Science for Communists?

[LBird]

YMS wrote:

I'm fine with you calling it idealism-materialism, so long as you and the rest of us realise you're just using that to desribe Marxian Materialism.

Yes, I'm fine with that, YMS.My scientific ideology is Marxian Materialism.And since Marx emphasised the control of the means of production by the producers, and science is produced by human producers, all aspects of production should be democratically control by the producers.So, the human products of science (ie. scientific results) must be subject to a democratic vote.There is no elite, expert, 'neutral method' ouside of human social production.We must vote upon 'scientific truth'.The world does not tell us what it is.Knowledge is produced by societies, not elites.We must all have a say in determining 'truth'.What's your ideology of science, YMS?

[DJP]

Young Master Smeet wrote:

I'm fine with you calling it idealism-materialism, so long as you and the rest of us realise you're just using that to desribe Marxian Materialism.

Or the word "materialism" could be avoided and it could just be called "Marxian Monism", but you have to accept that Marx did see himself as belonging to the materialist tradition… 

[Anonymous]

DJP wrote:

Vin Maratty wrote:

It is obvious that 'materialism' has a multitude of meanings on this thread.

That's unavoidable because it does…

 Then a meaninful debate is impossible if all sides are using a term to mean many different things. Shirley, we need to state what we mean by the term and in what context?

[Young Master Smeet]

So, we're agreed that human beings produce knowledge, and that is an active process that occurs under historically specific conditions.  We're agreed that in a democratic society people need to be informed and have free access to information, and that everyone will contribute according to their ability.  From here we may diverge, but I think this is a problem you need to resolve.  The more able members of the community, whom you label an elite willl necessarilly consume more data (to each according to their needs) and scientific resources (including study time), they will develop new propositions, which will enter into the social arena for debate and discussion, as a minority seeking to become the majority view.   I think you need to account for why that will not happen if you want to remove the elite, with or without votes.

[LBird]

DJP wrote:

Young Master Smeet wrote:

I'm fine with you calling it idealism-materialism, so long as you and the rest of us realise you're just using that to desribe Marxian Materialism.

Or the word "materialism" could be avoided and it could just be called "Marxian Monism", but you have to accept that Marx did see himself as belonging to the materialist tradition… 

Yeah, Marxian monism, but, in turn,……you have to accept that Marx did see himself as belonging to the idealist tradition…That's what the Theses on Feuerbach is all about.Why do you still feel the need to emphasise 'materialism', to the exclusion of 'idealism'?I don't exclude one, I'm quite happy to stress both.'Marxian Monism' is 'Marx's idealism-materialism'. Marx wanted to blend the best of idealism and the best of materialism into your term 'monism'.I don't have any problem just saying it: Monism, neither just materialism nor just idealism, but a unity. Theory and practice.Why can't we say that to workers? Why do we stress 'materialism', when it isn't?The problem originated with Engels, and was carried forward by the Second International, and Lenin.

[LBird]

Young Master Smeet wrote:

So, we're agreed that human beings produce knowledge, and that is an active process that occurs under historically specific conditions.  We're agreed that in a democratic society people need to be informed and have free access to information, and that everyone will contribute according to their ability.  From here we may diverge, but I think this is a problem you need to resolve.  The more able members of the community, whom you label an elite willl necessarilly consume more data (to each according to their needs) and scientific resources (including study time), they will develop new propositions, which will enter into the social arena for debate and discussion, as a minority seeking to become the majority view.   I think you need to account for why that will not happen if you want to remove the elite, with or without votes.

No, an 'elite' is not a democratic minority, but a group who claim to be 'more able' than the rest, and thus this 'ability' is outside of a democratic vote.You're still hung up on 'elites', YMS.I thought that you'd got over that, but it seems that you are still just paying lip-service to democracy in all areas of life.Why don't you just say that you're an elitist?The SPGB doesn't seem to mind them.

[DJP]

LBird wrote:

…you have to accept that Marx did see himself as belonging to the idealist tradition…

I don't because he didn't

Marx wrote:

my method of development is not Hegelian, since I am a materialist and Hegel is an idealist.https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1868/letters/68_03_06-abs.htm

[Young Master Smeet]

Lbird, well, the problem is 'from each according to their ability' isn't it?  Elite is a relative term, so no matter how high the baseline average of the group is if someone is a little bit better, they are in the elite.  By mere fractions of a second, the average footballer playing in the premier league would thump daylights out of the best players of 1902.  The point, though, of socialism isn't to make everyone the same, but to ensure that no-one has a material interest separate from the community, or, more particularly, to be able live better than everyone else just because they are good at one thing.  Stephen Hawking would be a terrible football player, a worse binman.  Wayne Rooney would be terrible at molecular biology.  People have different competences.  Socilism won't change that, in fact it would encourage it.These differences will exist, whether you vote for them or not (there will be room in any system, even by accident, for someone to be better informed than their neighbour).Lets try for comprimise: would juries do you, a bit of sortition to decide which theories are favoured and deserve a bit more research?Anyway, you till need to account for from each according to their ability. Your turn.

[LBird]

DJP wrote:

LBird wrote:

…you have to accept that Marx did see himself as belonging to the idealist tradition…

I don't because he didn't

Marx wrote:

my method of development is not Hegelian, since I am a materialist and Hegel is an idealist.https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1868/letters/68_03_06-abs.htm

Whatever happened to 'Monism'? Now you're returning to only material at the expense of ideas.We've been here before, DJP. We know we can't solve our problem by simple appeal to scriptural authority. We can both find evidence from Marx to support our claims. I've said this many times previously.Unfortunately, no matter what he wrote in polemics, Marx was also an idealist. The Theses make that clear, as does the content of his other work, which never simply point to the 'material'. He more often points to 'production'.The real solution is for us, in the 21st century, to clarify what, for us, is the best term to employ.The term 'materialism' is tainted by association with Lenin, but, more importantly for us today, implies… well… 'materialism', which it isn't.If any worker comes to read these debates, knowing nothing of the arcane issues involved, which term better describes the philosophical basis of the SPGB, which has a political strategy of developing 'ideas' (ie. education, propaganda, class consciousness and workers' self-development)?'Materialism'or'Idealism-Materialism'?For the first time, perhaps since the First International, a workers' party will describe their philosophy as matching their politics.Whilst they hide behind 'materialism', they'll always have recourse to YMS's elitism.That is, they say one thing in politics (democracy), but another in philosophy (the material talks to an 'able' few, in YMS's terms). And as sure as eggs is eggs, the 'political' will follow the 'philosophical', in practice.Engels' materialism leads to political elites.

[DJP]

LBird wrote:

We've been here before, DJP. We know we can't solve our problem by simple appeal to scriptural authority. We can both find evidence from Marx to support our claims. I've said this many times previously.

You made a claim that Marx saw himself as belonging to the Idealist tradition. I showed that he did not. There is no where in Marx, after the German Ideology if not before, where he says "I am an idealist" whether you like it or not…."Monism" is fine for our purposes, but if the argument is "what Marx said" he never used that term – though he would have obviously know what it means.

[DJP]

LBird wrote:

The term 'materialism' is tainted by association with Lenin

Well more so the words "communism" and "socialism". Perhaps we should not use these to?

[LBird]

DJP wrote:

LBird wrote:

We've been here before, DJP. We know we can't solve our problem by simple appeal to scriptural authority. We can both find evidence from Marx to support our claims. I've said this many times previously.

You made a claim that Marx saw himself as belonging to the Idealist tradition. I showed that he did not. There is no where in Marx, after the German Ideology if not before, where he says "I am an idealist" whether you like it or not…."Monism" is fine for our purposes, but if the argument is "what Marx said" he never used that term – though he would have obviously know what it means.

Ok, DJP, stick to materialism.It's your party that's not getting any bigger.I'm trying to help, but clearly I'm not.If you're happy telling workers that the 'material' determines their thoughts, don't be surprised when they take you at your word, and assume that, since the material determines their thoughts, that they way they think now is the correct way to think, because the material tells them so. And the material world they live in is capitalism.Unless Communists introduce a philosophy that is critical of what exists, in other words, ideas that contradict the material existence that workers lead (and thus argues that ideas are required to change the material), then Communism will continue to shrink, as it has been doing throughout the last 100 years, since the Engelsian philosophy took centre stage.It's a crying shame that Marx's 'idealism-materialism' (or, critical realism) is being ignored. But, then, there you go. My best clearly isn't good enough.

[Young Master Smeet]

William Morris wrote:

“No, I do not,” said he, “and I will tell why; it is each man’s business to make his own work pleasanter and pleasanter, which of course tends towards raising the standard of excellence, as no man enjoys turning out work which is not a credit to him, and also to greater deliberation in turning it out; and there is such a vast number of things which can be treated as works of art, that this alone gives employment to a host of deft people.  Again, if art be inexhaustible, so is science also; and though it is no longer the only innocent occupation which is thought worth an intelligent man spending his time upon, as it once was, yet there are, and I suppose will be, many people who are excited by its conquest of difficulties, and care for it more than for anything else.

and:

Quote:

“You are right, neighbour,” said he.  “Although there are so many, indeed by far the greater number amongst us, who would be unhappy if they were not engaged in actually making things, and things which turn out beautiful under their hands,—there are many, like the housekeepers I was speaking of, whose delight is in administration and organisation, to use long-tailed words; I mean people who like keeping things together, avoiding waste, seeing that nothing sticks fast uselessly.  Such people are thoroughly happy in their business, all the more as they are dealing with actual facts, and not merely passing counters round to see what share they shall have in the privileged taxation of useful people, which was the business of the commercial folk in past days.  Well, what are you going to ask me next?”

And just on democracy:

Quote:

“Certainly,” said he; “how else could we settle them?  You see in matters which are merely personal which do not affect the welfare of the community—how a man shall dress, what he shall eat and drink, what he shall write and read, and so forth—there can be no difference of opinion, and everybody does as he pleases.  But when the matter is of common interest to the whole community, and the doing or not doing something affects everybody, the majority must have their way; unless the minority were to take up arms and show by force that they were the effective or real majority; which, however, in a society of men who are free and equal is little likely to happen; because in such a community the apparent majority is the real majority, and the others, as I have hinted before, know that too well to obstruct from mere pigheadedness; especially as they have had plenty of opportunity of putting forward their side of the question.”

And, (finally, it took me a while to find the real quote I was looking for):

Quote:

For the only claim he has to the title of a ‘man of genius’ is that his capacities are irrepressible; he finds the exercise of them so exceedingly pleasant to him that it will only be by main force that you will prevent him from exercising them[…]What I have said of the man of genius being compelled to work by his genius applies to all superior workmen in greater or less degree, and disposes of the need of a bribe. You need not bribe the superior workman to be superior, for he has to work in any case (we must take that for granted), and his superior work is pleasanter, and indeed easier, to him than the inferior work would be: he will do it if you allow him to. But also if you had the need you would not have the power to bribe, except under a system which admitted of slavery — ie., tormenting some people for the pleasure of others. Can you bribe him to work by giving him immunity from work? or by giving him goods that he cannot use? But in what other way can you bribe him when labour is free and ordinary people will not stand being compelled to accept degradation for his benefit? No, you will have to depend on his aptitude for his special work forcing him into doing it; nor will you be disappointed in this. Whatever difficulties you may have in organizing work in the earlier days of Socialism will not be with the specialists, but with those who do the more ordinary work; though as regards these, setting aside the common machine-work, the truth of the matter is that you can draw no hard and fast line between the special workman and the ordinary one. Every workman who is in his right place — that is, doing his work because he is fit for it — has some share in that ‘genius’ so absurdly worshipped in these latter days. The genius’ is simply the man who has a stronger speciality and is allowed to develop it; or, if you please, has it so strongly that it is able to break through the repressing circumstances of his life, which crush out those who are less abundantly gifted into ‘a dull level of mediocrity’. It is a matter of degree chiefly..

https://www.marxists.org/archive/morris/works/1886/commonweal/09-genius.htm

[DJP]

LBird wrote:

If you're happy telling workers that the 'material' determines their thoughts

I don't tell "workers" that and neither does the party.

[LBird]

I came across this very interesting text about science, objectivity, mathematics, Kant, Hume, Copernicus, Galileo, Popper, etc., on the LibCom site. I thought it worth sharing with other comrades, who are interested in these questions, which will affect how we view 'science' in a future Communist society. The author seems to link the commodity with the way we view nature. Anyway, it provides food for thought.http://libcom.org/library/unconscious-objectivity-aspects-critique-mathematical-natural-sciences-excerpts-claus-pe

[Author]

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