LBird
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ALB wrote: “Suggesting that Marx was a critic of materialism…”
This is well established, and has been for over a century. You’re clutching at straws (and strawmen), ALB.
ALB wrote: “When someone who has known us for over five years repeatedly accuses us of arguing that socialism will not have to be brought “by the thinking, conscious, proletariat”, there are only three possible explanations.”
There is apparently a fourth, ALB.
Whenever I ask ‘Who determines truth within socialism’, you don’t answer that it will be brought “by the thinking, conscious, proletariat”.
You answer that truth will be determined by ‘Specialists’, an elite separate from “the thinking, conscious, proletariat”.
The scientific method “by the thinking, conscious, proletariat” is democracy.
The fourth answer seems to be that you are unable to read, reason, and reply, when asked a political question.
Bijou Drains wrote: “If you are going to ask me that question, you first have to define what you mean by science, as the notion that science is some part of human existance divorced from the rest of that existence is, at least for me, problematical.”
Who argues “..the notion that science is some part of human existance divorced from the rest of that existence…“?
The ‘materialists’, that’s who, BD.
Otherwise they’d agree to democracy within science.
That’s Marx’s whole point, in his criticism of ‘materialism’.
I’m never sure quite what the SPGB is defending in these discussions about ‘science’.
Its members/sympathisers never seem to mention humanity, social production, proletariat, or democracy.
Who do you think your ideas will appeal to? Those ideas about ‘matter’ and a non-democratic science?
They won’t appeal to anyone who’s read Marx, who wants the self-emancipation of workers, who wants democratic production.
Don’t you ever give any thought to the certain demise of your party, and the whole ‘materialist’ ideology?
You seem to put ‘science’ before ‘democratic socialism’. And your notion of ‘science’ is outdated, and was by Marx’s time (as proved by Einstein).
I must admit, I’m baffled by what inspires you. If ‘material conditions’ (TM) will produce ‘socialism’, why would a worker bother to participate? The ideology of materialism cuts its own throat.Matthew, you seem to have a handle on things.
I presume, since you argue that ‘workers are scientists’, then you’d agree that ‘workers’ should determine ‘science’?Bijou, ALB, you’re entitled to draw whatever political and philosophical conclusions that you wish, from Marx.
But… drawing the ones that you seem to want to draw, it’s going to be up to ‘Nature’, ‘Matter’, and ‘Material Conditions’ (excluding ideas, or they would be also ‘ideal conditions’, to your way of thinking) to bring about a change in consciousness amongst the proletariat. Thus, the new mode of production of communism will have been brought about, not by the thinking, conscious, proletariat, but by ‘material conditions’.
It’s never going to happen, comrades. All the ‘materialist’ parties, Leninists, Trotskyists, Maoists, seemingly even the SPGB, will die out. Basically because they argue to workers that workers themselves are not needed to build science. Materialist parties don’t require democracy to learn, because they already know. Marx’s conclusion, too.
Well, workers will leave it to ‘material science’. Good luck organising the Specialists that you really want to appeal to.
The fundamental problem that you’ve got, is that ‘science’ no longer looks to ‘material’, and hasn’t done since the 19th century.
Marx (CW3, p. 305) wrote:
“Now it is certainly easy to say to the single individual what Aristotle has already said: You have been begotten by your father and your mother; therefore in you the mating of two human beings – a species-act of human beings – has produced the human being. You see, therefore, that even physically man owes his existence to man. Therefore you must not only keep sight of the one aspect – the infinite progression which leads you further to inquire: Who begot my father? Who his grandfather? etc. You must also hold on to the circular movement sensuously perceptible in that progress by which man repeats himself in procreation, man thus always remaining the subject. You will reply, however: I grant you this circular movement; now grant me the progress which drives me ever further until I ask: Who begot the first man, and nature as a whole? I can only answer you: Your question is itself a product of abstraction. Ask yourself how you arrived at that question. Ask yourself whether your question is not posed from a standpoint to which I cannot reply, because it is wrongly put. Ask yourself whether that progress as such exists for a reasonable mind. When you ask about the creation of nature and man, you are abstracting, in so doing, from man and nature. You postulate them as non-existent, and yet you want me to prove them to you as existing. Now I say to you: Give up your abstraction and you will also give up your question. Or if you want to hold on to your abstraction, then be consistent, and if you think of man and nature as non-existent, ||XI| then think of yourself as non-existent, for you too are surely nature and man. Don’t think, don’t ask me, for as soon as you think and ask, your abstraction from the existence of nature and man has no meaning. Or are you such an egotist that you conceive everything as nothing, and yet want yourself to exist?” [my bold]
https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1844/manuscripts/comm.htm
Any notion of a ‘Nature’, supposedly apart from, and preceding, humanity’s creation of a ‘Nature-for-Us’, is meaningless for Marx.
Nature is not ‘discovered’ or ‘described’ (by a specialist elite), but socially produced by humanity. No ‘nature’, no part of nature, is eternal, unchanging, fixed, unhistorical, asocial.
And since we produce ‘nature’, we can change it.
The only political question for Marxists, and those interested in building a future social society, is ‘Who will have the power to determine our nature?’ Is it to be an elite, a conscious minority, as Lenin argued? Or is it to be the whole of humanity, basing its social product upon the interests and needs of the whole of humanity, which are all determined democratically?
In fact, democratic socialism. A new mode of production for humanity, created by humanity itself. Self-emancipation.
I entirely agree with you and Marx, BD!
Everything revolves around humanity – not ‘god’ (as idealists like Berkeley allege), not ‘matter’ (as materialists like Lenin allege) but humanity. [Marx and my italics and bold!]
It’s all there – visible, birth, himself, genesis, ‘real existence of man and nature’ ‘evident in practice’, ‘through [human] sense experience’.
No mention whatsoever of ‘gods’ or ‘matter’. No passive humanity, no clockwork humanity.Whatever you think is ‘outside of human social production’, BD, you should name ‘it’ – and tell us why the rest of humanity can’t make the same decision as you apparently can, about its ‘existence’ or not.
As Marx pointed out, materialists simply have to split society into two – one part, the mass, who can’t be allowed to determine ‘it’, and another part, an elite, who can be allowed to determine ‘it’.
No doubt, you’ve saved yourself a place amongst The Elect, The Conscious Party Members, who will tell those supposedly unable to participate, what ‘it’ is.
Lenin argued quite the same, of course! The proletarians salute your selflessness, Oh Clever One! Show us the light, holy redeemer!
And ‘self-determination of the proletariat’ be damned, eh?
What is this ‘nature’ that is not ‘historical’, that you know? And how do you know it?
ALB wrote: “The claim that Marx held that there is nothing outside of human conscious activity is groundless”
Marx, CW 3, p. 305, wrote: “…for the socialist man the entire so-called history of the world is nothing but the creation of man through human labour, nothing but the emergence of nature for man…” [Marx’s italics, my bold]
There are pages of similar claims by Marx surrounding this extract.
ALB wrote: “The view that a tree doesn’t exist…”
Once more, ALB, as I explained in my previous post, you (like the idealist Berkeley and his god) are employing the bourgeois ideology of the subject being an individual (active divine creator for Berkeley, passive biological clockwork for bourgeoisie), where ‘exist’ supposedly has no human subject.
For Marx, to ‘exist’ is to ‘exist-for’ a human social creator; so, as in quote, ‘nature for [hu]man[ity]’.
ALB wrote: “Engels explicitly held that the external world existed independently of human perception of it.”
Engels also held that it didn’t – I’ve already given his quote about ‘matter’ being a human product. Engels contradicted himself often, and Engels isn’t Marx. We’ve had long discussions about the invalidity of quoting Engels to represent (as did Lenin) Marx. There is not a unified being called ‘Marx-Engels’.
ALB wrote: “Actually, the view that scientists are describing rather than discovering the external world is fairly mainstream. ”
Yes, ALB, it’s a ruling class idea, so it would be ‘mainstream’.
According to Marx, ‘scientists’ (being human social producers) are, not ‘discovering’, not ‘describing’, but creating a ‘world-for-them’. ‘Them’ being the ruling class, the bourgeoisie.
As socialists, we have to help build a ‘world-for-humanity’, our social product, a ‘world’ which suits our needs and interests (expressed democratically), and not those of any ruling class. This is a unified world, not bifurcated into ‘hard’ and ‘soft’, or ‘material’ and ‘ideal’, or ‘nature’ and ‘society’, which is a creation of the bourgeoisie. Our ‘nature’ is a socio-historical ‘nature for us’. Which we can change.
Please address the points that Marx and I make, ALB, rather than suggest that he is, or I am, a follower of Divine Creation, like Berkeley.
Perhaps a little more explanation…
It’s best to see Marx’s ‘ontology’ as an ontology of production.
In class-based ontologies, ‘Being’ has an independent ‘existence’ outside of any producer. But in a humanity-based ontology, based upon Marx’s ideas, ‘being’ is always ‘being-for’, where the producer of that ‘being’ must be given.
This unites the subject-object into a necessary relationship, so we have ‘object-for’, ‘exists-for’, ‘matter-for’, ‘real-for’, ‘nature-for’, ‘universe-for’, etc. None of these concepts can be adopted without the ‘-for’ suffix, because that would be to pretend that someone has a position outside of these concepts, but yet can know them. This would be a ‘god-like’ reference point.
This then makes sense of Marx’s concept of ‘Entausserung’ (‘externalisation’), whereby the subject produces its own object, thereby knowing it. Any ‘nature’ that we know, is a ‘nature-for-us’, which we’ve produced, and can thus, as Marx argued for, change. We externalise our nature to produce ‘nature-for-us’.
This also allows us to have a ‘unified science’, where the concepts, theories, practices, results, etc., are socially produced in the same way. That is, there would be no separation (introduced by bourgeois science) between ‘hard’ and ‘soft science’, science and art, ideas and reality, truth and opinion, politics and physics, etc.
Of course, a key feature of this ‘unified science’ would be that it would be democratic, because there wouldn’t be an academic elite who could pretend to know ‘being’ by passive observation and merely ‘describe’. Their conscious, active role in socially producing their ‘being-for-them’ would be exposed to all. Thus, Marx’s ‘revolutionary science’ would be established.
The interests and needs of all humanity, democratically determined, would be the basis of this ‘new science’.
First of all, ALB, I have to say that we’re not very far apart, with your description of ‘social conditions’ as the meaning ‘material conditions’, which human activity creates and can thus change.
But…
ALB wrote: “Whatever it is that humans experience, it is not like social conditions, i.e., a product of human activity. Humans only describe it. They focus on a part of the world of experience (abstract it) and give it a name. This applies as much to tables and chairs as it does to “matter”. But this is not same as creating (bringing into existence) what is being described. That is there independently of human descriptions of it.”
You’re still separating ‘it’ from ‘product of human activity’. Thus, this ‘it’ can only be passively ‘described’. This denies ‘conscious human activity’ or ‘social production’. For Marx, anything outside of human production is a ‘nothing for us’.
The key point is how can this ‘it’ be ‘independent of human description’?
I suspect that the problem is that often people assume ‘independent’ means “outside of a biological individual’s brain”. Of course, this (unconscious?) assumption is precisely the same one that allows ‘value’ to supposedly be determined, not by social relations, but by ‘individual preference’. That was not Marx’s starting point.
By ‘independent of humanity’ is meant ‘outside of social human conscious activity’. But ‘matter’, ‘material’, ‘it’, etc., are all social products, which change over time, especially between modes of production.
For Marx, there is nothing outside of social production, because anything we know is a social product of our own conscious activity. Thus, we can change ‘it’ (whatever we call it) – whether ‘matter’, ‘hard stuff’, ‘the universe’, ‘the physical’, etc.
Once again, ALB, thanks for your thoughtful post – it provides a good basis for further discussion.
ALB wrote: “Two more pieces confirming that Marx was a materialist (without scare quotes). The debate about whether or not this is the case must surely be over. Perhaps it is.”
I hope that you are proved correct, ALB. Once everyone agrees that ‘material’ for Marx meant ‘human’ (as opposed to ‘ideal’ meaning ‘divine’), and that all ‘material conditions’ means for Marx is ‘social conditions’, then all socialists can get down to work on how we, collectively, democratically, can change our ‘social conditions’.
ALB wrote: “Materialism is basically a rejection of theological explanations of experience rather than a commitment to a particular theory of the nature of “matter”.”
Yes, but Marx not only rejected the ‘theological’, but replaced it with the ‘human’, which is why he wasn’t simply a ‘materialist who rejects the theological’.
ALB wrote: “Materialists can have all sorts of theories about that or none. They can even be agnostic about it.”
Perhaps ‘materialists’ (of the ‘old’ variety, Pre-Marx) can, but Marxists certainly can’t. Marxists hold to the theory that humans create ‘matter’, and since ‘matter’ (as Engels said (quote above), it’s a human product) is a socio-historical product by humanity, we can change it. In a future democratic socialist society, any changes being made to ‘matter’ would be democratically decided, unlike in the capitalist mode of production, where an elite determines whether ‘matter’, or ‘mass’, or ‘energy’, or whatever comes next, is our social product. They change it undemocratically now, and we can change it democratically in the future.
Another recommendation for reading, concerning the nature of Marx’s ‘new materialism’.
Peter Osbourne How To Read Marx (2005) Granta
Esp. chapters 2 and 3 ‘A New Materialism (1): Practice‘ and ‘A New Materialism (2): History‘
I’ve just come across these two answers to the question “What are the differences and similarities between German idealism and Marx’s philosophy?“:
The first answer, by Peter Stillman, is one I would recognise.
The second, by Shayn McCallum, is one ‘materialists’ would recognise.
Yeah, BD, I’m sure beer would ‘oil the wheels’ of debate to a great extent!
On my side, after about 10 years of being a hanger-on, I joined the SWP. Of course, at the time I believed all the Leninist guff about ‘materialism’, and the evils of the dastardly ‘idealists’!
But mention “workers’ democracy”, and the smiles dropped. No, this wasn’t needed, because ‘material conditions’ were going to change workers’ consciousness, and the party had a special consciousness which meant that the ‘material conditions’ didn’t apply to them! Now, it seems laughable that anyone fell for it, but we did, and have done for generations. Hopefully, Marxists in the 21st century will begin to read Marx, and try to get to the bottom of his ideas.
Whether the SPGB will be at the forefront, or even that Marx’s ideas will survive, I’m not sure. One thing I am sure of is that ‘materialism’ is dead, and those parties that make a fetish of ‘matter’ are doomed.
Thanks, BD.
