Marx, and the myth of his ‘Materialism’

[LBird]

YMS wrote:

You can find matter for yourself…

Of course you can, and bollocks to socio-historical production, eh?Individualist and bourgeois crap. No wonder robbo and you espouse materialism.No need for science, when biological individuals can 'touch matter', and, like hippies "Find it for yourself, maaaannn!".And finally, you admit that 'you have to know, prior to change' – the complete opposite of Marx, who argued that 'we know by changing', 'we are active producers of our knowledge'. It doesn't simply 'sit out there', 'waiting to be known', but is produced by active workers.It's laughable bourgeois nonsense, your ideology, YMS.No wonder you NEVER mention democracy in the 'finding' process. Unlike Democratic Communists, who always mention democratic production.

[alanjjohnstone]

I must be stupid because it is not words i am seeking…What interpretation is made to those statements is neither here nor there as means of clearing my mind…"we know only a single science, the science of history" -German Ideology It isn't what they say but what they do. I tried to explain the contradiction i see in what you say…SPGB ideas are the building bricks of a dictatorship of the elite…But these ideas have not produced a Party dictatorship either existing in the present or aspiring for the future. Nor does our interaction and engagement with fellow workers betray such a tendency to a hierachy of intellectuals, hoarding social knowledge to exert and apply control for whatever personal advantage you think they could have for such behaviour.I keep showing how our principles do not support such claims and are doing the opposite – building the  foundations of an autonomous not authoritarian society. What actual particular pieces of political organisation reflects Leninism in the Party structure?What Party actions concerning the working class reflects a policy, intended or not, to form an elite above/over the working class that is aimed to deprive them of their own democracy?I knowi must be off on a limb because nobody but me seems to think this is of any importance to get an answer from you

[Young Master Smeet]

LBird wrote:

And finally, you admit that 'you have to know, prior to change' – the complete opposite of Marx, who argued that 'we know by changing', 'we are active producers of our knowledge'. It doesn't simply 'sit out there', 'waiting to be known', but is produced by active workers.It's laughable bourgeois nonsense, your ideology, YMS.No wonder you NEVER mention democracy in the 'finding' process. Unlike Democratic Communists, who always mention democratic production.

Oh, what happened to

Someone or other wrote:

But what distinguishes the worst architect from the best of bees is this, that the architect raises his structure in imagination before he erects it in reality. At the end of every labour-process, we get a result that already existed in the imagination of the labourer at its commencement. He not only effects a change of form in the material on which he works, but he also realises a purpose of his own that gives the law to his modus operandi, and to which he must subordinate his will.

So, to re-iterate:1) How can we know the results of the vote, without a vote to tell us the results of the vote?2) Is the material substrate differentiated?  Does it bring any qualities to the relationship with human labour in producing organic matter?3) Can consensus gentium be subject to coercion?  Could a mobilised dictatorship enforce a vote, and thereby determine truth as a minority with the acquiesence of the majority?

[LBird]

alanjjohnstone wrote:

But these ideas have not produced a Party dictatorship either existing in the present or aspiring for the future. Nor does our interaction and engagement with fellow workers betray such a tendency to a hierachy of intellectuals, hoarding social knowledge to exert and apply control for whatever personal advantage you think they could have for such behaviour.

As I've said, alan, you will not acknowledge your materialism, and so you can't 'see' what's in front of your eyes.Don't you think YMS, robbo, twc, etc., etc., are 'aspiring to a future' physics that workers don't control? How you keep missing this baffles me, because they keep saying that they 'aspire' to a democracy-free production of knowledge.Don't you think, by what the materialists have said, that have "a tendency to a hierachy of intellectuals, hoarding social knowledge to exert and apply control"? Well, I can see it, alan, even if you can't. And that difference between us is a result of our differing ideologies: I'm a Marxist, you're an Engelsist. I look to 'socio-historical production', you look to 'eternal matter'.

Quote:

I keep showing how our principles do not support such claims and are doing the opposite – building the  foundations of an autonomous not authoritarian society.

But your Party has the 'secret clause', the 'hidden principle', that it pretends doesn't exist: 'Religious Materialism'.A simple way to reveal the adherents to the Secret SPGB Principle would be to take a vote about workers' power, about democratic control of the production of scientific knowledge, and the Secret would be revealed! The very idea of workers' power! If this happened to be rejected by newer members, they materialists would desert the party which no longer adheres to their secret, anti-worker, bias.

ajj wrote:

I knowi must be off on a limb because nobody but me seems to think this is of any importance to get an answer from you

Well, I keep answering your question, alan, but you apparently don't recognise an answer.What part of "Workers will not control physics and maths" do you see as 'democratic' or non-elitist?You seem to be saying, 'Trust us, workers, we say one thing (no democracy), but in power, we'll do another (workers' democracy). We haven't been in power, yet, so no-one can prove the opposite.'Yeah, right! Pull the other one, alan, it's got bells on it!

[robbo203]

LBird wrote:

Don't you think YMS, robbo, twc, etc., etc., are 'aspiring to a future' physics that workers don't control? How you keep missing this baffles me, because they keep saying that they 'aspire' to a democracy-free production of knowledge..What part of "Workers will not control physics and maths" do you see as 'democratic' or non-elitist?

 Once again LBird how in practical terms will workers – all 7 billiion of us – democratically "control physics and maths" How? How? How?Why dont you answer the question repeatedly  put to you?Why dont you behave like a democrat instead of pretending to be one?Why are you so scared of even attempting an answer?Could it be that you realise by now you have no answer and that this reduces everything you say to just so much windy vacuous nonsense?

[Anonymous]

robbo203 wrote:

 Once again LBird how in practical terms will workers – all 7 billiion of us – democratically "control physics and maths" How? How? How?Why dont you answer the question repeatedly  put to you?Why dont you behave like a democrat instead of pretending to be one?Why are you so scared of even attempting an answer?Could it be that you realise by now you have no answer and that this reduces everything you say to just so much windy vacuous nonsense?

  

[alanjjohnstone]

Quote:

“As I've said, alan, you will not acknowledge your materialism, and so you can't 'see' what's in front of your eyes…. Well, I can see it, alan, even if you can't”

Then let me view it through your eyes is what I keep saying to you.

Quote:

“I keep answering your question, alan, but you apparently don't recognise an answer.”

But you don’t, that is my problem.You don’t show the results of this materialism you say that dominates the Party in its actual practice and activity. Elite Engelsian materialist intellectuals took control of the SPD and the Bolsheviks. They exercised their ideological control to impose a dictatorship over, first, the Party and then the workers as a whole. Historians can easily provide the evidence for those claims of mine that an intelligensia sought to and did rule both parties.   Has the SPGB over a hundred years shown any movement towards such outcomes? …Within the Party, has a manipulating minority assumed charge? Has the SPGB entered or advocated workers organisations to direct them? According to your view it must have and i keep asking for you to provide examples of this.

Quote:

Your Party has the 'secret clause', the 'hidden principle'…A simple way to reveal the adherents to the Secret SPGB Principle would be to take a vote about workers' power, about democratic control of the production of scientific knowledge, and the Secret would be revealed!… their secret, anti-worker, bias.

This is like saying there is an SPGB Illuminati What I’m saying: “Trust us because regardless of whatever ambitions any technological elite may wish to assert and which that some say could arise, the conditions of free access and to each according to needs, DENIES any such group any social power to thwart democratic control of society. No commissar or intellectual can allot ones share of the collective wealth, this is self-determined.”

[LBird]

alanjjohnstone wrote:

But you don’t, that is my problem.

But I do, and the fact you can't recognise that, is your problem. It's a product of your unacknowledged materialism. I keep saying this, and you continue to fail to address the question of your ideology, and continue to affect a disarming 'but, but… I'm ignorant… I'm a simple soul just dealing with 'reality', as I see it…'. Of course, this is materialism, so you won't address it.And now, you'll wring your hands, plea ignorance of "big boys' philosophy", and feign mystification, and lament my failure to answer you.

ajj wrote:

This is like saying there is an SPGB Illuminati 

Hmmmm… how close you are, alan!The Materialist Illuminati! Brilliant! I'll remember that one for future use, when I'm warning workers about the SPGB's secret intent to deny workers' democratic control of production.

ajj wrote:

DENIES any such group any social power to thwart democratic control of society. No commissar or intellectual can allot ones share of the collective wealth, this is self-determined…

But the materialists define 'the collective wealth' not to include physics and maths! Buttons only, for the workers.So, a materialist intellectual will determine, and the class will not self-determine.Of course, this is all still going over your head, isn't it, alan? Y'know, the politics of science, the power to determine. After all, these are political issues, and apparently, like philosophy, it's of no concern to you.Perhaps socialism to you is merely an administrative task, and the workers should keep their ignorant noses out of administration and out of science?YMS fears 'the mob' ruining his science, and them not becoming class conscious, but passively following a demagogue. Perhaps you do, too.Whatever, there's no sign of any socialism I can recognise in YMS's bourgeois bluffing. Or robbo's individualist concerns.As to the SPGB, not one single member or supporter has come out against 'materialism', so I think we can safely say that the whole party is infected with the hidden disease.

[jondwhite]

LBird wrote:

As to the SPGB, not one single member or supporter has come out against 'materialism', so I think we can safely say that the whole party is infected with the hidden disease.

There is around three to four hundred members of the SPGB and only four or five have ever commented on materialism on this forum in topics you have also commented in. At most that is about one tenth in a hundred.

[Young Master Smeet]

LBird wrote:

Perhaps socialism to you is merely an administrative task, and the workers should keep their ignorant noses out of administration and out of science?

Workers already run the administration of capitalism from top to bottom, why should they stop when we have socialism?

LBird wrote:

YMS fears 'the mob' ruining his science, and them not becoming class conscious, but passively following a demagogue. Perhaps you do, too.Whatever, there's no sign of any socialism I can recognise in YMS's bourgeois bluffing. Or robbo's individualist concerns.

I was simply asking, which one is more likely to be elitist, a philosophy of the world in which the word of a king can be contradicted by evidence, or one where the king can demand a vote to recognise that he can turn the tides?  Also, note, I said nothing about mob rule, but organised mobilised dictatorship of the Leninist type.

[LBird]

jondwhite wrote:

LBird wrote:

As to the SPGB, not one single member or supporter has come out against 'materialism', so I think we can safely say that the whole party is infected with the hidden disease.

There is around three to four hundred members of the SPGB and only four or five have ever commented on materialism on this forum in topics you have also commented in. At most that is about one tenth in a hundred.

And this circumstance, of course, is mere coincidence!Let's see, let's use maths, so beloved of the physicalists!In favour of materialism: 1%.Opposed to materialism: 0%.Ignorant of philosophy: 99% ? (readers alone, or whole wider party?)Given what I've read, and what support I've conspicuously lacked, I'll bet that materialism is rife!It's just like the SWP! Except, then I was ignorant, and talked the same shite that's been talked here, which is why I can recognise it as such.But, just like the guy who was turned into a newt by the witch in MP, at least I got better.

[LBird]

Young Master Smeet wrote:

LBird wrote:

Perhaps socialism to you is merely an administrative task, and the workers should keep their ignorant noses out of administration and out of science?

Workers already run the administration of capitalism from top to bottom, why should they stop when we have socialism?

LBird wrote:

YMS fears 'the mob' ruining his science, and them not becoming class conscious, but passively following a demagogue. Perhaps you do, too.Whatever, there's no sign of any socialism I can recognise in YMS's bourgeois bluffing. Or robbo's individualist concerns.

I was simply asking, which one is more likely to be elitist, a philosophy of the world in which the word of a king can be contradicted by evidence, or one where the king can demand a vote to recognise that he can turn the tides?  Also, note, I said nothing about mob rule, but organised mobilised dictatorship of the Leninist type.

'Kings' in workers' councils?'Leninist consciousness' in workers' councils?Boy, you do have a low opinion of those thick workers, YMS!Unlike all those clever elitists, who have been busy fucking up the planet for 300 years, and happily supporting, not just bourgeois rule, but the fuckin' Nazis! Not just Mengele, but Heisenberg. And who was the WW1 German physicist who developed the poison gas to massacre workers?I wonder why no physicist ever said 'Physicists have known sin'? And the Eugenicists in the USA and UK, cutting bits out of unwashed workers…No, there is no 'elite sin' for you, is there, YMS?They know what they're doing, without the grubby workers intervening, in their 'Objective Search for The Truth' [TM bourgeoisie, 1660]

[Young Master Smeet]

LBird wrote:

They know what they're doing, without the grubby workers intervening, in their 'Objective Search for The Truth' [TM bourgeoisie, 1660]

1660 was when the bourgeoisie were revolutionary, the truth was on their side.  A ruling class defends itself through obscurantism, and the denial that reality can ever be known.But, I do ask again, which serves a ruling class more, a fixed reality, or one that can be changed by fiat? ISTR that Workers Councils in Russia voted for Lenin an awful lot, as they helped the Bolsheviks launch their counter revolution.

[Anonymous]

jondwhite wrote:

LBird wrote:

As to the SPGB, not one single member or supporter has come out against 'materialism', so I think we can safely say that the whole party is infected with the hidden disease.

There is around three to four hundred members of the SPGB and only four or five have ever commented on materialism on this forum in topics you have also commented in. At most that is about one tenth in a hundred.

PLus 'materialism'  is LBird's Starwam. I am a materialist but don't recognise his description of my beliefs, nor do I wish to. He talks nonsene and refuses to answer simple questions about his own untenable position.

[LBird]

YMS wrote:

A ruling class defends itself through obscurantism…

And they don't come any more 'obscurantist' than 'materialism'.Its adherents pretend that 'matter' tells them, and them alone, what 'it is'.It's elitist, through and through, which Marx warned about. The materialists will always divide society into two, the smaller part dictating to the larger part.Many of the physicists seem to think that they know better than us! Imagine that, a handful of bourgeois ideologists think that they will know better than billions of organised workers! As if!Although, some admit that they're no more than plumbers.And, most crucially of all, they're not Democratic Communists (ie. class conscious workers).But, this plays no part in the concerns of the Religious Materialists, who look to their god, Matter, and its divine offspring Differentiated Matter, who walks amongst us, here, on Earth.

[Author]

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