Science for Communists?

[LBird]

YMS wrote:

…it's to rebut distortion.

Since everything humans approach is 'distorted' by the action of 'approachment', then we have to expose our framework of 'distortion'.I do this, but you (and the others) do not. You won't tell us your ideology.Unless, of course, one claims to have a scientific method that allows humans to approach reality (ideal and material) without distortion (as 19th century science claimed), and thus one 'doesn't have an ideology', but merely deals with 'reality'.I think that you think that you have an 'undistorting' approach, YMS, and that you merely deal with the 'real world' of your senses.For you, this 'empiricism' is tied to a view of yourself as an 'individual'.Whatever one thinks of this, it's nothing to do with Marx's views.

[Young Master Smeet]

*sigh* Interpretation is one thing, but such things as whether Marx did or didn't make a statement is something we can debate without distortion. (By the way, how do you know that there is distortion? I don't think you can know that).By the way, I've forgotten, might you be the same Lbird who is a communist?I'm confident that we have a framework of investigation that allows us to be confident in the information about the world we are capable of producing.

[LBird]

YMS wrote:

…By the way, how do you know that there is distortion? I don't think you can know that…

Science tells us that.Human science.The science that came after the one you're wedded to.Marx's science.

[Young Master Smeet]

But how do you know that the distortion you've identified isn't actually a distortion of the truth: that we can know?  If every claim about the world is a distotrion then so is the claim that there is a distortion, so claims could be true, except if they were true then that claim would be false, so it wouldn't be a distortion so it would be true.  All Yorkshiremen are liars.

[LBird]

Young Master Smeet wrote:

But how do you know that the distortion you've identified isn't actually a distortion of the truth: that we can know?  If every claim about the world is a distotrion then so is the claim that there is a distortion, so claims could be true, except if they were true then that claim would be false, so it wouldn't be a distortion so it would be true.  All Yorkshiremen are liars.

If you're happy with that conclusion, I'm happy for you, too.Me, though? I'm afraid not.

[Young Master Smeet]

But how do you know you're not happy with that conclusion?  Isn't your unhappiness and ideological disrtotion of the turth that you really are happy with that result?#FunWithSkepticism

[LBird]

Fred Engels, in a letter to Schimdt, wrote:

The materialist conception of history has a lot of them nowadays, to whom it serves as an excuse for not studying history. Just as Marx used to say, commenting on the French "Marxists" of the late [18]70s: "All I know is that I am not a Marxist."….In general, the word "materialistic" serves many of the younger writers in Germany as a mere phrase with which anything and everything is labeled without further study, that is, they stick on this label and then consider the question disposed of. But our conception of history is above all a guide to study, not a lever for construction after the manner of the Hegelian. All history must be studied afresh, the conditions of existence of the different formations of society must be examined individually before the attempt is made to deduce them from the political, civil law, aesthetic, philosophic, religious, etc., views corresponding to them. Up to now but little has been done here because only a few people have got down to it seriously. In this field we can utilize heaps of help, it is immensely big, anyone who will work seriously can achieve much and distinguish himself. But instead of this too many of the younger Germans simply make use of the phrase historical materialism (and everything can be turned into a phrase) only in order to get their own relatively scanty historical knowledge — for economic history is still as yet in its swaddling clothes! — constructed into a neat system as quickly as possible, and they then deem themselves something very tremendous.

[my bold]https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1890/letters/90_08_05.htmWho is the contributor to this thread who is actually studying the issue of 'Science for Communists?'?It's certainly not the 'materialists'.

[DJP]

LBird wrote:

If you're happy with that conclusion, I'm happy for you, too.Me, though? I'm afraid not.

What would make me happy is for you to provide a reason why you think your argument does not fall foul of the reductio ad absurdum that has been provided. If you have a clear grasp of what it is you're trying to say this shouldn't be too difficult.

[LBird]

DJP wrote:

If you have a clear grasp of what it is you're trying to say this shouldn't be too difficult.

I've said this over and over, DJP.Neither you nor YMS are Democratic Communists/Socialists or Marxist 'idealist-materialists', who emphasise human social activity, creativity and criticism (in short, 'ideas', the 'ideal', Marx's 'active side'), and the provisional nature of 'knowledge' and 'truth'.You both seem to be 'individualists' and Engelsian 'materialist/physicalists', who emphasise biological sense impressions, human passivity when confronted with the 'material', and the purely physical nature of 'reality' and 'eternal Truth'.It's not too difficult to say, but apparently it's too difficult for you two to grasp.After more than 12 months of my presence here, and nearly 1000 posts on this thread alone, you two (and others) still don't seem to have the slightest clue about the problems, which have been obvious since the 1920s/30s, with 'official Marxism' (ie. Engels and 'materialism'). Talk about 'heads in the sand'.Quite frankly, DJP, its religious certainty that I'm trying to overcome.

[Young Master Smeet]

LBird wrote:

Neither you nor YMS are Democratic Communists/Socialists or Marxist 'idealist-materialists', who emphasise human social activity, creativity and criticism (in short, 'ideas', the 'ideal', Marx's 'active side'), and the provisional nature of 'knowledge' and 'truth'.

The provisional nature of knowledge is part of standard science, so hardly a world shattering claim.  I've emphasised the material nature of ideas, and how they must be taken into account as part of a rounded aesthetic materialism (as opposed to seen as passive reflections as they would be under mechanical materialism).  I've also discussed socialism and science and the role of bold hypotheses.  I'd suggest that you repeatedly demonstrate the failures of your scientific method by assuming in advance what you think people are propounding and then reading their words in the light of those assumptions, instead of what they actually say.Anyway, back to socialism and science.  Just another wee point on interest.  Socialism would necessarilly mean that scientists would have no interest in their science apart from that of the general community: they would not have intellectual property, patents nor even salaries (they would have dreams, prestige and, yes "budgets" in terms of having their projects approved, but that would depend, as now, on pleasing the approvers).  The coincidence of interests means that, unlike anarchists, we have no need to fear the "power" of expertise.  Indeed, I'd suggest collectively we'd want to develop as diverse sets of expertise as possible to avoid the ecological failure as demonstrated by present day automated trading software, which in all behaving the same means that problems are systemwide, rather than to specific instances.Oh, and if you mean by the 1930's the publishing of the Philosophical notebooks, you may notice I have read them, and post 1950's marxist culture criticism, such as Raymond Williams, hence my instance on the materiality of ideas.

[LBird]

Marx commenting upon YMS's 'individual' view of 'individual' production.

Marx, Introduction, wrote:

The further back we trace the course of history, the more does the individual, and accordingly also the producing individual, appear to be dependent and to belong to a larger whole. At first, the individual in a still quite natural manner is part of the family and of the tribe which evolves from the family; later he is part of a community, of one of the different forms of the community which arise from the conflict and the merging of tribes. It is not until the eighteenth century that in bourgeois society the various forms of the social texture confront the individual as merely means towards his private ends, as external necessity. But the epoch which produces this standpoint, namely that of the solitary individual, is precisely the epoch of the (as yet) most highly developed social (according to this standpoint, general) relations. Man is a Zoon politikon [political animal] in the most literal sense: he is not only a social animal, but an animal that can be individualised only within society. Production by a solitary individual outside society – a rare event, which might occur when a civilised person who has already absorbed the dynamic social forces is accidentally cast into the wilderness – is just as preposterous as the development of speech without individuals who live together and talk to one another. It is unnecessary to dwell upon this point further. It need not have been mentioned at all, if this inanity, which had rhyme and reason in the works of eighteenth-century writers, were not expressly introduced once more into modern political economy by Bastiat, Carey, Proudhon, etc. It is of course very pleasant for Proudhon, for instance, to be able to explain the origin of an economic relationship – whose historical evolution he does not know – in an historico-philosophical manner by means of mythology; alleging that Adam or Prometheus hit upon the ready-made idea, which was then put into practice, etc. Nothing is more tedious and dull than the fantasies of locus communis.Thus when we speak of production, we always have in mind production at a definite stage of social development, production by individuals in a society.

[my bold]https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1859/critique-pol-economy/appx1.htm#188YMS, an 'individual' of his 'epoch', both regarding politics and science.Apparently, according to YMS, Communism will involve more of the same 'individualism'.

[Young Master Smeet]

Erm, no, according to YMS Socialism will entail a fuller, rounder development of the individual than is allowed by the crushing division of labour in capitalism, as socialism will be a society in which the free development of each will be the condition for the free development of all, in which the commonality of interests means that the means of production and the networks of production cease to appear an alien uncontrolled force, but one aligned with our expressions of individuality and subjectivity; and where nobody has one exclusive sphere of activity but each can become accomplished in any branch she wishes, society regulates the general production and thus makes it possible for me to do one thing today and another tomorrow, to hunt in the morning, fish in the afternoon, rear cattle in the evening, criticise after dinner, just as I have a mind, without ever becoming hunter, fisherman, herdsman or critic.

[LBird]

YMS wrote:

…the free development of each will be the condition for the free development of all…

[my bold]You recognise no 'condition' upon the 'individual'.For one's development, there is the condition that all must be able to develop.'The free development of each' (in other words, we must provide the conditions for the development of each and every individual) is a condition imposed on 'all'.The 'free development of each' can't simply be the lone task for each individual, as you allege, but is a social task for all.You pay lip service to the concept of a 'social individual', and claim to be one, but won't allow any claim of the 'social' half of the couplet to intefere with your 'biological' half of you as an 'individual'.As a 'social individual', I will comply with the democratic decisions of me and my comrades.As a self-declared 'individual', you won't.But then, I'm democratic Communist.You're a bourgeois individualist who doesn't like what he sees of bourgeois society in reality (because you are not 'free' to do as you want), and so wishes to realise the myth of bourgeois individualism in a non-bourgeois society.You mouth platitudes, but have no concept whatsoever of the political implications of those views.Communist society won't be 7 billion isolated individuals doing as they like, but 7 billion social individuals working to a common purpose, the social task of developing 7 billion individuals.Communism is not solipsism.

[Young Master Smeet]

As a free individual there are things that your comrades will not democratically ask you to do, the condition of developing and promoting freedom sets the limits of the free association.  Yopu wll not be democratically asked to go down a salt mine.  You won't be given a job you detest (you'll only be asked to do work that is necssary or enjoyable).  That is, my comrades would treat me as an end in itself, not a means to an end..  thus, we reconcile the individual with the community, so that the collection of individuals does nto appear as an alien force to each member of it.  As a social individual I won't have to be consciously compelled, but will be socialised for co-opration and inmbued with socialist consciousness: recognising that my interests are those of the community, and that my road to development lie through and with my fellows.

[LBird]

YMS wrote:

…that my road to development lie through and with my fellows.

That implies democracy, and not 'free individual'. You keep making the above statement, but denying its political implications.What your constant reference to yourself, as the final arbiter of what you will or won't do, means is:

YMS, to be philosophically and politically consistent should have wrote:

…that my road to development lie through me.

If you claim to be a 'social individual', YMS, you have to say what your social role is: either 'worker' or 'boss' (at its simplest). These are structural roles. In CR terms, our 'individuality' is at the 'component level' and our 'worker-ness' is at the level of 'structure'. So, as an 'individual', one is like a use-value (eg., a tin of beans, a component outside of any structure), whereas as a 'worker', one is like an exchange-value (eg., a commodity, a component within a structure).If one wishes to understand the two-sidedness of bricks/walls, use-value/exchange-value, tins of beans/commodities, individuals/society, that is, relationships, one should employ Critical Realism, the modern name for the method used by Marx's 'idealism-materialism'.Claiming to be a 'free individual' is bourgeois ideology, and ignores the inescapable social context for every human that has ever lived. It ignores relationships.

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