democratic discussion about having ‘science’ under ‘a system of common ownership
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Doesn’t Dieztgen and Pannekoek consider ideas as material things that are required for establishing socialism?
If so, then it is true, we are waiting for that consciousness to arise. I don’t think anybody believes our minuscule efforts to communicate the socialist case is effective against the overwhelming hegemony of capitalist ideology. Our conviction in workers’ democracy extends to the autonomy of our class to work out the solutions for themselves and take the appropriate actions independently of any intellectual elite.
If i am right in my reading that ideas are part of the material conditions, we will only be able to gauge that material conditions have matured when we encounter a growth in our membership (or whatever socialist organisation comes to represent the socialist idea)
alanjjohnstone wrote
“…Dieztgen and Pannekoek consider ideas as material…my reading that ideas are part of the material…”
For Marx, ‘material’ meant ‘human’ (as opposed to ‘ideal’ meaning ‘divine’), so what Marx was simply arguing was ‘ideals are social’, and not the product of a ‘god’.
‘Ideas’, just like ‘widgets’, are social products of humanity. The are no ‘widgets-in-themselves’ which produce ‘ideas’, merely by humans pretending that the ‘widgets’ already exist, and that us being ‘practical’ with these ‘widgets’ will produce ‘ideas’ (that is, that the ‘widgets’ are the active producers of our ‘ideas’, and we are passively imbibing, as ‘ideas’, the ‘truth’ of these ‘widgets’). This latter view is simply ‘widgets’ are ‘god’.
alanjjohnstone wrote
“…we are waiting for that consciousness to arise…”
What are you waiting for? For the ‘widgets’ to produce that consciousness?
alanjjohnstone wrote
“Our conviction in workers’ democracy extends to the autonomy of our class to work out the solutions for themselves and take the appropriate actions independently of any intellectual elite.”
But this is not robbo’s (or any materialist’s) argument. They argue that ‘material conditions’ (and by ‘material’, they mean something outside of ‘consciousness’) will ‘mature’, and then ‘consciousness’ will follow, hence their ‘waiting for consciousness to arise’.
Any democracy, autonomy, ‘for themselves’, actions independent, require discussion about and creation of those ‘solutions’, ie. ‘theory and practice’, by workers themselves.
Having come up with successful theory and practice (ie. a world socialist revolution installing socialism), why would the democratic producers then hand that power over to any elite (scientific, technical, intellectual, philosophical), which as you argue, a power that they will have already taken control of, ‘independently of any intellectual elite‘?
Surely, the role of the SPGB, like any worker communists (as Marx argued) is to help their fellow workers to self-develop as a class? Surely, telling interested workers that ‘material’ or a ‘technical elite’ will be the final beneficiary of the efforts and risks taken by the workers themselves, is likely to be unconvincing and ultimately unsuccessful?
If we thinking humans create the ‘material conditions’, we can change them.
If the ‘material conditions’ create thinking humans, we can’t change them.
That was Marx’s great criticism of passive, 18th century materialism. Who is the ‘creator’ – god or humanity? Engels didn’t understand that ‘matter’ was just another name for ‘god’.
I don’t know if this helps
“Those who desire to gain a clear notion about that must not be satisfied with simply following the example of the old materialist who reduced everything to ponderable atoms. Cosmic matter has not only gravity, but aroma, light and sound – and why not also intelligence? If the smellable, visible and audible is more spiritual than the ponderable – if the comparative is natural, why not also the superlative? Gravity cannot be seen nor light be smelled, nor the intellect be touched, but we may perceive everything which exists. Don’t we perceive our thoughts as physically as we feel pain, light, heat or stones? The prejudice that ponderable objects are more perceptible than the phenomena which are communicated to us through hearing or feeling in general misled the old materialists to their atomistic speculations, misled them to make the ponderable the final cause of things. The conception of matter must be given a more comprehensive meaning. To it belong all phenomena of reality, also our force of thinking. To the idealists who call all natural phenomena “Ideas” or “intellectual phenomena” we say that the natural phenomena are by no means “things in themselves,” but objects of our sensations. Since also the particular phenomenon called subjective feeling, soul or consciousness is an object of sensation, there is no use here splitting up things into subjective and objective. The objective thing can only be perceived subjectively, and vice versa. Both exist and both are of the same kind; body and soul are of the same empirical material. An impartial observer can have no doubt that spiritual material, or, to be more exact, that the phenomenon of our force of thinking is a part of the world and not the reverse. The whole governs the part, cosmic matter the mind, at least in the main, though it is true that mind reacts on cosmic matter. And it is in this sense that I said we must love and honor the material world as the supreme being, as the cause of all causes, as the creator of heaven and earth.
That confession does not in the least prevent us from regarding the intellect as the primus inter pares, as the first object of all the objects in the world.
When Social-Democrats call themselves materialists, they only want to emphasize their view that they refuse to acknowledge anything which pretends to lie beyond human cognition in a metaphysical way. All witchery must go overboard.”
https://www.marxists.org/archive/dietzgen/1876/philosophy.htm
But this is not robbo’s (or any materialist’s) argument. They argue that ‘material conditions’ (and by ‘material’, they mean something outside of ‘consciousness’) will ‘mature’, and then ‘consciousness’ will follow, hence their ‘waiting for consciousness to arise’.
This is simply not the case L Bird. What you are describing is what might be called a mechanical or mechanistic form of materialism. This is not and never has been my position. Ive made it clear many times before that “consciousness” is inseparable from the “material” world it investigates. I am not a dualist in that sense. I have explicitly stated that there is no such thing as a value free-science. You have simply not been listening.
The application of science is thoroughly conditioned by the kind of society we live in. It is here – in the way in which science is applied that there is ample scope for democratic decision-making – but not in the development of scientific theories per se which is the ridiculous nonsensical idea that you seem intent upon dogmatically pushing. You need to understand the difference.
You arguments are a complete caricature of the SPGB’s position. For a start, the SPGB is not ‘waiting’ for socialist consciousness to arise which implies a position of passivity. There would be no point in the SPGB even existing as a political party if that were the case.
Secondly, I referred to what has been called by convention the objective and subjective preconditions of socialism which in a way are analogous to the hardware and software of a computer system respectively. The Party’s position is and always has been that the objective preconditions for socialism (a sufficiently developed technological infrastructure to satisfy the reasonable needs of humanity) have long been met – at least since the beginning of the 20th century – but that we are long way off yet from fulfilling the subjective precondition of socialism -mass socialist consciousness.
You naively misinterpret this to imply a one-way deterministic relationship between the ‘objective’ preconditions and the ‘subjective’ preconditions where the realisation of the former automatically works to bring about the latter. Hence your absurd fatalistic gloss on what the Party is supposed to stand for – that it does not have to do anything – except “wait” – since the material conditions will inevitably produce socialism.
But that’s ridiculous. Even our very perception of what constitutes the “reasonable needs of humanity” is coloured by the system of values we subscribe to. So for example according to bourgeois economics human beings are inherently insatiable in their demands and so by definition there can never be enough in the way of physical output to satisfy the reasonable needs of humanity. So if you look at the highly developed technological infrastructure we have today through the eyes of a bourgeois economist, rather than a socialist, you will be bound to conclude that the objective preconditions of socialism have not and never will be met – no matter how much the living standards of workers might rise
The point I am making is that a socialist awareness of technological potential to underpin a socialist society is bound up with her consciousness and own deeply held socialist values. In short, they cannot be separated
alanjjohnstone, quoting Dietzgen
“the natural phenomena are by no means “things in themselves,” but objects of our sensations. Since also the particular phenomenon called subjective feeling, soul or consciousness is an object of sensation, there is no use here splitting up things into subjective and objective. The objective thing can only be perceived subjectively, and vice versa.”
Yes, this is it: ‘mind-matter’, which was Marx’s view.
Not ‘matter’ (as something which exists outside of our production of ‘it’); not ‘consciousness’ (as something which exists outside of our consciousness of ‘it’).
Subject-object (not subjective individual opinion, nor objective reality).
To split ‘mind’ and ‘matter’ requires one to argue for a non-human producer, ie. a god.
Marx was discussing the social producer, mind-matter, which produces and reproduces mind-matter. We are our own god.
Nice to see you are following your historical pattern and not answering the questions put to you. In the hope of a straight answer:
As you have pointed out on several occasions, I am as thick as two short Planck’s Constants. In your proposed system having science under common ownership do I get to vote on theories of areas of science which I have no particular interest or knowledge?
L Bird
On a more conciliatory note, I’m not sure if you are aware of Vygotsky and his work, but if not I though if your not it would interest you.
Here is a link to pretty good website, although whilst they do acknowledge the Marxist element of Vygotsky’s theoretical approach, they don’t really apply it to the material he produced. He is much better understood through his original work, although I cannot find any links to his work.
Cheers
T
Lev Vygotsky wrote:
“I don’t want to discover the nature of mind by patching together a lot of quotations. I want to find out how science has to be built, to approach the study of mind having learned the whole of Marx’s method.”
Put simply, the ‘science’ Vygotsky wished to see didn’t yet exist, and democratic discussion by workers looking to Marx would precede the ‘building’ of that ‘science’.
I think Vygotsky would have recognised Marx’s ‘revolutionary science’ as playing a crucial part in our building of ‘democratic socialism’.
Bijou Drains wrote
“… I am as thick as two short Planck’s Constants”
I wouldn’t worry too much about your status, Bijou.
Planck’s Constant is a number produced by a social being, in order that another product of social beings, mathematics, could make sense of another product of social beings, physics, which was premised upon another product of social beings, philosophy, which was premised upon another product of social beings, politics.
Of course, Planck and his mathematical ideologists insist that this ‘Constant’ is a ‘Universal’, asocial, ahistorical, ‘number-in-itself’.
Yeah, right! says any Marxist, who already knows that socio-historical products ‘constantly’ CHANGE, and we humans change them, to suit our productive purposes, purposes which are always related to ‘our’ interests and needs. One society’s ‘constant’ is another society’s ‘load of bollocks’.
We just argue about who the ‘our’ is. It might turn out that your ‘objective’ status is much improved, when ‘we’ come to judge it. 🙂
Bijou, given your ‘conciliatory’ post, I’ve just ordered Vygotsky’s Mind In Society, and if you want a discussion around that work, I’m game if you are.
I’ve already read Newman and Holzman’s Lev Vygotsky: Revolutionary Scientist, which is where I got the quote in the post above from, but there is no substitute for a discussion about original work.
Sorry for the tardiness of my reply, been to the pub to watch the Mighty Magpies triumph for the third time in a row!
More than happy to discuss the work of Vygotsky. Very interesting guy on lots of levels.
Do you want to start a new thread when you have your copy?
Always glad to see Newcastle win, especially under Benitez!
Yeah, a new thread on Vygotsky’s Marxism would be best, when I get the text.
Meanwhile, I’m re-reading Lev Vygotsky: Revolutionary Scientist, to examine Newman and Holzman’s understanding of Marx.
In case it might be of interest, I see that Vygotsky-enthusiast Andy Blunden last year published a book titled ‘Activity Theory — A critical overview’, the table of contents of which is here:
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