[LBird]

Vin Maratty wrote:

It is not 'crass mechanistic' to say that a material brain is required for thinking with.

No-one is arguing that it isn't required, Vin.

VM wrote:

If you wish to ignore things you have no answer for…..

This is starting to border on the childish, now.What I am I supposed to say back? Nah, nah, na-nah, nah…The answers that I've been giving are from the perspective of critical realism, not physicalism.The fact that you won't acknowledge or discuss your perspective is not my fault.

[LBird]

Vin Maratty wrote:

You are now backtracking on what you said earlier  LBird wrote: 'the inseparability of ideas and material conditions'. LBird wrote:You're right, 'idealism-materialism' doesn't mean the 'primacy of ideas over material conditions'. As you say, it's 'a false dichotomy'.   

As long as you're happy that I'm 'backtracking', then you're satisfied. That's OK by me, Vin.

[LBird]

DJP wrote:

LBird wrote:

Theory and practice is not 'materialist', but 'idealist-materialist'.

And that's where you're plainly wrong.Materialism entails that all things including 'theory and practice' are material.I think the problem with this discussion is that we are using the same terms to mean different things….

But this is what I keep telling you, DJP!I'm 'plainly wrong' from the 'materialist/physicalist' perspective! Of course I am. But I'm not a 'materialist/physicalist'. I'm a 'critical realist'. So, I'm not 'plainly wrong' from that perspective.Unless we discuss the differences between 'materialism' and 'critical realism', and then compare the results to Marx's work, we can't advance the discussion.The real problem seems to be that DJP and Vin don't even accept that they're employing a theory, but are merely just 'dealing with the Truth'. So, we can't resolve our differences, not even on the level of understanding those differences (rather than coming to any agreement, which is impossible).

[LBird]

Vin Maratty wrote:

Humans can create communism where the material conditions exist.

[my bold]To me, Vin, this 'potential' clashes with:

VM wrote:

I suggest the answer is a materialist one

Why reduce 'can' to 'material'?If you'd written 'must', then the answer would simply be a 'materialist one'.The 'can' doubt destroys the logic of the 'materialist' answer.Theory and practice is not 'materialist', but 'idealist-materialist'.Any formulation that reduces to 'material' has lost Marx's advances made in the Theses on Feuerbach.I'm not a 'materialist', Vin, and I don't think that the answer is a 'materialist one'.

[LBird]

robbo203 wrote:

The point Im getting at is that we should move away from this kind of crass mechanistic notion that material conditions "produce" ideas which the base-superstructure model often, unfortunately, seems to encourage. Actually this is a form of mysticism. Ideas are held to be latent in the mysterious workings of the universe and become manifest in its unfolding. This is to strip history of any kind of creative aspect and reduce us to the role of passive onlookers.

This is the key philosophic point, robbo, that all of us 'non-materialists' are making.One of the consequences of adopting this 'active and creative human' perspective, however, is to undermine the model of science we are all taught in school, that 'science produces the Truth of material reality'.

robbo203 wrote:

A more useful model of historical materialism which acknowleges that ideas do have an influence and an internal development of their own is the one outlined by Marx when he pointed out that men make their own history but not under conditions of their own making. This posits the idea of material conditions as a constraint rather than a determinant.

Perhaps we should also see 'material conditions' also as developing potential, as well as constraint. Of course, the notion of 'material conditions' determining human actions is the 19th century positivism and materialism, erroneously embraced by Engels.The materialists never answer how Communism is possible (ie. the self-emancipation of the proletariat) if material conditions determine human actions.Humans must consciously create Communism. We can't leave it to 'the rocks' to instruct us.

[LBird]

The essential difference between our ways of understanding 'value', DJP, is an ideological one.You use 'physicalism', whereas I use 'critical realism'.IMO, Marx's claim that 'value does not contain matter' is more explicable by critical realism, than by physicalism.Since I've already given some explanation of some concepts in CR, and some further reading of texts, for any comrades that are interested in following up this discussion, I'll leave it at that.

[LBird]

DJP wrote:

If you think physicalism is unable to deal with relations you are wrong.

Surely you mean Marx is wrong?

Marx, Capital, wrote:

The value of commodities is the very opposite of the coarse materiality of their substance, not an atom of matter enters into its composition.

[my bold]https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1867-c1/ch01.htm#S1

[LBird]

Marx, Capital, wrote:

The value of commodities is the very opposite of the coarse materiality of their substance, not an atom of matter enters into its composition.

[my bold]https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1867-c1/ch01.htm#S1It doesn't seem as if we're going to get to the bottom of Marx's quote, on this thread, now.Perhaps he was talking out of his arse, and value is material (whether cloth, 'grey', or titchy bits of the sun…).

[LBird]

Young Master Smeet wrote:

Lbird,what I wrote was a (slightly edited for context) quote from Marx.  "Substance" and "Material" (Materiatur)are his words.http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1867-c1/appendix.htm

Yes, but I wasn't asking for a Marx quote. I can read him just as well as you.I was asking you which ideology you use to understand 'value'.That is, what you think.If it's 'materialism' (or one of its synonyms) that OK by me.Then we can progress the thread, because I'm not a 'materialist' (or one of its synonyms).Do you ever have the feeling you're going round in circles?

[LBird]

Young Master Smeet wrote:

With regard to value, what I think is that only through a general character does the value-form correspond to the concept of value. The value-form had to be a form in which commodities appear for one another as a mere jelly of undifferentiated, homogenous human labour, i.e. as expressions in the form of things of the same labour-substance. For they are all material expressions of the same labour, of the labour contained in the linen or as the same material expression of labour, namely as linen. Thus they are qualitatively equated.

This hardly answers my question, YMS. Which was:

LBird wrote:

So, you agree, YMS, that 'value' contains no matter, is not in the 'grey matter' of individuals (not even in one synapse of one head, never mind in all 7 billion), and is a real mechanism (but not physical) that causes our problems.

You still seem to be clinging to a 'materialist/physicalist' viewpoint. That's OK if you are, but I just can't understand why you don't say so.For Marx, there is no 'matter' in 'value'. I agree with Marx. It is not a 'material expression'.I'm beginning to have the sinking feeling that my words are not having any affect after all, notwithstanding what I wrote earlier.Why can't comrades see that there are alternative ideologies being used to understand 'value', and discuss their differences, rather than pretend it's all the same mish-mash of 'materialism/physicalism/realism'.

[LBird]

DJP wrote:

LBird wrote:

So, you agree, YMS, that 'value' contains no matter, is not in the 'grey matter' of individuals (not even in one synapse of one head, never mind in all 7 billion), and is a real mechanism (but not physical) that causes our problems?

Are you talking about 'value' the concept or 'value' the social relation?

The social relation existed before the concept was dreamt up. I'm talking about the causal mechanism that destroys the lives of humans.Value existed before Marx identified it. Value is nothing to do with 'grey matter'. Capitalism ruined humans prior to 1867.

[LBird]

Young Master Smeet wrote:

LBird wrote:

Well, perhaps I've succeeded (at last!) in pointing out to you the difference between a 'realist' and a 'physicalist' view of nature.It's your choice, comrade, which ideology you want to employ to help you to understand the world (physical and social).Leaving aside the substantive issue of 'value', etc. and how we understand it, I'm just glad that I've been able to finally explain something!

I think it's more like we now understand your terminology.  You say Critical Realism, I say Cultural Materialism, after the deaths of millions of electrons, we now agree that what we've been calling materialism is what you call critical realism….Now, potato, or potato?

So, you agree, YMS, that 'value' contains no matter, is not in the 'grey matter' of individuals (not even in one synapse of one head, never mind in all 7 billion), and is a real mechanism (but not physical) that causes our problems?If you do, I'm not yet sure that others, for example, Vin or DJP, agree.And to call this perspective 'materialism' is a misnomer, because, well… much of it has as much to do with 'idealism' as with 'materialism'. That opposition was resurrected by Engels, after Marx thought he'd put it to bed.

[LBird]

DJP wrote:

LBird wrote:

If 'value' is in the 'grey matter' of individuals, 'all in the head', why doesn't everybody in capitalist society know about 'value' just by thinking about what's in their heads?

I don't think anyone has claimed that value is 'all in the head'…

Didn't you read the quote I gave with this question? From Vin?

[LBird]

DJP wrote:

LBird wrote:

God is real.I think a 'materialist' will disagree with that statement, but a 'realist' will agree with it.

LOL I don't think realism entails one to have to say that! One can say that the concept 'god' is a real thing that exists as a concept in the minds of people (and so effects how they behave) but at the same time say that thing that the concept refers to does not exist in the real world.Surely you have to seperate the concepts from the entities / non-entities they refer to. Otherwise you will have to say that anything that can be concieved is real. I don't think anyone would use 'real' in this sense.

Well, perhaps I've succeeded (at last!) in pointing out to you the difference between a 'realist' and a 'physicalist' view of nature.It's your choice, comrade, which ideology you want to employ to help you to understand the world (physical and social).Leaving aside the substantive issue of 'value', etc. and how we understand it, I'm just glad that I've been able to finally explain something!

[LBird]

Vin Maratty wrote:

LBird wrote:

Or do you think 'value' doesn't exist, because 'there is no-thing outside or beyond matter'? Marx clearly thinks 'value' is 'outside' of 'matter'.

Does he?  Without getting out and dusting down my copy of capital I think Marx refers to 'Value' as a  relationship between people expressed as a relationship between things. The relationship is in all our heads and has a material existence within our grey matter.

[my bold]A further question for you, Vin, relating to your earlier post from page 2.If 'value' is in the 'grey matter' of individuals, 'all in the head', why doesn't everybody in capitalist society know about 'value' just by thinking about what's in their heads?It's clear that the vast majority of our society don't know about 'value'. For everybody, it only becomes clear when it's openly discussed, when people have read Capital (and often not even then!), when they realise that an external mechanism is at work upon them, that compels them to act in certain ways, or to die otherwise.Value is real, and causes humans (of all classes) to act in ways which are detrimental to all of humanity. In the short term, the ruling class might appear to be benefitting from their exploitation, but they are not freely, consciously, choosing to exploit, but are prisoners of a social mechanism which exists outside of them as individuals.If value is left to continue to exercise its powers, it will destroy humanity. It's not merely an opinion 'in our heads', comrade.

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