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

[LBird]

DJP wrote:

I'm posting this here because it is related to some of the points made in previous posts. It's the first chapter from Ellen Meiskins Wood's book "Democracy Against Capitalism" the first 5 chapters are concerned with how "historical materialism" can be coherently formulated (hint: neither as "base-superstructure", "technological determinism" or "economic determinism")http://libcom.org/library/separation-economic-political-capitalism-ellen-meiskins-wood

Thanks for the recommendation, DJP. I've ordered a copy of the book, having had a brief look at the link.

[twc]

Pannekoek was an Avowed Materialist in Marx’s SenseSorry to disappoint you but Pannekoek agreed entirely with Marx’s scientific method of “descent from the concrete to the abstract in order to ascend from the abstract to the concrete”—as Marx called it—just as I presented it here, and just as Castoriadis didn’t have a clue about what Marx was doing, and ignorantly attacked what he failed to comprehend.Lenin was never in the hunt, and his book on Empiriocriticism is pure drivel.

[twc]

Robbo, you want to move on from Castoriadis to cover your deception.  Not so fast!In response to my exposé of his nonsense, you were forced to change tack and say that you happen to agree that Castoriadis is merely trashing me—which is a minor matter, about which I have no concern whatsoever.But the truth is that Castoriadis is, and always was, directly trashing Marx—which is a major matter—and you happen to agree with Castoriadis against Marx.  [The consequence that Castoriadis’s direct trashing of Marx is an indirect trashing of me is merely incidental.]So I’m quite prepared to linger over Castoriadis’s direct trashing of Marx until we settle the matter.  It is far too important an issue to let slip on disingenuous spurious grounds that you introduced him only to trash me, when it was quite evident that Karl Marx could only be collateral damage in such an unbelievably stupid exercise.  So I am led to repeat, this riposte of yours is totally unbelievable Jesuitical casuistry.You know as well as I do that we’ve got all the time in the world in which to examine your other charges against Marx later on.  They are not going to go away.So stop and confront your deception over Marx.  It’s your agreement with Castoriadis trashing Marx that cries out for defence.  Would you have me do otherwise than defend him, or go along with the treacherous ride?Even if you prefer to move on and cover your tracks, I’m simply not going to let you.  The issue is central to socialism, and what we all supposedly stand for. Trashing MarxI remind you that Castoriadis directly trashes Marx by falling back upon the world as contingent and messy, while Marxian science is abstractly pure and rational.Ultimately this is a variant on the perennial theme that appearance is irrational.  Everybody knows that, but it has always been the spur to science.It was Hegel who proclaimed “that which is actual is rational, and that which is rational is actual".That is the war cry of all science, including Marx’s scientific socialism.That’s precisely why, for Marx, science is the critique of appearance — the rational critique of the irrational.That is why, for Marxian critics, all their critiques urged against him rely on the bleeding obvious, the patent irrationality of the phenomena [appearance] that doesn’t agree with Marx’s pure rational theoretical principles.  It was never meant to.Accepting the irrationality of phenomena without question is what Marx called fetishism, the falling for appearance, and the worst fetish of all fetishes is that which comes in the insidious guise of the rational, as in money, capital, etc.To get beyond fetishism is precisely why Marx’s science must be the critique of appearance, whether in its messy irrational guise or in its insidious rational guise. FetishismBut if, with Castoriadis, we can’t mount a rational critique of the irrational phenomena, socialists have little choice but to take the irrational phenomena at face value — to fetishize appearance.Politically, this leaves us falling back upon the bleeding obvious solution of voluntarism, what Marx called Banquism, or what we today would call Leninism or Leftism.It is precisely to counter such dangerous political irrationalism that, as I pointed out, Marx gave his life to remove socialism’s dependence upon emotion or, worse still, upon morality.  And I stand by that statement.Standing by it has absolutely nothing to do with your imaginary claims that I thereby discount morality or emotion.  That is merely your acting out the disgusting analogue of the religious person who says if you don’t rely on god, you can’t be moral.  Both are nonsense and based on insularity of “thought” otherwise known as bigotry.  Bigotry sits well with irrationalism, which can avoid responsibility.It is invariably those who parade morality who least honour it, partly because they consider themselves sole custodians of it.  Hence your three or four summoning cries to quickly move on from Castoriadis.  Do you imagine that you can run away so quickly without bearing any responsibility for trashing Marx? Just a Little on Making the Irrational RationalScience is always rational and pure, but must pollute itself in the process of dealing with contingency.In the paradigm case of Newton’s Principia we find him setting out three highly pure “laws of motion” that had been abstracted by generations of precursors — the famous giants on whose shoulders he stood.First Newton applies his pure principles—imposes them as the ignorant Castoriadis complains—upon the purity of the heavens, the solar system, from which he abstracted them.  What absurdity for Castoriadis to suggest he should never do this.  But what else can one expect from an impractical carping philosopher.Newton then brings his pure principles down to our impure Earth, where motion is impeded by friction, and the tides bulge out of the pure sphere, etc.  He succeeds beyond all expectation here, because he has created a pure abstract rationality in order to describe, comprehend and show us how to “control” the impure concrete irrational world, of which Earth is a prime messy “irrational” example.Show me one philosopher who can rank with this achievement.  Perhaps in modern times only Hegel can, since all the rest since him stand on his shoulders, and find that he anticipated them long before they were born.What Newton did in the Principia is precisely what Marx saw Hegel doing in the Logic.  Moving from abstract non-determination [pure Being] to more concrete determination [Determinate Being, etc.], and ultimately tripping himself up by imagining that pure abstraction must finally by concatenation of determination upon determination, make itself so “abstractly determinate”, or concrete, so that the Reason of [behind] the world has no choice but to give birth to the concrete world of Nature, i.e. ultimately concretize itself.Now this conclusion of Hegel’s strikes us, as it did Marx, as nonsense.  But Hegel’s methodology of seeing the subject as process, as self-evolving out of itself by itself, is the crucial insight into comprehending all phenomena as autonomous but dependent.  It is Hegel’s organicism.Marx takes society as his subject, and treats it as evolving autonomously out of itself by itself but obviously dependent on the world it finds itself inhabiting.Consequently Marx sees consciousness as society’s consciousness, and he wants to comprehend how that consciousness comes into being, and what determines it.And so he develops a rational, abstract, useful, vulnerable and testable science of it based upon the materialist conception of history.It sets off on its life journey pristine pure but, like Newton and Hegel, ultimately pollutes itself by messing with the world, as it delves deeper into the mire of concrete contingent reality, which it uses its pure rationality to explain, since humans can only comprehend the rational by thought [even though, of course, we can appropriate the irrational by emotion, etc.]But Castoriadis exemplifies stupidity in two ways.He criticizes the abstract pure foundation.He denies the possibility of rational explanation of the irrational.This is the hallmark of all critiques of Marx.  They all boil down to these two criticisms. RepresentationWith Robbo and Bird, criticism of Marx takes a Kantian form, the usual genus, that we cannot really ever know the world beyond our internal representation of it.  For Kant, there is our mental or nuomenal world of representation, and our concrete of phenomenal world (which we can’t ultimately know).It is because Engels met this position head on that he is scorned by those who think he is too obtuse to recognize that we are trapped inside our own virtual world.  Well, Engels argues against this trap, and against those who think there’s no access to the world beyond, and they respond to him by turning up their intellectual noses at such a “philosophical” simpleton.And Engels has the great virtue of writing in the simple direct language of a scientist, he just has to be wrong for the nuomenal sophisticates.But Marx, as well as Engels (following the lead of Hegel, who showed the way forward) rejected Kantianism.  For Marx human practice inhabits the phenomenal world, and human practice is ultimately social practice, and so subservient to the social process itself of which it is a part.And social practice tests our representation and changes it.  But we’ll examine more carefully what Marx means by “determines” in this context in a future post on base–superstructure determinism.Just a warning to the unwary.  Marx is developing an abstract foundation and is not describing contingent phenomena as they appear to us.  So any criticism of his account in the Preface to the Critique that assumes he is describing irrational phenomena as they appear to us, simply misunderstands what he is trying to do as a scientist.Any fool can see that the foundation of science is “wrong”.  It can never correspond to the concrete irrationality that it has been abstracted from and that it is intended to be “imposed” [to Castoriadis’s incomprehension] back upon to make rational sense of it.Having fallen for Castoriadis, it’s quite appropriate that you also fall for another post-Kantian, the anthropologist Levi-Strauss and his deep structures-of-the-brain Structuralisme, which is similar to Chomsky, Piaget, and the whole tribe of 1970s post-Kantian structuralists.But please don’t attribute your phrase about kinship as being original to Levi-Strauss.  That was Engels’s discovery before Levi-Strauss was born.  Engels even states it in the most accessible of all places, as footnote to the opening paragraph of the Communist Manifesto, and you have no excuse whatsoever for misattributing it to Levi-Strauss apart from personal contempt for Engels.  If you want a truly wonderful account of human morality, you could do worse than read Engels’s Origin of the Family.But Engels and the founder of it all, Lewis Henry Morgan, didn’t rely on representational structures in the brain to fashion our phenomenal world, which is what Levi-Strauss needed.Finally, for now, I am reminded of Schopenhauer, Kant’s true successor, who imagined that music, as pure feeling, allowed us to escape our virtual nuomenal world and experience the actual phenomenal world.¹   Kant had ambiguously, as is the way of all dualists, left us unsure whether or not we could really know the phenomenal world.That’s why I asked you whether you believed exploitation was phenomenal or only nuomenal.  You sort of squibbed the issue, just like all dualists when pressed. Footnote¹ I have a personal interest in the composer Richard Wagner, erstwhile revolutionary associate of Bakunin, who wrote music inspired by the philosopher Feuerbach, but was later introduced by Marx’s buddy the revolutionary poet, Georg Herwegh, to the post-Kantian philosopher Schopenhauer, and discovered the latter’s “theory” that pure music through feeling lets us burrow out of our inner nuomenal world into the external phenomenal world.  [Wagner was also mentor to Nietzsche, who turned violently against him.]For Schopenhauer, music was the wormhole linking our two otherwise parallel universes of the nuomen and the phenomenon.  If you read Lukacs [one of Lakatos’s mentors] you’ll see he made the Party the equivalent of Schopenhauer’s wormhole into the phenomenal world.  Both, are of course, nonsense.We have been crippled by unaccountable philosophers for far too long.  It’s time to return to Marxian science, and that is why I attack your philosophy

[twc]

Materialism or StructuralismSo now you are back-tracking on Levi-Strauss also.You didn’t say outright that Levi-Strauss originated the thought.  But since you knew Engels did originate the thought, we can only assume the reason you attributed it to Levi-Strauss instead of to Engels was because he [of the raw and cooked] must surpass him [of the origin of the family] in your estimation of each’s relevance to primitive kinship relations. Fair enough, your call.Well, Levi-Strauss certainly surpasses Engels by retreating backwards into philosophical dualism—your territory—in its trendy 1970s form, structuralism.  For Levi-Strauss, primitive kinship structures objectify deep structures within our brain.  We are to some extent trapped, as with dualist Kant, by the structural constitution of our brain. I naturally assumed you, as confirmed dualist, would lap up stuff of this ilk.  But you’ve lost your appetite.Instead you back-track once more, protesting innocence that butter wouldn’t melt in your mouth “it was only food for thought”! Only, but like Castoriadis — trash Marx only “to show up twc”, so that’s OK.  Dismiss Engels, but only as “food for thought, so that’s OK.What sort of thought could it be food for?  Levi-Straussian dualist structuralism instead of Engelsian materialism.

[twc]

Philosophical IllusionRobbo, your anti-Marxian authorities all harbour the identical illusion.Every criticism of the materialist conception of history and every criticism of base–superstructure determinism, without fail, is a personal variation on a common theme, born of the identical illusion.That common theme is:   Marx’s scientific principles [the MCH and BSD] are refuted by what we see around us.The shared illusion is that this is somehow significant.Scientists understand precisely why scientific principles, being abstractions from “what we see around us”, can never correspond to “what we see around us”.Philosophers demonstrate, time and time again, that they are incapable of understanding why.  Instead they imagine that they have detected an obvious flaw in the scientific principles.In other words, the philosopher hasn’t a clue what’s going on. Reinterpreting the WorldConsequently, an anti-Marx philosopher feels compelled to demonstrate his flash of brilliance by “correcting” Marx’s obviously faulty scientific principles so that they do “interpret the world” precisely as the philosopher sees it to be.And so, every philosophical criticism of the MCH&BSD turns into the analogue of Lenin’s view on objects as “faithful” representations, except that the philosophers outdo him in their even-more-stupid view that scientific principles must be “faithful” representations of our world.Yet what can a “faithful” view of our world be but the view we all hold of it.Consequently, everything Pannekoek said against Lenin’s views on “faithful” objects also holds with identical force against every one of the anti-Marx philosophers’ views on “faithful” scientific principles.Take a good hard look at all the philosophical criticisms of, or all the philosophical corrections to, the MCH&BSD, and you’ll see a direct parallel with Lenin’s true and “faithful” reflections of reality.  They are therefore kin to Lenin’s mechanical materialism, even while they profess to be refuting it.As I said, the most embarrassing gaffe is to be so close yet to be so far away.Every “faithful” improver or critic of the MCH&BSD is a mechanical materialist in the simple sense that he condemns Marx’s principles for not being a “faithful” representation of perceived material reality.They are exactly parallel to Lenin, because a scientist treats his abstract principles as if they were a priori.  The philosopher complains that they should be both a priori and “faithful".What an intellectually dismal state of affairs! CallengeShow me a single critic of Marx’s scientific principles who doesn’t criticize them because they don’t correspond “faithfully” to the world they intend to explain.Show me a single sympathizer of Marx’s scientific principles who doesn’t feel compelled to “interpret them in his own way”.

[LBird]

twc wrote:

Every criticism of the materialist conception of history and every criticism of base–superstructure determinism, without fail, is a personal variation on a common theme, born of the identical illusion.That common theme is: Marx’s scientific principles [the MCH and BSD] are refuted by what we see around us.The shared illusion is that this is somehow significant.Scientists understand precisely why scientific principles, being abstractions from “what we see around us”, can never correspond to “what we see around us”.Philosophers demonstrate, time and time again, that they are incapable of understanding why. Instead they imagine that they have detected an obvious flaw in the scientific principles.In other words, the philosopher hasn’t a clue what’s going on.

You really should get out more, twc, from your mental ghetto of 'materialism'.The whole basis of Critical Realism is the need for 'theories' to understand a 'reality' that is often unobservable, intangible and created by humans.The idea that 'philosophers' (including Marx) think that the only reality is what we can touch, is nonsense.In fact, the only people arguing that the only 'reality' is 'material' is, funnily enough, 'materialists'. They are the ones who can't see 'knowledge' as having a history, and insist that 'science' produces the 'Truth'.Ideas are real. They have causal powers, just like 'value' or 'god'.'Abstractions' are 'ideas'. Abstractions are created by humans. They are not 'abstractions from "what we see around us" ', as you erroneously put it. That is 'induction', the method of 'empiricism' . You're a 'materialist' and 'positivist', unlike Marx.You haven't got a clue, twc. Any comrades reading your tirades, and supposing that they have any merit, should think again, and read further.

twc wrote:

They are exactly parallel to Lenin, because a scientist treats his abstract principles as if they were a priori.

Lenin held to a 'reflection theory of knowledge' and a 'correspondence theory of truth'. You follow his method, in arguing that 'abstractions' come from 'reality'. That is entirely Lenin's point.On the contrary, Marx argued that 'abstractions' are human creations, and are tested in practice. This is the very opposite of 'reflection' and 'correspondence'. 'Truth' belongs to 'knowledge', not 'reality'. Reality doesn't tell us what it is. Humans don't passively wait for 'rocks' to 'abstract' themselves.'Knowledge' of a 'rock' is a human creation.

[LBird]

Quote:

verbPronunciation: /əbˈstrakt/[with object]Back to top 1(abstract something from)Consider something theoretically or separately from (something else):to abstract science and religion from their historical context can lead to anachronism2(usually abstract something from)Extract or remove (something):applications to abstract more water from streams

http://www.oxforddictionaries.com/definition/english/abstract‘Materialists’ (like Engels, Lenin and twc) employ ‘abstract’ in the second sense.They ‘extract or remove’ (‘abstract’) some features of reality from reality to form ideas. This is induction.‘Idealist-Materialists’ (like Marx and me) employ ‘abstract’ in the first sense.They create ideas ‘theoretically or separately from’ (ie. ‘apart from’) reality.But then the ‘abstract’ idea must be tested in practice. 'Theory and practice', or 'abstraction and use'.This is not 'practice and theory', or 'use and abstraction'. That is induction.

[DJP]

LBird wrote:

The whole basis of Critical Realism is the need for 'theories' to understand a 'reality' that is often unobservable, intangible and created by humans.

If something is unobservable and intangible why would you need a theory to explain it, in fact how would you know it was there?Can you tell me what the wieghtless and invisible elephant that is sitting on my desk needs to eat for its tea?I'm sorry LBird you're the one that's speaking bunk now…

[stuartw2112]

LBird is obviously right, I'm surprised people are arguing against. I'm surprised to read your argument, DJP, because I know you've read Capital, and in the very first chapter of Capital, while laying the basis for his value theory, Marx admits that "value" is very much like your invisible elephant: unobservable and intangible.

[DJP]

stuartw2112 wrote:

LBird is obviously right, I'm surprised people are arguing against. I'm surprised to read your argument, DJP, because I know you've read Capital, and in the very first chapter of Capital, while laying the basis for his value theory, Marx admits that "value" is very much like your invisible elephant: unobservable and intangible.

LOL. There's a difference between something not being directly observable and it being unobservable. Value is observable but only through Exchange value.

[LBird]

DJP wrote:

LBird wrote:

The whole basis of Critical Realism is the need for 'theories' to understand a 'reality' that is often unobservable, intangible and created by humans.

If something is unobservable and intangible why would you need a theory to explain it, in fact how would you know it was there?

I'll say this slowly. I know it's a bit complex, and you've never come across this strange notion before, and no-one's raised it yet on this thread.By employing the theory in practice.If the 'theory' of the 'unobservable' works in practice, it becomes 'knowledge'.This is how we 'know' about 'value'.

DJP wrote:

Can you tell me what the wieghtless and invisible elephant that is sitting on my desk needs to eat for its tea?

Well, let's employ your, errr, 'theory'. Watch the 'elephant' as it 'consumes' and note 'what' is consumed.I'll leave you with your 'theory and practice', DJP, and you can report back later on your findings.

DJP wrote:

I'm sorry LBird you're the one that's speaking bunk now…

As stuart has commented, it seems to be a 'trait' of the 'materialists' to insult rather than to argue.I could say in return, that DJP is an uneducated clown who has never read any philosophy of science, never mind read Marx and Engels critically, and posts videos, of which he himself doesn't understand the meaning.But I won't say that – it would be decending to the depths of the 'materialists'.I'll just ask DJP, Vin, twc, etc., why don't you read some philosophy of science, and ask questions if something is confusing to you? Why don't you declare openly your theoretical perspective (of 'knowledge' or 'truth', for example)?You're out of your depth, and twc seems to have sunk completely and has become a bottom-feeder.You're right, I'm being childish… but it seems to be all the rage, in the SPGB. If you can't beat 'em…

[DJP]

LBird wrote:

Well, let's employ your, errr, 'theory'. Watch the 'elephant' as it 'consumes' and note 'what' is consumed.I'll leave you with your 'theory and practice', DJP, and you can report back later on your findings.

But it's unobservable, I can't watch it. 

[DJP]

LBird wrote:

I'll just ask DJP, Vin, twc, etc., why don't you read some philosophy of science, and ask questions if something is confusing to you? Why don't you declare openly your theoretical perspective (of 'knowledge' or 'truth', for example)?

I'm with the vast majority of scientists and philosophers. Materialism or Physicalism, what ever you want to call it, is the only game in town. I could perhaps accept property-dualism but substance-dualism is a complete non-starter.Which of these would you go with:1. Although the world is constituted of just one kind of substance – the physical kind – there exist two distinct kinds of properties: physical properties and mental properties. In other words, it is the view that non-physical, mental properties (such as beliefs, desires and emotions) inhere in some physical substances (namely brains).or2. There exist two kinds of substance: physical and non-physical (the mind), and subsequently also two kinds of properties which adhere in those respective substances.or something else?With regard to the "truth" thing I like this from Simon Blackburn's book Truth "..once we have an issue to decide, it comes with its own norms. Once the issue is the issue, relativism becomes a distraction"And here I am waffling on about "Value" for what it's worth and you can get to see my ugly mug.http://www.worldsocialism.org/spgb/video/marx-and-economics

[stuartw2112]

Pick a commodity up, turn it this way and that, weigh it, prod it, you'll never discover a single molecule of value. Pick up the commodity's price tag. Same thing. Look at the list of prices in the FT. Watch commodities change hands. Nope, still can't see no value. This is why we need what Marx grandly calls "the power of abstraction", or that most people would call "to think about it". (Do thoughts exist? Can't see them, can't weigh them…)The point is that what science can discover is limited or constrained by the instruments it uses to look at the world. This is obvious. It is also limited and constrained by the main instrument is uses to look at the world, which is the human nervous system itself. What limits, what constraints? It's not obvious! We have to think about it. Perhaps our thinking too is constrained, limited… then what?Or as a thing doing the rounds on Facebook points out, the existence of the rainbow depends on the conical photoreceptors in our eyes. To animals without cones, the rainbow doesn't exist. We create the rainbow! You might pity the poor animals without those receptors. But we are animals too, and what is it that we can't see? Well, just about everything! If there's one big problem with materialism, it's this: material doesn't exist. Or if it does, we're not at all sure what it is. And it moves in very mysterious ways. As LBird says, just read some science if you doubt this.

[DJP]

stuartw2112 wrote:

If there's one big problem with materialism, it's this: material doesn't exist. Or if it does, we're not at all sure what it is. And it moves in very mysterious ways. As LBird says, just read some science if you doubt this.

I think this is why "physicalism" is more fashionable these days.But anyhow is this a good enough reason to adopt idealism or dualism? Don't you think these have more problems associated with them?

[Author]

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