LBird
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robbo, it seems pointless for me to say the same things, once again.You can read what I'm saying, and what I'm saying is backed up by Jordan.What seems to be the problem is that you don't accept what I'm saying. Which is fair enough.But these are Marx's arguments, and I do accept what Marx says.The difference between us is an ideological difference.You use the term 'exists' – I use the term 'exists-for-us'. You thus separate object from subject, whereas I don't (for Marx, an 'object' can't 'exist' before it's produced by a 'subject'). You might not like this, but it is what Marx argues, as Jordan clearly outlines, and with which I agree.As I've said, if you think this is 'obviously absurd', then tell us what your ideology says. Then we can compare your ideology with Marx's, and I'll point out the differences.
Young Master Smeet wrote:No, please do explain how I can turn a table into cheese. Either:1) I'm radically misunderstanding your position.2) Inorganic nature is differentiated, real and our being in that world depends ono the relationship of our needs to that reality.There is a third possibility, YMS, but since the thread has been mostly comradely, and in the interests of avoiding a ban, I'll leave it to others to work it out.
You'll have to read Jordan's article if you want to understand any more, YMS.If you don't agree with Marx and Jordan, that's fine by me.Just use 'your' ideology when workers ask about epistemology. And if they prefer your ideology to mine, that's fine by me, too.
Young Master Smeet wrote:LBird wrote:You'll have to explain the relevance of your model to the revolutionary proletariat who wish to change their world and democratise all social production.In your dough analogy, how would you respond to the worker who asks "How can I make a table into cheese?"
Why would a worker whose purpose is to understand Marx's epistemology ask a question irrelevant to the analogy?
Young Master Smeet wrote:LBird wrote:Unless you accept that Marx links subject and object by activity, then you won't understand the analogy, and will simply, as a 'materialist', wish to 'know' what 'dough' is, 'in-itself', outside of any baker, recipe and pie.I'm not a 'dough-in-itself-ist', and neither was Marx.Dough has properties, and qualities. But thse qualities are not dough in itself, but dough for us, we shape the dough by our approach to it, but can only do with it what we can do with dough.
That's an arguable opinion, YMS, that Marx's 'inorganic nature' has an 'existence' outside of its 'ingredientness'.But it's not Marx's opinion, as I've shown, and as Jordan confirms. Also, Bogdanov is useful here, too, because he argues that 'resistance' implies 'activity', and 'activity' implies 'resistance'. The two are inescapably interlinked, as are subject and object.Furthermore, the argument that 'inorganic nature' 'exists outside' of our usage of it, is what the bourgeoisie argue.These are opposed ideologies, but only one of those ideologies would be in the interests, and for the purposes, of the democratic proletariat.Workers have to choose their ideology. Either they chose to determine, by social theory and practice, their own object, or they passively accept the object presented to them by the active bourgeoisie (who employ their own theory and practice to produce 'object-for-them'). Obviously, class interests are involved in this choice of epistemology.
Young Master Smeet wrote:LBird wrote:A conversation that YMS is participating in, but doesn't bother to read.I'm not participating in that conversation.
I don't think you're participating in any conversation.And to refuse to read what's being said by others about issues relevant to your 'conversation', is quite revealing of your 'individualist' method: the 'materialist monologue', perhaps?
You'll have to explain the relevance of your model to the revolutionary proletariat who wish to change their world and democratise all social production.This a site (supposedly) dedicated to politics, especially socialist/communist politics, and this is a discussion about Marx's epistemology, which I'd argue is a key issue for the class conscious proletariat.As for 'dough', read 'ingredient'.An 'ingredient' requires a baker with a pie recipe, whose aim is to produce a pie.Unless you accept that Marx links subject and object by activity, then you won't understand the analogy, and will simply, as a 'materialist', wish to 'know' what 'dough' is, 'in-itself', outside of any baker, recipe and pie.I'm not a 'dough-in-itself-ist', and neither was Marx.
Young Master Smeet wrote:I don't read Robbo's posts or your replies to them.Why doesn't that surprise me?A conversation that YMS is participating in, but doesn't bother to read.Y'couldn't make it up!The 'materialist' blinkers fully at work!You'd probably be more accurate to say:
Young Master Smeet shouldve wrote:I don't read Robbo's or LBird's posts or his or your replies to them.I'm a 'materialist'. My faith sustains me.Perhaps if I use an analogy, that any worker can understand (I just know that I’m going to regret doing this, because analogies are always open to being read in a way not intended – and the ‘materialists’ will always ‘read’ in a different way).A baker takes dough and produces a pie.This is essentially Marx’s model – ‘baker’ = ‘active human’, who has an idea of what they wish to produce; ‘dough’ = undifferentiated ‘inorganic nature’, which is an ingredient into the labour of the ‘active human’; ‘pie’ = ‘object’, which is part of our ‘organic nature’.The bourgeoisie argue that their ‘baker’ simply ‘discovers’ their ‘pies’ on the shelf of the shop, and that their baker does not produce pies, but simply sells an existing object.With Marx’s model, we can determine for ourselves what ‘dough’ we choose to take, based upon what our interests and purposes are in producing our ‘pie’. We don’t simply accept a ‘pie’ which is a ‘shit pie’, and is damaging to us (for ‘shit pie’, read ‘scientific eugenics’, for example).With the bourgeois materialist model, we can’t refuse ‘shit pie’ – after all, the nice ‘baker’ simply gives us what they must, that object which magically appears on their shelf, for disinterested distribution.Comrades, please take this for what it is – a simple attempt to point those interested in epistemology in the right direction.
Young Master Smeet wrote:I find it hard to see how the Marx's words ‘the priority of external nature unassailed’ can be squared at all with your reading. I'd be interested for you to explain. Also ‘sensuous external world' would suggest to me that the external world possesses quality.So, I'm being 'tag-teamed', now, am I?Can't you and robbo co-ordinate your posts, so I don't have to say the same thing twice?Anyway, here's the short answer.Marx argues that 'inorganic nature' is laboured upon to produce 'organic nature'. Is that clear, once again?'Physical' or 'matter' is part of 'organic nature' – that is, we produce 'matter'.Engels, and the 'materialists' don't agree with Marx's 'social productionism', but argue that 'matter' pre-exists its social production. This is an ideology, produced by the bourgeoisie, and is opposed to Marx's views.The 'external world' (by which you mean 'inorganic nature') does not possess 'quality' (no matter what you 'suggest' – your 'suggestion' is an ideology, which you refuse to confront or expose).'Qualities' are produced by social labour, and 'exist' within 'organic nature' (ie., 'nature-for-us').The ideology of 'materialism' doesn't agree with Marx, and neither do you, and that's fine by me. Just don't pretend that what your ideology argues is what Marx argues.PS. re-read Jordan's quote, above – we create our objects.
robbo203 wrote:LBird wrote:robbo, I can't express myself more clearly. I'll put it in bold/italic for you, if it will help:We do actually "produce" our physical world. .Sigh. What I am trying to do, LBird, is to encourage you to modify your language in a way that makes clear in what sense we "produce" our physical world,. You are not seriously suggesting here that the we actually literally produce the physical world are you? At least, I hope not! As far as is known the physical universe preceded the appearance of human beings by, well, millions upon millions of years, right? To a peasant like me that sounds as if its highly unlikely that we "produced" this universe
Sigh. Even bold/italic doesn't help you to read 'words'.'What you are trying to do, robbo' is to read what I'm writing from the ideology of 'materialism'. I've patiently (with much 'sighing') tried to explain this to you, but you won't read these 'words', either. So much for 'materialism' eh? It prevents 'words' being read, apparently. Must be a 'real', even 'physical', barrier to understanding.
robbo wrote:What I suggest we "produce" is not the physical world as such but an IDEA of the physical world. Thats what I am trying to get you to see but you don't see it. You continue to use this obscure elitist academic language you have such such a fondness forAnd you keep using 'this obscure elitist academic and bourgeois language you have such a fondness for': 'materialism'. That's what I am trying to get you to see but you don't see it.And what 'you' (ahem) 'suggest' is a well-attested ideology, an ideology that pretends not to be a social ideology, but common-or-garden, simple, basic, individual common sense!You're the one separating 'idea' from 'physical' – which is an ancient philosophy, which separates the 'subject' from the 'object' (or, the 'idea' from the 'physical'; or, 'consciousness' from 'being'; or, 'ideal' from 'material', etc.).Once more, robbo – and please, please, please, read my words – Marx doesn't do this. Marx maintains the link between the 'subject' and the 'object', and claims that this link is human activity (or, 'social labour'; or, 'social production').Now, if you wish to separate 'idea' and 'physical', by all means do so. But don't pretend that this has anything whatsoever to do with Marx's epistemology. Just openly state your ideology of 'science', your philosophy of 'epistemology', your definition of the 'subject' (which will be 'an individual', rather than Marx's 'social subject').Once you openly state your ideology, it will not only be clearer to all reading here, but, I think, will make your 'own' ideas clearer to yourself. And, hopefully, Marx's ideas clearer to everyone.
Jordan, pp. 29-30, wrote:Marx rightly argued that naturalism thus understood ‘distinguishes itself both from idealism and materialism, constituting at the same time the unifying truth of both’. Although what men see, touch, or grasp are responses to external stimuli, the external objects are determined by the selective activity of the senses and the senses in turn are constantly modified by the biological, social, and cultural evolution of the human species. In a certain, sense, then, there are no natural data, no God-given external facts of nature, but only socially mediated objects.[45]The world as known to man is a man-made world; it is the totality of ‘things for us’ and not of ‘things-in-themselves’. The only knowable is the world that appears in man’s experience, that is causally transformed by human action, divided into species and particulars, class members and classes, articulated into objects and their relations, into things with a definite form, arrangement, and structure, and cut out from the chaotic mass of the pre-existing world as it persists by itself. This humanized world is knowable because it is a world determined by man, the outcome, as Marx said in the first Thesis on Feuerbach, of ‘human sensuous activity’. As a natural being man shapes the environment according to his needs, and the needs determine the articulation of the world into separate things and their connections. External objects are, as it were, the objectified centres of resistance in the environment encountered by the human drives striving for the satisfaction of needs. If the needs were different, the world would look differently too, as it does to other animal species.[my bold]This is a longer version of my statement: humans socially produce their own world, our nature is our product.It is 'nature-for-us', 'reality-for-us', 'truth-for-us', 'object-for-us', 'fact-for-us'…… and not 'nature-as-it-is', 'reality-as-it-is', 'truth-as-it-is', 'object-as-it-is', 'fact-as-it-is'.This is why Marx's epistemology is revolutionary: it allows us to change our world. It denies the bourgeois myth that the world we live in (their social product) can't be changed, but must be simply endured, 'as-it-is'. They claim that their product is not their product, but a universal 'reality', 'nature-as-it-is', which their bourgeois science claims to simply, disinterestedly, objectively, 'discover'. Which can't be changed, because their elite 'Knows Eternal Truth', of 'Matter' (or, 'The Physical').
robbo203 wrote:LBird wrote:If you read what I've written, robbo, then we do actually produce our 'physical world'.Jordan supports this view of Marx's epistemology.If you're not interested in this, why keep posting?Like I said, LBird, your way of expressing yourself is misleading. We don't actually "produce" the physical world because, taken literally, that would mean human beings predate the physical world in which they find themselves. Unless you've gone bonkers that is obviously not what you mean but you need to say what you mean more clearly without resorting to this poseur style of cod philosphy
robbo, I can't express myself more clearly. I'll put it in bold/italic for you, if it will help:We do actually "produce" our physical world. This is what Marx argued, this is what Jordan in his book says that Marx argued, and this is what I agree that Marx argued.I've told you what the problem is, that prevents you reading what Marx, Jordan and I write: it's your 'materialist' ideology. The sooner you examine that, the sooner you'll be able to understand Marx, yourself, and why you disagree with Marx.One symptom of this is your refusal to use the concept "our physical world", which your ideology tells you should be "the physical world".The use of 'the', the definite article, is part of an ideology that claims universal application: 'the physical'. Thus, 'the physical' is external to any human activity. 'The physical' just 'is', simply 'as it is'.The use of 'our', a pronoun, is part of an ideology that claims relative social application: 'our physical'. Thus, 'our physical' is relative to (and created by) some human activity. 'Our physical' is a 'product', of a complex 'production' process, which varies with time and place.You'll either have to start studying Marx's epistemology, or keep resorting, as all 'materialists' do, to insults like 'bonkers', 'poseur' and 'cod'.I'm not being insulting when I say that it's only your ignorance that's preventing you from understanding these issues.Read Jordan's text again, and compare how a 'materialist' would understand it with how a Marxist would understand it, now that you should be able to do this.Of course, this all depends upon you being interested in doing so – I can't make you read what Marx, Jordan and I 'literally' write.
