[robbo203]

ALB wrote:

robbo203 wrote:

Or will socialism be the ultimate expression of a post modernistic culture in which anything goes?

Of course not. I know you don't think this as you have argued here a moral case as well as a class case for socialism and that this is just a rhetorical question.But just in case someone gets the wrong impression, we don't agree with the post-modernists that cannibalism is just a matter of taste.

 LOL.  "Cannibalism is just a matter of taste".  Quite a quotable quote that!.  But talking specifically about sexual preferences or attachments which is what this thread is about, rather than culture in general,  I imagine people would be free or freer to chose what form this takes with the proviso that it would be consensual.  So, yes, at least in this respect "anything would go" but up to a point (where consensus runs out).  It is certainly possible even likely that some, maybe  even most,  people would chose to be in a monogamous relationship which is why I question the tacit assumption that monogamy as such is the problem.  The problem is trying to push such a relationship down ones throat if I can put it like that.One point of clarification – I don't see the moral case for socialism as  something separate from the class case for socialism.  Class consciousness is a moral construct.  It is the expression of a "proletarian morality"

[robbo203]

Subhaditya wrote:

James W. Prescott's research shows that monogamous and any society that tries to discourage physical pleasure seeking is a violent one.So how will socialism succeed in an environment of violence… people will be killing each other not for food, water or shelter but for sex… need for sex is no less trivial than need for food,water or shelter… so shouldnt socialism deal with it as seriously as it deals with issues like food,water, shelter ?

 Good point but I dont think you should push the argument too far in the direction of specifying or layng down a particular prescribed  pattern of sexual relations as the means by which sexual needs could be accommodated.  After all,even in a monogamous relationship sexual needs can be met.  Sexual needs are in any case not the only consideration in forming attachments or relationships; what about love or affection? I think the main point that comes across in your argument is that a socialist society should not seek to constrain the way in which individuals seek sexual pleasure, providing of course that this is consensual (which by definition rape is not and which no one here would defend).  I would go along with that and with the corollary that socialists should behave in this regard in  a way that prefigures the kind of society they seek and the values it embodies.  But it is problematic to infer from this any particular pattern of sexual attachment.  There are so many variables to contend with. Look at the way notions of sexual attractivenesss or beauty  today are mediated or structured by the  fashion industry, advertising and so on. We assume such pressures won't exist in a socialist but who knows?  Surrogate versions of the same could emerge.  Or will socialism be the ultimate expression of a post modernistic culture in which anything goes? 

[robbo203]

LBird wrote:

 The SPGB does not agree the workers should democratically control their science (but argues that 'science' is an elite activity, with disinterested experts, who employ a politically-neutral scientific method, and that there is no place for democracy in the production of 'Truth'). 

 Until you answer the question of 1) WHY and 2) HOW the production of truth should be organised be "democratically organised" we are banging our heads against a wall with you, LBird Why don't you ever answer the simple question – how do you propose to organise multiple global plebiscites  on literally thousands upon thousands of scientific theories? Do you seriously think this is feasible? If  0.1 per cent of the population voted to endorse String Theory – probably a wildly optimistic prediction – would you consider that the "democratic production of scientific truth" had been secured?. What happens if a socialist society decided not to go through the whole, rather pointless (and very expensive), rigmarole of democratically voting on scientific theories but just let the scientists get on with the job? Do you think this would in any way undermine the practical and democratic running of a socialist society as far as this affects the allocation of resources? In a society where goods are freely available and labour is performed on a purely voluntary basis what possible leverage could the scientists exert over the population in general? A trained astrophysicist may know a lot more about String theory than the average person but how does this translate into social power over the average person in socialism? Please explain!

[robbo203]

alanjjohnstone wrote:

Well worth a read about how society fears the consequence of discovering the true nature and intelligence of animal specieshttp://www.truth-out.org/news/item/37826-we-are-not-alone-listening-to-the-8-7-million-other-animals-who-live-on-earth

 Yes indeed Alan – an interesting read.  Apropos that there is a fascinating link here concerning Dolphins and their ability to communicate with each other. Dolphins according to the article " have possessed brains that are larger and more complex than human ones for more than 25 million years" http://www.telegraph.co.uk/science/2016/09/11/dolphins-recorded-having-a-conversation-for-first-time/ Going back to the piece you linked to, this comment is central : "It's a phenomenon leading primatologist Frans de Waal calls "anthropodenial." It's the reflexive "rejection of humanlike traits in animals and of animal-like traits in humans" and it still persists despite mounting evidence to the contrary. De Waal collected much of that evidence himself during years studying primates like bonobos. They are 98 percent genetically similar to humans, they exhibit many of the hallmarks of humanness and they are famous for the ribald complexity of their culture.And yes, it is a culture." "Anthropodenialism" gained ground as evidence for evolution began to accumulate in the 18th and 19th centuries. The Mediaeval concept of the Great Chain of Being  – actually it goes back to the Ancient Greeks –  held that God's entire creation was a continuum in which there were no gaps  (the principle of "plenitude").  However the whole  structure was essentially static.  Apes for example might resemble human beings but could never evolve into human beings.  They were part of God's grand design. Two developments then occurred that are relevant to this discussion… The first was what was called the "temporalisation" of the Great Chain – that is, reconceptualising it as a dynamic process.  The evidence from such fields as comparative anatomy and palaeontology contributed to this development.  For example, the evidence of fossils of extinct creatures did indeed suggest there were gaps in creation and so cast doubt on God's limitless benevolence The next development focussed essentially on human beings and in particular their perceived relationship to primates.  European expansion and  colonialism gave rise to what was called the "Problem of the Savage" – how  to fit strange new exotic cultures that Europeans encountered within their cosmological view of the world.  Some of the armchair travellers speculated from their comfortable estates in the Home Counties,  that the "primitive natives" in faraway places with their strange incomprehensible language and customs, must have constituted intermediate species between the apes and true humans.  In my native country of South Africa there was a tradition among early white settlers of organising hunting trips in  the Western Cape  to kill members of Khoi people as trophies – much as the hunting fraternity today chase after foxes Polygenism – belief in the multiple origins of different human groups – represented a transformation of the Great Chain into a racial hierarchy – and became quite popular in the 19th century,  While it appeared to offer a materialistic or biologistic account of human diversity – indeed many polygenists were atheistic –  the rival theory of monogenism which a posited a common origin for all humans was ironically in large part religious inspired.  The gulf between humans and animals became absolute due to the former's possession of a soul which, needless to say, was threatened by talk of human beings having evolved from the apes.  It was really only with the rise of Darwinian evolutionism that the monogenists emphasis on the uniqueness of the human species came under sustained threat. Might I suggest that in some ways "anthropodenialism" today is a faint echo of this early monogenist perspective?

[robbo203]

ALB wrote:

Steve-SanFrancisco-UserExperienceResearchSpecialist wrote:

Because Sociologist who study primates tell us humans have the abiity to behave in ways primates behave.

Of course we have and a lot more other ways too. But the point is that they can't behave in the ways we can and do.

 There is an interesting article in the  Scientific American on the subject of chimp behaviour….http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/like-humans-chimps-reward-cooperation-and-punish-freeloaders/?WT.mc_id=SA_MB_20160824 Im not entirely convinced that the distinction between primate and human behaviour is  quite as cut and dried as it may seem.  Frans de Waal's work is quite seminal in this regard – books such as Chimpanzee Politics: Power and Sex among Apes (2007) and Chimpanzee Cultures (1994) Here he is delivering a TED talk https://www.ted.com/talks/frans_de_waal_do_animals_have_morals?language=en

[robbo203]

Hi Osama, You cannot introduce socialism without majority support for socialism.   The very nature of socialism requires that people understand and want it. The history of political parties such as the German Social Democratic party which, in the late 19th century, was easily the largest organisation in the world to claim to  stand for a revolutionary transformation and with whom Marx and Engels had connections, prove this.  The SDP succumbed to the revisionist ideas of reformists like Eduard Bernstein – a leading figure in the SDP – and advocated a "minimum" programme of reforms alongside a "maximum" programme of social revolution.  What happened? Well, what happened is that workers were attracted to the SDP because of its minimum programme and eventually the maximum programme was effectively abandoned.  The SDP emerged in the 20th century as a straightforward capitalist party standing for capitalism and nothing else. There is a hard lesson to be learnt from that!

[robbo203]

Steve-SanFrancisco-UserExperienceResearchSpecialist wrote:

Primitive society before the advent of a currency was limited to what was called a gifting economy.  A gifting economy is maybe class based or maybe classless depending on how you understand "class".   It's an interesting myth that people bartered for goods and services before the advent of an exchange currency, but it's just a myth apparently. There's no actual examples of pre-currency civilizations engaging in barter and instead they operated on a system of patronage.  Wikipedia says more about this better than I can . . . https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gift_economy

 Hi Steve David Graeber likewise rejects the idea that there was ever a barter based economy.  See his book Debt: The First 5000 years https://libcom.org/files/__Debt__The_First_5_000_Years.pdf I'm not quite sure what you mean by a gift economy  operating "on a system of patronage".  Karl Polanyi's threefold typology  springs to mind here  –  a market system, a redistributive system and a reciprocity system.  I would class a gift economy under a reciprocity system  – generalised reciprocity to be precise which is more or less what we understand  by socialism by the way "Patronage", on the other hand, seem to me fall more naturally  under the heading of a redistributive system where wealth flows inwards towards a centre eg, a tribal chief  and is redistributed outwards as a way of cementing social bonds and maintaining  loyalty and allegiance.  In other words it would be more appropriate to a tribal social formation than a hunter gatherer band society for example. But then I may have misunderstood what you mean by patronage…

[robbo203]

Adam, In the same chapter of Anti Duhring from which you quote there is another passage a little further on which says this The role played in history by force as contrasted with economic development is therefore clear. In the first place, all political power is organically based on an economic, social function, and increases in proportion as the members of society, through the dissolution of the primitive community, become transformed into private producers, and thus become more and more divorced from the administrators of the common functions of society. Secondly, after the political force has made itself independent in relation to society, and has transformed itself from its servant into its master, it can work in two different directions. Either it works in the sense and in the direction of the natural economic development, in which case no conflict arises between them, the economic development being accelerated. Or it works against economic development, in which case, as a rule, with but few exceptions, force succumbs to it. These few exceptions are isolated cases of conquest, in which the more barbarian conquerors exterminated or drove out the population of a country and laid waste or allowed to go to ruin productive forces which they did not know how to use This would seem to contradict Pearce's reading of Engels.  Political power , aka the state, develops out of the "dissolution of the primitive community"

[robbo203]

ALB wrote:

It does not quite say what Pearce says but has more in common with what our pamphlet speculates about those carrying out a technical social functions evolving into a ruling class (as well).

Yes, it doesn't quite say what Pearce says and I too cannot find anything in Engels that specifically says that the state emerged in a primitive communism prior to the division of society into classes.  This would be contrary to what one might expect from a reading of a materialist conception of history. Perhaps, if the minority you referred to earlier  at whose service "armed bodies of men over and above the rest of society" emerged,  constituted a proto class then by the same token the political set at the time would constitute a proto state but not yet a developed state based on centralised power.  At any rate I cant really see how state formation and the division of society into classes can be separated out as cause and effect.  The former surely is just the political expression of the latter and the latter, the socio economic expression of the former. All states depend upon the extraction of an economic surplus to maintain and reproduce themselves which in turn presupposes a system of class exploitation.  If so I cannot really see how the view Pearce attributes to Engels can be correct

[robbo203]

LBird wrote:

Ah! What a shame, robbo.You were playing games all along!You still won't read what I'm writing.Ah well, back to the merry-go-round:end of the snake in box 42, robbo.I'll have to wait now until someone posts who's genuinely interested in discussing Marx's social theory and practice, and democratic production.

With a response like this its not surprising that no one takes you seriously anymore. I've tried to engage with you in a serious argument but you always seem to end up with evasive comments and childish riddles.  Enough is enough.Enjoy your self imposed exile to Alice's wonderland, LBird

[robbo203]

LBird wrote:

 And whether the social product of the proletariat's theory and practice is 'true' or not, can only be decided by the producers themselves. Often, a 'knowledge product' of 'science' can be 'true' in one historical era (or decade!) and 'false' in another, so its status can only be determined by a vote. Only the producers can change the status of a socio-historical product.Is this Marxist, class-based, democratic, social productionist model of the 'scientific method' the one that you, too, argue for?

 Apart from your stupid  impractical  and utterly pointless idea of billions of people voting on the truth of tens of thousands scientific theories there is not much I would disagree with in the "idealist-materialist" approach you outline as I've made clear countless times. Indeed I was pushing this argument on this forum long before you first appeared on this forum.The fact that scientific knowledge is socially produced does not in any way validate your crackpot theory of voting on  scientific theories. There are lots things that are "socially produced" that we dont need to vote upon,  The sewage system in Shanghai is a social prodict but does that mean the citizens of Upper Volta or Guinea Bissau have a vested interest in voting on the precise configuration of this system.  Of course not  I keep on saying this but you still haven't got your head around this basic point that democracy is about practical decisions that impact on our lives.  It is NOT about theories or whether they are truthful or not.  What is true for one person may not be for another and a vote is not going to alter that fact in any way.  So why are you so obsessed with the idea of a voting on the truth of a scientific theory, eh? But my main point is this and I note you have studiously evaded it – you are NOT an  idealist materialist .  You are an idealist and nothing more  since you clearly believe matter cannot exist outside of human beings perception of it and consequently nothing existed before human beings appeared on the scene. Your whole argument is totally opposed to the "idealism materialism" you claim to espouse and as such is totally opposed to everything Marx wrote on the matter as well.

[robbo203]

LBird wrote:

Matt wrote:

Quit the games and answer the question. It is bad enough posts aren't trimmed and we have to read all this.

Yeah, robbo and YMS, "quit the games and answer the question"!Tell us what your social theory and practice is. What is your ideology and method?Good 'intervention', Matt! They don't like 'intervention', the 'materialists'!

 Matt's riposte was directed at you LBird in case you hadnt realised this. My philosopy is what you  call "idealism-materialism" since I hold that science is never value free and that the facts are always selected in accordance with our preexisting theories. Your philosopy on the other hand is pure idealism and opposed to everything Marx wrote.  You seriously maintain that the material world cannot exist without human perception so that prior to the evolution of human beings, nothing existed according to you.  There was not, nor could there ever be, anything called matter.  Galaxies and black holes never existed before we came along.  The dinasours are simply a creation of our own imagination and never actually existed.  The fossil record must a complete fraud according to your line of idealist thinking. You have far more in common with a Jehovah Witness than a Marxist, LBird

[robbo203]

ALB wrote:

It could only denote a "proto class". Anyway, I'm searching for what Engels actually did say.Here's how the section on 'The Emergence of Class Society' in Chapter 3 of our Ecology and Socialism pamphlet speculates on how class society might have arisen from another once purely technical social role, storing surpluses once agricultural evolved (rather than defence):

Quote:

The existence of a common store becomes another aspect of the society's material conditions of production and requires a social arrangement for managing this store – collecting and redistributing the surpluses. The usual arrangement seems to have been to confer this responsibility on a particular family. Arguments can go on as to whether being given this responsibility made the head of the family concerned "the chief" or whether this responsibility was conferred on a family whose head had already acquired this status for other reasons – perhaps military or religious. But the fact remains that this role of collecting and redistributing surpluses was one that had to be filled if all the members of the society were to be able to meet their basic needs as of right.The Emergence Of Class Society It is easy to imagine how over time this coordinating role in distribution could become a source of privileged consumption for the chief and his family. The duty to contribute any surplus products to the common storehouse could become a duty to contribute this to the chief, and the chief and his family could come to consume an excessive amount of the stores at the expense of redistributing them to those in need. This tendency for what was originally a necessary technical function to evolve into a social privilege would have been even more pronounced when the technical coordinating role concerned production rather than simply distribution, as was the case when large-scale irrigation works had to be managed so that agriculture could be practised. This was what happened with the agriculture that was practised, for instance, in the Nile, Euphrates and other river valleys.

Yes, the argument that the technical coordination of large scale irrigation  projects gave rise to the state is one that Wittfogel put forward in his account of "hydraulic civilisations" in riverine enviroments such as the ones you cite.  In this case the technical role of overssing the project evolved into a social role in which the overseers – typically a priestly caste with a knowlege of such things as astonomy – emerged as a ruling class.  At what point did the state emerge in this process of social transformation, though? Regarding the storage of food surpluses there is an interestung article here. http://www.pnas.org/content/106/27/10966.full  This paxssage is of particular interest: Third, excavations at Dhra′ indicate that the granaries were located in extramural locations between other buildings. Elsewhere Kuijt (11) argues that starting at 10,500 cal B.P. food storage starts to be located inside houses, and that by 9,500 cal B.P. dedicated storage rooms appear in Neolithic villages. These data may reflect evolving systems of ownership and property, with PPNA granaries being used and owned communally with later food storage systems becoming part of household or individual based systems. Fourth, these sophisticated storage systems with subfloor ventilation are a precocious development that precedes the emergence of almost all of the other elements of the Near Eastern Neolithic package—domestication, large-scale sedentary communities, and the entrenchment of some degree of social differentiation  Food storage is an essential development for food production, sedentism and farming, and represents a major evolutionary threshold for human civilization (12). Archaeologists have only recently started to document food storage among cultures before the appearance fully developed agro-pastoralist economies, and assess whether, when, or even if, people were able to regularly store food beyond their annual consumption needs, including banking grain to overcome spoilage, and to provide seed for planting and potential years of crop failure. In some cases storage necessitates, or is necessary for, changes in social systems, invoked both in increasing corporate activities and for the development of hierarchical structures. Storage also represents a critical form of risk management and economic intensification 

[robbo203]

LBird wrote:

robbo203 wrote:

LBird wrote:

robbo203 wrote:

I can read perfectly well LBird.  Stop playing games . Refer me to your alleged answer to the question I posed above.  I genuinely cannot find your answer amongst the the tons of stuff you have written.  Where is it?

Yes, robbo, at the bottom of the snake, in box 42.

 What are you on about. Post number 42 on this thread is by Capitalist Pig, not you. Can toy kindly copy and paste your response to my question

Snakes and ladders is a 'game', robbo.And '42' is the answer to life, the universe and everything.I'm playing a 'game', just like you, robbo.

 I see. So in response to a serious question all you can offer is a puerile retort like this.  So you lied through your teeth about having answered my question – didnt you LBird? –  and you prefer to display your elitist contempt for others by mocking the questions they ask you in good faith. By all means continue playing your silly "game", LBird,  At least now we know never to take you seriously ever again

[robbo203]

LBird wrote:

robbo203 wrote:

I can read perfectly well LBird.  Stop playing games . Refer me to your alleged answer to the question I posed above.  I genuinely cannot find your answer amongst the the tons of stuff you have written.  Where is it?

Yes, robbo, at the bottom of the snake, in box 42.

 What are you on about. Post number 42 on this thread is by Capitalist Pig, not you. Can toy kindly copy and paste your response to my question

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