Science for Communists?

[alanjjohnstone]

Quote:

ALB -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.

I have said it on other related threads that IMHO they have been flawed by their esotericism. For all remarks about workers ideology and determining meanings and intent and content, i doubt many would have a lot to say about the protagonists and antagonists on these threads……oh i am sure there will be an instant retort of the importance of this discussion for working class ideas and the promotion of their consciousness…but again on those other threads i have asked just what relevance it all has for us mere workers with mundane matters on our mind such as ALB's question.Since you forgo membership of the SPGB (and other groups), LBird,  can i hear some practical advice on how we firstly communicate our ideas so that the meet with a receptive audience that our ideology (and yours, despite differences) are simply is not reaching. How should our magazine, leaflets and blogs be themed to capture the imagination and sympathy of workers who presently reject our ideas but who on the plus side also increasingly reject the status quo and the left's and the right's too and are searching for something that reflects their own outlook more accurately and currently unable to find it Thats my impression of the present state of consciousness. That there exists not a prevailing workers ideology but a vacuum of ideology ..a dearth of ideas…which shows in the shallowness of the political opposition and the sterility of protest and resistance we witness…i consider Piketty as an example of this lack of revolutionary ideology in that he is only re-editing, re-phrasing the run of the mill, bog-standard amelioration of capitalist conditions, not their abolition and reinforcing the ruling class by making its inequality less visible, less important, so that we pay no attention to the man behind the curtain and the deeper social relations of alienation, non-control of the means of production, etc etc…The offer is a fair share slice of the cake for letting some get all the icing on the cake. 

[LBird]

alanjjohnstone wrote:

oh i am sure there will be an instant retort of the importance of this discussion for working class ideas and the promotion of their consciousness…but again on those other threads i have asked just what relevance it all has for us mere workers with mundane matters on our mind such as ALB's question.

This is the  tightest I can get the explanation, ajj, since I know that, unlike the other 'experts', you don't pretend to follow or understand the intricacies of this 'esoteric' debate.'Objective Truth' leads to Lenin, Stalin, Mao, Pol Pot, etc.I think that this is very relevant 'for us mere workers'.To expand just a titchy bit, if workers allow any authority outside of their own democratically-arrived at opinion (any authority including so-called 'reality') to dictate to them, they'll be powerless.This notion that 'workers have to dicate what reality is' goes entirely against the myths of the bourgeois scientists and the fools who follow Engels' materialism. They always argue that they have a method which gives them special insight into 'really what reality is', when the determination of 'what reality is' is a human task, and thus a task for the whole of society, if one is a Communist.I hope that this helps a little, if only to explain what is at stake.

ajj wrote:

Since you forgo membership of the SPGB (and other groups), LBird, can i hear some practical advice on how we firstly communicate our ideas so that the meet with a receptive audience that our ideology (and yours, despite differences) are simply is not reaching.

My 'practical advice' is to first find an audience willing to listen. I thought that I might be given a hearing on LibCom, the ICC site, and here, but they've all proved to be in thrall to the ruling class idea of 'objective truth', so I've never yet been able to put that 'practical advice' into 'communicating our ideas'.I had high hopes of the SPGB, after years of searching, but the disappointment continues. Y'know what they say about 'the ruling ideas in any society being the ideas of the ruling class'…You wouldn't believe the venom against the very suggestion of 'workers' democracy within science'. You'd think I'd suggested digging up the corpse of Marx and buggering his remains.Now, Engels… perhaps….

[DJP]

LBird wrote:

'Objective Truth' leads to Lenin, Stalin, Mao, Pol Pot, etc.

Is that really true?If so what makes it true?

[DJP]

LBird wrote:

They always argue that they have a method which gives them special insight into 'really what reality is'

This is pure strawman repeated for the umpteenth time. Almost no-one would claim this today. (Accept perhaps followers of Ayn Rand) http://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Objectivism

[LBird]

DJP wrote:

LBird wrote:

They always argue that they have a method which gives them special insight into 'really what reality is'

This is pure strawman repeated for the umpteenth time. Almost no-one would claim this today.

'Almost no-one'?What is it they say about 'ruling class ideas, DJP?Or have you ditched Marx as well as workers' democracy?And it wasn't me who used the phrase 'objective truth', but your party comrade ALB.ajj, should you keep listening to these fellow party-members, because they have the best interests of the working class at heart? That's not sarcasm. They really believe it.Me? I think that the working class should decide its own interests, by a democratic vote, and reject 'objective truth' for the bourgeois myth that it is. Parties are not god, and they don't have an access to reality which is denied to the proletariat. No party does. They always claim to have this access to 'objective truth'. Lenin, Stalin, Mao, Pol Pot, the comedy duo 'DJP & ALB'…

[DJP]

alanjjohnstone wrote:

How should our magazine, leaflets and blogs be themed to capture the imagination and sympathy of workers who presently reject our ideas but who on the plus side also increasingly reject the status quo and the left's and the right's too and are searching for something that reflects their own outlook more accurately and currently unable to find it

I think we jsut have to go to the mountain a bit more rather than expecting the mountain to come to us.These days that's probably things like Youtube and Twitter..Look how many views this guy gets for example, and it looks like he's just one lad with a camera..https://www.youtube.com/user/ElectricUnicycleCrew/videos

[LBird]

DJP wrote:

LBird wrote:

'Objective Truth' leads to Lenin, Stalin, Mao, Pol Pot, etc.

Is that really true?If so what makes it true?

The deaths of hundreds of millions of workers and Communists?We've listened to the 'Objective Truthists' for far too long. But, we're learning, slowly…If only we'd listened to Marx, rather than Engels.

[DJP]

LBird wrote:

DJP wrote:

LBird wrote:

They always argue that they have a method which gives them special insight into 'really what reality is'

This is pure strawman repeated for the umpteenth time. Almost no-one would claim this today.

'Almost no-one'?What is it they say about 'ruling class ideas, DJP?Or have you ditched Marx as well as workers' democracy?And it wasn't me who used the phrase 'objective truth', but your party comrade ALB.ajj, should you keep listening to these fellow party-members, because they have the best interests of the working class at heart? That's not sarcasm. They really believe it.Me? I think that the working class should decide its own interests, by a democratic vote, and reject 'objective truth' for the bourgeois myth that it is. Parties are not god, and they don't have an access to reality which is denied to the proletariat. No party does. They always claim to have this access to 'objective truth'. Lenin, Stalin, Mao, Pol Pot, the comedy duo 'DJP & ALB'…

You where previously talking about "bourgiose scientists" and that was what I was talking about. The rest of this answer is just hot air..Go and speak to some scientists, you'll find none of them believe in naive realism or think they are uncovering the absolute unmediated "Truth".But I've said this to you before many times…

[DJP]

LBird wrote:

DJP wrote:

LBird wrote:

'Objective Truth' leads to Lenin, Stalin, Mao, Pol Pot, etc.

Is that really true?If so what makes it true?

The deaths of hundreds of millions of workers and Communists?We've listened to the 'Objective Truthists' for far too long. But, we're learning, slowly…If only we'd listened to Marx, rather than Engels.

So..1. 'Objective Truth' leads to Lenin, Stalin, Mao, Pol Pot, etc.2. Hundreds of millions of workers and Communists died under Lenin, Stalin, Mao, Pol Pot, etc.3. Therefore 'Objective Truth' leads to Lenin, Stalin, Mao, Pol Pot, etc.I don't think you've yet got a valid argument there yet.

[Anonymous]

LBird wrote:

They always claim to have this access to 'objective truth'. Lenin, Stalin, Mao, Pol Pot, the comedy duo 'DJP & ALB'…

 Really? You know this for sure? Is it the truth? Have you used your own individual  scientific method? The same method you wish us all to adopt? Your scientific method leads you to the conclusion that these  two socialists are as bad as pol pot et al?I think you should return to a bourgeois method. 

[LBird]

DJP wrote:

Go and speak to some scientists, you'll find none of them believe in naive realism or think they are uncovering the absolute unmediated "Truth".

Well, YMS and ALB do. They've both said so, finally.So do you. You're a 'physicalist'. Or are 'physical' things not true? If everything is 'physical', what about Marx's value? He categorically denies that it has anything 'physical' in it. 'Not an atom of matter', he insists.Philosophy really is out of the reach of the party, isn't it?Yes, yes, yes, Vin, that mud on your hands really is there. So, that's sorted out the philosophy of science, eh? If Vin's got mud on his hands, or Vin can touch a rock, what's the need for all this nonsense about 'science'.The individualist, empiricist, method of the 19th century bourgeoisie.

[DJP]

LBird wrote:

So do you. You're a 'physicalist'. Or are 'physical' things not true? If everything is 'physical', what about Marx's value? He categorically denies that it has anything 'physical' in it. 'Not an atom of matter', he insists.

Marx also catergorially and undeniably said "I am a materialist". So how could he say the below without contradicting himself?

Marx wrote:

 The value of commodities is the very opposite of the coarse materiality of their substance, not an atom of matter enters into its composition. Turn and examine a single commodity, by itself, as we will, yet in so far as it remains an object of value, it seems impossible to grasp it. If, however, we bear in mind that the value of commodities has a purely social reality, and that they acquire this reality only in so far as they are expressions or embodiments of one identical social substance, viz., human labour, it follows as a matter of course, that value can only manifest itself in the social relation of commodity to commodity.

Because phyiscalism (or materialism) means that "everything is physical, or as contemporary philosophers sometimes put it, that everything supervenes on, or is necessitated by, the physical"Of course social relations aren't physical in the sense that you can weigh them or observe them under a microscope, but they are neccessitated by, or supervene onto, the material world.There is no problem here…

[LBird]

DJP wrote:

LBird wrote:

DJP wrote:

LBird wrote:

'Objective Truth' leads to Lenin, Stalin, Mao, Pol Pot, etc.

Is that really true?If so what makes it true?

The deaths of hundreds of millions of workers and Communists?We've listened to the 'Objective Truthists' for far too long. But, we're learning, slowly…If only we'd listened to Marx, rather than Engels.

So..1. 'Objective Truth' leads to Lenin, Stalin, Mao, Pol Pot, etc.2. Hundreds of millions of workers and Communists died under Lenin, Stalin, Mao, Pol Pot, etc.3. Therefore 'Objective Truth' leads to Lenin, Stalin, Mao, Pol Pot, etc.I don't think you've yet got a valid argument there yet.

'Valid' for who?Valid for workers, or valid for the elitist academics who 'know' logic?Don't worry, I know your answer. 'Logic is not a democratic vote'.

[DJP]

LBird wrote:

'Valid' for who?Valid for workers, or valid for the elitist academics who 'know' logic?Don't worry, I know your answer. 'Logic is not a democratic vote'.

Yes you're right 'workers' are incapable of understanding logic, even of the 'baby' kind.How elitist of me.Perhaps the more useful thing to do would have been for you to flesh out your argument. I guess that was presumptuous of me..

[ALB]

LBird wrote:

DJP wrote:

Go and speak to some scientists, you'll find none of them believe in naive realism or think they are uncovering the absolute unmediated "Truth".

Well, YMS and ALB do. They've both said so, finally..

I don't recall saying that. When and where was it?

[Author]

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