[LBird]

It must be clear to all, now, that the SPGB is completely unable to produce a political response to the criticism of 'materialism', and in the absence of any organisational reply, the gap is being filled by ignorant members who always revert to personal abuse.I'm not sure why those who are keeping quiet can't see that this discredits the SPGB.

[LBird]

Young Master Smeet wrote:

Lbird, could we produce yellow?Are you Humpty Dumpty in disguise?  Are you humpty in disguise?

Your ignorance does the SPGB no favours.Personal abuse is not a political response.

[LBird]

Young Master Smeet wrote:

Nature is a source of use value, that implies to me that inorganic nature has qualities which restrict what we can do with it.

What are these 'qualities', YMS?How do you 'know' them?Marx argues that 'qualities' are relational, products of an active 'intervention' by humans upon 'inorganic nature'.If you're claiming to be able to 'know' inorganic nature without any relationship to it, please tell us how you do so. What is your method?This would require you to argue for passivity, which Marx denied when he looked to the idealists as providing the 'active side'.The subject-object relationship is inescapable.Remember, Marx was big on the term 'relations'.

[LBird]

As I've said many times, YMS, you're approaching Marx from an Engelsist Materialist perspective, so you can't understand that Marx argues for change, not contemplation.As for 'real world', you'll have to read what I wrote earlier.As for 'material', if everybody doesn't already know the difference now between Marx's 'material' and Engels' 'material', they'll never know. I've explained it often enough.

[LBird]

Young Master Smeet wrote:

So, unlike Marx Lbird does not believe in an external Nature, and that we are part of Nature, not that Nature is part of us.

The SPGB should really begin with basic reading lessons for its members.I've said it, time and again, Marx and LBird agree on 'inorganic nature': this is the 'ingredient into' social labour.This is not 'matter'.Engels started by calling 'inorganic nature' matter. This is nothing to do with Marx's social productionism.

YMS wrote:

So, no-one determines the truth.  The truth just is.

And you'll continue to passively contemplate 'Truth', eh, YMS?And hail your eternal god 'Matter'.And you'll continue to place your trust in the 'elite' who 'know' your God. Or, so they say.Whatever reason could they have for denying, like you, the workers a vote on 'matter'?

[LBird]

alanjjohnstone wrote:

But you must think why for over 3 years you ahave been on this forum with moreorless the same arguments. Surely, there must be a psychological reason and not a political reason for why you have persevered so long. We cannot be as bad as you say, otherwise, you could be considered a masochist. 

The 'materialists' can never self-analyse!You, being a 'materialist', are compelled to regard all this as a 'psychological' issue, rather than a 'political' one, because that's precisely what your ideology tells you, to regard 'individuals' who oppose your claim to 'elite knowledge production'. I must be a 'faulty cog', who questions the 'machine' (a 'material' machine, of course!), and so I've got 'psychological' issues. We all know where 'materialism' went in the Stalinist Soviet Union, regarding 'psychological' dissidents.But… I'll take you on, on both levels.'Psychologically', it's because I was fooled for years by the Leninists into believing in 'materialism', and being a worker, I did not have the abilities to question what I was told. But now I do. But I bear a grudge, and hope to help other workers, who want to see the democratic control of the means of production (socialism), avoid the mistake that I ignorantly made. We're all made ignorant by this society, and we have to fight back, if we get the chance.'Politically', it's because you claim to have a special consciousness, that allows Tim, linda, robbo, gnome, you, etc., etc., to alone 'know' this 'matter'.Logically, this must be a 'special consciousness', otherwise you'd regard other workers as just like you, and allow them to determine for themselves, collectively by voting, whether what you say individually is the truth for them, too. If one is a 'materialist', one can't do this, but must appeal to the god of 'matter', which talks to your elite alone, and must encourage workers to simply have faith in their betters.I persevere for two reasons:1. The SPGB claims to be democratic, and I have faith in the abilities of workers to think critically, and so it might be possible to change some minds;2. The reading that I'm compelled to do has vastly increased my knowledge about these issues, and I'm far more confident in Marx's arguments than I was when I first started posting. Frankly, it's becoming a doddle to run rings round 'materialists', and to show them up as the elitists that they are.So, not 'masochism', but workers' self-development. A political task, not a psychological one.

[LBird]

alanjjohnstone wrote:

We have spent an exorbitant time in discussing these and various philosophical positons that keep getting returned to I have said previously that the debate is all rather hair-splitting and point-scoring.I would much rather you redirected your intellect to much more mundane issues, LBird, …

[my bold]That's the problem, alan.Elitist ideologies always regard 'democracy' as "all rather hair-splitting and point-scoring", in their attempt to shift the focus away from difficult issues (difficult for them, of course) about 'who has power'.I'm sure you'd prefer I 'redirect my intellect to much more mundane issues', and leave the field clear for the 'materialist' ideology to keep telling workers that they can't control the production of ideas.I, too, in the SWP, used to accept that argument, that issues about 'power' are best left to the 'party', and that I should concern myself with 'much more mundane issues', like selling papers, recruiting more fodder, stewarding marches, paying subs, etc.The simple truth, alan, is that you can't see the vital importance of this political issue, and you're encouraged in your ignorance by the ideology that has a grasp on your mind.You'll deny this, of course, and simply argue, like Tim and linda, that you and they can 'touch matter', and that's the end of the issue.SPGB slogan? – 'Back to the mundane, workers! Nothing to see here! Trust us elitists! Use your own biological senses!'No, it's not for me, alan. I want workers active in the intellectual and critical areas of production, not just the mundane.

[LBird]

gnome wrote:

lindanesocialist wrote:

Workers are starving, unemployed, homeless and landless. Reach out to them, me, us. The idealists are the past, we have our material conditions and interests to deal with. Shelter, food, clothes etc etc. LBird is a troll and a time waster.If you are not arguing pointlessly with LBird, you are attacking and suspending members trying to connect with the real issues that concern the working classMake this a workers forum and we might move forward.

Head and nail come to mind…

[my bold]You have one?It's certainly not a critical one. Or active.But, that's your 'materialist' ideology in play, eh? Passive in the face of 'matter', to the end.If there are any 'trolls and time wasters' on this thread, it's those who deny Marx's 'active proletariat' creating their own world. But I wouldn't call youse 'trolls', just ignorant of anything whatsoever to do with Marx's theories. You are Engelsian Materialists, and you should be open about this, with any interested workers reading.But, you won't be. Elitists always hide their ideology from democratic workers.

[LBird]

robbo, Tim , linda… please read what I've written.

[LBird]

robbo203 wrote:

Im still waiting for LBird's answer. Why is he so coy about providing an answer?

You'll have to read my answer, robbo, as opposed to ignoring it, and substituting your own terms for Marx's.

[LBird]

Another consideration: Pannekoek argues that we create the so-called 'laws of nature'.Is Pannekoek correct, or do humans simply discover eternal 'laws of nature', that were 'out there' all the time, and we just contemplate them?Put in the epistemological terms that I discussed earlier, are 'laws of nature' 'objective', or are they a product of the subject-object relationship?Pannekoek seems to agree with Marx, that the 'socially objective' laws of nature are a socio-historical product, which we can therefore change.

[LBird]

lindanesocialist wrote:

Don't need any long words to answer my quetion.

No, but apparently you need continued repetition: it seems to be a party attribute, the inability to read what workers write, and the substitution of other terms.

Quote:

Do yo believe we created the world? 

Little words, linda, once again:Humans …create …their …world.This is Marx's argument, and I agree with him.If you don't agree with Marx's social production, you should say openly just who you agree with. I'll bet it's Engels and the 'materialists'.You're fishing in deep waters, linda, and I'm trying to help you. Just like I did Vin.

[LBird]

lindanesocialist wrote:

LBird wrote:

This is the heart of Marx's ideas: social production. We are the creator of our world. That's why we can change it.

So we created the Sun and the moon? Or did they exist before humans?

You're not very good at this epistemology lark, are you, linda?I've already explained what 'existence' is, so if you insist that the world we create 'existed' before we created it, you'll have to tell us how you know that, and who did create this 'existence'.I'd suggest that you 'know' this because someone has told you so (you're a social individual, as Marx says), and you'll have to argue that as humans are not the creator of their world (which goes against what Marx argued, about social production), then a god was the creator.It all fits with Religious Materialism, linda. Don't listen to them, if you want workers to build socialism. Otherwise, you'll hand power over to an elite. The elite who told you the story about Religious Materialism.

[LBird]

I suppose it saves time, mcolome1, if you just refuse to discuss the issues, and continue to misrepresent me.I've already told you that I'm not an adherent of Dunayevskaya, I think her views are very similar to Lenin's; so, it doesn't surprise me that you've been part of both movements, because they are very similar.Marx's so-called 'materialist conception of history' is nothing to do with 'matter'; by 'material', Marx meant 'human' or 'social', as opposed to 'ideal', relating to divine production.Yes, you are an 'amateur', but so is the entire SPGB, going by what's been written here, so you won't learn anything soon.The SPGB members here do base their epistemological views on 'individuals' and their 'biological senses': they keep saying so, it's not me accusing them of doing so.I've never blamed Engels for 'all the problems of socialism': I argued that he, like you, was an amateur, and had no idea whatsoever about epistemology.The rest of your post is just the usual evasion of the issues, combined with the usual personal abuse.Does it say something in the handbook 'The ideology of materialism', that you seem to have as your bible, that personal abuse of Marxists is the only way to deal with those who question your elitism?If you're 'wasting your time', then give posting a miss, and try reading the debates and forming an opinion about the social production of 'organic nature'. You've clearly got lots to learn.

[LBird]

Here's a philosophical question for everyone to ponder.If the subject-object relationship must always be maintained, how can 'interventionless nature' exist?Marx (just like the idealists with whom he agreed) maintains the relationship by arguing that the mediating factor between the two is activity. Marx used the term 'social labour' for this category.Thus, he argues that the subject (a social category, not an 'individual') creates its object, by its social activity upon 'inorganic nature'.But this 'inorganic nature' does not 'exist in itself', but only forms an input or ingredient into social labour, which changes it into a human product, our object, 'organic nature'. That is what 'exists-for-humans', what is 'reality-for-us'.The notion of contemplating 'inorganic nature' is meaningless, because, separated from its active side, it doesn't 'exist'. It only comes into existence-for-us as a labour-ingredient, and we immediately change it.This is the heart of Marx's ideas: social production. We are the creator of our world. That's why we can change it.Any other formulation leaves workers passive in the face of 'interventionless nature', at best; and at worst, under the control of a social elite, who do produce an 'organic nature' that is built to their purposes and interests, but hide this with their ideology of 'interventionless nature', the myth of 'Objective Reality' and 'Eternal Truth'.Humans build their world: subject creates its object.

[Author]

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