Science for Communists?

[LBird]

alanjjohnstone wrote:

Quote:

"thus the political need for democratic methods being used throughout that society, including science."

That was the reason…a jury of your and YMS peers deciding democratically who is correct – the test of the vote. 

But if our peers decide 'democratic methods' are the answer, my position is thus deemed 'correct' already, prior to any personal debates.Unless comrades separate out 'society' from 'science' (that is, they accept democracy within society but not science), at which point they disagree with Marx.In that sense, my position can't be denied.The only alternatives to Marx's desire for a united and democratic method is either non-democracy or disunity.The choices are:1. democracy within society and science (unity)2. democracy only within society (disunity)3. no democracy at all (unity)4. democracy only within science (disunity)I argue for choice 1, as does Marx.YMS et al argue for choice 2, as does Engels.

ajj wrote:

Plus now you mention it, the prospect of on platform fisticuffs is also appealing, too, now.

No, I'm happy to leave YMS et al to their Engelsian party. It has no future.Any worker I'm speaking to in the future will be told that the SPGB does not want democratic methods to be adopted by the proletariat in its control of the means of production (which includes, obviously, science), and instead that the SPGB argues for discreditted 19th century elite science, and that in that sense the SPGB is identical to the Leninists and their party model, of an elite telling workers what they must believe.From that conclusion about science, questions will flow about 'parliament', which is yet another political arena in which the SPGB wishes to impose its views above workers' councils.Only those who argue for democratic workers' control over all aspects of human production, that is, Communists, have a consistent case.One only has to read YMS's self-appointed individualist epistemological views about 'knowledge' to know what he desires. It's not democracy, it's elitism.For YMS, the elite scientists and political experts will tell us the 'Truth'. That's why they can't accept humans making the decisions about what 'reality' is. They believe that they have a neutral method that tells them what 'reality' is, but they won't tell us what this method is, because they can't. This belief was shot to ribbons by Einstein, and even the bourgeoisie and the religious know this.But not the Engelsian 'materialist' parties, like the Stalinists, Leninists, Trotskyists… and the SPGB. They are all cut from the same philosophical cloth.Materialism? Dead.Marx was an Idealist-Materialist.

[alanjjohnstone]

Quote:

the SPGB is identical to the Leninists and their party model, of an elite telling workers what they must believe

I have to plead guilty to this although i wouldn’t have phrased it that way.

As a party we do claim to possess a collective knowledge acquired from accumulated experience of past events and what we consider their proven worth in interpretation so we do endeavour to educate (propagandaise) workers and tell them where they may be correct and where they may well be wrong in their view of society.

The old slogan of “Educate…Organise…Agitate” still stands as a guide for todays socialist parties although “self-education and self-organisation” may be an improvement but the creation of a formal organisation i view as having its place in our self-liberation, myself as an individual and myself as a constituent of something larger, my class.

In many ways we are anti-democratic but in the sense that popular ideas held by the majority of workers are not accepted by ourselves as the undeniable truth and we challenge them, often in the guise factually and scientifically, such as the issue of race. Might of numbers is not always right.

What we don’t try to do is impose our “minority” views on that majority by political power or street violence, which differentiates us from the Leninist.

We may hold that we are possess a superior consciousness…class/socialist consciousness, an elitist position ,perhaps, …but we do not claim that as authority or suffice reason to offer ourselves as a vanguard leadership to substitute our party for our class. We may well think we are correct but we still rely on persuasion and the power of argument to convince others of our correctness.

As an aside your reference to workers councils is over-egging the pudding. There exists and is tolerated within the SPGB a variety of opinion and empahasis on the value or otherwise of workers councils and the party position is elastic and flexible on their futur potential role. Our critics decline to offer the same give and take on the question of the use of parliament and as James Connolly moreorless said about the IWW political action clause being deleted…”just try and stop the workers from using it…”,

In the work-place i was often acccused of arrogance…of having an answer for everything…which usually is the case with socialists…I’m sure that accusation has been thrown at you, too…welcome to the elitist club, LBird

[Young Master Smeet]

OED wrote:

Idealism: Philos. Any of various views according to which reality is ultimately in some sense mental or mind-dependent; any of various views according to which the objects of knowledge or perception are ideas (in various senses: see idea n.); more generally, any view opposed to some form of realism or materialism.Materialism: Philos. The theory or belief that nothing exists except matter and its movements and modifications; (more narrowly) the theory or belief that mental phenomena are nothing more than, or are wholly caused by, the operation of material or physical agencies.Dualism:Philos. The doctrine that mind and matter exist as distinct entities; opposed to idealism and materialism.

Lbird wrote:

Any worker I'm speaking to in the future will be told that the SPGB does not want democratic methods to be adopted by the proletariat in its control of the means of production (which includes, obviously, science)

And if you direct them to this discussion, they will see members of the party committed to democratic control of the means of production, and to the democratic organisation of science, and they will wonder why you are saying something that is untrue (even more, they might question how you know what the SP stands for, since by your own light, without a democratic vote, you cannot have any knowledge).I am indeed arguing for democracy within society and science.  So it would be untrue for you to tell any workers that you meet the contrary.  And I'm sure you would not want to say untrue things to the class.At a philosophical level, never mind the practical, one question you have run away from is what happens to truth prior to a vote.  Necessarilly, the new propositions to be adopted will be moved by a minority (and how are they convinced to even begin proposing new theses?) that will become the majority.  Democracy does not resolve the epistemological question, there must always be a point at which the minority is right against the majority.

[LBird]

alanjjohnstone wrote:

I have to plead guilty to this although i wouldn't have phrased it that way. As a party we do claim to possess a collective knowledge acquired from accumulated experience of past events and what we consider their proven worth in interpretation so we do endeavour to educate (propagandaise) workers and tell them where they may be correct and where they may well be wrong in their view of society. The old slogan of "Educate…Organise…Agitate" still stands as a guide for todays socialist parties although "self-education and self-organisation" may be an improvement but the creation of a formal organisation i view as having its place in our self-liberation, myself as an individual and myself as a constituent of something larger, my class.

[my bold]I think you're being too harsh on yourself, in this case, alan. The rest of what you say I agree with, and indeed is the basis of my looking to the SPGB in the first place. Prior to a revolution, the class can either agree or disagree with your party position. If they agree, the ideas are spread; if they don't, changes happen in other circumstances.The real philosophical question is about the 'material' (as in 'conditions', 'production', etc.). In this case, the members here are arguing that, even after a revolution, they won't accept that the class as a whole should determine the meaning of the 'material'. That is, your party members are arguing that they, either as individuals or as a party, have access to a means of generating social knowledge that is either not available to the mass of workers, or that the mass of workers can't be trusted with. Thus, it is an elitist stance, very different to your point above that, clearly, within a capitalist society, Socialists/Communists have a head start on workers who are not class conscious.This issue is about a post-revolutionary situation. And since I think that the 'social training' for  workers' political development must take place prior to a revolution, and that that development must reflect how things will work post-rev., I therefore argue that science for Communists must reflect now how we'll organise our society then. That is, if we want science to be a democratic social activity, we must argue for that now. But your members here reject entirely the notion that workers should determine what the 'material' consists of, not just now (which isn't on the agenda anyway), but after the revolution. To do this, they must have a method that tells them the truth of the 'material', but they won't share it with us here.The reason they won't answer this question, is that any answer they give will be based upon completely discredited ideas about 'individual biological senses', 'induction', 'common sense', etc., which will be laughed at by anyone with any real awareness of the state of the philosophy of science and epistemology, today. In effect, they're holding on to a 19th century method of science which is nonsense. They do so, because they have both been brainwashed by this society to revere 'scientists', and bamboozled by Engels' misreading of Marx, which was based upon Engels' own brainwashing by 19th  century science.

ajj wrote:

In the work-place i was often acccused of arrogance…of having an answer for everything…which usually is the case with socialists…I'm sure that accusation has been thrown at you, too…welcome to the elitist club, LBird

That's right… 'clever shite' and 'know-it-all' being amongst the printable.The thing is, though, they kept listening, especially when my 'arrogance' meant that I ran rings round the bosses in any public discussion. Remind me, if we ever meet, to tell you the story about the vice-president who gave us an hour's talk about 'quality', while we sat there po-faced and bored, and made the mistake at the end of asking whether there were any questions, while smiling at us… it ended with him stamping out of the room, leaving with a face like thunder, confused, having been shown up as an ignorant fool who didn't know anything about 'quality', its proponents, methods, aims, or even its Japanese post-WW2 origins, as a development of pre-war Taylorism. Of course, everyone else was now smiling…No, "workers' arrogance" when faced with bosses is something to be encouraged and developed, and I always did my best to provide a good role model for my workmates.

[Young Master Smeet]

Quote:

In this case, the members here are arguing that, even after a revolution, they won't accept that the class as a whole should determine the meaning of the 'material'. That is, your party members are arguing that they, either as individuals or as a party, have access to a means of generating social knowledge that is either not available to the mass of workers, or that the mass of workers can't be trusted with.

Erm, no, they're arguing there will be no working class.  As to what is material, the answer is everything.  Including love, poetry  and sex. No one is arguing that we have access to special knowledge, far from it (in my case, the exact opposite, I'm arguing it is through ongoing discussion that we come to know the world, and no vote can nor should stop that discussion).

[LBird]

YMS wrote:

No one is arguing that we have access to special knowledge, far from it (in my case, the exact opposite…

You must have a memory like a sieve, or are a hypocritical liar, YMS.You've said several times that, if your own senses tell you something, you'll accept that rather than a vote of your comrades.It was 'tides coming in', I believe, last time.You know so little about epistemology, that you don't even know when you're displaying your method. You don't even know it's a method. To you, it's just 'common sense'.

[Young Master Smeet]

No, last time I talked about tides cvoming in, I ws asking what would happen if a socialist commonwealth voted to stop the tides?  i.e. I was trying to elicit from you a further explanation of what you are talking about through a concrete example, either you can point out the flaw in my quwestion, or take me through how the tides will stop.  As you said, any practitioner of science must be able to explain it to an ordinary person…More to the point, i've also asked you whetehr we can all do the same experiment, the point of that question was that we cannot all do the same experiment, and that information must flow through society: I have never been to India, I don't know if it exists, but some people tell me so and I have no reason to distrust them.What I have said is that I, like my comrades, will make up my own mind based on evidence and testimony: you have to accept this is necessary, since new propositions must be put to the socialist commonwealth by a minority (prior to it becoming a majority through a vote), ele there can be no new knowldge.  I'd accept the verdict of the vote, but campaign to overturn it if I thought it was wrong, as is the right of a minority in a democracy, n'est pas?

[LBird]

YMS wrote:

What I have said is that I, like my comrades, will make up my own mind based on evidence and testimony…[and] I'd accept the verdict of the vote…

This is tantamount to saying that you agree with a democratic theory of knowledge in science.Why you don't just say so, beats me.So, no 'scientists' telling the rest of us what the 'material' is, then?Thus, you can't be a 'materialist', can you?If you accept a democratic theory of knowledge, in which social IDEAS play a fundamental part (as you also go on to say in your brief outline about debates), why call your self a 'materialist'?Surely, like me and Marx, you're also an 'idealist-materialist'?Why ever did you deny it?I think that you've been taking 'ideas' about materialism at face value, accepting what others have said, without asking where those 'ideas' about materialism came from. I can tell you that, too. They came from Engels, and I've already given you the pamphlet title and page number, before.I recommend that you look this up, because it's the source of great confusion for Marxists/Communists/Socialists.Hmmmm… perhaps we are getting somewhere…

[alanjjohnstone]

Quote:

even after a revolution, they won't accept that the class as a whole should determine the meaning of the 'material'. That is, your party members are arguing that they, either as individuals or as a party….This issue is about a post-revolutionary situation….

Lbird, i think you can have the satisfaction that there will be no SPGB after the revolution and these now ex-members of a now defunct organisation simply won't have the ability to lay any special claim to the 

Quote:

access to a means of generating social knowledge that is either not available to the mass of workers, or that the mass of workers can't be trusted with.

Or maybe more accurately, any more than any other individual member of the community has access to the means of generating social knowledge. Again, there does not exist the possibility of any political privilege/power that today's elites are able to acquire through a political dominance to impose an ideology…So isn't this all a bit of hypothetical scare-mongering, in a way, about a situation that circumstances won't allow to arise. As for the SPGB attitude towards knowledge prior to the revolution i think we do acknowledge that, as you say elsewhere, it is ideologically based,  in that out of the millions of pieces of facts and information, we select only those that support our case for socialism to advance that case. Anything else is discarded. (dangerous groud to go down, i know) The case against socialism we deny its validity from our arguments for socialism. What did Marx say in some context or other…when there exists two equal but conflicting rights… it is the success of the force of one which prevails…something like that anyways…what doesn't happen is that "truth" always wins out. 

[LBird]

alanjjohnstone wrote:

As for the SPGB attitude towards knowledge prior to the revolution i think we do acknowledge that, as you say elsewhere, it is ideologically based…

So, how can the members here claim to be 'materialists'? 'Materialism', if it is to mean anything, is the exclusion of 'ideas' in the fundamental make-up of the world. That's why its adherents always oppose themselves to 'idealism'.But if your claim above is true, and 'knowledge' (of a rock, for example) is 'acknowledged' by the SPGB to be 'ideologically based', then the material and ideal have the same status.Thus, the term 'idealism-materialism' would be more apt to describe the scientific ideology of the SPGB (and one I would agree with, and would argue was also Marx's position, too).Furthermore, why do you stress 'prior'? What is it that you think changes the status of 'knowledge' prior to, and after, the revolution? If you claim that after the rev. that 'knowledge' becomes unideological, then you are claiming that, post-rev., humanity can then adopt a positivist view of science.This is a serious epistemological error, as has been made clear by science, and has dangerous political effects, because if one section of humanity claims to have 'unideological access' to the 'truth', we're going down the Leninist road, where a part of society separates itself off from the mass.

ajj wrote:

Again, there does not exist the possibility of any political privilege/power that today's elites are able to acquire through a political dominance to impose an ideology…So isn't this all a bit of hypothetical scare-mongering, in a way, about a situation that circumstances won't allow to arise.

I find this very naive, and is clearly based upon Engels views about the 'material' and the 'ideal'. You're arguing that, if the 'material' circumstances don't 'exist', then 'elite ideologies' can't form.But, if we follow the logic of your first statement, and accept that the material and ideal have the same status (in opposition to Engels' views), then clearly 'elite ideologies' can form, and then go on to produce 'material' circumstances favourable to the 'elite ideology'.So, 'hypothetical scare-mongering', on my part? Or, 'naive realism and naive political views' on yours?

[Young Master Smeet]

Ideas are material and are subject to causation, that's what I got from the German Ideology. And, as I've said what you alone in the world call Idealism-Materialism is just what I'd call materialism.  Use the shorter name, save electrons.I'd accept the fact of the outcome of a vote of my peers, but I wouldn't necessarilly agree that what they said was the truth was so (and I'd reserve the right to campaign to overturn the vote, too).  Also, you seem to be implicitly accepting my point about the minority of scientists being right against the majority.  This seems to me to validate my point about the vote being unnecessary for finding truth.As I've noted before, by the material process of mathematics alone, Paul Dirac predicted the existence of antimatter (this has been confirmed by evidence).Interestingly, this article (below)http://www.ucl.ac.uk/news/news-articles/1014/061014-john-okeefeSeems to give some grist to the rationalist mill, since our brain structure does seem to provide some a priori structures to things like spatial positioning (also it's a further fillip to materialism, as we do seem to be chasing down a good healthy reductionism and proving that the meatbots do think with their grey goo).And, BTW, obviously in socialism the Nobel Prize would be voted on by the entire community and there wouldn't be a financial component.

[LBird]

YMS wrote:

And, as I've said what you alone in the world call Idealism-Materialism is just what I'd call materialism.

But why would you?If 'ideas' and 'material' have the same status, why choose one as the name, and not the other?Or, if it is deemed acceptable to select one component, why not call it 'idealism'?By your logic, one could say that a zebra crossing is 'white'. Or 'black'.Why can't you just say that a zebra crossing is 'black and white' (or, 'white and black')?I think you should look further into this issue, YMS, and I think you'll find that to accept the term 'materialism' as one's viewpoint, is to choose an ideology.What's more, as I've said before, this philosophy negates the SPGB strategy of 'education and propaganda' and the development of workers' consciousness, which I agree with.But I'm amazed that SPGB members say they agree with this political strategy, and yet hold to a contrary philosophical underpinning, one that suggests that 'education and propaganda' are not necessary because 'material conditions' tell workers what they are (ie. it's all obvious to plain sight of any worker), and so passive observation will lead to the development of class consciousness amongst workers.On my part, I agree with the SPGB political strategy, but find it undermined by the Engelsian philosophy adopted by members. It does not give me any confidence that the SPGB actually, consciously, knows what it is doing.

[Young Master Smeet]

Yes, ultimately monism is monism, and a consistent idealist monism is effectively the same as materialism (so long as we are all just ideas living in the mind of God, or somesuch, and the dream world is consistant in its rules, exists exterior to the minds of individuals and cannot be altered by thought alone), but what I am not is a dualist, ideas and mind do not exist on some other plane, but are part and parcel of the same stuff as everything around us.  That is, the crossing has no stripes.At a cognitive level, I do believe that what we call the self is largely an illusion to give linguistic expression and justification to the processes and lived biological experience of the meatbots.  That is not to deny the role (entirely social in character) of the processes, discourses and algorithms that ideas are a pat of in unfurling that lived experience among socialised meatbots.That is, discussion, education and propaganda are part of the material conditions for creating socialism and socialist consciousness and understanding (without which socialism cannot happen).  That doesn't just pop into the minds of workers out of the sky, but only through conscious discussion (although we do see the same ideas respawned independently, arising from the application of discussion among different sets of workers to their common conditions).

[DJP]

LBird wrote:

'Materialism', if it is to mean anything, is the exclusion of 'ideas' in the fundamental make-up of the world. 

LOL. Perhaps if your name is Paul Churchland (or LBird) it does, but for everyone else it means nothing of the sort. We've been here before, many times, and it seems to me you're stuck in a dualistic way of thinking that's why you keep asking these same questions..

[LBird]

DJP wrote:

LBird wrote:

'Materialism', if it is to mean anything, is the exclusion of 'ideas' in the fundamental make-up of the world. 

LOL. Perhaps if your name is Paul Churchland (or LBird) it does, but for everyone else it means nothing of the sort. We've been here before, many times, and it seems to me you're stuck in a dualistic way of thinking that's why you keep asking these same questions..

You're the adherent of 'physicalism', DJP.You think ideas supervene on the material.If that's not dualism, what is?I think the material can 'supervene' (to use your ideological term) upon ideas. Marx agrees with me, as I've shown with quotes.Human ideas create material conditions, as much as material conditions create human ideas.Dietzgen also follows this view, that ideas and things are both 'real', and have the same status. Thus, to argue for physicalism is to argue against this viewpoint.

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