Bertrand Russell
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When I was 18 years old, I remember how excited I was to read this philosopher.
I remember it was the book about why I am not Cristian
It helped me a lot in my atheist training and my vision of life.
Regarding the vision of life, I still think like him, but as for society I am closer to thinking of Marx
I was a Nationalist and did not sign up for military service in the country I was born in and then when I emigrated to the United States I approached the left-wing movements, especially the Trotskyists.
Now I have been reading your organization for a long time and I think that you are the ones that represents and explains … What is Capitalism? And the only organization that speaks of a Socialist world!
I would like to know what you think of this philosopher who for me reflects the turbulent last century with its contradictions.
Well, if you want to know about the different school of philosophy it would be better to read the works of the Marxists Humanists, such as Raya Dunayevskaya, Peter Hudis, Kevin Anderson, Olga, Isaac Wood, Andrew Killman, and others, and some members of the School of Frankfurt, like Lukakcs, but for me when it comes to idealism, I think Hegel would be more than enough. I know his works but I would say like CLR James: There is nothing for me on Hegel.
The book written by Marx and Engels titled the German Ideology summarized everything about Idealism and Materialism, and philosophy, and Lenin Materialism Empirocriticism messed up the whole thing and it had to be placed properly by Anton Pannekoek, and Mao Tse Tung did a terrible job
I think there is not anything known as Liberal socialism, they are two different conceptions, but in our times there are too many strange hybrids including the concept of corporate socialism.
Atheism is not enough when many atheist philosophers support capitalism and bourgeoise liberalism because the critique of religion is the critique of capitalism and vice versa, many atheist philosophers are as reactionary as any capitalist, and there are many theists which are more socially advanced than many atheists, one example would be the liberation theology
Yes, Russell’s “Why I am not a Christian” is good and its implication that, as we only have one life, the best “philosophy of life” is to try to make the best of it and not hope for a better one in some non-existent afterlife.
What is lacking is that the way to achieve this for everyone is through a society based on the common ownership of the means of life, so that there can be production solely and directly to meet people’s needs and distribution on the principle of “from each according to their ability, to each according to their needs”. And that this is what an individual should work for.
This article by an early socialist ( sort of) is also good against the idea of the immortality of a supposed “soul”
https://www.marxists.org/archive/bax/1888/04/immortality.htm
Having said this, philosophy has largely given way today to the theory of science and to neuroscience as the study of how the brain works.
Science is not an ideology. Dialectic only exists in the realm of ideas. It was one of the mistakes of Engels to apply dialectic to the universe
Bax’s ‘A short history of the Paris Commune’ is a good read.
I believe that knowing that we have only one life and that the universe is indifferent to our desires and fears is not an obstacle to fighting for a better world, on the contrary, it is a reason to change this capitalist system where most of us work more than we need for one minority that exploits us and allows us to live fully and limits our needs
Stop believing in God is the first step to stop believing in our masters who dominate us.
‘Having said this, philosophy has largely given way today to the theory of science and to neuroscience as the study of how the brain works.’
I suspect ALB was provoking the likes of myself with this assertion. Of course science can be seen as a branch of philosophy (natural philosophy) but it has come to see itself as somehow superior to its originator. ‘Science’ has become a magical/religious (ideological) concept to many divorced from its origins. As an exercise in empirical trial and error it is something that humans have always practiced. As a branch of philosophy it can never answer interesting questions concerning meaning and purpose etc. Roberto’s statement that the universe is ‘indifferent to our desires’ is illogical since we are part of the universe – we may be a unique example of the universe becoming conscious of itself.
Here’s someone from another religion — I am not sure whether it is Sikhism or Hinduism — saying why he doesn’t believe in some “supreme being”:
https://www.marxists.org/archive/bhagat-singh/1930/10/05.htm
I would like to know which is the best book on dialectical materialism.
If you in your organization share this philosophy.
‘Science is just another name for organised knowledge. It’s not an ideology.’
Agreed but many have elevated it to the status of a religion. If it is indeed another name for organised knowledge then how can it have superseded philosophy which shares the same ambition?
‘I would like to know which is the best book on dialectical materialism.
If you in your organization share this philosophy.’
Some comrades struggle on trying to read Marx without a knowledge of dialectics but others, like myself, believe it to be a key to political insight. Bertell Ollman’s ‘Dance of the Dialectic’ is a good introduction.
You can read extracts of it here.
We have a long thread in this forum on the topic of dialectic. We do not need philosophers and we do not need dialectic. I think that Adam Buick summarized it in the following way: We need a coherent theory of socialism/communism
If we go into the needs of dialectic, it would be better to follow the Marxists Humanists who proclaimed that Karl Marx was a Hegelian and dialectician all his life since the very beginning until the end of his life and that Das Kapital is a dialectical book, and without dialectic, we can not understand Marx and Capital( others Marxists proclaimed that he abandoned dialectic when he became a materialist ) and that after 1914 Lenin became a Hegelian and a dialectician,( the so-called ambivalence of Lenin ) therefore, there is no need to look for something else, Hegel is more than enough.
Marx did not create the concept of dialectical materialism, it was Gietzen, and Adam Buick wrote an article titled: The workers’ philosopher, the hybrid dialectical/historical materialism was created by Lenin.
We have enough confusions to add more to the existing ones, we do not need another Marx or another Engels even more without them socialism would have existed, what we need is a post-socialist society and send this one to the trash bin. The website of the SPGB/WSM has everything that we need to know about socialism
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