The Long Awaited Materialism thread

[LBird]

Vin Maratty wrote:

LBird wrote:

Or do you think 'value' doesn't exist, because 'there is no-thing outside or beyond matter'? Marx clearly thinks 'value' is 'outside' of 'matter'.

Does he?  Without getting out and dusting down my copy of capital I think Marx refers to 'Value' as a  relationship between people expressed as a relationship between things. The relationship is in all our heads and has a material existence within our grey matter.

But…

Marx, Capital, p. 138, wrote:

Not an atom of matter enters into the objectivity of commodities as values.

 … Marx isn't talking about 'grey matter', but 'commodities'. You're talking about a different issue, aren't you?  Further, if this 'relationship is all in our heads', don't you think 'value' has an 'objective' existence of some kind, contrary to Marx?

[DJP]

Vin Maratty wrote:

Marx refers to 'Value' as a  relationship between people expressed as a relationship between things. The relationship is in all our heads and has a material existence within our grey matter.

I'd agree. The fact that goods and objects appear as commodities and values is not due to any physical characteristic of the good or object itself. "Value" is not a physical property of objects but a social relationship that exists "in all our heads and has a material existence within our grey matter."As far as I know Marx was a monistic thinker and is not trying to claim that concepts and thoughts exist in some metaphysical realm (along with Plato's "forms" perhaps)

[LBird]

DJP wrote:

The fact that goods and objects appear as commodities and values is not due to any physical characteristic of the good or object itself.

So far, so good! We agree.

DJP wrote:

"Value" is not a physical property of objects but a social relationship…

And again!Value is a 'social relationship'.

DJP wrote:

…that exists "in all our heads and has a material existence within our grey matter."

Ahhh… now we can see the problem.As before, you've reduced a 'social relationship' to its components of the 'grey matter' of individual brains.This is the difference between our conceptions, DJP.I'm with Marx on this. Social relationships cannot be reduced to the individuals that comprise those social relationships.The influence of 'ruling class' ideas on the science of mind, I'm afraid. Bourgeois individualism, at root.Bourgeois science has a tendency to reduce 'structure' to 'components', because that is how it understands its society and itself. Hence, its tendency to look for problems of the mind (a social relationship) inside individuals' 'grey matter', like genes, synapses, etc.Luckily for the bourgeoisie, if 'value' is physically inside our heads, they can remove it by a lobotomy.You can go first at the counterrevolutionary clinic, DJP, when they get their hands on us Communists! I'll be standing right behind you!

[Anonymous]

LBird wrote:

Vin Maratty wrote:

LBird wrote:

Or do you think 'value' doesn't exist, because 'there is no-thing outside or beyond matter'? Marx clearly thinks 'value' is 'outside' of 'matter'.

Does he?  Without getting out and dusting down my copy of capital I think Marx refers to 'Value' as a  relationship between people expressed as a relationship between things. The relationship is in all our heads and has a material existence within our grey matter.

But…

Marx, Capital, p. 138, wrote:

Not an atom of matter enters into the objectivity of commodities as values.

 … Marx isn't talking about 'grey matter', but 'commodities'. You're talking about a different issue, aren't you?  Further, if this 'relationship is all in our heads', don't you think 'value' has an 'objective' existence of some kind, contrary to Marx?

No, this is the same issue. It is an example of how people mis interpret and misunderstand   what Marx was saying:  ideas that appear to have an independent existence are in fact part of our material conditions of existence. To reject that, is to reject  his analysis of capitalism and our case for socialism.  

[DJP]

LBird wrote:

Could you explain further what you mean, DJP? What are the 'problems of reductionism' to which you refer?And can you tell me which ideological approach you're using to understand these issues? For example, are you a reductionist or a critical realist, or something else?

It would take too much of my time to write something myself but have a look at this:http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/physicalism/#7To be honest I haven't really made my mind up about much of this. It doesn't seem that anyone has the answers yet.

[Young Master Smeet]

LBird,Charlie pre-dated Einstein by a wee bit, so didn't have the benefit of knowing (or is that "flapping") that E=MC^2, i.e. that matter and energy are the same thing.Anyway, it would have helped if you'd continued the quote:

Uncle Charles wrote:

If, however, we bear in mind that the value of commodities has a purely social reality, and that they acquire this reality only in so far as they are expressions or embodiments of one identical social substance, viz., human labour, it follows as a matter of course, that value can only manifest itself in the social relation of commodity to commodity.

My bold.  The value is a substance, and definitely material.  That is, not in human minds, not in the mind of God, but in the real substance of social relations.

[DJP]

Young Master Smeet wrote:

The value is a substance, and definitely material.  That is, not in human minds, not in the mind of God, but in the real substance of social relations.

But where then does this "real substance of social relations" exist?

[Young Master Smeet]

DJP wrote:

But where then does this "real substance of social relations" exist?

Everywhere, and, importantly, historically, during the process of creation: i.e. in the concrete social actions of sensuous human beings,

[LBird]

Young Master Smeet wrote:

LBird,Charlie pre-dated Einstein by a wee bit, so didn't have the benefit of knowing (or is that "flapping") that E=MC^2, i.e. that matter and energy are the same thing.Anyway, it would have helped if you'd continued the quote:

Uncle Charles wrote:

If, however, we bear in mind that the value of commodities has a purely social reality, and that they acquire this reality only in so far as they are expressions or embodiments of one identical social substance, viz., human labour, it follows as a matter of course, that value can only manifest itself in the social relation of commodity to commodity.

My bold.  The value is a substance, and definitely material.  That is, not in human minds, not in the mind of God, but in the real substance of social relations.

[my latter bold]This is the key philosophical point, YMS.'Real' doesn't mean 'material' (or, 'matter')So, I'd agree that 'value' is 'real' (ie., as Marx says, and opposing DJP, 'not in human minds'), but it is not 'material' (as Marx also says, in the quote I gave earlier).'Matter' is a 19th century concept that has given way in 20th century philosophy of science to 'real'. That's why we can say that human thought is real, but is not some mysterious, and never defined, 'matter'.As you rightly observe, 'Charlie pre-dated Einstein by a wee bit'. But we post-date Albert, and we have to update our 'idealist-materialist' views. And as it so happens, Marx's views are entirely compatible with modern Critical Realism. However, the same can't be said for Fred Engels' travesty of 'materialism'.If we maintain Marx was a 'materialist', to put it simply, we're f*cked. The religious know it, too. We can't undo what humans have learned about nature since Einstein.But, if it turns out Marx was an 'idealist-materialist' (or, perhaps what we would now call a 'critical realist'), and 150 years ahead of his time, then we can still use his insights. Otherwise, if we stick to Engels' 'materialism' (dialectic or not), we might as well join a religious order, because they are in advance of 19th century thinking (and us, if we cling to 'materialism').PS. I'll dig out a quote from Charlie

[Young Master Smeet]

LBird,Maybe we come from different experiences of philosophy, but I'm actually a bit sniffy about real, given its etymology, i.e. that real = royal, i.e. that what is real is a product of authority (Money is "real" because the King says so).  Maybe you could define what you mean by real (and by critical-realism)?

[LBird]

As promised, YMS:

Marx, EPM, wrote:

Here we see how consistent naturalism or humanism is distinct from both idealism and materialism, and constitutes at the same time the unifying truth of both. We see also how only naturalism is capable of comprehending the action of world history.

https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1844/manuscripts/hegel.htmSo, Marx's 'naturalism or humanism' is neither 'idealism' nor 'materialism', but their unity. So, perhaps, 'idealism-materialism'; or 'critical realism' is better, nowadays. Engels, by the 1880s, seems to have forgotten these works from the 1840s (if he ever understood them?).

Marx, EPM, wrote:

Only here has what is to him his natural existence become his human existence, and nature become man for him. Thus society is the complete unity of man with nature – the true resurrection of nature – the consistent naturalism of man and the consistent humanism of nature.

https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1844/manuscripts/comm.htm'Nature' isn't something to be 'discovered', but something to be 'humanised'. Knowledge is created by active humans, using the scientific method of 'theory and practice'. And humans are fallible, and knowledge is not a mere reflection of reality.

[DJP]

Young Master Smeet wrote:

DJP wrote:

But where then does this "real substance of social relations" exist?

Everywhere, and, importantly, historically, during the process of creation: i.e. in the concrete social actions of sensuous human beings,

But what makes that "creating value" rather than people just doing stuff?It seems to me at some point you have to say that concepts are (socially produced) mental states.But mental states are not that easily reduced to physical states since "chocolate trombone" can could be realised via a presumably infinite combination of neural connections.n'est-ce pas?

[Anonymous]

LBird wrote:

As promised, YMS:

Marx, EPM, wrote:

Here we see how consistent naturalism or humanism is distinct from both idealism and materialism, and constitutes at the same time the unifying truth of both. We see also how only naturalism is capable of comprehending the action of world history.

https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1844/manuscripts/hegel.htmSo, Marx's 'naturalism or humanism' is neither 'idealism' nor 'materialism', but their unity. So, perhaps, 'idealism-materialism'; or 'critical realism' is better, nowadays. Engels, by the 1880s, seems to have forgotten these works from the 1840s (if he ever understood them?).

Marx, EPM, wrote:

Only here has what is to him his natural existence become his human existence, and nature become man for him. Thus society is the complete unity of man with nature – the true resurrection of nature – the consistent naturalism of man and the consistent humanism of nature.

https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1844/manuscripts/comm.htm'Nature' isn't something to be 'discovered', but something to be 'humanised'. Knowledge is created by active humans, using the scientific method of 'theory and practice'. And humans are fallible, and knowledge is not a mere reflection of reality.

 None of this supports your previous argument.     In fact it is unrelated. Are you merely saying that human beings actively think and are creative?   

[Young Master Smeet]

DJP,of the cuff, I'd say that the point is that subject and object are not separate but part of the same thing/process, the concepts are a part of the system that needs them (or, another way, that concepts are just transformations of the same substance).Let's not forget my basic oprating position is that I don't exist, the mental state called 'I' is just a retroactive justification of a small portion of my brain for the operations of the meat-bot and it's associated system. 

[DJP]

"Naturalism" is the view that most things can and are best described through the framework of the natural sciences. Therefore it is a physicalist position.I think you need to look at the broader literature rather than trying to do a micro-Marxologist job.

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