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

[DJP]

LBird I was referring to the quote "theory determines what we observe". Things like the illusion I have posted show that it's not that simple.See also the link to the "colour phi phenomena" and read the stuff by Dennett on the "Cartesian Theatre". You should read some philosophy of mind.

[twc]

I’ll get to the substantive issue in due course, since it was over this substantive issue, you might recall, that LBird lost his Idealist virginity and transformed himself into a lascivious Materialist–Idealist.For the moment, you two [robbo and bird] might ponder the following account by Marx of his scientific method, and then show me the courtesy of answering one really important question for socialists that arises out of your contrary view to Marx’s.Proximity is Not IdentityFirst consider this.  Hegel and Marx are almost identical in their scientific method and their method of development, and especially in their joint recognition of the truism that “we are part of the very thing we study”.Though very close, they were actually diametrically opposite, and Marx upturned Hegel to set him right side up.  You guys may think you’re close to Marx, but you are still standing on your heads.  You mistake proximity for identity—the most embarrassing gaffe of them all.Marx’s Scientific MethodNow consider this.  Marx explained his scientific method with absolute clarity in Capital Volume 1, and there is no room for misunderstanding him.I therefore quote Marx’s account of his scientific method in full, but break his single paragraph into numbered lines for easy reference.  We can thus consider these lines separately, as necessary, at our leisure.“Vico says, human history differs from natural history in this, that we have made the former, but not the latter.”“Technology discloses man’s mode of dealing with Nature, the process of production by which he sustains his life, and thereby also lays bare the mode of formation of his social relations, and of the mental conceptions that flow from them.”“Every history (even the history of religion) that fails to take account of this material basis, is uncritical.”“It is, in reality, much easier to discover by analysis the earthly core of the misty creations of religion, than, conversely, it is, to develop from the actual relations of life the corresponding celestialised forms of those relations.”“The latter method is the only materialistic, and therefore the only scientific one.”“The weak points in the abstract materialism of natural science, a materialism that excludes history and its process are at once evident from the abstract and ideological conceptions of its spokesmen, whenever they venture beyond the bounds of their own speciality.”Question:  Is Capitalist Exploitation Actual?For your brand of Idealism, capitalist exploitation is mere working-class ideology.  [Capitalists shouldn’t hold it, but in practice more capitalists seem cognizant of the source of their revenue—exploitation—than members of the working class.]Since capitalist exploitation is mere working-class ideology, capitalist exploitation needn’t actually be taking place in society!Please then explain to us:how you ideologists can ever know that capitalist exploitation is actually taking place in society?

[LBird]

DJP wrote:

LBird I was referring to the quote "theory determines what we observe". Things like the illusion I have posted show that it's not that simple.

Well, at least we're getting somewhere, comrades!I agree, DJP; truly, "it's not that simple".

[Anonymous]

LBird wrote:

Vin Maratty wrote:

I agree, it is an absurd proposition.

It might be 'absurd' to you, Vin, but it's the basis of modern philosophy of science.Oh yeah, and of Marx's view of science, too. He was far in advance of the bourgeoisie, which is one of the reasons we still read him in a way we don't read many positivist scientists from the 19th century.Rather than just dismissing 20th century philosophy of science, from Popper, through Kuhn and Feyerabend, to Lakatos, you should read some. I'm sure you'll find it very illuminating, comrade!

 I read Popper a few years back but I didn't come across any 'proletarian science' By the way, I thought your opinion was that these were bourgeois scientists

[LBird]

Vin Maratty wrote:

By the way, I thought your opinion was that these were bourgeois scientists

Yeah, they are, Vin. And they're just catching up with Marx.As for us Communists, we're throwing away our 150 years' head start, and reverting to 19th century 'scientific socialism'.

[twc]

LBird wrote:

As for us Communists, we're throwing away our 150 years' head start, and reverting to 19th century 'scientific socialism'.

Drivel.  Stop feeling sorry for yourself!Show us the might of your ideological science, by answering the question I posed in #77.Bourgeois philosophy is insidious because it perfectly reflects the dominant thought of our society, and so appears perfectly correct.  Falling for its might is absolutely evident in the postings of DJP, Robbo and especially yourself.You reflect the Kantian aspects that are latent in the scientific philosophy of Popper [who is an avowed Kantian] and his offspring [Lukacs trained] Lakatos and the absurdist Feyerabend.For 18th century Kant, we humans can never know what’s out there beyond our untrustworthy mental representation of it.You might recall that it was precisely such Kantian critiques of Marx that laid the foundations of anti-Marxian revisionism in the 1890s, although Bernstein courteously waited decent months after Engels died before he blurted out the revisionist truth that Marxian materialism was bunkum.Marx’s materialist science [as outlined in #77] is the practice of the critique of appearance:  “All science would be superfluous if appearance [phenomena] and essence coincided”.For Marx, essence determines appearance — base determines superstructure; social being determines consciousness.We conceive appearance as a process.We abstract determinism from processes to conceive their unifying dynamics — the changing fluidity of the persistent thing.We abstract categories from processes to categorize their unifying statics — the persistent thingness of the fluid change.We develop abstract theory [concept] of processes in which our determinism operates abstractly upon our categories and produces abstract appearance [phenomena].We can test in practice our abstract appearance against the phenomena of the world.This is merely a systematic form of the way each of us comprehends and navigates the world on a daily basis.  It is what gives us the confidence to avoid falling down holes in the pavement or of walking into closed doors.I am quite prepared to engage with you further, but first please answer #77.[Note to admin — the # numbers are unreliable when you are writing/editing.  I had formerly written #80 for what now is labelled #77.]

[LBird]

twc wrote:

Bourgeois philosophy is insidious because it perfectly reflects the dominant thought of our society, and so appears perfectly correct. Falling for its might is absolutely evident in the postings of DJP, Robbo and especially yourself.

It's a shame that none of us can get you to actually discuss these issues, twc.Especially as there's differences between DJP, Robbo and me (and others, like Vin), so we could have the makings of a good discussion.

[twc]

So it’s “the makings of a good discussion”!  What dilettante puerility!  Seek bourgeois edification on philosophical puzzles elsewhere.It is with no pleasure that I enter the threads you derail.Marx’s conception of science is too precious to discuss carefully with a proven sneerer.  His profound thought plumbs the depths of appearance for essence, and so offers a perfect target for sneerers.  By comparison, the vulgarities of bourgeois thought are impervious to sneering, because they remain satisfied with surface appearance, the tacitly-agreed phenomena recognized by us all.You earn your stripes, and answer #77.

[LBird]

twc wrote:

So it’s “the makings of a good discussion”! What dilettante puerility! Seek bourgeois edification on philosophical puzzles elsewhere.It is with no pleasure that I enter the threads you derail.

And you pass yourself off as a 'comrade' within the SPGB?

twc wrote:

Marx’s conception of science is too precious to discuss carefully with a proven sneerer. His profound thought plumbs the depths of appearance for essence, and so offers a perfect target for sneerers. By comparison, the vulgarities of bourgeois thought are impervious to sneering, because they remain satisfied with surface appearance, the tacitly-agreed phenomena recognized by us all.

This is just religious nonsense.

twc wrote:

You earn your stripes, and answer #77.

The concept of 'discussion' really does go over your head, doesn't it?Mind you, the 'disciples' never need to discuss, do they? They just 'spread The Lord's Word', and dismiss any critical thought.And, of course, you get 'no pleasure' from your tireless, humourless task.God help us if your sort get anywhere near the levers of power. We won't be even be able to appeal to your 'moral' sensitivities, since you're quite open about your lack of moral awareness. Just 'Scientific Socialism' and inhuman 'interests', as given to us by the rocks, to which you have a 'special access' (though you never specify this).D'y'know, I think I prefer Thatcher?

[twc]

Give up the childishness, and answer #77.

[LBird]

twc wrote:

Give up the childishness, and answer #77.

We can really see now, the fruits of your elitist 'scientific method'.No need for politics, morality or, god forbid, persuasion. Just passively listen to the 'material'.And cast-iron religious certainty, which holds forth the 'SPGB Objectives' to workers' faces, and commands "Kneel before the Revealed Truth!"."Scientific Socialism"? Just "Leninism" will do.This belief of yours really is 'childishness'. And what's worse, you're a child of the 19th century, twc.Unfortunately for you, the rest of humanity went through the 20th century. One or two things have happened since Marx and Engels died, in politics, philosophy and science.But history is of no 'interest' to 'materialism'. Even the prefix 'Historical' is meaningless to the faithful.

[twc]

That is mere smokescreen — a pathetic squib for not facing up to the moral imperative of defending one’s view, following one’s own science wherever it may lead.  Show scientific integrity and moral courage and simply test your view.If you squib out, why should anyone respect you?  Maybe you haven’t given the point consideration, and need time to do it justice.  That's fine.  But if you run for cover, and hide behind a barrage of sneer hoping that somehow the issue will go away, you are sadly mistaken, and proved — despite your bluster — to be a moral coward before all and sundry,If you won’t test your view, why should anyone else bother with it?Stop hiding and answer #77.

[Anonymous]

LBird wrote:

God help us if your sort get anywhere near the levers of power. We won't be even be able to appeal to your 'moral' sensitivities, since you're quite open about your lack of moral awareness. Just 'Scientific Socialism' and inhuman 'interests', as given to us by the rocks, to which you have a 'special access' (though you never specify this). 

'your sort' Please enlighten me to this 'moral awareness'  that some of us lack but you obviously don't.Does it allow you stand up on high and condemn us mere mortals for our lack of humanity?Are you really been serious?I am not surprised you prefer Thatcher. She was  moralistic and self righteous, too.     

[Anonymous]

LBird wrote:

Unfortunately for you, the rest of humanity went through the 20th century. One or two things have happened since Marx and Engels died, in politics, philosophy and science.But history is of no 'interest' to 'materialism'. Even the prefix 'Historical' is meaningless to the faithful.

 'bourgeois science' not science at all. Your words 

[robbo203]

OK, TWC, I'll have a crack at responding to the theoretical challenges you have issued in posts 77 and 81. Work commitments in the past few days have prevented me from responding sooner  The gist of what you seem to be saying is that DJP, Robbo and L Bird have succumbed to the "might of bourgeois philosophy" and are presumably to be dismissed as  unreconstructed idealists.  I think you are talking bunkum, frankly and not for the first time. If anything the opposite is true.  It is you, old chap, who is the quintessetially bourgeois philosopher here and your brand of mechanical materialism  strikes me as just a cover for a kind of mystical idealism,I am reminded of something that Castoriadis wrote in a little pamphlet called  History as Creation.  Though I dont agree with a lot of things he wrote (I have several of his works) he does sometimes hit the nail on the head as is often the case in this pamphlet.  Check out  the link here – its worth a read https://libcom.org/files/history%20as%20creation%20searchable%20and%20reprintable.pdf.  Here's the  relevant comment  which is directed at precisely the kind of "objective rationalism" to which you seem so fondly attached.Marxism does not therefore transcend the philosophy of history . It is merely another philosophy of history. The rationality it seems to extract from the facts is a rationality which it actually imposes upon them . The 'historical neces­sity' of which it speaks (in the usual sense of this expression, namely that of a concatenation of facts leading history to­wards progress) in no way differs, philosophically speaking, from hegelian Reason. In both cases one is dealing with a truly theological type of human alienation. A communist Providence, which would so have pre-ordained history as to produce our freedom , is nevertheless a Providence. In both cases one elim inates the central concern of any reflex­ion: the rationality of the (natural or historical) world, by providing oneself in advance with a rationally constructed world. Clearly, nothing can be resolved in this way: a totally rational world would, by virtue of this very fact, beinfinitely more mysterious than the world in which we struggle. A history that would be rational from beginning to end – and through and through – would be more massively incomprehensible than the history we know. Its whole rationality would be founded on a total irrationality , for it would be in the nature of pure fact, and of fact so brutal, solid and all-embracing that we should suffocate under it"There's incidentally a colourful little passage in the "Introduction" which nicely situates your fetishisation of science uber alles – or should that be science at the expense of everything itself – in the context of bourgeois society itself and so helps to throw light on the very bourgeois influences that inform your own thinking:This was the science that the founders of "scientific socialism" had sucked into their  bones; the science of elegant universalism, of cosmological laws to which there were no exceptions, of systems that would encompass the whole of reality in their net.  The very structure of this kind of thinking reflected the confident ambitions  of a capitalism in full development.  In the air was the promise  that life itself would soon be amenable to the same mathematical manipulations  that had successfully predicted the motions of the stars, the combinations of the atoms and the propagation of light  (C. Castoriadis, Introduction to History as Creation , Solidarity Pamphlet, London 1978. p.4)As I said before I would banish the expression "scientific socialism"; it is thoroughly misleading and sets quite the wrong tone.  Please dont get me wrong.  This is not a denigration of science or the scientific method.  It is simply to recognise the limits of the scientific approach when it comes to changing society. You dont seem to recognise any such limits.  And you singularly failed to answer my earlier point  vizI think youve got it precisely the wrong way round.  Most people dont become  socialists through an academic contemplation of the nuances of labour theory of value and then become indignant  when they learn from the theory that they have been exploited by their capitalist employer all along.  On the contrary, it is their own experience of exploitation expressed in a myriad of ways that gives rise to a feeling, however inchoate, that they are being exploited.  That becomes the spur to acquiring greater understanding.  In short , indignation generally precedes knowlege rather than follows knowlege though of coure it can be reinforced by the latter.Anyway on to the business at hand. Ill deal with the two main points you make.  Firstly this one"For Marx, essence determines appearance — base determines superstructure; social being determines consciousness".Weve been here before, haven't weTWC?  I referred you to Peter Stillman's article "The Myth of Marx’s Economic Determinism" (http://marxmyths.org/peter-stillman/article.htm) .  You did not answer the central claim Stillman was making but just airily pooh-poohed what Stillman had to say.What is the "base" and what is the "superstructure" and how does the former "determine" the latter? I come back to this point again and again because frankly, for all your swaggering  bravado, you never seem to get beyond a dogmatic repetition of a rather crude and reductionist materialist catechism.The problem with the base – superstructure model was perhaps unintentionally revealed by an off-the-cuff comment by Engels in his speech as Marx's funeral vizJust as Darwin discovered the law of development or organic nature, so Marx discovered the law of development of human history: the simple fact, hitherto concealed by an overgrowth of ideology, that mankind must first of all eat, drink, have shelter and clothing, before it can pursue politics, science, art, religion, etc.; that therefore the production of the immediate material means, and consequently the degree of economic development attained by a given people or during a given epoch, form the foundation upon which the state institutions, the legal conceptions, art, and even the ideas on religion, of the people concerned have been evolved, and in the light of which they must, therefore, be explained, instead of vice versa, as had hitherto been the case.What Engels was seemingly invoking here was the notion of temporal priority.  Before you can think or engage in ideological activities you have to eat, drink, find shelter and so on.  This fits in with a kind of mechanistic "billiard ball" view of the universe in which cause and effect is made visibly apparent.  You hit one ball with your cue and it impacts upon another, causing the latter to drop into the pocket.  Two separate events in time. In the same way, a crude reductionist materialism purports to "explain" how a certain configuration in the economic basis of society – that is the particular combination of the "forces of production" (crudely, technology) and the "relations of production "- "gives rise to" a certain idelogical form.  G A Cohen calls this the "fallacy of equivocation".  The fact that ideological activities may be dependent on material activities does not mean they can therefore be explained by them. Its the same with the brain-mind interactions in "emergence theory" in the cognitive sciencesNow I dont think Engels actually meant to literally suggest a kind of temporal prority at work here but that is what an uncritical acceptance of the thrust of his reasoning can lead to and has led to in your case, in my opinion. You are thinking "as if" such a temporal priority applied.  Hence your claim "base determines superstructure"The plain fact is that there is no such thing as a "base" without a "superstructure".  That being so how do you demonstrate the determing influence of one upon the other?  At no point in time did mankind strive to eat, drink, have shelter and clothing, without also engaging in ideological activities.  In fact, if you look into the anthropology of early hunter-gatherer groups you will see this very clearly illustrated.  Everything is mixed up in such societies.  You cannot identify anything that individuals did that was "purely economic"  or "material" or for that mattrer purely religious or spiritual.  Activities such as hunting or gathering while meeting the group's need for food also had religious significance – that is, they were pregnant with religious meaning.In fact, the identification of a distinctly separate "economic domain "as Louis Dumont brilliantly showed in his "From Mandeville to Marx" really only came about with the rise of capitalism and the growth of individualism.  The supposedly autonomous nature of this domain was captured by Adam Smith's quasi-theological conceptualisation of the "invisible hand of the market".  It fitted in with the mechanistic thinking of the times and the growing influence of the "machine metaphor".  "Scientific socialism " was an offshoot of such thinking as I suggested above and is predicated on certain bourgeois ways of looking at the world which postulates precisely a separate economic domain which is thus able to  impact upon the superstructure of society.  So we have the paradoxical situation in which the base-superstructure model is itself an ideological product of a particular kind of society which it seeks to explain.  In other words, it is not transhistorical or universal but peculiar to capitalismInterestingly, some anthropologists – like the structuralist , Claude Levi-Strauss  –  have argued that in "primitive" societies the rules of kinship and marriage have an "operational value equal to that of economic phenomena in our own society"  (quoted in  Marxism and "Primitive" Societies: Two Studies by  Emmanuel Terray, Monthly Review Press, 1972,  p.139).  By that he meant kinship, rather than economic phenomena as such,  is the organising  principle of such societies – the prism through which they need to be viewed.  In other words, kinship replaces economic infrastructure as the basis of these societies.  Its food for thought,  I supposeOne final point to throw into the discussion under this heading is something that exSPGBer Keith Graham  mentions in his excellent book "Karl Marx Our contemporary".   Graham refers to certain objections raised by people like Acton and Plamenatz to the Marxian thesis that "phenomena  such as social, political and intellectual life cannot be understood on their own, and are conditioned by material life"  (p.50).  Acton, for instance, has argued that para-technological relationships such as property laws and customs have to be in place at the outset if any kind of production can commence since these define the rules under which production is to occur.  That being so, laws and morals "cannot properly be regarded as superstructures" but instead form  part of the relations of production.  Similarly, the point made by Plamentz is that it is "impossible to define relations of production except in terms of the of the claims people make on one another" and this entails the recognition of "laws", broadly speaking.  Graham's response to such objections is not unreasonable:We can distinguish between base and superstructure by reference to the de facto/de jure distinction. To have the power over some productive force , whether legitimately or not, is to stand in a basic relation of production to it; to have a right over it is to stand in a superstructural relationship to it.  The very fact that people sometimes have ineffective rights or illegitimate powers over such resources  demonstrates the conceptual distinctness of base and superstructure"  (p.52)What counts as a "relation of production", then, is what actually happens on the ground in terms of ownership and control of the productive forces – the de facto situation. The de jure legitimation of one's ownership and control of these productive forces is in a sense superogatory – a kind of rubber stamping of the status quo.  This counter argument is fair enough as far as it goes but a distinction surely needs to be made between a moral right and a legal right .  Durkheim said something of relevance here on the relationship between morality and the law –  that the latter will tend, in the long run, to reflect, rather than determine, the moral values of a given society.  This, curiously enough,  is somewhat  homologous to the putative relationship between base and superstructure (bearing in mind the caveat about the latter simply "reflecting" the former).  It is questionable whether someone who has "power over some productive force , whether legitimately or not" would not, at the same, time feel morally entitled to exercise this power.  Or, indeed, that those thus excluded  from this productive force would not have consented to such an arrangement and considered it to be quite normal and morally acceptableAnyway on to your next point TWC as this post is already getting much longer than I expected  viz"Question:  Is Capitalist Exploitation Actual?For your brand of Idealism, capitalist exploitation is mere working-class ideology.  [Capitalists shouldn’t hold it, but in practice more capitalists seem cognizant of the source of their revenue—exploitation—than members of the working class.]Since capitalist exploitation is mere working-class ideology, capitalist exploitation needn’t actually be taking place in society!Please then explain to us:how you ideologists can ever know that capitalist exploitation is actually taking place in society?"My first response to this would be to say that you are asking the wrong question. The right question would be to ask –  if exploitation is indeed objective or "actual" can it really be apprehended in terms that are devoid of ethical import?  I woud say emphatically no. The very concept of exploitation is intrinsically value laden.  This is why it so obviously silly to claim that the case for socialism is not also based on morality – nor their morality, the moraility of the capitalist class, but ours, a proletarian moirality.  It is not just a case of what is in "our own self interests" as individuals.  If you identifiy with the wellbeing of others (your fellow workers) then ipso facto,  and by defintion, you are taking up a moral position,  Morality is afterall an "other-oriented" perspective which regards others – in this case our fellow workers – as having value in themselves.  So calling on the workers to unite in  class struggle cannot but involve taking a moral position – logicallyThere is a further point I would make which is a little more elaborate and roundabout.  Back in the late 19th century  when  the marginalist revolution in economics got underway, one effect of this was to radically reconceptualise the whole question of distribution in a capitalist society.  Within the general framework of  marginalist theory, capital and labour were deemed  – subjectively, of course – to get back exactly what they put in – no more and no less  The theoretical possiblity of exploitation was thus precluded by an ex cathedra type statement which rationalised massive inequalities of outcome as something that is wholly explicable – and justifable –  in terms of the  commensurate contributions to production made by capitalists and workers respectively.  Ironically, while the Marxian labour value theory was severely criticised on grounds that it did not adequately deal with the problem of the heterogeneity  of labour inputs and how to assign different labour time values to different skills,  no such scruples were raised with regard to the distribution of income between labour and capital.  Michael Perelman quotes the once prominent American economist  – John Bates Clark – on the matter, that "the distribution of income [is] controlled by a natural law, and…this law, if it worked without friction, would give to every agent of production the amount of wealth which that agent creates….Free competition tends to give labor what labor creates, to capitalists what capital creates, and to entrepreneurs what the coordinating function creates. (Michael Perelman, The Perverse Economy: The Impact of Markets on People and the Environment, New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2003 p. 152).  Now I put it to you, TWC – how would you counter Clarkes point?  If the capitalist countered your objection that he is exploiting his workers by pointing out that, in fact,  the value of his contributiuon to the production of wealth is at least equal to that  all of his workers combined, how would you respond?  You can recite the labour theory of value all you like but you cannot get round the fact that different labour contributions impart different values to the end product.  The capitalist has only to assert that 10 minutes of his time in a flying visit to his factory office to sign a cheque is equal in value to a full day's work by one of his workers to counter the charge that he is "exploiting his workers".The point that I am getting at is that this is, at bottom, a value judgement, not simply a cold mathematical calculation that workers are exploited in terms of socially necessary labour time.  If you deny that, you cede ground to the bourgeois economists and you will find yourself engaging in a debate that will inevitably be rigged in their favour. Beware and be very aware of the perils of insisting that the case for socialism is one essentially based on objective scientific  rationalism

[Author]

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