Reason and Science in Danger.
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Thomas
Just a quickie – there are economic historians like Ellen Meiksins Wood who would argue that “mercantile capitalism” is not really capitalism as such – see her book The Origin of Capitalism: A Longer View (2002). There was capital in the form of merchant capital of course in periods you mention but is the mere existence of capital sufficient to allow us to talk about the existence of capitalism? Similarly wage labour. In Ancient Roman there was wage labour but the dominant form of coerced labour was of course slave labour
We can define capitalism as a constellation of interlocking features but it is a tricky business to pin down when exactly capitalism was supposed to have kicked off . To use the language of dialectics it may be a case of quantitative changes transmuting into qualitative changes – for instance a growth in the extent of wage labour
There were a bunch of mercantilists from Spain, Portugal and France in the Caribbean who weren’t capitalists
The bolivarians ideologists of the XXI century socialism claim that neoliberalism started with the arrival of the Spanish French and Portuguese to South America probably some of the historical distortion published in this thread fit within their description. I hope nobody would say that the mayas and the Incas had capitalist production
I wish to apologise for my arrogance, and to Marcos especially. I do get overly-enthusiastic.
Please be well, everyone.
Yours for socialism.
I thought, TM, that it has been a very useful discussion with all angles being examined as different contributors made different points. We don’t often have controversial discussions here but we should, as that’s one of the reasons the forum is for. Most are with our feathered friend but after 5 years of discussing with a parrot this has become rather predictable and boring.
ALB wrote: “We don’t often have controversial discussions here but we should, as that’s one of the reasons the forum is for. Most are with our feathered friend but after 5 years of discussing with a parrot this has become rather predictable and boring.”
‘Controversies’ are for those who can think critically, ALB. I suspect that you think that youse ‘don’t often have’ them for good reasons. Reiteration of outdated beliefs is religious thought.
Rather better to be thought, by a materialist, to be a ‘predictable and boring parrot‘, than to be a ‘predictable and boring rock‘. At least the parrot has consciousness.
Good luck with ‘matter’, my pre-Marx, 18th century revivalist.
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The first three extracts are ok. The last one about the Civil War is more dubious. I wonder which historian wrote it? Do we know so that we can examine their credentials? I see someone has challenged them by asking for a citation. Of course there was a link with 1688. Whigs and Marxists, unite !
LBird and ALB,
If the forum failed to debate a broad range of ideas- we are in trouble!
The modernist thinkers had been accused of engaging in mimetic echoes- nodding approvals to one another as if a mirror confined their own image or that camera obscura took real photos!
I would prefer a parrot, looking at me square on, challenged my statement- or else it all becomes… immaterial!
Matter has no voice until our thinking gives it so… and yet… it still hurts when you stub your toe on it.
Keep the debate active!!!
LB
“Matter has no voice until our thinking gives it so… and yet… it still hurts when you stub your toe on it.“
Yes, but the second part is a step our feathered friend won’t take perhaps because stubbing his toe would undermine his argument that the outside world doesn’t exist until we create it.
Incidentally, you sound like a bit of a post-modernist since whoever else would talk of “ modernists” ( whoever they are!)?
Sorry ALB, I am a bit of a post modern- so it makes me premodern and modern.
I think debate can be limited and confined by the current time- but- if we dare debate outside of it so much more is possible.
I am a paradox ALB: of faith, of postmodern, of science… of socialism.
Never ask a post modern that… way too fragmented, and way too sure.
The best answer I can give is the simplest- I share your concerns, I am but a small voice, but I will say that little voice is for socialism- no matter the ‘modern’ prefix or suffix.
We need to keep the dialogue open.
LB
L. B. Neill wrote: “I would prefer a parrot, looking at me square on, challenged my statement- or else it all becomes… immaterial!
Matter has no voice until our thinking gives it so… and yet… it still hurts when you stub your toe on it.
Keep the debate active!!!”
I’m always willing to debate the difference between Marx and ‘materialists’, L. B. Neill. I just hope we can keep it to the issues involved, and stop the personal attacks, which, especially since Lenin, seem to be part and parcel of the elite materialist response to their democratic critics.
Your notion of ‘matter’ being related to ‘stubbing one’s toes on it’, reflects Bijou Drain’s earlier stance. This means that you both regard the ‘active subject’ as a ‘biological individual’. For youse, the determinant of ‘matter’ is a ‘biological individual’s physical experience and opinion’.
But for Marx (and necessarily for democratic socialists), the ‘active subject’ is a ‘social producer’. This is not an ‘individual’, but socio-historical group of humans, and within democratic socialism, humanity.
The key political question is: ‘who (or what) has the power to determine ‘matter’?‘
The ‘materialists’ deliberately pretend that it is a question of ‘biological individuals’ and their ‘touch’ (or any other sense), and pretend that this is the basis of the social activity of ‘physics’. Clearly, it isn’t, because physics (and maths, etc.) are not based upon ‘touch’ (etc.) but upon, as Marx said, social theory and practice. ‘Physics’ is under the political control of an elite, and materialists wish to retain this elite control (otherwise, they would accept democratic voting within physics, and the democratic determination of ‘truth’).
This, again, is what Marx said: the materialists will divide society into two: an elite who allegedly know a ‘matter’ which pre-exists the conscious activity of humanity in producing its knowledge, and a mass who remain ignorant, and can’t be allowed to vote on whether ‘matter’ should ‘exist’ or not.
As we all know, ‘matter’ no longer exists in contemporary physics, since the elite have moved onto ‘mass’ and ‘energy’. There are other alternatives, too.
The key political question for democratic socialists is: how can the determination of the content of our world be determined and changed by an elite, if we hope to build democratic socialist society? Change must be under democratic control.
Our world is the socio-historical product of conscious human activity, and thus we can change it.
Reminds me of Haddock and the parrot in The Castafiore Emerald engaging in furious pecks and expletives. Feathers are flying, blistering barnacles!
“The key political question is: ‘who (or what) has the power to determine ‘matter’?‘”
And this is the pivotal point LBird. Those who are in control often determine it.
Look, I know matter is matter. The thing is, the material matter of our world is so subject to change, and change according to our current understanding. And I share the idea it is socio-historical, and therefore in a flux- but an observed flux, and a flux that can be managed.
The subject is not an ‘active individual’ in and of itself. The idea I can feel pain while stubbing my toe on matter is an act of biology- but my response to it is a social construct.
A rock does not tell me it is a rock- my socially informed construct tells me it is a rock.
When I am oppressed- I know it- not that the wage slave job tells me so- but I consciously cognise it as so.
It might sound odd, or how I explain is odd, but I am agreeing with you, and yet I know there is so much data waiting to come to light around this matter.
ALB- I smiled at your Sun around the Earth- Not a Copernicus revolution after all…
Stay safe
LB
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