Young Master Smeet
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Jordan wrote:What can be said about the Marxian conception with certainty concerns its naturalistic character. As Marx saw it, within an all-inclusive and self-sufficing nature there was no place for the operation of disembodied forces, of a mind, a soul, a spirit. Consequently, in Marx’s view of the physical world, man, society, and history, not the slightest trace of the supernatural was left. Man is a natural entity among others and does not hold a privileged position in the universe. Even when man struggles with and tries to secure his control over nature, he remains part of it.
(My emphasis). I'd quite agree with the above.This I'd take issue with
Quote:Nor is the Marxian view justifiably described as materialism, because Marx explains the social activity of man and man’s history ‘by his needs and by the means and methods of satisfying these needs ‘.[128] No historian can avoid resorting to this kind of explanation and, consequently, all historians would be materialists.Plenty of historians have written ignoring such factors, looking at the history of pure ideas (and today this continues, for example, with ideologists who see Islamic radiclism as an idea that just falls from the sky on people's heads).
LBird wrote:One further point of clarification would be helpful, YMS. Does your 'point' represent the official 'point' of the SPGB? That is, does the SPGB consider Marx's philosophy to be helpful to workers today, or does it consider it, like you do, only a hindrance to workers' self-development?Nice straw man, there, I didn't say it was a hinderance. I said we don't need it. It is useful, but we can live and succeed without it.Marx had considerable achievements: he identified that wage labour is inehrently exploitative, and exploitation does not arise from underpayment of wages. Along with Engels he developed a method of analysing society which can help us very much (as outlined in the german Ideology), and along with Engels he identified the revolutionary poetential of the proletariat. Alongside all that he spent years in the service of the workers movement as an aorganiser, educator and propagandist. He also laid out an analysis on the need for the seizure of political pwer as the way for the workers to make their revolution. All that deserves respect, and we can put the fruits of that effort to the service of our cause today. But, understanding Marx' views on the object of philosophy and the inorganic subject, is not esential to the cause.
LBird wrote:Perhaps I can put some of that down to my failings (my combative style of questioning and debate, even when I’m not descending to the level of my childish detractors, is off-putting to many, even if I thrive on such stimulating clashes), but, given the sheer numbers of so-called ‘Marxists’ that I’ve debated with, I’d expect at least some to be able to get through the combativeness, to the ‘meat’ of these issues facing any democratic workers’ organisations aiming to build for Communism. But this problem goes deeper than me simply being an argumentative bastard.That's just it, though, you're not. You duck and cover and refuse to debate whenever challenged on any substantive point (and maybe come back later with a slightly modified argument). The point is: we don't need to understand Marx' philosophy. We have his public work as an active member of a revolutionary party, we have the political documents, we know what he stood for, and we know that communism/socialism is something he learned from the worker's movement, all he did was help and have a certain élan in his writing style.The bottom line is: if Marx is right, we don't need Marx. The methods of analysis he developed (not originated) are useful, and we should adopt and develop those methods. Philosophers only interpret the world.
mcolome1 wrote:"The fundamental idea of religion is a belief in the persistence of life after death. Originally, and in essence throughout, religion is a belief in the existence of supernatural beings, and the observance of rites and ceremonies in order to avert their anger or gain their goodwill. “Corpse worship,” as it has been tersely called, “is the protoplasm "That's the idea religion generates/promotes: but all human cultures, even those without elaborate mythologies, present the behaviours of religion, which involve energetic group gatherings, state-of-consciousness altring behaviours, singing, dancing and meeting up regularly.But, how many sports people are described as 'immortal', or 'legendary', sports people are role models and exemplars, etc.
Lets not forget sport, which often nowadays fulfills a religious function: group meetings, energeetic singing and dancing, altered states of consciousness, and of course a ritual calendar.
Varoufakis in Zagreb, and on his love of Star Trek communism: https://yanisvaroufakis.eu/2016/12/13/the-hitchhikers-guide-through-a-collapsing-europe-by-diem25ers-yanis-varoufakis-srecko-horvat/
Should have added the Rodinson is available free online:https://rosswolfe.files.wordpress.com/2015/11/maxime-rodinson-islam-and-capitalism.pdfNot the party case as such, but a worthy addition to the pantheon of Socialist critique of religion and discourses around it.Of course, lets not forget:https://www.marxists.org/archive/kautsky/1908/christ/index.htm
I'm currently reading Maxime Rodinson's 'Islam and Capialism' and it's a wonderful take-down of the idealist nonsense we get from the Islamaphobes in the right and the media, slaughtering the idea that islam as an Idea held back the development of capitalism in the Islamic world, counterposing the materialist view that it was lives lived that shaped islam, and how plenty of capitalistic behaviours were exhibited (to the point it demolishes the idea that Islam is itself anti-capitalist).It also demonstrates the rational aspects of Islam, and this is important, how many religious impetuses had to deal with rational investigation of the world, and pitch themselves as authoritative narratioves, much like that of a traveller from a distant land.It's important to remember that religion was once the bleeding edge of science, but the changes in the lived experience of the world challenged the material basis of the religious producers.
Well, refutability comes via Popper.Deductive logic was largely refined by the Greeks.These are methods that are available to everyone, not to elites, that's the joy of them, so there's one of your claims falsified.The problem is, we disagree on what the word ideology means.
Ice cores. Carbon 16 dating: these demonstrate that objects we observe in the world existe before human beings existed. In order for those propositions to be refuted we would have to overthrow established atomic physics and require an explanation of how ice layers were formed otehr than incrementally.There, no faith, a refutable proposition that suggests strongly that the world existed prior to humans. There are others, but I think two will do.If the world existed before humans, that means, logically, human social production does not create the world.There you go, I can do premises and logic and stuff, I wonder if Lbird can, or will Lbird continue to debate by assertion?
LBird wrote:And since 'matter' is a social product, it's easy to show workers that the Religious Materialists are either lying to workers or are totally unaware of the political effects of an 'absolute' of any kind.Can you prove "matter" is a social product, or is that merely an assertion?
Lbird wrote:1. I've done this many times over dozens of threads, so you could re-read some or all of them.Not on the specific issue of Marx and Socialism Utopian and Scientific you haven't. This is a thread specifically about Engels and Marx, and the frankly ludicrous attemopt to use Engls as some sort of Alibi for Saint Marx (not to mention the whole attempt at a Great Man theory of history which ignores the public aspects of the joint project between the two men and the whole mileu of that project).Noticeably, you have consistantly ignored the joint authorship of the German Ideology, and all it's content about materialism.Fart, willy, bum.
I don't suppose you could assay a brief rebuttal?Also, you may find this letter from Charlie interesting.
Quote:It would certainly be very pleasant if a really scientific socialist journal were to be published. It would provide an opportunity for criticisms or counter-criticisms in which we could discuss theoretical points, expose the utter ignorance of professors and lecturers and at the same time enlighten the minds of the general public–working class or bourgeois. But Wiede's periodical cannot possible be anything but sham-scientific; the same half-educated Knoten and dilettante literary men who make the Neue Welt, Vorwärts, etc., unsafe, necessarily form the majority of his collaborators. Ruthlessness –the first condition of all criticism–is impossible in such company; besides which constant attention has to be paid to making things easily comprehensible, i.e., exposition for the ignorant. Imagine a journal of chemistry where the readers' ignorance of chemistry is constantly assumed as the fundamental presupposition.http://marxists.catbull.com/archive/marx/works/1877/letters/77_07_18.htmAlso, let's not forget their collaboration on the German Ideology, which went unpublished till long after the time of the social democrats et al.
I would draw people's attention to this:http://marxists.catbull.com/archive/marx/works/1880/05/04.htmNow, this is Marx' introduction to the French edition of Socialism: utopian and scientific.Now, we know that Marx was alive when it was published, and felt secure enough to write:
Quote:Frederick Engels, one of the foremost representatives of contemporary socialism, distinguished himself in 1844 with his Outlines of a Critique of Political Economy,which first appeared in the Deutsch-Französische Jahrbücher, published in Paris by Marx and Ruge. The Outlines already formulates certain general principles of scientific socialism. Engels was then living in Manchester, where he wrote (in German) The Condition of the Working-Class in England (1845), an important work to which Marx did full justice in CapitalNow, we cannot know if Marx had any reservations about the text of that pamphlet, but we do know that there does not exist any public or private record of criticism, and willingness to add an introduction can legitimately be seen as an endorsement of sorts of the contents of that pamphlet.
