LBird
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alanjjohnstone wrote
“…Dieztgen and Pannekoek consider ideas as material…my reading that ideas are part of the material…”
For Marx, ‘material’ meant ‘human’ (as opposed to ‘ideal’ meaning ‘divine’), so what Marx was simply arguing was ‘ideals are social’, and not the product of a ‘god’.
‘Ideas’, just like ‘widgets’, are social products of humanity. The are no ‘widgets-in-themselves’ which produce ‘ideas’, merely by humans pretending that the ‘widgets’ already exist, and that us being ‘practical’ with these ‘widgets’ will produce ‘ideas’ (that is, that the ‘widgets’ are the active producers of our ‘ideas’, and we are passively imbibing, as ‘ideas’, the ‘truth’ of these ‘widgets’). This latter view is simply ‘widgets’ are ‘god’.
alanjjohnstone wrote
“…we are waiting for that consciousness to arise…”
What are you waiting for? For the ‘widgets’ to produce that consciousness?
alanjjohnstone wrote
“Our conviction in workers’ democracy extends to the autonomy of our class to work out the solutions for themselves and take the appropriate actions independently of any intellectual elite.”
But this is not robbo’s (or any materialist’s) argument. They argue that ‘material conditions’ (and by ‘material’, they mean something outside of ‘consciousness’) will ‘mature’, and then ‘consciousness’ will follow, hence their ‘waiting for consciousness to arise’.
Any democracy, autonomy, ‘for themselves’, actions independent, require discussion about and creation of those ‘solutions’, ie. ‘theory and practice’, by workers themselves.
Having come up with successful theory and practice (ie. a world socialist revolution installing socialism), why would the democratic producers then hand that power over to any elite (scientific, technical, intellectual, philosophical), which as you argue, a power that they will have already taken control of, ‘independently of any intellectual elite‘?
Surely, the role of the SPGB, like any worker communists (as Marx argued) is to help their fellow workers to self-develop as a class? Surely, telling interested workers that ‘material’ or a ‘technical elite’ will be the final beneficiary of the efforts and risks taken by the workers themselves, is likely to be unconvincing and ultimately unsuccessful?
If we thinking humans create the ‘material conditions’, we can change them.
If the ‘material conditions’ create thinking humans, we can’t change them.
That was Marx’s great criticism of passive, 18th century materialism. Who is the ‘creator’ – god or humanity? Engels didn’t understand that ‘matter’ was just another name for ‘god’.
alan, the ‘bloody obvious’ has just dawned on me, just as I posted the above and logged out!
‘Materialists’, like you and the SPGB, are passively waiting for the ‘material conditions’ to mature.
In the hope that, one fine day, ‘matter’ will say its piece to robbo’s ‘technical elite’, but the mass of the proletariat will never hear its whispers, and the ‘elite’ will merely assure us all that it was the case, that ‘Material conditions have arrived!“.
Marx would be weeping at the passivity of it all.
alanjjohnstone wrote:
“Is LBird only being premature with his concerns and that perhaps later when his aim is actually achievable we will set about solving the science Vs. democracy conflict”
This is obviously a possibility, alan.
But Marx has been dead for 135 years, and if I’m still being ‘premature’ about the conflict between bourgeois, elite, science’s undemocratic methods and Marx’s views about the need for the proletariat to adopt a revolutionary science, and the need for us to at least start discussing how we can define this ‘revolutionary science’, then we’re all going to be long dead before these ‘concerns’ mature.
If your view plays a part in the SPGB’s official reluctance to discuss ‘democratic science’ (not even the why this is necessary), then I think that you might have some answers regarding some cause of the irrelevance and decline of the SPGB.
I personally can’t see any reason why nearly 200 years after Marx wrote his Paris Manuscripts it could be held to be too premature to discuss the issues Marx raises in them.
robbo203 wrote “You can call those who have undergone the necessary training in this particular branch of science a technical “elite” if you so wish. But you cannot transpose this understanding of the term “elite” to the idea of a political elite or vanguard to which the SPGB is opposed. These two things signify quite different things. The latter implies an asymmetrical power relationship; the former does not”
robbo, who determines ‘the necessary‘? The technical elite itself?
robbo, who determines what can or ‘cannot be transposed’? The technical elite itself?
robbo, who determines ‘this understanding‘? The technical elite itself?
Further, on ‘elites and political elites’, many do argue precisely that – that the SPGB is confused and contradicts itself, when it separates out, according to you, a ‘social elite’ (or a ‘production elite’, or an ‘abstract theory elite’, or a ‘technical elite’, or a ‘scientific elite’, or a ‘specialist elite’ – use whichever term suits) from a ‘political elite’.
It is a political assumption (based upon a non-democratic ideology) that ‘these two things signify quite different things‘, and it’s a political assumption that democrats don’t share, never mind democratic socialists and revolutionaries.
Again, there is an asymmetrical power relationship – any ‘science’ within any class society will have this political characteristic. That’s the whole point of Marx’s argument about revolutionary science – the political need for workers to control all social theory and practice. We’ll democratically control the universities, so just who will teach this elitist stuff, that you argue in support of, to the succeeding generations?
Or are you really going to argue that there wasn’t an asymmetrical power relationship between Mengele and his selected?
robbo203, On the power of ‘science’ and its elite scientists, when it destroys workers’ lives:
To the Jewish kids experimented on by the bourgeois scientist Mengele: “Why can’t people just agree to disagree?”
To the black men experimented on by the scientific Tuskegee Experiment: “Why can’t people just agree to disagree?”
To the disabled people sterilised by scientific Eugenic Programs: “Why can’t people just agree to disagree?”
robbo203 wrote “Democracy should be about practical matters that concern our practical interests, not abstract theories”
Good job robbo has appointed himself as the definer of ‘abstract theories’, as I’d expect from an anti-democrat, who constantly tries to hide the social power of ‘science’, and pretends that its ‘practitioners’, like Mengele, can be trusted to appeal to ‘practical’ results.
robbo, mate, it’s the ‘abstract theories’ that require our democratic control. The ‘abstract theories’ of ‘science’ have a habit of becoming ‘practical disasters’ for humanity.
I’ll let you into a secret – there really isn’t an elite group of disinterested scientists who have a politically neutral method which simply discovers ‘practical’ affairs. That idea is a ruling class idea.
The building of a self-conscious revolutionary class requires the challenging of ‘abstract theories’, and a democratic method of us deciding just which ‘abstract theories’ should be put into ‘practice’ as beneficial to our needs, interests and purposes. ‘Science’ is a class battlefield, not the preserve of a ‘clever elite’.
Finally, Marx’s method was ‘theory and practice’ – not robbo’s ‘practice and theory’. The ‘abstract theory’ always comes first – ‘theories’ do not just ’emerge’ from ‘doing stuff’, although that’s just what the Trots insist to workers.
The method of ‘practice and theory’ is intended to keep workers passive, and to keep the development of necessary ‘abstract theory’ in the hands of a self-proclaimed elite who claim to have a ‘special consciousness’ which is not available to the vast majority. That’s why these elitists, like robbo, won’t have even any talk of ‘democracy’ in their ‘elite science’.
The ‘Cadre Party’ does robbo’s ‘elite science’.
The ‘Democratic Class’ does Marx’s ‘revolutionary science’. Any ‘science’ has power. Any democrat sees the needs for any social power to be democratically organised.
But not robbo, who’s had all this patiently explained several times, but just doesn’t get ‘democracy’ in social production. Political power seems to be a mystery to robbo, who places his hopes in ‘scientists’, not in workers.
Which is fair enough, if one doesn’t want the democratic control of social production (world socialism).
Bijou, I’ve been caught out and merely insulted by you, too many times, after making long, detailed posts, containing references to Marx, Pannekoek, etc., etc. (I can’t even be bothered any longer to list yet again the extensive background authors and texts for you to learn from) for me to go through that charade again.
What I will say, is that if you can ever be bothered to read the Ancient Greek thinkers on ‘matter’ (hule), I’d recommend that you pay especial attention to the concepts of ‘the underlying’ (to hupokeimenon), ‘qualityless’ (apoios), ‘undefined’ (aoristos), ‘shapeless’ (amorphos), which offer modern democratic communists and Marxist idealist-materialists, a set of concepts suitable to the democratic control of the social production of our world.
I know that you’re a Religious Materialist, centrally concerned, not with ‘social production’ by ‘active humanity’ (as was Marx), but with the elite concept of ‘matter’ and its impression upon ‘passive humanity’, so I don’t expect that you’ll get anything from these potentially democratic concepts, which require us to openly state who or what creatively gives ‘quality’, ‘definition’ and ‘shape’ to our world.
Marx argued that the creator was ‘humanity’; ‘Materialists (like you and the Trots) argue that it is ‘matter’ and that the majority have to passively accept that ‘fact’. Of course, as Marx warned, the Leninists/Trotskyists, as elite ‘Materialists’, will simply surreptitiously place themselves as the ‘active side’, and will expect us workers to passively accept their creation of a world which suits their elite interests, needs and purposes, whilst pretending that they are merely obeying the dictates of ‘matter’, which is a god of their own making (and their changing, when it suits their purposes).
There is no place for ‘democracy’ within ‘Materialism’.
ALB, thanks for the link to yet another ‘materialist’ dismissal of Marx’s theories.
McClatchie doesn’t mention:
- Worker’s democracy;
- Marx;
- Social production;
- Theory and practice;
- Modes of production;
- Socio-historical change;
- Socialism;
- Doubt;
- Debates;
- Bourgeois physics leaving behind of ‘matter’, and move to ‘mass’, and then ‘energy’;
- Philosophy of science (eg. Einstein, Bohr, Schrodinger, Heisenberg, Kuhn, Feyerabend, Lakatos, Smolin, Rovelli, etc.).
Of course, in a short text, one couldn’t expect all of these issues to be covered, but in an account by a ‘socialist’, surely just one of the above would have been mentioned?
McClatchie’s account seems to be a bog-standard bourgeois account of a ‘politically-neutral’, ‘objective’,’disinterested observer’ form of ‘science’ (individuals and their brains, rather than the socio-historical production of social mind) . It seems to be a liberal account of the ‘onward march of progress’. He doesn’t address the issue of ‘matter’ as the ideological form that ‘private property’ takes within the physics of class societies, since the Ancient Greek thinkers, or that ‘matter’ has been long regarded as simply another name for ‘god’, which is the ‘active side’ within ‘nature’. Of course, this simply regards humanity as the ‘passive side’ of a world which already exists, and so can’t be changed (handy for the conservative ruling class and its status quo, eh?).
Put simply, McClatchie’s account is a religious account of ‘nature’, one that Marx rejected, and replaced with a revolutionary account of humanity as the active side, as the ‘social producer’ of any ‘nature’ that we know, an ‘organic nature’ which is a ‘nature for us’, and thus can be changed.
Why the SPGB allies itself with the Trotskyists’ ‘materialism’, I don’t know (and have never been given a political explanation).
alanjjohnstone wrote
“Could you acknowledge that in this respect of offering a platform to our critics we have shown admirable forbearance that should be commended, Lbird, even if you do consider your contributions to be pearls cast before swine”
I’m very happy to do both, alan!
First. The SPGB has shown admirable forbearance that should be commended. Though I should say that I’ve also made similar statements about the SWP and ICC, who also showed ‘admirable forbearance’ when their undemocratic ‘materialism’ was criticised. But like the SPGB too, they couldn’t answer the political criticism of their ‘materialism’ (or its synonym, ‘Scientific Socialism’) – see Bijou Drain’s (lack of political) response.
Second. Ahem! Am I allowed to spell this out so brutally? 😀 The very nature of ‘materialists’, as exposed by Marx?
Bijou, it’s a shame that you are unable to answer without using abuse, a political criticism of your very post about Trotskyism. I’ve shown that you share the very same commitment as Trotskyism to a supposed ‘Scientific Socialism’, which denies that workers can ever control ‘science’ by democratic methods.
So, also following your very words, could you ‘please behave with a bit of respect and use the thread‘ to actually answer serious political criticism of your opening post.
I doubt that you will do this, because I’ve given you every opportunity, many times, and many others who argue your undemocratic views, to actually answer why you argue that the Trotskyists are correct, about ‘science’ being a socio-historical activity which can only be controlled by an elite.
I know that you don’t like this political criticism of your views, and take it as an ‘abuse’ of you personally, and so you think it acceptable to ‘personally abuse’ your critics, but at some point you’re going to have to answer this political issue – why does your party argue that it is ‘democratic’, and yet line up with the undemocratic Trots about ‘science’?
Even having me banned, which has been done before by the SPGB, won’t stop the question being asked in the future, by any worker looking to socialist ideas, and finding the SPGB to be, at least, confused about “workers’ democracy”, and at worst, like the Trots, to be devious about it.
The ball’s in your court, Bijou.
Bijou Drains wrote
“You might start thinking wouldn’t it be better to have an open and genuinely democratic approach to politics, one without leaders or lead, without posers and factions and schisms. You might then start to look at the Socialist case, put forward by the Socialist Party, the case for a world without guns, borders, leaders, money and markets, the case for a system of common ownership and genuine democratic control.”
The problem is that, apparently, just like the Trots, the SPGB won’t have ‘an open and genuinely democratic approach‘ to ‘science’, a ‘science’ under ‘a system of common ownership and genuine democratic control‘.
The SPGB seems to argue for the elite leadership of ‘scientists’ over ‘science’, where, for example, ‘elite physicists’ determine ‘physics’, ‘elite logicians’ determine ‘logic’, ‘elite mathematicians’ determine ‘mathematics’, all without any ‘genuine democratic’ involvement by the vast majority of workers.
Even worse, the SPGB seems to argue for an Engelsian version of ‘Scientific Socialism’ (and not for its political opposite, ‘Democratic Socialism’), which, being supposedly ‘scientific’, would cause the same problems in any politics, as in ‘science’: an elite leadership would have to determine ‘politics’, and this political form of ‘socialism’ would thus not be amenable to democratic control. Clearly, if it was under democratic control, the majority could vote to democratise ‘science’, which is anathema to ‘Scientific Socialists’. We can have ‘elite science’ or we can have ‘democratic science’, and we should be open about this political choice.
For those workers with a political bent towards the ‘democratic’ choice about our ‘science’, the history of bourgeois science (for that is what it is) shows that all science – physics, logic, mathematics, etc. – has changed over time in society, and so any ‘science’ is a socio-historical product. The political control of changes within ‘science’ in a democratic society has to be under the control of the majority, so that that ‘science’ follows the interests, needs and purposes of the vast majority – and not those of an elite who claim a ‘special consciousness’, like ‘physicists’.
This ‘democratic’ argument is, of course, completely in line with the SPGB’s democratic traditions – so it’s very strange that members of the SPGB seem to be so resistant to it, and apparently favour the Trotskyist political line about ‘Scientific Socialism’.
alan wrote “Semantic sophistry doesn’t achieve socialism”
I know alan, that’s what I keep telling you!
But you keep doing it!
You say ‘ideas are material’… but then talk of ‘material’ conditions, as if they (without workers’ consciously building them) will ‘result in…a movement’.
Can’t you see the damage you’re doing?
Let me explain, as a worker who keeps trying to help ‘materialists’ to understand why they are preventing a workers’ movement from emerging.
If ‘ideas are material’, then, surely, ‘material are ideas’? So why not call this concept ‘idea-material’? And then say the ‘idea-material conditions’ will result in a movement?
This would then make it clear to all workers that neither ‘idea’ nor ‘material’ alone will produce socialism.
But when you tell workers that ‘material’ will build socialism, without their conscious participation, then why would they bother to participate? And, in fact, since you believe this, you really think that workers’ conscious participation is not required, because you’re only paying lip-service to ‘ideas are material’, which is, as you so rightly say, ‘semantic sophistry’.
Now, I’m a worker, and I’ve been in and around ‘materialist’ parties for over 30 years, as have dozens of workers I knew personally, who have all been dedicated to consciously building a workers’ movement, but after exposure to various ‘materialist’ parties, have left the ‘movement’, when they realised that this ‘movement’ had no intention whatsoever in letting them democratically control their movement. I don’t know a single person (all dedicated socialists/Marxists) who have remained.
So, throughout the 20th century, all over the world, millions of workers hopefully joined ‘materialist’ parties… and then, when they understood what ‘materialism’ entailed (an elite of ‘special consciousness, and lack of democracy), they left again.
This argument provides an answer to your conundrum… the ‘conditions’ for socialism don’t exist – because ‘materialist’ parties are ACTIVELY PREVENTING their emergence.
If I were to use the term ‘Leninist parties’ in this argument, you’d probably agree with me.
What’s stopping you (and the rest of the ‘materialist’ SPGB) coming to consciousness of this truth? It was the ‘materialism’ in Lenin that was the problem.
Marx argues for the self-emancipation of the proletariat, conscious self-activity of workers – not for ‘matter’ building a movement.
Workers’ emancipation requires ‘idea-material’, not ‘material’, conditions.
Dave B wrote “
To have socialism or full communism you need two things.
1] A highly developed means of production and technology etc capable of producing sufficient abundance given expectations at the time etc with minimal effort.
2] And a communist consciousness; wherever that might come from.”
I agree with you, Dave, as far as it goes.
So, to be clear – the ‘material conditions’ for socialism did not exist at the end of the 19th century.
The ‘material conditions’ for socialism do not exist today, and have never yet existed, anywhere.
To argue with my statements, one has to separate the so-called ‘material’ (your ‘means’) and the so-called ‘ideal’ (your ‘consciousness’), and argue that one ‘already exists’, to the exclusion of the other (usually, this argument takes the form that the ‘material’ can ‘exist’ without the ‘ideal’).
But, as you imply, neither can ‘exist’ without the other – there is no ‘means’ just sitting there, without ‘consciousness’ – both 1] and 2] define each other.
This was Marx’s great innovation – ‘material’ and ‘ideal’ are inescapably intertwined for humans. We socially produce any ‘conditions’, by theory and practice, and we can’t have one without the other.
The separation of these two, material and ideal, was Engels’ misunderstanding of Marx’s unifying of the two, and Engels’ return to 18th century, pre-Marx, ‘materialism’.
Thus, one’s political view of epistemology comes into play here – there is no non-epistemological, simply ‘practical/pragmatic’ answer to this issue.
If one argues that 1] can ‘exist’ alone (or, indeed, 2] can ‘exist’ alone), then one is taking an Engelsist epistemological stance, and rejecting Marx’s unifying of 1] and 2], in a theory of social production, which is both ‘ideal’ and ‘material’.
Lew wrote “As it happens, I’ve reviewed Carver’s books for the Socialist Standard and I agree with his point that there are important philosophical differences between Marx and Engels. However, they have no practical political significance as far as we are concerned. “
No, practical political significance, eh?
Well, let’s see how it aligns to this thread.
The ‘materialists’ (see ALB’s quote) argue that the ‘material conditions’ for socialism have existed since the late 19th century, but there has been no workers’ revolution.
What is the OP to make of this?
There’s all this shiny, new, bright ‘material socialism’, just sitting there, for 120 years, and those workers have completely ignored it!
It doesn’t take much deep thought to realise those workers must be stupid! Fancy them ignoring the ‘material conditions’, which are just begging to be employed in the interests of all workers! And all the hard work has already been done, by those capitalists!
Either it can be done overnight, because the ‘material conditions’ already exist – or it can’t be done overnight, because those dumb workers haven’t yet shown the slightest inclination to take those ‘material conditions’ over for themselves, so they’re clearly going to take a long time to learn, being taught by those nice ‘materialists’!
Of course, whichever answer is given to the OP (and any other interested workers, looking to the SPGB ‘materialists’ for a lead), it involves workers being as thick as pig shit.
Lew wrote “Ironically, Carver shows that the main philosophical difference between Marx and Engels concerns epistemology (the theory of knowledge) and it is precisely here that L Bird’s argument fails.”
That is the ‘argument’, Lew.
You ‘materialists’ claim to know something workers don’t and can’t (ie. you have an elitist epistemology), which is why you refuse to countenance workers voting on the ‘truth’ of physics, maths, logic, scientific method, etc., etc.
Lew wrote “It will be noted that, yet again, L Bird evades the epistemological problems inherent in his position as he obsessively pursues his ‘materialist’ straw man.”
Who’s ‘evading the epistemological problems inherent in his position as he obsessively pursues his ‘materialist’ hard man’, Lew?
The worship of ‘matter’ is a religious practice, and Marx argued against it.
Try re-reading Carver’s books, Lew, in the light of the failure of the ‘material conditions’ to have persuaded workers to adopt socialism. You (and ALB) will be waiting a long time for ‘material conditions’ to do anything. Only humans, as Marx argued, consciously, with planning and purpose, change their world.
And another, repeated, ‘cordial invitation’, alan.
Have a read of Gareth Stedman Jones’ “Karl Marx: Greatness and Illusion’ (2016), especially pp. 191-99.
Surely 9 pages is not too much to ask of anyone’s time, is it, alan?
alan wrote “
So LBird you decline the cordial invitation to offer comradely advice to a group you very obviously seem attached to, despite what disagreements you hold with us.
Then let me re-phrase my request
Construct an address to our fellow-workers in a non-party, non-partisan manner that will encourage them to investigate the socialist case further.”
But what are my thousands of posts over several years, if not an ‘offer of comradely advice’ to think critically about the anti-democratic ideology of ‘materialism’?
And I’d like to be ‘attached’, as I’ve said often before – but, having joined, argued with, and left, the SWP (as did many friends in Militant, RCP, WRP, CP, WP, etc., etc. – I’ve known a few), I want to politically examine this party, first. That hasn’t gone well, has it? The membership have consistently argued that they will deny workers’ democracy in production, and then have resorted to personally abusing me, rather than make a case for their anti-democratic views (which clearly will let the cat out of the bag in front of other readers).
I’m non-party and non-partisan, through and through, alan – I’m only ‘partisan’ to my class and its necessary democratic methods, which is why I’m here, at least. Obviously, that’s not why some are here.
Anyway, I’d ‘cordially invite’ those comrades in London to attend Carver’s talk on Engels, because that might help to break the political logjam between us, once some ‘outside’ input has been accepted by SPGB members.
