LBird
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Dave B wrote:how do you put stuff in quote boxes????????
Just replace the first and last curly bracket, below, with corresponding square brackets:{quote=Dave B]how do you put stuff in quote boxes????????[/quote}and it comes out as at the top.
Vin wrote:If socialism/communism as defined by the Socialist Party were to be established, in what way would an elite gain an advantage and what would that advantage be? How would an 'elite' gain anything.Will there be groups with conflicting economic interests in 'democratic communism'?Not 'economic determinism' as well, to add to our other travails?
Is there anybody reading this thread, either party members or not, who approach issues regarding science from the perspective of class analysis?Or is everybody else 'individualist' in orientation?Frankly, it seems pointless me going on, if there is no-one else who is looking at science from a class perspective.I'm quite happy to leave the SPGB to discuss science from YMS and robbo's perspective, if that's the basic view being taken.Perhaps it's me on the wrong site, because I think I have very little in common with other posters, from a political perspective.
Young Master Smeet wrote:Ah, so, Lbird, you don't think that people who don't work should have any say in the scientific process?You're starting to baffle me now, YMS.I'm not talking about 'individuals' who do, or do not, work.I'm talking about a socio-economic class, proletarians, who sell their labour to exploiters.My political ideology doesn't recognise a category of 'people who work' or 'people who don't work', which is an individualist way of understanding and categorising 'individuals' by their 'personal activity'.My political ideology recognises two opposed categories, 'exploiters' and 'exploited' (or, 'bosses' and 'workers'). These are social, not individual, categories. They are determined by relationships between them, as social groups, especially the exploitation of one by another.You still don't seem to recognise that we have differing ideologies, YMS.Why you don't seem to be able to recognise this ideological and political difference between us, I don't know.
YMS wrote:…I see democracy as being the concrete individuals…Yes, I know, YMS.And 'I see' democracy as 'workers power'.If we're talking about 'science', I'm talking about 'workers' power' and you're talking about 'individuals'.I keep pointing this out, but you don't seem to acknowledge it.We have different ideological approaches to science.I'm a Democratic Communist, and you're a… ?
Vin wrote:This thread has become littered with personal off topic attacksIt's certainly littered with a party that seems to know nothing about politics whatsoever.Even basic ideology.No wonder no-one will answer the simple question 'what political ideology do you use to understand 'science'?'And this on a thread titled 'Science for Communists?'.
YMS wrote:Free association = democracy, no free association, no democracy.I've done my best many times to point out to you, YMS, that the defining of the term 'democracy' is an ideological act.We define 'democracy' differently, because we hold to different ideological beliefs.If you want to define 'democracy' as 'free association', fine, but then openly say what ideology holds that to be the definition of 'democracy'. It's a liberal/libertarian/individualist definition of 'democracy'. It focusses on 'freedom' and 'individuals'.I define 'democracy' as 'the power of the political community'. This is the Greek meaning of the term 'democracy': 'demos' is a self-defined political community (thus, in Classical Athens, the 'political community' defined itself as 'free Athenian men'; this 'democracy' did not include slaves, women or aliens (metics)); 'kratos' means 'power'.Communists define the 'political community' to be, neither 'individuals' (an ahistoric and asocial category) nor 'free' citizens, but 'the direct producers within a capitalist society: ie. 'workers'. So, no 'bosses' ('individuals' or not) or the 'free' (as Marx says, we're not 'free' from nature), but WORKERS.So, 'democracy', for a Communist, is 'workers deciding, as a collective'.In contrast, for a libertarian, 'democracy' is 'free association'.Are you catching on, yet? Political ideology is inescapable within 'democracy' and 'science'.Why are you avoiding declaring your political ideology?I clearly state that I want to see workers' democratic control of the means of production, Communism.You don't. But you're hiding it, from us, and perhaps yourself.
robbo203 wrote:However, knowing you, I will be waiting till the cows come home. And to think I was once sympathetic to you on this forum. Well, you've sure shown yourself to me in your true colours, haven't you sunshine?Mooo….
YMS wrote:I doubt we could do without the mathematics, though.Yeah, makes you wonder why I suggested getting rid of mathematics.Bit like Morton, when he recommended getting rid of Latin and all human culture, eh?Communists, eh? They plan to destroy all learning, don'cha know?
YMS wrote:I believe your Mengele example, aside from being ad absurdam is a category error. He is not an example of scientific thinking (or scientific thought) but a question of research ethics (and power).That's just plain bollocks, YMS. Mengele was a well-educated scientist, who retained his links to the research department of his university, and supplied results to his mentor, a respected professor whose name you can look up.
YMS wrote:In a society without an armed central power, his sort become an imjpossibility, and any science that exists will be on the same vo,untary free associating basis that all social activity is undertaken with.So, no democratic control by workers, then? Just an 'voluntary, free' individualist paradise (tm. Bourgeois Productions, 1600-1900).Why don't you just plainly say that the means of production will not be under democratic control, in your version of 'socialism', YMS?You're confusing other comrades who have enough difficulty with this subject, already.
'Inference', eh? As I said, robbo, yours, not mine.As for the 'Mengele jibe' (actually a philosophical explanation), it explains why the notion of 'anyone anywhere, without controls' argument is, well, to use your terminology, 'idiotic'.You made the argument, not me. Idiot, QED.
By coincidence, between bouts of wasting my time with this site, I’ve been reading up on the relationship between the Tudors and the developing bourgeoisie, and happened upon this little historical and social indicator.
A L Morton, A Peoples History of England, p. 181, wrote:One innovation did have an immense though delayed effect. This was the publication of an English version of the Bible. Once the Bible was common property and not a book in an unknown tongue available only to the priests, the key to the mysteries lay in the hands of any man who could read… it was a veritable revolutionists’ handbook, making the priestly monopoly of grace forever untenable.If we supporters of workers’ democratic control of the means of production (OK, just me) replace ‘Bible’ with ‘research papers’, ‘Latin’ (the ‘unknown tongue’, for those ‘individualists’ here who have no knowledge of history) with ‘maths’, and ‘priests’ with ‘scientists’, and ‘grace’ with ‘physics’, this might give us Communists some indictors of ‘how’ the claims of ‘string theory’ might be available to most workers, for their consideration and determination.But then, this is to stray into the realms of ‘how’, when most here won’t even countenance the ‘who’ not being the priestly Latin-reading elite.So, we’d have:
LBird, A Beastly History of Physics, p. 666, wrote:One innovation did have an immense though delayed effect. This was the publication of an English version of the research papers. Once the research papers were common property and not a book in an unknown tongue [ie. mathematics] available only to the elite scientists, the key to the mysteries lay in the hands of any [hu]man who could read… it was a veritable revolutionists’ handbook, making the scientific monopoly of physics forever untenable.‘Revolutionists’, eh? Whatever happened to that way of thinking?
robbo203 wrote:…a version of "communism" that made it "mandatory" for workers to vote…Where did you get this gem from? It isn't anything that I've written, so you must be arguing with your own demons.
robbo203 wrote:Did you even bother to read what I wrote?Yes, your own demon.
robbo203 wrote:You have seriously gone down in my estimation, LBird. I never thought you would sink so low as to resort to tactics such as this.Yeah, 'workers can deal with string theory' – foul tactic, according to 'elitist robbo'.Oh shit, more 'low tactics'…
robbo203 wrote:I would be fiercely resistant to the idea of imposing any kind of elitist obstacle or barrier to anyone whatsoever wanting to explore the subject further and make a contribution to the debate.But you'll place a barrier on 'workers determining the truth of string theory'?Your 'anyone' sounds like a synonym for 'individuals'.Curiouser and curiouser.No class analysis, or democratic controls – or social or historical analysis of 'science' as it has developed today, just a rant about 'barriers to anyone whatsoever'.Presumably Mengele gets to do live twin experiments, on your personal planet of 'no barriers or obstacles to anyone whatsoever'.So, 'Mengele, Yes', but, by christ, 'Workers, No!''Sinking low' is my speciality with those opposed to workers' democracy and their control of the entire means of production.I'm a Communist, funnily enough. In a sea of 'individualists', it seems. Say hello to Young Master Smeet for me, robbo.
Brian wrote:This generalist approach to our listening skills means we only pick up those bits of conversation which relate to our everyday affairs and we tend to leave the nuances and niche details to the specialists. And with the majority of humanity being composed of generalists and not specialists we tend to switch off when a specialist subject is intoduced to the conversation and comes under scrutinyThere's a political ideology struggling to make itself heard within that approach, Brian, and I wouldn't recognise it as anything to do with Socialism. Or, indeed, democracy.
LBird in effect wrote:I take seriously the beliefs that workers should control the means of production, and that that control should be democratic.robbo203 wrote:I certainly hope not because I, for one, would fight your "communism" tooth and nailEvidently you're in the vast majority here, robbo, and I seem to be in a minority of one.The very idea of 'string theory' being dealt with by workers, eh? Outrageous! They'll be too busy sweeping the streets, and other 'proletarian' activities. We [never specified] are certainly never going to let them anywhere near the nuclear research facilities!We seem to have very different interpretations of the meaning of 'the means of production'.To me, that includes 'string theory'.Wacky idea, eh?I wonder what other social groups will be 'fighting tooth and nail' against the notion of 'workers determining the production of ideas'?And ajj still seems to think that there's room for me in the SPGB.
