Young Master Smeet
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SP,Imagine if the broadcast media, all the university experts and a substantial number of people kept on insisting that the sun was green, and that it was impossible to see in the daylight.Therein lies my answer.
LBird wrote:Furthermore, even the Leninists at least pretend that, after the revolution, they'll be able to develop workers to understand epistemology, that workers have abilities denied to them by the present society. Even Stalin brought the Russian workers and peasants on educationally, ensuring most had access to the means of developing themselves…And that was Leninism's greatest sin, the belief that you could have the revolution before the working class were intellectually capable of understanding and wanting socialism and could then 'raise their culture'. The point is that teh workers today have the capacity to run their own lives, and run capitalism from top to bottom, in the interests of the capitalist class. As Charlie said in these infamous theses, philosophers have interpreted the world, the point is to change it. A working capacity to change the world is what is required.
AFAICS, and I'll end it here, is you want to call materialism idealism-materialism while referring to the same thing everyone else does when they call it materialism. I couldn't care less what the name is. The upshot is that ideas are subject to necessity, and are part of the unfurling of a singular universe without dualism.If the workers try and maintain that Unca' Charlie was some sort of dualist, they're wrong (whetehr or not they vote on it).
My philosophy is trombonism. The world is made of trombones, and the only stuff in the world is trombones. We are trombonebots. There is no intereaction between trombones and catfish, there are only trombones, and thus no priority. Catfishism-trombonism is absurd.
Matter=Ideas. Ideas=Matter.Materialist monism says there is no ideal, only actual stuff. I'll go with stuffbots. Ideabots is ridiculous.
Quote:When you call your philosophy 'materialism', instead of the more accurate 'idealism-materialism'.But, I've told you this before. You don't read.I suppose I would have previously replied that I am not separating them, because I am denying any independent thing called ideas, they are part and parcel with matter. I reject "inkism-bauxiteism" precisely because it does separate the two things, and suggests a form of dualism.
SP,we have the evidence that millions have received our leaflets, seen our adverts, etc. They may not have read deeply, but that would only be indicative of their rejections from the get go. Their ideas are well developed, and we have to respect that decision, rather than assuming 'Ah, but if they only heard what we have to tell them!' Indeed, they often have quite complex and well developed political ideas. yes, they are misinformed, and subject to a bombardment of propaganda, but they are not brainwashed or conmpletely subsumed by ideology, as the Leniniss would have us believe. Our working assumption has to be that they are rational agents, who can run their own lives, and see working within the system as it is as their best option.
LBird,pardon me, but whn did I separate matter and mind? I've said that mind is made of the sam stuff as the rocks, and is material and part of necessity (and is thus not some pale reflection or spearate stuff that mirrors or copies the real world, but is in fact the real world itself). I was merely pointing out, again,why I don't use the term Fishism-Sodiumism like you do (or whatever it is you say, i forget). I just use spoonism because at the very least it suggestion of rejection an anthropocentric univers and reflects the fact that there is only blancmange.
LBird, matter was here before mind, including the need to keep a human brain runnign before it can do any thinking. No matter what the logic of a position, deeprive a brain of oxygen or proteins for a sustained period, it'll styart producing poor ideas. hat need ultimately comes down to the exterior world and any set of ideas we posses must be consistent with our ability to go on providing our brains with oxygen and proteins.
SP,I think that under estimates the amouint of thought people put into supporting capitalism, and for most people it is a lot. Hours upon hours are spent arguing in the pub, watching telly, reading leaflets (including ours). If they don't read very far that is because they reject our idea tout court. much in the same way I'm not going to waste my time on the writings of The Campaign to restore Feudalism, or any such.I'm afraid you have to wake up to the fact that millions of workers have read our propaganda, heard our message, and rejected it. Even if they have not specifically read our literature, they are aware of the critiques of the market, and usually reject them and accept market ideas.
Lived experience is the whole of the human, mind and senses living their lives (and reaching for and creating a personal identity) it is act-ual being, and what is rational is actual and what is actual is rational, etc. All experience is culturally mediated. No one can introduce the lived experience, otehr than humans themselves in their daily lives. Ideas that doen't fit with the daily reproduction of life will be rejected.This comes back to the old debate about whetehr revolutions are for something new, or to save somethign old. What gives a greater impetus, people who have nothing wanting something, or people who have something striving to retain it? Whatever the answer to that one it (and I think the jury is still out) socialist ideas won't take until they necome necessary to complete the identity of individuals.
I believe the Japanese pure communists were distinctive in their actual views, they took on board ideas received from abroad, but they wouldn't have listened to them (or adapted them) if they didn't fit with their needs and their apprehensions of their cconditions. Our ideas are part of material consitions, and can feed into the growth of socialist consciousness/culture, but they'll only take, to continue the agrarian metaphor, in the right soil.
I think we need to take workers' opinions at face value. When asked, time and again they support capital;ist parties, and capitalist ideas. When presented with the case for socialism, they reject it. That's why workers vote Tory, Libreral and Labour. Unless and until their lived experience accords with socialist understanding (and the need for socialist ideas) they will go on supporting capitalism. All we can do is make that coming to socialist consciousness a little easier, and mean that workers' don't have to re-invent the wheel each time.
I think this in part comes down to a correction I heard one party member make: we're not here to make socialists, we're here to catch socialists. The Party is not about persuading workers to socialism, but finding those who al;ready have socialist consciousness. In my own case, I joined the party because it agreed with me, not because I agreed with the party (and I am perfectly prepared to walk away should I find that the party disagrees with me). It's more a case of if we're right then capitalism will begin to generate socialistically minded workers, and if we're wrong, at least we've done no harm.
Ah, the lecture is now available online:http://www.ucl.ac.uk/constitution-unit/constitution-unit-news/141014
