Gnostic Marxist
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‘The defeat of the English Revolution, for those not interested in history, society, philosophy… politics.’
Now LBird is venturing into history with, it seems, an equally fragile hold on the facts. How was the English Revolution defeated? As he himself states bourgeois ideology had triumphed as did their ‘New Model Army’. The Restoration was only possible with the consent of the capitalists and the concessions of the king. The attempted counter revolution in 1688 was totally crushed. Explain yourself master Bird.
Haven’t you read Marx?
Or are you, like robbo and now alan, now going to ditch Marx?Well, unlike LBird, I’m not a Marx cultist – there was stuff that Marx wrote that was clearly wrong and that I am quite happy to ditch. But having said that, Marx would probably laugh his head off at the thought that the idealist drivel that LBird has been coming out with has anything to what with what he (Marx) was saying.
The idea that dinosaurs did not exist independently of human beings thinking about them (which is what LBird is saying) is about as far removed from Marx and Marxism as it is possible to get. And since only the human individual is capable of thinking, it follows that nothing can exist independently of this individual and therefore influence what this individual thinks. For LBird there is no point in democracy since other individuals don’t really exist independently of him. This also means LBird rejects the very concept of social production.
But that’s fine LBird – you don’t have to pretend to be a Marxist for our sakes. I don’t think anyone here would judge you too harshly if you were to just honestly admit that you disagree fundamentally with Marx’s own philosophical standpoint which was very clearly NOT the idealist philosophy you very clearly embrace
ALB, your quote from the SS Sept ’73 is spot on.
It consistently emphasises the ‘social’ (or its synonym, ‘material’) and production, as did Marx.
The key statement is:
“Human beings are born with brains, but not minds. Men only acquire minds in and through society, the content of their minds reflecting their social life and experience. A man outside society, could he exist, would have a brain, but no mind. Which is why physical theories of the mind are inadequate.”
‘Minds’ are socially produced, not ‘physical’.
The routine identification of ‘brain’ with ‘mind’ by the materialists is ‘inadequate’.
‘Minds’ are socially produced, and don’t pre-exist their maker.
Wez wrote: “How was the English Revolution defeated?”
Read any textbook, Wez, but Hill’s The World Turned Upside Down is as good a place to start as any.
Chapter 14, ‘Mechanic Preachers and the Mechanical Philosophy‘, pp.287-305, is especially pertinent to your question.
robbo203 wrote: “…there was stuff that Marx wrote that was clearly wrong and that I am quite happy to ditch.”
I agree, robbo, there’s the basis for a very interesting discussion, on the view that we could update Marx for the 21st century.
For example, if only Marx had made clear that his ‘new materialism’ wasn’t just ‘materialism’ with a meaningless prefix, like ‘chocolate materialism’, but that the content of his ‘new’ was revolutionary.
Perhaps we should have been able to suppose that revolutionaries would assume that ‘new’ meant ‘revolutionary’, but unfortunately Engels reverted in his texts to ‘materialism’ (ie. ‘old materialism’).
Still, your impulse is correct. Critical thinking has to be the basis of our self-emancipation.
For example, if only Marx had made clear that his ‘new materialism’ wasn’t just ‘materialism’ with a meaningless prefix, like ‘chocolate materialism’, but that the content of his ‘new’ was revolutionary.
Yes, but since you reject Marx’s “new materialism” in a favour of straightforward idealism – nothing exists (or like dinosaurs, existed) independently of our ideas, according to you – perhaps you need to make this clear. Otherwise, people here might get the quite wrong impression that you are some kind of “Marxist” who believes that other people exist independently of our ideas we as individuals hold in our heads or that there is such a thing as “social production”
robbo203 wrote: “Yes, but since you reject Marx’s “new materialism” in a favour of straightforward idealism…”
This is a figment of your own imagination, robbo, and doesn’t reflect anything that I’ve written here.
‘Idealism’ is the ideological belief that ‘God’ is the active consciousness, not ‘humanity’.
It’s very similar to ‘materialism’, which is the ideological belief that ‘Matter’ is the active consciousness, not ‘humanity’.
On the contrary, Marx’s ‘new’ made ‘humanity’ the active consciousness, which is why he argued for ‘theory and practice’.
Here’s a quote from the Socialist Standard of September 1973:
“German idealist philosophy made ideas the driving forces of history. Marx and Engels did not deny that the real men who made history were conscious beings who had ideas about what they were doing; their point was that these ideas did not come from nowhere and were not arbitrary. Ideas, they said, arose from material social conditions so that men’s ideas reflect their material conditions of life, their activity in society. Consciousness in the abstract did not exist: “Consciousness can never be anything else than conscious existence, and the existence of men is their actual life process” and “life is not determined by consciousness, but consciousness by life”.
The theory advanced here is not a theory of the physiology of perception and thinking (which Marx and Engels knew they were not qualified to formulate) so that talk of ideas “reflecting” social processes must not be misunderstood as a theory that the brain is a kind of camera photographing the world. It is a theory of the social origin of ideas.” [my bold]
You should read and follow the Socialist Standard, robbo.
robbo203 wrote: “Yes, but since you reject Marx’s “new materialism” in a favour of straightforward idealism…”
This is a figment of your own imagination, robbo, and doesn’t reflect anything that I’ve written here.
Actually, rather a lot of what you have written here, LBird, shows unequivocally that your view is one of “straightforward idealism”. Take your comment, that “Nothing can have a ‘real existence independent of humanity because humans couldn’t know it.” As I have explained to you many times what this very clearly means is that you think, for instance, that dinosaurs could have not have had a “real existence independent of humanity” even though the fossil record shows they existed and became extinct long before there were human beings around to “know” they existed. Your idealist philosophy is therefore anti-science, amongst other things.
I appreciate that it must be difficult for you, being a Marx cultist, to come to terms with the fact that your whole idealist philosophy and outlook on life is radically different from Marx’s. Not that that matters too much. I disagree with some of Marx views as well but at least I don’t pretend to agree with him in cases where I actually disagree with him just for the sake of wanting to appear as a Marxist as you do
robbo, you’ve given up sane discussion, for a fight with your own imagination. Good luck.
Me? I’m off to read the Socialist Standard of September 1973, where there’s a excellent article that all posters here should read.
robbo, you’ll have to explain how you know what a dinosaur is, without using your mind.
And if you’re using your mind, as the Socialist Standard says, it’s a product of society.
So, ‘real’ anything is determined by a society, which is where all individuals in that society get their ideas from – including those of ‘dinosaurs’.
Thus, it’s clear that “Nothing can have a ‘real existence independent of humanity because humans couldn’t know it” is a scientific statement.
You think that a dinosaur is outside your brain – no shit, sherlock.
robbo, you’ll have to explain how you know what a dinosaur is, without using your mind. And if you’re using your mind, as the Socialist Standard says, it’s a product of society.
LOL LBird of course you have to use your mind to explain what a dinosaur is. But that’s not the issue is it? The “idea” of a dinosaur is different from the object to which the idea refers – the referent. The fact that we cannot apprehend what we call a dinosaur without using our minds does not mean the existence of dinosaurs is dependent on our minds
The argument you are putting forward is precisely the same one as that advanced by that famous idealist Bishop Berkeley (1685—1753) who like you contended that the “opinion strangely prevailing amongst men, that houses, mountains, rivers, and in a world all sensible objects have an existence natural or real, distinct from being perceived” is “a manifest contradiction” As a philosophical idealist, you don’t believe there is such a thing as an objective reality. Everything is in the mind for you – even when the mind demonstrates to itself that the object it refers must logically have a real existence independent of the mind even if we cannot apprehend this existence apart from, or outside, of our minds.
So in the case of dinosaurs, our own minds inform us when we look at the fossil record that dinosaurs must have had a real existence independent of humanity since they predate humanity and human minds themselves. Since human beings weren’t around when dinosaurs were around how can the existence of the latter be dependent on the former??? The extinction of dinosaurs sixty-odd million years ago happened all the same, even when we were still ignorant of the past existence of these creatures – or do you really want to deny this?
As for your claim that if “you’re using your mind, as the Socialist Standard says, it’s a product of society” well now you have well and truly destroyed your own argument! You have just shot yourself in the foot big time
See, the problem for you as a philosophical idealist is that you have no way of knowing whether there is such a thing as “society”. Insofar as society consists of other people how do you know these other people exist? Why should they exist but not dinosaurs, independent of your own mind, huh? You are not me and I am not you so how do you know I exist? If dinosaurs don’t exist outside your mind why is that not also true of society as well? In which case how does your mind come to be a product of society when society does not exist outside of your mind????
robbo203 wrote: “The “idea” of a dinosaur is different from the object to which the idea refers – the referent.”
How do you know the ‘referent’, robbo, without using your mind?
And your mind, as the Socialist Standard article says, is socially produced.
So, any knowledge by you of any referent requires society.
You’re arguing against the Socialist Standard now, robbo. You might as well accuse the SPGB of idealism and Berkeleyism.
The fundamental problem with your ideological method, robbo, is that your ‘active subject’ is you, as a biological individual, who determines what’s ‘real’ by your ‘senses’.
If one employs this method, Marx’s analysis of ‘value’ falls, because he argues that society is the active agent that creates value.
Your method compels a return to an ‘individualist’ determination of ‘value’, which is, in short, the Thatcherite view that ‘value’ is what one thinks it is, in one’s own opinion – it is ‘valuable for me’.
So, one can either reject Marx, or separate ‘economics’ from ‘science’.
But Marx argued for a unity in method (social theory and practice), so the latter option (the bourgeois separation of mind/matter, sociology/physics, individual/society, fact/opinion, arts/science, dinosaur idea/dinosaur referent, etc.) involves a rejection of Marx’s ‘unified science’.
Thus, for Marx, both ‘value’ and ‘matter’ are social products, which have a history, and can be changed by their creator, us, humanity.
And your mind, as the Socialist Standard article says, is socially produced.
Yes and according to your idealist philosophy, other people (and therefore society) are a product of your mind and, like dinosaurs, do not have a real existence independent of your mind. So how can the mind be a product of society by that logic if society is nothing more than a product of the mind???
It’s not me that has a problem with recognising that minds are socially produced – but you! Your idealist philosophy rules out the possibility of any kind of dialectic between mind and objectivity reality. It is indeed the mind that allows us to see that such an objective reality exists – to know that “The “idea” of a dinosaur is different from the object to which the idea refers – the referent.”
But being a pure idealist you have no way of explaining where that idea comes from since according to you it cannot originate outside of the mind. It cannot be socially produced, following your logic, because society – other people – don’t exist outside your mind in the same way that you believe dinosaurs never existed objectively. They are entirely a figment of your imagination as is this entire thread
Thus, for Marx, both ‘value’ and ‘matter’ are social products, which have a history, and can be changed by their creator, us, humanity.
Not according to you, LBird. Because according to your idealist philosophy, humanity – other people – doesn’t exist objectively outside of your mind. Therefore according to you, we have no way of knowing whether ‘value’ and ‘matter’ were created by them
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