LBird
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Brian wrote:In order to bolster your hypothesis you make the claim that Marx puts theory first…
I'm not sure where you're going with this, Brian.Don't you agree that 'Marx puts theory first'? I thought that that claim was uncontroversial.
twc wrote:If you aren’t inclined to critique my exposure of the hitherto-unnoticed⁴ “objectivity-of-social-practice” thread running through Marx’s—not Engels’s—Theses on Feuerbach, then you might favour us by solving a much simpler problem that we ordinary folks can only accomplish daily by taking our apprehension of sensuous and practical activity as objective:Unlike the rest of us, you do not take our sensuously perceived shoes and shoelaces as objective sensuousness.Unlike the rest of us, you do not take our shoelace-tying practice as objective practice.How then, unlike the rest of us, do you—an anti-objective social constructionist—manage to anti-objectively tie anti-objective shoelaces on anti-objective shoes by anti-objective practice, unless your anti-objective conceptions of anti-shoes, anti-shoelaces, anti-shoelace-tying, and the anti-world in which this anti-objective mystery is anti-objectively acted out are actually objective in the first place—and are all actually conceived by you to be objective?.This is just 'individualist' nonsense, and nothing whatsoever to do with 'science' and the production of 'knowledge'.According to this method, 'tying one's shoes' allows both the shoes and laces to tell us what they are called, how to manufacture them, the molecular constituency of them, how to lace our shoes, etc. etc.'Shoes, laces and their tying' are social activities, in their naming, production, learning, and chemistry.Unless you're really saying that a native Australian Aborigine of 5000 years ago would, without a moment's hesitation when presented with 21st century polished leather shoes, know the names of their constituents, be able to knock up a pair, tie them immediately from intuition, and give us a breakdown of their molecular form…Do us a favour, twc… go and read some Marx and Engels. Even Fred would have no time for your asocial, ahistoric, bourgeois individualism of 'biological senses'.
The usual Stalinist approach, eh, twc? Play the man not the ball. Smear the person's character, rather than answer their questions.'Duplicitous', 'playing a dirty game'… oh dear!Do you froth at the mouth, too, when compiling your diatribes against me?I'm so confident of my arguments that I give links to people who disagree with me, to encourage wider reading, whereas you never engage in the pros and cons of positions, but just fulminate at my 'devious' character.You would do well to read what I actually write, twc, like some comrades obviously do.And wipe your mouth.Moderator1 2nd Warning: 7. You are free to express your views candidly and forcefully provided you remain civil. Do not use the forums to send abuse, threats, personal insults or attacks, or purposely inflammatory remarks (trolling). Do not respond to such messages.
Brian wrote:And your democracy in science derives from your theory and practice hypothesis, which not many agree with.Yeah, just who was the thinker who pushed that 'theory and practice hypothesis, which not many [here] agree with'?
For anyone who's interested in these issues, of "Engels versus Marx", reading this from John Rees of the SWP will prove enlightening. He makes a very good opening, outlining the criticisms and arguments that I've also made of Engels, but then, in contrast to me, goes on to defend the unity of "Marx-Engels".http://www.marxists.org/history/etol/writers/rees-j/1994/xx/engels.htmReading this might provide some good arguments for those who disagree with me; but perhaps they'll then end up following Rees' politics, too!
I agree with much of what you say, mcolome1. I'm always attacking academics, not least the idiot Piketty, and agree that both Marx and Engels made mistakes. We even agree that workers need class consciousness and 'advanced sociological and anthropological knowledge'.But this is our key difference:
mcolome1 wrote:I do not think you understood what I wrote,or what I was trying to express, or probably you do not know Leninism pretty well. I will repeat again: Lenin did not adopt his concept of the vanguard party, and the concept of the cadres from Engels, he adopted it from the Second International, that conception came after Engels, he did not have an elite mentalityI do understand what you're writing, and you're expressing it well. The problem is, I disagree about your view of Engels and his philosophy of nature. It was not only Lenin, but also the Second International in its entirety, that looked to Engels for guidance on these matters. Marx didn't write much on the issue of science/ontology/epistemology, and what he did write wasn't published until well after the Russian Revolution of 1917. So, the nature of 'Marxism' for those who adopted it prior to the publication of the Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts was, in fact, 'Engelsism'.This is what we have to deal with. Much of what passes, even today, as 'Marxism', is actually 'Engelsism'. We can see that on this very thread. Marx was an 'idealist-materialist' (if you can accept that terminology as it refers to the concepts used in the Theses on Feuerbach), not a 'materialist'. Engels' 'materialism' was a throwback to before the Theses, and ditched the insights Marx provided, into the 'active side' of humanity. Rocks do not talk to humans. Humans ask questions of rocks.The outcome of this philosophising, though, is fundamentally about our politics.If we accept that 'rocks talk to us' (materialism/physicalism), then those who claim to be able to hear the rocks are a separate minority from society, because humans can't hear rocks. The minority lie to us, whether in science or politics. Leninists are the scientists of society. Both are an unelected elite, who maintain their power by pretending to know something that the masses don't.Engels 19th century positivist understanding of science is responsible for this erroneous basis to 'Marxism'.As I keep saying, for the worker confused by these issues, they simply have to ask 'Do you agree with democratic controls on all of your activities? The academic, elite scientist will answer 'No!', and the cadre, elite Leninist will answer 'No!'. This is actually the answer on this thread from a number of posters, who are members of the SPGB: 'No to workers' democracy in science'.I'm a Communist and Marxist, mcolome1, and believe that the proletariat can come to consciousness of all its activities, political, economic, social, cultural, ideological, scientific, and must employ democratic methods in all of these areas.Those who look to Engels' philosophy of science cannot do this. This thread proves that.Engels' philosophy is not a suitable basis for the SPGB's strategy of democracy. Marx's radical democracy is.
Vin Maratty wrote:LBird wrote:I fundamentally disagree with you here, comrade.We do need the proletariat to produce its own intellectuals, and it needs to be a mass movement, too. Workers need to develop as thoereticians…[my completion of quote] Elite?
No, just selection, driven by your theory, rather than 'objective facts'.
mcolome1 wrote:Vladimir Lenin used certain conception of Frederick Engels, but it does not mean that Engels was completely wrong like Lenin was, and he did not distort socialism like Lenin did, therefore, I do not see the relationship between Leninism/ Bolshevism and the Socialist Party.I have my personal critiques against Engels, but I do not think that he was a proto-Leninist, personally, I am grateful toward the works of Engels because by reading him I was able to get into the workers movement, and I was able to have in my hands volume 2 and 3 of Capital which were edited by him.I'm not criticising Engels as a historian, as good friend of Marx, as an editor or as a revolutionary. I admire him in those aspects. But I've said this before, to other comrades who seem to think that any criticism of Engels (or, indeed, Marx) is beyond the pale. Well, it isn't, if we profess to be critical thinkers.I'm criticising Engels as a shit philosopher, whose complete nonsense about 'materialism' and 'dialectics in nature' gave politicians like Lenin the fig-leaf of philosophical cover for their anti-proletarian ideology, that only a select few of cadre can come to class consciousness. It merely reflects 19th century elite thinking, that bourgeois academics are required to do the thinking for humanity, and the rest of us are too dumb to run our world. This infected both politics and science.
mcolome1 wrote:We do not need intellectualism in the socialist movement, that is an old petty bourgeois conception that I went theoreticians many years ago, surrounded by a bunch of theoreticians, what we need is a simple socialist theory to be inserted in our heads in order to overthrow capitalism, and we are not going to overthrow capitalism pretending to know more than anybody else.I fundamentally disagree with you here, comrade.We do need the proletariat to produce its own intellectuals, and it needs to be a mass movement, too. Workers need to develop as thoereticians, and the last thing we need is 'a simple socialist theory inserted in our heads'. We need our class to produce more and more critical thinkers, in order to combat the bourgeoisie's academics, like Piketty, who will only derail our movement. I'm all for simplifying much of Marx's output, in order to generate some understanding and thus discussion, but building Communism will never be 'simple'.And we do need to 'know more than anybody else'. If we don't believe that 'we know best', and draw confidence from that knowledge, then we are beaten before we begin. We have to attract the best thinkers in our society, both proletarian and bourgeois, to undermind the ruling class at its heart. This can't be done by 'simple socialist theory', but only by educated, confident, critical workers, determined to run their own world.
Vin Maratty wrote:Your last post has been said by you a hundred times. You really do need to change the record, LBird. Why not engage with what is being said to you instead of repeating yourself with the same old insult and accusations that we are all Ignorant Stalinists or Leninists.I can, and will, keep saying it, too.Particularly since no-one in the SPGB seems to be able to argue a sustainable position which opposes it. Especially not you.It's simple, Vin. The nonsense that twc, DJP, you and others are putting forward is of no use for the workers' movement, because the political ideology based upon that Engelsian philosophy is Leninism.The simplest of tests is to ask "who determines 'truth'?".The religious and idealists say 'god'.The Engelsian-Leninists and materialists say 'objective reality' (but they won't disclose their method for accessing this 'objective truth').The Marxists and 'idealist-materialists' say 'the proletariat'.That's what Marx's Theses on Feuerbach was all about.I can clearly say that 'democratic methods' should be used by humanity for all of its social activities, including science, but none of you can say that.You're all bluffers about workers' power and Socialism.Half of you are bourgeois individualists, and the other half are crypto-Leninists.At least there is some hope, though, from those who aren't posting in opposition to me, and are reading the arguments carefully, as I know some are.
I've said this before, twc, and I'll say it again.It's a shame that you won't engage in discussion, as opposed to just blindly repeating Engelsianism.
twc wrote:The Theses on Feuerbach are Marx’s final severance, his parting of the ways, with subjective philosophical thought.They record Marx’s discovery of how society actually comes to comprehend objective truth.This is an assertion which does not stand up to any examination.If you disagree with my characterisation of Critical Realism as being (a) very close to Marx's own method, and which helps us to explain 'value' to workers; and (b) a potential source, when combined with a Communist ideology, of a unified scientific method that Marx sought, then why not engage with me?Finally, my overall philosophical approach, with its intimate emphasis on proletarian democracy being necessary for all human activity (political, economic and scientific), is the one more suited to the supposed views of the SPGB.In constrast, your Engelsianism, with its 19th century emphasis on 'objective truth', is a philosophy more suited to the Leninist conception of workers' consciousness, and the need for a cadre party and central committee, who pretend to have access to 'objective reality', whilst the masses clearly don't, and so is fundamentally undemocratic.
I’d like to give an example of this method of Critical Realism being employed by humans in trying to understand and explain both physical and social phenomena. This is also part of an attempt to realise Marx’s hope for a unified scientific method.Don’t forget, this method is Marx’s method of ‘theory and practice’ upon a world that really exists outside of the enquirer, and so we have to declare our theory first, if we are to claim that it’s a scientific method.Theories consist of two parts: an ontology (what humans claim ‘being’ is; remember, the ‘facts’ do not talk to humans) which cannot be disproved empirically (an ontology, or metaphysics, is similar to Lakatos’ ‘hard core’ of a ‘research programme’ and consists of definitions, axioms and assumptions, which pre-exist the scientific enquiry, and inescapably exist prior to ‘practice’), and a hypothesis (which is the part of theory to be tested and proved by practice, and so can be refuted empirically). Various ontologies are a part of creative human thinking, and are a product of societies.So, all humans employ theory (their ontology, often chosen for non-scientific reasons, and a discipline-based hypothesis) to guide their research and select their results. The 19th century positivists, 20th century empiricists, and today’s physicalists, lie when they say they do not have a prior ontology. We Communists must insist that Marx was correct to talk of ‘theory and practice’. Those who argue for ‘practice and theory’ are ideological inductivists, who conceal their ‘theory’, and then pretend (often to themselves) to have stumbled upon ‘theory’ in amongst their ‘empirical facts’, which they pretend to have discovered ‘objectively’. This is the mythical ‘discovery science’ excoriated by Pannekoek.So, the ontology of CR consists of components, structures, levels and emergent properties, and the belief that ‘ideas’ and ‘material’ have the same status (that is, neither is the basis of the other). These comprise the ontology of CR, and can’t be disproved empirically. They are human assumptions which exist prior to the scientific process of enquiry. They are human axioms about ‘what exists’.As an example of the CR approach to the ‘physical’, we can take the analogy of firefighting with either atoms (components, elements) or molecules (structures, compounds). [For those comrades who are not familiar with chemistry, water is nothing more than hydrogen and oxygen]. If the firefighters place water on a fire, it is extinguished. But if they place hydrogen and oxygen, in their raw, separated state, on the fire, then an explosion results.Here we have components which if put together in a specific relational structure produce an emergent property. That is, hydrogen and oxygen chemically combined produce ‘wetness’, which extinguishes fire. This ‘wetness’ does not exist at the level of the component elements hydrogen or oxygen, but emerges at the structural level of molecules of water. At the component level, hydrogen and oxygen are explosive, not wet.The obvious example of the CR approach to the ‘social’ is Marx’s explanation of ‘value’. If we take a tin of beans as an example of a commodity, it is clear that ‘value’ does not exist in the tin of beans. It’s not included amongst the list of ingredients on the label, and that’s because ‘value’ is not an ingredient of either beans or tin cans. But, just like with regarding chemical components as part of a ‘water structure’, if the tin is observed as part of the structure of capitalism, then we can perceive the social relationships between all of the commodities (tins of beans and every other useful thing) as producing ‘capitalism’. And just as water has emergent properties like ‘wetness’ which has the power to put out fires, so capitalism has emergent properties like ‘value’ which has the power to compel human individuals to act in ways detrimental to themselves, whether capitalists or workers.
Marx, Capital I, p. 739, wrote:But, so far as he is personified capital, it is not values in use and the enjoyment of them. but exchange-value and its augmentation, that spur him into action. Fanatically bent on making value expand itself, he ruthlessly forces the human race to produce for production’s sake; he thus forces the development of the productive powers of society, and creates those material conditions, which alone can form the real basis of a higher form of society, a society in which the full and free development of every individual forms the ruling principle. Only as personified capital is the capitalist respectable. As such, he shares with the miser the passion for wealth as wealth. But that which in the miser is a mere idiosyncrasy, is, in the capitalist, the effect of the social mechanism, of which he is but one of the wheels. Moreover, the development of capitalist production makes it constantly necessary to keep increasing the amount of the capital laid out in a given industrial undertaking, and competition makes the immanent laws of capitalist production to be felt by each individual capitalist, as external coercive laws. It compels him to keep constantly extending his capital, in order to preserve it…[my bold]https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1867-c1/ch24.htm#S3Capitalism cannot be understood at the level of components (commodities, individuals), but only at the structural level (socio-economics, or Political Economy). And whereas the emergent property of ‘wetness’ can have beneficial powers for humans, like putting out fires or quenching our thirst (although it can also drown us!), the emergent property of ‘value’ is entirely detrimental to humanity. It has no redeeming features. It’s not too rhetorical to call value a ‘social acid’, so that rather than having some constructive features, it is entirely destructive.Neither Hayek, Keynes nor Piketty can observe ‘value’ because their choice of ideology (ie. a theory comprising ontology and method) doesn’t allow them to ‘see’ it. But we do have an ideology which does: Marx’s scientific method of theory and practice, combined with his Communism.It’s my opinion that Critical Realism combined with Communism gives us the unified scientific method that Marx argued was possible. It is the humanising of nature.Communism without Critical Realism has to erroneously rely on Engels’ mistaken beliefs about ‘dialectical’ nature and unexamined 19th century positivism. Critical Realism without Communism remains a plaything of liberals and radicals, who try to keep the separation of physical nature from social humanity. But Marxism can combine both Communism and Critical Realism (which is simply a synonym for Marx’s ‘theory and practice’, and reflects his double-barrelled usage of ‘material’ and ‘history’) into a proletarian science to help workers to understand and explain their world (physical and social) in the process of building for Communism. This unified science will then form the basis of human science after we get rid of capitalism.
Karl Marx, EPM, CW3 pp. 303-4, wrote:History itself is a real part of natural history – of nature developing into [hu]man[ity]. Natural science will in time incorporate into itself the science of [hu]man[ity], just as the science of [hu]man[ity] will incorporate into itself natural science: there will be one science.https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1844/manuscripts/comm.htm
Though Harman must be read critically, I think this text of his is very useful for identifying our problem (if not for helping us to solve it, because Harman was a Leninist).
Chris Harman (blog extract) wrote:From: Philosophy and Revolution, ISJ 21 (1983)http://chrisharman.blogspot.co.uk/2009/10/philosophy-and-revolution.htmlMarx argued in the Theses on Feuerbach that philosophy before him divided into two main streams.One was materialist, in the sense of recognising a world external to human sensation and thought. But it soon ran into a problem: how can we test the validity of our impressions of the world, since all our contact with the world is through these impressions?Some materialist philosophers (eg Locke) attempted to make a distinction between some impressions of the world which 'resembled' external reality, and others that didn't. But the procedure was bound to be very arbitrary and to tend to accept as 'real' that which fitted in with current ideology. It certainly proved no basis for developing a scientific perspective which challenged existing preconceptions. Some philosophers (eg Hume) drew the conclusion that we could know nothing with certainty, and what we thought of as truth was really a product of our own psychological disposition. Still others (eg Berkeley) reached back to an essentially religious conception to explain knowledge: it was God who organised our perceptions.The 'correspondence' theory of truth of the materialists seemed to work so long as no one questioned the common sense interpretations of human impressions that prevailed in existing society. The moment anyone started making critical judgements, it fell apart, giving way to idealism or scepticism.The second philosophical tendency was that of 'idealism'. The philosophers in this tradition insisted that the key to truth lay with human reasoning. Any idea we could deduce from certain basic principles was true; any idea we could not was false. The logical coherence of our ideas was the test of their truth, not any one-to-one correspondence with reality.This did not mean these philosophers denied the existence of the external world. It did mean, however, they tended to see the external world itself as in some way produced by (or corresponding to) thought (or, at least, the valuable elements in the external world as produced by thought). It was ideas (whether human or of God) which underlay what we think of as the impressions of material things.But this view led to all sorts of problems. As the German philosopher Kant showed, from simple 'first principles', it was quite easy to deduce quite opposed notions (what he called 'antinomies'). The search for coherence in the realm of ideas alone led you straight into contradiction.In the Theses on Feuerbach Marx suggests that the materialist 'correspondence' theory of truth and the idealist 'coherence' theory both fail because they are one sided.The materialist view correctly sees that human beings are part of the material world. But it fails to work out any criteria for judging how correct our knowledge of that world is. This is because it conceives of our relation to it as purely passive, contemplative. Impressions of the world around us hit us, and our brains have somehow to make sense of them.Idealism, by contrast, falls down because it tends to deny the independent existence of the external world. But it does have one advantage over traditional materialism. It sees the role of the human mind as active – as intervening in reality.Marx argued that for materialism to overcome its problems, it has to integrate this element of activity into its own ideas. It has to conceive of humanity's relationship with the world not as contemplative, but as practical.It is because human beings are engaged in transforming the world in practice that they can come to grasp which ideas about it are true and which false. Above all, it is the revolutionary activity of a class which enables it to approach the truth, because in making a practical challenge to all of existing reality it is testing all ideas about existing reality. As Marx put it:"The question whether objective truth can be attributed to human thinking is not a question of theory but a practical question. Man must prove the truth, ie the reality and power, the this-worldliness of his thinking, in practice. The dispute over the reality and non-reality of thinking which is isolated from practice is a purely scholastic question… All social life is essentially practical. All mysteries which lead theory into mysticism find their rational practical solution in human practice and in the comprehension of this practice."Althusser will have none of this. He downgrades the importance of the Theses on Feuerbach. They were produced, he claims, during the 'break', before Marx got his ideas clear. As a result they are 'riddles'. The mature Marx, he insists, did not see truth as based in revolutionary practice, but in 'theoretical practice', something done by scientists according to their own procedures. But this leads the Althusserian school into all the problems classically associated with philosophy. Althusser's starting point is that of a 'contemplative materialist', with a correspondence theory of truth. But he then has to find some criteria for distinguishing 'true' from 'false' impressions. 'Theory' (with a capital T, remember), he says, will provide the answer. This, he says, enables us to process existing notions of the world and develop more advanced ones. Theory comes to validate itself.But this merely shifts the question from being about how you distinguish a true impression from a false one, into how you distinguish a true theory from a false one. We are back in the old problem of all idealist 'coherence' theories of truth – why should one view of the world developed logically out of first principles be better than another developed in the same way?It is a very short step from Althusser to the view that there are many, different 'theoretical discourses' (a Marxist, a feminist, a psychoanalytical, etc) all equally valid – or even to the views adopted by some ex-Althusserians in France, who deny the validity of any theory. By abandoning the Theses on Feuerbach, Althusser slides down the slope from materialism through idealism to complete subjectivism![my bold]The key step which neither Harman nor other so-called ‘Marxists’ (really, they are Leninists in politics) make is to provide a measure of ‘better’ or ‘valid’ which overcomes these problems besetting both ‘materialism’ and ‘idealism’. That is, overcomes the problem without appealing either to elites in science or to elites in politics to provide the measure or judgement of ‘better’ or ‘valid’.The ‘measure’ for the proletariat is its own opinions (not the opinions of academics or central committees).Proletarian democracy has to determine ‘better’ and ‘valid’ by its own ‘theory and practice’ within both science and politics, and this ‘democratic and unified scientific method’ must provide the basis for a future Communist society.
Marx wrote:All mysteries which lead theory into mysticism find their rational practical solution in human practice and in the comprehension of this practice.[my bold]For us Communists, ‘human practice’ is always social, and its ‘comprehension’ is always social. ‘Rational Practice’ (theory and practice) can only be determined socially by the proletariat itself, collectively and democratically.
YMS wrote:Now, I'd be a lot happier (per he science debate) if people used 'culture' where 'ideology' is often used. To say that knowledge is cultural, and that we have inevitable cultural biases, to my mind, avoids the perjorative sense of ideology, and in fact emphasisies the entirely antural state of culture…I'm only going to make a short comment on this thread, because what I'm about to say has been said often enough on the 'science' thread.If one accept 'cultural bias', then one is fooling oneself by avoiding the use of 'ideology'.Culture is ideological, not 'natural' (which is a meaningless statement once one accepts culture is a human product, and thus variable). 'Natural' is always used by conservatives to emphasise the status quo.Being 'pejorative' about human knowledge is no more than 'coming to consciousness'.Humans produce distorted knowledge.To argue otherwise necessitates arguing for a 'copy theory of knowledge', that we are at one with 'nature'.As for your comments about 'socialism', it's totally ahistorical and idealistic. So much for your alleged 'materialism'.That's it, on this thread.
YMS wrote:Well, the truth sucks, don't it? I don't exist, the meatbot does.Where did you dig this little gem of 'truth' up from, YMS?Don't bother to answer, it's a rhetorical question. As I said:
LBird wrote:Mind you, none of this discussion, for you, is really about the problems of 'Science for Communists', is it?
