means he's lying, and they're on our side, which means they're on their side…

Oh, how clever, YMS! Wordplay!

[LBird]

robbo, the core issue is one of 'power'.Read what Pannekoek thought of 'professors'.Your view that an elite knows better than society is a bourgeois ideology.We socialists have to start from the premise that 'we' know better than 'professors'.The organisation of that premise into political terms is a task for the revolutionary proletariat to take forward.If one starts from the premise that an elite knows better than the majority, then the organisation of our science will be on that basis. In fact, it will then simply mirror the bourgeois organisation of science, and retain power in the hands of a minority.This is the philosophical basis of Leninism, that a minority have a 'special consciousness' not available to 'the masses', and thus the organisational structures are formed upon that assumption.Unless we start from 'democracy' and 'mass consciousness', then I think that Leninist conceptions will triumph.I thought, when I first came to this site, that the SPGB shared my ideological premises, concerning democracy and mass consciousness, but I think that, in fact, no-one here seems to. I certainly get no visible support – whether there is a still silent strand who sympathise, I don't know. On the surface, other posters seem hostile to 'democratic science' and the democratic production of truth.All your arguments seem to be premised on elitism and the inabilities of the majority. I don't see that as leading to any form of 'socialism' that I'd recognise.But then, I'm an anti-elitist and a democrat. I think that the best judge of 'truth' is a majority employing democracy, not a minority pretending to have a method we can't understand.

[LBird]

Anton Pannekoek wrote:

A ruling class cannot voluntarily give up its own predominance; for this predominance appears to it the sole foundation of the world order. It must defend this predominance; and this it can do only so long as it has hope and self-confidence. But actual conditions cannot give self-confidence to the capitalist class; therefore it creates for itself a hope that has no support in reality. If this class were ever to see clearly the principles of social science, it would lose all faith in its own possibilities; it would see itself as an aging despot with millions of persecuted victims marching in upon him from all directions and shouting his crimes into his ears. Fearfully he shuts himself in, closes his eyes to the reality and orders his hirelings to invent fables to dispel the awful truth. And this is exactly the way of the bourgeoisie. In order not to see the truth, it has appointed professors to soothe its troubled spirit with fables. Pretty fables they are, which glorify its overlordship, which dazzle its eyes with visions of an eternal life and scatter its doubts and dreams as so many nightmares.

[my bold]https://www.marxists.org/archive/pannekoe/1909/new-middle-class.htmYeah, 'professors' who produce 'fables' as bourgeois 'truth', to 'glorify its overlordship'.This applies to physics as much as sociology, comrades.We have to democratise all science.[edit – a bit more from Tony]

Anton Pannekoek wrote:

The fact that science is merely the servant of capitalism could not be more clearly expressed than in such statements…. Not the discovery of truth, but the reassurance of an increasingly superfluous class of parasites is the object of this science. No wonder that it comes into conflict with the truth.

[my bold][more]

AT wrote:

They have great notions of their own education and refinement, feel themselves elevated far above “the masses”; it naturally never occurs to them that the ideals of these masses may be scientifically correct and that the “science” of their professors may be false.

[my bold]

[LBird]

Vin wrote:

… I will decide what the truth is myself.

Of course you will, Vin.All those infected by bourgeois ideology say this, because they really believe the bourgeois myth that 'We're all individuals!'.Those who identify as 'workers', on the contrary can see that they occupy a social position within a structure, and that that social structure they live in is an exploitative structure, divided by classes, and that each class produces ideologies in an attempt to explain their world.The bosses have found that obscuring the 'exploitative' nature of the present socio-economic production system is best done by avoiding all talk of 'structures', and by emphasising 'individuality'. Hence, the ruling class idea of 'We're all individuals!'.When it comes to 'truth', of course there are conflicting class ideologies about this, too. Workers recognise that humans produce their world, and that humans produce their ideas about that world, including what 'truth' is. Bosses want everybody to think that they all have their own, personal, individual 'truth', a truth which is not amenable to social control, or which has to be argued about, and voted on.So, when we put your declaration that "I will decide what the truth is myself" in the present socio-economic context, it is clear that you are espousing ruling class ideas about 'truth'.I find this kow-towing to ruling class ideas strange in a socialist, like you Vin. Perhaps you are simply not as class conscious as you think you are.

Vin wrote:

You belong in some Stalinist group that decides the 'truth' and votes upon it amongst yourselves and impose it upon the rest of us.

Isn't it odd, that I should be arguing for 'democratic truth production' (ie. 'imposed' by all of us, after a vote), whereas you are arguing for 'individual truth production' (ie. 'imposed' by you, without consultation with comrades), and because you don't like me pointing this out, you call me a Stalinist. I'm sure that you are aware that the capitalist propaganda machine used to equate socialism with Stalinism, so we can see, yet again, you employing ruling class ideas.

Vin wrote:

You are wasting your time here.

I certainly am with you, Vin. The ruling class can sleep soundly whilst you're conducting such a good defence of their ideas.

Vin wrote:

Your 'truth' can fuck off and kiss my arse.

Well, since 'my truth' is a democratically-decided 'truth', I think your contempt for your fellow workers' ability to discuss and decide for themselves, what constitutes 'truth' in this society, is plain for all to see.In fact, you're lining up with robbo, another individualist who won't have democracy in science, and prefers to trust the 'elite-experts', just like you, Vin.What's even more laughable about 'your' views, is that you've never actually read or discussed anything about the philosophy of science. This is clear, because otherwise you'd be aware of the difficulties associated with understanding what 'truth' is, especially since Einstein.Get off your knees, Vin. We have a world to win.'We', notice, not 'I'.

[LBird]

Meel wrote:

I am gobsmacked.

I know, because you're not a Democratic Communist, and you believe the bourgeois myth about 'non-ideological science'.Fair enough, if you want to believe in fairy stories, but perhaps you should read some of the texts that I've mentioned.And accusing Commies of '1984' is sooo old hat – I haven't heard that one in years!You'll be accusing me of being Pol Pot, next!

[LBird]

robbo203 wrote:

You still dont get it do you, LBird?Philosophically, I dont have a problem with what you are saying…

No, your 'problem' with 'what I'm saying' is merely a 'political' one.You won't have democratic science. You argue for elite science.The final arbiter of 'truth' must be society: if necessary, all 7 billion must vote.Socialism must start from the premise that 'scientific explanation' is understandable by all.Science must be open to all, as the producer of concepts, as a social activity to test those concepts, as the arbiter of the truth of the results of those activities.There will be no 'Latin-speaking priests', who are seen as the source of 'The Truth' about a 'reality' that remains unfathomable to 'the uneducated, uncaring, illiterate, masses'.If any scientist claims to 'know' something, they will have created this 'knowledge' by social means, in a historical context, 'matter' will not have 'spoken to them', and they will be compelled to explain this socially-created 'knowledge' to us all.With the revolution, will come a Reformation in bourgeois science. The Bible will be open to all.You hate this sort of talk, robbo, because it smacks, to you, of 'bringing politics into science'.I've got news for you, mate: science is, and always has been, a political activity. Only purveyors of bourgeois ideology argue otherwise, because they need to preserve the power, authority and legitimacy of an 'elite science' to bolster their own undemocratic power.And 'special individuals', like you, who will not have their comrades 'telling them what to think!'. Who needs the aid of their comrades to think, when they have access to a disinterested, neutral method, beloved of all 'special individuals', who hanker for 'free association', rather than 'workers' power'.Individualists always reject democracy, because democracy implies power outside of the individual."From each according to their abilities, to each according to their needs" is not an individualist slogan, but a collective one.Society determines 'abilities and needs', not an individual their own. In that sense, 'association' is not 'free'. 'Freedom' is a democratic act, the right to participate, not to secede. We are all inescapably social beings, with all the rights and responsibilities that that brings.

[LBird]

Meel wrote:

If in the days when most people believed that the Sun orbited the Earth, a vote of the population had been taken to confirm this, would the result have been "the truth"?

Yes, it was.But irrelevant to our concerns, now.We have three factors to consider:1. We're Communists, who insist that the means of production must be under democratic control;2. Science since Einstein has taught us that 'truth' is a social and historical construct, and not an eternal, universal 'Truth', as alleged by 19th century science;3. Marx argued, as did others influenced by German Idealism, that both external reality and human consciousness are required, and that it's consciousness that is the 'active side', not 'matter'.So, if one is not a Communist, doesn't know anything about modern physics (especially Einstein's views) and disagrees with Marx's Theses on Feuerbach, then one can continue to hold the ideological belief, propagated by the bourgeoisie, that when science tells us something, like 'the earth orbits the sun', that it can be taken as an eternal, universal Truth.It's then a short step to having faith in a 'neutral method' (ie., non-political method), employed by 'disinterested' physicists, who thus retain power, authority and legitimacy when faced with workers' demands for the 'democratic control of production'. The bourgeoisie continue to pretend they have such disinterested, neutral academics, because they use the fake 'legitimacy' conferred by 'science' to argue that 'democracy' is impossible when faced with 'elite-expert' opinion.I'm a Democratic Communist, Meel, so I would argue these opinions. All science is political. And science must be under our democratic control.If you're not a Communist and a Democrat, then you can ignore my opinions. You won't share my ideology of science.

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