[robbo203]

Young Master Smeet wrote:

Quote:

Truth can be elected, and thus the good life for humans can be established, by active humans employing social theory and practice.

This is demonstrably untrue.A) A truth claim can only be verified by a vote. The polity votes on the truth claim.C) The result of the vote is itself a truth claim.D) The result of the vote can only be discovered by a further vote.

 Science is necessarily ideological  in some sense – and I don't think anyone here disagrees with that – but the proposition that we, all 7 billion of us on planet Earth, must therefore vote on scientific theories in order to determine their  supposed "truth" status – a ludicrous  and totally impractical idea anyway – is to completely misunderstand what democracy is about and what it is for.  It is about practical decisions that affect our wellbeing.  In other words its about the application of scientific discoveries to particular end uses not about the process of scientific discovery itself even if the latter may be indirectly influenced by the former. And yes you are right.  There is something inherently absurd about the the whole idea of voting to determine the truth of a scientific theory .  This is an idea that springs from a religious cum dogmatic cast of mind.  So 4.2 billion people vote in favour of String Theory in Astrophysics while 2.8 billion vote against it.  So what?!?  What actually has been accomplished by this grand folly of a gesture?  Absolutely nothing except an incredibly pointless waste of peoples time and resources. Are the 2.8 billion minority of the global population now expected to toe the Party line and renounce their adherence to any rival theory. If that is what is being asked of us than frankly we would still be stuck in a geocentric ptolemaic paradigm of the universe when the great majority of people believed the sun revolved around the earth and not the other way round..  It is intrinsically conservative in its implications The proposition that we should vote on scientific theories is anti scientific and stems from the mindset of religious Ayatollahs albeit dressed up in the paper thin veneer of a commitment to "democracy" but which will soon enough reveal its true character in the crushing and banning of any kind of dissenting scientific opinion in order to give credence to the empty ritual of such a vote in the first place

[robbo203]

LBird wrote:

I'm not allowed to answer you yet again, robbo, on pain of yet another ban.Please stop asking me the same questions (founded upon your wish to deny workers' democracy), all the while continuing to ignore the same answers.This thread is about your Religious Materialism, and I wish to adher to that topic.If you wish to pursue your topic, please read the answers that I've given before, time and time again, on other threads.

 You are clearly suffering from some kind of delusion LBird.  No you havent given the answers to the questions I ve asked at all.  Not at all.  On every single occasion WITHOUT FAIL  you've simply run away from the questions asked.  And now you have the effrontery to lie through your teeth about  it all declaring that I wish to "deny workers democracy". Quite the opposite is true and I said quite explicitly Im all in favour of workers democracy but where it is needed and not where it is not needed.  So, I dont think it is needed to determine , for instance, what I should wear, what I should consume,. where I should live , what music I should listen to, what interests I should pursue  and so on. These are personal choices and it is ridiculous and totally impractical trying to subject them to "democratic decisionmaking".  The same is true of your utterly daft and ill thought out idea of democratic "truth production".  It is such a stupid impractical idea I can hardly believe any rational human being could come up with such a thing. You say this thread is about "religious materialism".  That is ironic because, compared to you, a devotee of the Hare Krishna sect or a Jehovah Witness, would come across as a positively reasonable. You are the quintessential expression of the religious dogmatist who has nothing useful to say and finds some kind of weird comfort in the repetitive utterances of mantras, boring the pants off .all and everyone around him/her in the process.  Youve completely lost the plot, LBird

[robbo203]

LBird wrote:

I can feel yet another ban coming on… to keep the site safe from critical thought, and safe for the Religious Materialists, like robbo, who won't have workers' democracy in truth production.

 So not  content with dodging all my arguments and flinging round the odd cheap insult to cover your tracks , now your are resorting to down right porkies to plug the holes and stem the draining away of what little credibility you have left on this forum.   So I'm a  "religious Materialist" now meaning, in your terms, a positivist, some one who thinks that "rocks talk" as you put it.  Ill have you know, LBird,  that long before you announced your triumphal entrance on this forum in a fanfare of trumpets,  I was doggedly critiquing positivism and the so called "fact- value" distinction .  Your initial comments on the subject actually attracted my support, if you recall.  However, your pattern of behaviour since then – abusing those who dare disagree with you, twisting their arguments or just simply walking away from them when attempting to deal with them would expose your own argument for claptrap it is – has all but lost my sympathy vote.  A case in point  is is this idiotic mantra of yours –  "workers' democracy in truth production".  What the hell does that mean in practice LBird?  You wont say. You adamantly refuse to say time after time after time when repeatedly asked to elaborate.  Frankly, arguing with you is like debating with a Jehovah witness zealot on the merits of creationism. Are you seriously trying to tell us that 7 billion people are going to be voting on the "truth" of thousands upon thousands of scientific theories every year. (why they even need to vote on the truth of such theories is another matter).  It is not as you stupidly continue to assert that  I am saying workers should not be allowed to have an opinion on some scientific theory and that this should be left to expert elite. I have no problems with anyone whatsoever venturing an opinion. I'm just saying that no one individual, however clever or gifted, can ever acquire more than a tiny fraction of the sum total of human knowledge and that consequently for any theory it is more than likely that most people (including the experts in  some other field) will have neither the knowledge or the inclination to pass an informed opinion on the subject,  I  have precious little knowledge of, for example, molecular biology and wouldn't presume to pass an opinion on some theory  relating to this field.  Does that bother me? Nope.  Not at all.  I  am quite happy for the molecular biologists to discuss among themselves the rights and wrongs of this particular theory.  You on the other hand have no conception whatsoever of the simple fact  that there is such a thing as a social division of labour and that with advances in human knowledge this is becoming more and not less pronounced. Your head is completely  in the clouds and that is why you never seem to progress beyond the utterance of empty mantras My point is that there are structural limits to democratic decision making and my interest is in trying to delineate where these lie. I'm all for democratic decision making but where it is needed and  not where it is not needed. Are you trying to tell that global population should determine what I read, where I live , what clothes I wear , what music I should be allowed to listen to and so on,  No? Well then if you say no then you too by implication accept that there must be structural limits to democratic decision making.  That is why I mentioned local or decentralised decision making in a future socialist society.  You didn't seem to understand the point of this example. In fact it serves as an analogy  for the example of expert elites.  If you agree that a local community knows best what it needs locally and does not need the global community to determine whether it requires a local hospital and where to siute it then what is the difference between that and saying that some people know more about a particular theory than others and are therefore in a better position to pass comment. In principle not much  This is nothing wrong in admitting you know less about a particular subject than someone else and it is nothing short of arrogant self delusion to pretend that the situation is different Of course if you dont think there will be some degree of decentralised decionmaking in socialism then that makes you a central planner.  In which case would you care to demonstrate  how you imagine one single plan for the whole of global society is remotely practicable?

[robbo203]

LBird wrote:

Perhaps the real problem, robbo, is that you don't want to explain to workers, and you're quite happy with your own 'individual understanding'. That thesis would certainly fit with your refusal to democratise truth production, and your wish to retain 'elite expert' control in science. You could then pose as the 'elite expert' in philosophy and history, and prevent workers from controlling the production of history writing, too.In fact, this sequence is precisely what happens with the Leninist philosophy, of elite 'special consciousness' being embodied in a cadre party, who will 'lead' the dumb workers to socialism. No workers' democracy there, and none with you, either.

  You do talk a load of tosh at times LBird, as well completely evading my central point – that your so called "critical reading" of Engels may have quite misread what the guy was saying on the first place. As your nonsense about "democraticising truth production" perhaps you might care to respond to the relevant section in my earlier post – reproduced below -something else  you completely evaded, preferring it seems to hide behind cheap and empty smears about "elite experts" and repudiating "workers democracy"  Your problem, L Bird, is that that you dont know what democracy is for, what its purpose is, and that is why you come out with kind of idiotic kneejerk comments such as the above

robbo203 wrote:

Groan.  Not this daft idea again!  It is not a question of anyone trying to stop anyone from saying what is the truth in their view.  Its just a simple fact that none of us however talented or gifted can ever acquire more than the tiniest fraction of the  sum total of human knowlege  and therefore the idea that any of us, let alone all of us , can competently pronounce on the "truth" of everything is just plain ludicrous.  Democratic control of production is a relative thing or are you seriously trying to tell us that the total global workforce (7 billion people) is going to have a say in what goes on in Factory no.156 in William Morris Avenue,  Surbiton, Surrey in the new global communist world order?  Pull another one, LBird! It does not follow from the fact that production is a socialised process that the totality of society has to be involved in literally every single decision made in the global economy.  If this is what you are saying that makes you an advocate of crackpot central planning and an opponent of any kind of decentralised or localised decisionmaking whatsoever. Ironically that would make your perspective more of a Leninist one than you perhaps care to admit

On this last point,  do tell us LBird – what is your take on central planning? Do you believe that the totality of production should be democratically controlled by the total global workforce (i.e. there should be no localised or decentralised decisionaking)  and how in practical terms are you going to achieve this?  C'mon lets hear from you on the subject. Why do you keep mum every time it is brought up?

[robbo203]

LBird wrote:

   Engels then goes on to throw away, once again, Marx’s notion of human ‘production’ (theory and practice, plans and product, human social and historical creativity), and reverts to the ‘economic’ as ‘ultimately decisive’, and specifically says that ‘human minds’ do not play ‘the decisive one’.

Engels, Bloch letter, wrote:

We make our history ourselves, but, in the first place, under very definite assumptions and conditions. Among these the economic ones are ultimately decisive. But the political ones, etc., and indeed even the traditions which haunt human minds also play a part, although not the decisive one.

[my bold] 

 But he doesnt say what you say he is saying.  This is not a "critical" reading of the text  as you claim  but a display of your own prejudices in the pursuit of this  hobbyhorse of yoursThere is a difference between saying Engels "specifically says that ‘human minds’ do not play ‘the decisive one’"  and what Engels actually said viz But the political ones, etc., and indeed even the traditions which haunt human minds also play a part, although not the decisive one."   Can you spot the difference? It is not the human mind as such which does not play a decisive part but rather the political conditions and traditions which haunt the human mind.  There is nothing in what Engels says that the human mind per se (i.e. consciousness) is not also implicated in those conditions that do play an ultimately decisive role i.e. the economic ones Your claim that " His use of ‘economic’ excludes ‘mind’, and so he thinks that the term is equivalent to ‘material’, something to do with ‘matter’, to the exclusion of ‘mind’ is unproven.  You say:  It’s obvious to all that human ‘production’, being social, involves both ideas and materiality, in equal measure.  Assume for the sake this applies to all forms of activity not just production and that that is what Engels actually meant  Is it possible to argue that some forms of activity exhiting this fusion of what you call the ideal and  material can predominate in influencing the course of history while other forms of activity are less influential.  I think it is . Im quite persuaded by Keith Graham's (another ex SPGBer) way of looking at the matter thusRecall that synchronic materialism concerns the relations of a society frozen in snapshot, as it were.  Some of these difficulties of verification may be eased by observing societies in motion, over time.  Although relations of production cannot be observed without accompanying superstructural attributes, any pattern in successive relations of production and their accompaniments may allow inferences of subordination and domination to be drawn  (Keith Graham , 1992, Karl Marx Our contemporary  Harvester Wheatsheaf,  p54-55) Or to ram the point home here is another , and one of my favourite, quotes from Carolyn MerchantAn array of ideas exists available to a given age: some of these for unarticulated  or even unconscious reasons seem plausible to individuals or social groups; others do not.  Some ideas spread; others die out.  But the direction and accumulation of social changes begin to differentiate between  among the spectrum of possibilities so that some ideas assume a more central role in the array, while others move to the periphery.  Out of this differential appeal of ideas that seem most plausible under particular social conditions, cultural transformations develop (Carolyn Merchant, 1980, The Death of Nature: Women , Ecology and the Scientific Revolution,  Harper and Row      p.xviii)It is in this context that economic circumstances can be seen to act as a crucial part of the "sifting process" that leads to cultural transformation – not as something separate from the realm of ideas but as the expression of ideas like the idea of property rights or the idea of self interest, say

[robbo203]

LBird wrote:

So, WHY call it the 'materialist'?I agree that, not only does Marx's 'conception' of history 'not preclude consciousness and a role for ideas', but argue also that 'consciousness and ideas' play a central role in 'theory and practice'.If the 'term' doesn't have any significance, why not call it the 'chocolate conception of history'?

For the reason hinted at, I think, in the Bloch letter – it was called the materialist conception of history to redress the balance somewhat in the light of the predominately idealist conceptions of history making the rounds at the time.  Whether or not "materialist conception of history" is the right phrase or an inappropriate description –  I am sympathetic to the latter conclusion – the main point is that at least in the hands of Marx (and Engels despite what you say) it does not  preclude consciousness and  the role of ideas in history at all.[quote-LBird]No, most workers seeing, for the first time, the word 'material' attached to Marx's concept, naturally think that it's something basically to do with 'material' things.Then, when they meet the Religious Materialists, who tell them that 'idealism' is an evil best avoided, the die is cast.[/quote] I think you are engaging in a bit of caricature here. Opposing "idealism" is not the same as saying ideas dont count.  Rather it is oppposing the idea that ideas alone count. Material circumstances likewise count.  Of course it is quite true that material circumstances are never presented to us unmediated by ideas but that is not what an idealist theory is saying. It is saying something rather more than that, is it not?  The main reason why I dont like your clumsy formulation- the idealist-materialist conception of history – though I understand the point you are trying to make is that, taken literally, its a contradiction in terms  

LBird wrote:

Let's face it, there are even 'socialists' on this very site who won't have workers electing 'truth'. So much for the democratic control of production.

 Groan.  Not this daft idea again!  It is not a question of anyone trying to stop anyone from saying what is the truth in their view.  Its just a simple fact that none of us however talented or gifted can ever acquire more than the tiniest fraction of the  sum total of human knowlege  and therefore the idea that any of us, let alone all of us , can competently pronounce on the "truth" of everything is just plain ludicrous.  Democratic control of production is a relative thing or are you seriously trying to tell us that the total global workforce (7 billion people) is going to have a say in what goes on in Factory no.156 in William Morris Avenue,  Surbiton, Surrey in the new global communist world order?  Pull another one, LBird! It does not follow from the fact that production is a socialised process that the totality of society has to be involved in literally every single decision made in the global economy.  If this is what you are saying that makes you an advocate of crackpot central planning and an opponent of any kind of decentralised or localised decisionmaking whatsoever. Ironically that would make your perspective more of a Leninist one than you perhaps care to admit

[robbo203]

LBird wrote:

 So, if it involves 'ideas', why not call it the 'idealist-materialist conception of history'? Why do you continue, against the drift of your posts on this very thread, which, I agree, continuously stress the role of ideas and consciousness, to use the term 'materialist'? 

 I didint invent the term.  I am just  saying what the expression "materialist conception of history " signifies and it does not signify what you think its does.  Its does not preclude consciousness and a role for ideas

LBird wrote:

I'll quite happily ditch 'materialist conception', 'idealist conception' and 'idealist-materialist conception', if we can get away from the Engelsian myth that Marx was a 'materialist'.But, whilst the Religious Materialists continue to insist, following Engels, that Marx was a 'materialist', we're compelled to argue about these 'labels'.

 Again, I ask the simple question – where is your evidence for this? Point me to the evidence where Engels expressed a crude reductionist standpoint.  How difficult is that? You say you produced lots of evidence earlier on this forum.  Where? On what thread? Can you be specific?

[robbo203]

LBird wrote:

I've read Alison's article (it was provided to me by a comrade from here), and I think that she is too influenced by Engels, and fails to see the differences between them.She still refers to 'Marx's materialism' (p. 20), and so clearly doesn't understand that Marx was an 'idealist-materialist'. She then refers to 'his materialist conception of history'. This is Engels' term, not Marx's. Marx merely referred to 'our conception'. I've given all the relevent quotes, previously.

 I think you are too hung up on the fomality of labels.  In no way does a materialist conception of history preclude a role for ideas as I explained.  You say you have given all the relevant quotes concerning Engels previously but where? At least till me what thread your are talking about

[robbo203]

LBird wrote:

robbo, go back and read some of the numerous threads in which I've discussed these things with you and others, and provided copious evidence.To be truthful, I've been caught out before by the Religious Materialists, and spent hours, days and weeks 'providing evidence', explanation and discussion, but the RM-ers will not engage.If you hold the belief that Marx was a 'materialist', nothing I write here for you will shake your faith. Sorry, but you're going to have to do the work, this time.

 LBird, there are numerous threads and  tons of posts to plough through to get the precise informationm I asked for – whether Engels was a crude reductionist as you claim he was.  I frankly do not have the time to go through all of that.  I cannot see why, if you claim to be so familiar with the subject that you cannot reproduce here one or two quotes that you have at your fingertips  from Engels to substantiate your view of him You already know my views on "materialism".  I was arguing long before you appeared on this forum that the "fact-value" distinction was a bogus one and made clear that I favoured an emergence paradigm over a reductionist model.  I have also made a sharp distinction between historical materialism and metaphysical materialism and a particular quarrel I have with the Party is that it – totally unecessarily – makes membership of the organisation effectively conditional upon acceptance of the latter as though it served as some kind of sheet anchor for the former. Hence its bar on religious socialists.  I dont think it does and I agree with Alison Assister , an ex SPGBer, that " Marx’s materialism should not be seen as philosophical materialism’ (Alison Assiter "Philosophical Materialism or the Materialist Conception of History", Radical Philosophy, 23 (Winter 1979). In Marx's materialism, theory and practice are indeed unified.  In the so called base-superstructure model, there is no such thing as a base which is somehow  idea-free and then, functionalist-fashion,   "gives rise" – like mushrooms in a compost  – to a set of ideas that are conducive to the perpetuation of that base .  "Ideas" are there right from the get-go .  Property relations presuppose a certain set of social expectations and values and the productive forces are themselves the product of the application of ideas interacting with cicumstances

[robbo203]

LBird wrote:

[I know that you're not convinced, robbo, and you won't accept the evidence that I've provided time and again, that show two things:1. Engels can be quoted to support either position;2. Some of Engels' formulations were not shared by Marx.

 I haven't seen this evidence you say you have produced to support the view that Engels was a crude reductionist.  Could you please resubmit this evidence or point  me in the direction where it can be found

[robbo203]

LBird wrote:

Yes, robbo, Engels did write that, amongst other things that contradicted it. He was confused.But, even given what you've quoted, the Religious Materialists still insist that 'consciousness' can be reduced to 'matter'.'Matter' was a hobbyhorse of Engels, not of Marx.

 I'm not convinced that Engels is quite the reductionist you make him out to be.  Where is your evidence?  His later writings, like the quote I provided seem, if anything, to provide good evidence of an anti reductionist  position.  To wit, his famous letter to Joseph Bloch  (September 21, 1890) in which he said.  According to the materialist conception of history the determining element in history is ultimately the production and reproduction in real life. More than this neither Marx nor I have ever asserted.If therefore somebody twists this into the statement that the economic element is the only determining one, he transforms it into a meaningless, abstract and absurd phrase.The economic situation is the basis, but the various elements of the superstructure – political forms of the class struggle and its consequences, constitutions established by the victorious class after a successful battle, etc. – forms of law – and then even the reflexes of all these actual struggles in the brains of the combatants: political, legal, philosophical theories, religious ideas and their further development into systems of dogma – also exercise their influence upon the course of the historical struggles and in many cases preponderate in determining their form.There is an interaction of all these elements in which, amid all the endless host of accidents (i.e., of things and events, whose inner connection is so remote or impossible to prove that we regard it as absent so and can neglect it) the economic movement finally asserts itself as necessary. Otherwise the application of the theory to any period of history one chose would be easier than the solution of a simple equation of the first degree.(my emphasis) If anything this seems closer to an emergence perspective than a reductionist perspective

[robbo203]

LBird wrote:

Any 'materialism' which separates nature into two essences (the 'material' and the 'ideal', of which only the former is regarded as 'real') is forced to bring in 'ideas' and 'consciousness' by the back door. Engels was the thinker who brought this 'old-style mechanical materialism' back into socialist thought, after Marx had attempted to unite the two in a philosophy of 'theory and practice', which by its nature requires both the 'ideal' (consciousness, spirit, geist) and 'material' (a 'material substratum' to quote Marx) to be worked upon by human labour (mental and physical).

 And yet Engels is the guy who wrote this…"And, in fact, with every day that passes we are acquiring a better understanding of these laws and getting to perceive both the more immediate and the more remote consequences of our interference with the traditional course of nature. In particular, after the mighty advances made by the natural sciences in the present century, we are more than ever in a position to realise, and hence to control, also the more remote natural consequences of at least our day-to-day production activities. But the more this progresses the more will humanity not only feel but also know their oneness with nature, and the more impossible will become the senseless and unnatural idea of a contrast between mind and matter, humanity and nature, soul and body, such as arose after the decline of classical antiquity in Europe and obtained its highest elaboration in Christianity." (my emphasis) https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1876/part-played-labour/

[robbo203]

John Oswald wrote:

 Karl Marx and Frederick Engels, for all their revolutionary ideas, also toed the old nature-conquest line. …

 Hmm. Not too sure about that, John, sympathetic though I am to your line of argument.  Here for example is something that Engels wrote that would rather contradict the above…. “Let us not, however, flatter ourselves overmuch on account of our human victories over nature. For each such victory nature takes its revenge on us. Each victory, it is true, in the first place brings about the results we expected, but in the second and third places it has quite different, unforeseen effects which only too often cancel the first.“The people who, in Mesopotamia, Greece, Asia Minor and elsewhere, destroyed the forests to obtain cultivable land, never dreamed that by removing along with the forests the collecting centres and reservoirs of moisture they were laying the basis for the present forlorn state of those countries.“When the Italians of the Alps used up the pine forests on the southern slopes, so carefully cherished on the northern slopes, they had no inkling that by doing so they were cutting at the roots of the dairy industry in their region; they had still less inkling that they were thereby depriving their mountain springs of water for the greater part of the year, and making it possible for them to pour still more furious torrents on the plains during the rainy seasons.“Those who spread the potato in Europe were not aware that with these farinaceous tubers they were at the same time spreading scrofula.“Thus at every step we are reminded that we by no means rule over nature like a conqueror over a foreign people, like someone standing outside nature — but that we, with flesh, blood and brain, belong to nature, and exist in its midst, and that all our mastery of it consists in the fact that we have the advantage over all other creatures of being able to learn its laws and apply them correctly.”— Friedrich Engels, The Part Played by Labor in the Transition from Ape to Man

[robbo203]

DJP wrote:

Unless you've got a specific question I think there's far too much bredth here for a discussion topic..

 Well, how about narrowing it down to the point made by Alison Assiter concerning  "Reasons why Marx’s materialism should not be seen as philosophical materialism’ (Alison Assiter "Philosophical Materialism or the Materialist Conception of History", Radical Philosophy, 23 (Winter 1979) – and to the wider argument that shackling historical materialism to a materialist metaphysic is not particularly healthy for the socialist movement itself?

[robbo203]

ALB wrote:

Just read the same article in this weekend's i paper. I read it as saying that within capitalism such schemes will never be mainstream, but isn't this was what we say?  It could have some relevance to the idea Robbo has revived on the SPGB Communications thread about encouraging such schemes as bits of pre-socialism within capitalism. Having said that, that doesn't mean we should reject or denounce them (after all, they are one way of trying to survive under capitalism), just criticise extravagant claims made about them.

 I think the point is that these kinds of developments – like the sharing economy – that, in a way, transcend  or go beyond the market relationship, provide a means by which we can begin to address that most daunting of problems – what are we to do in the meantime.  If we are honest with ourselves the reaction of 99% people to the idea of a socialist society – even if they like the idea  – is to consign it to some distant future, if at all.  It is because they think of it as a very long term future that they dont feel motivated to bring it about.  There is in other words a gap – or hiatus – between people's short term perspective and their view of socialism as a long term goal. Unless you have some kind of feasible transitional strategy  you will never will bridge this gap and socialism will remain forever stranded on the other side , a tantalising will o' the wisp never to be realised and for that reason never likely to motivate workers in sufficient numbers to do something about bringing socialism a little closer.  Its a vicious circle.With all due respect to Adam I dont think its enough to say we shouldn't reject or denounce such developments.  I would rather say that these are developments to be welcomed and encouraged.  Yes they are one way of trying to survive under capitalism.  So too is workers joining trade unions,  And does not the Party encourage  workers to join trade unions? Specifically in relation to the sharing economy I would say it provides a kind of organic or homologous connection between the present and a potential socialist future.  That is important because it is through praxis not just abstract propaganda – important though the latter is – that workers are likely to gain the necessary confidence and self  belief to change society

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