the difference between Marxism and original communist theory/ideology

[moderator1]

lindanesocialist wrote:

'The philosophers have already interpreted the world'. Stop wasting your time on this. I can't believe the party is still stuck with Berkeley.Workers are starving, unemployed, homeless  and landless. Reach out to them, me , us . The idealists are the past, we have our material conditions and interests  to deal with. Shelter, food, clothes etc etc. LBird is a troll and  a time wasterIf you are not arguing pointlessly with LBird, you are attacking and suspending  members trying to connect with the real issues that concern the working class Make this a workers forum and we might move forward.   

3rd and final warning: 7. You are free to express your views candidly and forcefully provided you remain civil. Do not use the forums to send abuse, threats, personal insults or attacks, or purposely inflammatory remarks (trolling). Do not respond to such messages.

[Anonymous]

lindanesocialist wrote:

Workers are starving, unemployed, homeless and landless. Reach out to them, me, us. The idealists are the past, we have our material conditions and interests to deal with. Shelter, food, clothes etc etc. LBird is a troll and a time waster.If you are not arguing pointlessly with LBird, you are attacking and suspending members trying to connect with the real issues that concern the working classMake this a workers forum and we might move forward.

Head and nail come to mind…

[LBird]

gnome wrote:

lindanesocialist wrote:

Workers are starving, unemployed, homeless and landless. Reach out to them, me, us. The idealists are the past, we have our material conditions and interests to deal with. Shelter, food, clothes etc etc. LBird is a troll and a time waster.If you are not arguing pointlessly with LBird, you are attacking and suspending members trying to connect with the real issues that concern the working classMake this a workers forum and we might move forward.

Head and nail come to mind…

[my bold]You have one?It's certainly not a critical one. Or active.But, that's your 'materialist' ideology in play, eh? Passive in the face of 'matter', to the end.If there are any 'trolls and time wasters' on this thread, it's those who deny Marx's 'active proletariat' creating their own world. But I wouldn't call youse 'trolls', just ignorant of anything whatsoever to do with Marx's theories. You are Engelsian Materialists, and you should be open about this, with any interested workers reading.But, you won't be. Elitists always hide their ideology from democratic workers.

[Bijou Drains]

LBird wrote:

gnome wrote:

lindanesocialist wrote:

Workers are starving, unemployed, homeless and landless. Reach out to them, me, us. The idealists are the past, we have our material conditions and interests to deal with. Shelter, food, clothes etc etc. LBird is a troll and a time waster.If you are not arguing pointlessly with LBird, you are attacking and suspending members trying to connect with the real issues that concern the working classMake this a workers forum and we might move forward.

Head and nail come to mind…

[my bold]You have one?It's certainly not a critical one. Or active.But, that's your 'materialist' ideology in play, eh? Passive in the face of 'matter', to the end.If there are any 'trolls and time wasters' on this thread, it's those who deny Marx's 'active proletariat' creating their own world. But I wouldn't call youse 'trolls', just ignorant of anything whatsoever to do with Marx's theories. You are Engelsian Materialists, and you should be open about this, with any interested workers reading.But, you won't be. Elitists always hide their ideology from democratic workers.

there's a lady who knows all that glitters is……. oh hang on I'll get this but……. ok ……. gold and she's……….err…..buying a stairway to hum hum. 

[alanjjohnstone]

I have a lot of sympathy for Linda's view LBird although i would not have worded it as brutally. We have spent an exorbitant time in discussing these and various philosophical positons that keep getting returned to I have said previously that the debate is all rather hair-splitting and point-scoring.I would much rather you redirected your intellect to much more mundane issues, LBird, and advancing the case for socialism.I would like you to convince me of the workers' councils as a means to socialism and not as an end as how socialism itself will be organised. 

[LBird]

alanjjohnstone wrote:

We have spent an exorbitant time in discussing these and various philosophical positons that keep getting returned to I have said previously that the debate is all rather hair-splitting and point-scoring.I would much rather you redirected your intellect to much more mundane issues, LBird, …

[my bold]That's the problem, alan.Elitist ideologies always regard 'democracy' as "all rather hair-splitting and point-scoring", in their attempt to shift the focus away from difficult issues (difficult for them, of course) about 'who has power'.I'm sure you'd prefer I 'redirect my intellect to much more mundane issues', and leave the field clear for the 'materialist' ideology to keep telling workers that they can't control the production of ideas.I, too, in the SWP, used to accept that argument, that issues about 'power' are best left to the 'party', and that I should concern myself with 'much more mundane issues', like selling papers, recruiting more fodder, stewarding marches, paying subs, etc.The simple truth, alan, is that you can't see the vital importance of this political issue, and you're encouraged in your ignorance by the ideology that has a grasp on your mind.You'll deny this, of course, and simply argue, like Tim and linda, that you and they can 'touch matter', and that's the end of the issue.SPGB slogan? – 'Back to the mundane, workers! Nothing to see here! Trust us elitists! Use your own biological senses!'No, it's not for me, alan. I want workers active in the intellectual and critical areas of production, not just the mundane.

[alanjjohnstone]

 

Quote:

I want workers active in the intellectual and critical areas of production, not just the mundane.

Let me remind you, LBird, that i offered you the medium of the blog for you to address our fellow-workers with your message (subject, of course, to a reasonable word-count limit). That invitation still standsBut you must think why for over 3 years you ahave been on this forum with moreorless the same arguments. Surely, there must be a psychological reason and not a political reason for why you have persevered so long. We cannot be as bad as you say, otherwise, you could be considered a masochist. 

[LBird]

alanjjohnstone wrote:

But you must think why for over 3 years you ahave been on this forum with moreorless the same arguments. Surely, there must be a psychological reason and not a political reason for why you have persevered so long. We cannot be as bad as you say, otherwise, you could be considered a masochist. 

The 'materialists' can never self-analyse!You, being a 'materialist', are compelled to regard all this as a 'psychological' issue, rather than a 'political' one, because that's precisely what your ideology tells you, to regard 'individuals' who oppose your claim to 'elite knowledge production'. I must be a 'faulty cog', who questions the 'machine' (a 'material' machine, of course!), and so I've got 'psychological' issues. We all know where 'materialism' went in the Stalinist Soviet Union, regarding 'psychological' dissidents.But… I'll take you on, on both levels.'Psychologically', it's because I was fooled for years by the Leninists into believing in 'materialism', and being a worker, I did not have the abilities to question what I was told. But now I do. But I bear a grudge, and hope to help other workers, who want to see the democratic control of the means of production (socialism), avoid the mistake that I ignorantly made. We're all made ignorant by this society, and we have to fight back, if we get the chance.'Politically', it's because you claim to have a special consciousness, that allows Tim, linda, robbo, gnome, you, etc., etc., to alone 'know' this 'matter'.Logically, this must be a 'special consciousness', otherwise you'd regard other workers as just like you, and allow them to determine for themselves, collectively by voting, whether what you say individually is the truth for them, too. If one is a 'materialist', one can't do this, but must appeal to the god of 'matter', which talks to your elite alone, and must encourage workers to simply have faith in their betters.I persevere for two reasons:1. The SPGB claims to be democratic, and I have faith in the abilities of workers to think critically, and so it might be possible to change some minds;2. The reading that I'm compelled to do has vastly increased my knowledge about these issues, and I'm far more confident in Marx's arguments than I was when I first started posting. Frankly, it's becoming a doddle to run rings round 'materialists', and to show them up as the elitists that they are.So, not 'masochism', but workers' self-development. A political task, not a psychological one.

[alanjjohnstone]

Then consider the stimulation and inspiration you will get by actually joining the SPGBIt will liven up whatever branch that will have the privilege to have you as a memberOf this increased understanding and knowledge…unless it is reproduced then it is sterile…Why are you insistent that you won't present your core ideas for the blog? 

[Young Master Smeet]

So, unlike Marx Lbird does not believe in an external Nature, and that we are part of Nature, not that Nature is part of us.I'll return to a question Lbird posed some time again (my time is short today), "who determines the truth?" I beleive was how it was phrased.  I believe this is a flawed question.  The truth just is (or, rather, per Fox Mulder, the truth is out there).  No-one determines the truth.  Just as we cannot, and I would be interested to hear if Lbird accepts this, produce Yellow.  We can produce yellow substances.  We can even create yellow light beams, but we cannot make Yellow.In thuswise, we cannot 'make truth'.  We can produce statements, that may convey truth, or contain truth, but we cannot command truth, it just is.So, to return to the question of scientific production: those working in scientific endevours will produce statements, containing truth, and those statements will be subject to open discussing and debate that may generater new statements.The free associations of scientific practitioners will be organised democratically, and they will democratically decide what is an isn't valid methodology for their fields and associations, subject to being democratically acocuntable to the whole of society (which will in turn allocate resources for the continuation of their endevours, and to dissemination of the outputs of those endevours, their statements and propositions).So, groups of workers will act: if we want to put a satelite into orbit, we will have to apply special relativity in order to communicate with it (I think it's special, may be general) and to maintain geocentricity.  We will vote to decide to have such satelites (though I doubt we'd have a vote of the whole of humanity over the issue, the worldwide communications bodies could be mandated to do that sort of thing).  Resolutions to action will implicitly include scientific understanding, in order to make them possible.  We'd accept the climate science on anthropogenic global warming (sadly we can't just vote the carbon away).So, no-one determines the truth.  The truth just is.

[LBird]

Young Master Smeet wrote:

So, unlike Marx Lbird does not believe in an external Nature, and that we are part of Nature, not that Nature is part of us.

The SPGB should really begin with basic reading lessons for its members.I've said it, time and again, Marx and LBird agree on 'inorganic nature': this is the 'ingredient into' social labour.This is not 'matter'.Engels started by calling 'inorganic nature' matter. This is nothing to do with Marx's social productionism.

YMS wrote:

So, no-one determines the truth.  The truth just is.

And you'll continue to passively contemplate 'Truth', eh, YMS?And hail your eternal god 'Matter'.And you'll continue to place your trust in the 'elite' who 'know' your God. Or, so they say.Whatever reason could they have for denying, like you, the workers a vote on 'matter'?

[Young Master Smeet]

LBird wrote:

I've said it, time and again, Marx and LBird agree on 'inorganic nature': this is the 'ingredient into' social labour.

Marx wrote:

The religious world is but the reflex of the real world..The religious reflex of the real world can, in any case, only then finally vanish, when the practical relations of every-day life offer to man none but perfectly intelligible and reasonable relations with regard to his fellowmen and to Nature.The life-process of society, which is based on the process of material production, does not strip off its mystical veil until it is treated as production by freely associated men, and is consciously regulated by them in accordance with a settled plan. This, however, demands for society a certain material ground-work or set of conditions of existence which in their turn are the spontaneous product of a long and painful process of development.

For Marx there is a real world,and the goal of man is to confront Nature.  Man could not confront, or have relations with Nature is it goes not posses qualities with which to relate.  Also note Charlie's phrase 'material conditions', tough one, eh?

Lbird wrote:

And you'll continue to passively contemplate 'Truth', eh, YMS?And hail your eternal god 'Matter'.And you'll continue to place your trust in the 'elite' who 'know' your God. Or, so they say.Whatever reason could they have for denying, like you, the workers a vote on 'matter'?

Can we produce Yellow?  I never said that an elite can know the truth, I said statements can approach or contain the truth, no one statement will ever be the truth: the truth is the truth, just as yellow is yellow and not yellow socks.  There will be continuing debate, or dialectic if you like.

[Young Master Smeet]

Marx in Gotha programme wrote:

Labor is not the source of all wealth. Nature is just as much the source of use values (and it is surely of such that material wealth consists!) as labor, which itself is only the manifestation of a force of nature, human labor power

Nature is a source of use value, that implies to me that inorganic nature has qualities which restrict what we can do with it.

[LBird]

As I've said many times, YMS, you're approaching Marx from an Engelsist Materialist perspective, so you can't understand that Marx argues for change, not contemplation.As for 'real world', you'll have to read what I wrote earlier.As for 'material', if everybody doesn't already know the difference now between Marx's 'material' and Engels' 'material', they'll never know. I've explained it often enough.

[Young Master Smeet]

Lbird, could we produce yellow?Are you Humpty Dumpty in disguise?  Are you humpty in disguise?

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