[LBird]

robbo203 wrote:

Ironically LBird professes to be what he calls an "idealist materialist".  Funnily enough I don't have, and never have had,  any quarrel with his criticisms of a positivistic cum objectivist view of science and its pretensions to be value free.  Theory, the ideas we hold in our head always condition that factswe apprehend about material reality.  Hence idealism-materialism. 

I'm happy enough that at least robbo seems to be agreeing with me, here.And if he really means that the 'reality' we 'know', is a product of 'conditioning' plus 'fact', then we've got there, at last.Thus 'plus' is 'activity' (or, as Marx called it, 'social labour'), and 'unconditioned fact' is the 'passive ingredient' to labour (or, as Marx called it, 'inorganic nature'), and 'reality' is our product (or, as Marx called it 'organic nature').So, we have 'theory' ('conditioning') being 'active' ('plus') on 'unconditioned fact'.But, 'fact' IS NOT 'out there', but a product, a 'conditioned fact'. There is no 'fact' (unconditioned) that we 'know', because we condition 'unconditioned fact' by our social labour, and produce 'our facts', or 'facts-for-us'.As Marx says, we create our 'objective facts'.So, 'reality-for-us' is our active product, by social theory and practice, when we change inorganic nature into organic nature.This is not 'materialism', which pretends to 'know' the 'unconditioned facts', which is why it is passive and claims that what the elite know is a reflection of 'out there'. Materialism denies activity (social labour) which changes 'out there' into our 'in here'. Materialism claims that an elite can produce 'Truth', whereas 'truth' is a social product, which we can change.So, it's better to call Marx an 'idealist-materialist', to capture 'theory' and 'practice'. Engels did not understand these epistemological issues, otherwise he would not have talked about a 'dialectic in nature' prior to human conscious activity, social labour, our theory and practice, which produces 'nature-for-us', a 'nature' which changes within modes of production, a socio-historic 'organic nature'.

[LBird]

Tim Kilgallon wrote:

Young Master Smeet wrote:

lbird wrote:

So, if a democratic vote is not 'binding' (in some sense), what's the point of it?

Exactly!

then presumably we would need a vote on the vote on the result of the vote, followed swiftly by a vote on the vote…………..

I'm not sure what point you two think that you're making, other than, according to you, democracy is pointless and voting is a process without an end product.I don't think arguing this about 'democracy' will gain you any members of the SPGB from amongst those workers looking for answers about 'democratic socialism'!This standpoint is not only opposed to democracy in science, but also to democracy in politics.But… I'm sure you two will claim to have a 'special consciousness', that allows you two to 'know' the product of 'science'.Otherwise, it's the death of any notion of 'science', even a bourgeois elitist one.

[LBird]

Young Master Smeet wrote:

Bourgeois science works by rstricting access to the fruits of collective endevour: education, training, resources to practice science and time.  When there are no more classes, and the intellectual fruits of society are available to freely access by all, and the working day is reduced to the bare minimum, members of society will be able to practice a different sort of science.  The basis of that society will be that the free development of each will be the condition for the free development of all, so there will be access to heterodx views, and active steops taken to ensure that minorities interests and opinions are supported so that they can test and promote their ideas through equal access to the means of communication.  Where large projects are required, society will democratically decide whether it is worthwile to build ITER, or CERN like facilities, and we will co-ordinate worldwide to ensure that we can all benefit from them.Science would be a part of daily life, with the practical possibilities of being able to feed it into our communities and workplaces providing a fucs, so knowledge will be produced out of our daily existence.  Where "the human essence is no abstraction inherent in each single individual. In its reality it is the ensemble of the social relations."

I can go along with everything that you've said, here, YMS.

YMS wrote:

What we won't have is a "doctrine [which] must, therefore, divide society into two parts, one of which is superior to society." by having binding votes on whateveryone thinks.

So, if a democratic vote is not 'binding' (in some sense), what's the point of it?There is still only 'one part' in society: the producers.But, clearly, any democratic vote produces two 'parts': the thing voted for, and the thing voted against. This is nothing to do with Marx's point in his Theses on Feuerbach, about an elite which 'outranks' the producers, in the decision-making process.

YMS wrote:

 Indeed, it will be a society in which 'everyone' can access [evidence], and then have to decide what it means to them… "Finally:

Quote:

Because I'm a Democratic Communist, and think that humans actively produce their knowledge of what 'evidence' says, and I argue that socialism cannot be in the power of an elite…

As I have demonstrated, the basic definition of an eleite would include a majority, so your theory is elitist and does include an elite.  I'm afraid that isn't wordplay, it is the logical outcome of your own theories.  Not to mention that you have never adressed the probblem of how we can know the result of a vote without voting on the result of the result of the result…

This last bit, though, is meaningless.But, overall, some progress.

[LBird]

Twford John wrote:

…do you believe that democracy is, as it were, a trump card. That if a majority of the membership supports a proposal, no matter how preposterous …then the democratic decision overrides everything else?

I'm not a member of the SPGB, TJ, but the simple answer to your question, for any democratic socialist, is 'Yes'.The alternative is to accept that an elite have the power of determining 'preposterousness'.That you hold this elitist belief seems to be implied by your question.

[LBird]

So, YMS, still no detail in your account of 'science', about workers' democracy, social production, elite power, historical orgins of the bourgeois ideology of 'science', classes and their conflict, Marx, the mistakes of Engels, how humans 'know' what 'reality' is…… just the usual ignoring of all these issues, combined with a concealing of your ideological views – which amount to a continuation of the bourgeois method of the production of scientific knowledge (while pretending that it's 'objective'), and the standard individualist/biological belief that 'individuals' (usually so-called 'geniuses') simply access 'evidence' and then plainly tell the rest of us just what 'the evidence says'.

YMS wrote:

But materialists don't claim they have special access to evidence, they claim that there is evidence, and everyone can have access to it.

So, why doesn't the 'evidence' have to be voted upon?Either 'everyone' can access it, and then have to decide what it means to them… or you're arguing that the 'evidence' speaks for itself, and 'everyone' will give the same account of it… or you're arguing that a special elite alone can 'read' the 'evidence'.The first implies democracy, the second implies passivity, the third implies Leninism.Because I'm a Democratic Communist, and think that humans actively produce their knowledge of what 'evidence' says, and I argue that socialism cannot be in the power of an elite……I argue for workers' democracy in the social production of their knowledge.

[LBird]

YMS, post #272 wrote:

But collective production does not mean voting…

YMS, post #275 wrote:

Materialism does not necessitate an elite with special access to reality…

[my bolds]I'll have to leave it to others to determine the meaning of what you're writing, because I can't make sense of your contradictory posts.

YMS wrote:

…individuals acting together…

I suspect that you're echoing robbo's concerns with 'individuals', rather than Marx's concern (and mine) with 'social production' by classes.

YMS wrote:

So they refuse to use the evidence of the minority, or to allow the minority to collect evidence?

Yes, the 'evidence' produced by the minority is put to the vote.If the majority accept that the 'evidence' produced by the minority suits the purposes and interests of the majority better than the earlier 'evidence' which had won a vote, then the new 'evidence' becomes the current 'truth'.

YMS wrote:

And doesn't the evidence dictate the coclusion?

No, 'evidence' doesn't 'dictate' – the democratic producers 'dictate', by a vote.This is yet another example of 'materialists' claiming that 'evidence' speaks for itself. We're back to what I've caricatured in the past as the claim that 'the rocks speak to the materialists'.Workers in the 21st century are no longer going to fall for the claim by 19th century 'materialists' that the 'materialists' have a special access to 'evidence',  which allows the 'materialists' alone to determine 'what the evidence says'. That's the direction 'materialism' takes us: to an 'elite' with a 'special consciousness', who alone, without a vote by workers, determine what 'evidence' says. It's the philosophical basis of Leninism.

[LBird]

twc wrote:

…skulk off ignominiously like a rebuffed cur with tail between legs.

Yet more personal abuse from the 'Religious Materialists'.I suppose it helps divert attention from the non-democratic ideology of the RM-ers, especially for those interested workers who know little yet, about epistemology, and the need for democracy within scientific production, and are trying to get to grips with these vital issues about 'power' and who wields it, within physics and maths, etc.

[LBird]

YMS wrote:

But collective production does not mean voting…

That's one ideological point of view, YMS, but I don't happen to share it, because I'm a Democratic Communist, who looks to Marx, and his ideas about social production, workers' power, and democratic production.If you wish to argue that "collective production does not mean voting", you'll have to specify what this 'collectivity' consists of (it can't be 'the proletariat', for example), and how it decides what to produce, and how it determines 'true knowledge', and why it does things in this way.I openly state that only the proletariat (pre-rev; post-rev: the producers) can determine its method, interest, purpose, product, by democratic means, ie. 'voting'.If you (and the wider SPGB) disagree with this ideology, and prefer 'not voting', then you should openly declare to workers looking for socialist ideas (ie. the democratic control of production) that you're not socialist.

YMS wrote:

Last I checked, Lbird has accepted that the majority would act on evidence, and investigation of the world, but would his majoritarian elite be able to act against evidence?

Yes, but the reason I accept this, is the the majority produce their 'evidence'.I suspect that you disagree with this notion of 'social production', because you are a 'materialist', and 'materialists' argue that 'evidence' simply sits 'out there' in the 'real world', passively awaiting its 'discovery' by 'disinterested' observers. It's 19th century, obsolete, thinking, but nevetheless, under the influence of Engels, the Religious Materialists (with their worship of 'matter', which cannot be 'voted upon') continue to argue this ideology.

YMS wrote:

So, the majority can be the elitie.

If you're reduced to playing with words, YMS, it only weakens your already flimsy, ahistoric, asocial, non-Marxist, anti-voting, case.

[LBird]

alanjjohnstone wrote:

Quote:

You spend more times attacking Engels and the Socialist Party than toward capitalism and the ruling class.

 Lbird, To remedy this criticism from mcolme, …

I can 'remedy this criticism' very fast, alan.Simply put, mcolome1 hasn't got a clue about how I 'spend my time', other than that which he encounters on this site.Most people who meet me know that I spend most of my time attacking 'capitalism and the ruling class'.But, on a site supposedly based on a desire for socialism, which continues to push the nonsense that Engels wrote, and to ignore the detail of what Marx wrote, clearly I will appear to be 'spending my time' here attacking the SPGB. I am attacking the SPGB. It's a shame that mcolome1 doesn't respond to my criticisms of 'Engels and the Socialist Party', rather than try to shift the blame onto me, for being critical, rather than blame the SPGB for spouting nonsense.

ajj wrote:

…can i suggest you write something not too controversial or convoluted to persuade or convince our fellow workers of the advantages and benefits of socialism and why the capitalist society is a failed system and requires replacing…

I can't even 'write something etc.' to persuade our fellow socialists, who supposedly look to Marx and workers' democracy, but won't apply those ideas to 'science'.I don't think my writing a blog attacking the SPGB for its inability to produce thinkers who can cope with ideas about science, epistemology, physics, maths, social production, etc., would be productive in the wider class. The idea that the membership would 'endorse' my views is currently laughable, because Religious Materialism is their ideology, but not mine.I look to Marx, social theory and practice, workers' democracy, the collective production of truth, class origins of bourgeois science, etc., etc., etc…

[LBird]

alanjjohnstone wrote:

Lbird, you may be interest in this article – the medicalisation of racism.http://www.truth-out.org/opinion/item/37681-the-dangers-of-medicalizing-racism

Quote:

racism is viewed as a matter of faulty wiring that can simply be corrected with medical intervention…Medicalizing racism has the added consequence of silencing cries for social justice. The message is clear: racism is to be fought at the psychiatrist's office, not in the streets. However, we do not need racism recovery, we need revolution. The prescription we need is for radical social change.

Yeah, alan, the article is to my political tastes, as it discusses issues which should be relevant to any Communist scientist: the individualising and biologising of social products; structures; disastrous theory shifts; the problem with focus on the physical; ideologies at the heart of medicine; power; and revolution.

[LBird]

Brian wrote:

Has for your reference to the "induction methodology" it appears you are forgetting that deduction requires induction to compare and contrast between what is and what isn't.

The key word, Brian, is production, not 'induction' or 'deduction'.You've now completely moved away from the posts that you made earlier.I'm not sure why you made those posts, only to not use any of the concepts and terms within them, now.The 'constant assertion that 'social theory and practice' is the end all and be all of everything' is what you agreed with, earlier.I keep emphasising social theory and practice, because that is Marx's method. And he's concerned with 'social production' and 'change', not the 'contemplation' of either 'induction' or 'deduction'.You've stopped mentioning the social production of knowledge by the class conscious proletariat, and have returned to bourgeois concerns like induction and deduction, apparently unaware of what you are doing.As for 'historical context', I'm the one who constantly tries to discuss the social origins of your ideology, whereas you ignore it.

[LBird]

mcolome1 wrote:

The Socialist Party is not an organization composed of robots,

Unfortunately, it is, whilst its members continue with ruling class ideas about 'science', and it'll continue to 'robotically' repeat those ideas.Marx's method is a critical method, and so 'critical theory' of 'what exists' must precede any social practice.'Robots', of course, can just do 'practice', because they are programmed with someone else's 'theory'.Given your hatred of Leninism, mcolome1, I don't know why you can't see these 'robotic methods' are those of the 'materialists', who regard workers as 'robots' who 'do practice', while the elite experts determine the 'programming', without any democratic input and control from the workers themselves.That's why the 'materialists' will let workers control 'widget production' in factories, but not 'ideas production' (ie. scientific knowledge and the election of truth) in academia.

[LBird]

Brian wrote:

Right let's now fast forward to socialism to try and visualise how a complete system analysis will work in theory and practice or practice and theory for when you use system analysis it's constantly evolving and eventually it becomes immaterial which comes first – the chicken or the egg!

[my bold]This is where I have problems, Brian.In your earlier post, that I agreed with, you seemed to agree with Marx's method of social theory and practice.This is a method, which insists that 'theory' precedes 'practice', because 'practice' is always driven by theories, even if those theories are undeclared/unconscious by those employing them in their social practice (as they often are by those following bourgeois ideologies). It's the examination of those theories, and the interests and purposes that those theories embody, that allows us to collectively determine whether those theories are acceptable to us.But now, you've jettisoned any talk of Marx, and the social origin of theories, and moved to 'system analysis', rather than 'social theory and practice', and claim that 'practice and theory' (ie. 'induction', the unthinking,uncritical acceptance of 'what exists' and simply 'doing') is also an acceptable scientific method.This 'pragmatic' type of thinking, the doing of supposedly untheoretical 'practice' is suited to 'individuals', and is indeed a core notion of US 'pragmatism'. They 'just get on with it!', without any need for accounting for one's social practice to one's comrades.Where does democratic accountability sit within 'practice and theory'? If the 'act' is already done, prior to the discussion (and the 'theory'), how is this production to be controlled by the associated producers?Once again, I'm sorry to realise that many socialists seem to pay lip service to Marx's ideas, of social production, but simply discard them within their account of how production will work in a socialist society, and return to bourgeois conceptions of, for example, 'practice and theory'.I'm sorry to see this further development (or, should I say 'regression'), because I genuinely thought that we were getting somewhere, in today's discussion.As for "robbo's dig at the impracticalities of your claim for theory and practice", it's robbo who has no understanding of the consequences of his 'dig'. He's 'digging' at Marx, and democratic socialism. Since I know that robbo is an individualist at heart, I can live with his political opinion, but I'm surprised, given your earlier posts, that you can't see that the problem lies with robbo, not with Marx's theory of social production.Hmmm… back to the drawing board, eh?

[LBird]

mcolome1, I'm criticising 'materialism', and only criticising the SPGB inasmuch as the members and supporters here espouse 'materialism'.Where those SPGB members seem to follow the SPGB study guide (and some other things that I've read), I don't criticise the SPGB.It seems to me, that there is a contradiction between much of what the SPGB 'officially' says, and what many (most?) of the members actually believe.In pointing that out, it's up to the SPGB to address that contradiction.Of course, it's always open to the SPGB to declare that it as yet takes no side on the issue of Marx's 'idealism-materialism' versus Engels' 'materialism', because the organisation is yet to form a democratic opinion.But, in taking that route, the party can no longer claim to be 'materialist' in its approach to 'science' and epistemology. Which would suit me just fine – it would show an openness to new opinions by fellow workers.

[LBird]

Brian wrote:

LBird wrote:

Once again, Brian, I'm not sure why you think we disagree.Engels and 'ultimate' I have a problem with (elsewhere he talks of 'finality'), but I don't want to sidetrack yet again into the detail of Engels' mistakes (and his contradictory assertions), since most of what you've written seems to me to be incompatible with 'materialism', which is why I think I agree with what you've said.

Like I've mentioned, I knew this would be no easy task.  You need to unpick what Engels means by ultimate and only.  He like Marx were on a learning curve when they originally took on the MCoH and the LVToV and combined them into a methodology for an analysis of "production and reproduction of real life", albeit when investigating a political economy.  With time they came to realise this methodology was incomplete and it suggested they had the answer to everything.In effect what they both admitted in later life (it took Engles a bit longer to catch up with Marx) was the actual methodology or system analysis would only become a complete whole once the majority were in a position to decide for themselves what is and what isn't without the hinderance of ideology. Or like when Marx hinted at 'the demons of the past weighing like an incabus on the present'.  Obviously, this all harks back to the philosophers becoming proactive rather than reactive.Personally, being a generalist and not a specialist, I could not care two hoots what is and what isn't in the present. For my end goal is that  essential change where I can decide what is and what isn't.  And to that end I not only seek fundamental change by democratic methods but also am ultimately determined that the future decision making process will not be constructed by a party elite, or any other elite for that matter, but by the majority.For more on this see#27.

I can only reiterate that I can't see why you think we disagree, on the substantive issue of 'social production'.Perhaps we'd argue about Engels, if we had to, but I'm content to register my general agreement with your position, which I take to be that there is no 'neutral method' of science, which is only available to an elite, and so the social production of 'scientific knowledge' is amenable to workers' democracy. That is, the class conscious workers (pre-rev.; post-rev, the associated producers) can elect their 'truth' and determine their 'reality'.

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