Young Master Smeet
Forum Replies Created
-
Posts
-
Produce and create are not pure synonyms, especially given the divine connotations of create, since you don't want to add meaning by differentiating them, I need to ask questions for further clarification.Per my Edinburgh/Carlisle example, if throughout the conversation we're both just saying "town" then the confusion is not easy to spot.Asking questions, and re-phrasing your comments is an attempt to tease out the unclarity, especially when you seem to resort to ad hominem whenever you're challenged on any weak points in your argument.
LBird wrote:I agree, and Marx often doesn't provide it. But you are the one changing/substituting what I write, for what you wish that I'd written.Or maybe what you wrote isn't as clear asyou think.
Lbird wrote:Here we go, again. In this context, 'produce' and 'create' are synonyms for human activity. If you wish to reserve one for 'god and nothing' (ie. 'creation'), that's your choice, not mine. If you wish to use 'transform' to alter the meaning of 'produce/create', then you're 'adding' to confuse. If you simply mean 'produce/create', why add another term?Produce: To make (an object) by physical labour; (now spec.) to make or manufacture (a product or commodity) from components or raw materials.Create: a. trans. To bring into being, cause to exist; esp. to produce where nothing was before.The point, at any rate, to be clear, is that we do not produce ex nihil: do we agree on tha, we produce our objects from the stuff of the world? I think this is a key point, and requires clarity.I am suggesting transmorm as a better word than either, becuase it clarifies this particular point.
Lbird wrote:You should take note of this.My purpose to clarify an epistemology suitable for the revolutionary proletariat, as a part of its class consciousness, to help build a democratic politics, including in the social production of scientific knowledge and truth.If you have a different purpose (individual knowledge, personal clarification, defence of bourgeois science, piss-taking, whatever), you should declare it, because it will impact upon your understanding of Marx.My purpose is to debate, clarify and understand what you are trying to say.
Lbird, I'm trying to understand you. Marx was very precise in his termininology (this is what makes his works difficult to read sometimes) Precision is important in debate. You can call it word play if you like, but it is quite galling after an hours debate about the state of traffic to find you were discussing Edinburgh when I was talking about Carlisle.I note your quiet acceptance of 'produce' rather than create. Can you now add transform to the mix?
I didn't ask what Marx says (nor imply anything about what Marx says) I asked a simple question, for you and your understanding alone: is it possible to enter into a relationship with nothing?
Yes, the sheet can only become known by a knower, so far so banal (but at least we'regetting somewhere). The thing in itself remains unknown, and we can only know the thing for us: but for a knowing relationship to occur, for here to be a relationship.I think also, the word "create" is the problem, unless you can point to Marx using the word create, we have the citation I posted from Jordan that the relationship is "production" (i.e. transformation), the knower produces the sheet-for-the knower.Lets try getting away from blank sheets, clearly that's confused you, Can we enter into a relationship with nothing?
LBird wrote:'Nature for us' is 'properties for us'.You're arguing for 'properties in themselves'.So, you are seeking to know 'nature in itself'.No, I'm arguing in properties for us, if we give things all their properties, if they do not exist without us, they do not exist, and there is just us. To be a thing for us is different from the thing in itself.Imagine a rorschach test: for me, it is a a terrifying dragon: for you, it is an accurate reading of Marx: for both of us, such a thing is terrifying. Now, for us, it brings patterns of light, we never see the blots in themselves, but we enter into a relationship. We cannot enter into a relationship with a blank sheet.
Lbird, I think you need to brush up on yoru English. What is the subject of this sentence: "unalienated humanity that's mental states accord with its lived experience"The absence of power is not about individual sovereignty (you're the one interpolating that), but of conditions in which consent and co-operation are the basic need. Power creates sovereign individuals, the absence of power is the absence of the sovereign indivuidual.DemocracySocial productionRevolution.
LBird wrote:Your argument is flawed because the 'subject' is the 'active side'.If you wish to 'know' the 'properties' of 'inorganic nature', that is, 'nature-in-itself', then you are separating subject and object.I'm not seeking to know Nature in itself, but what nature for us is.
Quote:Your claim differs from Marx's. Marx argues for the social production of 'organic nature' (or, 'nature-for-us'). You're arguing for 'nature-in-itself'.And I agree with that claim, I'm asking, if there is a relationship between subject and object: what is the relationship, if only one part has properties? Perhaps you can explain, for Marx.
*Ahem* "Emancipated labour", "Common ownership""Humans, without power": do you see power existing in socialism? "mental states accord with its lived experience" is that not another way of saying "theory and practice" oh, I think it is. I also didn't mention moon rockets, calamari nor bovril.
Lbird wrote:either the subject-object relationship has to be presentWhat is the relationship? When I enter into a relationship with a chair, I bring my mass, and the chair brings its molecular structure which is capable of holding its shape under my mass. Me sitting on it is what makes it a chair. It is not active, I give the chairiness to it. However, I cannot launch it at the moon. A relationship involves two things, if one part adds nothng to the relationship, there is no relationship. Can you at least agree with that basic premise? If not, where is it flawed?I've already described how, as I udnerstand it, the thing for us works: a coke can is absically a ball of light, it is our eyes, the way they work, our fingers, the way they feel, our muscles, the way they lift, our chemical receptors that give it smell: all those things that turn it into a cold weighty cylinder with a metallic taste.See, the thing is: if theThing in Itself is irrelevent, since we can never approach it, and so we might as well consider it doesn't exist. If the thing for us does not give any quality to the subject object relationship, then it might as well not exist, and there is no norganic nature.As for citations: I have readMarx' works, and I give quotes to back up my argument, you always refuse to.Finally, the whole point of this discussion is that I think you are misreading Marx, I think my claims agree with what he (and to a greater or lesser extent Jordan) wrote.
Emancipated labour, under conditions of common ownership allows for the realisation of unalienated humanity, one that's mental states accord with its lived experience: a practical unity of actions and control over the world and its collective social enviornment, a conscious association that knows itself to be a human community. Its thought objects would emerge from the discussion between humans, without power, thus enabling discourse to be free and unfettered, a language of a hamanity without distortions needed to keep a subject populaion in check. The free development of each would be the condition for the free development of all, and each human would be an end in themself.
Well, BBC speaking speed is 200 words a minute, which would mean reading the pamphlet aloud would take 1 hour. So, taking the nine chapters as a start, we could do it in 10 minutes within about 200 words per section, which is doable. Lets say 20 minutes, though, to go into details where necessary.
LBird wrote:I don't think that you ask genuine questions and clarifications, because it's clear that your questions often have nothing to do with what either I, Marx or Jordan write, but what you wish that we'd written.There is always the possibility, if multiple people fail to understand what you write, that the problem may be in the way that you communicate. For example, when I try to go to the text, the accepted way of resolving exegetic disputes, you simply say that people who disagree with you have a different ideology, rather than seeking to prove a hermeneutic basis for your assertions.My ideology is that of a Marxist and a humanist, I consider that human beings exist within the world, that ideas are cultural and material, that ideology is lived. Our unconscious exists in the world around us, which is structured semiotically through deferred meaning. I agreed with the Bakhtin school that signs are polyphonic and contested, meaning is historical. I agree with Serle that language is intentional and not merely algorithmic.
