Science for Communists?

[Anonymous]

I am by no means an economist but I understand the process of exploitation. I understand that my wage is payment for my labour power.I understand that the wealth we produce as a class selling our labour power to our capitalist owners is more than we receive in wages.The surplus is shared amongst the various parasites in the form of rent interest and profit.I know many conservatives including Thatcher also understood the process.  Are they using the same ideology as me? Or is exploitation a simple truth?Do I need another scientific method when I already understand?

[SocialistPunk]

YMS wrote:

Just back to linguistic register. Latin was once a hugely progressive force, it enabled scholarship across national linguistic barriers, the role now played by English. It wasn't the rarified language of academia that kept working class kids out, it was the economic basi of the system whereby they wouldn't even get an education in the first place.

I don't recall claiming that  Latin itself was the reason why working people didn't get an education. If I believe that, then my socialist credentials would be in question, as I would then be another left wing inverted snob, instead of a socialist who understands the impersonal role of economic forces in distorting human relations. I beleive I stated the importance of money and status in attaining an education in days of old, rather than a language preventing that from happening. Once Latin had ceased to be a commonly used language it was retained by those who saw themselves as the elite. It became an elitist language, not that it was or is of itself.This thread just gets more surreal by the day.

[SocialistPunk]

Vin Maratty wrote:

SocialistPunk wrote:

 The world is full of changing definitions. Different definitions for different places, times and people.Perhaps we should keep quiet now our definition of socialism is not the one doing the rounds today. We have been left behind and we didn't even know it. Socialism as we define it is irrelevant, right?

Not if we are persistant and  state what we mean by it. Make clear our definition. So there can be know confusion.  

I agree Vin. I wasn't being serious when I suggested we give up on socialism because our definition isn't the dominant one. "We gotta fight, for the right, to paartyyy"I simply think it odd that some on this thread were quick to fall back on the many faces of meaning cop out, yet claim our definition of socialism as the true one, or the "truth"."Curiouser and curiouser" 

[alanjjohnstone]

 "It became an elitist language, not that it was or is of itself."i recall from my school days that Latin qualification was still required for entry into medicine, and indeed only a very few of the brightest in school didn't drop it the moment they could. But i keep forgetting i am getting old now. Today having a Latin GSCE doesn't even count for UCL med school entry much less being compulsory. 

[SocialistPunk]

Brian wrote:

Nevertheless, to even attempt to make the case that all science is ideologically biased towards the profit motive would in my estimation not only be throwing the baby out with the bath water, for its also seemingly proposing we reject all science because it is "class based"  (LBird #1.)?  When the simple fact is that the revolutionary process will demand we will have no alternative other than to use the tools we have to hand which by default includes the scientific method as we know it and understand it, and despite its class bias.  

I've checked out LBirds opening post quite a few times over the last few days and I've done it once more today. But try as hard as I can, I just can't seem to find any reference to proposing to reject all science.What we have here is assumption.

[Brian]

SocialistPunk wrote:

Brian wrote:

Nevertheless, to even attempt to make the case that all science is ideologically biased towards the profit motive would in my estimation not only be throwing the baby out with the bath water, for its also seemingly proposing we reject all science because it is "class based"  (LBird #1.)?  When the simple fact is that the revolutionary process will demand we will have no alternative other than to use the tools we have to hand which by default includes the scientific method as we know it and understand it, and despite its class bias.  

I've checked out LBirds opening post quite a few times over the last few days and I've done it once more today. But try as hard as I can, I just can't seem to find any reference to proposing to reject all science.What we have here is assumption.

You are right the opening post is not directly stating that "all science is ideologically biased towards the profit motive".  I never said it did, but nevertheless what I did infer is that the discusion is "seemingly" heading that way due to the conclusion that science is class based.  My post was merely pointing out that there are two sides to the coin when referrring to ideas being class based, or that science in particular is dependant on support from capitalism, or that science only investigates fields which expand profit margins.  It does in most cases do all of this but there are examples like the climate change debate which illustrate that there are certain scientists who go against the grain.Hence, not all fields of scientific investigation are ideologically biased towards capitalism.  And to treat it as such is not in our interest.

[SocialistPunk]

Hi BrianYou made an assumption, that is all I was showing by highlighting part of your post. 

LBird wrote:

 I think that I take a broadly Marxist perspective, and so don't consider myself an 'individual', but a 'worker'. I think 'ideas' are socially-produced and class-based, so that 'ideas about science' will also be of class origin. I think, again broadly, that there are two competing 'ideas' about the world (social and natural), that is, 'ruling class' ideas and 'exploited class' ideas, and that these are relevent to a discussion about 'science'.

Where did you get the idea from the words above that LBird was proposing we ditch all science?

[ALB]

Vin, I don't think he is attacking the party (the most he could say there is that we haven't committed ourselves to one particular theory of science but have left this open). But he is attacking some party members and insulting them by calling them individualists and suggesting that they are not socialists (which, ironically, he couldn't do if he was a member without being called to order) just because they don't agree with the particular theory of science he has adopted. If adopting this is a condition for being a socialist then he is even  sectarian than the party is alleged to be ! In fact I think we'd be talking about a one-person socialist party and movement !He claims that he is putting forward Marx's view but Marx went no further than to say that the human mind played a creative role in understanding nature and so did not simply passively reflect the outside material world. This is fairly well accepted now, and even in his day Marx was not unique, and does not commit those who hold it to the position that LBird is taking up. That's just one rather idiosyncratic variety of it.

[LBird]

ALB wrote:

He claims that he is putting forward Marx's view but Marx went no further than to say that the human mind played a creative role in understanding nature and so did not simply passively reflect the outside material world.

[my bold]That is correct.This 'creative role in understanding' is the exact opposite of YMS's 19th century 'positivist science' method of obtaining 'the truth' which emerges from 'a clear and accurate apprehension of the world'.

Young Master Smeet, post #299, wrote:

I'd argue that socialism is not an ideology. I'd suggest that socialism is the truth, based on a clear and accurate apprehension of the world, and that ideology is the process of mystifications and obfuscation of the world as it lies.

Rovelli, the physicist, makes it clear that the science of Newton does not produce 'a clear and accurate apprehension of the world'. That is impossible. Philosophers know it, physicists know it, even the god-botherers know it, but the communist movement which still looks to Engels, does not know it. I include the SPGB in that assessment. The most damning verdict I can deliver is to call this 'method of science' the 'Leninist method'. If that doesn't wake up the Rip van Winkles here, nothing will.I won't engage any further, because I consider the other posters on this thread to be individualist, bourgeois, religious adherents of an outdated 'science' (and cloth-eared). I've only responded to you, ALB, due to my respect for your other achievements, not least, in company with alanjjohnstone, of clarifying for me during debates on LibCom with the various 'market socialists' about 'free access' communism.Even this post is against my better judgement.

[ALB]

For the record, I too think that it can be said that it is "true" that socialism is the only framework within which the problems currently confronting humanity in general and the wage and salary working class in particular can be solved. This is not a mere matter of opinion ("ideology") but is the case irrespective of whether people agree with it or not or what they might think. It is an objective fact. But this doesn't mean that I therefore think that what scientists are doing is uncovering "the truth". That's a different matter.Pity we were not able to continue the other discussion about how socialist workers should go about establishing socialism/communism, at least not on this thread.

[LBird]

ALB wrote:

This is not a mere matter of opinion ("ideology") but is the case irrespective of whether people agree with it or not or what they might think. It is an objective fact.

There we go. Even you're infected, ALB, with the Leninist certainty.Because I'm a Marxist, I insist that only the proletariat can decide on what is 'objective' and what isn't.

ALB wrote:

For the record, I too think that it can be said that it is "true" that socialism is the only framework within which the problems currently confronting humanity in general and the wage and salary working class in particular can be solved. This is not a mere matter of opinion ("ideology")…

For the  record, I agree with you, about 'socialism'.But, I agree with you because I'm a totally-biased Communist, who recognises that I have to get my 'biases' adopted, by their own choice, by persuasion, by the entire proletariat.I'm an 'ideologist', and you can bet your bottom dollar that I'm 'biased' against some 'science'. I haven't got an 'open mind' when it comes to vivisection of pregnant women without anaesthetics by 'Dr.' Mengele.The 'idea' that science is an unbiased search for the Truth, and scientists are the best ones to tell us what that consists of, is nonsense, and itself entirely unscientific, according to philosophers of science since Einstein.What was it that Robert Oppenheimer said? 'Physicists have known sin'?This guff, that you personally are privy to an 'objective fact' is a lie, and it's a lie that we now know that Leninists employ, when they insist that the Party knows better than the Class.You're ideologically-driven, ALB, as is every scientist, and as am I.The difference is, I'm open with the class (and myself, unlike others here, it seems). If they don't freely become Communists, we won't see Communism.Unless, in another way, using a special, though hidden, method, you're going to carry out a revolution, just like the ICC, behind the backs of the proletariat?Do me a favour, mate! It's the 21st century, and we workers have heard that one before!The SPGB pays lip service to workers' control, just like the rest, who're still peddling Engels' woeful crap.Ask YMS who's going to determine 'maths', and they'll answer 'mathematicians'; ask DJP who's going to determine 'mind', and they'll answer 'psychologists'; ask Vin who's going to determine 'mud pies', and they'll answer 'mud pies'.And, following the same method, ask ALB who's going to determine 'socialism', and they'll answer 'Me! I have access to objective truth'.No, maths, mind, mudpies, socialism, and science in its entirety, will be determined by the proletariat, using democratic methods.At least I'm open about my 'biases'. If any comrades think they can get to socialism without workers taking control of all of society's activities, then you try explaining that elitism to them. They might even vote for it, have me locked away in the Lubianka, but in my opinion it won't be the Communism that Marx envisaged, which is a revolutionising of society by the democratic, class conscious, proletariat.Not fuckin' elite scientists and academics. No wonder 'professor' Piketty's 'War and Peace'-like tome and hymn to reformism is worshipped by so many 'socialists', who should really know better.He's a paid prize-fighter for the bourgeoisie, just like those scientists who are not yet Communists.

[DJP]

So, in other words "I'm the only communist in the village, everybody else are dumb and ignorant Leninists"

[LBird]

DJP wrote:

So, in other words "I'm the only communist in the village, everybody else are dumb and ignorant Leninists"

Just what I'd come to expect from the SPGB.Still can't have a discussion, just insults.Trouble is, my returned insults are accurate insults, whereas yours just suggest that any worker who dares to argue for democracy is an oddity and alone.

[DJP]

LBird wrote:

Trouble is, my returned insults are accurate insults, whereas yours just suggest that any worker who dares to argue for democracy is an oddity and alone.

Surely the proletariat have to vote on that to determine if it's an objective fact or not?

[LBird]

DJP wrote:

LBird wrote:

Trouble is, my returned insults are accurate insults, whereas yours just suggest that any worker who dares to argue for democracy is an oddity and alone.

Surely the proletariat have to vote on that to determine if it's an objective fact or not?

Yes, 'sneering and ignorance' just about sums up your approach. All the time I've spent trying to reason with you has been completely wasted.Have a nice day with your 'Truth'.And it's part of ALB's 'objective truth', isn't it?

[Author]

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