the difference between Marxism and original communist theory/ideology

[twc]

What a feeble cop out from the rampant anti-socialist who urges people to vote for the Truth of Capitalism in his other life, yet feigns esoteric mental elitism to dodge exoteric substantiation of his anti-Party sniping in this one.Chomsky’s fantasy is that mankind is born innate with every language that was, is and ever will be.LBird’s fantasy exceeds Chomsky’s.  His fantasy conjures into thought a Utopia ruled by post-doctoral encyclopaedic dilettantism.LBird’s Utopians are indistinguishable from games-show contestants whose special subject is the truth of everything that was, is and ever will be.LBird’s Utopians’ perpetual task is to dictate to the social practitioners actually practicing the actual truth of the practitioners’ actual practice.From such Utopian omniscience, nobody buys your feigned intellectual cop out.Demonstrate the courage of your convictions:Lay yourself open to exoteric criticism, or else skulk off ignominiously like a rebuffed cur with tail between legs.

[Young Master Smeet]

LBird wrote:

I can't even 'write something etc.' to persuade our fellow socialists, who supposedly look to Marx and workers' democracy, but won't apply those ideas to 'science'.I don't think my writing a blog attacking the SPGB for its inability to produce thinkers who can cope with ideas about science, epistemology, physics, maths, social production, etc., would be productive in the wider class. The idea that the membership would 'endorse' my views is currently laughable, because Religious Materialism is their ideology, but not mine.I look to Marx, social theory and practice, workers' democracy, the collective production of truth, class origins of bourgeois science, etc., etc., etc…

But collective production does not mean voting, it means knowledge arises out of human agency, and that means out of the whole proceses of production of knowledge, not by legislative fiat.  Last I checked, Lbird has accepted that the majority would act on evidence, and investigation of the world, but would his majoritarian elite be able to act against evidence?  Could they make the sun turn green merely by fiat?  I think not.  Their knowledge and capacities emerge from their being in the workld, and being part of nature: and that world includes working with the ideas they inherit from history.BTW, a quick appeal to authority:

OED wrote:

Elite, n. 1. The choice part or flower (of society, or of any body or class of persons).

So, the majority can be the elitie.  Lbird continues to peddle his elitist views, and refuses to respond to evidence.  SP members have rpeatedly said that science, and the whole of society woiuld be under the self active control of all it's members, and our collective agency would produce for all our needs, and we'd all have access to the fruits of that society, including incorrect and heterodox ideas.

[LBird]

YMS wrote:

But collective production does not mean voting…

That's one ideological point of view, YMS, but I don't happen to share it, because I'm a Democratic Communist, who looks to Marx, and his ideas about social production, workers' power, and democratic production.If you wish to argue that "collective production does not mean voting", you'll have to specify what this 'collectivity' consists of (it can't be 'the proletariat', for example), and how it decides what to produce, and how it determines 'true knowledge', and why it does things in this way.I openly state that only the proletariat (pre-rev; post-rev: the producers) can determine its method, interest, purpose, product, by democratic means, ie. 'voting'.If you (and the wider SPGB) disagree with this ideology, and prefer 'not voting', then you should openly declare to workers looking for socialist ideas (ie. the democratic control of production) that you're not socialist.

YMS wrote:

Last I checked, Lbird has accepted that the majority would act on evidence, and investigation of the world, but would his majoritarian elite be able to act against evidence?

Yes, but the reason I accept this, is the the majority produce their 'evidence'.I suspect that you disagree with this notion of 'social production', because you are a 'materialist', and 'materialists' argue that 'evidence' simply sits 'out there' in the 'real world', passively awaiting its 'discovery' by 'disinterested' observers. It's 19th century, obsolete, thinking, but nevetheless, under the influence of Engels, the Religious Materialists (with their worship of 'matter', which cannot be 'voted upon') continue to argue this ideology.

YMS wrote:

So, the majority can be the elitie.

If you're reduced to playing with words, YMS, it only weakens your already flimsy, ahistoric, asocial, non-Marxist, anti-voting, case.

[LBird]

twc wrote:

…skulk off ignominiously like a rebuffed cur with tail between legs.

Yet more personal abuse from the 'Religious Materialists'.I suppose it helps divert attention from the non-democratic ideology of the RM-ers, especially for those interested workers who know little yet, about epistemology, and the need for democracy within scientific production, and are trying to get to grips with these vital issues about 'power' and who wields it, within physics and maths, etc.

[Young Master Smeet]

LBird wrote:

That's one ideological point of view, YMS, but I don't happen to share it, because I'm a Democratic Communist, who looks to Marx, and his ideas about social production, workers' power, and democratic production.

And for marx Communism was about 'conscious association'.  It was also a society based on the 'free development of each'.

LBird wrote:

If you wish to argue that "collective production does not mean voting", you'll have to specify what this 'collectivity' consists of (it can't be 'the proletariat', for example), and how it decides what to produce, and how it determines 'true knowledge', and why it does things in this way.

It means conscious association, individuals acting together in a way that acknowledges their desire for continued comity, wherein the actions of everyone contribute to the wellbeing of everyone.  Voting is a necessary but not sufficient part of this: voting is a form of negotiation on a wide scale.

LBird wrote:

Yes, but the reason I accept this, is the the majority produce their 'evidence'.

So they refuse to use the evidence of the minority, or to allow the minority to collect evidence?  And doesn't the evidence dictate the coclusion?  

LBird wrote:

YMS wrote:

So, the majority can be the elitie.

If you're reduced to playing with words, YMS, it only weakens your already flimsy, ahistoric, asocial, non-Marxist, anti-voting, case.

I'm reduced to showing you the truth of your own major premise, which does not hold. Materialism does not necessitate an elite with special access to reality, your view, that the minority are denied access to reality is elitist.  So, not just false, but dangerous.

[LBird]

YMS, post #272 wrote:

But collective production does not mean voting…

YMS, post #275 wrote:

Materialism does not necessitate an elite with special access to reality…

[my bolds]I'll have to leave it to others to determine the meaning of what you're writing, because I can't make sense of your contradictory posts.

YMS wrote:

…individuals acting together…

I suspect that you're echoing robbo's concerns with 'individuals', rather than Marx's concern (and mine) with 'social production' by classes.

YMS wrote:

So they refuse to use the evidence of the minority, or to allow the minority to collect evidence?

Yes, the 'evidence' produced by the minority is put to the vote.If the majority accept that the 'evidence' produced by the minority suits the purposes and interests of the majority better than the earlier 'evidence' which had won a vote, then the new 'evidence' becomes the current 'truth'.

YMS wrote:

And doesn't the evidence dictate the coclusion?

No, 'evidence' doesn't 'dictate' – the democratic producers 'dictate', by a vote.This is yet another example of 'materialists' claiming that 'evidence' speaks for itself. We're back to what I've caricatured in the past as the claim that 'the rocks speak to the materialists'.Workers in the 21st century are no longer going to fall for the claim by 19th century 'materialists' that the 'materialists' have a special access to 'evidence',  which allows the 'materialists' alone to determine 'what the evidence says'. That's the direction 'materialism' takes us: to an 'elite' with a 'special consciousness', who alone, without a vote by workers, determine what 'evidence' says. It's the philosophical basis of Leninism.

[Young Master Smeet]

LBird wrote:

YMS, post #272 wrote:

But collective production does not mean voting…

YMS, post #275 wrote:

Materialism does not necessitate an elite with special access to reality…

[my bolds]I'll have to leave it to others to determine the meaning of what you're writing, because I can't make sense of your contradictory posts.

Those statements are not contradictory.  In what world are they contradictory, they are talking about two different subjects.

LBird wrote:

YMS wrote:

So they refuse to use the evidence of the minority, or to allow the minority to collect evidence?

Yes, the 'evidence' produced by the minority is put to the vote.If the majority accept that the 'evidence' produced by the minority suits the purposes and interests of the majority better than the earlier 'evidence' which had won a vote, then the new 'evidence' becomes the current 'truth'.

But you have previously said the minority has no access to reality?

LBird wrote:

YMS wrote:

And doesn't the evidence dictate the coclusion?

No, 'evidence' doesn't 'dictate' – the democratic producers 'dictate', by a vote.

So if despite overwhelming evidence produced by a minority a thing is so, the majority can make it not so? 

LBird wrote:

Workers in the 21st century are no longer going to fall for the claim by 19th century 'materialists' that the 'materialists' have a special access to 'evidence',  which allows the 'materialists' alone to determine 'what the evidence says'. That's the direction 'materialism' takes us: to an 'elite' with a 'special consciousness', who alone, without a vote by workers, determine what 'evidence' says. It's the philosophical basis of Leninism.

But materialists don't claim they have special access to evidence, they claim that there is evidence, and everyone can have access to it.  What I can say about your theory is that: "This doctrine must, therefore, divide society into two parts, one of which is superior to society."  Your majority is superior to society.  "But the human essence is no abstraction inherent in each single individual. In its reality it is the ensemble of the social relations."So, lets put it in a nutshell.  You have failed to back up your claim that material necessitates claims to 'special access to reality', and further, let us recall, you have no way of establishing the truth, since as we've noted we cannot decide what the result of the vote was until we decide the result by a vote on the result of the vote. Your theory does turn society into two parts, with one superior to the rest, and that is the elite majority, self selected. 

[LBird]

So, YMS, still no detail in your account of 'science', about workers' democracy, social production, elite power, historical orgins of the bourgeois ideology of 'science', classes and their conflict, Marx, the mistakes of Engels, how humans 'know' what 'reality' is…… just the usual ignoring of all these issues, combined with a concealing of your ideological views – which amount to a continuation of the bourgeois method of the production of scientific knowledge (while pretending that it's 'objective'), and the standard individualist/biological belief that 'individuals' (usually so-called 'geniuses') simply access 'evidence' and then plainly tell the rest of us just what 'the evidence says'.

YMS wrote:

But materialists don't claim they have special access to evidence, they claim that there is evidence, and everyone can have access to it.

So, why doesn't the 'evidence' have to be voted upon?Either 'everyone' can access it, and then have to decide what it means to them… or you're arguing that the 'evidence' speaks for itself, and 'everyone' will give the same account of it… or you're arguing that a special elite alone can 'read' the 'evidence'.The first implies democracy, the second implies passivity, the third implies Leninism.Because I'm a Democratic Communist, and think that humans actively produce their knowledge of what 'evidence' says, and I argue that socialism cannot be in the power of an elite……I argue for workers' democracy in the social production of their knowledge.

[Young Master Smeet]

Bourgeois science works by rstricting access to the fruits of collective endevour: education, training, resources to practice science and time.  When there are no more classes, and the intellectual fruits of society are available to freely access by all, and the working day is reduced to the bare minimum, members of society will be able to practice a different sort of science.  The basis of that society will be that the free development of each will be the condition for the free development of all, so there will be access to heterodx views, and active steops taken to ensure that minorities interests and opinions are supported so that they can test and promote their ideas through equal access to the means of communication.  Where large projects are required, society will democratically decide whether it is worthwile to build ITER, or CERN like facilities, and we will co-ordinate worldwide to ensure that we can all benefit from them.Science would be a part of daily life, with the practical possibilities of being able to feed it into our communities and workplaces providing a fucs, so knowledge will be produced out of our daily existence.  Where "the human essence is no abstraction inherent in each single individual. In its reality it is the ensemble of the social relations."  What we won't have is a "doctrine [which] must, therefore, divide society into two parts, one of which is superior to society." by having binding votes on whateveryone thinks.Indeed, it will be a society in which 'everyone' can access [evidence], and then have to decide what it means to them… "Finally:

Quote:

Because I'm a Democratic Communist, and think that humans actively produce their knowledge of what 'evidence' says, and I argue that socialism cannot be in the power of an elite…

As I have demonstrated, the basic definition of an eleite would include a majority, so your theory is elitist and does include an elite.  I'm afraid that isn't wordplay, it is the logical outcome of your own theories.  Not to mention that you have never adressed the probblem of how we can know the result of a vote without voting on the result of the result of the result…

[LBird]

Young Master Smeet wrote:

Bourgeois science works by rstricting access to the fruits of collective endevour: education, training, resources to practice science and time.  When there are no more classes, and the intellectual fruits of society are available to freely access by all, and the working day is reduced to the bare minimum, members of society will be able to practice a different sort of science.  The basis of that society will be that the free development of each will be the condition for the free development of all, so there will be access to heterodx views, and active steops taken to ensure that minorities interests and opinions are supported so that they can test and promote their ideas through equal access to the means of communication.  Where large projects are required, society will democratically decide whether it is worthwile to build ITER, or CERN like facilities, and we will co-ordinate worldwide to ensure that we can all benefit from them.Science would be a part of daily life, with the practical possibilities of being able to feed it into our communities and workplaces providing a fucs, so knowledge will be produced out of our daily existence.  Where "the human essence is no abstraction inherent in each single individual. In its reality it is the ensemble of the social relations."

I can go along with everything that you've said, here, YMS.

YMS wrote:

What we won't have is a "doctrine [which] must, therefore, divide society into two parts, one of which is superior to society." by having binding votes on whateveryone thinks.

So, if a democratic vote is not 'binding' (in some sense), what's the point of it?There is still only 'one part' in society: the producers.But, clearly, any democratic vote produces two 'parts': the thing voted for, and the thing voted against. This is nothing to do with Marx's point in his Theses on Feuerbach, about an elite which 'outranks' the producers, in the decision-making process.

YMS wrote:

 Indeed, it will be a society in which 'everyone' can access [evidence], and then have to decide what it means to them… "Finally:

Quote:

Because I'm a Democratic Communist, and think that humans actively produce their knowledge of what 'evidence' says, and I argue that socialism cannot be in the power of an elite…

As I have demonstrated, the basic definition of an eleite would include a majority, so your theory is elitist and does include an elite.  I'm afraid that isn't wordplay, it is the logical outcome of your own theories.  Not to mention that you have never adressed the probblem of how we can know the result of a vote without voting on the result of the result of the result…

This last bit, though, is meaningless.But, overall, some progress.

[SocialistPunk]

Young Master Smeet wrote:

Bourgeois science works by rstricting access to the fruits of collective endevour: education, training, resources to practice science and time.  When there are no more classes, and the intellectual fruits of society are available to freely access by all, and the working day is reduced to the bare minimum, members of society will be able to practice a different sort of science.  The basis of that society will be that the free development of each will be the condition for the free development of all, so there will be access to heterodx views, and active steops taken to ensure that minorities interests and opinions are supported so that they can test and promote their ideas through equal access to the means of communication.  Where large projects are required, society will democratically decide whether it is worthwile to build ITER, or CERN like facilities, and we will co-ordinate worldwide to ensure that we can all benefit from them.Science would be a part of daily life, with the practical possibilities of being able to feed it into our communities and workplaces providing a fucs, so knowledge will be produced out of our daily existence.  Where "the human essence is no abstraction inherent in each single individual. In its reality it is the ensemble of the social relations."  What we won't have is a "doctrine [which] must, therefore, divide society into two parts, one of which is superior to society." by having binding votes on whateveryone thinks.Indeed, it will be a society in which 'everyone' can access [evidence], and then have to decide what it means to them… "

That's what it's all about.

[Young Master Smeet]

lbird wrote:

So, if a democratic vote is not 'binding' (in some sense), what's the point of it?

Exactly!

Lbird wrote:

There is still only 'one part' in society: the producers.But, clearly, any democratic vote produces two 'parts': the thing voted for, and the thing voted against. This is nothing to do with Marx's point in his Theses on Feuerbach, about an elite which 'outranks' the producers, in the decision-making process.

The same could be said of a Leninist vanguard.  In fact, the ame could be said of genius materialists who know the truth no-one else knows, as long as they are still producers.A vote also produces the people who voted for, and the people who voted against.  The winners and the losers, one part of society will have access to reality, another part will be denied it.And I'll re-phrase that 'meaningless' bit.The majority, in your theory, is still an elite.  That is not wordplay, that the facts.  There is nothing in the definition of elite that requires it to be a minority.And, as we've discussed before: how can we know the result of a vote if the only way to find out the truth is to have a vote?  We'd have to vote on the result of the vote.

[Bijou Drains]

Young Master Smeet wrote:

lbird wrote:

So, if a democratic vote is not 'binding' (in some sense), what's the point of it?

Exactly!

Lbird wrote:

There is still only 'one part' in society: the producers.But, clearly, any democratic vote produces two 'parts': the thing voted for, and the thing voted against. This is nothing to do with Marx's point in his Theses on Feuerbach, about an elite which 'outranks' the producers, in the decision-making process.

The same could be said of a Leninist vanguard.  In fact, the ame could be said of genius materialists who know the truth no-one else knows, as long as they are still producers.A vote also produces the people who voted for, and the people who voted against.  The winners and the losers, one part of society will have access to reality, another part will be denied it.And I'll re-phrase that 'meaningless' bit.The majority, in your theory, is still an elite.  That is not wordplay, that the facts.  There is nothing in the definition of elite that requires it to be a minority.And, as we've discussed before: how can we know the result of a vote if the only way to find out the truth is to have a vote?  We'd have to vote on the result of the vote.

then presumably we would need a vote on the vote on the result of the vote, followed swiftly by a vote on the vote…………..

[Anonymous]

Young Master Smeet wrote:

lbird wrote:

So, if a democratic vote is not 'binding' (in some sense), what's the point of it?

Exactly!

Lbird wrote:

There is still only 'one part' in society: the producers.But, clearly, any democratic vote produces two 'parts': the thing voted for, and the thing voted against. This is nothing to do with Marx's point in his Theses on Feuerbach, about an elite which 'outranks' the producers, in the decision-making process.

The same could be said of a Leninist vanguard.  In fact, the ame could be said of genius materialists who know the truth no-one else knows, as long as they are still producers.A vote also produces the people who voted for, and the people who voted against.  The winners and the losers, one part of society will have access to reality, another part will be denied it.And I'll re-phrase that 'meaningless' bit.The majority, in your theory, is still an elite.  That is not wordplay, that the facts.  There is nothing in the definition of elite that requires it to be a minority.And, as we've discussed before: how can we know the result of a vote if the only way to find out the truth is to have a vote?  We'd have to vote on the result of the vote.

 Vanguard Party and Vanguardism is older than Lenin What is to be done ? and older than the Bolsheviks and the Second International, and Anarchists also rejected the same concept, and it can not be blamed on Frederick Engels either. This is an article from an Anarchist groups rejecting the same conception:http://anarchism.pageabode.com/afaq/sech5.htmlMaterialist-idealists like the Marxist-Humanists have also rejected the concept of the vanguard party, and the WSM/SPGB rejected it  before the Russian coup, even more, I do not think that Lenin want to turn this conception into an universe because he said it was only applicable to Russia, it was Stalin who did it, and he was the one who turned all the so called Communist Parties added to the Third International in vanguard parties,  and Trotsky who called himself an anti-fascists was also a heavy defender of the vanguard party.What we are doing here is also  an etilist process because we are deciding what workers must do, and must not do, and we do not know what they are going to do when  the real decisions will come along, workers might vote against the capitalists, and in some places they will be forced to throw them out of power, because some of them are also going to place resistant, by that time we are going to see many Coffee shop theoretician hiding under the bed

[LBird]

Tim Kilgallon wrote:

Young Master Smeet wrote:

lbird wrote:

So, if a democratic vote is not 'binding' (in some sense), what's the point of it?

Exactly!

then presumably we would need a vote on the vote on the result of the vote, followed swiftly by a vote on the vote…………..

I'm not sure what point you two think that you're making, other than, according to you, democracy is pointless and voting is a process without an end product.I don't think arguing this about 'democracy' will gain you any members of the SPGB from amongst those workers looking for answers about 'democratic socialism'!This standpoint is not only opposed to democracy in science, but also to democracy in politics.But… I'm sure you two will claim to have a 'special consciousness', that allows you two to 'know' the product of 'science'.Otherwise, it's the death of any notion of 'science', even a bourgeois elitist one.

[Author]

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