Marx, and the myth of his ‘Materialism’
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alanjjohnstone wrote:It may well be the anarchist in me, LBird…Because even with a proletarian democratic vote on the "truth" of science, i still rebel and dissent…
Yeah, it may well be the source of our difficulties, alan.I'm not an anarchist.Thanks for your prompt and revealing answer, alan.We have fundamental political differences. I look to Marx for inspiration, not Bakunin.
Perhaps watch Edvard Moser’s 2010 talk in Israel.https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pATzOJLptGo
twc wrote:…this dedicated scientific couple…Wow! As long as they are 'dedicated to science', we can all rest assured.You wouldn't think we are now in the 21st century, from twc's posts, would you?Apparently, Mengele and his academic professor who participated in his 'research', were also a 'dedicated scientific couple'.Just ask them, and they'll assure you that this is the case.
twc wrote:Tell us where their results are wrong.Yes, LBird! Less of this obscure Marxist philosophising, and a bit more of the 'real world', of practical importance!This is the usual response from bourgeois science, to any worker who starts to question the usefulness to the proletariat of bourgeois science.You'll also notice this deliberate method means that twc doesn't have to engage in any mere philosophical discussion of Marx's mythical 'materialism'.twc is a 'practical man'. He's a 'materialist'.
Edvard and May-Britt Moser are Norwegians.On YouTube, Edvard addresses fellow Israeli scientists.They communicate with each other humanly, respectfully and amicably.Please explain your profound knowledge of their political agenda.
twc wrote:Edvard and May-Britt Moser are Norwegians.On YouTube, Edvard addresses fellow Israeli scientists.They communicate with each other humanly, respectfully and amicably.Please explain your profound knowledge of their political agenda.Are they Democratic Communists, who wish to get rid of private property, and ensure that the direct producers across the whole planet democratically control their production and distribution?Of course, this is of no interest to bourgeois science, because it claims to be 'objective', 'non-political', and not class-based.Bourgeois science deals in 'The Truth', and it has a neutral method, which it claims produces ahistorical and asocial 'Truth'.No need for workers to be interested… move along… nothing to see, here… place your trust in science… be assured… the elite academics know what they're doing…If anyone suggested this method for economics, perhaps comrades could imagine the problem. It's simply 'private property in the means of scientific production'.
I note LBird is still declining to deal with the problem of humans making history but not in conditions of their own choosing, maybe his Anarcho Feudalism can't deal with such an idea.
Young Master Smeet wrote:I note LBird is still declining to deal with the problem of humans making history but not in conditions of their own choosing, maybe his Anarcho Feudalism can't deal with such an idea.You're only able to claim this, YMS, because you continue to ignore both my ideology and your own.I fully agree with Marx's statement that 'Men [sic] make history, but not in circumstances of their own choosing'.It means:Human theory and practice in the present is constrained by human theory and practice in the past.When Marx uses the term 'material', he means 'social production'.So, YOU interpret your term 'conditions' to be 'material conditions', and YOU interpret 'material' to be 'matter' (following Engels), ie. nothing to do with ideas, theory, society, history, or production.Whereas, I interpret 'conditions' to be 'human social theory and practice' (following Marx), ie. everything to do with ideas, theory, society, history, especially production.The sooner you wake up to your ideological beliefs, the sooner you will start to understand Marx, and indeed my views.Put simply, Marx means that current social production is constrained by previous social production. Nothing about 'matter', or the rocks determining our human activities.
Quote:The first premise of all human history is, of course, the existence of living human individuals. Thus the first fact to be established is the physical organisation of these individuals and their consequent relation to the rest of nature….Men can be distinguished from animals by consciousness, by religion or anything else you like. They themselves begin to distinguish themselves from animals as soon as they begin to produce their means of subsistence, a step which is conditioned by their physical organisation. By producing their means of subsistence men are indirectly producing their actual material life.Of course, how can someone with a Liberal Agrarianist ideology comprehend such things?Also, I'd note that LBird's "bourgeois science" does condemn an awful lot of proletarians engaged in science to non-existence. Also, i'd note that the likes of Kline must by the same reasoning be using Bourgeois philosophy to make their claims about the philosophy of science…
You stick to 'physical matter' YMS, and I'll stick to 'socio-historical production'.It's up to other workers to decide which view of 'Marx' they should find most useful.
LBird wrote:When Marx uses the term 'material', he means 'social production'. […]Whereas, I interpret 'conditions' to be 'human social theory and practice' (following Marx), ie. everything to do with ideas, theory, society, history, especially production. […]Put simply, Marx means that current social production is constrained by previous social production. Nothing about 'matter', or the rocks determining our human activities.Exactly, us, the talking, moving, thinking rocks, doing things. We are made of matter, so are our processes and our thoughts, they are real, exist and subject to natural laws. We cannot just think food into our stomachs, any more than we can transcend the speed of light. At an atomic level, there is little practical difference between you and a diamond in a pond. So, shine on you crazy diamond.
YMS wrote:…there is little practical difference between you and a diamond…Workers will be pleased with the conclusions drawn by your 'philosophy', that they can be bought and sold as commodities – practically, anyway.Of course, diamonds don't require their owners to provide toilets for them, whereas slave-workers will, but that is a mere detail of theoretical importance only.The fruits of 'materialism': the only issue is the shithouse to be provided to the slaves.
LBird, wrote:No need for workers to be interested…move along…nothing to see, here…place your trust in science…be assured…the elite academics know what they’re doing…The discovery and publication of the neuronal “grammar” of an animal’s movement deserves better.Anyone, who is willing to learn the neuronal “language”, can decipher the animal’s neuronal map, decode its “firing” patterns in real-time (or in playback after the event) as if reading a music score, and “visualise” (or reconstruct after the event) the animal’s movements in the external world, in high-resolution.No need for workers to be interestedTo the implied charge of withholding scientific work from the public:Edvard Moser’s hour-long seminar is in the public domain on YouTube, along with numerous popular videos.A popular, and historical, jointly-written article appears in the current issue of Scientific American.The couple’s Nobel Prize presentations are on the web, as is an interview conducted by Nature.Scientific research papers are hard for the public to track down but, in principle, they may be accessed through university libraries. In practice research papers are heavy going for anyone outside the scientific field.But it is not the scientists who block communication of primary research. The blockage is entirely commercial. Publishing companies, like Springer and Elsevier, typically hold copyright over scientific papers. Social prestige may accrue to scientists but their products accrue to their commercial owners, who sell them for profit.Social power of scientistsAs to wielding social power, working scientists have a strictly limited amount of it and, like other workers, are as easily thwarted when they engage in strike action, and are just as quickly dismissed when they are deemed redundant to commercial needs.LBird warns us that scientists harbour ambitions to rule the world, even to construct Fourth Reich Mengele chambers of horror. This is where his idealism—that the power of thought governs the social world—comes to the fore.He proposes co-opting non-elite scientists à la Maoist cultural-revolution rules, enforcing adherence to a Lysenko-style political credo of class struggle (in a socialist society), and monitoring/controlling scientific thinking through global thought policing. [This fate awaits creative artists, and all who live by thinking.]Scientific method
LBird wrote:If anyone suggested this method for economics, perhaps comrades could imagine the problem. It’s simply ‘private property in the means of scientific production’.No! Marx explains his open scientific method, discursively in the Grundrissehttp://www.worldsocialism.org/spgb/forum/general-discussion/marx%E2%80%98s-scientific-method,and succinctly in his “Notes on Wagner”.No! Marx does not stack the scientific deck in his favour, as LBird advises, even though Marx has a fair idea of where his investigation will take him, but nevertheless, like all scientists, he is prepared to follow his scientific logic, fearlessly, wherever it takes him. How else could he hope to discover anything new, and unforeseen, in the course of his investigation?Marx’s approach allows him in Capital to reveal the distorting superstructure (i.e. capitalist society’s shared false consciousness) that its social base of class ownership and control inexorably raises. Had he deliberately stacked the deck in his favour, as LBird asserts, nobody could take Marx’s suspect superstructural investigation seriously.As to private propertyWe have already seen that scientists have relinquished control of their scientific papers.Scientists rarely own their their physical means of production—laboratories, field stations, accelerators, telescopes, super-computers, i.e. the necessary infrastructure and equipment for the scientific production they perform—in the same way as workers in factories, hospitals, etc. rarely own their physical means of production.In this regard there is nothing unique about scientists, as workers. Capitalism depends for its survival on the dispossession of the working class (whether scientist or shearer). Lack of ownership of the means of production is the reality for the working class.Actual scienceLet us turn to rational human science.
Moser and Moser wrote:Sadly, the entorhinal cortex [where the grid-cell neurons are found] is among the first areas to fail in people with Alzheimer’s disease.…When these neural tracts malfunction they can produce the severe disorientation experienced by patients with Alzheimer’s disease.Such research is a desired short-term goal. “Materialist ontology” is a long, long way off
twc wrote:LBird warns us that scientists harbour ambitions to rule the world, even to construct Fourth Reich Mengele chambers of horror. This is where his idealism—that the power of thought governs the social world—comes to the fore.twc is only partially correct in his allegation. My proper warning would be:LBird warns us that bourgeois scientists harbour ambitions to rule the world, even to construct Fourth Reich Mengele chambers of horror.twc misses out this vital adjective because of the ideology which he espouses: he agrees with the bourgeoisie, who allege that 'science is class neutral'.The bourgeoisie, when they constructed 'modern' science from the 1660s, removed 'consciousness' from their method, in the pretence that they were engaged in 'finding Truth' and 'discovering the real'. As we are now aware, bourgeois scientists were actually engaged in building a world safe for bourgeois profits, in which questions of 'property ownership' (ie. 'material things') would not be questioned, because 'matter' was outside of considerations of 'consciousness'. The world they built, through science, trade, war and conquest, was 'real'.Of course, the proletariat require a 'science', but they require a 'science' that has a purpose that is in line with proletarian purposes.The purpose of proletarian science would be to 'build a better world for all', the 'good life for humanity'.Whereas, the bourgeoisie pretend that the purpose of their science is to 'discover material Truth', a 'reality' that cannot be argued with, an 'eternal knowledge' that fits their purposes of eternalising their class rule.twc apparently doesn't understand this, although he claims to agree with Marx.Where is his socio-historical account of the development of 'science', based upon a 'mode of production' and 'class struggle'?There isn't one. For twc 'science' is above such mundane concerns as 'class', 'history' or exploitation. For twc, scientists are ahistoric, asocial 'good people', who aim for 'objective knowledge', and who the workers should just trust. No mention of democratic controls within the social activity of science, just ignorant, unthinking, uneducated, uncomprehending 'trust of the elite by the mass'.
twc wrote:This is where his idealism—that the power of thought governs the social world—comes to the fore.Yes, human thought, as Marx argued, has the power to change the world, and it does 'govern the social world' (else, why would Marx be concerned with the power of 'ruling class ideas' to govern our thoughts?), and that does 'come to the fore' in both Marx's and my thinking. It's called 'theory and practice'.twc, being an Engelsist, follows an ideology that stresses 'matter' (a fixed category, once discovered, forever known) and the belief that there are only two basic forms of philosophy: idealism and materialism.twc, just like all of us, including Marx and Engels, are governed by the ideas of the society around us: in a class society, we can recognise clashes between these competing ideas.One of these clashes is between the notions that 'Marx was a materialist' (an Engelsian idea) and that 'Marx was an idealist-materialist' (an idea that fits with 'theory and practice').Materialism is essentially a bourgeois notion, suited to elites and minorities, and which can ignore change and democracy. That's why Lenin was a materialist.Marx's philosophy was an amalgam of the creativity of idealism and the reality of human production, as any reading of his Theses on Feuerbach will show.But the clinching argument is at heart a simple one: which is better suited to the purposes of the class conscious proletariat?A 'materialism' that stresses respect for the unelected elite, that argues that the 'material' determines our social thoughts, or an 'idealism-materialism' which provides a philosophical basis for democratic production.What is our class' purpose? 'Eternal Truth', 'Objective Knowledge'? Or 'A Better World', 'Democratic Communism'?twc's ideas (and he does have ideas, no matter how often he claims to be merely 'reflecting material reality') will lead to Leninism. The Leninists hide their 'consciousness', just as the bourgeoisie do. And for the same purpose: elite rule. And science is a part of this class battleground.
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