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

[LBird]

Vin Maratty wrote:

I assume this is view of the Socialist Party…. “Mans outlook is not just a reflection of economic conditions. Social development is the result of mans action on circumstances. Economic conditions develop certain ideas in the mind of men which move them to alter their conditions – and so the process goes on. As we have already mentioned man makes his own history but only out of the conditions that are to his hand. It is reciprocal – man and conditions acting upon each other.” …. 

[my altered bold]Vin, can I comment on this party view?It is contradictory while the bolded part stands.It needs to read "Humanity develops certain ideas in its mind regarding economics conditions…"The active factor, as rightly stressed in most of the quote, is "Men" (ie. humanity).The active factor is not 'economic conditions'. Thus, it can't be 'reciprocal'. 'Conditions' do not act upon humans; humans act within the constraints of their 'conditions'.Humans are the creative, active element. That is why we can 'change the world', as opposed to passively being 'developed' by it.

[SocialistPunk]

Only just managed to get on here today, so I'm probably a bit behind with what's been going on and I dare not change pages for fear of being timed out of the site.I'm gonna try something very simple here. I like simple me.Like it or not, contained within the political framework of socialism are a set of values. Those values are essentially at odds with the values of capitalism. Told ya it was gonna be simple.Let's start with socialist values of common ownership and democratic control, then we have production for human need. International working class solidarity and one of my favourites, "from each according to ability, to each according to need". I'll also throw in open democratic participation.Now the capitalist versions. Minority ownership and control of wealth, production for profit. Nationalism and racism. Then there is the huge waste of human resources with the likes of unemployment and useless employment and of course, can't pay can't have. To top it off we have governance over populations by either pseudo democracies or outright dictatorships.When people come into contact with real socialist politics and wish to understand it fully, they learn (as I did) just how capitalism operates. As a budding socialist we are left with a choice, to take on board our newly discovered socialist values and reject capitalism, or continue to bury our heads in the sand and accept capitalism and the misery it causes. In effect we make a conscious choice of what we see as a right and wrong way to organise society. In doing so we are knowingly taking a hard road in trying to convince the majority of the worlds population that we have an alternative to a system (capitalism) that they do not even fully understand.Faced with a choice between the current horror and waste of human potential that capitalism gives us on a daily basis and the opportunity for achieving true human well being and nurtured potential within a global socialist society, it boils down to a choice each potential socialist must make. A simple (or not so simple judging by this thread) choice of right and wrong.

Wikipedia wrote:

Morality (from the Latin moralitas "manner, character, proper behavior") is the differentiation of intentions, decisions, and actions between those that are "good" (or right) and those that are "bad" (or wrong).[citation needed] Morality can be a body of standards or principles derived from a code of conduct from a particular philosophy, religion, culture, etc., or it can derive from a standard that a person believes should be universal.[1] Morality may also be specifically synonymous with "goodness" or "rightness." Immorality is the active opposition to morality (i.e. opposition to that which is good or right), while amorality is variously defined as an unawareness of, indifference toward, or disbelief in any set of moral standards or principles.[ 

[twc]

LBird wrote:

All science contains 'metaphysical assumptions' (or an 'ontology'), that are 'untestable' and thus are 'unrejectable'.(1)

Quote (1) is a fatal misunderstanding of scientific practice that arises from your quasi-theological misreading of Kuhn and Lakatos.  You mistake scientific practice as being indistinguishable from religious bigotry.Modern scientific practice had to prove itself historically under surveillance of powerful anti-scientific social bigotry, whose ‘metaphysical assumptions’ were only too forcibly made cognizant to everyone from birth till death.Science was consciously designed to deal with the totally obvious fact that all human activity is based on unrecognized assumptions that can only become apparent when later they come back to bite us. As defence against this, scientists adopted the only possible practical solution, and built open testability, and reliance on vulnerability, into scientific theory.This genuine openness exposed science to all the standard charges ever levelled against it, and of which its modern practitioners are totally aware.Thus, the charge of science being only “theory” was recognized from its birth, and immediately seized upon, as in the tendentious preface by Osiander to Copernicus’s “de Revolutionibus”, our first modern scientific revolution.Thus, the charge against science being only the best we can do at present was immediately recognized and seized upon by its hostile opponents in their haste to exploit its open vulnerability.But, being open, what better testing ground for scientific theory could there ever be but scientific practice itself.  Scientific theory continually tests itself, day-in, day-out, in practical application.These obvious “weaknesses” of vulnerable, testable theory are actually the strengths of science.  They turn it into mankind’s consciously crafted practical solution to the insidious problem of how to flush out our hidden assumptions, and thereby defeat the paralysis of bigotry [your quote (1)].I totally stand by my assertion that

wrote:

Marxian materialism is a scientific abstraction from experience.  Unlike a metaphysical assumption, it is scientifically testable, and so vulnerable to rejection.

A scientific theory is founded upon internally unchallengeable abstractions.  But that is only the start of the story.Because scientific theory is directly vulnerable and testable, the foundation upon which it is built becomes indirectly vulnerable and testable.  When theory fails, it takes down its foundation with it. That’s when a foundation is revealed to be ultimately challengeable.The decisive challenge to theory comes when its foundation can no longer support its superstructure, and so can no longer perform the practical task it was designed for.  The foundation is proven to be practically worthless, an impediment to scientific progress, and so must be rejected by scientific practice.We are dealing here with the difference between Kuhnian “normal” science and Kuhnian “revolutionary” science.  Kuhn described a long-term static phase, during which the implications of a scientific principle are laboriously worked out over time, followed by a rapid dynamic phase transition to overcome the paralysis of a foundation that has been proven to be wanting.¹That is something your quote (1) misrepresents.Theoretical phases [or paradigms] are succeeded, through phase transitions, by new phases.  Transitions expose hitherto unshakable foundations to the ultimate test, and reject them along with the phase they supported.  Thereupon, Minerva’s owl spreads its wings [Hegel’s reference to wisdom coming too late to save the now-comprehended defunct phase.]A theory’s hidden assumptions are only revealed, and so can only be recognized as such, and comprehended as such, after that theory completes its phase transition into its brave new phase.  Phase transition is the scientific “revolution”, precisely as Kuhn calls it, that lays bare abstractions as mere assumptions, because they really were historically hidden from scientific scrutiny.  It is scientific revolution alone, and nothing else, that proves a theory’s foundation abstractions to have been merely historically necessary assumptions.Thus science must, and does, prove its hitherto unrecognized assumptions to be such.  That is a remarkable capability unacknowledged by quote (1).Revolution, in science and society, according to materialists, directly forces us to acknowledge theory’s ultimate subservience to the external world.  It is through revolution alone that we overcome historically necessary barriers of our own making.We are subservient to the world, and must struggle to cognize it in order to comprehend it, and act out our solutions to the problems it poses us, as well as acting out new solutions for the necessarily unforeseen problems our always temporary solutions eventually pose for us when they eventually outrun their historical course.It has always been the practice of dualists, since Kant, to dwell on the acknowledged vulnerability of necessarily open scientific practice.  Engels took them on precisely for throwing up “hidden assumptions” or “lack of closure”, or some such, as impenetrable obstacles to objective knowledge. As he replied, experiment and industry disprove them.  To ask for more disproof is to revert to a realm of philosophy, in which nothing can be disproved, or proved, by practice.Footnote¹ Marx similarly described the working out of social relations of ownership and control of the means of life.  Gould replicated Kuhn and Marx in his evolutionary punctuated equilibrium of stasis and speciation.  Hegel preceded all of them. ↩ [Back]

[LBird]

It's a real shame that you don't do discussion, twc.

[twc]

Like most of your claims, this one relied on the persuasive power of unexamined popular prejudice, which is far easier to sling than to rebut. Marx is owed some time for a reasoned examination and defence against your charge that he based his science on untestable and unrejectable ‘metaphysical assumptions'.You, on the other hand, have been asked to explain the Soviet Union by something other than, and superior to, the 90-year old materialist explanation of primitive accumulation of capital.Since you claim a materialist explanation is identical to Leninism, you clearly have an opinion.  Perhaps it was, as you implied, a failure of 19th century mechanical materialism, or of dialectics, or of hidden assumptions, or of whatever.  Please give us a reasoned explanation.You owe it to everyone on this forum to do more than just snipe, and you must demonstrate the explanatory power of your materialist–idealist dualism before all.Thar would be a very good practical start to “doing discussion”.  The “real shame” is your squibbing to back up the charges you so freely sling, and then duck away from.Show us how genuinely open, vulnerable and testable materialist–idealism is, and demonstrate the superiority of its explanatory power.

[LBird]

I'm always a sucker for a discussion. I know that I've tried before with you, twc (oh so many times!), but I'll take your present offer to discuss at face value.

twc wrote:

Marx is owed some time for a reasoned examination and defence against your charge that he based his science on untestable and unrejectable ‘metaphysical assumptions'.

[my bold]The key point here for discussion, is 'science'. To examine 'Marx's science' it is logically necessary to examine what we mean by 'science'. After that, we can compare/contrast 'his' version of it with other versions of it.So, shall we discuss whether (any version of) science is 'based on untestable and unrejectable 'metaphysical assumptions', or isn't?We would need to give an example of a science which does not contain these 'metaphysical assumptions', and, from long experience of this type of discussion, I think we should get to the 'heart of the beast' and discuss 'physics'. If we discuss any other scientific discipline, and discover 'metaphysical assumptions', the unwary and unread will always fall back on the excuse that "Oh, that's not real science, only physics is real, hard, science!", so we'll have to address that eventually.IMO, it's only when physics is addressed, and shown to have 'metaphysical assumptions', that we can move on, and deal with 'science' as it really is, rather than 'science' as scientists claim it is. It's been shown that scientists are the last ones to know what they are actually doing.[edit] For other comrades: the relevence of this discussion to the thread, is that it will be argued that 'morality' sits within 'metaphysical assumptions'.

[twc]

Please proceed. Explain (1) what you mean by science, and (2) what you take to be the incontestable metaphysical assumptions of physics that (3) include morality.

[LBird]

twc wrote:

Please proceed. Explain (1) what you mean by science, and (2) what you take to be the incontestable metaphysical assumptions of physics that (3) include morality.

Hold your horses, twc! Keen as ever to jump to the end of a discussion process, eh? In fact, your ‘method’ is usually a peremptory demand that we skip the ‘discussion’ entirely, and move instantly onto passively reading your closing, lengthy diatribe!No, this time, it’s either a discussion or nothing. That means we can ask each other questions and for clarification. A discussion is not merely the presenting of already finished statements, which are then read at one another.Let’s keep this to your ‘demand’ number 1, suitably amended to read ‘what we mean by science’. I think that your ‘demands’ 2 and 3 will be answered by our discussion of what we mean by ‘science’. If not, we can then discuss them.I’d like to open with three statements by Marx, which I think set suitable grounds for a discussion between socialist comrades about ‘science’.

Marx, in Capital Vol. III, wrote:

… all science would be superfluous if the outward appearance and the essence of things directly coincided.

http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1894-c3/ch48.htm

Marx, in Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts, wrote:

… the senses of the social man differ from those of the non-social man. Only through the objectively unfolded richness of man’s essential being is the richness of subjective human sensibility (a musical ear, an eye for beauty of form – in short, senses capable of human gratification, senses affirming themselves as essential powers of man) either cultivated or brought into being. For not only the five senses but also the so-called mental senses, the practical senses (will, love, etc.), in a word, human sense, the human nature of the senses, comes to be by virtue of its object, by virtue of humanised nature. The forming of the five senses is a labour of the entire history of the world down to the present. The sense caught up in crude practical need has only a restricted sense.

http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1844/manuscripts/comm.htm

Marx, in Capital Vol. I, wrote:

Labour is, in the first place, a process in which both man and Nature participate, and in which man of his own accord starts, regulates, and controls the material re-actions between himself and Nature. He opposes himself to Nature as one of her own forces, setting in motion arms and legs, head and hands, the natural forces of his body, in order to appropriate Nature’s productions in a form adapted to his own wants. By thus acting on the external world and changing it, he at the same time changes his own nature. He develops his slumbering powers and compels them to act in obedience to his sway. We are not now dealing with those primitive instinctive forms of labour that remind us of the mere animal. An immeasurable interval of time separates the state of things in which a man brings his labour-power to market for sale as a commodity, from that state in which human labour was still in its first instinctive stage. We pre-suppose labour in a form that stamps it as exclusively human. A spider conducts operations that resemble those of a weaver, and a bee puts to shame many an architect in the construction of her cells. But what distinguishes the worst architect from the best of bees is this, that the architect raises his structure in imagination before he erects it in reality. At the end of every labour-process, we get a result that already existed in the imagination of the labourer at its commencement. He not only effects a change of form in the material on which he works, but he also realises a purpose of his own that gives the law to his modus operandi, and to which he must subordinate his will.

https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1867-c1/ch07.htmI’ll try to base my arguments about science upon those of Marx, expressed in these quotes. We can add others, if required. I think that the ideas produced by philosophers of science during the 20th century fit well with Marx’s views, which were expressed a century earlier than the views of those thinkers.(I should make it clear, as a warning to other comrades, that an entirely different basis for ‘science’ can be created out of other Marxian quotes, passages which are much more in line with Engels’ ‘materialist’ views, but that problem inheres in the contradictory nature of Marx’s works. We have to decide for ourselves which ‘Marx’ we agree with.)If you don’t agree with these texts being the basis of our discussion about science, twc, can you outline with quotes what you think should form the basis of our discussion?If you take this option, perhaps a comparison between two sets of quotes can help to illustrate our differences. If you don’t have any problem with my choices, we can proceed to illustrate and broaden Marx’s views, and see if we draw different conclusions about the meaning of his words.

[twc]

First QuoteWhat do you think about your first quote, and Marx’s use of the hegelian term “essence”?  Fire away, if you want to start a discussion.  I’ll respond.Second QuoteI’ll discuss the second quote in a following post.It can only be done justice to from the standpoint of Marx’s 1844 notes as he worked his way towards what we have come to know as the 1846 “German Ideology”, but which the new MEGA claims was not a single entity but is a heavily edited compilation from multiple original sources that were collated into a unity by Ryazanov and team.  It will be interesting to read the original mice-unchewn sources when they appear in English translation.  Third QuoteYour third quote amply demonstrates the problem of uncritical quotation, the practice of isolating a paragraph from its author’s context which alone lends it the meaning its author intended.  Here is its author’s intended context.Marx is discussing the production of use-values under the capitalist mode of production, but he temporarily changes tack to re-consider it, in abstraction, under any mode of production.

Marx, Capital, Ch. 7, wrote:

We shall, therefore, in the first place [=for the time being], have to consider the labour-process independently of the particular form it assumes under given social conditions.

Then follows one of the grandest of pæans to the socialist labour process ever penned by the mature Marx, which includes your extract (3).  It rivals anything written by William Morris on the joyful affirmation of our humanity engrossed in the social activity of producing use-values, alas only under socialism.Then follows a passage in which Marx reminds us of his temporary assumption, of abstracting from specific modes of production, lest we get swept away.

Marx, Capital, Ch. 7, wrote:

The labour-process, resolved as above into its simple elementary factors, is human action with a view to the production of use-values, appropriation of natural substances to human requirements; it is the necessary condition for effecting exchange of matter between man and Nature;  it is the everlasting Nature-imposed condition of human existence, and therefore is independent of every social phase of that existence, or rather, is common to every such phase.

He then proceeds to snap us out of our reverie, bringing us back to the capitalist mode of production, where production of use-values is entirely subservient to the production of capital.

Marx, Capital, Ch. 7, wrote:

Let us now return to our would-be capitalist. …From the instant [the producer of use-value] steps into the workshop, the use-value of his labour-power, and therefore also its use, which is labour, belongs to the capitalist.

Thus Marx is saying, contrary to the apparent import of quote (3), when it is offered in isolation of Marx’s intended context, that the reality of the capitalist production of use-values is the very negation of joyful life affirmation, but is its exact opposite, its contradiction, namely joyless life denial.Marx is contrasting your quotation with actual capitalist production in which, instead of the producer of use-values gaining mastery over nature, under capitalism he gains subjection both to nature and to man, because neither his own labour nor the nature he engages with are his own, nor do they serve direct social needs but instead they are compelled to serve the directly anti-social means to the private end of capital expansion.There can be few clearer accounts of life denial.Your isolated quote is no affirmation of idealism, but in its intended context is the materialist denial of affirmative idealism.The best capitalist producer of use-values is worse than that of the worst of bees or spiders, for, unlike them, he is far more endowed with consciousness than they.  Lucky bees, lucky spiders.Your isolated quote, extracted from the context Marx intended, inverts, contradicts, negates Marx’s message.I suggest you reread all of the short Part III, Ch. 7, § 1 “The Labour Process or the Production of Use Values” to comprehend what Marx is really saying.This tiny section is the prelude to § 2 “The Production of Surplus Value”, which unmistakably drives the materialist nail into any implied idealist interpretation of mankind being able to chart and realize its own creative destiny under capitalism.If mankind could chart its own life-affirming destiny under capitalism, there’d be no need to replace capitalism with socialism, since we could all affirm our joy in creating use-values untrammeled under our present social system.Finally, Marx expresses emotional joy in human creation of social use-values.  But he consciously controls his emotion when he contrasts capitalism’s destruction of this joy, all the better to let his temporarily elated reader draw his own emotional response and build his own intellectually informed resolve to dismantle the capitalist mode of production that cripples him.

[LBird]

Oh dear. As I suspected.

[twc]

Squibbing, even on your own changed goalposts.  True to form.

[LBird]

It was your chance to outline where you get your ideas from, whether from Marx or from some other source.Then we could have compared these choices, and seen if we can uncover some underlying assumptions about why we made those particular choices.I try to be open about my influences (indeed, I think being transparent about ideology is a key to scientific method, because it allows the 'scientist' to be interrogated about their assumptions, prior to examining their 'scientific results'), and I'm always suspicious about those who claim to be 'scientists' but hide their influences/philosophy/ideology. I suspect most of the problem is that these so-called 'scientists' don't even recognise that they have underlying/unspoken inputs into their 'science'.As I've said before, since Einstein it has been clear, to all who wish to consider the problem, that the 'position' of the 'observer' is a key element in producing 'knowledge'.This is as true for physics as for sociology.As to what you think science is, twc, I don't really have a clue. You seem to think that 'holding forth about The Truth' is a method likely to influence comrades. I disagree, and I think that discussion and persuasion (y'know, politics) is a better method.The real tragedy is that you seem to have read into some of these issues, which many other comrades haven't, and so feel out of their depth and unable to contribute, but you don't seem to read anything critically. You take things 'at face value', ironically enough, for someone who seems to have 'seen through' the lies of the capitalists about their 'economy' and 'market'.I find this perplexing, because I would have thought that once comrades have seen through the lies of the bourgeoisie about 'The Market', they would then find it relatively easy to begin to see through their lies about 'objective science' and 'objective knowledge'.What's worse, is that some of their own philosophers have taken this step already, which is why the debates about 'science' are so venomous within academia. 'Scientific Truth' is one of the mainstays of bourgeois rule, one of their 'ruling ideas', and some academics can see the dangers for that rule if too many people start to question the priestly caste of 'The Scientists'.But, given all this, you want to remain in the 19th century, twc.

[twc]

You shift the goalposts again.  So now my problem is 19th century science, with its belief in the possibility of objective science and of scientific objectivity.Let me break it to you gently that your two heroes of 20th century “critical realism” have objective 19th century feet of clay.  Critical-realist historian, Adam Schaff, believes in the possibility of objective science, and has a chapter devoted to it.  Critical-realist philosopher, Roy Bhaskar, even holds that “dialectical connections, relations and contradictions are themselves ontological—objectively real”.Hang on, that can’t possibly be true.  Oh yes it is!  But they can’t do this to their disciple.  Sadly, they can, and did, long before you discovered them.How can your Bhaskar believe in dialectics, the very monstrosity that, in your literal apoplexy, was the “last refuge of a scoundrel".  So your Bhaskar turns out to be a scoundrel.  Your make-belief world is rapidly falling apart!From what I’ve observed of your behaviour, that’s no setback for a “critical thinker” to discover that his heroes disappoint him, just like the fallible Pannekoek, and Marx, and Engels, and Dietzgen before them.  None can attain your “critical” skeptical-dualist standards.There is one obvious explanation.  Your aversion to any possibility of objectivity arises from your crude dualistic “theory” of relationships.  If there is a single person on this thread who literally believes in what, for everyone else, is a stock caricature of economic determinism it is your very self.  You, as “theorist” of relational relativities, are a living caricature of the crude economic determinist.It is therefore tempting to ask what you think about the actuality of (1) god, (2) darwinian evolution, (3) global warming, (4) exploitation, (5) classes, (6) capitalism, (7) socialism.But you’ll just shift the goalposts.  Frankly, I’m fed up.  Finis.

[LBird]

twc, you've no idea about my critical views of Schaff or Bhaskar, or anyone else, or anything else, because you never discuss anything.If you really are gone, thank god!Perhaps a final comment: look up the meaning of 'discussion' in a dictionary. I think you'll be very surprised.

[twc]

I offer you the following statement as a fair, clear, and open summary of your position, as I have gleaned it from your many posts.  To me, this statement makes sense of most of the things you’ve said in your posts.Please feel free to amend any misunderstandings, as appropriate, or else tell me in no uncertain terms that I totally lack any comprehension of your actual position, in which case you had far better lay out your own fair, clear, and open summary of your position.Social consciousness is the collective consciousnesses of different social-groups as well of the common consciousness of society as a whole.Social-groups comprise marxian classes [e.g. capitalists, workers] and professions [e.g. science, marketeers].A social-group actively determines its consciousness in accordance with its own interests [e.g. its position, function, needs, etc.] within society.A social-group’s truths are relative to the social-group itself.  They are not socially absolute in the sense of being in the interests of any other social-group or in the interests of the whole of society.The metaphysical assumptions behind all social-group consciousness, and so the metaphysical assumptions underpinning all relative truths, are their unstated expression of their social-group’s interests within society.Metaphysical assumptions may be hidden from the social-group that holds them [e.g. they may unconsciously express capitalist interests, or scientific interests, etc.].Only society as a whole can actively decide on which competing relative truths are in society’s own interests.Consequently society as a whole is the active arbiter of its own socially absolute truths.Thus, all truths, both relative truths and absolute truths, are inextricably social products [e.g. capitalist truths, or scientific truths, etc.]All truths, even socially absolute truths, ultimately rest on the originating social-group’s metaphysical assumptions, which express its social-group interests.A democratic society [like socialism] actively decides its interests democratically.Therefore a democratic society decides absolute truth democratically by universal suffrage, i.e. by voting on it.On these principles, a socialist society democratically affirms its own interest, absolutizes its relative truths, and socially homogenizes its common social-group consciousness.

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