[LBird]

ALB wrote:

I don't think Engels can be blamed for having a go, even if he failed. He did follow very closely the scientific developments of his days…

Well, he could have ignored 'the scientific developments of his days', which were clouded in a positivist mystique that he, having no philosophical training (unlike Marx), was unable to disperse with a proletarian philosophical basis, 'the philosophical developments of his youth', which he either never understood or forgot as he got older and became mightily impressed by 'positivistic science' (as were almost all other thinkers) – [by his youth, here I'm referring to Marx's Theses on Feuerbach].Carr’s What is History? describes how this positivist influence even penetrated into historiography, with von Ranke's advice 'simply to show how it happened', just like ‘scientists’ were [allegedly] doing. Of course, von Ranke was a conservative bastard, as Schaff relates

Charles Beard, quoted by Schaff, p. 92, wrote:

Ranke who, in disregarding stubbornly social and economic interests in history, avoided successfully any historical works infringing the conservative interests of Europe of his times, may correctly characterised as one of the most ‘partisan’ historians which the 19th century produced.

This could apply to scientists, too, who are ‘partisan’, because ‘partisanship’ is unavoidable for humans.Anyway, Engels can be blamed, he was out of his depth, and his failure adversely affects the Communist movement still, today.As the proletarian Jim Royle would so aptly put it: ‘Dialectics? My arse!’

[LBird]

I could cry with gratitude, ALB, at both reading the mysterious E. W.'s opinion of Engels' travesty of Marx's views, and your posting of it! tears of joy, I assure you!

[LBird]

Brian wrote:

…to try and impose a uniform process of socialisation…

I think that this thread is dying a death, Brian, and that you should look to twc's views for a lead.On my part, I'm fed up with my views being misrepresented.I've argued for 'the democratic control of the process of socialisation': whether that would be 'uniform' or not, should be a democratic decision, in my view. Personally, I would vote for 'diversity', in opposition to the current ruling class practice of 'imposing' a 'uniformity' of 'individuality'.The fact that everyone in our society claims to be an 'individual', doesn't seem to strike anyone here as a 'uniform', historical, socially-produced ideology, but is assumed to be an ahistoric, biological fact.If one identifies as an 'individual', one is wearing the ideological uniform of the bourgeoisie.If I'm in favour of society trying to 'impose' anything, comrade, it's bloody 'critical thinking'!

[LBird]

twc wrote:

Intellectual cowardice!Resolve your dilemma in your own non-dialectical fashion.  But resolve it to save your credibility.[Your insult to Marx is ignorant and contemptible.  You are no marxist.]

I confess my sins, Father twc, I'm an undialectical, unresolved, discreditable coward!As for 'no marxist', I think that I'm in rather good company on that one!

[LBird]

ALB wrote:

I don't know why you assume that the Party is committed to Hegelianism. As far as I'm concerned, he just wrote incomprehensible quasi-religious mumbo-jumbo.

[my bold]Am I glad to hear that opinion expressed! You can add Engels to that comment, where he's talking about science and 'dialectics'.

ALB wrote:

But what has this got to do with issue under discussion?

Well, whilst you've got twc 'saving the party's virtue' on the other thread, and no-one from the party seems to be taking twc to task for presuming to be 'the saviour', it seems obvious that twc's anti-democratic rantings will be taken to have the imprimatur of the wider party.And your unclear statements about the commitment to democracy read like a liberal plea for 'individualism'. If society in all its manifestations, and science in all its manifestations, aren't to be under our democratic control, just whose will they be under?Are there comrades reading who do believe that they are 'individuals', and not just products of bourgeois society and its ideology?Surely Communism is the only way to ensure that all humans do actually develop into thinking, critical social individuals? It's a collective task to produce such a society, not merely the 'freeing' of a biological imperative in humans from political ideologies (as liberal ideology would have it).

[LBird]

ALB wrote:

Remember this all started with an off-hand remark of yours about "the democratic control of ideology (including religion". Maybe it's just a semantic thing about the meaning of "ideology"?

Well, according to 'democracy-hater' twc on the Pannekoek thread, Communism will involve the 'dialectical control of ideology'.I'll leave comrades to decide for themselves which is preferable.'Dialectics'? The 'Holy Water' of The Party, for use whilst genuflecting to Hegel.Perhaps I'm on the wrong site, after all, comrade. I was just impressed by the SPGB's commitment to democratic politics, as opposed to Leninist 'party consciousness'. Well, we all live and learn, eh?

[LBird]

twc wrote:

DialecticsThis is a signature Hegelian problem.Are you capable of resolving thesis and antithesis into a synthesis?Reveal what sort of a dialectician you are.

Dialectics? As I predicted, Engelsian 'science', opposed to Marx's.'Dialectics', now, the last refuge of the scientific scoundrel.

[LBird]

Apparently, 'democracy' is a cause for concern within the SPGB, to go by the 'Pannekoek' thread.

[LBird]

ALB wrote:

Do you really think that democratic control should extend to what people should think?

What's the alternative? Leave it in the hands of a minority, as it is now?What? You actually believe the ruling class myth that 'we are all individuals'? That we all now think as 'individuals', and that future democratic control of our socialisation processes would be a retrograde step? That we shouldn't have a collective say in how we reproduce our society?

Brian wrote:

It seems to be implicit within LBird's contributions that he's fixed on one particular methodology ruling the roost in reference to the scientific method.

Yeah, the method of democratic control of science. You obviously disagree with me, and seem to be in agreement with twc. But twc hasn't explained, unlike me, what their method actually looks like in practice. In effect, twc's method comes down to placing one's trust in scientists: 'Our betters'. No thanks.I suppose this derail saves anyone from the SPGB having to discuss the method of science. Surely there must be someone reading who can discuss these fundamental issues?

[LBird]

twc, post 365, wrote:

Its author takes the view that social practice determines social thought in direct opposition to the view you express here that social thought determines social practice.

After some consideration, I thought that I should revisit this statement by twc, as it seems to suggest that there are only two contrasting views about a particular subject. I seem to remember that other posters, too, at least initially, tried to reduce these issues of cognition to an either/or problem.I’ve tried to show, through Schaff, that there are numerous stances which could be taken, and there are some that Schaff mentions that I haven’t even covered. This led me to try to uncover the basis of this dichotomous approach to issues which don’t lend themselves to such a simple viewpoint, like ‘theories of cognition’. Since I’ve experienced similar problems elsewhere, regarding other different issues (that is, the constant reduction of various philosophical issues to a simplistic two-sided view), I though that I should point out what I consider that the problem might be.To be clear, it seems to be the reduction of all philosophical problems to the fundamental issue of idealism versus materialism. In short, any attempt of mine to discuss ideas, ideology, consciousness, cognition, epistemology, understanding, etc., when I try to bring human thinking into the debate, seems to always be met by accusations of ‘idealism’ on my part, which is contrasted to the ‘proper’ Marxist method of ‘materialism’. This is embodied in twc’s view, above, that ‘practice determines thought’ (implying a ‘materialist’ position) which ‘opposes my view’ that ‘thought determines practice’ (implying an ‘idealist’ position).Of course, the latter is not my view, but then, neither is the former. My view is essentially the same as Marx’s, that ‘praxis’, the unity of though and practice, is a method which overcomes the separation into either the passive, thoughtless, practice of materialism or the active, practiceless, thought of idealism.

Marx, Theses on Feuerbach, wrote:

IThe chief defect of all hitherto existing materialism – that of Feuerbach included – is that the thing, reality, sensuousness, is conceived only in the form of the object or of contemplation, but not as sensuous human activity, practice, not subjectively. Hence, in contradistinction to materialism, the active side was developed abstractly by idealism – which, of course, does not know real, sensuous activity as such.Feuerbach wants sensuous objects, really distinct from the thought objects, but he does not conceive human activity itself as objective activity. … Hence he does not grasp the significance of “revolutionary”, of “practical-critical”, activity.IIThe question whether objective truth can be attributed to human thinking is not a question of theory but is a practical question. Man must prove the truth — i.e. the reality and power, the this-sidedness of his thinking in practice. The dispute over the reality or non-reality of thinking that is isolated from practice is a purely scholastic question.IIIThe materialist doctrine concerning the changing of circumstances and upbringing forgets that circumstances are changed by men and that it is essential to educate the educator himself. This doctrine must, therefore, divide society into two parts, one of which is superior to society.The coincidence of the changing of circumstances and of human activity or self-changing can be conceived and rationally understood only as revolutionary practice. 

Here, Marx thought that he had overcome both Feuerbach’s ‘materialism’, which ignored ‘the active side’ which had correctly been developed by idealism, and earlier ‘idealism’, which he condemned as ‘thinking that is isolated from practice’. For Marx, early materialism was passive and ‘contemplative’, whereas earlier idealism had captured something important, ‘abstract activity’ but it had forgotten ‘real, sensuous activity’.I think that Schaff’s third model of tripartite cognition (subject, object, knowledge) is the one that meets Marx’s desired method: the active social subject interacts through practice with the really-existing object, to produce knowledge. This also meets Pannekoek’s belief that:

Pannekoek, Lenin as Philosopher, wrote:

Hence Historical Materialism looks upon the works of science, the concepts, substances, natural Laws, and forces, although formed out of the stuff of nature, primarily as the creations of the mental Labour of man. Middle-class materialism, on the other hand, from the point of view of the scientific investigator, sees all this as an element of nature itself which has been discovered and brought to light by science. Natural scientists consider the immutable substances, matter, energy, electricity, gravity, the Law of entropy, etc., as the basic elements of the world, as the reality that has to be discovered. From the viewpoint of Historical Materialism they are products which creative mental activity forms out of the substance of natural phenomena.

The culprit, I think, for this ‘return’ to pre-Marxian materialism, that notion that ‘matter’ impinges on the passive senses, and that any talk of ‘human consciousness being essential’ is ‘idealism’, is Fred Engels. His works have been massively influential upon ‘Marxism’ from before Lenin, and it’s arguable that Engels’ philosophical ideas are not Marxist at all, but a return to pre-Marxist ‘materialism’.I think that a discussion of Engels’ views, as opposing Marx’s, would require a new thread, so I won’t discuss it further on this one, but I felt obliged to make comrades aware of what I consider to be a fundamental problem within all discussions by Communists about issues relating to consciousness. This includes not just cognition, but also science and the class/party relationship, in my experience.To finish, twc and any other posters who wish to understand these issues of cognition must be very wary of this simplistic separation of materialism versus idealism.[edit]I've just seen twc's latest diatribe, after I posted this, and I despair.

[LBird]

Pannekoek wrote:

In such a process of unceasing transformation, human consciousness adapts itself to society, to the real world.Hence Marx's thesis that the real world determines consciousness does not mean that contemporary ideas are determined solely by contemporary society. Our ideas and concepts are the crystallization, the comprehensive essence of the whole of our experience, present and past. What was already fixed in the past in abstract mental forms must be included with such adaptations of the present as are necessary.

Science as change.http://libcom.org/library/society-mind-marxian-philosophy-anton-pannekoekSelective quoting is no answer, twc. We can all find parts of Marx, Engels, Lenin, Dietzgen, Untermann or Pannekoek to support our case. I can even find parts of all of those thinkers that I disagree with.Can't you try some of your own thinking? Why not discuss, rather than merely reiterate? What are your views of the process of cognition of science, in the light of the 20th century advances in human thinking and knowledge?

[LBird]

ALB wrote:

Harvey wrote:

But if you had a money form that dissolved, that is oxidisable, we would end up with a very different kind of society. You would have a money form that would aid circulation but that would not facilitate accumulation.

But surely 'money' represents an 'exploitative relationship', not an 'aid to circulation'?To maintain an 'oxidisable' exploitative relationship would be to just get rid of a fixed ('not oxidisable') exploitative relationship, and replace it with… errr… a constantly regenerating exploitative relationship.Money is for individual exchange. Surely we'll have a social economy, production for free use by all, with no need to exchange money?If we need to estimate the worth of, or time taken to make, or materials required for, any social production, surely we'll just ask the direct producers for an estimate of worth, time or materials, and make decisions collectively as to how to expend resources, if there are differences of priorities?Is Harvey a Communist, or just a "neutral" [sic] academic and commentator?

[LBird]

twc wrote:

Our needs and the impressions of the surrounding world are the impulses, the stimuli, to which our actions are the responses. Needs, as directly felt, and the surrounding world, as observed through the senses…

This conception regards the subject as passive, and suggests that the object, as the active entity, imposes itself upon the passive subject as a copy, or reflection, by its ‘impulses’ to which the subject merely ‘responds’. It is also ahistoric and asocial, because it relates to an individual (biological needs and fixed senses), and doesn’t relate to a dynamic society. Marx disagrees with this formulation, as I have already shown:

Marx, EPM, wrote:

… for this reason the senses of the social man differ from those of the non-social man. Only through the objectively unfolded richness of man’s essential being is the richness of subjective human sensibility (a musical ear, an eye for beauty of form – in short, senses capable of human gratification, senses affirming themselves as essential powers of man) either cultivated or brought into being. For not only the five senses but also the so-called mental senses, the practical senses (will, love, etc.), in a word, human sense, the human nature of the senses, comes to be by virtue of its object, by virtue of humanised nature. The forming of the five senses is a labour of the entire history of the world down to the present. The sense caught up in crude practical need has only a restricted sense.> For the starving man, it is not the human form of food that exists, but only its abstract existence as food. It could just as well be there in its crudest form, and it would be impossible to say wherein this feeding activity differs from that of animals. The care-burdened, poverty-stricken man has no sense for the finest play; the dealer in minerals sees only the commercial value but not the beauty and the specific character of the mineral: he has no mineralogical sense. Thus, the objectification of the human essence, both in its theoretical and practical aspects, is required to make man’s sense human, as well as to create the human sense corresponding to the entire wealth of human and natural substance.

Marx stresses the ‘social’, ‘unfolding’, ‘cultivated’, ‘coming to be’.He disparages ‘crude practical need’ as a biological impulse, and suggests that both our ‘needs’ and our ‘senses’ grow in society.Your views, twc, seem to me to have been formed by Engels’ and Lenin’s views of nature and consciousness, rather than Marx’s. I might be wrong with this guess, but you can correct me if my speculation is incorrect.

[LBird]

twc wrote:

This pre-War article, written before Schaff and Lakatos, explains the social content of cognition.

I can't find any link within your post, twc.

twc wrote:

Its author takes the view that social practice determines social thought in direct opposition to the view you express here that social thought determines social practice.

This is an incorrect assertion. I haven't 'expressed the view' that 'social thought determines social practice'.I've expressed the view that the active subject interacts with the really-existing object to produce knowledge.If you don't agree, you should outline the theory of cognition that you think that 'science' employs.If you don't agree that there are three separate entities to this process of cognition, how many are there?If you don't agree that the subject is an active social entity, what is it?If you don't agree that the object pre-exists the cognitive process, what creates it?If you don't agree that knowledge is created by the subject, is it just a passive reflection of the object, as for Lenin?You've had the chance to participate in this thread from the start, twc, but have not engaged in discussion, and have merely stated your beliefs and used attacks to 'personalise' the issue of cognition.If you now wish to participate, I welcome that. But… you must engage, and engage without personal attacks, or I will go back to ignoring you. The ball's in your court.

[LBird]

On the issue of the nature of the ‘subject’, unless anyone disagrees, I’ll proceed on the assumption that the ‘subject’ (which interacts with the ‘object’ to produce ‘knowledge’) is a social entity, not an isolated individual (‘well, I have my opinion and I don’t need to back it up with evidence: I’m entitled to my personal opinion, irrespective of my comrades reasoned arguments’) nor a social elite of self-selecting ‘scientists’ (‘well, we scientists are the ones to tell you thickoes just what is the ‘truth’ about nature and society: we have both an intelligence and  training that you are not capable of having, and we employ a special socially-neutral method’).I’m making this assumption because I’m also assuming that most people reading this will already be Communists and Marxists (of some stripe), and I don’t need to make a case for opposing the widespread bourgeois ideological myth of ‘the individual’ or a case for democratic control by all over any social power. If I prove to be wrong on these assumptions, or if any non-Marxists are still reading, we can go back and discuss those assumptions of mine.Since Schaff looms large in my thinking, I’ll provide his view, for those who wish to follow up this discussion with some further reading. I should apologise to any women comrades reading, because Schaff was writing before feminist struggles of the ’60s (he was born in 1913), and always uses the term ‘man’ when he could have used ‘humanity’ (Marx is also open to the same criticism: he too was a social individual of his times).

Schaff, pp. 51, 55, wrote:

…the third model…emphasizes the active role of the subject who is conditioned in many ways, but always socially, thus bringing into cognition his [sic] socially transmitted mode of perceiving reality….Man [sic] is, in his [sic] reality, an ensemble of social relations; if one disregards this social content of the human individual, then only the ties of nature will remain as a link between people…in addition to biological determinates, social determinates also exert a moulding influence on him [sic], and this is why he [sic] is a social individual. Marx emphasizes this vividly stating that man [sic] is “the ensemble of social relations”.

From this, I think we have to assume that our ‘perception’ of the ‘object’ is inescapably ‘social’: as Einstein said, ‘theory determines what we observe’, and our ‘perception’ is shaped by the social theories to which we are exposed prior to the act of perception by an individual employing their ‘own senses’. We have seen with DJP’s video just how strongly our perception is affected by prior ‘conditioning’. The notion of the five ‘senses’ alone, doing the perceiving passively through an isolated biological individual, as for ‘induction’, just cannot stand any longer. At this point, I should say that both Dietzgen and Untermann make the mistake of emphasising ‘induction’ as the ‘scientific method’. This is understandable given the times when they wrote, under the heavy influence of 19th century positivistic science. Engels, too, made the mistake of allowing positivism to misdirect him, when he contributed to ‘Marxist’ science thinking, which has proved to be so deleterious upon following ‘Marxist’ thinkers, including Lenin.But, on the contrary, Marx’s early works on epistemology weren’t even published until well into the 20th century, and he doesn’t seem to have fallen into the ‘inductivist’ trap. For example, when Marx talks of ‘the senses’, it’s clear that he isn’t simply referring to them as biological mechanisms, or arguing that, if one keeps social ideology at bay, then one can simply passively experience reality, as the empiricists argue, through one’s senses, without troubling to include the mind. For Marx, our senses are fundamentally historical and social, not mere individual and biological, senses, and which develop in society:

Marx, EPM, wrote:

… for this reason the senses of the social man differ from those of the non-social man. Only through the objectively unfolded richness of man’s essential being is the richness of subjective human sensibility (a musical ear, an eye for beauty of form – in short, senses capable of human gratification, senses affirming themselves as essential powers of man) either cultivated or brought into being. For not only the five senses but also the so-called mental senses, the practical senses (will, love, etc.), in a word, human sense, the human nature of the senses, comes to be by virtue of its object, by virtue of humanised nature. The forming of the five senses is a labour of the entire history of the world down to the present. The sense caught up in crude practical need has only a restricted sense.> For the starving man, it is not the human form of food that exists, but only its abstract existence as food. It could just as well be there in its crudest form, and it would be impossible to say wherein this feeding activity differs from that of animals. The care-burdened, poverty-stricken man has no sense for the finest play; the dealer in minerals sees only the commercial value but not the beauty and the specific character of the mineral: he has no mineralogical sense. Thus, the objectification of the human essence, both in its theoretical and practical aspects, is required to make man’s sense human, as well as to create the human sense corresponding to the entire wealth of human and natural substance.

[my bold]http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1844/manuscripts/comm.htmNot only is the ‘mind’ or ‘consciousness’ a social creation, but so too are our senses themselves.Thus, the ‘subject’ (in our tripartite schema of cognition) develops and changes throughout history, constantly influenced by, and in turn influencing, social factors. We have to always situate any ‘scientific understanding’ within a historical, social and developmental context. The bourgeois alternative, what Pannekoek labels ‘discovery science’, which allegedly produces ‘eternal truths’, supposedly employing an ahistorical and asocial ‘neutral method’, is a myth. Science is a source of social power, and scientists currently wield this power outside of our democratic control, most often to the tune of the bourgeoisie. Under Communism, the social activity of science in all its facets must be subject to our democratic control.

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