Answers to Some Unanswered Questions

I tried to plough through the various screeds you submitted on this thread  that pretend to answer the questions I raised on another thread but, to be quite honest, half way through my eyes began to glaze over.  Talk about tedious, turgid and, for the most part, utterly irrelevant waffle.  You never seem to get to the point  Why can you not learn to answer a simple and direct question, simply and directly, without proposing to mount some pulpit to lecture an already half- bored congregation for the next four hours, eh?If you are to believed,  Robbo has foolishly allowed himself to be irrationally swayed by the sheer force of moral indignation alone and has summarily repudiated all science and employing a scientific method.  What rubbish.  All I am doing is denying the fact-value distinction which Marx himself incidentally regarded as a form of "estrangement". I have lost count of the number times L Bird has demolished your flimsy pretentious arguments,  making  precisely the same point as I am doing here.  But nothing will seem to budge you from your entrenched 19th century positivismThe thread from which these various "unanswered questions" (which still remain unanswered!)  derive is entitled "Is the case for socialism, one of morality, cold logic or long term survival of our species?" My point was simply  that, yes, of course the case for socialism is based on morality – how can it not be? – but I was not for one moment suggesting it was not ALSO based on cold logic (or science, if you prefer) or the long term interests of the species.  On the contrary it is based on all of these things.    You've just wasted a lot of your own time and mine and that of anyone else unfortunate to happen upon your long-winded bad-tempered and ridiculous attempt to constantly bark up the wrong tree.   Try, in future, reading what other people write before putting pen to paper. It might just helpIve told you already why I dont like the expression "scientific socialism" – because it conveys  precisely the wrong impression.  You have already admitted I was right to say:Most people don’t become socialists through an academic contemplation of the nuances of labour theory of value and then become indignant; when they learn from the theory that they have been exploited by their capitalist employer all along.  On the contrary, it is their own experience of exploitation expressed in a myriad of ways that gives rise to a feeling, however inchoate, that they are being exploited.  That becomes the spur to acquiring greater understanding.  In short, indignation generally precedes knowledge rather than follows knowledge, though of course it can be reinforced by the latterThen you protest that Im reading into your text something that was not there. Really? This is what you said in post no 60 of the other thread:Socialism doesn’t rely on indignation.  Indignation, like all emotion is impermanent.  It must be feigned to be kept alive, and then it becomes a mere self-serving pose.  Our opponents are expert poseurs at this.  We despise their subterfuge.You then proceed to read something into my text which I did not say. According to you I entertain some "plan" to "channel indignation against system faults into indignation against the system itself, devoid of any immediate prospect of solving the system fault that generated the fury you seek to channel without falling back on scientific socialism".  Surely, you ask,  I can’t be advocating that we hijack social movements as prelude to our human scientific socialism.   How pathetic can you get.  Its pretty obvious what I have been saying and only a compolete idiot could not have twigged this by now  – that the advocacy of the socialist case does not mean abandoning logic and science; only that it needs also to give due weight to the fact that people, for the most part,  are not primarily or initially drawn to socialism because they are presented with some irresistable "scientific" argument for socialism.  (If only that were true, most people when presented with the case for socialism reject it precisely becuase they dont think it is crediuble. They are prejudiced  which means we cannot sidestep the question of addressing the values on which their prejudices rest) Insofar as they do become attracted to the case for socialism it is primarily because they are indignant about things that the system throws up. We have to connect with that sense of indignation which is what also surely drives us as socialists and speak in a language that people can understand – the language of moral outrage.  That is where the limits of "scientific socialism" lie.  If such a socialism doesnt rely on  indignation then of course all it has to fall back on is cold logic and cold logic on its own is mnot going to motivate many to become socialists.  Socialist discourse will merely come to resemble kind of academic discourse carried out in academia increasingly abstract in tone and more and more removed from the everyday realities of working class expereienceThe naivete of your whole perspective  is well illustrated by your ridiculous logic expressed in post 91 of the other thread    (robbo.1)  the materialist conception of history is false.    (robbo.2)  base–superstructure determinism is false.    (robbo.3)  the objectivity of capitalist social relations is false.    (robbo.4)  we must therefore rely on emotion and morality.I don say the MCH is false .  What I say is that you hold a view of history which is at variance with what is called the materialist conception of hisotry. You are a mechanical or reductionist materialist.  As L Bird mentioned earlier. it is indeed surprising that no one in the SPGB has yet called you out on this.  Here is what the SPGB's own pamphlet on Historical Materialism has to say on the matterA few years ago a writer in the Guardian (March 5th 1965) put forward a common misconception of Marx’s view. He contended that Marx preached economic determinism by which, he alleged, Marx meant that all individuals act in accordance with their economic interests. A short acquaintance with Marx’s writings would show how absurd it was to attribute such a superficial view to him  That superficial view is the view you hold.  Make no mistake about it, you are preaching economic determinism with your dogmatic insistence that "base determines superstructure".  I challenged you to show how this was possible when a certain configuration of relations of production (one component of the "economic base" along with the productive forces themsleves) must presuppose certain ideas, values, beliefs etc  in order to come into existence. How can private property exist or come into being without a set of values that sanctions such an arrnagement?  You declined to answer my point.  Instead you infer illogically from what I say that " the objectivity of capitalist social relations is false".   No , thats not what I am saying. What I am saying is that it is not a question of PURE objectivity.  There is no such thing as facts standing alone accessible to all by mere observation. I emphatically deny the whole fact-value distinction which you constant insist on making with your fetishised  notion of "scientific socialism".  Your faulty logic leads you to further infer that I think we must therefore "rely on emotion and morality".  But since I dont deny the objectivity of capitalist social relations –  only the claim that such relations can be considered purely objective and standing completely apart from our values, your argument falls to the ground.  You seem to have this totally simplistic naive view of the world in which things are either black or white and there are no shades of grey in betweenAnd so we come finally to the question of exploitation.  You did not not answer my question at all.  All you did was parade your superogatory and oh-so-clever familiarity with Kliman's response to Steedman or whoever – like anyone gives a toss.  Well, if a bit of namedropping helps your cause and hides your own pitiful  evasions on the subject then why not  go for it, I suppose.   The basic question still stands, howeverIf exploitation is purely objective (which by your own definition means accessible to everyone) then why is it that most workers dont think they are exploited in the Marxian sense.  Not just workers but capitalists too. They are not even aware of such concepts as"surplus value". Exploitation to them simply means not getting a fair days wage for a fair days work.  The implication being that, in theory, you can operate capitalism without exploitation by being more generous and less harsh in your dealings with your workforce.The fact of the matter is that exploitation in the marxian sense is  theoretical judgement and as such presupposes a process of selecting the facts which in turn implies a set of values upon which such a selection is based.  Once again you cannot separate facts and values and this is why "exploitation" is NOT a purely objective matter.And you still dont understand the point I made about John Bates Clark.  I dont deny the objectivity of capitalist exploitation only that my recognition of it has come about separately from my socialist values. In raising the example of Clark I was playing the role of Devil's advocate to get you to see this very point and not as you idiotically claim as  a "hopeless spokesman for the capitalist". You warble on ridiculously: "your whole scenario is so inept, and so clearly imaginary, that no self-respecting capitalist would ever stoop so low.  But an idealist socialist might in his sterile ramblings.  I’d back the capitalist any day".  Are you really incapable of grasping the simple  point that the situation itself does not have to be an actual one  for it still to present the possibility of a theoretical defence of the capitalists claim that they do not exploit their workers but on the contrary that everyone gets their just rewards. – that they get out of production exactly what they put in – and that this is a process of evaluation?All you are doing is evading the argument by whining about how inept the scenario is becuase, well, no self-respecting capitalist  is going to stoop so low as to put in a little bit of work now and then  (Really? Are you seriously suggesting that no capitalist has ever done any work whatsoever? I think thats quite an extraordinary claim to make .  Years ago I worked as a gardener for a full blown multimillionaire who even had a heliport on his sumptuous grounds in Surrey and a helicopter to whisk him quite frequently to his office in the East Anglia where he could do some of the paper work).  Puhleeeeze.  The fact that that capitalist draws a profit doies not mean that the capitalist necessarily sees himself as exploiting his workers in the Marxian sense or that his workers see themselves as being exploited in that same sense. No one is denying that profit exists; the issue is what does it signify  and this is where the question of values enters the picture.  I cant seem to get that point into your skull.  All you are doing is to concoct some facile excuse to avoid confronting the issue of how you might evaluate the capitalist's contribution to the social product vis-a-vis the worker and that makes you , ironically enough,  a pretty piss poor exponent of "scientific socialism" in my opiniuon