Is the case for socialism, one of morality, cold logic or long term survival of our species?
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The "materialist conception of history" seems to be treated like some kind of religion round these parts – I was taken to task for "contradicting" it elsewhere, as if it were chipped into tablets of stone. No historian, not even those sympathetic to Marx, takes it all that seriously. It's a sometimes useful starting point, an interesting guide to thinking, nothing more. It tells us next to fuck all about the real problems of history and is next to no help at all in the doing of it. And, to make my last point yet again, it has nothing at all to do with the question that started this thread.
Vin Maratty wrote:But both morality and logic have been around for thousands of years. Slavery was 'logical' and 'morally right' in it's day. Why has it become illogical and immoral today?Because 'logic' and 'morality' are social and thus historical?That is, they are not 'eternal' but change.I agree with those comrades who stress these (so-called) ideological factors.Marx wasn't a 'materialist', in the way that Vin (and some others on other threads) has suggested.Marx was an 'idealist-materialist', as am I. Theory and practice.If 'Marxists' think Communism is going to be brought by the 'material' rocks, then, also like Marx, "I'm not a Marxist!".
LBird wrote:Marx was an 'idealist-materialist', as am I. Theory and practice.No, he wasn't. I think there's only ever been one person who's claimed to be an 'idealist-materialist'. Still I guess that's one up on square circles.
DJP wrote:LBird wrote:Marx was an 'idealist-materialist', as am I. Theory and practice.No, he wasn't. I think there's only ever been one person who's claimed to be an 'idealist-materialist'. Still I guess that's one up on square circles.
You stick to looking for 'morality' from 'rocks', DJP!
As long as they more or accept what socialism is and more or less agree how to achieve it i don't think i really care how they became convinced. Their inspiration for all i care can be the Sermon on the Mount (or in Edinburgh's case, Sermon at the Mound !!.)We all reached our similar agreed conclusions by our separate individual and often very different paths. As we are not yet a class movement or a mass party i don't think we can seriously place the reason down to the MCH but accept that for the moment we are an idiosyncratic expression of it. What is that saying…nothing can stop an idea whose time has come…perhaps we got just a little bit while longer to wait for that to happen!!!I suppose the question does have a bearing on how we should direct our campaigns of persuasion but the thread doesn't seem to be addressing it.If we discuss abstract philosophical (or economical) questions then we should be relating it to practical politics. I have just been reading a bit on crisis theory and ignored all the theoretical arguments, much of which i couldn't even follow, and concentrated on just what it meant in real terms to accept or reject one theory against another.Already in a few threads on this discussion list , i simply got lost in how the topic affected my actual daily life or even my outlook on life. Not saying these things should not be discussed here, it is the purpose of the discussion list, but just don't expect it to be the most popular.
alanjjohnstone wrote:If we discuss abstract philosophical (or economical) questions then we should be relating it to practical politics.That’s precisely what Marx’s materialist conception of history does for practical politics.The materialist conception of history reveals the following highly practical politics to our highly practical species:a part of our species possesses the means of life of the whole of our species;a class of society owns-and-controls all of our society’s means of production;the owning-and-controlling class of society lives at the expense of society;the owning-and-controlling class need not labour for society;the owning-and-controlling class can live off the proceeds of the social labour it owns-and-controls;the owning-and-controlling class exploits the dispossessed-and-controlled class;the owning-and-controlling class robs-and-rules society;a society, so constituted, is the possession of its owning-and-controlling class;a society, so constituted, is riven in two;a society, so divided, survives in part because material conditions — for long periods of history — offer society-as-a-whole no viable alternative mode of production;a society, so divided, survives in part because it creates a social consciousness that justifies and rationalizes class rule;for its own survival, and thus for the survival of its own society, the dominant-class creates a dominant-class ideology;an indispensable function of dominant-class ideology is to unite actual social division into an imagined social unity;a society, so divided, necessarily breeds a class struggle between the possessors and the dispossessed;the dispossessed in a divided society can only transcend the divided society that dispossesses them by gaining ownership-and-control of the means of life;all political activity that is not directed towards gaining common-ownership and democratic-control of the means of life cannot transcend the bounds of a society based on private-ownership and private-control of the means of life;all political activity that is not directed towards gaining common-ownership and democratic-control of the means of life is socially reactionary;all other political action is, consciously or unconsciously, directed towards maintaining a society based upon class rule;the world socialist Declaration of Principles and Object are the only practical political means to socialism.
stuartw2112 wrote:No historian, not even those sympathetic to Marx, takes [the materialist conception of history] all that seriously.It tells us next to **** all about the real problems of history and is next to no help at all in the doing of it.[The materialist conception of history] has nothing at all to do with the question that started this thread.Marx took the materialist conception of history extremely seriously all throughout Capital — “The general conclusion at which I arrived and which, once reached, became the guiding principle of my studies”.¹I don’t know what else Marx would have to say to convince you that he “took it seriously”.World socialists also take it extremely seriously — see my last two points above. It is the foundation of their case against capitalism and for socialism.It is not a dilettante toy that you play with whenever it suits your intellectual fancy.Most “historians”, as prodigiously skilled analysts as many of them are, fail to see beneath the concrete contingencies of historical situations. Few are consistent scientists like Marx, and cannot comprehend the scientific, and therefore testable, necessity to explain the concrete by abstract theory — the materialist conception of history — which is a non-trivial task.The sort of history you seem to allude to is largely descriptive, and ultimately like any pursuit that “restricts itself to the facts” finds that the facts themselves are tendentious, and so the “factual” historian is forced against his will to choose his own alternative theory of history to make sense of his “facts” or merely rest his “factual” case upon his own persuasiveness as an author. Yes, Marx is no help to such an “historian”.The materialist conception of history has everything to do with it. It is the only way of conceiving it. Social being determines consciousness.Footnote ¹ Marx. “A Contribution to a Critique of Political Economy”, Preface. ↩ [Back]
twc wrote:Most “historians”, as prodigiously skilled analysts as many of them are, fail to see beneath the concrete contingencies of historical situations. Few are consistent scientists like Marx, and cannot comprehend the scientific, and therefore testable, necessity to explain the concrete by abstract theory — the materialist conception of history — which is a non-trivial task.The sort of history you seem to allude to is largely descriptive, and ultimately like any pursuit that “restricts itself to the facts” finds that the facts themselves are tendentious, and so the “factual” historian is forced against his will to choose his own alternative theory of history to make sense of his “facts” or merely rest his “factual” case upon his own persuasiveness as an author. Yes, Marx is no help to such an “historian”.There is much to what you say, twc, about 'factual historians' and their method.But 'abstract theory' allows us to comprehend 'unobservables', like structures, which is just what Marx did.To call these 'unobservables' material seems to be stretching the term's meaning too far, though.And as for 'testable', the problem is that it's the 'abstract theory' which often determines what counts as 'evidence' or 'facts', and so whether a 'test' is 'proved' or not, remains a function of the 'theory', not of the 'unadorned facts' (sic).A better name for this approach is Realism, rather than Materialism. If Marx had had this term available to him, he would have written about 'the realist conception of history'.
Just to say that I agree with SocialistPunk, robbo203 and stuartw2112, that 'morality' is an essential part of the case for socialism.Right and wrong are attributes of human thinking about 'material conditions', and in that sense are as much about the 'ideal' as about the 'material'.The 'material' does not 'throw up' or 'bring forward' a correct moral position to passive humans.Our morality has to also take account of 'unobservables', like 'value'.
Marx wrote:The value of commodities is the very opposite of the coarse materiality of their substance, not an atom of matter enters into its composition.[my bold]https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1867-c1/ch01.htm#S3
LBird wrote:'morality' is an essential part of the case for socialism.That depends on how 'morality' is defined. I certainly believe that certain things hurt humans and should not happen but I do not need a religion to guide me. But more importantly 'morality' will not remove the wages system: The working class will, in its own economic interests.
The most interesting and difficult part of the question had been missed here. It is not to be found in dead debates about 19th century philosophy, or in the question whether socialism has a moral element (obviously it does) or should be made logically (how else? Illogically?). It is whether the survival of our species hangs on the question. This is more difficult. Those who argue that strong government intervention and subsidy of alternatives are enough to sufficiently protect the environment would seem to have history on their side. If climate change is a special case the argument would have to be made. And even if it could be shown that the survival of our species hangs in the balance and socialism is the answer, there is evidence that it is not a good idea to say so – despair over our future is not a good motivator and tends to make people less rather than more likely to act. Greens in this country and gay rights campaigners in the US, for example, have both found that it pays to appeal more to people's sense of morality and fair play than it does to make reasoned scientific arguments about how doomed we are or how about unreasonable our beliefs are.
I'm confused by what you are saying, Stuart. What is it you are saying?"Those who argue that strong government intervention and subsidy of alternatives are enough to sufficiently protect the environment would seem to have history on their side. "How so? It appears they have failure on their side if the prognosis for the future is accurate. Thing have got worse, not better fo all the supposed intervention by government legislation and subsidies to alternative fuels. Bio-fuel quotas have contributed a side-effect in exacerbating poverty and food shortages . And need i go into carbon trading agreements?Do you expect climate change to be effectively solved by governments? That the best means is to mobilise a campaign for reforms? Which ones?Certainly, researchers have found that to refute conspiracists, disputing the facts simply reinforces their beliefs in conspiracy theory. Research into anti-vax even found it increased those who were anti vax . http://www.motherjones.com/environment/2014/02/vaccine-denial-psychology-backfire-effectSo it is true that mere reason does not always have an effect.But does morality and fair play? Charities/christianity have been playing our heart strings for centuries with limited success. Does emotional blackmail work any better?I have no idea how best to present our case, except by maintaining a consistent honesty about it. Even some of our most bitter critics rarely attack our integrity.On another thread which you probably not looked at we talked about how the WSPA in 1948 was acknowledging the question of effectiveness and lack of success. On Libcom i just brought up how we are often ridiculed for going sice 1904 without results but the IWW which started just a year later escapes that criticism.But i keep asking myself, if we have failed, have others succeeeded? And i keep coming up with the same answer. No. I fully recognise a lot of changes in social attitudes have taken place in my lifetime. But has it been because of legislation. Maybe so. Smoking is perhaps an example. Anti-racism and anti-descrimination laws, too, perhaps? Or do they just legitimise changes taking place rather than promoting it. Or do PC politics simply drive these attitudes underground? But then just being exposed day to day to immigration leads to tolerance.http://www.telegraph.co.uk/science/science-news/10674167/Racists-absorb-tolerance-in-ethnically-mixed-communities.htmlThis research backs up the earlier evidence that it is in areas of low immigrant percentage that more of the fear of it exists.I'm offering no answers and still seek them to why people change and we already readily admit that they have. Sometimes very rapidly.But then we also witness many who do not change and simply shift their ground. I am a proponent of the LHO did it school in the JFK shooting and to get to the kernal i will often say…"ok give me the one piece of decisive evidence that convinces you that he didn't " When i then explain away that…lo and behold …something else is then primary…then another …then another…no matter how often reasonable explanations are offered , they keep shifting the goal posts. (James Randi often has the same problem when he tries to debunk the woo-woo as he calls them.)When it comes to conspiracies it doesn't matter if the person is left wing or right wing. I simply got fed up responding on Media Lens to the "radicals" who didn't realise how "conservative"" with small c they were even if they convinced themselves they were "anti". The name 9/11 truthers says it all.Anyways, too much quoting of the MCH simply turns us into determinists…history does fuck all…people do…but what sets them moving? ….ahhhh….You say despair doesn't but many such as Mattick rely on things getting worse …so it isn't despair but hope and optimism…the belief that we will win…the confidence in what we are doing…the view that set-backs are only temporary…subjective factors and …dare i say it moral positions…or as Pannekoek and Dietzgen called them…spiritual in the non religious sense.
StuartI may be missing something but do you believe the class struggle – which is essentially an economic struggle of conflicting economic interests – has anything to do with socialism?Setting aside 'morality', all I am saying is that the class struggle is the basis upon which the case for socialism rests.
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