Young Master Smeet
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LBird,
Lbird wrote:I don't believe in 'elites', either in society or in science.But if you (and YMS, DJP?) do believe in 'elites' in any sphere, why not say so, and make it plain?I cited the example of sporting elites, they plainly exist, likewise I believe there are mathematical elites, and even linguistic elites. Try as I might, I can't write poetry what is as good as Shelley's. Or should we write poetry democratically?
I've played on the same pitch as elite sportspersons (well, an Ireland 7's international), so I quite firmly believe they exist…
LBird,to be fair, you haven't exactly engaged in argument, merely assertion. I asked a relatively sensible question, how you can refer to proletarian rationality/science, whatever, without reference to what the proletariate actually does in terms of reason/science, etc. If it's not the mode of science as practiced by proletarians, then isn't adding 'proletarian' just a bit of branding, a bit like 'All new and improved'?
Quote:No, if we start from the current practice of economics (and ignore theory), we're then compelled to use the present theories of that practice, like 'the firm', 'supply and demand', 'individual consumers', 'selfish human nature', 'marginal utility', etc., to understand that practice.But that is precisely what Charlie did? He started from the current practice, and the theories that accompanied it, he didn't start with a new critical theory: 99% of Capital can be found by reading Smith & Ricardo.ISTR he even discusses how the equation of labour and value is only revealed by the changes in the practice of production (quite where I can't call to mind just now).But all this evades my substantive point, that you can't talk about 'proletarian rationality' as divorced from the practical reason of actually existing proletarians.
Sorry, should have said: Wikipedia is noticeably not democratic (yes, this could be ascribed to the objectivist views of Jimmy Wales, but then, why would it fly if it ran counter to the ideology of the countless proletarians who contribute?). That said, I would expect science in Socialism to be like a giant wikipedia…
Well, thinking on a little, I reckon we can point to a revolutionary proletarian science (nice dodge, btw): Wikipedia. That is proletarian science stripped of the hierarchies of bourgeois control.Lets go back to the (roughly remembered) methodology of the German ideology. So the English (And Scottish) bourgeosie were in a position to implement their ideas, and developed empiricism. The French were disempowered, and developed rationalism, and the Germans imported rationalism, and thus developed idealism (and Americans imported ideas which they put into practice, and thus pragmatism). My rationality is proletarian, per Hegel, what is rational is actual, what is actual is rational. I am actually proletarian.
LBird,well, if we're looking in a rational way at what proletarian science might be, it'd be best to start with the practice of proletarian scientists, rather than starting from the sky. Living ensuous proletarians, engaged in the production of knowledge.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-26614051
BBC wrote:The Los Angeles Times was the first newspaper to publish a story about an earthquake on Monday – thanks to a robot writer.Journalist and programmer Ken Schwencke created an algorithm that automatically generates a short article when an earthquake occurs.How long before we can get robot writers to write the Standard:<Something awful has happened/is happening><it's all the fault of capitalism><Only in World Socialism…>
I'm not sure this bourgeois/proletarian science thing holds. There are thousands of proletarian scientists, in unviersities up and down the land, on the treadmill of publish or perish, working without owning their ideas (in collaboration in massive projects of associated labour), most mainstream science and its outputs are prolatearian efforts. The day of the lone gentleman of leisure collating knowledge from correspondence is long over.
Quote:The Co-operative group has demonstrated it is not a profit-maximising structure. It never meant to be. Instead it has elected to remain as a family of firms, not willing to sacrifice people and businesses due to short-run concerns.Clearly the future now holds great uncertainty and a lower profit rate. The large debts built up will need to be serviced. But the Co-op governance has shown that an inclusive solution must be found which delivers what customers want while generating enough profit to secure the future. Not the most profit possible at any price.Some "Housing associations" whilst nominally co-operatives are often run in the interests of the director's remuneration: I suspect that may have been the model that the Co-op CEO wanted to go down, essentially the same as a public company where the shareholders do not receive a dividend. That many co-operators are there out of political position seems to have scuppered him: my vote in the co-op is slight but it still matters to me that I have a decent say in how my property is administered. It was noticeable in the survey they announced that they were looking at getting rid of the political wing of the co-operative.
JUst run across this article:http://theconversation.com/chattering-brain-cells-hold-the-key-to-the-language-of-the-mind-24085
Quote:We can also determine the location of every single neuron and all of its connections and its chemical messengers. Having done this, though, we still will not understand how the brain works. To understand a code we need to anchor that code to the real world.We easily anchor Shakespeare’s code (we find out that “Juliet” refers to a specific young woman, “Romeo” to a specific young man) but can we do this for the brain? It seems we can. By recording the chatter of neurons while animals (and sometimes humans) perform the tasks of daily life, researchers have discovered that there are regions where the neural code relates to the real world in remarkably straightforward ways.If I'm reading that right, we can't isolate the brain states from the whole chain of environment and action that they are connected to their objects, intimately. That for me is a thoroughgoing account of how the meat-bots relate to the universe and pretend that they think to each other.
I wonder how much of the scamming came from the fact that other NGO's from Western States were operative there? Certainly, one scammer in Africa tried to play us off against an NGO out there.Anyway, a useful resource:http://www.ssees.ucl.ac.uk/library/directory/ukraine2014.htm
Richard Seymour does a nice take down on the Stop The War Coalition's stances on this issue:http://www.leninology.com/2014/03/ukraine-against-infantile-realpolitik.htmlActually, I don't think it is that complex.One mafia opposed the mafia that was in charge, and co-ordinated the discontent in the government, and found muscle through the fash (and maybe lost control of the muscle). The mafias had relations with groups in Europe and in Russia, who sponsored them. One mafia had friends in the unions (in the East).Our position (and Stop the War's) should be clear: we are against the mafia. We don't support anyone dying for either side, and we don't support "our" state sending anyone to the theatre to kill or be killed. We have no interest in where the borders are drawn, but we do care that effective and meaningful democracy be restored.
