LBird
Forum Replies Created
-
Posts
-
After some consideration, I feel obliged to give you some well-meant advice, robbo!Forget (for now, at least) about your 'problem' about '7 billion voting on string theory', and focus on the issue of 'if not the proletariat, who?'.The knub of the issue is 'who? or what?', rather than, once we've identified a 'who' (or a 'what'), then turning to 'how' that specified 'who or what' can implement their power to decide.For example, we could decide that a 'who', like 'scientists', or a 'what', like 'matter', are the 'decider' of 'truth'. That's logically prior to 'how' scientists or matter go about determining truth.In my case, I think that the 'decider' should be 'society', as a whole (clearly, I mean within socialism, when there will be no classes, but, during the build-up to revolution in bourgeois society, it must be the 'proletariat' who are regarded as the 'decider', because that stance would prefigure our belief that the working class must take control of the means of production, and abolish classes).If you toss that problem around, and identify what you consider the best 'decider', we can compare notes. You have the advantage of already knowing my 'decider': 'the whole of society'. If you disagree with me, fine, but specify your 'decider', and we'll explore that.[edit – cross-posting]
robbo203 wrote:Christ, there I was actually starting out rather sympathetic to much of what you were saying (I still am). You sure have a knack of alienating your sympathisers, LBird, you sure do….I started to write a longer post, robbo, but on reflection I think that it's probably best left there. You'd probably be better reading some books or something, because I can tell when I'm beaten!
What was I saying about 'cloth-ears', alan?robbo, can you explain once again to Vin – mind you, if even a quote from Marx the first time didn't have any effect…
ajj wrote:I think your frustration is getting to you, LBirdThere is always a little boy in the back of the class-room who doesn't understand or follow what the teacher says and therefore doesn't pay attention, stares out the window instead, doodles, pulls funny faces…a good teacher doesn't ignore or condemn that boy..but, as you often said before, instead seeks out better ways to communicate and convey the message, to reach the boy……the failing is yours…and you have conceded that in the past.Yes, it is, and yes, I have, haven't I? My apologies.But sometimes we just have to realise that the 'little boy' just isn't interested in learning, and no teacher can make them so.
ajj wrote:It isn't perfect but the only way we have and for all its weaknesses, the SPGB is best of the bunch.Perhaps I might have hoped that, 18 months ago, but I'm far less certain, now. As you said yourself, my peculiar, nay perverse, focus on workers' democracy seems to be discomforting most, if not all. And my outrageous attacks on 'materialism' has shades of heresy, to some quarters.
ajj wrote:You may have one bit of the solution on how to shape the world into something more worthwhile but the means to make it practical is still missing from your formula…The individualism is your problem…you won't join together with others to make change.It's a case of 'been there, done that', alan. Union rep, arguing with police on picket lines, ANL activity…Even joined the SWP. I soon found out that they weren't prepared to listen. It's a funny thing, that all so-called 'workers parties' say they want workers to join, and workers must be the active element in social change.But when self-confident workers, who're used to arguing with bosses and all authority, and thinking for themselves, finally make the ideological jump to 'the need for a revolution', and political organisation, actually join, they find that the so-called workers' party just won't listen to them. The parties seem to think that they're there to teach workers and tell them 'what's what', and don't realise that the boot is (or should be, according to the party's ideals) on the other foot, and the party is there to learn from and obey the workers who join.So, I'm keen to to find a crowd who are ready to listen and learn, but I'm always disappointed. The funny thing is, it turns out these workers' parties are more like religious sects – try criticising Marx's terribly unclear texts (which, for the most part, might as well be written by a random word generator – a Martian one, with the verbal shits) or Engels' schizophrenic meaderings, which say two different things on following pages. And if the matter-god 'materialists' hear you raise a word against physics – why, you're a destructive hooligan, out to destroy civilisation, the Enlightenment, and all human thinking! Kill the heretic! Burn the witch!Frankly, I have more educated and critical discussions with my relatives and friends in the pub, than I've ever had with a 'party-member' of any sect. It's only the ex-members who have something to offer – I've known loads of ex-SWP, Militant, RCP, WRP, Workers' Power, even CP(!), who after they've left, suddenly start to critically think and discuss with fellow workers, in an open-minded manner.My experiences on this site, unfortunately, have bolstered my previous experiences, both online (LibCom, ICC) and cadre-priests. Democracy carries many fears for them all. Fear of the mob, I think. They don't really mean workers to control the means of production. That's just a line.It's a funny old world, isn't it? When workers see workers' parties as part of the problem?When will they listen to workers? The cloth-ears here are in great evidence.
ajj wrote:Not really the point i was trying to make on election vote loser, LBird.I'm sure it wasn't!Perhaps you didn't really get the point, in the first place?
ajj wrote:More that it would re-confirm the abstract nature of socialism of how many angels dance on a pin-head rather than its practical application.This characterisation of a debate about one of the central pillars of bourgeois ideology (along with 'free markets and money' and 'individualism', 'scientists as non-political, non-ideological truth-producers, who can give us a neutral opinion') says more about your political failures than mine.If you don't understand it, fair enough. If you can't be arsed to read up on it, fair enough. If you have no interest in it whatsoever, fair enough. You can still be a better comrade than me.But to regard your individual characteristics as defining something as so 'abstract' as to be tantamount to discussing 'angels dancing on a pinhead', is a massive political mistake, in my opinion.When most workers question 'individualism', 'markets and money' and 'science', we'll know that we're on our way. Until then, any attempt to fudge any of those three will throw up even more problems in the future.Unless you're about to jettison all 'abstract' talk of 'socialism' and argue for anarcho-capitalism, freedom for bosses, and their constant companion 'neutral science'?
Young Master Smeet wrote:See, where I'd say a woman on her own on an island thinking about stars is engaged in social production of science (or art) and you're model seems insufficient and to exclude vaste swathes of social effort. Society is wherever people are. You stand for the undemocratic curtailment of thought and the production of ideas, whereas I am for communal production. You would have us serve under King nose count, whereas I am for practical democracy of co-operating human beings.As I said, the views of a liberal individualist.No historical or social context to the analysis, hippie-like 'nice thoughts' ('society is wherever people are'), no focus on the class struggle linking all workers of any sex, and, yet again, the identification of 'democracy' with 'individual freedom'. The use of the 'cuddly' term 'communal', rather than the hard-nosed, anti-bourgeois, death-to-the-property-owners 'Communist', and a suspicion of 'nose-counting' (read: "fear of the mob", always a concern for liberals and their own right to 'stuff'), and an emphasis on reasonable 'practical democracy' (read: no scuffs voting on my manor) and 'human beings', rather than destruction of the rich as a class.Your going to get a shock, YMS. You're playing with revolutionary fire, without any recognition of its dangers. For the 'anti-democratic liberal', that is.
ajj wrote:…you'd definitely lose us votes if you raised the questions raised here at an election meeting..Yeah, my opinions are for class conscious Communists.If the vast majority dislike my revolutionary views, it's an indicator that we're a long way from any widespread, and necessary, consciousness.I don't agree with the reformist method of pretending to believe in something one doesn't.I want to see the end of elite control of all human production, and the institution of democratic controls.Even most here don't want that. So, yes, I'd lose votes for any reformist party…
alanjjohnstone wrote:…Aren't many of us excluded by the elite that have studied this topic…I know…you'll reply LBird that you have tried to simplify and clarify the problem and issue…and i think of all those on the thread you have sincerely endeavoured to do that…Yes, most are excluded from this topic, and I'm painfully aware of that.Our education system (both its ideological content and its denial to those who are forced to work for a wage rather than study important social issues) prevents this topic from being widely understood.I have tried to 'simplify and clarify', but, again, I'm painfully aware that often my over-simplification is not helping. I'm trying to let interested comrades get a 'hook' into this important political issue, without having to read the dozens of books that I have (quite a few were mostly a waste of time), so that comrades can focus on the fundamental issues, as quickly as is possible for them.There has to be a willingness to accept analogies, and let that drive the questioning and exploration, until comrades have the ability to recognise both the strengths and weaknesses of any particular analogy.But there seems to be a determination to protect bourgeois thinking (often under the guise of 'materialism', which Marx rejected), which makes me wonder why, with so little reading and understanding of this topic, other posters are so vehemently against any notion of democracy in truth-production.It's possible that they just don't like me, personally, but I'm inclined to think that the philosophical and ideological issues go far deeper than that.Odd, isn't it, that revolutionaries should be so… ermmm… almost violently opposed to any revolutionary forms of criticism. Oh yeah, and democracy.
Young Master Smeet wrote:LBird,that is different, democratic control is different from setting out limits. What you're saying is that artists will only be permitted to write what has been democratically agreed? The very act of creation will be subject to this democratic control?Yes.
YMS wrote:And no one will be allowed to be alone with paints and a brush lest unauthorised art occurs?What has this 'individualist-oriented' question to do with 'laws of society'?I've told you numerous times, that your ideology is an individualist one, and I'm not a bourgeois liberal, but a Democratic Communist.The fact that you can't see the difference between public and private masturbation is your problem, not mine.If you wish to continue this conversation about 'science', it would be better if, as I've asked of everybody a thousand times, you reveal the scientific ideology that you use to understand the world, social and physical.Why will no-one reveal their political views about science?I suspect that many think that science has no political content, which is a bourgeois myth. It's very surprising to find so many here taken in by a 'ruling class idea'. But, there you go…
Young Master Smeet wrote:Ah, so you're happy to leave art to the elite artists (within limits) but not leave science to its elite artisans?I actually said the very opposite, YMS.
LBird wrote:All societies have limits on what is considered 'acceptable'.As a Democratic Communist, I want those inescapable limits to be democratically decided.If you disagree, you'd have to tell me 'who' should decide those limits.What bit don't you understand about 'We won't leave anything produced by humans under the control of elites'?Unless you don't think art is produced by society.I do, and since art fits within the means of production, it will be under democratic control, unlike now, when it is under bourgeois control.Perhaps you erroneously think 'means of production' means 'factories', and so you think that under socialism workers will only run the factories, whilst your elitist artists will continue merrily in the bourgeois fashion?I don't think so.I'm inclined to see your question within the context of your 'libertarian' framework (read: 'individualism'). I don't think that you are a Democratic Communist, which is fair enough, but you should openly admit it, if only for the other posters to orientate themselves to your ideology and politics, which clearly differ from mine.
Vin wrote:I think it would be absolutely ridiculous for the SPGB to start advocating the abolotion of the science that for example successfully treats diabetes and cancer. Penicilin was a bourgious science. Should the socialist movemnent dump it and the science behind it.?Only rational replies without put downs, abuse or ridicule please.I don't think that you read what I write anymore, Vin, so I'll have to leave it to other comrades to explain that no-one is advocating the abolition of science.In fact, I think our discussion is about deciding exactly what 'science' is, because we all want to keep it, rather than reject it.
Young Master Smeet wrote:Lbird,would you have democratic control of art as well? Voting on feminine rhymes?All societies have limits on what is considered 'acceptable'.As a Democratic Communist, I want those inescapable limits to be democratically decided.If you disagree, you'd have to tell me 'who' should decide those limits.
YMS wrote:But, that's all there is, a process of being less wrong, and ongoing tantalising debate.You're on the same wavelength as me here, YMS.We know that science produces 'the wrong answer'.That's what science seems be telling us, that it gives us several 'wrong answers', and that we humans, having used the scientific method to produce several 'wrong answers' must decide OUTSIDE OF the scientific method, which answer is the 'least wrong'.It's not 'scientists' who can tell us what consists of 'the least': that is a social judgement, and that judgement, within a socialist society which employs democratic methods, must be a democratic judgement.And when other 'wrong answers' are later produced, last year's 'truth' can then voted out, and a new 'least wrong truth' could be installed.Then we'd be able to record our social history of 'truth change'.This realisation of the possibility of 'truth change' will help to develop and maintain our critical approach to science, education, truth, and the ongoing production of human knowledge.The conservatives won't like it, though.
Robbo, you say you agree with most (nearly everything?) that I say, and yet the bit that you don't understand you accuse me of using 'smear tactics'.You (and the others) have the problem. Youse don't understand.When I first tried to engage in these issues, 18 months ago, I started by discussing ontology, epistemology, the subject-object-knowledge triad, with quotes from Communists like Marx, Engels, Pannekoek, Dietzgen, and philosophers of science like Popper, Kuhn, Feyerabend and Lakatos, commentators like Schaff and Chalmers. Since then, on the recommendation of comrades here, I've read Kolakowski, Untermann, Bogdanov, and off my own back Labriola, Lukacs, Korsch and Gramsci. Believe me, that's just a fraction of the books that I've bought and read in the last 18 months (Murray, Hook, Avineri, Lichtheim, Schimdt, Carver, Ball, Sohn-Rethel are just a few of the others).Oh, yeah, Rovelli. And others. And more.Whereas, from what I can tell from the ill-informed responses throughout that period, no-one else has read a single book. Certainly, no-one is critically reading the ones I've recommended and then critically discussing them. The single partial exception that I'm aware of is twc, who had a look at Schaff, but then, disappointingly, refused to discuss it. twc does long pronouncements which must not be queried, unfortunately, rather than discussion.So, why I am listing these books? From my ego? Trying to impress?No, simply because I'm trying to help, to help comrades actually avoid much of the reading (lots of it is simply wrong, from a Democratic Communist perspective). But apparently, you and the others don't need my help, because you all already know the answers, and argue with me constantly from a position of abject ignorance.You want 'smear tactics', robbo? I haven't started them, yet.Now, if you're fed up with simple answers, fine, let's get back to the subject-object-knowledge triad, and perhaps Kant, but you're going to have to read and discuss, both critically. Especially about Engels and 'materialism', which is nothing to do with Marx's 'idealism-materialism' (which retains the subject-object relationship, unlike physicalism, for example, the modern form of 'materialism').Some comrades have actually admitted that they've never read Marx, and prefer Engels, because they can understand Engels! The fact that Engels is totally confused, and thus confusing to readers, doesn't seem to bother them. Some others haven't even read Engels, and just take their ideas from either 'materialism' (read: Leninism) or from bourgeois thinkers, without any critical distance!So, robbo, you can either start to look at the questions being posed (take a look at the Rovelli quote, above), or remain in the dark.On a final note of conciliation, surely your socialist intuition tells you that there must be something to a viewpoint that argues for workers' democracy, and is being combatted by arguments that deny democracy and stress 'expert' decision-making?In some ways, it's a simple choice: who determines human knowledge (and ethics and truth)? An elite, or our whole society, by voting?The whole tone of the SPGB response has been elitist and anti-democratic. What do you all think a revolution is going to look like?Do you really think physics (and all science) will be untouched by the earth-shattering events of a proletarian revolution, where workers take control of the production of this planet?I'm seriously beginning to wonder just how far the 'parliamentary road' has affected the party's thinking. As a measure of 'temperature-taking', I can see the argument for contesting bourgeois elections. But you don't seriously think that power will reside in parliament, do you? The only purpose for this method is the end of 'parliamentary suicide'.I think you should name your strategy just that, to clarify for those who accuse the SPGB of thinking that election to parliament is the same as workers' control.The ideological belief in elite science and 'expert truth' seems to me to be read into 'elite and expert parliament'.On my part, I think Workers' Councils will be formed in parallel with the election of an SPGB majority, and the task of the SPGB will be to disband 'elite expert' parliament, and ensure that 'bourgeois legitimacy' is handed over to Workers' Councils, which will be democratically run, and will control science, too. That's the 'means of production', to those who don't seem to see the identity of 'science' with 'production'.
Brian wrote:Are you saying that all successful practice must be validated by a vote so it determines what is 'truth' for a socialist society?Is this absolutely necessary in all cases? If so does this mean all past scientific discoveries will have to be validated by a vote, or do we just take them at face value and thereby presume that the evidental practice is sufficient 'truth' to get on with? Obviously, we would have to have a vote on that under your theory.Well, let's look at what at least one practicist physicist says:
Rovelli, The First Scientist: Anaximander and his Legacy, wrote:This reading of scientific thinking as subversive, visionary, and evolutionary is quite different from the way science was understood by the positivist philosophers… (p. xii)Facile nineteenth-century certainties about science— in particular the glorification of science understood as definitive knowledge of the world—have collapsed. One of the forces responsible for their dismissal has been the twentieth-century revolution in physics, which led to the discovery that Newtonian physics, despite its immense effectiveness, is actually wrong, in a precise sense. Much of the subsequent philosophy of science can be read as an attempt to come to grips with this disillusionment. What is scientific knowledge if it can be wrong even when it is extremely effective? (p. xv)But answers given by natural science are not credible because they are definitive; they are credible because they are the best we have now, at a given moment in the history of knowledge. (p. xvi)http://www.amazon.com/The-First-Scientist-Anaximander-Legacy/dp/1594161313So, the short answer to your question, Brian, is 'Yes'.
Brian wrote:What if society decided via the ballot that a vote is unnecessary where would that leave your theory? On the other hand if society decided that a vote was necessary on every single scientific discovery would that not stop the clock on any future scientific investigation? After all until we get to the bottom of this deep philosophical issue and problem it would not be safe to venture any further according to your parameters.Finally, the big if. What if in the final analysis society democratically determined that not all scientific investigation needs democratic scrutiny? What happens next?If you're arguing that is it possible (even likely) that after a world revolution, during which the vast majority of the population of this planet will have come to consciousness of their abilities as humans to control the entire means of production, and will have grown in confidence and will necessarily have developed a great thirst for new knowledge, so that they can control the means of production, that after all this, that they will vote to hand the power to make decisions back to a elite of experts, the same elite of experts that had got the planet into the mess that it was in, and because of which mess we had to build and fight for a revolution…If that happens, then, yes, I agree that society should hand power back to a scientific (and thus political) elite.I'll be voting 'No!', comrades.
