[LBird]

Young Master Smeet wrote:

Read him, disagree (lets face facts, the philsophical notebooks are a slender reed for any analysis, weren't meant for publication, and in so many words 'I agree with Feuerbach').

Marx doesn't agree with Feuerbach, YMS.So much for your 'slender reed'.

YMS wrote:

Lbird wrote:

Of a producer?It can't.That's the point, of Marx's argument about the subject-object relationship.

"as objects independent of him".Square that away.

Read very carefully, YMS, because I've only just written the answer to this.'Objects' are independent of humanity.You're particularly slow today.Now, tell me how these 'objects' are independent – the secret is, to read what I wrote earlier.Until you quote my answer, to show that you have read it, I'm not continuing with your education, because you don't seem keen to actually learn anything.

[LBird]

Young Master Smeet wrote:

How can production be independent?

Of a producer?It can't.That's the point, of Marx's argument about the subject-object relationship.Why not read Jordan?

[LBird]

Young Master Smeet wrote:

To repeat "as objects independent of him".https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1844/manuscripts/hegel.htmCan you guess how often I'm going to quote this at you, Lbird?

I'm all for it!I'd quote it, too.That's what 'production' means.So, you keep 'quoting', but not 'understanding'. I'd guess you'll do it incessantly until the cows come home.

[LBird]

Young Master Smeet wrote:

But the social is something: society is made of something isn't it?  So what do we call the stuff that is producing?

The 'social' is 'something social'; 'society' is made of 'something social'; the 'stuff that is producing' is 'society'.Marx argues that we are self-creators.Why not read Jordan, and read in detail where he explains all this?

[LBird]

Young Master Smeet wrote:

I think the important thing is stuff monism: either everything is ideas, or everything is matter, …

I know that you think this, YMS, and have done for years.I've also pointed out years ago just where you got this 'either/or' notion from, too.You got it from Engels, and I've given the passage, where he divides all philosophy into Materialism and Idealism.This is nothing whatsoever to do with Marx's views about 'social production'.You stick to 'stuff monism'; I'll stick to 'social production'.It's up to workers, coming to revolutionary consciousness and wanting to build for socialism using democratic methods, which they'll 'stick' with.

[LBird]

Young Master Smeet wrote:

… if everything that exists is matter, then ideas are material…

[my bold]I've told you a thousand times, YMS, that 'if' clause is an ideological choice, which determines the 'then' statement.I don't share your ideological choice, and neither did Marx.What 'exists' for those who look to Marx is 'social production'.I wish that you'd read my words, and accept that we disagree about what 'Marx meant'. 'Meaning' is related to politics and ideology, and my ideology, Democratic Communism, (that 'socialism' is the democratic control of social production by the producers), can see that Engels' focus on 'matter' was a move away from Marx's focus on 'social production'.If one chooses an ideology that is not concerned with 'social production', then one can't understand Marx, in terms of what Marx meant.If you believe that Marx meant 'matter', then that's your choice. But your choice is of no use to the revolutionary democratic proletariat, in its attempt to build for socialism.Since you're not interested in these politics, your choice is fine for you.

[LBird]

Young Master Smeet wrote:

Problem is, on a quick search of the Marxist archive, I couldn't find any uses of the word divine that seemed to fit your analysis.

No, you won't find this, YMS.I've already told you why.

[LBird]

mcolome1 wrote:

We have taken the most essential ideas and analysis, of  Marx and Engels, but we have also developed our own ideas and analysis. We dont worship Marx or Engels like a god

No, you've taken the most essential idea of Engels', his 'materialism', and upon that have developed his idea and analysis. Thus, you do 'worship matter like a god'.That's the whole point of the discussion, mcolome1. Why would you and the SPGB continue to argue for a concept that the producers cannot change? It's a concept that Lenin also argued that only 'specialists' can 'know'.On the contrary, Marx argued that the producers can change their product – that's why the anti-worker Leninists must argue that there is 'something' that workers do not produce and so cannot change. Of course, this inability to change 'something' is a lie, and so the Leninists then claim that only they can change this 'something'.You've said many times that you're anti-Lenin, mcolome1, and I believe you. But I'm baffled as to why you'd then follow Lenin, in his anti-worker, anti-democratic epistemology.Put simply, once anyone argues that there is a 'substance' which cannot be changed, then they are rejecting both Marx and workers' democracy, and putting in place the philosophical building blocks for party rule based on 'special consciousness'.The fact that the SPGB has started arguing for a 'specialist/generalist' separation of society shows that this tendency is well-advanced within the party. This will be the basis of further anti-democratic developments. And it's not just me making this warning – Marx makes exactly the same point in his Theses on Feuerbach.We all have faith and worship, mcolome1. It's a choice between 'producers' and 'matter'. Those who choose 'producers' will be democrats and will argue for a united society, whereas those who choose 'matter' will be elitists and will argue for separation in society.

[LBird]

Thanks for the extracts, YMS.The question is, though, whether Marx shared either Engels' or Lenin's views on 'materialism'.I think that I've shown, over many threads, over many years, that Marx didn't share with either.If one reads the context of Marx's works, he clearly means by 'material' an opposition to 'ideal'. This is nothing whatsoever to do with 'material equals matter'. Marx is contrasting the 'human' with the 'divine'.That's why in almost any passage in Marx's works, where he writes 'material', it can be replaced by 'social'.When Marx writes 'material production', he's contrasting 'human production' from the 'divine production' of the Idealists. But Marx accepts that the Idealists are correct to stress the importance of 'creativity', of 'activity', of 'production', and he criticises the Materialists for being passive.Marx takes from, and discards from, both Idealism and Materialism, to produce a human-centred view of creativity.That's why I categorise Marx as an Idealist-Materialist.

[LBird]

Adam Riggio, reply to Steve Fuller, wrote:

One of the most illuminating things I learned from reading some of your earlier works was the fight between Robert Boyle and Thomas Hobbes on how to pitch the new experimental techniques of scientific research that the Royal Society was developing. This was in your collaborative work with Jim Collier, Philosophy, Rhetoric, and the End of Knowledge.  Hobbes advocated total transparency: experiments were demonstrations, purposely artificial scenarios whose purpose was public education, not only about the principles and phenomena they helped discover, but also about how scientific investigation actually worked. Boyle wanted scientists to be a new order of mysterious authorities; the public would consider them a special class of people, a priestly order of material truths instead of divine ones. That way, science would be above politics. Ironically for Hobbes' modern reputation as an authoritarian, his conception of science was democratic, even anarchist. Science was a public enterprise in which anyone could participate as best they could or wanted. Boyle's clericalism was a product of the English Civil War, just as Hobbes' openness was. Hobbes was honest about the political power of science. Boyle wanted scientists to stand above the orders of human politics so they'd be left alone while the kings and militiamen killed each other. You can't have a sacred order if the magicians show everyone their strings.

[my bold]http://adamwriteseverything.blogspot.co.uk/2015/03/knowing-knowledge-v-honesty-as-anarchy.htmlI think that this discussion about the development of the Royal Society from 1660 displays the opposing sides that I and (the majority of?) the SPGB take with regard to ‘science’.From this, I seem to be a ‘Hobbesian’, whilst the SPGB is ‘Boylean’.I know that I’m wasting my time posting this, because Religious Materialists don’t ‘do history’ (‘matter’ is their ‘absolute god’ and demands faith, not critical thought), but nevertheless I find it fascinating for Marxists, and hope that perhaps even a minority of one might benefit from reading some history of science and its ideologies (which includes, obviously, the Religious Materialism of the SPGB).The SPGB doesn’t want ‘specialists’ to openly discuss ‘strings’, and just who pulls them, for what purposes, and in whose interests. For the SPGB, ‘matter’ is the disinterested ‘string-puller’ (and not their elite 'specialists', god forbid!).Happy New Year!

[LBird]

Young Master Smeet wrote:

Ideology does not free us from meaning and history, it draws us within it.

So, what's your ideology, YMS?

[LBird]

Young Master Smeet wrote:

LBird wrote:

This is an ideological dispute, not a personal dispute.

No, it's a hermeneutic dispute, one that can be dealt with with evidence: what do the texts say?

You're really struggling with the developments of 20th century, aren't you, YMS? Or, at least, your 19th century materialist ideology is.It's a commonplace of even bourgeois scientific thought today that 'evidence' is based upon the 'theory' that 'selects' it. In physics, Einstein argued that 'the theory determines what we observe'. In historiography, read E H Carr's What is History? The 'theory-ladenness of facts'.You're an ideological 'materialist', YMS, who believes (ie., has faith) that 'evidence', like 'matter', simply 'exists out there', and we can passively observe the 'evidence' and objectively discover The Eternal Truth.Apparently, 'texts' talk to you, of their own volition, just like 'matter' talks to the Leninist Materialists, and so the proletariat are simply shooed away, with 'Nothing to see here, or criticise here, or decide democratically here; just leave it to the 'specialists' to use 'hermeneutics' to listen to the almighty text'.Do us a favour, YMS – get an education fit for the 21st century, not the 19th. And an ideology fit for democratic production, too.

[LBird]

Young Master Smeet wrote:

Lbird,My dispute is entirely  that I do not think that your reading of these texts accord's with a sensible Marxist perspective, that's the whole nub of the dispute.

[my bold]No, YMS, not 'me and you', but our ideologies.That's the whole nub of the dispute.I'm a Democratic Communist, whose concern is to use Marx to further the building of the democratic control of social production by the producers (ie., socialism).You're an Individualist Materialist, whose concern is Engels' 'matter', and how individuals 'know matter' by their biological senses.Your 'sensible Marxist' is not my 'sensible Marxist', either.This is an ideological dispute, not a personal dispute.It's about politics and power – you won't have the producers determining by democratic means their own product.You don't accept that 'matter' is a social product, and so you won't have the producers determining whether matter exists for them. This attitude of political opposition to democratic production is itself the social product of bourgeois 19th century 'materialism'. You disagree with this – to you, this is all about individual opinions, rather than political and ideological dispute.And so, you hide your ideology.

[LBird]

Wez wrote:

I found Bertell Ollman's book 'Dance of the Dialectic' particularly helpful with aspects of Marx's epistemology.

But not 'particularly helpful' with others?

Ollman, DotD, p. 4, wrote:

And when I sought to construct my own definitions from the way Marx used his key concepts in his writings, I was shocked to discover that their apparent meanings varied with the context, often considerably. I was not the first, of course, to note or to be bothered by the elastic quality of Marx’s meanings. Vilfredo Pareto, the Italian sociologist, provide the classic statement of this problem long ago when he said, “Marx’s words are like bats. One can see in them both birds and mice” (1902).

This 'problem' is most severe in relation to Marx's use of the concept 'material'.Engels' material bat was a bird of 'matter'.Others' material bat was a mouse of 'social production'.As to which bat is most useful for the interests and purposes of the proletariat, democratically building for the 'social production' of socialism…

[LBird]

Wez wrote:

It is to the credit of comrades that they continue to indulge Mr. Bird. However when he rises from his keyboard and feeds his body, looks both ways before crossing the road and puts on an extra layer for the frosty mornings he becomes, miraculously, a materialist. Even his/ or is it her imagination would be unavailable without the help of some grey material called a brain.

Have you bothered to read anything that Jordan wrote?No?What a surprise – another Religious Materialist displays just what the lack of 'imaginative grey material' leads to.Ignorance.

[Author]

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