Marx and Automation

[Alan Kerr]

Yes exactly. We need to know how you would change freely to using machines first and to hand crafts after. 

[LBird]

Young Master Smeet wrote:

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.

You're a clown, YMS.

Marx wrote:

…the products of the production process. This is exactly the same relation in the sphere of material production, in the real social life process — for this is the production process — as is represented by religion in the ideological sphere: the inversion of the subject into the object and vice versa.

[my bold]https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1864/economic/ch02.htmI know you won't read it, YMS, but other Marxists might benefit.All the Marx quotes in the world won't shake your Faith In Matter, as you're a good Religious Materialist.For Marx, 'material' meant 'human', and 'ideal' meant 'divine'.'Material production' is a synonym for 'social production'.

[Anonymous]

LBird wrote:

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'.

What absolute idealist nonsense ! Where did Marx say this ??  That we could have as many moons giong around the earth as we wish is absolute tosh. References???? 

[robbo203]

LBird wrote:

 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'.

 This makes no sense.  The physical universe cannot possibly be a product of  human society not least because it  prexisted human society.  What you are trying to say in your clumsy manner is that our apprehnsion of the physcial world is a product of human society and that I wouldnt disagree  with but you cannot then infer from that that physical world itself  does not exist or does not eist without us which is what you saying when you say  there that "there is  no 'matter-in-itself'",.  Our technical ability to determine the age of the earth as 4.5 billion and modern humans as a mere 200,000 years disproves you In other words, you are confusing "matter in itself" and our human knowledge of matter  and trying to soud profoud by putting matter in itself in inverted commas when all you are talking about is the concept of matter and not matter in itself Incidentally now that Ive provided you with that wonderful quote  from Engels will you now concede that you were wrong in your assessment of him?

[Bijou Drains]

LBird wrote:

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.

the problem is, my feathered fiend, is that you conflate Matter with Materialism. they are two different concepts and the words have effectively two different derivations although coming from the same latin root.material (adj.) mid-14c., "real, ordinary; earthly, drawn from the material world;" a term in scholastic philosophy and theology, from Old French material, materiel Matter " from Latin materia "matter, stuff, wood, timber".Your use of the word matter is a more modern usage to describe the "theory of matter". Adhering to Materialsim, does not per se adherence to modern theories of matter, which must by their very nature be subject to scrutiny and change.So to summarise basically, your talking bollocksYou may find the following link useful:http://blog.planetjamie.co.uk/blog/wp-content/uploads/2010/11/Arse-Elbow-smaller.jpg

[Anonymous]

Wow! This thread has gone off the rails from its initial discussion on automation, Marx, value, price and wage fabrications!I guess LBird is reiterating a slight variation of Feuerbach's notion that humans project onto the phenomenal world their ideals and/or conceptual structures. Or, he is reiterating some Kantian notion that our a priori concepts, housed in the human brain, produce the world, as we know it, from alpha to omega. Or like Schopenhaur, LBird, understands "the world as will and idea", or, like Wittgenstein, he understands that "the world is all that is the case". In any event, he has tripped on the limits of Marxist thinking and has stumbled into a fundamental contradiction in Marxist thinking.I suggest he read my recent Dissident Voice article: The limits and difficiencies of dialectical and historical materialism:(An abstract of the principals of anarcho-historical-relativism). https://dissidentvoice.org/2017/09/the-limits-and-deficiencies-of-dialectical-and-historical-materialism/ 

[moderator1]

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[Anonymous]

MBellemare wrote:

Wow! This thread has gone off the rails from its initial discussion on automation, Marx, value, price and wage fabrications!I guess LBird is reiterating a slight variation of Feuerbach's notion that humans project onto the phenomenal world their ideals and/or conceptual structures. Or, he is reiterating some Kantian notion that our a priori concepts, housed in the human brain, produce the world, as we know it, from alpha to omega. Or like Schopenhaur, LBird, understands "the world as will and idea", or, like Wittgenstein, he understands that "the world is all that is the case". In any event, he has tripped on the limits of Marxist thinking and has stumbled into a fundamental contradiction in Marxist thinking.I suggest he read my recent Dissident Voice article: The limits and difficiencies of dialectical and historical materialism:(An abstract of the principals of anarcho-historical-relativism). https://dissidentvoice.org/2017/09/the-limits-and-deficiencies-of-dialectical-and-historical-materialism/ 

comment out of track:we already had a long discussion about that it is not new for us Dialectical materialism is not a creation of Marx. It was Geitzen ,and we have written about that too. Dialectical historical materialism is a conception of Lenin. Marx is not a Hegelian and we do not  need dialectic and we do not  need philosophy it is useless. Historical materialism is not a philosophical category either.  The socialist party has being digging in philosophy and anthropology for many years 

[Alan Kerr]

@MBellemareMind over matter and matter over mind is the answer of Marx and Engels. But it’s not their full answer. It still leaves us facing both ways.Let’s cut to the chase.Same question to you.How could you achieve automated factory stage first and simple manufacture stage after?How could you do that not just in imagination but in practice?

[LBird]

Alan Kerr wrote:

Mind over matter and matter over mind is the answer of Marx and Engels. But it’s not their full answer. It still leaves us facing both ways.

No, you still haven't grasped what Marx said – and I've given several quotes from Marx, on this thread and the other current.Marx unified 'mind' and 'matter' into conscious activity.Thus, we are not left 'facing both ways'.You can only argue this, if you believe that there is a choice between two options. If you believe that, fair enough, but it's nothing to do with Marx's views.This is the whole point, of the revolutionary content to Marx's ideas. He put the old argument between 'mind' versus 'matter' to bed, and started from the assumption of both 'humanity' and 'inorganic nature'. Read the quote I gave earlier. He insists that one can't separate the two, and ask 'which came first?'.The upshot of this is that 'automation', for Marxists, can only be discussed in the form of the question 'automation-for-who?'.Human conscious activity, social production, will produce an 'automation-for' whoever is the 'active side', and whose needs, interests and purposes are expressed in the production of a 'social-automation-for-them'.This is not a battle of 'stages', where 'automation-in-itself' just proceeds, on its own course. This is an ongoing battle, part of a class struggle, now, to determine whose 'automation' will be built.If the bourgeosie are left with a clear field to build 'in this stage', then we'll find the 'our stage' never comes. 'Automation', as a social product, will be 'automation-for-the bourgeoisie', but will appear to all as simply 'automation'. And we as a class will have lost the battle, again. This 'automation' will not suddenly (or, indeed, gradually) morph in an 'automation-for-workers'. That has to be built, either now or later. But it's not a case of fixed 'stages', in which the 'former stage' must precede the 'latter stage'.Oh yes, whilst I rememer – it was Engels who resurrected the 'idealism' versus 'materialism' debate, the notion that there is a choice between 'mind' and 'matter', as to 'which came first?'.There is only 'mind-matter', as a unity, for Marxists. Social production.

[Young Master Smeet]

LBird wrote:

Marx wrote:

…the products of the production process. This is exactly the same relation in the sphere of material production, in the real social life process — for this is the production process — as is represented by religion in the ideological sphere: the inversion of the subject into the object and vice versa.

[my bold]https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1864/economic/ch02.htmI know you won't read it, YMS, but other Marxists might benefit.All the Marx quotes in the world won't shake your Faith In Matter, as you're a good Religious Materialist.For Marx, 'material' meant 'human', and 'ideal' meant 'divine'.'Material production' is a synonym for 'social production'.

Lbird, your quote doesn't support the weight you're putting on it.  Especially as within a fw sentences Charlie is talking about "the ruthless productive powers of social labour, which alone can form the material basis for a free human society." If material and human are synonyms, then that sentence is meaningless.  The whole paragraph is discussing "objectified labour to convert itself into capital," i.e. into the theory of commodity fetishism.   Also, as a side note, Marx is specifically here talking about a transient form of sociey, not a transhistorical once and forever relationship of labour to objects.There is no evidnce 'material' was a synonym for human, much less 'ideal' as divine (even the very section you've provided us demonstrates the opposite, since the premise is that humans created the divine.Real social life is material production.  That is what the above quote says, twist it how you will.  You're interpretation only works if you ascribe to Marx a unique meaning of the word 'material', to do which, you will need to provide evidence.

[robbo203]

LBird wrote:

.Oh yes, whilst I rememer – it was Engels who resurrected the 'idealism' versus 'materialism' debate, the notion that there is a choice between 'mind' and 'matter', as to 'which came first?'. 

Once again, I refer you to the Engels quote in which Engels explicitly talks of the "the senseless and unnatural idea of a contrast between mind and matter, man and nature, soul and body" Automation does not happen because the bourgeosie think it is a "nice idea".  They are embedded within an economic system that operates according to laws that are beyond their control, akin to a force of nature, which in turn, shapes their thinking on the matter.  There is always a two way interaction between the objective and the subjective, between mind and matter. Its not a one way process

[LBird]

Young Master Smeet wrote:

 Lbird, your quote doesn't support the weight you're putting on it.  Especially as within a fw sentences Charlie is talking about "the ruthless productive powers of social labour, which alone can form the material basis for a free human society." If material and human are synonyms, then that sentence is meaningless.  

I beginning to doubt your ability to understand the meaning of what you yourself write, YMS.'Social labour', 'alone'.'Social Labour' is Marx's specific term for 'Conscious Activity'.So, 'Mind-Matter' (to put it in your ideological terms) creates the 'material basis'.'Material basis' is a social product of conscious, human, social, active, labour.And I've explained this 'synonym' issues to you, very carefully, dozens of times.When Marx writes 'material' he means 'human' (or, 'social' (ie. not 'individual')), and when he writes 'ideal' he means 'divine'.You don't agree with Marx, because you're not a Marxist. I have no problem with that. But why pretend to others to be agreeing with Marx, when you very clearly don't?In fact, again as I've shown dozens of times, you're following Engels' 'materialism', which was Engels' attempt to understand Marx's unifying of 'mind-matter' ('social labour', 'conscious activity', 'productive humanity'), by breaking the unity back into 'mind' and 'matter', and thus reverting to a debate between 'idealism' versus 'materialism', which Marx (thought he had) ended.Now, the last two days, both you and robbo have posted quotes from Marx (and, indeed, Engels on his better days!) which support this argument of Marx's, about the unity of 'mind-matter'. The whole point is, you can't have one without the other.There is no 'matter', 'out there', patiently waiting for our passive 'discovery' of 'IT', 'in-itself', which once 'discovered', is 'Objectively Known For Eternity'.We created 'matter-for-us', and we can change it, to 'mass-for-us', or, 'energy-for-us', as have the bourgeoisie in history.Or, we can even change it to 'hupokeimenon', an Ancent Greek concept with which Marx was completely aware. It is 'qualityless', and only has 'qualities' when we actively put them there. We are the 'active side', not any 'divine'. Another name is 'apoios ousia' ('qualityless being'), and the Greeks had several more.The point here, is that WE CAN CHANGE, as Marx argued. 'Matter' is a choice, not an 'Eternal Category'.

[LBird]

robbo203 wrote:

There is always a two way interaction between the objective and the subjective, between mind and matter. Its not a one way process

robbo, this is your ideological interpretation of 'object' and 'subject'.You choose 'matter' and 'mind' to be synonyms of them.Marx didn't – he chose 'inorganic nature' and 'conscious activity' which produces 'organic nature'.That is, the 'object' is a product of 'subject', by its 'conscious activity'.So, you are arguing something different to Marx. Which is your right.But, it's nothing to do with Marx's ideas about 'social production'. There is no 'matter' prior to our production of it – read the various quotes by Marx, provided by several of us here, on these two threads, including yourself.BTW, Engels also used the terms 'mind' and 'matter' erroneously, at least in places, because he understood as much about Marx's ideas as you do. Which is why you follow Engels, not Marx.

[Young Master Smeet]

Yes, social labour alone, which is a material thing, forms the basis for a free society (so, pace Iain M. Banks, fully automated luxury communism cannot be the basis of a free society, we can only be as free as we can help each otehr to be.  Machines and automation alone cannot make a free society.You are demonstrating your inability to read texts, and to abstract portions out of context to provide an overall misreading.  The social labour alone at most produces the material basis of a free society, it says nothign about the entire cosmos.

Lbird wrote:

'Social Labour' is Marx's specific term for 'Conscious Activity'.

.Again, you argue from Marx not using words to mean what they mean for everyone else.  For instance, here is your actual Engels definining social labour:

Engels wrote:

And I say not only labour, but social labour. A man who produces an article for his own immediate use, to consume it himself, creates a product, but not a commodity. As a self-sustaining producer he has nothing to do with society. But to produce a commodity, a man must not only produce an article satisfying some social want, but his labour itself must form part and parcel of the total sum of labour expended by society. It must be subordinate to the division of labour within society. It is nothing without the other divisions of labour, and on its part is required to integrate them.

I entirely agree that mind/matter is ne thing, I am a stuff monist, ideas are material, and have no independent existence from matter.  Humans and their ideas are a part of nature, as are their products, including their automata.Science, including physics, must deal with ideas as an object of study, as, in the very least abstract, intelligent life will have an effect on the development of the universe.

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