robbo203
Forum Replies Created
-
Posts
-
LBird wrote:robbo203 wrote:LBird wrote:robbo203 wrote:LBird is hiding his pure idealist ideology which puts him at odds with "idealism-materialism" by refusing to explain what existed prior to the evolution of human consciousness …
You'll have to read the answer that I've already given, robbo.You might not like it, but it's there.When you show that you understand my answer (not 'agree with', but just understand), we can continue to discuss these epistemological issues.We're not getting anywhere by you ignoring (or, worse, failing to understand) what I write.I'm happy to help – try to understand the various claims for the 'subject-object' relationship. I follow Marx on his view of this relationship. I don't hide my ideology.
But you havent provided an answer to the question I posed – what existed before human consciousness evolved if not matter? If you have provided an answer show me where it is . Copy and paste it here for all to see!
If you can't read and understand the first time, a second won't help.You'll have to read for yourself. I can't read for you.
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?
LBird wrote:robbo203 wrote:LBird is hiding his pure idealist ideology which puts him at odds with "idealism-materialism" by refusing to explain what existed prior to the evolution of human consciousness …You'll have to read the answer that I've already given, robbo.You might not like it, but it's there.When you show that you understand my answer (not 'agree with', but just understand), we can continue to discuss these epistemological issues.We're not getting anywhere by you ignoring (or, worse, failing to understand) what I write.I'm happy to help – try to understand the various claims for the 'subject-object' relationship. I follow Marx on his view of this relationship. I don't hide my ideology.
But you havent provided an answer to the question I posed – what existed before human consciousness evolved if not matter? If you have provided an answer show me where it is . Copy and paste it here for all to see!
ALB wrote:Your link to Pearce's article doesn't seem to work. This (hopefully) does:https://www.marxists.org/archive/pearce/2002/xx/asiaticmode.htmlI wonder if Engels was just making a point about a situation which eventually led on to the evolution of a state (as, presumably, armed bodies of men over and above the rest of society at the service of some minority)Problem is, though, that this "minority" surely denotes the existence of class society so that in this formulation, it would be class division that leads to, or precedes, the state. The classic MCH position, if you like According to Pearce, however, Engels himself seems to have accepted “that the state arose in primitive-communist society, before any division into classes, because of the need for defence . In other words, the state preceded class division. This is the basic problem I'm referring to. Which of these positions is correct or is it a case of both being inextricably linked and part of the same process? If so, what are the theoretical implications of this for the MCH itself and its base-superstructure model of society?
LBird wrote:'Materialism' hides a complete contempt for the masses, and it is fundamentally undemocratic, and thus anti-socialist.Why are you hiding your ideology and method? What have you to fear from telling workers your theory and practice?LBird is hiding his pure idealist ideology which puts him at odds with "idealism-materialism" by refusing to explain what existed prior to the evolution of human consciousness and our ability to perceive, if not matter which he has confidently asserted on this forum cannot exist apart from our human perceptions and is thus nothing more than a manifestation of our human perceptionsI think everyone basically accepts on this forum that there is no such thing as a "value free science" and so would comfortably fit in with Lbirds' epithet, "idealism- materialism". The oddball in this debate is LBird himself who is NOT an "idealist materialist" but an idealist, pure and simple
gnome wrote:robbo203 wrote:Twford John wrote:By the way, Jim D'Arcy bought Head Office, and he wasn't making a 'capital investment'.I maybe wrong about this but I vaguely recall in Barltrop's book The Monument which I read years ago that it was an elderly female comrade in Edinburgh with a cat called Karl Marx who put down the money for 52 Clapham High St!
It seems that Frank Offord also contributed in some way although it's not entirely clear who actually put down the money to enable the party to acquire the premises.
Socialist Standard wrote:Frank Offord was Party auditor for a number of years, and was one of the back room boys of the Party. Some of his early life had been spent in China, and he wrote and spoke on various aspects of the conditions there. Together with the late Ted Kersley, he was the mainspring of the New Premises Committee, and it was he who discovered our present Head Office at 52 Clapham High Street. When the lease at Rugby Chambers expired it was this Committee that organised the move, much of the expense of which was paid by Frank out of his own pocket. It was he who introduced films to be used in conjunction with socialist lectures. Ill-health prevented him in the last few years from carrying on any Party activity.Interesting. So who was the elderly woman from Edinbugh then – the one who lived with Karl Marx (the cat, that is)?
Twford John wrote:By the way, Jim D'Arcy bought Head Office, and he wasn't making a 'capital investment'.I maybe wrong about this but I vaguely recall in Barltrop's book The Monument which I read years ago that it was an elderly female comrade in Edinburgh with a cat called Karl Marx who put down the money for 52 Clapham High St!
LBird wrote:robbo203 wrote:Im still waiting for LBird's answer. Why is he so coy about providing an answer?You'll have to read my answer, robbo, as opposed to ignoring it, and substituting your own terms for Marx's.
Where is your answer? It does not appear to be on this forum. Can you refer me to your post explaining what existed before human consciousness evolved, if not matter (given that you have openly stated that matter could not exist independently of our ability to perceive it,)
robbo203 wrote:Since LBird has claimed that matter does NOT have an existence independent of our perception of it, I would be interested to know whether LBird believes anything at all existed before the evolution of human consciousness and our ability to perceive. If LBird seriously believes that this could not possibly be matter since matter could not exist independently of our ability to perceive it, could he please explain what exactly it was that existed prior to our existence as a species, if not matter? I await his answer with bated breath (sarcasm alert)Im still waiting for LBird's answer. Why is he so coy about providing an answer?
Since LBird has claimed that matter does NOT have an existence independent of our perception of it, I would be interested to know whether LBird believes anything at all existed before the evolution of human consciousness and our ability to perceive. If LBird seriously believes that this could not possibly be matter since matter could not exist independently of our ability to perceive it, could he please explain what exactly it was that existed prior to our existence as a species, if not matter? I await his answer with bated breath (sarcasm alert)
LBird wrote:robbo203 wrote:For example, in response to Tim's question " Do you believe that matter has an existence independent of your perception of it?", LBird confidently asserted that it does not. Now clearly this is nonsense. Presumably LBird accepts that before human beings evolved on this planet or indeed before life and living things appeared, there was matter. So in a formal sense obviously matter exists independently of our perception of it.'Matter' is obviously speaking directly to robbo, here.robbo clearly states that 'matter exists independently'.So, he clearly arguing, unlike Marx, that 'matter is not a social product'.
You are very muddled LBird. Youve not really grasped the point at all and you misread Marx completely. When Marx talks of matter being a social product he is referring to our apprehension of matter. Meaning we cannot understand matter in a purely objective sense. Our understanding of matter is conditioned by our preconception of it. It is in this special sense only that Marx suggests matter is not independent of us. He is referring to the concept of matter, how we grasp it, intellectually speaking. Marx is definitely not saying, as you are, that matter itself does not exist outside of the ideas we hold about matter – only that we can never understand or grasp matter outside of these ideas which are themselves socially produced. What you are claiming is a ludicrous distortion of Marx. In effect you are saying that before human beings existed and entertained thoughts about matter, there was no matter and you are atrributing this view – laughably – to Marx! TWC is right. You are a straightforward Berkelean idealist, not an "idealist materialist"
Brian wrote:ALB wrote:What's wrong with you Brian? Let that thread go round in circles and not open another one for our feathered friend. This forum is to discuss socialist ideas not the bizarre theories of some eccentric individual. Sometimes we are our worst enemies.An OP which is implying there are limits to the application of democracy is I assume discussing socialist ideas.
I tend to agree. Sometimes ideas, however bizarre, can serve as a foil for productive discussion. The question of where to draw the line when it comes to the application of democracy is an important one for socialists. Democratic practice lies at the heart of the socialist project. We socialists call for the common ownership and democratic control of the means of production in a future socialist society. But what does this actually mean in practice? How far do we go with the concept of democratic control? I have been attacking LBirds frankly preposterous idea that scientific theories should be subject to a democratic vote. Not only is this logistically speaking, totally impractical; it also serves absolutely no point and is totally inimical to the self critical aspect of scientific discovery itself. But what about other areas of life in a socialist society? How far do we extend democratic control over these? There are other values apart from democratic values to take into account. Freedom for example. LBird may well sneer at this as a bourgeois preoccupation but Marx himself talked of the free development of each as being a condition for the free development of all. Freedom is not opposed to democratic values but complements such values. Its a question of getting the balance right. For instance, the communist principle of " from each according to ability to each according to need" presupposes that we as individuals chose to decide how we contribute to society and what we take from it in the form of the goods and services we appropriate. It would be utterly absurd for a global society to democratically decide by means of a vote what food we should eat, what our music preferences should be or what clothes we should wear At bottom, democracy is about the resolution of conflicting views and interests and presupposes that we give equal moral weight to everyone in the decision making process. That is to say, democracy presupposes equality which in a socialist society springs from our equal relationship to the means of wealth production. So really democracy is about to resolve conflicting or potentially conflicting objectives that impact on the way in which resources are allocated. It is not about the validity of scientific theories or the particular lifestyle we may chose to adopt. But there is another aspect to this which has been overlooked. While we talk about democratic control of the means of production, what about the process of producing wealth itself in a socialist society? In my view the great majority of decisions impacting upon the allocation of resources simply do not need any kind of democratic mandate at all. They are grounded in the spontaneous operation or automaticity of the production process itself based on a self regulating, system of stock control. Factory A does not need to convene a democratic meeting to decide how to respond to a request for more stock from Distribution store X. It just does it. The democratic mandate has to do with the parameters within which such automatic decisions are made, not the decisions themselves Furthermore, what is overlooked by people like LBird is that a socialist society must necessarily be to a large extent a decentralised system of production or, if you prefer, a nested hierarchy of scales of production – local regional and global – with the great preponderance of decisions being made at the local level . LBird's distinct preference for all decisions to be made at the global level is a recipe for society-wide or centralised planning. It is totally impractical for all sorts of reasons and ironically in LBird's case, thoroughly Leninist in inspiration Hence Lenin's idea of socialism that The whole of society will have become a single office and a single factory (State and Revolution) Does LBird endorse this idea, I wonder?
Capitalist Pig wrote:There seems to be a major division in ideology. correct me if I'm wrong. One side believes that truth(or science) is entirely objective and the other side believes that it is entirely subjective?Why can it not be both? I think this debate on epistemology has been somewhat sterile. For example, in response to Tim's question " Do you believe that matter has an existence independent of your perception of it?", LBird confidently asserted that it does not. Now clearly this is nonsense. Presumably LBird accepts that before human beings evolved on this planet or indeed before life and living things appeared, there was matter. So in a formal sense obviously matter exists independently of our perception of it.. In fact, LBird's construction "idealism-materialism" makes absolutely no sense if this were not the case. ""Matter" would merely be a species of ideas and what LBird would really be advocating would be "idealism-idealism" What LBird was really trying to say, I think, is that our understanding of matter – scientific truth – is never free of, but is always mediated by. our ideological or subjective preconceptions. Or if you like,- science is never value free. As LBird colourfully put it *the rocks don't speak to us" in some proximate sense. That much is true. I think it was Popper who made the point that in order to observe we need to know what to look for and that presupposes a rudimentary model of the world we carry around in our heads to begin with. The" facts" we perceive are elicited and structured according to this model. In other words, the theory precedes the facts though it can be modified by the facts Positivism is the contention that rocks can speak to us directly, that we can have a purely objective knowledge about them. Despite LBird's claim to the contrary I don't see any evidence here of a positivistic view of science being promoted on this forum. What I do see is claims to the effect that matter does indeed have an an existence independent of our perception of it. But that is not positivism and LBird has muddied the water considerably by suggesting that it is
LBird wrote:robbo203 wrote:So lets have it from the horses mouth: are you now denying that your vision of a future communist society involves workers voting on the truth or otherwise of scientific theories? A straightforward YES or NO will be much appreciated and if NO please enlighten with a simple explanation in your OWN words as to precisely what you have in mind without your customary waffle. .Yes. (ie. workers will vote on 'truth')If you don't agree, robbo, you have to say who does determine 'truth'.I suspect that you'll argue that 'truth' is 'out there', waiting to be 'discovered', but then that puts power in the hands of 'out there' and we can't change it.Can you please give me a similarly simple answer, to my reasonable political question?Who determines 'truth'?
OK so now we have it in black and white from LBird. Workers in a communist society will vote on the truth of scientific theories – thousands upon thousands of them! The theories not the workers, that is. So 7 billion people, more or less, voting on thousands of thousands of scientific theories is how LBird sees the future. Glad we sorted that out LBird Do I agree with this idea? You gotta be kidding. The idea is about as daft as it gets. Logistically it is simply out of the question. But the more important question I wanted LBird to answer which he is failed to do – is WHY is it it necessary for workers to vote on the truth of these thousands of scientific theories? Why? Why? why? LBird says if I don't agree with his idea then I have to say who then determines the truth. But why? Why should anyone determine the truth? If I have one particular scientific theory to account for a certain phenomenon and you have another, then obviously we have a difference of opinion. What is true for you is not for me and vice versa. Of course we can look at each others respective theories in the light of the evidence presented and perhaps as a result I might come to reject my theory and accept yours . Or vice versa. Or we might even come to see that both our theories are off the mark. The point is the truth is relative and provisional, not absolute and set in concrete. Scientific advancement develops through engagement and debate not by bureaucratic rubber stamping of a particular theory as true by virtue of some democratic sanction. So the question of who determines what is the truth is quite misleading. It betrays the mindset of a Jehovah Witness not a Marxist. Marx said "question everything" but how can you possibly question something when it has been "democratically" determined to be The Truth. Explain LBird So lets run with this idea that LBird has put forward and see where it takes us. Let us assume (very generously) that a substantial number of workers in a communist society – say 4 billion out of a population of 7 billion turn up to vote on the Truth of String Theory in astrophysics. 62% of this 4 billion vote in favour of String theory (Ill ignore the fact that this is still a minority of the total population)) So String theory has now been officially designated as Scientifically True, Fine, Now what? What is supposed to happen as a result of this vote??? See, this is what LBird totally fails to explain. Is he saying that all those who reject String Theory in favour some other theory are now forbidden to promote this other theory. No? , what then? What was the point of the exercise? Why has a communist society gone through the enormous expense of organising a global plebiscite on a particular theory when all it serves to do is to rubber stamp the theory as scientifically true no doubt to to the satisfaction of its proponents whose egos would have been suitably massaged. Its quite dumb when you think about it. This is not at all what democracy should be about. Democracy is about practical decisions that have a practical bearing on our lives in terms of the allocation of resources to certain desired objectives. It is not about deciding the scientific truth of this or that theory. That is a complete waste of time and resources and its utterly pointless
LBird wrote: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'.
Er what? Ive gone through everything youve written on the subject with a fine toothcomb and Im completely baffled as to why you think otherwise. If anything this sounds like you going off yet again on a "rhetorical tangent" and though you accuse others of doing this I very much suspect this is an unconscious projection of your own peculiar method to deflect attention from yawning crddibility gap in your own argument – that is, by accusing others of doing what you routinely do yourself So lets have it from the horses mouth: are you now denying that your vision of a future communist society invoives workers voting on the truth or otherwise of scientific theories? A straightforward YES or NO will be much appreciated and if NO please enlighten with a simple explanation in your OWN words as to precisely what you have in mind without your customary waffle. .
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.This is already being done obliquely today, of course, when you consider climate change and folk voting for political candidates and their policies that either endorse or deny the science behind it.In future won't there also be indirectly votes taking on the validity of science.
Alan,That is not how I would interpret what LBird is saying but then LBird has only himself to blame if people misinterpret him given his tendency to haughtily decline to respond to questions concerning the practicality of his ideas. Perhaps he imagines in that fertile imagination of his that such questions betray a..er.." bourgeois" view of the world and elite communists like his good himself have no need to concern themselves with such mundane matters. As I see it, LBird has explicitly invoked the idea of workers in a communist society voting to determine the truth or otherwise of scientific theories – thousands upon thousands of 'em. Not once has he explained WHY this is necessary or HOW such a stupendously mammoth undertaking is going to be accomplished. I have repeatedly asked him these questions but he has snubbed me every time And no I don't think he is demanding only the "right" to democratically decide such issues. How would such a right be activated anyway? Would it require a petition with a minimum number of signatures and who decides what is the minimum in a population of 7 billion people? Its all too silly for words Nor do I think what LBird is suggesting is being obliquely done today. There is a world of a difference between what LBird is proposing and voting for candidates who want to do something about climate change. Firstly the latter does not involve a global vote. Secondly , the vote happens only once ever four years or so but new scientific theories crop up on a daily basis. Thirdly, the political candidates people vote for stand for a raft of other things too apart from wanting to tackle climate change so there is no way of determining whether a vote for them represents an endorsement of the "truth" behind climate science. And fourthly and perhaps most importantly, the candidates are putting forward practical policies that impact upon the utilisation of resources. Now this indeed is, or should be, the subject of democratic decision making. I have always made this clear to LBird that this is what democratic decision making ought to be about – practical decisions that affect us all, not the supposed truth of scientific theories – despite his puerile insults levelled at oppnents like me that they are "not democrats". I fully support the idea of common ownership and democratic control of the means of production. I do not however support the idea of democratically deciding whether this or that scientific theory is "true" or not. It is a stupid and utterly pointless idea. If LBird thinks otherwise then he should get his finger out and make a case for it. That would certainly make a change from just sneering at his opponents as not being democrats for having the effrontery to reject his daft idea.
