Antonio Labriola: A Strict Marxist?
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The collective choice is to produce biscuits (or to make the means of making biscuits available to the community).I assume Socialism will produce poetry, plays and novels, but I wouldn't have thought that we'd write them by committee (I'd imagine either we print everything anyone asks to have printed, or we have 'review groups' taking the place of publishing houses, reading the slush pile to recommend to the community). There would have to be plurality in publishing, else you're talking a monstrous possibility for censorship. Once we have plurility in publishing, that means anyone may distribute any ideas they want to.After all, art is just as much a social product, and truth is beauty and beauty truth, as some geezer once said.
Actually, YMS, if I remember correctly he is on record in one of the previous multiple threads on this as saying that if society democratically votes in favour of one particular scientific theory that will become the orthodox view that will be expressed in all textbooks, etc. as such. Any rival view will have difficulty in being expressed. A vote will also be able to ban the expression of certain views.
ALB wrote:Actually, YMS, if I remember correctly he is on record in one of the previous multiple threads on this as saying that if society democratically votes in favour of one particular scientific theory that will become the orthodox view that will be expressed in all textbooks, etc. as such. Any rival view will have difficulty in being expressed. A vote will also be able to ban the expression of certain views.Since you hide your Engelsist ideology, ALB, it is not clear for other workers to understand what I'm saying, if they refract what I actually say through your ignorant understanding.I'm actually 'on record' as saying a vote will produce a temporary 'truth', which we'll know is temporary, because Marxists recognise that all 'truths' are socio-historical productions by societies, and so, being democrats, we'll have other 'truths' on standby, which will be available to replace the current 'truth', if we decide that it needs replacing.So, workers will produce by democratic means a 'vote-winner', 'truth A' and obviously minority 'truth B' (and perhaps C and D, etc.).Whilst it suits the purposes of the democratic workers' councils, then 'truth A' will remain, with options to replace that, if they so wish. Our textbooks will be full of choices of truth, not Truth.This method will, of course, be taught by our democratic education system, and so the myth of bourgeois science that humans have access to 'matter', through an elite-expert neutral method, which gives eternal, asocial, ahistoric 'Truth', will be no more.All humans will finally have the power to change their world, as Marx hoped for in socialism, rather than being produced by an elite, under capitalism.But… with you being an Engelsian Materialist, and having a faith in the god 'matter', you seriously believe in the 19th century positivist myth of 'Objective Truth', out there, simply waiting for humans to passively 'discover', so you never mention the need to produce truth, but simply lie that Marxists will 'ban the expression of certain views'.Such is the fruit of the 'thinkers' (I use the word very loosely) of the SPGB. Lies, abuse and secrecy of their plan to prevent workers from democratically producing 'scientific knowledge'.You're an ignorant bluffer, ALB.
LBirddo you think the whole forum should be devoted to your accusation of 'Englism' or whatever you call it? Or are you going to allow us to discuss other stuff without your arrogant and ignorant interuptions and baseless slanders and accustaions?How about devoting a whole thread to your baseless slander?
Vin wrote:LBirddo you think the whole forum should be devoted to your accusation of 'Englism' or whatever you call it? Or are you going to allow us to discuss other stuff without your arrogant and ignorant interuptions and baseless slanders and accustaions?How about devoting a whole thread to your baseless slander?I'll tell you what, Vin.Get the SPGB to admit that it won't have the democratic control by workers of maths, physics and truth, and we can end the myth of the SPGB's 'socialism' (which is precisely that workers' control), and I'll bid you all a good-day.Whilst you pretend to be socialists, to try to attract unsuspecting workers, I'm here (until banned, anyway).If you don't understand all this debate, Vin, just ignore it, or perhaps try to learn.
LBird wrote:I'll tell you what, Vin.Get the SPGB to admit that it won't have the democratic control by workers of maths, physics and truth, and we can end the myth of the SPGB's 'socialism' (which is precisely that workers' control), and I'll bid you all a good-day.That sounds like a threat to disrupt every thread. You are a very good troll And I have told you a thousand times you ignoramous. Socialism abolishes the working class. You are a confused left winger, not a revolutionary
Vin wrote:LBird wrote:I'll tell you what, Vin.Get the SPGB to admit that it won't have the democratic control by workers of maths, physics and truth, and we can end the myth of the SPGB's 'socialism' (which is precisely that workers' control), and I'll bid you all a good-day.That sounds like a threat to disrupt every thread. You are a very good troll And I have told you a thousand times you ignoramous. Socialism abolishes the working class. You are a confused left winger, not a revolutionary
Why not just say the magic words, Vin?Until then, then SPGB can't be allowed to disrupt every thread with their anti-democratic, anti-worker, Religious Materialism, and to troll the movement for socialism.The SPGB will not discuss these issues, but simply dishes out abuse.
LBird wrote:Get the SPGB to admit that it won't have the democratic control by workers of maths, physics and truth, and we can end the myth of the SPGB's 'socialism' (which is precisely that workers' control), and I'll bid you all a good-day.I've already said there will be common ownership and democratic control of the means and intruments of producing and distributing wealth, including all intellectual wealth, so we can't 'admit that' it wouldn't, er, be true.Anyway, as to your notion of voting on several competing truths, I take it you are aware of:https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Voting_paradoxThe result of the voting paradox is that nothign may end up beign true, and everything is true, if society ranks truths A,B,C the result can be that each of them wins, and thus each is true.Anyway, for socialists, intelelctual endevour will continue to belong to the communiy, and be created by the co-operative action of members of the community…
ISR Winter 2016 cover Labriola herehttp://isreview.org/issue/103/critical-communism-antonio-labriola
jondwhite wrote:ISR Winter 2016 cover Labriola herehttp://isreview.org/issue/103/critical-communism-antonio-labriolaIn my opinion this assay by Doug Enaa Greene on Labriola’s thoughts is a good one. I can only find one point, which is not historically correct:“In contrast to the deterministic and economistic orthodoxy, there were a host of revolutionaries in the Second International such as Lenin, Trotsky, Plekhanov, Luxemburg, and Gramsci who were antideterministic and held to the view that rather than collapsing on its own, capitalism would have to be consciously overthrown. What was needed was a revolutionary break with previous Marxist orthodoxy and revisionism.”Gramsci was not active in the Second International. He joined the PSI in 1913 and his figure was rather marginal up to the end of WWI. One of the first popular article he wrote was in 1914 to prize Mussolini’s active and operational neutrality. He founded Ordine Nuovo in 1919 when the Second International was rather “dead”. I do not agree with the attribution of Trotsky theorization of permanent revolution to Labriola.“It is no accident that Trotsky’s conception of Marxism with the theory of permanent revolution, critical dialectical method, and anti-economism owed a great deal to his engagement with Antonio Labriola”In fact, as written in the Standard’s February article, “Labriola had already anticipated that Russia’s so-called ‘agrarian communism’ could not be a path to socialist revolution and, in agreement with Engels, that Russia had to first go through a bourgeois phase of development (commodity production) before it could host a real emergence of socialist ideas.” I am also not aware that “By the time Labriola died in 1904, he had grown increasingly pessimistic about the validity of Marxism”. And this surprises me quite a bit. Other than those points, I agree with the author’s take on Antonio Labriola. He definitely “deserves to be known and studied based on his own merits.”.
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