[LBird]

YMS wrote:

…qualities of natural phenomena…

But, as we have seen with Marx and Pannekoek, 'qualities of natural phenomena' are produced by active humanity. 'Natural qualities' are relational 'qualities', not 'something out there'.Because you are a materialist, you want to know of some mythical 'qualities of natural phenomena' in themselves, without any consciounsess being involved. This is the bourgeois myth of 'knowledge' being simply a reflection of 'nature', and requires a passive stance on the part of the observer.

YMS wrote:

If there is no difference or quality, then nature does not exist.

This is an ideological statement – you wish 'nature' to exist outside of active humanity, whereas Marx and Pannekoek are talking about humans producing their own 'nature'.And I've told you, 'differences and qualities' do exist, and are produced by active humanity.You won't accept this claim, because you're not a Marxist or Pannekoekian, but an Engelsist.You want to 'know' nature as it is without any 'knower' being actively involved. At best, you'll accept a passive observer, which is a bourgeois myth.Even Einstein said 'the theory determines what we observe', therefore bolstering Marx's claims of 'theory and practice'.

[LBird]

Young Master Smeet wrote:

LBird wrote:

YMS wrote:

…mere accdient suffices…

Who or what determines what is 'accident'?

No one needs to…

[my bold]But that is not what Pannekoek says. He says that humans are actively involved in producing our world.Marx says the same thing, and always talks about 'social production' to meet our 'needs'.So, someone 'needs' to determine what is produced.You're a materialist, YMS, and wish to passively observe the world 'as it is', and to pretend to keep 'consciousness' out of the consideration. This is a bourgeois myth.'Consciousness' and 'being' are in an inescapable relationship.We are our own producers, determiners, differentiators… we are in an active relationship with 'inorganic nature', within which creative relationship we build our own 'organic nature'.

[LBird]

YMS wrote:

…mere accdient suffices…

Who or what determines what is 'accident'?

[LBird]

Young Master Smeet wrote:

LBird,But as we had out before, you refused to accept that 'inorganic nature' is differentiated, and at least limits what we can do with it, and thus we have not got unbounded freedom to will some truth out of nature, we can only do with it what we can.  

Who or what 'differentiates' nature, YMS?Like Marx and Pannekoek, I regard 'differentiation' as a product of an active consciousness, specifically human social theory and practice.The alternative formulation, that 'nature differentiates itself' outside of any consciousness, is a return to the separation of 'being' from 'consciousness', the bourgeois materialism that Engels fell for.If humans are not the 'active side', then there must be a 'divine' force out there.There isn't, of course, and so if it is denied that humanity is the 'active side', a smaller part of society must substitute itself for the greater part.Marx warned about this in his Theses on Feuerbach, and the Leninists proved Marx right, because Lenin was forced to posit a 'special consciousness' outside of (wider) humanity. This elite expert minority then tells us that they, and they alone, can tell us the 'differentiation of nature'. But they are the active differentiators. And so the proletariat remains passive.The search for 'The Truth' of a 'nature outside of consciousness' is a bourgeois myth.Human consciousness is inescapably involved in the creation of our nature.Read your Pannekoek quote.

[LBird]

YMS wrote:

Herein is Lbirds apparent claims clearly and much better expressed, but note the difference, there is no denial that the external world exists or that we can just make up our science by will alone…

C'mon, YMS, even you must be getting tired of repeating this old canard.Marx does not 'deny the existence of the external world' – he calls it 'inorganic nature'.For Marx, the link between 'inorganic nature' and the world-we-create, nature-for-us, 'organic nature', is active humanity, employing social theory and practice, to create our world.Even Pannekoek, in the quote you supposedly have read, says that:

Pannekoek wrote:

…[humanity] is a dynamic force which reacts upon his environment and changes it. Society is nature transformed through labour.

You simply, like a good materialist, want to passively observe 'nature'. You want to know 'nature' as it is, without human intervention.Pannekoek uses the term 'stuff of nature' for what Marx calls 'inorganic nature' – this is an ingredient into our labour, which results in our creation of our world.The 'stuff of nature' cannot be passively observed, but only used.You're following a confused Engels, and I'm following Marx and Pannekoek.You think that there are only two options, 'materialism' and 'idealism', and so, with you being a 'materialist', and me not, you can only pidgeon-hole me as an 'idealist' – hence, your continual nonsense about me 'denying an external reality'.For god's sake, YMS, read your own quotes, and admit that you're reading them from the position of Engels' materialism.

[LBird]

Tim Killgallon wrote:

…we cannot democraticaly control the outcome of physical experiments, 2+2 equals four, no matter how many times any gorup of individuals vote to say ot doesn't.

[my bold]Tim, you're new to the site, so you won't know.I've shown many times that we can control the outcome of all experiments, and 2+2 can equal 11, and that both can be decided by a vote.Of greater philosophical significance is your use of the qualifier 'physical'.You won't recognise the importance of your use of that, but to any other readers who have followed this with interest, it should stand out like a sore thumb, as the mark of a 'materialist' (the modern term being a 'physicalist').

[LBird]

ALB wrote:

He's just done it again. He accused me of being the sort of materialist which has "'tangible matter'"as its "central concern".

ALB, I specifically asked you on the other thread what does 'means' (of production) include.I said it includes 'ideas', including physics and maths, and so 'democratic control of the means of production' means ''democratic control of physics and maths'.You argued against this, You said, in effect, 'means' includes only 'tangible stuff' and not 'ideas'.Now, you clown, give us a straight answer:Do you agree that the revolutionary proletariat should democratically control 'maths and physics'?If you say 'No', you're an Engelsist Materialism.If you say 'Yes', like me, you're a Marxist Idealist-Materialist.Fuckin' hell, it's simple enough.Either workers control 'maths' or an elite controls 'maths'.You want 'mathematicians' to control 'maths'; 'physicists' to control 'physics', etc. etc., which will end in a 'party' controlling 'politics'. Engels' materialism leads inexorably to Leninism.

[LBird]

ALB wrote:

I rest my case, but I can't keep on correcting your distortions every time you repeat them. It happens so often.

ALB, I answered your post on the other thread about Dietzgen, and told you he argued for 'induction' (ie. practice and theory), so he wasn't using Marx's method of 'theory and practice'.You haven't continued that discussion.The only distorter in all this is you.You 'distort' your ideology, and pretend to be a Marxist. You are an Engelsist.This ignoring by you of what you're told 'happens so often', and is always followed by you insulting me, that I can only conclude that you've got a problem with learning.I presume that there is a 'psychological connection' between 'ignorance and insulting', but you'll have to get the 'expert' Tim to explain that one.Meanwhile, if you want to discuss Dietzgen, read what I write, and make some progress.

[LBird]

alanjjohnstone wrote:

Just to add some psychological observations of my own, LBird, having read your earlier post on how you consider the Party to be, you must have one of the strongest streaks of masochism i have come across for you persistence in debating and discussing on this forum if you recognise the futility and fruitlessness of it No matter how much you are spurned, you keep coming back for moreIs it unrequited love, Lbird?…https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TwjS3_cZdN8&list=PL5_uypbSMXwCa_nxqQVu46MgJZDPwM4_y&index=10

Good one, alan! It made me burst out laughing – perhaps with uncomfortable self-recognition!

[LBird]

Vin wrote:

The medical profession will be under democratic control, I don't need to know how to run the canteen.

Fair enough, Vin, that's your individual opinion.But who decides who runs the 'medical profession' and 'the canteen'?If you agree with me, that it is democratic society, then it's society that decides what the 'medical profession' does and does not do with its production, not the 'medical profession' itself.If we, for whatever reason, decide that the 'medical profession' cleans the bogs, the 'medical profession' cleans the bogs.The only problem with accepting this formulation is for those who fear that the class conscious, revolutionary proletariat will make our surgeons and doctors clean shithouses, and will order plasterers to do heart surgery!Those stupid workers, eh? Wouldn't trust them to run a piss-up in a brewery, never mind physics and maths!I'll spell it out for you, Vin, because I know you don't do subtlety.It's a philosophical attitude towards the merits of democracy versus elitistism.Those brainwashed by the bourgeoisie fear democracy, because they fear the 'masses', and prefer to look to geniuses and 'special individuals', rather than that great unknown 'the democratic control of the means of production (and operations)'.

[LBird]

Bourgeois thinkers always want to find the root of any issue in individual psychology, eh, Tim, and not in political and philosophical, that is, social and historical, origins?Back to the crayons, Janet and John, and the Ladybird publication "Tim constructs a bourgeois argument", for you.

[LBird]

ALB wrote:

…his definition of socialism is not all that far from ours and not nearer to that of the SWP's state capitalism. He does agree that socialism is a society based on the common ownership and democratic control of the means of production which will make money, wages, profits, banks, etc redundant but –and it's a big but — he adds something rather sinister — that democratic control should extent to what people think, i.e thought control, which of course has never been part of the historical definition of socialism

[my bold]You're perfectly correct, ALB, we do have much in common.But you're a 'materialist', which has its roots in bourgeois biological individualism. Hence 'tangible matter' as its central concern.Here, I've bolded your ideological concern – 'Individual Free Thought'.No  socio-historical, Marxist, analysis of what 'thought' means.Your political and philosophical, unrecognised, unacknowledged assumption is that 'thought' is individual, not a social product.In fact, 'thought' is always a product of societies, not 'genius individuals', so our 'thought' in a democratic society would have to be democratically produced.This is a scary 'thought' for 'individualists', who have been progammed from birth by the bourgeoisie that 'they are individuals!', and that their thought is theirs.It's nonsense of course, and is merely a figleaf for the 'individual thought' of the 'elite', who obviously wish to keep their thought uncontrolled by the producers.So, here we have it – ALB is using standard bourgeois scare-mongering:The Commies will take not only your property, and daughters, but even your thoughts!

[LBird]

ALB wrote:

Tim Kilgallon wrote:

Vin, I think that's an excellent point. Come on then L Bird, we're all waiting.

I'm not. We don't want him contaminating this thread. If we must accommodate him let's try and contain him in a thread devoted to his obession of what is knowlefge. Mind you, I suppose he has his uses as a foil and punchball.

ALB, I'm just returning your abuse in the same terms, you dickhead.On the other thread, I was very patient and courteous, and explained some complexities to you, about your 'materialism'. You didn't abuse me, so I didn't abuse you. I treated you like a grown-up.But, this thread?You seem to be a very slow learner. I despair that you'll ever learn, about either your ill-manners or your ill-education.The SPGB should let alan vet members' posts on here, because at least alan makes the SPGB seem vaguely attractive, unlike youse ignorant louts.This is your party's 'shop window', for god's sake! Even I came here, actively following you and alan from LibCom, to browse initially and perhaps even enter, and build the concern.But… the dummies in the shop window are like a collection of zombies, banging on the glass, trying to eat my brains!

[LBird]

alanjjohnstone wrote:

I would welcome LBird to join the Party and take up the fight for socialism with folk who he can still debate and discuss with as comrades-in-arms …if he can't join, we and he should still recognise one another as fellow-workers seeking the same end…the end of capitalism…and regardless of the polarisation of these debates, we are all on the same wavelength politically if not philosophically.

Whilst I acknowledge the comradely tone of your post, alan, I've become less sure as time passes that we are 'seeking the same end'.I'm not simply seeking 'the end of capitalism' (as a negative, of what must be destroyed), but also seeking 'the creation of socialism' (as a positive, of what must be built).Years of debates with tories, liberals, anarchists, trotskyists, greens, managers, teachers, academics, has taught me to ask pithy questions which get to the nub of what someone really stands for.And the killer question about workers' democracy (which is what I mean by 'socialism') is 'who or what controls the production of social ideas?'.And by 'ideas' I mean all academic production, including mathematics, physics, logic, meaning, understanding, philosophy, etc., etc.This question always exposes, for example, the Leninists. If they agree with me, I ask when are we removing the central committee. Because by 'we', I don't mean the 'party organisation', but 'the membership'. It soon becomes clear that the Leninists are paying lip service to 'workers' democracy', and that they really want 'democratic centralism'. This is a phony 'democracy', which allow an elite to produce the ideas, policies, culture, structures of the party, not the membership.It must be obvious that I've employed the same method with the SPGB.When asked 'who' will control the production of maths and physics under (the SPGB version of) 'socialism', there is massed bafflement at the question. The simple answer by the SPGB is 'the elite that have always controlled maths and physics!'. The implication is that the elite have done such a good job in the last 350 years, so why change a perfectly good working formula, and let those uneducated, lazy, drunken, scruffs in the working class get their grubby hands on the shining edifice of perfection that is 'science'.No mention of the socio-historical orgins of that 'science', of course. Or its interests, purposes, theories, methods and practices of production.Surely it's clear to you, alan, that I'm the only one who ever mentions terms like 'socio-historical', and gives dates, names, events from hundreds of years ago, to the modern day. Descartes, Galilleo, Bacon, Comenius, Newton, 1660, the English Revolution, Kant, Fichte, Hegel, Marx, Engels, Kautsky, Lenin, 1905 and 1915 with Einstein, Bohr, Labriola, Lukacs, Schrodinger, Heisenberg, Born, Korsch, Pannekoek, Fleck, Kuhn, Lakatos, Feyerabend… I don't know about you, but I'm losing the will to live.And what do my opponents, who will not have democracy in the means of production (and by 'means', they mean physical things, like brick and mortar, instruments, tangible 'stuff', not 'ideas') look to for their basis?Engels' bloody 'materialism'. That's it. 19th century, half-arsed ignorant bullshit, based on a positivism that even the bourgeoisie have jettisoned. And the SPGB is supposed to be a resource for enquiring workers, looking for ideas that can help those workers build for socialism?No, alan, "we are not all on the same wavelength politically or philosophically".In fact, I can honestly say that the 'theoreticians' in the SWP can give a better, more informed, historical and social account of what we're discussing, than the supposed 'democrats' of the SPGB. The SWP still spout nonsense, of course, but at least its thought-out, informed, educated nonsense. As is most of the product of bourgeois academia.The SPGB seems to consist of uneducated, ill-informed, philosopically-illiterate bluffers, who like the sound of 'democracy' and 'socialism', but haven't got a clue what they're talking about.We've even had posters say that they have never read Engels or Marx, beyond a cursory uncomprehending glance by some, never mind physics or philosophy. I seriously doubt that some read books at all – they seem to rely on word of mouth, and they've learned, years ago, to mouth the slogan "Materialism Good, Idealism Bad!". And they're sticking to their potty training and ALB as the arse-wiper, no matter how many wellread workers explain about the modern water closet, soft toilet tissue and self-cleaning.After all this, alan, I could be persuaded that I'm just unfortunate to have encountered online mostly the 'thickoes' of the SPGB, and offline the party does contain literates. I could be persuaded of this if the SPGB could produce just one – one only – who shows some recognition of the complexities of understanding the Marx-Engels relationship, and the meaning of 'scientific knowledge', and the philosophical need for "workers' democracy".But I think that I'm right to conclude that the SPGB is built upon Engels' theory of 'materialism', which existed before the SPGB was formed, and had already contaminated the 'socialist' movement by 1904. Anyone who had encountered the party and already had some understanding of the roots of Leninism (in Engels' 'materialism') would never join, and if they were open minded enough to have developed during their membership, they would have resigned.Anyway, what do you think the chances are of me accepting your warm, comradely welcome, and joining your party?

[LBird]

ALB wrote:

I'm not. We don't want him contaminating this thread. If we must accommodate him let's try and contain him in a thread devoted to his obession of what is knowlefge. Mind you, I suppose he has his uses as a foil and punchball.

And there's me treating you like a grown-up on the other thread.I suppose that the fool in you will always come out, no matter how courteously you're treated. You never fail to revert to type.You really are an unpleasant crowd in the SPGB, aren't you?You can't discuss philosophy, and so duck the challenge.Make that unpleasant and cowardly. Oh yeah, and ignorant.

[Author]

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