robbo203
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“If the nationalists succeed in that vote, then an SNP-led departure of Scotland from the Union will be a knife to the heart of social democracy in the United Kingdom. Labour lost its “red wall” north of the border after the Blair–Brown years, but the SNP’s hegemony has been built on its transformation from an insurgent nationalist party to a mature social-democratic one, replacing Labour as the guardian of the health service and the public good; in pre-election polling this month, Labour’s vote in Scotland had all but collapsed to percentages in the mid-teens. The breakup of the Union would entail the removal of Scotland’s seats from the Westminster Parliament. That represents a huge new obstacle to Labour, forced thence to compete as essentially an English and Welsh party, without even the possibility of a social-democratic coalition with the SNP.”
https://www.nybooks.com/daily/2019/12/12/the-strange-death-of-social-democratic-england/
If the above analysis is correct this will intensify efforts within what will become an “essentially an English and Welsh” Labour party to move to the right nd capture the central ground. The problem is the Party machinery is still effectively in the hands of the Left who might double down on their agenda in the belief that fundamentally it is a politically popular one and that it was only because of the Brexit question that the Party came unstuck in a big way. According to this argument, a Johnson government is unlikely to survive after the next 5 years, when Brexit will have been a distant memory and the issues which the Labour Party so desperately wanted to focus on instead in 2019 will come into focus in a much more prominent way in 2024 without the distraction of Brexit.
There are thus different forces at work pulling or pushing the party in different directions. Which one will come to prevail only time when tell
I understand Glasgow branch will be doing something at COP26. I hope they combine their efforts with a sort of social weekend or whatever along the lines of Yealand that Lancaster branch organised so as to encourage more members and sympathisers south of the border to attend
Clever tactic Alan but would it work and how would it work? I’m constantly reminded of the situation here in Spain with Catalonia. Unless the central state assents to a referendum of some sort, its legal status will be questioned
During this campaign we distributed 56,500 leaflets via Royal Mail, 5,000 copies of the first edition of the local ‘World News’ flyer to Folkestone Harbour and other selected parts of the constituency
Is there an electronic version of this that could be made available here?
“…We lost our last illusions. The system is rigged – as it always has been – to benefit those in power. It will never willingly allow a real socialist, or any politician deeply committed to the health of our societies and to the planet, to take that power away from the corporate class. That, after all, is the very definition of power. That is what the corporate media is there to achieve…”
Sadly, Jonathan Cook has not lost his last illusions. The system may be rigged to benefit those in power but who put them in power? And why did they put the in power? The idea that workers just mindlessly and mechanically obey the dictates of a system that benefits those in power in effect portrays the former as just putty in the hands of the latter. Ironically, this is one of the ways in which the system perpetuates itself – by disempowering the workers and encouraging the belief among them that there is nothing they can do abut a system that is rigged against them.
Thus Jonathan Cook is inadvertently aiding the very system he rails against. Apart from anything else this flawed idea of some kind of absolutist totalitarian system of power overlooks that the powerful are never as monolithic in their outlook and interests as Cook seems to assume. Division at the top of the hierarchy is something that those at the bottom can and do exploit. Its just that the latter have not yet gone far enough – to end a system that generates this hierarchy of power in the first place
Alan
I think this election has had and will continue for a long time to have, a truly devastating and demoralising impact on people who felt the need to identify with Labour, even though they might have expressed some support for us. I think their resolve to identify with Labour might now be weakened somewhat as a result. Particularly if Labour begins the process of seeking to capture the middle ground by moving to the right as I fully expect it to do.
For Labour this is a worse result than even what happened under Foot (“the longest suicide note in history”, according to Kaufman). And of course as we all know Foot led to Blair.
The Left outside the Labour Party has been dying on its feet for some time now. The Left inside the Party – many of whom used to be outside the Party but were persuaded to join it by the rise of “Corbynmania” (now a fast receding memory) – has now been delivered a massive body blow. So where does it go to now? Is this the end of the line?
Time and time again the impossibilism of the SPGB has been passed over in favour of the possibilism of Labour reformism. Perhaps what was once perceived as impossibilism may now seem a little more possible whereas what was once perceived to be possible may now seem rather impossible.
My suspicion is that Left wing supporters of Labour are now likely to be one or two notches higher in their receptivity to socialist ideas. As ever we have to be careful about how we approach such people, not just dismissing out of hand what motivated them to vote Labour in the first place but at the same time trying to encourage and coax them to think outside the box and move on politically speaking
Its not going to be easy but if we strike the right tone and say the right things, there is good reason for hope
Hi Alan
I checked the messages on the site again. Sorry , its not two but one new member – in Dallas , Texas. The other one near Boston is I think still in the process of applying and looks very promising. So it looks like there are 3 possible applicants for the near future including the other two in south Carolina (?) and Oregon. Plus one more in California who is “willing to join only if he can meet one of us face to face”. Also I discovered the ex-member didn’t technically leave the Party but dropped out of activity n the 1990s and now wants to be active again. Plus there is another SPGBer who has expressed an interest in being active in the WSPUS
So yes things are looking better than did. Like you I am interested to learn how all these new contacts came across the WSM. The strategy you are using of posting links to the WSPUS may very well account for some of these new contacts and it just goes to show how even the most isolated member using the internet can contribute to the growth of the WSM
We need to make much greater use of this strategy. It is only by generating new contacts that the WSM can hope to grow
Good news. Two new members have joined the WSPUS and it looks like one or two more are on the way. Also an apparently lapsed member who lost contact because of isolation has re-joined and is now on the Party’s discussion forum
So the first shoots of revival for an organisation that quite recently seemed on the point of collapse
I think we need to redouble our efforts to make inroads to the 1,000s of disappointed labour activists who genuinely thought that Corbyn, et al was going to bring about change. I know several who are starting to question reformism, we need to get out there and show to them that, despite all the well meaning promises, reformism is an cul de sac of capitalism.
I genuinely feel this is a huge opportunity for the Party generallyMy sentiments exactly Bijou. And what about those one or two ex SPGBers who left the Party to vote Labour. Surely they can see now this is a dead end
The exit polls suggest Labour has been heavily defeated and the Tories will have a substantial majority in parliament
I have raised this issue but what could be the knock on consequences for the SPGB?
Any thoughts?
I see Steve Coleman our ex-comrade is involved in this project. According to Steve, talking of this gadget: “We think that this has potential to provide vital democratic feedback from the audience to the politicians and broadcasters.”
I cant see how that is true. Yes in a superficial sense it provides feedback and to that extent aids democracy but it also undermines democracy in a more insidious and fundamental way by focussing attention on the politicians themselves and by perpetuating the undemocratic leader/follower dichotomy that is the stuff of conventional capitalist politics.
Does is really matter if Boris Johnson is a bore or just plain boorish?
Yes, it is a physical process, because everything is a physical process.
John, you see, this is where the problem lies. Yes the workings of the mind necessarily and absolutely involve a physical process but the real point at issue here is whether it JUST involves a physical process.
I hesitate to ascribe any point of view to you as some of your comments seem the very opposite of the reductionist standpoint I have been criticising. e g “We are all connected. We ARE the universe! Maybe the problem is simply just how one expresses oneself, the particular form of words used. To me saying mind is a “property” of brain/matter IS reductionist. It come across as saying that what we think is entirely a function of the firing of the neurons in our brain.
It is obviously not. It is also influenced by what goes on outside our brains as well Yes the brain processes sensory inputs from outside but our minds are active in the way it retains and selectively organises this data into meaningful structures.
While we cannot think without a brain it is also true that what we think is not necessarily dependent on the brain in the sense that the mind can exert “downward causation” on the brain. Saying that the brain causes us to think what we think is what is called a “type identity” which basically means the mental states are identical to – and hence reducible to – brain states such that if a brain state were to be exactly duplicated, it wold reproduce exactly the same type of mental state. Type identity theories have been largely discredited in the literature. A more realistic approach I think is “token identity” which permits a degree of autonomy for the mind vis a vis the brain while at the same emphasising their connection
This link might be useful in explaining the difference if you are into this sort of stuff
https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/mind-identity/
Robbo, you don’t change your mind; your mind is changed.
Yes but what is involved in having your mind changed? Is it a purely physical process? Is it simply driven by the firing of the brain’s neurons? If that is what you are saying then we are back to the fatal flaw of reductive physicalism which reduces any kind of sensible understanding of the world around us to absurdity.
Mind utterly depends on the brain – there is no argument about that. But the mind is not some passive epiphenomenon that dutifully reflects in some sort of mechanical fashion the underlying physical processes going in the brain, It is an active or creative agent in its own development that exerts downward causation on the very thing upon which it depends – the brain – in ways that I have already mentioned and more besides.
Some folk here reading this thread might wonder what relevance it has to changing the world which is what we socialists supposedly want to do. Well actually it has quite a lot of relevance in a background sort of way
We talk about the need for a materialist understanding of the world in order to effect a revolutionary change. The historical materialist approach to changing society posits a distinction between society’s economic base and its superstructure – ideology, religion, politics etc. Marx was at pains to point out that the relationship between base and superstructure was NOT a mechanically determinist one whereby the former determined the latter. There is a two way interaction going on and it is only in the final analysis that the greater weight of economic factors are determinative.
We can see a parallel between that and this discussion on reductive physicalism in the context of mind-brain interactions. Reductive physicalism is the equivalent of the mechanical materialism which Marx explicitly rejected. Indeed our whole approach as a political party to revolutionary change based on education and propaganda would make no sense if we truly believed mind was purely a property of the physical brain. We are after all trying to persuade workers to change their minds about capitalism!
It is no surprise to learn that mechanical materialism played an important role in the early bourgeois revolutions – for example the 18th century school of French Materialists. Its reductionist approach is totally consistent with atomism and individualism. Hence the rise of mythologies at the time concerning the origins of society as a result of a “social contract” drawn up between what were essentially pre-social individuals “living in a state of nature” . As if there ever was such a thing as a “pre-social individual”
This is a foundational myth of individualist thought no better expressed than by the Iron Lady herself: “there is no such thing as a society, only individuals and their families”. This is the ideology we socialists are supposed to be battling against, not apologising for. Our emphasis on the social nature of human beings is something that accords fundamentally with our own outlook as socialists.
In a sense the logic of reductive physicalism is the self same logic that expresses itself in mechanical materialism. Its tendency is relentlessly atomistic in not wanting to see the wood for the trees.
I’ll end here with a quote from David Graeber summing up the broad outlines of Roy Bhaskar’s “critical realist” approach which is one that I strongly endorse and recommend to all here:
Reality can be divided into emergent stratum: just as chemistry presupposes but cannot be reduced to physics so biology presupposes but cannot be reduced to chemistry, or the human sciences to biology. Different sorts of mechanisms are operating on each. Each, furthermore, achieves a certain autonomy from those below: it would be impossible to even talk about human freedom were this not the case, since our actions would simply be determined by chemical and biological processes….the higher the emergent strata one is dealing with, the less predictable things become, the involvement of human beings of course being the most unpredictable factor of all (Towards and Anthropological Theory of Value: The False Coin of Our Own Dreams. 2001).
“Mind, as mental antecedents produce mental effects, does seem to take on an existence of its own. However, each and every thought or feeling that arises is a spark of electrical, and hence material, motion, confirming that it is a property of the cerebral/neural/chemical matter in motion.”
John, I am still not quite clear what you mean by this. If mind produces mental effects – that is, exerts downward causation – then it is somewhat misleading to say thought is a “property” of the cerebral/neural/chemical matter in motion. That suggests thought is a product of cerebral/neural/chemical matter in motion whereas it would be better expressed as thought <b>entailing</b> cerebral/neural/chemical matter in motion.
The discovery of “neuroplasticity” in recent years has conclusively demonstrated that the brain is quite malleable or capable of adaptation in response to various stimuli, meaning that it is indeed receptive to downward causation. Learning a new skill, for instance, can create new synaptic connections within the brain and even induce the growth of new nerve cells.
<b><i>”This of course is further evidence of the resultant and determined nature of the will”</i></b>
I am mindful here of John Horgan’s critique of Sam Harris’ a book, as follows:
“But just because my choices are limited doesn’t mean they don’t exist. Just because I don’t have absolute freedom doesn’t mean I have no freedom at all. Saying that free will doesn’t exist because it isn’t absolutely free is like saying truth doesn’t exist because we can’t achieve absolute, perfect knowledge.
Harris keeps insisting that because all our choices have prior causes, they are not free; they are determined. Of course all our choices are caused. No free-will proponent I know claims otherwise. The question is how are they caused? Harris seems to think that all causes are ultimately physical, and that to hold otherwise puts you in the company of believers in ghosts, souls, gods and other supernatural nonsense.
But the strange and wonderful thing about all organisms, and especially our species, is that mechanistic physical processes somehow give rise to phenomena that are not reducible to or determined by those physical processes. Human brains, in particular, generate human minds, which while subject to physical laws are influenced by non-physical factors, including ideas produced by other minds. These ideas may cause us to change our minds and make decisions that alter the trajectory of our world” (my emphasis in bold)John,
I wouldn’t say emergence theorists are non-materialists. For instance, in the cognitive sciences they would hold that mental states are indeed very much dependent (or “supervene) on the material brain but are nevertheless not “reducible” to, or wholly explicable in terms of, the firing of the brain’s neurons. To say they are is reductionist and this is what emergence theory opposes.
What emergence theory holds is that reality consists of multiple levels in which each level is dependent on the one below but not reducible to it. Mind-brain relations are analogous to the relations between society and individuals. Society depends on the existence of empirical individuals – just as thoughts depend on the brain – but society is more than the sum of its parts. It exerts “downward causation” upon individuals. Meaning individuals are influenced by the kind of society in which we live which is surely something on which all socialists would agree.
If you are going to be a reductionist you might as well go the whole hog and explain EVERYTHING in terms of the movements of subatomic particles. Any other explanation above the level of theoretical physics is essentially redundant. A thief who broke into a jewellers shop to steal some jewellery did not do so because he wanted it for the dosh he could make by selling the stuff. Rather it was because of the quirky behaviour of those quarks operating at the subatomic level that pushed his body into doing certain things over which he had no control. It was all predetermined. Problem is you have no way of showing how this is the case. It just a theory no more or less plausible than any other theory
Thoughts “exist” but according to you “Materialism is the belief that only matter exists.” So are thoughts just “matter” then? I dont think that is a very helpful way of defining matter – i.e. to extend the term to cover everything that “exists” (what is meant by “exists” anyway?) . It makes the term almost meaningless
I take matter to refer to sense data- what is empirically knowable via our senses.. Matter is indeed objective in this sense in that it is independent of, and predates, our existence – even if as LBird suggests , we cannot apprehend matter separately from our consciousness of it which is socially conditioned. Marx seems to hold the same view of matter and made this point in Capital vol 1 about the nature of (exchange) value to distinguish it from the use value of commodities
“the value of commodities is the very opposite of the coarse materiality of their substance, not an atom of matter enters into its composition”
Would you consider that the law of value does not “exist” because value is not composed a single atom of matter?
