Is the case for socialism, one of morality, cold logic or long term survival of our species?

[Anonymous]

LBird wrote:

 

Vin Maratty wrote:

You take up a 'moral' position then attack materialists as potential dictators and murderers.

'Potential'? Where were you during the 20th century, Vin? 

 Where do you think I was? I spent a lot of it in the materialist SPGB opposing the idealists of the Soviet Union and other dictators trying to impose their ideas on others.  

[LBird]

Vin Maratty wrote:

As you say I need to read some philosophy of science but perhaps you can enlighten me

And I'm trying my best to help any comrade who's interested in these issues to circumvent years of reading, by trying to summarise and explain by analogy some difficult issues!But, it requires a willingness to discuss, rather than just keep reiterating old ideas from Engels.For example,

Vin Maratty wrote:

…in the materialist SPGB opposing the idealists…

Your dichotomous approach of 'materialists' versus 'idealists' is meaningless.This ideology that you hold causes you, when I state that I'm not a 'materialist', to think that therefore I must be an 'idealist'. You get this ideology from Engels, who is the source of this 'either/or' view of philosophy.I've tried time and again to explain this, and I've told you where Engels says this, and told you that on the very next page that Engels himself goes on to mention a third category (agnostics).So, if you wish to hold on to the 'materialist/idealist' scheme, you have to explain why you hold onto it, in the face of evidence that Engels (its alleged originator) actually didn't hold to it himself. In fact, it's Lenin who is the real source of this nonsense, and he used judicious quotes from Engels to 'prove' his (ie. Lenin's) 'materialism'.But if we read Engels, we find that Lenin was selectively quoting Fred to bolster his own philosophy, especially his political philosophy.These issues are not merely 'pie-in-the-sky' debates about 'angels on pinheads', but are fundamentally about whether Lenin was following Marx and Engels. If he was, we're f*cked.It's my opinion that Lenin wasn't, and this opinion is based upon Marx's Theses on Feuerbach, which (to me, at least) show that Marx wasn't a 'materialist', (which Lenin was), and that Marx saw the need for the 'active side' of idealist philosophers (Kant, Hegel) to be added to the 'passive side' of crude 'materialism'.Now, Vin, if you want more information/explanation/quotes/discussion, that's fine by me, and I'll try to help.But if you want to stick to 'materialism/idealism', that's fine by me, too. But I can't help, in that case.

[Anonymous]

 But you still avoid answering any of my questions!!So in the spirit of Paxman I will ask you another:  Lenin and the bolshivics were guided by 'crude materialism'? Yes or no?

[LBird]

Vin Maratty wrote:

But you still avoid answering any of my questions!!So in the spirit of Paxman I will ask you another:  Lenin and the bolshivics were guided by 'crude materialism'? Yes or no?

Vin, I'm trying to explain. Patiently. I'm not trying to 'avoid' your questions, but trying to tell you why you are asking them in the form you are doing.Since Engels, 'Marxism' has consisted of 'materialism'. This includes, but is not restricted to, Lenin and the Bolsheviks. Marx himself rejected this 'materialism'. Engels clearly didn't understand what it was.If you want to call that 'crude materialism', then your answer is 'yes', but simple 'materialism' is more accurate.Marx wasn't a 'materialist'. That means his ideas are still useful today, when discussing the philosophy of science.If Marx is declared a 'materialist', his ideas are useless.If you consider Marx a materialist, and don't want to discuss why he isn't, that's fine by me. Just ignore what I write, and leave the discussion to those who have an interest in understanding why Marx wasn't a materialist.

[twc]

Challenge to the Anti-MaterialistsStuart explains the Soviet Union’s failure to introduce socialism as the consequence of a lapsed morality, commenting that a materialist explanation sends “shivers down his spine”.LBird explains the Soviet Union’s failure to introduce socialism as the consequence of a false materialist philosophy, because a materialist explanation is necessarily anti-democratic, and if we accept materialist explanations “we are all f—d”.It’s hard to know how Robbo explains the Soviet Union, but we do know that he stands above “crude” materialist explanations.It’s equally hard to know how Steve Colborn explains it, but we do know he openly scoffs at the explanatory power of the materialist conception of history.I challenge each of you opponents of the SPGB’s materialist explanation of the Soviet Union to demonstrate, to all of us, the power of your alternative anti-materialist explanation of its history.  Here’s your chance to prove the superiority of your alternative pro-idealist explanatory powers that you’ve hitherto extolled but never revealed. ProblemExplain non-materialistically the failure of the Soviet Union to implement socialism.Demonstrate in your own favourite chosen explanatory terms its failure, e.g., because offailed morality, orfalse materialist philosophy, orfalse dialectics, orwhatever alternative to the SPGB’s 90-year old materialist case you hold, and want to convince us of being the primary cause of the Soviet Union’s failure to implement socialism.Hic Rhodus!

[twc]

Admin.  Access to the forum has been flakey over the past days.  At last I’ve been able to connect before being timed out.Stuart.  I’m letting you call the shots and answering point by point.

stuart2112 wrote:

[twc] says “primitive accumulation” was unavoidable and necessary

 Correct.  Capitalists first needed to take possession of the means of production and to dispossess their future working class.  Morality was completely subservient to achieving this.  It is a long process of necessarily deliberate human degradation.

stuart2112 wrote:

and that morality has nothing to do with it

 False.I said exactly the opposite.  Morality has everything to do with “primitive accumulation”, whose moral function, as distinct from (and consequent upon) its economic function, is to reshape pre-capitalist morality into capitalist-class morality.Capitalist-class morality, both as agent and product of primitive accumulation, is absolutely central to the process.  Primitive accumulation is a horribly protracted process of moral attrition.In its formative stage, as an agent for bringing capitalist production into being, capitalist-class morality must be nakedly brutal towards its future working class as it shapes its future wage-slave to its exploitative needs.In its formed stage, as a product of brutal primitive accumulation, capitalist-class morality masquerades as benign towards its working class. But this new-found condescension towards the working class is no expression of universal deep-seated social connection, but of the necessary papering over of its duplicitous opposite, universal social division.I carefully chose “primitive accumulation of capital” because it is the absolutely necessary precursor to capitalism, upon which capitalism alone can rest, and without which it cannot function.Even from your opposing stance, it must be apparent to you thatsuch an historical process of proletarianization is indispensable for capitalism to function as capitalism;(ii) proletarianization can only be the dispossession of a potential, or future, working class of its private means of production;(iii) the dispossessed working class must become “morally” resigned to its absolute dependence upon the capitalist class. 

stuart2112 wrote:

that this is a matter of objective scientific fact and that you wooly minded idealists and religious nutjobs shouldn’t stand in the way of the march of history, you send shivers down my spine.

 False.  I have never ever been so cruel as to state that “wooly minded idealists and religious nutjobs shouldn’t stand in the way of the march of history”.  I have never told people how to behave.  However, I would ask you to reconsider whether your own forced hysteria, “you send shivers down my spine”, is an affectation designed precisely to tell other people how they should behave.

stuart2112 wrote:

The Bolsheviks would have agreed with you wholeheartedly.  As would Mao as he sent his troops into Tibet.

 False.And you know it to be false.  The communists are communists precisely because they claim to be able to thwart “primitive accumulation of capital” but can bypass it directly to some form of communism.  Thus, they purported not to agree with it.The standard SPGB case since the 1920s, which you’ve defended ably elsewhere, has been that(i) economic necessity predetermined that the bolsheviks would have to build capitalism by “primitive accumulation” whatever their morality and whatever they “believed”;(ii) bolshevik primitive accumulation of capital could not escape being implemented by “moral” brutality;(iii) the “moral” outcome of bolshevik primitive accumulation could not escape being a “morally” capitalist working class.Show me where the SPGB case is now wrong.

stuart2112 wrote:

Imagine your argument with a gun (state power) in its hands.  Chilling.

 Oh come now.  We don’t have to imagine that.  Primitive accumulation uses the gun (state power) in its hands everywhere it operates.  And it is operating all over the world.  If the actuality of primitive accumulation isn’t chilling enough, its almost total demolition of your favourite deep version of morality should be.If you don’t acknowledge the power of Marx’s materialist explanation of social conditions determining morality appropriate to social needs, please explain primitive accumulation in your terms.

[LBird]

twc continues to insist that if one isn't a 'materialist', one must be an 'idealist' (or, as a synonym, an 'anti-materialist' or a 'non-materialist').I've lost count of the number of time that I've shown that this simplistic, two-fold model is a creation of Engels.There are more than two options. Even Engels' own muddled texts show this.One can be something other than a simple 'materialist' and still not be an 'idealist' (or an 'anti-materialist' or a 'non-materialist').Marx, for example, was an 'idealist-materialist'. He argued for 'theory and practice', so both 'ideas' and 'nature' are required. Neither has a more fundamental role than the other. Ideas are as important as 'material' conditions.And given the central role of creative human ideas (in conjunction with nature) in building our understanding of our world (social and natural), the role of human 'morality' cannot be excluded from either politics or science.

[Anonymous]

LBird I am afraid you display a complete lack of understanding of the application of materialism. So how did Lenin and the Bolsheviks apply their materialism to the conditions in Russia? Give me your explanation!My answer is that they did not. Idealism  – Ignoring material conditionsThe Bolsheviks were idealists. They believed communism was possible when the material conditions did not exist.  Attempted to impose and idea that had not yet reached its time.Materialism   – Taking material conditions into considerationThe Mensheviks were the materialists. They recognised that capitalism and not communism was possible. Material conditions revealed the idea of communism to be a utopiaBut In the end  material conditions took precedence over naive idealism. The  SPGB used materialism to explain events in Russia and have been proved right.  

[LBird]

Vin, since Marx's 'idealism-materialism' does not 'ignore material conditions' and clearly 'takes material conditions into consideration', why do you insist you are a 'materialist'? And, if it doesn't 'ignore ideas' and does 'take ideas into account', why call it mere 'materialism'?Marx was an 'idealist-materialist', who argued for 'theory and practice'.'Materialism' can't explain 'ideas'.If it can, why isn't it called 'materialism-idealism'? Why the stress upon the 'material', to the denial of 'ideas'?Where did you get your ideology of 'materialism' from, Vin? I've argued that you've picked it up from Engels, and shown that Engels differed from Marx, and that Engels himself, when pressed, wasn't a 'materialist'.How do 'material conditions' take precedence over 'ideas'? Do those 'material conditions' require explanation? Doesn't explanation require ideas and human creativity? Or do 'material conditions' themselves tell passive humans what those 'material conditions' are?

[Anonymous]

  So how did Lenin and the Bolsheviks apply their materialism to the conditions in Russia? Give me your explanation! No answers  –  Paxman signing out  

[LBird]

Vin Maratty wrote:

So how did Lenin and the Bolsheviks apply their materialism to the conditions in Russia? Give me your explanation! No answers – Paxman signing out

So, once again, you're not interested in the topic of this thread, about how 'morality' (a human idea) fits into Marxist (idealism-materialism, theory and practice) explanations of social and political issues, especially 'socialism'?Because you and twc are unable to discuss philosophy, you revert to well-worn 'issues' like 'Russia in 1917'.These issues, about morality, ideas, science, etc. are philosophical, not about Tsarist Russia. They apply to both our understanding of the past and of the future.Whilst comrades continue to focus on '1917', we will remain marginal to today's issues.Especially to the issue of 'morality' within the Communist movement today, and future 'morality' within a Communist society.The rocks will not tell us those answers.Those answers lie in us, not 'material conditions'. The belief that 'material conditions' will form human morality is a Leninist myth. Witness the 20th century.

[LBird]

twc, I gave up trying to reason with you, after many attempts.

[twc]

LBird, you don’t have to reason with me but with everyone else on this forum.  You are answerable to them for raising undelivered-upon expectations.Instead of parading your theory, use it and prove its worth.  Show everyone else how to do it.Your pathetic excuse in your last post simply will not wash with an expectant audience.  Either your claims are vapour, or they can deliver the goods.  Demonstrate their worth in practice, you advocate of theory and practice.Also, stuart, robbo, and steve, show everyone here, and anyone else who visits this forum thread in the future, the explanatory power of your non-materialist science against traditionally agreed materialism, as adopted 90 years ago by the SPGB, and 60 years earlier than that by Marx and Engels.Don’t squib out like that moral abuser and craven intellectual coward, LBird.

[DJP]

Vin Maratty wrote:

Idealism  – Ignoring material conditionsMaterialism   – Taking material conditions into consideration

This is not right at all."Idealism" – EVERYTHING is mental stuff (whatever mental stuff may be). See Bishop Berkeley"Materialism / Physicalism" – EVERYTHING is material or physical stuff (whatver material or physical stuff may be). Marx, Deitzgen, Einstein, Dennett, Harris etcMetaphysical "Monism" – The universe is one. All things are made of one "kind of stuff" (both idealism and materialism are kinds of monism). All modern science is monistic.Metaphysical "Dualism" – The mental and the physical are the two seperate aspects or dimensions of reality. Descrates is the famous proponentMetaphysical "Pluralism" – There are many seperate aspects or dimensions of reality. Leibniz held this view.There are many different kinds of materialism and idealism. You can only reasonably argue that Marx (and Dietzgen) was not a "crude" materialist like perhaps Lenin, not that he wasn't a materialist. To do that you may as well rename yourself Rosa Lichenstien. 

[Anonymous]

DJP as materialists our  examination of  material conditions tell us that reforms cannot solve capitalism's problems. Those who believe that capitalism can me made into a heaven on earth are not materialists, they are ignoring reality, they are trying to impose there idea of heaven on earth. They believe that by the pure will  and strenghth of the 'idea' anything can be achieved. Marxists have always referred this as idealism. No? I do not see Berkely as an idealist in that sense.  

[Author]

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