LBird
Forum Replies Created
-
Posts
-
ALB wrote: “There is an interview in today’s Times with Richard Dawkins on his 80th birthday in which the interviewer writes:
“My all-time favourite Dawkins tweet is from 2019: ‘Accosted in restaurant by Flat Earth zealot who intrusively talked at us while friend & I were trying to enjoy our meal. Finally I lost it and said, ‘You are an ignorant lunatic’”.
We know the feeling.”
So, Dawkins and The Times is ALB’s inspiration for insulting a Democratic Communist and Marxist worker who has read Marx and philosophy, and understand both better than ALB, and dares to ask ‘where’s the democracy?’ in ALB’s politics?
It’s the materialist way, isn’t it? Don’t argue, because you’ll lose, just give false information about, and distort, what you opponent is claiming, argue with the strawman to ‘prove’ your case, and finally call them ‘lunatics’. Lenin’s method.
Keep digging, ALB and twc!
twc wrote: “…might gain some respect for Newton’s towering intellect. Likewise for the towering intellect of Marx…”
This, in a nutshell, is indicative of twc’s belittling attitude to us workers and democratic communists.
You’ve got it completely the wrong way around, twc.
It’s Newton and Marx who will gain some respect for us.
As will Einstein, Bohr, Schrodinger, Heisenberg, Hawking, and Engels, Kautsky, Plekhanov, Lenin.The self-emancipation of the proletariat means we will determine ‘science’ (both its theories and its practices), by democratic means.
You’ve made a big political slip, and you’re letting your elitism show, twc.
Who determines ‘Respect’, and how is it determined, according to you, twc?
It’s amazing how hostile the reaction has been to talk of democracy within the communist mode of production.
Not one of you has suggested who (and how they’ll do it) will control the power of social production.
My best guess, based upon what’s been written here, is that the SPGB favours a non-democratic control by ‘Specialists’.
That is, the social theory and practice of ‘physics’ will be controlled by an elite of ‘physicists’.
The social theory and practice of ‘education’ will be controlled by an elite of ‘educationalists’.
The social theory and practice of ‘academia’ will be controlled by an elite of ‘academics’.
And so on…
No mention whatsoever of the self-emancipation of the proletariat.
I think that it’s very clear from Marx’s writings that he argued that the social theory and practice of ‘human production’ will be democratically controlled by humanity.
All these social productive activities – physics, education, academia, and all others – must be democratically controlled, for the mode to be ‘democratic socialism’.
I don’t think that there’s any political intention here to allow workers to decide for themselves. That, at least, has been made very clear.
Matthew Culbert wrote: “Where does Marx ever use the terms ‘democratic social productionism in science’?”
Can I take that as a No, Matt?
That is, you don’t agree with Marx’s ‘democratic social productionism in science’?Matthew Culbert wrote: “It was all dealt with at the start.”
So, do you agree with Marx’s democratic social productionism in science?
Simple Yes or No will do.
Matthew, you haven’t mentioned Marx, or his politics, philosophy and physics.
Please do so, because that’s what the thread is about.
If you have a question about Marx’s democratic social productionism in science, please ask it.Well, I think that we’ve learned two things from this discussion, with reference to Marx’s own words:
1. Regarding politics, Marx was a democrat;
2. Regarding philosophy, Marx was a social productionist.
It’s hard to argue with either of these, because if one argues that Marx wasn’t a democrat, one has to explain what were his politics; further, if one argues that Marx wasn’t a social productionist, one has to explain why he continuously and exclusively wrote about the ‘social’ and ‘production’ (it’s impossible to understand Marx without reference to the ‘social’ and ‘production’, as all his concepts depend on these fundamentals).It seemed clear to many socialists (not just me), throughout the 20th century and into this, that Marx’s physics were based upon his politics and philosophy. This can only be argued against (ie, that Marx’s physics were not based upon democratic social production), by positing a ‘physics’ that is not socio-historical, has no cultural or ethical content, and can only be done by an elite of ‘clever’ people.
It’s a form of ‘physics’ that has nothing to do with democratic socialism, and if adopted, will prevent the self-emancipation of the proletariat.
On the other hand, Marx’s democratic social productionism is clearly fitted for our physics, a ‘physics for us’.
Matthew Culbert wrote: “For him the mutual interdependence of man and nature was what was essential and anything else seemed unreal.
The part I emphasised is crucial,in my view.”
Unfortunately for you, that wasn’t Marx, but McClellan. And he was wrong.
ALB wrote: “He was a materialist in the sense that he thought that (the rest of) Nature was just as real as Man”
No, ALB, it clearly says ‘nature for man’, not ‘the rest of nature (without man)’
You’ll know that an ‘object’ only has ‘existence’ for a subject.
And elsewhere, Marx makes this clear with his concept of Entausserung, which is ‘externalisation’.
Man’s externalisation is ‘nature for man’.
Humanity is the creator of any ‘nature’ that they ‘know’. If they can’t know it (ie. the rest of nature not known), Marx says it’s ‘nothing for us’.
Wez wrote: “The Idealist Manifesto right there – Marx would have laughed at such absurdity.”
It’s Marx that ALB quoted, Wez.
Marx specifically argues against idealism, so it can’t be an ‘Idealist Manifesto’.
Same with your ‘Materialist Manifesto’.
Marxs argues for social production (an ‘Idealist-Materialist Manifesto’). Read his words. ALB is helping you.
I agree entirely with your Marx quote, ALB.
Marx employs the concept “nature for man”, thus he specifies his subject ‘[hu]man[ity]’ and its object ‘nature’. The active, conscious subject creates its object for itself. There is no ‘nature’ outside of human conscious activity, outside of humanity’s social production.
“…it starts from the theoretical and practical sense-perception of man and nature as the true reality”
‘True reality’ requires the theory and practice of [hu]man[ity]. ‘[Hu]man[ity] and nature’ are inextricably linked.
‘Nature’ is not sitting ‘out there’, awaiting its passive discovery. There is no ‘true reality’ prior to our ‘true reality’. Truth is socially produced.
There is no ‘god’ doing this creation for us. There is no ‘matter’ doing this creation for us. Humanity is its own creator. We create ‘nature for us’.
Matthew Culbert wrote: “An advanced , post-capitalist society, run by us all, locally, regionally, globally, in democratic administration over resources and not a government over people.”
But not ‘truth’, eh?
Who, then, is going to ‘run’ that, Matt?
Matthew Culbert wrote: “I am just opposed to the stupidity of your claim.”
Materialists are always opposed to ‘the stupidity of’ democratic claims, Matt. Marx had your number!
You and your elite with a special consciousness are keeping hold of the social production of truth, aren’t you? Lenin and his cadre had the same idea.
Ohh, no, sorry, the ‘material conditions’ made the Bolsheviks do it! Pull the other one, Vladimir Ilyich!
Matthew Culbert wrote: “Where anywhere does Marx say we will be voting on the ‘truth’ of scientific theories.”
Marx – democrat, social production, err, no you’re right, Matt, anything not specifically mentioned by Marx, like ‘Brown shoes will be allowed’ means that ‘Brown shoes will not be allowed’.
Where do you think ‘truth’ and ‘scientific theories’ come from – clever individuals? God? Matter? Reality? Nature?
And why are you so opposed to them being socially produced by democratic methods? Do you assume that the masses can’t do physics?Materialists, eh? Marx had your number in the 1840s.
alanjjohntone wrote: “Karl Korsch had something of interest to say
Marxist ‘theory’ does not strive to achieve objective knowledge of reality out of an independent, theoretical interest. It is driven to acquire this knowledge by the practical necessities of struggle, and can neglect it only by running the heavy risk of failing to achieve its goal, at the price of the defeat and eclipse of the proletarian movement which it represents.”
Doesn’t ‘democracy’ form part of Marx’s ‘practical necessities of struggle’?
If so, the rest of the quote tells you where you and the SPGB are heading – ‘defeat and eclipse’.
alanjjohnstone wrote: “In my own words, if it doesn’t contribute to furthering the movement towards socialism, i don’t really give a damn…”
But ‘materialism’ doesn’t, as we’ve read here, ‘doesn’t contribute to furthering the movement towards socialism’, if that ‘socialism’ is a ‘democratic socialism’, because ‘materialism’ doesn’t regard ‘the active side’ as humanity (as Marx said), but it regards ‘matter’ as the active side, and so does not require human democracy, because ‘matter’ will bring socialism of its own accord (the mythical ‘material conditions’).
But… you do give a damn, don’t you, about ‘materialism’, because you’ve been brainwashed into thinking that the only alternative to ‘materialism’ is ‘idealism’, that is, religion and divine worship.
The third alternative, Marx’s alternative, is ‘social productionism’, which requires human conscious activity to produce its world. This is a reconciliation of both idealism and materialism (as Marx himself wrote). Since this ‘furthers the movement toward socialism’, because it puts mass human theory and practice by democratic means at the centre of building socialism, your ‘not giving a damn’ prevents you from participating actively, and leads you to wait for, not Godot, but ‘the material’.
Keep reading Korsch, alan, but from a Marxist perspective, not from a materialist one. It’s your choice, if you can begin to ‘give a damn’.
