the difference between Marxism and original communist theory/ideology

[LBird]

Young Master Smeet wrote:

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

What are these 'qualities', YMS?How do you 'know' them?Marx argues that 'qualities' are relational, products of an active 'intervention' by humans upon 'inorganic nature'.If you're claiming to be able to 'know' inorganic nature without any relationship to it, please tell us how you do so. What is your method?This would require you to argue for passivity, which Marx denied when he looked to the idealists as providing the 'active side'.The subject-object relationship is inescapable.Remember, Marx was big on the term 'relations'.

[LBird]

Young Master Smeet wrote:

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

Your ignorance does the SPGB no favours.Personal abuse is not a political response.

[LBird]

It must be clear to all, now, that the SPGB is completely unable to produce a political response to the criticism of 'materialism', and in the absence of any organisational reply, the gap is being filled by ignorant members who always revert to personal abuse.I'm not sure why those who are keeping quiet can't see that this discredits the SPGB.

[Capitalist Pig]

I think I understand it now. materialism is saying that there are absolute truths in the world and that people are capable of being completly objective in forming their hypothesis. Idealism-materialism is the idea that we are not capable of being completly objective and we are the ones who actually create 'absolute truth' which can change accordingly with our ideas.aaaaaahh my head hurts  

[LBird]

Capitalist Pig wrote:

I think I understand it now. materialism is saying that there are absolute truths in the world and that people are capable of being completly objective in forming their hypothesis. Idealism-materialism is the idea that we are not capable of being completly objective and we are the ones who actually create 'absolute truth' which can change accordingly with our ideas.aaaaaahh my head hurts  

That's what's been argued by me, anyway.It fits better with the general approach of Marx, of social productionism, than does Engels' reversion to old-fashioned, passive, elitist, 'materialism'.If you can tell the difference between Marx's and Engels' approaches to 'knowledge production', then you have the power to choose, and especially to decide which provides a better fit for workers who are coming to consciousness of their power to change our world.'Absolute Truth' and 'Finality' are the death of democratic socialism.PS, before the 'materialists' jump on you, '…accordingly with our ideas and practice'.Marx's method is 'social theory and practice'.

[LBird]

Marx, Capital III, p. 959, wrote:

Freedom …can consist only in this, that socialised man, the associated producers, govern the human metabolism with nature in a rational way, bringing it under their collective control, instead of being dominated by it as a blind power…

[my bold]All about 'intervention' in nature, democratic control, by active, productive, humans, and specifically not being about 'dominated by a blind power', or 'individuals' and their own 'biological touch', passively 'knowing'.Those who argue for 'Eternal Truth', 'Objective Knowledge', 'Absolute Truth' are arguing for a 'blind power' over us.The 'materialists' deny Marx's views.

[Rednose Blew]

Challenge: Toss aside the well-worn and as-taught ideologies of the so-called masters and create a contemporary structure that best represents all, and would bring the best in us all out.It is impossible to include labels such as Marxism without including the baggage of misinterpretation. It's like talking about God or the Bible: Mere reference to them conjures unwanted images that permeate any argument and negates useful debate that might secure the baby while throwing out the bathwater. It's time to accept this fact, and put such references behind us. I'm both fatigued, yet constantly shocked, to see all new models judged within these archaic and narrow frameworks…boxes ticked in accordance with some pre-existing dogma that no longer serves us in our current circumstances. Why do we need to define ideology? Just create your system, and let others label it. If we are also asking about the meaning of the original communist theory centuries after its true application became obsolete, then it's clear that it has been hi-jacked, and not by chance. All good tenet labels of any threat are muddied with the sole purpose of ensuring that they are associated with negative tenets. Stay ahead of the hi-jackers and change the label. Be original. Be relevant.Shall we spend our allotted time fighting to restore the original meanings of systems past, or shall we take that which we know to be relevant to today from those systems, and create something that is actually workable and sustainable TODAY – then give it a new name before the box-fitters and hi-jackers squeeze it into a label drawn from their narrow conditioning curricula? 

[Anonymous]

alanjjohnstone wrote:

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 positions 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. 

 Alan I don't know why the moderators have to give her a warning, the thing is that,   sometimes women  are more objectives than men, and the ruling class has not  brainwashed them, as they have done with men, most peoples that protested against the war in Iraq were women, and most men were supporting the war in several countries, and most of the wild cat strikes were initialed by women. I wish we had more women as members of the WSM, and in this forum, to give better seasoning to the discussionsWe have better issues to address at the present time, the whole world is in flame and we are wasting our time with intellectual , yuppie,  and coffee shop discussion. Let's leave the masochist to get fried in their own sauce, and move on. If this thread would have taken place at the WSM forum, I would have stopped  it a long time ago. we have dedicated enough time already.We had the same problems with the so called Anarcho-capitalists at the WSM forum,  and we stopped them, because their main purpose was to attack the socialist party , to use the forum to propagate their own ideas, and they were better than all the members of the party, they were riding on their high horse,  and they wanted to  change the course of the real discussion of the forum, and they repeated the same thing constantly, it was like beating a dead horseThe main issues of the working class at the present time are: Hunger, Unemployment, discrimination, killings, wars, forced immigration, child labors,  etc, etc, etc, and that is  what Linda said in her message. She did not use a yuppie dictionary, she said it on plain English, well, we should go to factories and listen how the workers express themselves about their problems, that is what Engels did to write his book about the Conditions of the working classAny new person that comes to this forum, will leave, because we are discussing about issues that are not of their interests, let's take a bath about reality and let's  forget about  idealist pipe dreaming.The only ones that are going to decide what socialism would be, are the working peoples of the whole world, it  will not be determinated by Marx, Engels, or Anton Pannekoek.As I said before: I rest my case, and i  raise the  glass windows of my car

[Young Master Smeet]

LBird wrote:

What are these 'qualities', YMS?

It doesn't matter what they are, all that matters is that they are.  If, as Marx says, Nature is the source of use-values, then Inorganic nature brings qualitative substances to the table, and brings properties and differences to the relationship when admixed with human labour. That is the issue.The truth that is out there thus becomes human knowledge (or, rather, truth claims about the world).  As in the old saw, I have a working scale model of the universe, unfortunately the scale is 1:1, any truth claim is going to be partial, scaled and contain degrees of truth, and any claims come from being in and of nature.The question about Humpty was a serious one, words often seem to mean what you want them to mean.And I'll note that you declined to answer the question, can we produce yellow?

[LBird]

Young Master Smeet wrote:

LBird wrote:

What are these 'qualities', YMS?

It doesn't matter what they are, all that matters is that they are.  

But how do you 'know' what 'they are'?You must have a scientific method which tells you what they are.Also, because you won't have the rest of us employing the same method, and then voting on its results of 'what they are', your method must be an elite one, that the rest of us can't employ.Marx, on the contrary, argues that we 'know qualities' because we act upon inorganic nature, and produce our 'knowledge of qualities'.So, 'qualities' are a social product of a relationship between an active subject and inorganic nature, which produces their 'object'.'Yellow' is a social product. I've said all this before, but like all 'materialists', you refuse to read what I write, and simply insert your own ideological terms (like 'matter'), and proceed to insist that you, individually, 'know qualities'.When you talk of 'yellow', you never mention society, history, Marx, the proletariat, epistemology, subject-object relationship, scientific method……it's almost as if you're employing bourgeois ideology, and think that individuals 'know', outside of all the factors that I've mentioned, and many more.You're not a democratic socialist or a Marxist, YMS. You never mention either when discussing how you know 'yellow'.Why not just come clean about your own ideology?Ahhh, sorry – 'materialists' hide their ideology, so that they can pretend to workers that only the 'materialists' know qualities, and so workers cannot vote upon what they think that 'qualities' are.'Materialism' hides a complete contempt for the masses, and it is fundamentally undemocratic, and thus anti-socialist.Why are you hiding your ideology and method? What have you to fear from telling workers your theory and practice?

[Young Master Smeet]

LBird wrote:

But how do you 'know' what 'they are'?

It doesn't matter what they are, for our purposes here, only that they are.  It may well be that we can only ever know what they are not.

LBird wrote:

Also, because you won't have the rest of us employing the same method, and then voting on its results of 'what they are', your method must be an elite one, that the rest of us can't employ.

That doesn't follow, I am suggesting that we all can have direct access to nature/reality, rather than the elitism of your majority only access.

LBird wrote:

Marx, on the contrary, argues that we 'know qualities' because we act upon inorganic nature, and produce our 'knowledge of qualities'.So, 'qualities' are a social product of a relationship between an active subject and inorganic nature, which produces their 'object'.

I don't disagree, but the object we create is the knowledge object, the truth claim.

LBird wrote:

'Yellow' is a social product. I've said all this before, but like all 'materialists', you refuse to read what I write, and simply insert your own ideological terms (like 'matter'), and proceed to insist that you, individually, 'know qualities'.

But the social product is a thought, a sign, a signifier, not yellow in itself.

[robbo203]

LBird wrote:

 'Materialism' hides a complete contempt for the masses, and it is fundamentally undemocratic, and thus anti-socialist.Why are you hiding your ideology and method? What have you to fear from telling workers your theory and practice?

 LBird is hiding his pure idealist ideology which puts him at odds with "idealism-materialism" by refusing to explain what existed prior to the evolution of human consciousness and our ability to perceive, if not matter which he has confidently asserted on this forum cannot exist apart from our human perceptions and is thus nothing more than a manifestation of our human perceptionsI think everyone basically accepts on this forum that there is no such thing as a "value free science" and so would comfortably fit in with Lbirds' epithet, "idealism- materialism".  The oddball in this debate is LBird himself who is NOT an "idealist materialist" but an idealist, pure and simple

[LBird]

Young Master Smeet wrote:

… not yellow in itself.

How do you know 'yellow', in itself, YMS?You must have a method that allows you, alone, to 'know' stuff 'in itself'.Your claim is nothing to do with Marx's method, of social theory and practice.

[Young Master Smeet]

LBird wrote:

Young Master Smeet wrote:

… not yellow in itself.

How do you know 'yellow', in itself, YMS?You must have a method that allows you, alone, to 'know' stuff 'in itself'.Your claim is nothing to do with Marx's method, of social theory and practice.

Nope, don't need to have such a method, perfectly legit to say we cannot know the thing in itself.  Yellow is just a proxy for truth here, if we cannot manufacture yellow we cannot manufacture truth.

[LBird]

robbo203 wrote:

LBird is hiding his pure idealist ideology which puts him at odds with "idealism-materialism" by refusing to explain what existed prior to the evolution of human consciousness …

You'll have to read the answer that I've already given, robbo.You might not like it, but it's there.When you show that you understand my answer (not 'agree with', but just understand), we can continue to discuss these epistemological issues.We're not getting anywhere by you ignoring (or, worse, failing to understand) what I write.I'm happy to help – try to understand the various claims for the 'subject-object' relationship. I follow Marx on his view of this relationship. I don't hide my ideology.

[Author]

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