[LBird]

SocialistPunk wrote:

That should help us to get to grips with what your theory is.

But you haven't yet 'got to grips with' what your own 'theory is', so how can you presume to understand mine?I say quite openly that my 'theory' is the same as Marx's: Democratic Communism.You pretend that you haven't got a 'theory', which is itself a product of bourgeois ideology.That you, as an individual, can 'know matter', because 'matter' is 'tangible' and you can 'feel' it.Once 'matter' is seen to be an invention of a society with 'private property', all this 'individualist, biological' nonsense goes out the window, and we're compelled to socially address 'what we know' (and not 'what I know'). And 'social knowledge' implies democracy, for us socialists at least, if not for elitists.

SP wrote:

If you choose not to do this, we can only draw one conclusion, that you are a troll. In which case I would suggest everyone ends all discussion with you.What do you say?

If you say that I'm a troll, I'll merely say that you're an uneducated wanker, in thrall to Religious Materialism and its god 'Matter', and a critical thought has never passed between your ears.So, let's not sling insults, either way, eh, comrade?

SP wrote:

What does everyone else think?

It'd be nice for once for 'everyone else' to actually 'think' – just for a change.There's a simple solution for 'everyone' – either all resolve to learn, or most ignore me, and leave only those who wish to read, discuss and think (or, I suppose, you could ban me permanently, but that wouldn't look good for the SPGB, would it?).

[LBird]

ALB wrote:

LBird wrote:

So, we have the nonsense about 'idealism' and Kant.

Indeed, we do. For instance

Quote:

'Inorganic nature' is an unknowable 'in itself' ingredient for active human social theory and practice.

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No matter how many times I repeat that 'inorganic nature' is an 'ingredient into activity', your ideology tells you to ask 'But, what is it, when it's not an 'ingredient into activity?'.

This theory that "ultimate reality" is an unobservable and so unknowable Ding an sich is pure Kant, which opens the door to all sorts of idealist and theist views.

[my bold]And, indeed, as even Engels said, also to a Marxist view. Marx came from the German Idealist tradition. The difference is Kant's passivity, as against Marx's activity.

ALB wrote:

You are one and it is dishonest as well as ignorant to try to saddle Marx and certainly Pannekoek with such a view.

No, I'm the one who is both honest and educated, unlike you, and point out the socio-historical context of Marx and Pannekoek's views, also unlike you.

ALB wrote:

Why not admit it instead of spreading lies about us being crude mechanical materialists who think that the mind is merely a mirror reflecting what's out there?

I'm not 'spreading lies' about the SPGB, I'm trying to teach you about Marx, Engels, Idealism, Materialism, Marx's unity, the differences between them, and where politically those philosophical differences lead.Youse are crude materialists, even you said so yourself, when asked about what the constituents of 'means of production' actually were. You said 'material' things, and not ideas.And if we don't create our physics, then physics must be a mirrorlike reflection on 'out there'.I'm the one saying that maths, physics and all science is a socio-historical creation.Youse are the ones arguing that these are 'discovering' what is simply 'to hand'. If that's true, then, once discovered, these 'things at hand' must have always been 'out there', simply waiting to be 'discovered'.If we create maths, physics and science, we can change them. These social activities do not 'discover' an 'objective reality' sitting 'out there'. The present bourgeois maths, etc., give us a picture of a world created by the bourgeoisie. If we accept that picture as 'eternally true', an 'objective account', an image of 'out there', how do we change it in the future?FFS, ALB, you must be able to tell the difference between an educated critic with whom you disagree (at the present), and a dishonest liar.

[LBird]

Young Master Smeet wrote:

Quote:

At the end of every labour-process, we get a result that already existed in the imagination of the labourer at its commencement.

Ahem…

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man of his own accord starts, regulates, and controls the material re-actions between himself and Nature. He opposes himself to Nature as one of her own forces, setting in motion arms and legs, head and hands, the natural forces of his body, in order to appropriate Nature’s productions in a form adapted to his own wants. By thus acting on the external world and changing it, he at the same time changes his own nature.

So, man takes nature as he finds it, changes it, in accordance with his own imagination, and is in turn changed by nature.  See what happens when you highlight different bits?So, just to make clear, nature "produces" (according to Marx); action in the world changes the human being (accordinmg to Marx); these "reactions" are "material" according to Marx.Of course, Marx never says what he means.  Nature here means "fish", reaction means "social productive forces", material means "Spain". 

I don't know how you can ignore what Marx says, about just 'who' is the initiator.There is not one word about 'matter' telling us humans what to produce.

[LBird]

SocialistPunk wrote:

Why some people fail to heed the law of holes is beyond me.

Bruce Lee wrote:

Mistakes are always forgivable, if one has the courage to admit them.

 

I'm waiting for you to do so, SP.

[LBird]

twc wrote:

…for whom material production follows in the wake of thought production.

Marx wrote:

Labour is, in the first place, a process in which both man and Nature participate, and in which man of his own accord starts, regulates, and controls the material re-actions between himself and Nature. He opposes himself to Nature as one of her own forces, setting in motion arms and legs, head and hands, the natural forces of his body, in order to appropriate Nature’s productions in a form adapted to his own wants. By thus acting on the external world and changing it, he at the same time changes his own nature. He develops his slumbering powers and compels them to act in obedience to his sway. We are not now dealing with those primitive instinctive forms of labour that remind us of the mere animal. An immeasurable interval of time separates the state of things in which a man brings his labour-power to market for sale as a commodity, from that state in which human labour was still in its first instinctive stage. We pre-suppose labour in a form that stamps it as exclusively human. A spider conducts operations that resemble those of a weaver, and a bee puts to shame many an architect in the construction of her cells. But what distinguishes the worst architect from the best of bees is this, that the architect raises his structure in imagination before he erects it in reality. At the end of every labour-process, we get a result that already existed in the imagination of the labourer at its commencement.

[my bold]https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1867-c1/ch07.htm

[LBird]

twc wrote:

All they need to do is own and control the material means of social production—as in the SPGB’s Object—and the social superstructure (or social consciousness) will follow materialistically in its wake.

[ my bold]I know what you're arguing, twc.And this argument is Engels not Marx.It's tantamount to saying 'consciousness' follows 'matter'. Or, to put it in terms any workers can understand, that 'the rocks talk to us'.It's exactly what the Leninists argue, too: let the Party 'own and control the material', and then the wider class 'social consciousness will follow materialistically in its wake'.Because, if the wider class themselves already 'own and control', then the 'social consciousness' must have preceded, not 'followed'.'Materialism' requires a passive class, lacking class consciousness. It allows an elite with a (supposed) special consciousness to provide the 'active side', as Marx warned.

[LBird]

Vin wrote:

LBird wrote:

By 'idealism', Marx means 'divine production', not 'using ideas' or 'active consciousness'.

He also referred to 'idealism'  as the belief that the material world is a reflection of the idea. That all we have to do is 'think' something into existence.

[my bold]I have never said humans can simply 'think into existence'.That's the reading of a materialist, who can't understand Marx, and has to condemn those who argue for human creativity as 'idealists'. They get this from Engels' dichotomy, that all philosophy is either materialism or idealism, which is nonsense.Marx argues that human theory and practice brings things into existence.I ALWAYS say 'theory and practice', and never 'theory', alone.

[LBird]

Vin wrote:

LBird wrote:

Once again, Vin, who creates 'the material conditions' that they, according to you, passively   'find at hand'?

Well whoever created them, created them out of the conditions the found at hand. Hisorically or otherwise. I have highlight the distortion you added 'passively' your word not mine, but typical of you.

Believe me, comrade, that 'distortion', which I clearly added, was done to clarify for you exactly what the implications, for human activity, the passive formulation 'finding at hand', actually are.As to 'historically or otherwise', Vin, that's precisely what is at issue.If it's 'historically', it's produced by humans; if it's 'otherwise', it's produced by god, outside of human history.Again, for you, who does create 'conditions'? Are they simply 'found at hand'?

[LBird]

Vin wrote:

LBird wrote:

They can't answer the question 'who does create our world?', which is a vital question for workers to answer for themselves.

Vin wrote:

Marx and SPGB,  'humans create their world from the material  conditions they find at hand'

Once again, Vin, who creates 'the material conditions' that they, according to you, passively 'find at hand'?If you accept that, by 'material', Marx means 'socially produced', then we can change those 'material conditions', because we don't simply 'find them at hand', but we have created them socio-historically.If, on the other hand, by 'material', you accept Engels meaning of 'matter', then you'll think that we don't create 'matter', and so we can't change it.Many thinkers have pointed out that 'materialism' is itself a form of 'idealism', because it must give the creative role to a divine being (or pretend to, but actually give it to an elite, behind the backs of the majority of humans), and not to humans.By 'idealism', Marx means 'divine production', not 'using ideas' or 'active consciousness'.

[LBird]

YMS wrote:

…after all, Marx never used words to mean what they mean.

You think that you're being funny, but you're closer to the real issue than you'll ever realise.Even Engels misinterpreted Marx's notoriously opaque works, and the longer his misinterpretation is taken as 'gospel', the less influence Marx's actual meanings will have to workers.But, since you're not a Marxist, YMS, you're not as interested in this issue as some of us workers are, who are keen to create our world, create our socialism.

[LBird]

As I've pointed out many times, Vin and ALB, because they are employing an unacknowledged Engelsist ideology, which tells them that there are only two forms of philosophy, materialism and idealism, and they claim to 'listen to the rocks', as do all materialists, then they must conclude that I'm an idealist, because I claim, like Marx, that humans create their world.They can't answer the question 'who does create our world?', which is a vital question for workers to answer for themselves.If we humans supposedly don't create our world, we can't change it, and worst of all we must place the power to create and change into the hands of a divine power – which the Leninists claim is 'The Party'.Vin and ALB can't answer this objection to Engels' materialism.So, we have the nonsense about 'idealism' and Kant.You wouldn't think that Marx was an inheritor of the German Idealist tradition, of Kant, Fichte and Hegel.

[LBird]

alanjjohnstone wrote:

I learned a new word today Agnotologyhttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Agnotology The study of culturally induced ignorance or doubt…More generally, the term also highlights the increasingly common condition where more knowledge of a subject leaves one more uncertain than before.

[my bold]So, alan, you still can't decide between 'the rocks talk to us' and 'humans create their world'?And the SPGB is to help educate and propagandise amongst workers coming towards socialist ideas?I've always said to the Leninists/Trots that their role to learn from workers, and I think that conclusion about the SPGB adds yet another dimension to the argument that the SPGB stands in the Engelsist-Leninist tradition.Religious Materialism and its passive faith in its god 'Matter' is a blind alley, alan.But since you haven't taken off your own blindfold, you can't 'see' that, yet.Agnotology? The study of the refusal to be decisive and active.

[LBird]

Once again, the SPGB bottles intellectual discussion, and reverts to childishness.So predictable.

[LBird]

Young Master Smeet wrote:

Quote:

socially productive force

What constitutes the socially productive force?Would they be

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the framework of definite modes of production, which, of course, are not dependent on the will, alien [fremde] practical forces, which are independent not only of isolated individuals but even of all of them together, always come to stand above people

Yes, but 'modes of production' are not 'matter', but socially produced by active humans, and so can be changed.Try reading Marx.

[LBird]

YMS wrote:

 dunno, though, we have on the one hand the gnomic 'Theses on Feuerbach' and some comments from the manuscripts…

You very conveniently ignore Capital, but it doesn't surprise me, YMS.You're not reading what I write, and are determined to hang onto your Engelsist ideology, and worship 'matter' as the source of critical ideas, of 'practice and theory'.Hopefully, the penny might start to drop with others, though…

[Author]

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