Science for Communists?

[Brian]

LBird wrote:

 You keep saying 'practice' determines 'truth'. Successful practice can be done by individuals or an elite, and thus a vote is not required.I keep saying 'voting' determines 'truth'. Successful practice requires to be validated by a vote, and thus can't be determined by either individuals or an elite. Society must determine what counts as 'truth', not simple 'successful practice'.If you agree, why not just say 'truth depends upon vote'?

Brian wrote:

Nevertheless, according to your 'theory' this amounts to being Leninist claptrap.

Yes, the belief (and it's an ideological belief) that 'experts in science' should determine 'truth' in science, is the root of Leninist politics.If you all have so much faith in elites and experts, whether in physics or astrophysics, how come working physicists say there are massive problems within science? I've given the quote so many times from Rovelli, that you probably know it now by heart.Why will no-one address these philosophical issues that physicists themselves have identified?

Are you saying that all successful practice must be validated by a vote so it determines what is 'truth' for a socialist society?Is this absolutely necessary in all cases?  If so does this mean all past scientific discoveries will have to be validated by a vote, or do we just take them at face value and thereby presume that the evidental practice is sufficient 'truth' to get on with?  Obviously, we would have to have a vote on that under your theory.What if society decided via the ballot that a vote is unnecessary where would that leave your theory?  On the other hand if society decided that a vote was necessary on every single scientific discovery would that not stop the clock on any future scientific investigation?  After all until we get to the bottom of this deep philosophical issue and problem it would not be safe to venture any further according to your parameters.Finally, the big if.  What if in the final analysis society democratically determined that not all scientific investigation needs democratic scrutiny?  What happens next?

[LBird]

Brian wrote:

Are you saying that all successful practice must be validated by a vote so it determines what is 'truth' for a socialist society?Is this absolutely necessary in all cases?  If so does this mean all past scientific discoveries will have to be validated by a vote, or do we just take them at face value and thereby presume that the evidental practice is sufficient 'truth' to get on with?  Obviously, we would have to have a vote on that under your theory.

Well, let's look at what at least one practicist physicist says:

Rovelli, The First Scientist: Anaximander and his Legacy, wrote:

This reading of scientific thinking as subversive, visionary, and evolutionary is quite different from the way science was understood by the positivist philosophers… (p. xii)Facile nineteenth-century certainties about science— in particular the glorification of science understood as definitive knowledge of the world—have collapsed. One of the forces responsible for their dismissal has been the twentieth-century revolution in physics, which led to the discovery that Newtonian physics, despite its immense effectiveness, is actually wrong, in a precise sense. Much of the subsequent philosophy of science can be read as an attempt to come to grips with this disillusionment. What is scientific knowledge if it can be wrong even when it is extremely effective? (p. xv)But answers given by natural science are not credible because they are definitive; they are credible because they are the best we have now, at a given moment in the history of knowledge. (p. xvi)

http://www.amazon.com/The-First-Scientist-Anaximander-Legacy/dp/1594161313So, the short answer to your question, Brian, is 'Yes'.

Brian wrote:

What if society decided via the ballot that a vote is unnecessary where would that leave your theory?  On the other hand if society decided that a vote was necessary on every single scientific discovery would that not stop the clock on any future scientific investigation?  After all until we get to the bottom of this deep philosophical issue and problem it would not be safe to venture any further according to your parameters.Finally, the big if.  What if in the final analysis society democratically determined that not all scientific investigation needs democratic scrutiny?  What happens next?

If you're arguing that is it possible (even likely) that after a world revolution, during which the vast majority of the population of this planet will have come to consciousness of their abilities as humans to control the entire means of production, and will have grown in confidence and will necessarily have developed a great thirst for new knowledge, so that they can control the means of production, that after all this, that they will vote to hand the power to make decisions back to a elite of experts, the same elite of experts that had got the planet into the mess that it was in, and because of which mess we had to build and fight for a revolution…If that happens, then, yes, I agree that society should hand power back to a scientific (and thus political) elite.I'll be voting 'No!', comrades.

[Young Master Smeet]

Relevent to this debate is the film Whiplash. http://theconversation.com/whiplash-is-a-horror-film-so-jazz-critics-should-stop-worrying-36156

Quote:

Whiplash is not solely concerned with jazz. It is as much a study of alienation and abuse. And so its inheritance is not from jazz history – but from a sub-genre of expressionistic films about obsession and losing one’s humanity. Powell and Pressburger’s The Red Shoes and Martin Scorsese’s Raging Bull are the real antecedents of Whiplash.

At the heart of the film is the teachers insistent question: "are you leading, or are you dragging?" i.e. do you know what you are doing?  He dismisses a french horn player, not for playing out of key, but for not knowing that he was playing out of key.The film isn't about Jazz, but about the Hegelian Master/Slave dialectic: how do you know you are good enough?  Pertinently to this discussion: how do I know anything?  Answer, when someone who I presume to be as knowledgable as me agrees with me.  How do I know she agrees?  How do I know that she knows as much as me?  Well, I must try and destroy her theories and positions, in direct contest.But if I win, then she doesn't know as much as me, and so I don't know if I am right, and if I lose, then I was wrong.But, that's all there is, a process of being less wrong, and ongoing tantalising debate.

[Young Master Smeet]

Socialist Punk, I'd imagine that the ethics set up would be much as it is now: the scientific affinity group performs experiements, it goes to the wider community for "funding" (i.e. resources), and it's activities are subject to debate in wider fora.  Within the affinity group they will have ethics committees and internal rules.  The only difference would be that there would be no commercial interest, so only benefit to the community will be the baseline question.

[robbo203]

LBird wrote:

robbo, I wish to acknowledge your post above, but I think that I've covered the points you seem to be trying to make in my reply to Brian.The key point you seem to be asking about is 'practical application'. As I've said before, the issue of 'practice' is an ideological and philosophical issue.Unless you engage with the discussion, at least at first, on that theoretical level, you will not understand the problems with both yours and Brian's stance, from which you ask your questions.If effect, for the purposes of this discussion, it could be considered that there are two frameworks in play.The first starts from the political/ideological/philosophical/scientific assumption that 'Democracy IS NOT necessary'. It then goes on to point out why democracy is not necessary, giving evidence and practical examples.The second starts from the political/ideological/philosophical/scientific assumption that 'Democracy IS necessary'. It then goes on to point out why democracy is necessary, giving evidence and practical examples.The framework one chooses to start from is not an objective choice, but is a socially-determined one.As a Communist, I choose to use the second framework, which I consider appropriate for workers' democracy.The first framework is entirely compatible with bourgeois science and politics, so I warn comrades to be wary of choosing that framework. It is also the framework entirely appropriate for Leninism.The arguments put forward by you and Brian would sound just the same coming from a supporter of capitalism. They, too, start from an assumption that 'democracy is not necessary', and then go on to prove this by reference to 'current practice'. Markets do not require democracy. Money is like Matter, and humans should keep their ideological beliefs in democracy out of the areas which don't concern them. That is the social basis of this ideology: bourgeois society, and its 'ruling class ideas'.

 Hi LBirdI am trying to follow your reasoning above but , I'm afraid, it still doesn't  make much sense to me.  Also , you still haven't really addressed the two points I raised at all – just basically sidestepped them completely.  Let me first of all correct you. I did not suggest at all that "democracy is not necessary" – certainly not  in the kind of unqualified form you present.  What I actually said was democracy is necessary for some purposes in communist society where there are conflicting interests or viewpoints as to what needs to be done but that it was not necessary for other purposes.  You have misrepresented me in other words.  As an example of the latter I mentioned workers having to vote on rival scientific theories to determine which one should prevail (which, for some unexplained reason, is something that you think a communist society ought to be doing).  To me that is an utterly pointless gesture which is moreover alien to whole spirit of scientific enquiry which is self critical not dogmatic yet you seem to see the need for scientific theory  to get some kind of formal seal of approval which is precisely a matter of turning theory into a dogma.  I explained all this to you but you completely ignored my explanationWhat I am trying to get at, LBird, is that you seem unwilling to draw a line in the sand where you can say that "on this side of that line democracy is necessary and on the other side it is not".  I think I know what lies behind your reluctance to do so (although I may be wrong) and it ties in with your oft-repeated refrain throughout this long (and needlessly tortuous) thread that "The framework one chooses to start from is not an objective choice, but is a socially-determined one" – that there is no such thing as an objective value free science. Such a view of science or knowledge is what you have repeatedly characterised as 19th century postivism. As I think you put it "rocks don't talk"As a matter of fact I am very largely in agreement with you on this matter.  I agree that 'practice' is indeed an ideological and philosophical issue – although, of course. I don't think even you would rash enough to claim that it is PURELY   a question of ideology/philosophy.  Even so, I think you have become so used  to repeating this mantra of yours that it has become a crutch.  It has blinded you to the implications (and very obvious shortcomings) of other aspects of your argument.   It is precisely because I too start from your second framework above – that science can never be value free –  that I reject what you say about there being no possibility or need to draw that line in the sand.  Moreover, I don't  have to rely on  "current practice" to back up my claim.  With respect, your whole line of argument seems incredibly crude and simplistic. It amounts to a form of smear tactics to be blunt.  Markets ("current practice") don't require democracy, you say.  Democracy, you say (misleadingly), is something that I assert  will "not be necessary". Therefore  the arguments put forward  by Brian and I "sound just the same coming from a supporter of capitalism".   Next , you  will be saying we are advocates of markets and bourgeois science because you chose to slot us into a framework "that is entirely compatible with bourgeois science and politics"! That is very poor reasoning, LBird.  It is nothing more than clever device  that enables you  to evade answering the two pretty fundamental  points I raised in my earlier post.  Those points incidentally were not based on "current practice" but on what is very likely to be case in a communist society and if you think otherwise then show me why it should be otherwise.  Don't just make ex cathedra type statements to the effect from on high.  Answer the points I raised or admit you have no answers to themYou know, two can play at this game of yours.  I could if I was so minded to, demonstrate that for all your claims about the quasi-Leninist approach of the SPGB in these matters,  you are far more Leninist in the implications of what you are saying than ever the SPGB  has been.  I don't think you are Leninist anymore than the SPGB but by taking a part of your argument and inflating it into the whole (as you have done with mine and others),  I could show that you are a thoroughgoing Leninist whose vision of a future communist society is that of a thoroughly centralised social order which functions through the centralised collation of the opinions of literally billions of workers on everything under the sun – whether this be on  the veracity of one scientific theory versus another or on the global allocation of steel plate to automobile manufacturing plants worldwide.  Afterall everything that requires a decision to be made,  according to you, requires by that very token, the democratic input and seal of approval of a "workers democracy".  And since "the workers" are worldwide,  the basis upon which every decision to be made in the world must therefore be worldwide tooThis is central planning in its classic sense (albeit a hyper-democratic version of the same which is even less realisable than the undemocratic version).  Bingo. I've just *seemingly exposed you as an advocate of a certain kind of bourgeois way of thinking apparent in people like Lenin, with its veneration of giantism, Fordism , mass society and centralisation .  I could argue that your representation of communist society as a kind of impersonal massified society in which billions of workers are constantly engaged on  the process  of collectively centralising their opinions on everything under the sun and collectively actively acting upon these as the expression of this workers democracy mirrors precisely that way of thinking.Except of course that I don't actually think you are pushing a bourgeois way of thinking on the rest of us. I read between the lines of what you are saying and understand that there is much more to what you are saying.  It would be nice if you could extend the same courtesy to your critics instead of caricaturing them 

[LBird]

Robbo, you say you agree with most (nearly everything?) that I say, and yet the bit that you don't understand you accuse me of using 'smear tactics'.You (and the others) have the problem. Youse don't understand.When I first tried to engage in these issues, 18 months ago, I started by discussing ontology, epistemology, the subject-object-knowledge triad, with quotes from Communists like Marx, Engels, Pannekoek, Dietzgen, and philosophers of science like Popper, Kuhn, Feyerabend and Lakatos, commentators like Schaff and Chalmers. Since then, on the recommendation of comrades here, I've read Kolakowski, Untermann, Bogdanov, and off my own back Labriola, Lukacs, Korsch and Gramsci. Believe me, that's just a fraction of the books that I've bought and read in the last 18 months (Murray, Hook, Avineri, Lichtheim, Schimdt, Carver, Ball, Sohn-Rethel are just a few of the others).Oh, yeah, Rovelli. And others. And more.Whereas, from what I can tell from the ill-informed responses throughout that period, no-one else has read a single book. Certainly, no-one is critically reading the ones I've recommended and then critically discussing them. The single partial exception that I'm aware of is twc, who had a look at Schaff, but then, disappointingly, refused to discuss it. twc does long pronouncements which must not be queried, unfortunately, rather than discussion.So, why I am listing these books? From my ego? Trying to impress?No, simply because I'm trying to help, to help comrades actually avoid much of the reading (lots of it is simply wrong, from a Democratic Communist perspective). But apparently, you and the others don't need my help, because you all already know the answers, and argue with me constantly from a position of abject ignorance.You want 'smear tactics', robbo? I haven't started them, yet.Now, if you're fed up with simple answers, fine, let's get back to the subject-object-knowledge triad, and perhaps Kant, but you're going to have to read and discuss, both critically. Especially about Engels and 'materialism', which is nothing to do with Marx's 'idealism-materialism' (which retains the subject-object relationship, unlike physicalism, for example, the modern form of 'materialism').Some comrades have actually admitted that they've never read Marx, and prefer Engels, because they can understand Engels! The fact that Engels is totally confused, and thus confusing to readers, doesn't seem to bother them. Some others haven't even read Engels,  and just take their ideas from either 'materialism' (read: Leninism) or from bourgeois thinkers, without any critical distance!So, robbo, you can either start to look at the questions being posed (take a look at the Rovelli quote, above), or remain in the dark.On a final note of conciliation, surely your socialist intuition tells you that there must be something to a viewpoint that argues for workers' democracy, and is being combatted by arguments that deny democracy and stress 'expert' decision-making?In some ways, it's a simple choice: who determines human knowledge (and ethics and truth)? An elite, or our whole society, by voting?The whole tone of the SPGB response has been elitist and anti-democratic. What do you all think a revolution is going to look like?Do you really think physics (and all science) will be untouched by the earth-shattering events of a proletarian revolution, where workers take control of the production of this planet?I'm seriously beginning to wonder just how far the 'parliamentary road' has affected the party's thinking. As a measure of 'temperature-taking', I can see the argument for contesting bourgeois elections. But you don't seriously think that power will reside in parliament, do you? The only purpose for this method is the end of 'parliamentary suicide'.I think you should name your strategy just that, to clarify for those who accuse the SPGB of thinking that election to parliament is the same as workers' control.The ideological belief in elite science and 'expert truth' seems to me to be read into 'elite and expert parliament'.On my part, I think Workers' Councils will be formed in parallel with the election of an SPGB majority, and the task of the SPGB will be to disband 'elite expert' parliament, and ensure that 'bourgeois legitimacy' is handed over to Workers' Councils, which will be democratically run, and will control science, too. That's the 'means of production', to those who don't seem to see the identity of 'science' with 'production'.

[Young Master Smeet]

Lbird,would you have democratic control of art as well?  Voting on feminine rhymes?

[LBird]

YMS wrote:

But, that's all there is, a process of being less wrong, and ongoing tantalising debate.

You're on the same wavelength as me here, YMS.We know that science produces 'the wrong answer'.That's what science seems be telling us, that it gives us several 'wrong answers', and that we humans, having used the scientific method to produce several 'wrong answers' must decide OUTSIDE OF the scientific method, which answer is the 'least wrong'.It's not 'scientists' who can tell us what consists of 'the least': that is a social judgement, and that judgement, within a socialist society which employs democratic methods, must be a democratic judgement.And when other 'wrong answers' are later produced, last year's 'truth' can then voted out, and a new 'least wrong truth' could be installed.Then we'd be able to record our social history of 'truth change'.This realisation of the possibility of 'truth change' will help to develop and maintain our critical approach to science, education, truth, and the ongoing production of human knowledge.The conservatives won't like it, though.

[LBird]

Young Master Smeet wrote:

Lbird,would you have democratic control of art as well?  Voting on feminine rhymes?

All societies have limits on what is considered 'acceptable'.As a Democratic Communist, I want those inescapable limits to be democratically decided.If you disagree, you'd have to tell me 'who' should decide those limits.

[Anonymous]

I think it would be absolutely ridiculous for the SPGB to start advocating the abolotion of the science that for example successfully treats diabetes and cancer. Penicilin was a bourgious science. Should the socialist movemnent dump it and the science behind it.?Only rational replies without put downs, abuse or ridicule please.

[LBird]

Vin wrote:

I think it would be absolutely ridiculous for the SPGB to start advocating the abolotion of the science that for example successfully treats diabetes and cancer. Penicilin was a bourgious science. Should the socialist movemnent dump it and the science behind it.?Only rational replies without put downs, abuse or ridicule please.

I don't think that you read what I write anymore, Vin, so I'll have to leave it to other comrades to explain that no-one is advocating the abolition of science.In fact, I think our discussion is about deciding exactly what 'science' is, because we all want to keep it, rather than reject it.

[Young Master Smeet]

Ah, so you're happy to leave art to the elite artists (within limits) but not leave science to its elite artisans?

[Anonymous]

LBird wrote:

I don't think that you read what I write anymore, Vin, so I'll have to leave it to other comrades to explain that no-one is advocating the abolition of science.In fact, I think our discussion is about deciding exactly what 'science' is, because we all want to keep it, rather than reject it.

 I am used to your distortions and I am sure 'comrades' are coming around to see it that way too. The whole thread is about dumping today's science. I advocate keeping today's science and taking it under the democratic control of the people. You advocate voting on the 'truth'  edit: which is a completely different science.Stop the obfuscation it doesn't flatter. 

[Anonymous]

I think it would be fair to assume that without the use of sarcasm, put downs and name calling, Lbird is speechless and doesn't have a rational response.  

[Anonymous]

No one denies that research, science and technology are driven by class rule and the needs of the market and economic growth but that drive will not exist in socialism when we have a society based on production for use instead of for profit. How can research, science and technology  continue to be driven by class or sectional interests when when there will be no market, classes and sectional interests? To believe such a thing shows a lack of understanding of capitalism and socialism.What would be the motive of hiding the truth in socialism? There will be no priveledge in it, no gain. It's not 'science' that needs to be understood on this thread but 'socialism'.

[Author]

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