Is the case for socialism, one of morality, cold logic or long term survival of our species?
- This topic has 359 replies, 11 voices, and was last updated 10 years, 6 months ago by
.
-
Posts
-
twc wrote:In the concrete world…
In 'a concrete mind', more like.Why not try reading what other comrades are writing?
Robbo Denies Exploitation is Objective
robbo203 wrote:The point that I am getting at is that [exploitation] is, at bottom, a value judgement, not simply a cold mathematical calculation that workers are exploited in terms of socially necessary labour time.This is bourgeois idiocy.In the concrete world, an employer’s conception of exploitation is forced upon him by the relentless pressure of capitalist competition. An employer is compelled, like a marionette, to act out Marx’s abstraction of his social position. He must continually make cold mathematical calculation, precisely in terms of labour time, to lower running costs, and from time-to-time make terrifyingly objective “judgements” on the “value” to his profit-making enterprise of his employees. He mightn’t like doing it, but that’s what keeps his business and him up and running.In the concrete world, an employee’s conception of exploitation is doubly constrained by the relentless pressure of capitalist competition and of fellow-worker competition for the right to be exploited. He is forced to act out Marx’s abstraction of his social position. He is compelled to groom himself as a suitable candidate for exploitation because it puts a roof over his head and food in his belly. He mightn’t like doing it, but that’s just the way the world is for a worker.Where in the name of socialism is there anything remotely approaching genuine “value judgement” in that? ObjectivePeople can disagree on their evaluation of any phenomenon, but still agree on its objectivity. For if something is objective, it is accessible to others.In the American Civil War [a class war between two ruling classes], the industrial-capitalist North and the slave-holding South¹ fought over opposing forms of exploitation, and neither doubted the objectivity of each other’s form.Each hypocritically exposed the “unethical” nature of the other’s variety of exploitation. Unsentimental anti-chattel-slave exploitation opposed equally unsentimental anti-wage-slave exploitation. Accusation and counter-accusation were both objectively true, and so unanswerable, except by force.“We are now engaged” in a class war between a ruling and a ruled class. If the ruled class harbours “philosophical” doubts over the objectivity of exploitation, this can only reflect (1) that capitalist–working-class exploitation is barely on the social agenda, and (2) the working class is still content for [class-divided] society to make up its working-class mind for it.The very fact that human exploitation can be raised to the status of an “intellectual proposition”, over which it is possible to have “views” and “values”, is tangible proof to a materialist that exploitation is not only objective concretely but also intellectually. Marx was Aware of Every Criticism Subsequently Made of HimFor Marx, science is the practice of the critique of appearance.In his quest to unmask bourgeois appearance, Marx was omnivorous, devouring every view and counter-view on capitalist appearance [phenomena] that he could lay his hands on in the British Museum and elsewhere—just look at his Theories of Surplus Value—from capitalism’s deepest and bravest thinkers to its hired “prize fighters”.He worked in the tradition of Hegel, for whom “science cannot reject a non-true knowledge just because it considers it to be a vulgar [apologetic] point of view.”Thus, we find Marx writing “Ricardo’s ruthlessness was not only scientifically justified but also a scientific necessity from his point of view”.Just pause to consider Marx justifying exploitation, in the context of Ricardo’s science, and we see what little intellectual store he placed upon “value judgement”. He is equally detached about Aristotle’s “natural slave” theory. Such lack of sentiment, where you might expect him to explode, is comprehensible for an historical materialist for whom people are products of their social environment.²Every counter-view to Marx that you hurl at him here, Marx had encountered by perennial genus and species long before you ever stumbled across its “modern” ephemeral rehash.Marx confronted a complete catalogue of counter-views while reaching the materialist conclusion “that neither legal relations nor political forms could be comprehended, whether by themselves or on the basis of a so-called general development of the human mind, but that on the contrary they originate in the material conditions of life … the anatomy of which has to be sought in political economy.”Make no mistake, Marx stands on comfortably equal footing with his “modern” critics, and has the supreme advantage over them of knowing them, and their heritage, far better than they know him.It is therefore simply a matter of whether Castoriadis can genuinely go toe-to-toe with Marx and last the distance, or Levi-Strauss can, etc. But first things first. Robbo’s “Response”Firstly, robbo, you chose not to answer #77. Squibbed it. I mention this so that there can be no misunderstanding, and I’m not letting you claim you did.To answer your response, I need to categorize your substantiated claims:(robbo.1) the materialist conception of history is false.(robbo.2) base–superstructure determinism is false.(robbo.3) the objectivity of capitalist social relations is false.(robbo.4) we must therefore rely on emotion and morality. Marx’s MethodTo answer your claims, I need to teach a little science, and so I’ll slip in my far too brief itemized summary of Marx’s method:(twc.1) We conceive appearance as a process.(twc.2) We abstract determinism from processes to conceive their unifying dynamics — the changing fluidity of the persistent thing.(twc.3) We abstract categories from processes to categorize their unifying statics — the persistent thingness of the fluid change.(twc.4) We develop abstract theory [concept] of processes in which our determinism operates abstractly upon our categories and produces abstract appearance [phenomena].(twc: 5). We can test in practice our abstract appearance against the phenomena of the world. Marx’s ScienceFinally, here is the [enumerated] excerpt from Capital Volume 1:(marx.1) “Vico says, human history differs from natural history in this, that we have made the former, but not the latter.”(marx.2) “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.”(marx.3) “Every history (even the history of religion) that fails to take account of this material basis, is uncritical.”(marx.4) “It is, in reality, much easier to discover (marx.4α) by analysis the earthly core of the misty creations of religion,than, conversely, it is, (marx.4β) to develop from the actual relations of life the corresponding celestialised forms of those relations.”(marx.5) “The latter method is the only materialistic, and therefore the only scientific one.”(marx.6) “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.”To be continued in next post Footnotes¹ The South was unsentimentally aided and abetted by sections of British industrial capital whose profits depended on Southern cotton. ↩ [Back]² The ancient world left us few arguments against slavery as an institution, but many outraged accounts of cruel masters or sympathetic accounts of kind ones, and instances of raising civil-service slaves to gods for general worship in imperial Rome, all of which reveals a “value judgement” that tacitly accepted the ancient institution of slavery as a whole, just as did the ante-bellum South.On the inefficacy of sentimentality, which is relevant to the main topic of this thread, and parallels the inefficacy of reformism, I quote the following (of uncertain origin) — he who consoles a slave in his servitude does his master an incalculable service. ↩ [Back]
twc wrote:Robbo Denies Exploitation is Objectiverobbo203 wrote:The point that I am getting at is that [exploitation] is, at bottom, a value judgement, not simply a cold mathematical calculation that workers are exploited in terms of socially necessary labour time.This is bourgeois idiocy.
TWC can you not for once resist the temptation to always resort to ad hominen argument? Its getting to be a bore, frankly, and only fuels the suspicion that you are unable to answer the point being made. Read again what I said . I said exploitation is at bottom a value judgement and not simply a cold mathematical calculation You are trying to teach people here how to suck eggs. We know very well, thank you very much, that capitalists are forced by competition to seek profit. How very illiuminating of you to point that out. The point at issue however is not that but the significance or meaning of profit itself. I quoted Clarke not because I agree with his position – of course I hold that workers are exploited – but becuase I wanted to see how you would respond to that argument he made without invoking the question of values. As usual you havent. What we get from you is the usual longwinded circumlocutionary peice of rambling irrelevance that deftly hides your inability to answer a simple point in a straightforward manner Try for once to break the mould and address the argument being presented TWC. It would make a refreshing change, believe you me
twc wrote:In the concrete world, an employer’s conception of exploitation is forced upon him by the relentless pressure of capitalist competition.FFS, twc, 'exploitation' is a moral category!One's understanding of a 'relationship' depends upon one's 'point of view'. This 'point-of-viewness' (or 'relativity') is a central cornerstone of modern physics, never mind history and sociology. Have you never heard of Einstein?Bosses don't have a 'concept' of 'exploitation', because that isn't their 'view' of the relationship that they have with workers.We're Communists, so we can understand it as a 'relationship of exploitation', but they don't. They really believe that by employing us, that they're doing us a favour! They really think that if they were dispossesed of their property, that then the world and production would collapse, because the 'mob' are too thick, selfish and greedy to organise themselves and feed themselves, and civilisation will come to an end. To them, Communism is a deadly cancer for humanity.We can't get away from 'moral' categories in our understanding of the 'real world' and the lives we live.If 'the concrete' is so obvious, why don't workers simply see it? The 'concrete' is related to our understanding of it, it doesn't simply expose itself to humans, and we have to explain to other workers how it works, for Communists. If they don't become Communists, the 'concrete' of 'production relationships' will remain what the bosses say it is.Of course, your sort also has the 'explanation' of workers' 'False Consciousness', so that most workers are stupid for not seeing the obvious 'concrete'. They will be lead to the Promised Land by you and your Leninist brethren, with your 'concrete' Truth.Telling workers to kneel before The Objectives doesn't work.Christ, asking you to read doesn't work. Your 19th century conception of the concrete is backward-looking, and whilst the SPGB remains in thrall to this disproved nonsense, it'll remain an isolated and small sect.I'm amazed that someone in the SPGB hasn't stepped into this thread to dissociate the party from this damaging viewpoint.
Robbo, that’s why I reserved a consecutive spot for Part 2 — the details. It’s a pity my numbered cross references will be split across pages, but that can’t be helped.You’ll just have to wait.You just trashed most of Marx. It’s easy to destroy. Building takes a little longer.Rest assured, unlike you, I will answer every last point you make.
I am minded by something Hal Draper said: "To engage in class struggle it is not necessary to 'believe in' the class struggle any more than it is necessary to believe in Newton to fall from an airplane…."Thankfully, i don't think i need to understand all this and all the other previous debates to be a socialist. so i'll just let you all get on with it and i'll do my own thing for my own reasons that certain circumstances have led me to believe be right, morally or not.Cue for a Bananarama song :- "It ain't what you do it's the way that you do itIt ain't what you do it's the time that you do itIt ain't what you do it's the place that you do it"The MCH in a song??
Just for my own clarity Is this a position held by anyone in this discussion? "Relativism is the concept that points of view have no absolute truth or validity"
Vin Maratty wrote:Just for my own clarity Is this a position held by anyone in this discussion? "Relativism is the concept that points of view have no absolute truth or validity"Vin, the theory of truth, that those who argue that 'material conditions' tell us the truth, is the 'Correspondence theory of truth', as given in your useful link.
Lbird you don't have to answer my question but it would help to clarify things in my own mind. Don't want to sound like Paxman!
By the way lbird you did not answer my qquestion in #87
Vin Maratty wrote:By the way lbird you did not answer my qquestion in #87Well, now we can see that you do have a 'moral awareness' about science, but that it is not a Communist 'moral awareness'.'Moral awareness' is inescapable in science, whether its ours, or Mengele's, or Oppenheimer's view that 'Physicists have known sin'.We should discuss the various 'moralities' held with science. Of course, this is much easier for those who don't think science produces 'objective truth' or scientific knowledge is a 'mirror image' of 'material conditions'.So, that's the first step: does science employ a method that gives it access to the truth of reality, or is truth always a social product, of an interaction of humans within a society with the external world?That is, is 'truth' a one-off 'discovery', which once discovered is then 'The Truth' for evermore, or is 'truth' a socially-created concept which can change with society?Is 'truth' social and historical, or 'The Truth'?
Vin Maratty wrote:Lbird you don't have to answer my question but it would help to clarify things in my own mind. Don't want to sound like Paxman!I'm just trying to encourage you in your good start this morning, by showing that 'relativism' is related to one's 'theory of truth'!So, since Marx didn't hold to a 'correspondence theory of truth', and thought that the production of 'knowledge' within a society was related to that society in some way (due to the different 'theory and practice' of different societies), Marx was a 'relativist', in this social sense (this is very different from post-modernism and its nonsense about every individual having a relative 'truth' of their own).So, in Marx's sense, I'm also a relativist. This stance is also backed up by Einstein in physics.
LBird wrote:So, in Marx's sense, I'm also a relativist. This stance is also backed up by Einstein in physics.So you do not believe that there is an objective reality to which we strive to understand? Thanks for that clarification.
LBird wrote:Well, now we can see that you do have a 'moral awareness' about science, but that it is not a Communist 'moral awareness'.I do not have a moral awareness of science. Anyone glancing at this forum can work that out. 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.
- You must be logged in to reply to this topic.