LBird
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If I were to put it in Marx’s terms, ‘matter’ is a fetish, a social product endowed by its producers, with attributes which really belong to its producers themselves. Much the same as sexual fetish by men gives ‘objects’ (eg. high heels) the subjective sexuality of women. So, ‘matter’ supposedly produces ‘mind’, whereas we know that ‘mind’ is social, and is produced and reproduced by humans.
‘Materialists’ fetishise what even Engels described as “Matter as such is a pure creation of thought and an abstraction” (CW 25, p. 533).
What humanity socially creates, humanity can change.
Bijou Drains wrote: “Matt – eventually he will admit how much he loves us. Come on Birdy, let it all out!!!!!”
Well, I’m happy with our relationship, BD!
In the last five-ish years, I’ve literally bought and read hundreds of books, which is why all the arguments built up by socialists and scientists throughout the 20th century are at hand, when we debate.
I can only thank you all (including ALB, who introduced me to Bogdanov) – it’s just a pity the educational process wasn’t a social one, shared by all contributors, even though this is what I set out to do. I’d probably have been a party member for years by now. Still, I haven’t lost out, but it could have been better.
Matthew Culbert wrote: “..and is this not what we have been saying to him all the damn time?“.
No, none of you have been saying this, Matthew. Not one.
Otherwise, you’d all have agreed with Marx’s democratic method, rather than Lenin’s elitist ‘materialism’.
Marx is concerned with how we externalise our nature (Entausserung); Lenin, like all bourgeois elitists, is concerned with contemplating the ‘material’, or a ‘Nature’ which supposedly pre-exists our production of it.
If we are the ‘externalisers’, we can change what we create; if we passively contemplate ‘What Already Exists’, we can’t change it.
That’s why Marx’s revolutionary science requires an active humanity, organised democratically.
Bijou Drains wrote: “Wouldn’t disagree with most of that, however not sure about “purse strings” and “funding”, but assume you mean that in terms of allocation of resources, as opposed to money??????”
Yeah, BD, I was simply replying using the same terms that alan had already used.
All scientific ‘resources’ have to be allocated according to our democratically-expressed wishes. And, to be clear, by ‘resources’ I also mean ‘academic’ or ‘intellectual’ or ‘conscious’ or ‘theoretical’ (take your pick) resources – not just ‘things’ we can touch, like buildings, test tubes, CERN, etc.
ALL the resources that society produces, ALL to be democratically-allocated.
alanjjohnstone wrote: “Don’t the ruling class hold the purse strings to what is studied? As such, don’t they ultimately determine the outcomes of scientific research?
A parallel would be that reforms must be compatible with capitalism or the reforms simply don’t transpire. If science or technology is not in line with the capitalist wishes, they won’t get funding and won’t become a reality.
It is a dichotomy that exists between those who seek to study “pure abstract science” and the need for it to have applications for the capitalists to benefit.
Scientists are as BD suggests, servants of the ruling class.”
Yes, agree with all your points, alan.
Perhaps a simple way to put it is – ‘the science within capitalism is a capitalist science’.
Implicit in what you’ve written, is that ‘science’ within a democratic socialist mode of production would based upon very different ‘purse strings’, ‘outcomes’, ‘compatible with socialism’, ‘democratic wishes’, ‘funding’ and ‘reality’, and an end to the ‘dichotomy’ between ‘pure abstract’ and human ‘need’. And indeed, our ‘scientists’ would become ‘servants’, not of a ruling class, but of humanity.
Wez wrote: “As far as I know a ruling class always derives its political power, in the final analysis, from the ownership and control of the means of production. How could a ‘scientific elite’ achieve this?”
Yes, I think any Marxist would agree with you, on that.
Bourgeois ‘science’ is, of course, part of the means of production. Without ‘thinking’, there would be no ‘production’. Marx always linked ‘theory and practice’. We need to identify which mode of production we Marxists are talking about, to discuss the ‘scientific elite’. The ‘scientific elite’ of any mode are a key part of the ruling class, and help to justify its rule.
Within the capitalist mode of production, the university system, its rules, selection procedures for its elite, teaching ideology, even buildings, are produced to the design of the ruling class. Clearly, any ruling class denies this, and claims its priests/professors are dedicated servants of humanity. Any Marxist knows that the ruling class tells lies.
Workers believing professors of physics, is like serfs believing priests of religion. We have to build our own democratic science, and introduce the elective principle to any positions of power within our science.
Bijou Drains wrote: “L Bird, you appear to be backing away from your previous view that scientific theory should be voted on, can you clarify your current position on this?”
You’re in luck this morning, BD, because I can give you the answer from both ideological positions!
If by ‘science’, you mean the bourgeois social activity that alleges that it has a disinterested elite, trained in their best universities, who are entirely free from ideology and socio-historical changes, who claim that ‘reality’ is just sitting there waiting for this elite to ‘discover’, who produce ‘Truth’, and always have the best interests of the whole of humanity at heart, and won’t have the ignorant, ill-educated masses interfering in their elite activity… then the answer is ‘No voting on scientific theory’.
If by ‘science’, you mean Marx’s socio-historical product, a social activity that should be under the control of the revolutionary proletariat, so that all of humanity can democratically determine its scientific social products (etc.)… then the answer is ‘Voting on scientific theory’.
Marx argued that ‘materialists’ will choose the former, as they are determined to separate society into two – a ‘scientific’ elite and a benighted mass. So, I’ll go with Marx on this question.
I just know which a materialist like you, BD, will choose!
Bijou Drains: “So you are saying that you do not believe that “scientific theory” should be voted on?”
What has “scientific theory” got to do with “the rising and setting of the sun”, which is the example you gave earlier?
This is what I mean by ‘materialists’ building straw men, and destroying their own creation.
What’s the point of taking the time to have a political/philosophical discussion, if you’ve no real interest in politics and philosophy? It baffles me, BD.
Bijou Drains wrote: “For example I have not come across another living person who thinks that we should vote on whether or not the sun rises in the East and sets in the West, or who thinks that if we voted in the contrary the sun would conveniently fit in with our voting patterns and start rising in the west.”
I, too, have never come across another living person who thinks this, either, BD.
Just why ‘materialists’ continue to make up false stories, and then prove them false, and are satisfied with this charade, is a mystery to me. Perhaps the only answer can be that political and philosophical problems seem not to concern them – that is, the problems of social production – since they believe that matter’s own actions will produce their desired ends.
Still, since this stance apparently passes for ‘Marxism’ and ‘Democratic Socialism’ amongst ‘materialists’, it’s no wonder that this ‘Marxism’ and ‘Socialism’ has less and less influence in the 21st century, and the SPGB, just like the Stalinists and the Trots, is dying out.
I’m still unsure why ‘materialists’ are not interested in discovering the real positions of democratic Marxists (and there are many), and then formulating answers to them, in a bid to win the political debate – it seems the obvious way to go for political party.
Lenin’s method of trashing his political opponents, of telling his mostly ignorant supporters that his opponents are dangerous heretics, is a road to nowhere. It’s certainly not the way to build a democratic socialist society.
Finally, I’m sure you mean to be humorous by calling me ‘mad as mince’ and ‘off my rocker’, but it’s no substitute for a political argument.
Thanks, BD.
Given what pgb wrote earlier, I’d be interesting to hear from you what you think will be the organising method for social production within a socialist society, if not democracy.
It is very enlightening to find out more about the SPGB and its notion of socialism. It’s revealing, too, that you think I’m the only Marxist in the world that argues for democracy.
Why is it that the SPGB will spend years defending ‘matter’, ‘material’, ‘science’… but not spend one post defending democracy – and I mean, as all Marxists do, ‘democratic social production’, not ‘parliamentary’ or ‘liberal democracy’.
Why does ‘democracy’ seem so laughable to the SPGB? Are you really all anarchists, who think that any ‘social authority’ (and its power) will simply disappear when ‘socialism comes’? That ‘politics’ will vanish?
ALB wrote: “The other argument is over as it has been admitted that Marx did describe himself as a materialist. Marx did not regard it as a dirty word as had been claimed.”
You’re sliding back into Lenin’s method, ALB – he built straw men of his political enemies supposed ‘admissions’, and altered the meaning of what they did actually say, and proclaimed his ‘final victory’ without actually engaging with his critics, like Bogdanov.
I’m not sure what your political intention is, but we know from history where these tactics lead – pretending an elite knows what the masses can’t, pretending that supporters of workers’ own democratic activity, like Bogdanov, are anti-Marx, pretending that their party is arguing for ‘democratic socialism’, but hiding the fact that they plan to remove democratic controls from the associated producers when ‘socialism’ is achieved.
To put the debate straight, no-one has ever claimed that Marx didn’t describe himself as a materialist. This is an accusation of your own making, and its purpose is to close down the debate, in case your opponents’ arguments start to have some effect.
The key problem is what Marx meant by ‘materialist’. All the evidence shows that it as nothing to do with ‘matter’ (or, ‘materiality’, ‘material conditions’ meaning ‘external impulse on humans’. Marx, as you have said, made claims for a ‘new materialism’, which, as you’ve said, was not the old 18th century ‘passive humanity/active matter’ belief, which required ‘clockwork’ humans. Marx insisted, always, that self-conscious humanity would change its world, and never argued for passively waiting for some unspecified ‘material conditions’ to work their ‘magic’, as Wez put it.
In effect, what Marx meant by ‘material’ was human (as opposed to ‘ideal’, meaning ‘divine’). And his fundamental concept was ‘production’, active, conscious, creation by humanity. This mean that, for workers to understand, now, its easier to tell them that when Marx talked of ‘material conditions’, he was talking about ‘social production’. Thus, where Marx writes ‘material’, we can understand ‘social’. This is nothing to do with ‘stuff an individual can touch’.
This is what the political and philosophical debate is about: ‘What did Marx mean by ‘material’?’.
I’d recommend that any interested should read, for example, George Kline (1988) The Myth of Marx’ Materialism Philosophical Sovietology, Volume 50. This covers the multiple meanings that Marx employed within his writings regarding ‘material’.
ALB wrote: “materialistic-critical“.
The clue’s in the word, ALB.
Not ‘materialistic’ (one strand), not ‘critical’ (the other strand), but a unity, a reconciliation, of the two strands.
‘materialistic-critical’ is simply another way of saying ‘materialistic-idealistic’.
Marx’s ‘materialism’ (‘new’ materialism) requires consciousness. It’s not about ‘matter’, but the criticism of what is, and its replacement by what we determine will be.
Marx was always discussing ‘consciously active humanity’ – not ‘the conscious divine’, not ‘consciousless matter’.
Well, pgb, if you’re going to argue that Marx was not a democrat (in the sense of social production), and that socialism won’t be a democratic society, then that’s a good, open, political position, to espouse and broadcast. I admire your frankness, which escapes the Trots!
But, not surprisingly, I disagree with you. I think that everything Marx wrote reflected his political experience, of his times, of its near contemporary history, especially the French Revolution. Without democratic politics, Marx’s works are meaningless.
On your views, to me they seem ‘anarchistic’, focussing more on ‘individuals’ and their ‘freedoms’, rather than on Marx’s political concerns, social production by the associated producers.
You claim: “a socialist society holds economic resources in common (no-one owns) under democratic control” – but this is contradictory, because ‘in common’ means ‘in common’, not ‘no-one’. That is, the community, the commonwealth, humanity as a whole determines the production and distribution of our collective resources. And if there’s ‘democratic control’, there’s politics – debate, disagreement, argument, voting, and decisions incumbent on all to respect.
In common with all ‘materialists’ (if I’m mischaracterising you, I apologise, but experience here has taught me something about the SPGB’s political ideology, so I’m assuming you share it), you appeal to Engels, rather than Marx, because Engels was an inheritor of a different politics to Marx. This is why Engels (not Marx) talks about ‘the administration of things’ (as if politics will disappear from humanity!). Engels is fruitful source of a ‘Marxism’ which is very different to Marx’s democratic social productionism. Anarchism, individual freedom and ‘the end of politics’ are far removed from democracy, collective social production and the ‘zoon politikon’ of Marx.
Nevertheless, thanks again for being so open. If the SPGB would be so open in its political publications about this future aversion to ‘democracy’, I think you’d attract people more in tune to your political views, and repel Marxists like me, from the start!
This reconciliation, this ‘unity’, is what Marx meant by the ‘new’ in ‘new materialism’.
Those who are already convinced by bourgeois ‘materialism’, simply ignore the prefix ‘new’, and console themselves with the thought that “it’s simply a materialism”.
‘Materialism’ is a ruling class idea, which has a hold on humanity that’s yet to be broken by Marxists.
Unless we socialists have ‘democracy’ as the basis of all our active social production – politics, philosophy, ontology, epistemology, science, logic, physics, maths, etc. – then there will be a social elite, in short, a ruling class.
ALB wrote: “They were keen to refute the religious view that the mind was something special created by god rather than a natural product and function, and endorsed the view that “the brain secretes thought as the liver secretes bile”. Ths might have scored a point, in fact did, against the religious view of mind (accepted by most other “natural scientists” of the time and who didn’t claim to be materialists; far from it) but was clearly inadequate as it offered no explanation of the content of thoughts or how these arose.”
1. idealism/religion – god creates mind;
2. materialism/bourgeois science – brain creates mind;
3. idealism-materialism/Marx’s revolutionary science – humans create mind.The key point, ALB, is that there are not simply two options, as Engels argued, battling against each other, in an eternal war – idealism versus materialism, good v. evil, white v. black, cowboys v. indians, etc.
Marx introduced a reconciliation of the two, and created social productionism, within which both the ‘ideal’ and the ‘material’ are represented, in which human conscious activity, social production, is the ontological basis – not active mind, nor passive matter, but ‘creative humanity’. And, since we are the creators, we can change our creation. Any ‘nature’ we are confronted with, is our creation. Any ‘nature’ outside of our conscious activity is, to quote Marx, ‘a nothing for us’.
