LBird
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Link to SPGB review of ‘Wild Ride’ wrote: “She sees the ‘ride’, even if in many ways smoke and mirrors, as broadly progressive in the sense of bringing alleviation to poverty in China and, while the system remains politically authoritarian, of being less nakedly repressive than the previous era.” [my bold]
Perhaps this displays the difference between the utilisation of the ‘Tool market’ (alleviation of poverty) and the utilisation of the ‘Free market’ (increasing of poverty).
I think that the answers in this thread to my comparison of ‘Tool’ versus ‘Free’ have confirmed my opinion that this is a useful way of explaining to workers the developments within China over the last three/four decades.
Using explanations that capture the essence of an issue is the way forward for developing workers’ understanding of their world.
That is the purpose of the ‘Tool Market’ / ‘Free Market’ model.
Thomas More wrote: “This new order still pays lip service to Mao and is a mixture of state-capitalism and private capitalism.”
But surely it was also ‘a mixture of state-capitalism and private capitalism’ after 1949? And indeed before?
So, what’s changed?
Thomas More wrote: “China has changed, but within capitalism, just as European countries have changed since the 1950s.”
Now, there’s a basis for a discussion. Thank you, Thomas.
So, what sort of ‘capitalism’ did China have, before the ‘change’, and what sort of ‘capitalism’ does it have now, after the ‘change’?
Or, is the ‘change’ superficial, and it hasn’t really ‘changed’? [perhaps twc’s position?]
Isn’t a good way of capturing this ‘change’, to use the notion of ‘Tool Market’? As opposed to ‘Free Market’, or non-Capitalist Maoism, or ‘Socialism with non-Chinese characteristics’ (take your pick of ‘pre-change’ notion)?
twc wrote: “No. It’s the same old capitalist market with the same old best-laid social plans, everywhere and always, governed by the same old rules.”
And yet, to quote one thinker, “Men make history”.
Ahistorical certainty is of no use to workers wanting to discuss issues and develop their own understanding.
Whatever happened to the notion of ‘change’?
China has certainly changed in the last few decades.
And please, let’s not get into an exchange based upon clownish “Oh, no, it hasn’t!”, because I, for one, am not interested.
The best way of conceptualising the difference between US/UK and China, is by examining the meaning of ‘market’.
The US/UK try to utilise a ‘Free Market’, but China utilises a ‘Tool Market’.
The purpose of the former is ‘profit’ for an exploiting class, whereas the purpose of the latter is ‘growth’ for a nation.
Of course, any Marxist communist knows that ‘nation’ is also a tool for an exploiting class, but it raises the issue of whether political control of an economy can be maintained to benefit all classes within a nation (differentially, of course), or whether political ‘interference’ in ‘the market’ must eventually collapse capitalism.
Can the Chinese ruling class succeed with their version of ‘Communism with Chinese Characteristics’, or is it simply a doomed ‘State Capitalism’?
The ‘Tool Market’ appears to be overtaking the ‘Free Market’ as the ideological basis of the 21st century.
In answer to the thread title:
No, the sole criterion for testing truth is, according to Marx, theory and practice.
McDonald wrote “Democracy needs centralised organisation…”
Yes, but are you opposing ‘democracy’ to ‘centralised’? ie. the ‘centre’ is free from democratic control?
Surely any body with power under socialism/communism would be not only elected, but those elected would be ‘delegates’, not ‘representatives’?
So, the ‘centralised organisation’ would do as it is told by the electors. If the decisions of the ‘centralised organisation’ were opposed by the majority, the delegates would be removed.
Thus, ‘centralised organisation needs democracy’, to re-work your statement.
I think that we actually agree, McDonald, rather than disagree.
That is, we DEFINE ‘effective’ to mean ‘effective for the working class population and society’.
Ditto for ‘efficient’.
There is no elite minority who can determine ‘effective for us’ or ‘efficient for us’.
We are the democratic determiners.
This is as true in politics as in physics.
McDonald wrote: “efficiency … over … effectiveness”
Both of these concepts are socially (and therefore politically) constructed entities.
Especially, given our current scientific ideology regarding the mathematisation of physics, ‘efficiency’ is not a number, or a process ‘in-itself’, that can be simply ‘read’ as a ‘truth’ by an elite minority, but something of which we must ask ‘efficient for whom?’.
Only democratic debate can determine what is ‘efficient for whom’. Ditto for ‘effective for whom’.
No group of elite physicists can determine these issues for us.
Socialism/Communism means the democratic production of our world, of a ‘world for us’.
DJP’s link :”“If there’s a single ideal that guides the materialist Left, it isn’t a moral ideal. It is an aspiration to strengthen our grasp of how the world works…”.
I know DJP won’t welcome my intervention, but the above is nothing to do with Marx’s ‘social productionism’ (or, ‘idealism-materialism’).
Marx argues that we are the producers of our world, and thus we can change our product.
This social activity of course includes notions of ‘morality’. His method of ‘social theory and practice’ requires both plans and activity.
This must of course be a democratically controlled social production.The ‘materialist left’ are the followers of Engels (who misunderstood Marx), Kautsky, Plekhanov and Lenin. This political and ideological trend emerged prior to the foundation of the SPGB, and unfortunately the SPGB doesn’t seem to realise this.
Merely ‘grasping how the world works’ is 18th century materialism, the passivity of which Marx opposed.
When any supporter of this ‘materialist Left’ is asked about ‘democratic conscious activity’, they refuse to accept ‘democracy’, and retain the power to organise the production of our world to an elite. Marx fundamentally opposed this elitism, for example in his Theses on Feuerbach.
Wez wrote: “Thanks to LBird (and I don’t often get to say that) I have revisited the debate concerning the nature of science and in the absence of any agreed definition…”
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Your thanks duly noted.I’ve certain tried for years to promote a “debate concerning the nature of science”, especially about its contemporary ‘elite’ nature, and the requirement for a democratic input to any ‘revolutionary science’ that Marx argued for, but, as you say, there is still an “absence of any agreed definition”, not just amongst ‘scientists’ themselves, but also amongst supposedly ‘democratic socialists’.
I think that this debate would require some clarification prior to evaluating Freud’s theories.
Lew wrote:
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“L Bird wrote:
‘Clearly, I believe that Marx argued for a ‘revolutionary science’In the past I have drawn attention to Bird’s inability to cite evidence. Here yet again he is using quotation marks to suggest he is quoting Marx.”
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Marx wrote: “From this moment, science, which is a product of the historical movement, has associated itself consciously with it, has ceased to be doctrinaire and has become revolutionary.”https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/subject/quotes/index.htm
Bijou Drains wrote:
“Who knows, L Bird might even arrange a vote about it.”
Nah, not on this site, mate.
They’re all politically, philosophically, ideologically and methodologically, opposed to democracy!Wez wrote: “LBird – I’m a big fan of Feyerabend so I would be interested in what he has to say about Popper’s Falsifiability theory.”
Preface, and rest of text of book:
Hope this helps.
