[LBird]

alanjjohnstone wrote:

But again, LBird…are you saying i vote at every level, at every stage, on every point and that everybody else has to, as well…i don't think so…

Only the producers can decide whether this is necessary, or not.This decision is not made by 'matter', so that we can't change our decision, but by conscious humans.I'm a Democratic Communist, and just like Marx, I can't give details of how the democratic control of, say, widget production, will work in practice.We might all want to vote on the production of every last widget in every last factory – though I can't imagine 'why' we'd want to do so, but its not my individual decision, and in fact I'd argue against such time-consuming activity.But, I argue that only the producers can decide about 'widget production'. The 'widgets' do not simply 'exist out there', and the 'widgets' don't tell us what we must do. It's our decision.A democratic society might decide to appoint a sub-committee to supervise widget production, but the members of that s-c would be delegates, and would have to report back to their appointers. Obviously, the report back would be in language and terms that the appointers understand. Their appointers would decide whether the production of widgets is in the interests and serves the purposes of the appointers; the interests and purposes of the delegates, if they differ from those of their appointers, would be over-ridden. That's political power, and it must be in the hands of the appointers, not the delegates.This is basic democracy. There can't be an elite who determine widget production, against the interests and purposes of society as a whole.Frankly, I'm surprised that the term 'democracy' seems to cause so much bafflement to the SPGB. If society determines that every last muscle movement in every individual shall be determined by a vote, then it will be. I'm a democrat, and so can't give any other answer, if I'm asked that question.Do I think that society ever would vote to do this, then I'd answer 'no'. I'm inclined to think that production would be subject to some division of labour (by choices, abilities and interests of the producers individually), by specialists (educated and elected by society), by delegates (controlled by mandates), by sub-committees (appointed from above), etc. Democracy in action. But, clearly, its society that decides if their shall be a division of labour ('matter' doesn't decide for us), or specialists (they don't select and educate themselves as an elite), or delegates (they'll do what we tell them to do) or sub-committees (they won't form themselves, outside of our social power).Does this cover the basis of 'democracy', alan? Clearly, if you had a different conception, and you and others outvoted me, your definition of 'democracy' would prevail.It seems to me, that any workers' movement being built up within capitalism would have to be built upon the principles of 'democracy', and so perhaps the first task is for workers to begin to determine just what they want from 'democracy', and to which spheres of production it would apply. I think all production should be subject to democracy, but perhaps other workers disagree, and want elites to continue to tell us things, and for workers to remain passive in the political process. I'd argue strongly against leaving any power to elites, because it leaves workers passive and thus powerless.

[LBird]

Tim Kilgallon wrote:

A simple question for L Bird, which mirrors one you posed to another poster earlier and which should hopefully elicit a simple yes or a no.Do you believe that matter has an existence independent of your perception of it?

A very simple and reasonable question, Tim.The answer is 'No'.Marx argues that the opposition to 'consciousness' is 'inorganic nature'.Engels thought (given his social circumstances and influences) that this meant 'matter'.According to Marx, 'matter' is a social product, which we can change, rather than, as the bourgeoisie allege, we contemplate.We could expect, if we were Marxists, that 'matter' could change (because it is a social product) to… errr… for example… errr… to… ermmm… 'energy'.So, some societies, from inorganic nature, produce matter.Other societies, from inorganic nature, produce energy.For some, 'inorganic nature' is 'matter'; for others, 'inorganic nature' is 'energy'. We have to choose.For us socialists, employing Marx's ideas, we can situate the social production of organic nature (nature-for-us) in socio-historical context. That is, we regard 'organic nature' as a social product, related to the 'mode of production' that produces it.So, to summarise, 'matter' is a social product (which we can change), and 'matter' has no 'existence' outside of our social production.'Existence' is produced.That's why we do not have to simply, passively, discover, contemplate 'matter', but can change 'it'.Bourgeois physics today is behind Marx in 1845.Theses on Feuerbachhttps://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1845/theses/theses.htm

[LBird]

alanjjohnstone wrote:

LBird is cautious about offering the technocrats the power to decide, even though they may well be the only ones who do understand the science…

This underplays my concerns, alan.We now know (read them) that 'the technocrats' do not 'understand the science'.That's why modern physics is in such a mess (read them).'Science' is a social product, and, in a democratic society like socialism, only the ones who produce socially can determine what 'science' is.'Scientists' (your 'technocrats') are products of our society, just like you and me, and the notion, that you espouse, that there is a minority of 'technocrats' who 'understand' (while we don't, and more importantly, can't) is a BOURGEOIS MYTH.Your statement, in effect, reflects ruling class ideas.That's not a surprise, because we live in a class society, where the ruling class are always concerned to eternalise their rule, and make the masses think that only the 'technocrats' 'understand' the world we produce (oooops… 'the objective world' – another myth).Modern physicists are moving in the direction that we produce 'space and time' (read them), so Marx's ideas about us producing our object are just what's needed in physics as in sociology.Thus, revolutionaries can have an input to all science (not just 'politics'), because science is political, knowledge is political, truth is political, maths is political, logic is political…'Politics' means 'power', and the only 'power' acceptable within a socialist society is democratic power.

[LBird]

Young Master Smeet wrote:

LBird wrote:

To argue that 'Freedom and individual development' is not task for  'social theory and practice', under the democratic control of all, is to argue for Thatcherism.

That doesn't follow.   As, I believe has ben argued here by others, hunter gatherers are highly individualistic, but they are hardly Thatcherite in their primitive communist societies.

Sometimes I wonder if you lot deliberately put the most obscure spin on everything I write.I don't wan't to get diverted into history, sociology, modes of production, etc., but…Yes, you're right, YMS. Not every pre-Thatcherite society has been 'Thatcherite individualistic'. It's arguable that the tory party in the '50s was 'hardly Thatcherite'.But, in our present day context, of capitalist society, that we live in, the most appropriate examples in debate are ones drawn from our recent history.Unless you're some sort of primitivist, harking for 'hunter gatherer' social production, then I think that this debate on 'democracy and the individual' is best discussed by talking about the 20th/21st centuries AD, rather than BC.So, do we have 7 billion individuals each as individuals defining what their own personal 'individual freedom' consists of, or we going to democratically determine what 'individual freedom' consists of?As a Democratic Communist, I think only we, as a society, given OUR level of social production, can democratically determine (and change that 'definition' later, if we want to) what we mean by 'individual freedom'.If you are a socialist and a democrat, YMS, and live in 2016, I think you'll agree with me. On the other hand, if you're hankering to get into a pair of budgie-smugglers, and roam around the fields and woods of your local park, and return to primitive food production, and eat caterpillars, then perhaps you won't.

[LBird]

Young Master Smeet wrote:

Society will be run democratically, but to the end of freedom and individual development.

My point entirely.'Freedom and individual development' are social aims ('theory') and social tasks ('practice').Social theory and practice in a socialist society will be democratically controlled.'Freedom' is not the 'individual tasks' of 7 billion individuals.'Individual development' is not the 'individual tasks' of 7 billion individuals.To argue that 'Freedom and individual development' is not task for  'social theory and practice', under the democratic control of all, is to argue for Thatcherism.Only we can achieve the 'end' you mention.7 billion individuals can't. Only a united society can.

[LBird]

alanjjohnstone wrote:

Quote:

LBird wants to global population of a future communist to hold tens of thousands of plebiscites on the truth value of each and every new scientific theory that comes on stream.

I don't want to put words into anybody's mouth but isn't his demand for only the right to democratically decide such issues.

I've tried talking to robbo, but he won't read what I write, and goes off on a rhetorical tangent.Perhaps you can explain 'socialist democracy' to him, alan.I define it as "workers' power", but he seems to define it as 'no individual's muscle moves without a vote', and thus condemns my wish to have workers in collective control of their production.Especially their production of our 'reality-for-us'.

[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…

[Author]

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