robbo203
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LBird wrote:.I'd be interested if you or any other member could find a matching article in the 1990s (or even 2000s), because we might be able to identify approximately when the SPGB stopped making these Marxist and democratic arguments, and moved to the (seemingly) present position, which is far closer to Lenin's views about 'matter', 'specialists', and 'problems' with democracy, to the exclusion of any mention of class consciousness or the proletariat, or the process of self-development of our class.
LBird you are becoming a complete bore now with this persistent, obsessive , deceitful and thoroughly evasive mantra of yours. There is absolutely no evidence you can cite that anyone on this forum subscribes to this peculair definition of "materialism" you allude to – namely mechanical materialism – which you atrribute to Lenin. No one here that I know of subscribes to the fact-value distinction that is central to a positivisitic model of sceince. If you have evdience to the contrary lets hear it. Saying that matter exists is NOT tantamount to saying that " the rocks speaks to us" to use your choiuce phrase – a point you persistently fail to see As for your gibberish about "specialists" and the "problems with democracy" it is noteworthy that you have singularly failed to address any of the questions that have been asked of you: On what grounds do you believe that socialist society – or any kind of modern advanced society for that matter – can dispense with any kind of specialisation? On what grounds do you believe that it is remotely practical or even necessary for billions of people to vote on tens of thousands of sceitnfic theories to determine their truth value in a socialist society? Until you begin to seriously attmept an answer to these and other questions or modify your you stance, you will continue to have absolutely zero creidbility on this forum
LBird wrote:So, your concerns are the 'limits' of, and 'counterbalances' for, democracy?It certainly is an important subject that deserves further discussion – and it would help if those who are to discuss it were actually in favour of democracy (never mind workers' democracy, the concern of socialists).That doesn't appear to be the SPGB, though, does it?I think that those with robbo's concerns, need only read the texts produced by bourgeois academics over the last three centuries, to ascertain some useful advice on 'limits and counterbalances' regarding democracy.This certainly is a 'surreal debate'.Yes of course there are limits to democratic decisionmaking. For example, it is totally impractical to imagine that 7 billion people can vote on the "truth" of multiple thousands of scientific theories. It is totally impractical and undesirable that "society" should democratically determine where we live, what work we should do, what clothes we should wear, what our tastes in music or food should be . And so on and so forth. Whether or not some bourgeois academics agree with us democratic communists on the impracticality of these things is neither here nor there. It does not make them any the less impractical – or undesirable. Freedom matters as much as democracy – in fact,one without the other will destroy both – and though a leninist like LBird might sneer at the idea of freedom as "bourgeois" he would find his totalitarian centralist ideas strongly opposed by Marx. Thus : "We are not among those communists who are out to destroy personal liberty, who wish to turn the world into one huge barrack or into a gigantic workhouse. There certainly are some communists who, with an easy conscience, refuse to countenance personal liberty and would like to shuffle it out of the world because they consider that it is a hindrance to complete harmony. But we have no desire to exchange freedom for equality. We are convinced that in no social order will freedom be assured as in a society based upon communal ownership.” (Marx, Engels, et al., Communist League, 1847).Finally yes of course the SPGB clearly does favour democracy. This is inscribed in its very object " The establishment of a system of society based upon the common ownership and democratic control of the means and instruments for producing and distributing wealth by and in the interest of the whole community" That is an example of where democratic decisionmaking is both practical and desirable
ALB wrote:Tim Kilgallon wrote:As to your nonsensical proposal to have votes for every single scientific development,Tim, it's not just on scientific developments that he wants a vote. It's also on how we describe everyday things such as a table — the perceivable and perceived regular pattern in "external conditions", "inorganic nature", "the world of phenomena", "matter", or whatever you want to call it, that was called (in French and then English) "table" generations ago without a vote having been taken, a description and social convention passed on to succeeding generations through learning and which will no doubt continue into socialism
Which reinforces the point made in an earlier post which is that if we can extract/salvage anything useful at all out this surreal debate with LBird then it should be to focus minds on where the practical limits of democratic decisionmaking in a socialist society should lie and to what extent democracy has to be counterbalanced by other considerations.http://www.worldsocialism.org/spgb/forum/general-discussion/socialism-and-democracy This is an important subject that deserves further discussion
Tim Kilgallon wrote:This is the scenario. We are living in a socialist society which works along the lines of your proposal for voting re scientific theories. In an area of the world an outbreak occurs of a particular illness at a level of deadliness previously unknown, perhaps a little like the recent Ebola outbreak. Would the development of an effective treatment for this illness be required to go through the lengthy, time consuming process of organising a worldwide vote, with all of the requisite sharing of relevant information, etc.at every stage of the process, before a treatment for this deadly disease could be given to the victims of the disease?You wont get an answer from LBird on this question, Tim. I note that it is his clear policy to shy away from anything remotely connected with the mechanics of how a global vote on thousands of scientific theories is going to be organised. Little wonder too. He has been hoisted by his own petard and is too embarrassed to admit it
LBird wrote:How can you consciously know 'matter', ALB, without a vote being taken by your fellow social producers?How would this vote be organised among 7 billion people, LBird, What would happen to the minority within the tiny minority of people ever likely to vote, if they disagreed with the majority within this tiny minority? Would they be allowed to continue holding and propagating their minority view? Or would your Leninist thought police be on to them , rounding up all these non-conformists in dawn raids? If none of the above, please explain in plain terms to simple proles like myself what was the point of this vote being taken among the social producers . What did you hope to achieve by such a vote?
LBird wrote:. The SPGB has started to argue for 'specialists', who are not under the political control of the 'generalists'.This is Leninist politics by another name.No, LBird, the only Leninist here is you with your leninist argument for so called "democratic centralism" Not only are you a leninist but you are a dishonest leninist to boot. The suggestion that the SPGB argues for specialists not under the political control of the generalists, clearly implies that said specialists have, in some sense, the power to impose their views on others against the will of the latter. Where has this ever been suggested? Cite the evidenceThe problem really boils down to your utterly childish and idiotic argument that there can be no specialists and no specialisation in socialism/communism. You have never bothered to explain how, for example, a neurosurgeon can become a competent neurosurgeon without specialising in neurosurgery, without devoting years and years of her life to studying and honing her craft. In LBird's surreal worldview, anyone can just walk off the street in a socialist society and perform a complex brain operation becuase, according to him, every single one of us will be fully competent skilled and knowledgeable in every conceivable kind of occupation. There will be no specialists in anything because we will all specialists in everything The idea is so preposterous its hardly even worth debating, Of course any advanced modern type of society requires specialisation to some degree – do you deny this LBird and if so on what grounds? Lets hear your argument for a change. Come out in the open with it and defend your ideas instead of forever running away from this argument every time it is levelled against you. And while you are at it, please explain how a neurosurgeon, being a neurosurgeon, can have any power over others in a society in which all work is performed on a purely voluntaristic basis and where all goods and services are made avialabe on a free access basis
ALB wrote:A joker wrote:No matter what Marx says, you're not going to have workers voting about whether 'matter exists' or not, are you?robbo203 wrote:the silly idea that scientific ideas – tens of thousands of them – should be put to a democratic vote by the global population …, if your silly idea were ever to be attempted I suspect less than 0.0001 per cent of the populace would even bother to vote on whether sting theory was true or not.I agree with you, Robbo, that if the issue "Does matter (external reality) exist? Yes/No" was put to a referendum, most people would vote with their feet — in the same way that Dr Johnston did when he answered the same question by kicking a stone. And if the No side won the Brexiteers' dilemma would be nothing compared with theirs. No doubt, our joker would be there to insist that "Exiting Reality means Exiting Reality". Who could disagree with that?
Yes indeed, ALB. I mean, what LBird is saying is so ludicrous it is astonishing that he doesn’t even seem to have the faintest glimmering of this. Is he seriously proposing that some new theory concerning, say, the asexual reproduction of the Malaysian tapeworm is gonna be put to a global vote of 7 billion people??? C’mon. Let’s get real here. LBird is obsessed with the word elitism” but it got nothing to do with elitism. Its get everything to with the fact that individuals are different in multiple ways. I couldn’t care a toss about the asexual reproduction of the Malaysian tapeworm, frankly, but somebody might. Maybe there is a little community of enthusiasts scattered around the world who are deeply interested in the subject. Good on them! Maybe LBird could join their forum if they would have him. He seems to think that every individual in a future communist society is going to be 1) fully knowledgeable and 2) fully interested in every conceivable kind of scientific theory that is being churned out so perhaps he should practice what he preaches and lead by example by actively participating in the discussion of that forum with fegular feedbacks to this forum I imagine, though, that some Facebook group for Malaysian tapeworm enthusiasts is unlikely to organise a democratic vote on this startling new theory but supposing that it did, what then? Are the rival factions going to stop debating the topic just because one of them carried the day and got more votes than the others? Of course not. So what really was the point of the vote in that case? You see this is what LBird doesn’t understand. He pretends to be a “democratic communist” but he hasn’t got a clue what democracy is about or what it is for. Democracy is not about stifling the free expression of ideas, denying the right of a minority to continue expressing their ideas in the face of majority opinion. This is what is so sinister and repulsive about what LBird is saying. He is a Leninist putting forward the Leninist principle of so called democratic CENTRALISM. The whole thrust of his argument is totalitarian, not libertarian, and it is high time he should be outed on that count. In effect, since there is no possibility of his apparently ultra-democratic proposal of a global vote on all scientific theories ever being implemented what he is actually arguing for, if only by default, is for a tiny minority to decide what the rest of us should think. That is to say, once this vote has been taken – in effect, by a tiny minority, since there is no way 7 billion people are going to concern themselves with the asexual reproduction of the Malaysian tapeworm – that’s it! No further dissenting opinion will be permitted. The TRUTH has been decided once and for all. This is the fascism of a Big Brother state, frankly. It is certainly not remotely what democracy is about. Democracy is not about controlling and regulating ideas. LBird’s basic argument is that ideas are socially produced which is true enough but he fails to see that just because something is socially produced, it does not follow therefore that it must therefore be subject to democratic control. My mobile phone is socially produced. Does that mean that every aspect of it’s design and functionality must be subject to a democratic vote of the entire world population. Seriously? Until LBird begins to learn the difference between what democracy is for and what it is NOT for, we will not make much headway in this discussion. Once he has jettisoned these junk ideas he holds then, but only then, can we begin a serious discussion about what democracy will look like in a democratic communist society
LBird wrote:And robbo keeps up his elitist claim that the 'science' done by a minority outweighs the opinions of the majority of producers.Bollocks. I say nothing of the sort. Its you who upholds the silly idea that scientific ideas – tens of thousands of them – should be put to a democratic vote by the global population, not me, So the question of the views of some "outweighing" those of others would simply not arise in my case. In practice, if your silly idea were ever to be attempted I suspect less than 0.0001 per cent of the populace would even bother to vote on whether sting theory was true or not. Meaning a tiny minirity anyway And if you still haven't answered the question – what happens if the global population of 7 billion (or 0001 per cent of 7 billion) decided by a majority that string theory was wrong?. Would people who thought that String theory was correct be preventeted from propagating their ideas in your Brave New World? I think you are basically a Leninist, LBird, with a strong attachment for the Leninist principle of democratic centralism whilst pretending to be a democratic communist
Young Master Smeet wrote:I ask, would Lbird see practicing geneticists gaoled if they continued to dispute the majority vote? Or tried to contionue writing papers and doing research against the wish of the majority?Yes I wanna know LBird's answer to that too! He never did get round to explaining what was the point in 7 billion people voting on tens of thousands of scientific theories every year or indeed how this even remotely practical, Nothing wrong with organising production on a democratic basis but democratically determining the truth value of ideas is another matter entirely!
What ever happened to Barry? One of my most memorable memories of him was when he represented the SPGB in a debate in Guildford back in 1980s against an organisation called – I vaguely remember – "Peace Through Nato" or some such name. He brought along with him an antique sword which he unsheathed and held up during the course of his contribution much to the consternation of his opponent who, I swear, turned slightly pale at the sight of it. Barry's point was a simple but effective one – war was gruesome, irrespective of the technology used, and he took care to point out the runnel down which the blood would flow when the sword pierced the victim's body.Yer just don't make 'em like that anymore!
Dave B wrote:[2] emergence is becoming an increasingly important idea in theoretical physics Thus it was a central theme in this recent Institute of Physics lecture The origin of the Universe. From macrophysics to microphysics Wednesday, 11 January 2017, 18:30 – 19:30 Professor Lucio Piccirillo, University of Manchesterhttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/EmergenceIts not just in physics that the emergence paradigm is gaining ground. In sociology a notable example of this approach to Durkheim is Keith’s Sawyers thought-provoking article “Durkheim’s Dilemma: Towards a Sociology of Emergence” https://www.unc.edu/home/rksawyer/PDFs/durkheim.pdf According to Sawyer, the emergence paradigm has become well established in a number of disciplines but has yet to really take hold in sociology (he wrote this article in 2002, mind you). One such discipline where it has made considerable inroads is the cognitive sciences. In the process, it has provoked much philosophical debate on the vexed relationship between mind and brain . Looking at this relationshop from an "emergent perspective" affords us analogous insights into the relationship between individuals and society in sociological thinking. The early post war era ushered in the “cognitive revolution" – though many of the ideas associated with this development can be traced back at least to the early 20th century when "emergentism" began to be discussed in a significant way and was often linked with the philosophical tradition of pragmatism However, this did not come to much and was soon eclipsed by the rise of the behaviourist paradigm which became absolutely dominant in the field of psychology by the mid 20th century. Behaviourism, developed and popularised by the likes of Pavlov, Watson, B F Skinner and others, more or less rejected "mentalism" with its focus on thought processes in favour of what it called a "science of behaviour", Behaviour was something that could be "objectively" observed and scientifically measured whereas mental states were, by their very nature, unobservable. Needless to say, Freudian psychodynamics relying on introspection and the recollection of childhood experiences was also repudiated for this reason. With the cognitive revolution, this whole behaviourist paradigm came under assault. That revolution was the outcome of several factors. Among these were the increasing application of interdisciplinary approaches to this whole subject and the introduction of new technologies such as sophisticated brain scanning equipment and computers. Computerisation in particular provided fertile soil in which new speculative insights into the way in which the mind might work, took root. Analogies were drawn between a computer's hardware and its software in which the brain was said to correspond to the former and the mind, the later. The development of Artificial Intelligence was predicated on the assumption that machines could simulate human intelligence and thus necessitated investigation into such mental processes as reasoning, perception and communication. Actually, it was Chomsky's celebrated critique of Skinner's book Verbal Behaviour in 1959 on the subject of language acquisition in which he propounded the view that human beings had an innate capacity for language that, in a way, sparked the cognitive revolution and marked the turning point in the fortunes of behaviorism. In the wake of that revolution a new theoretical perspective gained ground, loosely called “non-reductive physicalism”. Representing the “emergence paradigm” in this particular field, non-reductive physicalism increasingly came to be seen as a kind of intermediate position between the reductionist physicalism of “identity theory” (which regards consciousness as an essentially neurophysical process) and metaphysical dualism (which disavows any substantive connection between thought and neurophysical activity). I think the same basic kind of approach could be usefuly applied to sociology. Society depends on individuals but is not reducible to individiuals as per the mythical "contract" theory of society, propounded by Locke and other individualust thinkers, where society is essentially just the individual Writ Large. Or Mrs Thatcher's balmy claim that there is no such thing as society only individuals and their families…..
Osama Jafar wrote:am writing on the Subject Body!Osama. it might be better to start a new thread than change the title of an existing thread. It gets very confusing otherwise!
J Surman wrote:Something wrong with this page – it's not moving on from 02/01/17 although it's at the head of today's posts.Anybody else finding this?Yes and the title has changed hasnt it?
Utopia. The word itself was coined by Thomas More in 1516. Deriving from the Greek word for "no place" (which, spelt slightly differently, means "good place"), it stands for an imaginary, idealised and sought after society. It conveys also the idea of something that is essentially unachievable. To be called a "utopian" is to be dismissed as an impractical dreamer. Utopians, however, may take some comfort from the fact that history, amongst other things, has been a record of what was once thought to be unachievable, even unimaginable, being realised. As Oscar Wilde put it in The Soul of Man under Socialism, "A map of the world that does not include Utopia is not even worth glancing at. Progress is the realisation of Utopias" Utopian thought has had a long and illustrious past – from the musings of the legendary King Gilgamesh of Ancient Sumeria in 2000 BC to the hi-tech eco-friendly communes of today. What do all these different utopias have in common? According to Ian Tod and Michael Wheeler: The answer is very little in detail, except perhaps for an almost universal dislike of lawyers, and there are even exceptions to that generalisation. However, utopias are about how people should live, about human nature, and the meaning and purpose of life. And thus they deal with perennial problems: happiness, good and evil, authority, the state, religion, knowledge, work, sex, equality, liberty. Some utopias assume that people are inherently bad and that they need a state to prevent society breaking down in chaos. Others maintain that people are inherently good and it is only institutions like a state that prevent them living in peace and cooperation. Some see the solutions of social problems in the pursuit of material prosperity, whereas others see it in austerity and simplicity. Some advocate private property but by far the majority advocate some form of communism, with equal access to the bounty of nature and equal status between people (I Tod and M Wheeler Utopia, Orbis Publishing, London, 1978, p.7) It is with this last kind of utopia that, I suggest, socialists are primarily concerned with.
mcolome1 wrote:irwellian wrote:I look forward to a possible future with one or two capitalist restorationists standing on a street corner handing out copies of Capitalist Standard to the disinterested socialist masses.Capitalists under a socialist society ? It must be a miracle. Capitalists only exist on a capitalist society based on wage slavery, economical exploitation, extraction of surplus value, value of exchange, market, and private possession of the means of productions. Are we going to have those features under a socialist society ? Probably, not. If they are socialists they are not disinterested socialist either. I have heard from workers the following expression: I am a capitalist because I support capitalism, they are workers supporting capitalism, but they are not capitalists. If the slaves support their masters, Do they become slaves owners ?
Yes , I too have encountered people who say they are capitalists because they support capitalism. Its an unfortunate confusion but it has a certain logic to it. After all we socialists say we support a social system called socialism. But capitalism too is a social sysem so you can see why supporters of this system should call themselves capitalists even though "capitalist" is class category pertaining to capitalism which the great majority of us quite clearly do not fall under. Perhaps to be consistent we should call ourselves "pro-socialists" and the supporters of capitalism, "pro-capitalists". Or we could just live with this confusion and muddle our way through as is usually the case anyway
