Marx and Automation

[LBird]

Alan Kerr wrote:

@LBirdSo in Marx and in fact we get matter-over-mind.It is not, as you claim, mind-over-matter. 

Unfortunately, Marx didn't revert to 'mind-over-matter', which is always the accusation of 'materialists' (like you?), who follow Engels, who inadvertantly resurrected this debate, and argued in favour of 'matter-over-mind', as you do.Marx unified 'mind-matter' into conscious activity, and therefore solved the Gordian Knot of your problem with one stroke.Marx starts from the assumption of both, unified, as so doesn't talk about either 'mind' alone or 'matter' alone. This issue of 'which is over the other' is a non-problem for Marxists.As I've said, it was Engels who split Marx's ideas back into a battle between 'idealism' versus 'materialism', in which struggle one must take a side. As you're a 'materialist', you accuse me of 'idealism'. In this, you're also continuing the views of the SPGB, which also subscribes to Engels' 'materialism'.Democratic socialism will require 'conscious activity', social production, democratic politics – not a reversion to the ancient 'mind versus matter' debate. Marx's method is 'social theory and practice', which requires both 'mind' and 'matter', unified.

[Anonymous]

LBird wrote:

 Unfortunately, Marx didn't revert to 'mind-over-matter', which is always the accusation of 'materialists' (like you?), who follow Engels, who inadvertantly resurrected this debate, and argued in favour of 'matter-over-mind', as you do.Marx unified 'mind-matter' into conscious activity, and therefore solved the Gordian Knot of your problem with one stroke.Marx starts from the assumption of both, unified, as so doesn't talk about either 'mind' alone or 'matter' alone. This issue of 'which is over the other' is a non-problem for Marxists.As I've said, it was Engels who split Marx's ideas back into a battle between 'idealism' versus 'materialism', in which struggle one must take a side. As you're a 'materialist', you accuse me of 'idealism'. In this, you're also continuing the views of the SPGB, which also subscribes to Engels' 'materialism'.Democratic socialism will require 'conscious activity', social production, democratic politics – not a reversion to the ancient 'mind versus matter' debate. Marx's method is 'social theory and practice', which requires both 'mind' and 'matter', unified.

Absolute nonsense and not substantiated or supported with a single quote from Marx OR Engels. Unlike the two posts by SPGB member twc #354 and #355.LBird has never substantiated his silly claims. He should put up or shut up. We are all sick of this repetitive bullshit    

[moderator1]

Mon, 25/09/2017 – 8:20am#421 LBird1st warning: 6. Do not make repeated postings of the same or similar messages to the same thread, or to multiple threads or forums (‘cross-posting’). Do not make multiple postings within a thread that could be consolidated into a single post (‘serial posting’). Do not post an excessive number of threads, posts, or private messages within a limited period of time (‘flooding’).Queries or appeals relating to particular moderation decisions should be sent directly to the moderators by private message.   Forum members are free to discuss moderator’s decisions on a separate thread set up for that purpose but should not discuss moderator’s decisions on the main forum. You must continue to abide by the moderators’ decisions pending the outcome of your appeal.

[twc]

[Apologies for taking so much space.  It’s too dicey to copy and paste this safely to a new thread, where it belongs.]

Quote:

So, twc, you clearly affirm … when the term 'materialist' is used by both Marx and Engels, it always means 'social production'.

No!  I clearly affirm no such thing.What I do clearly affirm is that Marx and Engels always used the terms ‘materialist’ and ‘materialism’ in opposition to the terms ‘idealist’ and ‘idealism’.From Marx’s PhD dissertation on Greek materialism, their passing infatuation with German idealism and their engagement with the young Hegelians, Marx and Engels knew precisely what tradition of thought idealists and materialists avowed, and precisely what the terms ‘materialism’ and ‘idealism’ signified.  They saw no pressing need to depart from established traditional usage, and every reason to preserve the distinction.Here follows the proofs from Capital Volume 1…1. Marx’s use of the terms ‘materialist’ and ‘idealist’ in Capital Volume 1… an article dealing with the method of “Das Kapital”, finds my method of inquiry severely realistic, but my method of presentation, unfortunately, [Hegelian] German-dialectical:  “At first sight, if judgment is based on the apparent [Hegelian] form of Marx’s presentation of the subject, Marx is the most ideal of ideal philosophers, always in the German, i.e., in the bad [Hegelian] sense of the word.  But in point of fact, Marx is infinitely more realistic than all his forerunners in the work of economic criticism.  Marx can in no sense be called an idealist.”After a quotation from the [materialist conception of history] Preface to my Critique of Political Economy, where I discuss the materialistic basis of my method, the writer goes on:  “…If in the history of civilisation the conscious element plays a part so subordinate, then it is self-evident that a critical inquiry whose subject-matter is civilisation, can, less than anything else, have for its basis any form of, or any result of, consciousness.  That is to say, that not the idea, but the material phenomenon alone can serve as its starting-point…”Relics of bygone instruments of labour possess the same importance for the investigation of extinct economic forms of society, as do fossil bones for the determination of extinct species of animals.  It is not the articles made, but how they are made, and by what instruments, that enables us to distinguish different economic epochs.*Instruments of labour not only supply a standard of the degree of development to which human labour has attained, but they are also indicators of the social conditions under which that labour is carried on.  Among the instruments of labour, those of a mechanical nature, which, taken as a whole, we may call the bone and muscles of production, offer much more decided characteristics of a given epoch of production, than those which, like pipes, tubs, baskets, jars, &c., serve only to hold the materials for labour, which latter class, we may in a general way, call the vascular system of production.  The latter first begins to play an important part in the chemical industries.* The least important commodities of all for the technological comparison of different epochs of production are articles of luxury, in the strict meaning of the term.  However little our written histories up to this time notice the development of material production, which is the basis of all social life, and therefore of all real history, yet prehistoric times have been classified in accordance with the results, not of so-called historical, but of materialistic investigations.  These periods have been divided, to correspond with the materials from which their implements and weapons were made, viz., into the stone, the bronze, and the iron ages.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 of religion, even, that fails to take account of this material [=technological] 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.2. Marx’s use of the term ‘material’ in Capital Volume 1The first ten of many hundreds of occurrences of the term ‘material’ in Capital fall in its opening pages of Chapter 1:A commodity, such as iron, corn, or a diamond, is therefore, so far as it is a material thing, a use value, something useful. [p.1]The use values of commodities furnish the material for a special study, that of the commercial knowledge of commodities. [p.1]In the form of society we are about to consider, they are, in addition, the material depositories of exchange value. [p.1]If we make abstraction from its use value, we make abstraction at the same time from the material elements and shapes that make the product a use value; [p.2]Its existence as a material thing is put out of sight. [p.2]But coats and linen, like every other element of material wealth that is not the spontaneous produce of Nature, must invariably owe their existence to a special productive activity, exercised with a definite aim, an activity that appropriates particular nature-given materials to particular human wants. [p.5]So far therefore as labour is a creator of use value, is useful labour, it is a necessary condition, independent of all forms of society, for the existence of the human race; it is an eternal nature-imposed necessity, without which there can be no material exchanges between man and Nature, and therefore no life. [p.5]If we take away the useful labour expended upon them, a material substratum is always left, which is furnished by Nature without the help of man. [p.5]We see, then, that labour is not the only source of material wealth, of use values produced by labour. [p.5]3. Marx’s opposition of ‘materialism’ and ‘idealism’ in Capital Volume 1With Hegel, the dialectic is standing on its head.  It must be turned right side up again, if you would discover the rational kernel within the mystical shell.My dialectic method is not only different from the Hegelian, but is its direct opposite.To Hegel, the real world is only the external, phenomenal form of “the Idea”.With me, on the contrary, the ideal is nothing else than the material world reflected by the human mind, and translated into forms of thought.My standpoint, from which the evolution of the economic formation of society is viewed as a process of natural history, can less than any other make the individual responsible for relations whose creature he socially remains, however much he may subjectively raise himself above them.The physicist either observes physical phenomena where they occur in their most typical form and most free from disturbing influence, or, wherever possible, he makes experiments under conditions that assure the occurrence of the phenomenon in its normality.In the analysis of economic forms, neither microscopes nor chemical reagents are of use.  The force of abstraction must replace both.  But in bourgeois society, the commodity-form of the product of labour – or value-form of the commodity – is the economic cell-form.  To the superficial observer, the analysis of these forms seems to turn upon minutiae.  It does in fact deal with minutiae, but they are of the same order as those dealt with in microscopic anatomy.Intrinsically, it is not a question of the higher or lower degree of development of the social antagonisms that result from the natural laws of capitalist production.  It is a question of these laws themselves, of these tendencies working with iron necessity towards inevitable results.The country that is more developed industrially only shows, to the less developed, the image of its own future.In the domain of Political Economy, free scientific inquiry meets not merely the same enemies as in all other domains.  The peculiar nature of the materials it deals with, summons as foes into the field of battle the most violent, mean and malignant passions of the human breast, the Furies of private interest.4. Why ‘materialist’ is not a synonym for ‘social production’It was the ‘idealist’ Hegel who discovered and made explicit the concept of the ‘social production’ of thought.Unlike modern subjectivisms, Hegel grounded social thought, or social subjectivity, in the objectivity of the evolving world “Idea”.  For Hegel, social thought is the history of society’s discovery of the objectivity of the world.Marx knew and thoroughly appreciated what Hegel had achieved within the limitations of his idealism.However, according to LBird, ideas are primary and practice is secondary.  Practice, though unified with thought, invariably follows behind it at thought’s behest.  Why then didn’t Marx equally, or preferentially, honour Hegel and use the term ‘idealist’ instead of ‘materialist’ to mean ‘social production’?According to LBird, only Engels thought idealism and materialism were different and opposed, while Marx thought they were united.  Why then didn’t Marx use the famous LBird oxymoron ‘idealist–materialist’ — in the strict correct LBird word order — to mean ‘social production’?According to LBird, ‘material’ means ‘social’ and ‘materialist’ means ‘social production’.  Why then didn’t Marx use the term ‘material-ism’ to mean ‘social-ism’?.  Why didn’t Marx simply say —    Materialism = Socialism

[robbo203]

LBird wrote:

.Marx starts from the assumption of both, unified, as so doesn't talk about either 'mind' alone or 'matter' alone. This issue of 'which is over the other' is a non-problem for MarxistsAs I've said, it was Engels who split Marx's ideas back into a battle between 'idealism' versus 'materialism', in which struggle one must take a side. As you're a 'materialist', you accuse me of 'idealism'. In this, you're also continuing the views of the SPGB, which also subscribes to Engels' 'materialism'. 

 Frederich Engels: "And, in fact, with every day that passes we are acquiring a better understanding of these laws and getting to perceive both the more immediate and the more remote consequences of our interference with the traditional course of nature. In particular, after the mighty advances made by the natural sciences in the present century, we are more than ever in a position to realise, and hence to control, also the more remote natural consequences of at least our day-to-day production activities. But the more this progresses the more will men not only feel but also know their oneness with nature, and the more impossible will become the senseless and unnatural idea of a contrast between mind and matter, man and nature, soul and body, such as arose after the decline of classical antiquity in Europe and obtained its highest elaboration in Christianity."https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1876/part-played-labour/index.htm  

[LBird]

Marx, Letter to Annenkov, 1846, wrote:

…those who produce social relations in conformity with their material productivity also produce the ideas, categories, i.e. the ideal abstract expressions of those same social relations. Indeed, the categories are no more eternal than the relations they express. They are historical and transitory products. To Mr Proudhon, on the contrary, the prime cause consists in abstractions and categories. According to him it is these and not men which make history. The abstraction, the category regarded as such, i.e. as distinct from man and his material activity, is, of course, immortal, immutable, impassive.

http://hiaw.org/defcon6/works/1846/letters/46_12_28.html'Matter' is such a 'category'. Not 'eternal', but 'historical and transitory'. Not 'immortal, immutable, impassive', awaiting our 'discovery'.Those who think that 'the prime cause' is a 'category', like matter, which is 'distinct from [hu]man[ity]', rather than human activity, are not Marxists. They are the idealists. 'Materialists' are idealists. Engels didn't understand that, and neither do the 'materialists' who mistakenly follow Engels.Humans socially produce 'matter', and so can change it. 'Matter' is a social product.Even the bourgeoisie have changed from this 'category' to others. Thus, even the bourgeoisie are more advanced than 'materialists', who continue to live in the intellectual world of the 18th century, prior to Marx.

[moderator1]

Mon, 25/09/2017 – 2:54pm#424 twc1st warning: 6. Do not make repeated postings of the same or similar messages to the same thread, or to multiple threads or forums (‘cross-posting’). Do not make multiple postings within a thread that could be consolidated into a single post (‘serial posting’). Do not post an excessive number of threads, posts, or private messages within a limited period of time (‘flooding’). Queries or appeals relating to particular moderation decisions should be sent directly to the moderators by private message.   Forum members are free to discuss moderator’s decisions on a separate thread set up for that purpose but should not discuss moderator’s decisions on the main forum. You must continue to abide by the moderators’ decisions pending the outcome of your appeal.

[LBird]

robbo203 wrote:

LBird wrote:

.Marx starts from the assumption of both, unified, as so doesn't talk about either 'mind' alone or 'matter' alone. This issue of 'which is over the other' is a non-problem for MarxistsAs I've said, it was Engels who split Marx's ideas back into a battle between 'idealism' versus 'materialism', in which struggle one must take a side. As you're a 'materialist', you accuse me of 'idealism'. In this, you're also continuing the views of the SPGB, which also subscribes to Engels' 'materialism'.

Frederich Engels:"And, in fact, with every day that passes we are acquiring a better understanding of these laws and getting to perceive both the more immediate and the more remote consequences of our interference with the traditional course of nature. In particular, after the mighty advances made by the natural sciences in the present century, we are more than ever in a position to realise, and hence to control, also the more remote natural consequences of at least our day-to-day production activities. But the more this progresses the more will men not only feel but also know their oneness with nature, and the more impossible will become the senseless and unnatural idea of a contrast between mind and matter, man and nature, soul and body, such as arose after the decline of classical antiquity in Europe and obtained its highest elaboration in Christianity."https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1876/part-played-labour/index.htm

Thanks for that, robbo.Now, you have to accept that there is no 'matter-in-itself', only Marx's 'mind-matter', 'idealism-materialism'.

[robbo203]

LBird wrote:

robbo203 wrote:

LBird wrote:

.Marx starts from the assumption of both, unified, as so doesn't talk about either 'mind' alone or 'matter' alone. This issue of 'which is over the other' is a non-problem for MarxistsAs I've said, it was Engels who split Marx's ideas back into a battle between 'idealism' versus 'materialism', in which struggle one must take a side. As you're a 'materialist', you accuse me of 'idealism'. In this, you're also continuing the views of the SPGB, which also subscribes to Engels' 'materialism'.

Frederich Engels:"And, in fact, with every day that passes we are acquiring a better understanding of these laws and getting to perceive both the more immediate and the more remote consequences of our interference with the traditional course of nature. In particular, after the mighty advances made by the natural sciences in the present century, we are more than ever in a position to realise, and hence to control, also the more remote natural consequences of at least our day-to-day production activities. But the more this progresses the more will men not only feel but also know their oneness with nature, and the more impossible will become the senseless and unnatural idea of a contrast between mind and matter, man and nature, soul and body, such as arose after the decline of classical antiquity in Europe and obtained its highest elaboration in Christianity."https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1876/part-played-labour/index.htm

Thanks for that, robbo.Now, you have to accept that there is no 'matter-in-itself', only Marx's 'mind-matter', 'idealism-materialism'.

 If if there no matter in itself then the physical universe could not have existed before human beings thought about it.  Is that what you are saying?

[LBird]

robbo203 wrote:

LBird wrote:

robbo203 wrote:

LBird wrote:

.Marx starts from the assumption of both, unified, as so doesn't talk about either 'mind' alone or 'matter' alone. This issue of 'which is over the other' is a non-problem for MarxistsAs I've said, it was Engels who split Marx's ideas back into a battle between 'idealism' versus 'materialism', in which struggle one must take a side. As you're a 'materialist', you accuse me of 'idealism'. In this, you're also continuing the views of the SPGB, which also subscribes to Engels' 'materialism'.

Frederich Engels:"And, in fact, with every day that passes we are acquiring a better understanding of these laws and getting to perceive both the more immediate and the more remote consequences of our interference with the traditional course of nature. In particular, after the mighty advances made by the natural sciences in the present century, we are more than ever in a position to realise, and hence to control, also the more remote natural consequences of at least our day-to-day production activities. But the more this progresses the more will men not only feel but also know their oneness with nature, and the more impossible will become the senseless and unnatural idea of a contrast between mind and matter, man and nature, soul and body, such as arose after the decline of classical antiquity in Europe and obtained its highest elaboration in Christianity."https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1876/part-played-labour/index.htm

Thanks for that, robbo.Now, you have to accept that there is no 'matter-in-itself', only Marx's 'mind-matter', 'idealism-materialism'.

 If if there no matter in itself then the physical universe could not have existed before human beings thought about it.  Is that what you are saying?

The 'physical' is a social category, robbo.Human activity produces the 'physical'.You are simply replacing 'matter' (now you accept that it is a discredited category) with 'physical'.The 'physical universe' is a social product of conscious human activity. That's why, according to Marx, we can change it.You wish to passively contemplate something that 'exists' prior to human conscious activity. You're an 18th century 'materialist'.

[LBird]

Marx wrote:

Now it is certainly easy to say to the single individual what Aristotle has already said: You have been begotten by your father and your mother; therefore in you the mating of two human beings – a species-act of human beings – has produced the human being. You see, therefore, that even physically man owes his existence to man. Therefore you must not only keep sight of the one aspect – the infinite progression which leads you further to inquire: Who begot my father? Who his grandfather? etc. You must also hold on to the circular movement sensuously perceptible in that progress by which man repeats himself in procreation, man thus always remaining the subject. You will reply, however: I grant you this circular movement; now grant me the progress which drives me ever further until I ask: Who begot the first man, and nature as a whole? I can only answer you: Your question is itself a product of abstraction. Ask yourself how you arrived at that question. Ask yourself whether your question is not posed from a standpoint to which I cannot reply, because it is wrongly put. Ask yourself whether that progress as such exists for a reasonable mind. When you ask about the creation of nature and man, you are abstracting, in so doing, from man and nature. You postulate them as non-existent, and yet you want me to prove them to you as existing. Now I say to you: Give up your abstraction and you will also give up your question. Or if you want to hold on to your abstraction, then be consistent, and if you think of man and nature as non-existent, ||XI| then think of yourself as non-existent, for you too are surely nature and man. Don’t think, don’t ask me, for as soon as you think and ask, your abstraction from the existence of nature and man has no meaning. Or are you such an egotist that you conceive everything as nothing, and yet want yourself to exist?You can reply: I do not want to postulate the nothingness of nature, etc. I ask you about its genesis, just as I ask the anatomist about the formation of bones, etc.But since for the socialist man the entire so-called history of the world is nothing but the creation of man through human labour, nothing but the emergence of nature for man, so he has the visible, irrefutable proof of his birth through himself, of his genesis. Since the real existence of man and nature has become evident in practice, through sense experience, because man has thus become evident for man as the being of nature, and nature for man as the being of man, the question about an alien being, about a being above nature and man – a question which implies the admission of the unreality of nature and of man – has become impossible in practice. Atheism, as the denial of this unreality, has no longer any meaning, for atheism is a negation of God, and postulates the existence of man through this negation; but socialism as socialism no longer stands in any need of such a mediation. It proceeds from the theoretically and practically sensuous consciousness of man and of nature as the essence. Socialism is man’s positive self-consciousness, no longer mediated through the abolition of religion, just as real life is man’s positive reality, no longer mediated through the abolition of private property, through communism. Communism is the position as the negation of the negation, and is hence the actual phase necessary for the next stage of historical development in the process of human emancipation and rehabilitation. Communism is the necessary form and the dynamic principle of the immediate future, but communism as such is not the goal of human development, the form of human society.

https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1844/manuscripts/comm.htmSee also: Early Writings, Penguin, p. 357;or, Collected Works, Volume 3, page 305;or, Fromm, Marx's Concept of Man, page 112, for slightly different translations.

[Young Master Smeet]

Marx, Letter to Annenkov, 1846, wrote:

…those who produce social relations in conformity with their material productivity also produce the ideas, categories, i.e. the ideal abstract expressions of those same social relations. Indeed, the categories are no more eternal than the relations they express. They are historical and transitory products. To Mr Proudhon, on the contrary, the prime cause consists in abstractions and categories. According to him it is these and not men which make history. The abstraction, the category regarded as such, i.e. as distinct from man and his material activity, is, of course, immortal, immutable, impassive.

http://hiaw.org/defcon6/works/1846/letters/46_12_28.htmlI can't help but notice that in this quote provided by Lbird, Marx twice refers to the material, and gives that precedence over the ideal (the categories he refers to).  Humans do indeed produce ideas, abstract expressions of material relations and activities.An independently minded person would assume that when Marx talks of "material productivity" and "material activity" he means "material productivity" and "material activity", not "socially produced".  The onus is on Lbird, as an honest interlocutor, to prove that when Marx said material, he didn't mean material.Now, linguistic philosophers would tell us that 'material productivity' and 'material activity' pressupose matter and its existence.  The onus is on Lbird, as an honest interlocutor, to prove that when Marx said material, he didn't mean material.

[Anonymous]

I think the moderator should block this thread. This is not about Marx and automation anymore, It has been taken out of track. The original argumentation has been proven that it is totally incorrect too, it does not work like that on the real world

[Alan Kerr]

@LBirdOf course, the problem is all yours Bird. This is if you try to explain anything. All you are saying is that ideas and matter affect each other. This is true. Who denies it? This is in both Marx and Engels. But in itself what can this explain in practice?See The Socialist Preamble. At first, the capitalist firm is small compared to the later capitalist firm. The former starts from simple manufacture. The latter is rather machine work. In both Marx and Engels, these steps have an order to them. In the same way, we leave the womb and learn to walk before we learn to run. But since ideas and matter just affect each other so you could reverse the order of these steps? Yes?Ok then maybe, you can explain in that case how you make the first machine?You could not make the first machine by machine not if it was the first one. But once you make the first machine by hand then you have simple manufacture step before machine step.That’s your problem Bird. We see no way out not for your way just to explain ideas by matter and vice versa matter by ideas. Do you?While you explain your way out of your problem, we also welcome criticism. So what problem did you find in The Socialist Preamble?Thank you for your link to letter from Marx. Of course, Marx also brings the exact same argument that I bring here against you.“Needless to say, man is not free to choose his productive forces—upon which his whole history is based—for every productive force is an acquired force, the product of previous activity.”(Taken from your link see #420)

[LBird]

Alan Kerr wrote:

@LBirdThank you for your link to the letter from Marx. Of course, Marx also brings the exact same argument that I bring here against you.“Needless to say, man is not free to choose his productive forces—upon which his whole history is based—for every productive force is an acquired force, the product of previous activity.”(Taken from your link see #420)

Yes, 'productive forces' are a social product of previous generations' social production, Alan.This is nothing whatsoever to do with 'matter-in-itself'.We're 'not free to choose' them, as Marx says… but we are 'free to change' them, as Marx also says.Conscious Activity, not passive contemplation of 'matter'.

[Author]

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