Z A Jordan and Marx’s epistemology

[Young Master Smeet]

LBird wrote:

The 'social' is 'something social'; 'society' is made of 'something social'; the 'stuff that is producing' is 'society'.Marx argues that we are self-creators.Why not read Jordan, and read in detail where he explains all this?

So society is the only stuff?

[LBird]

Young Master Smeet wrote:

To repeat "as objects independent of him".https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1844/manuscripts/hegel.htmCan you guess how often I'm going to quote this at you, Lbird?

I'm all for it!I'd quote it, too.That's what 'production' means.So, you keep 'quoting', but not 'understanding'. I'd guess you'll do it incessantly until the cows come home.

[Young Master Smeet]

How can production be independent?

[LBird]

Young Master Smeet wrote:

How can production be independent?

Of a producer?It can't.That's the point, of Marx's argument about the subject-object relationship.Why not read Jordan?

[Young Master Smeet]

Read him, disagree (lets face facts, the philsophical notebooks are a slender reed for any analysis, weren't meant for publication, and in so many words 'I agree with Feuerbach').

Lbird wrote:

Of a producer?It can't.That's the point, of Marx's argument about the subject-object relationship.

"as objects independent of him".Square that away.

[LBird]

Young Master Smeet wrote:

Read him, disagree (lets face facts, the philsophical notebooks are a slender reed for any analysis, weren't meant for publication, and in so many words 'I agree with Feuerbach').

Marx doesn't agree with Feuerbach, YMS.So much for your 'slender reed'.

YMS wrote:

Lbird wrote:

Of a producer?It can't.That's the point, of Marx's argument about the subject-object relationship.

"as objects independent of him".Square that away.

Read very carefully, YMS, because I've only just written the answer to this.'Objects' are independent of humanity.You're particularly slow today.Now, tell me how these 'objects' are independent – the secret is, to read what I wrote earlier.Until you quote my answer, to show that you have read it, I'm not continuing with your education, because you don't seem keen to actually learn anything.

[LBird]

For those readers keen to see just where YMS is going wrong, but can't be arsed to read Marx:

Marx, Theses on Feuerbach 1, wrote:

The chief defect of all hitherto existing materialism – that of Feuerbach included – is that the thing, reality, sensuousness, is conceived only in the form of the object or of contemplation, but not as sensuous human activity, practice, not subjectively. Hence, in contradistinction to materialism, the active side was developed abstractly by idealism…

[my bold]https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1845/theses/theses.htmYMS wants to separate his 'object' from any producing 'subject'. This is 19th century ideology. And Marx went beyond it.

[Young Master Smeet]

If objects are produced by humanity, they cannot be independent of humanity, such is basic logic.  Yet marx says they are independent of humanity.I will quote exactkly what you have said on this subject earlier:

Lbird wrote:

   

Once again, boxed into a corner, Lbird begins to try and wriggle away…"as objects independent of him". — Marx

[LBird]

Young Master Smeet wrote:

If objects are produced by humanity, they cannot be independent of humanity, such is basic logic.

No, 'your logic', YMS, which is based upon an ideology.

YMS wrote:

Yet marx says they are independent of humanity.

Can anyone else point out how something can be 'independent' and 'not independent'? How Marx argues both?It's not too difficult for anyone who's been reading so far.

[Young Master Smeet]

Logic is not based on an ideology: those who claim processes are ideological are usually trying to hide something.  Ideology is based on premises (and unstated presuppositions), logic is a set of procedural rules.  Nothing can be two mutually exclusive things, else explain how someone can be pregnat and not pregnant at the same time."as objects independent of him". — Marx

[LBird]

Young Master Smeet wrote:

Logic is not based on an ideology: those who claim processes are ideological are usually trying to hide something.

[my bold]Hmmm…

YMS wrote:

Ideology is based on premises (and unstated presuppositions), [whereas, in contrast] logic is [merely] a set of procedural rules.

[my bold]Hmmmmmm…

YMS wrote:

Nothing can be two mutually exclusive things…

[my bold]Sounds like a 'premise', an 'unstated presupposition' an 'ideological' definition, YMS. Tell me, where do your 'rules' come from? The planet 'Rules', outside of any human social consciousness?

YMS wrote:

… else explain how someone can be pregnat and not pregnant at the same time.

A sly switch from 'nothing' to 'something' there, YMS.It's pitiful. Your ideology. And your (supposed) non-human 'logic'.It's elitist bluffing at its best.

[Young Master Smeet]

Can a sponge be a ford fiesta?  Can they both be each at the same time as both?These do exist outside human consciousness, because a hydrogen atom is not the same as no hydrogen atom.According to you picking your nose is ideological.Just remember that Democratic communism is not an ideology."as objects independent of him". — Marxp.s. Greek slaves did use logic, btw.

[Anonymous]

LBird wrote:

mcolome1 wrote:

We have taken the most essential ideas and analysis, of  Marx and Engels, but we have also developed our own ideas and analysis. We don't worship Marx or Engels like a god

No, you've taken the most essential idea of Engels', his 'materialism', and upon that have developed his idea and analysis. Thus, you do 'worship matter like a god'.That's the whole point of the discussion, mcolome1. Why would you and the SPGB continue to argue for a concept that the producers cannot change? It's a concept that Lenin also argued that only 'specialists' can 'know'.On the contrary, Marx argued that the producers can change their product – that's why the anti-worker Leninists must argue that there is 'something' that workers do not produce and so cannot change. Of course, this inability to change 'something' is a lie, and so the Leninists then claim that only they can change this 'something'.You've said many times that you're anti-Lenin, mcolome1, and I believe you. But I'm baffled as to why you'd then follow Lenin, in his anti-worker, anti-democratic epistemology.Put simply, once anyone argues that there is a 'substance' which cannot be changed, then they are rejecting both Marx and workers' democracy, and putting in place the philosophical building blocks for party rule based on 'special consciousness'.The fact that the SPGB has started arguing for a 'specialist/generalist' separation of society shows that this tendency is well-advanced within the party. This will be the basis of further anti-democratic developments. And it's not just me making this warning – Marx makes exactly the same point in his Theses on Feuerbach.We all have faith and worship, mcolome1. It's a choice between 'producers' and 'matter'. Those who choose 'producers' will be democrats and will argue for a united society, whereas those who choose 'matter' will be elitists and will argue for separation in society.

 Did you read  what I said before that ? I said that without Marx and Engels the Socialist Party would be a Socialist Party, and I am going to add, the following: Without Marx and Engels I would have joined the Socialist Party, therefore, your repetitive lyrics would not make any difference to me. I rest my case

[Young Master Smeet]

https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1867-c1/p3.htm

Marx wrote:

Since 1848 capitalist production has developed rapidly in Germany, and at the present time it is in the full bloom of speculation and swindling. But fate is still unpropitious to our professional economists. At the time when they were able to deal with Political Economy in a straightforward fashion, modern economic conditions did not actually exist in Germany. And as soon as these conditions did come into existence, they did so under circumstances that no longer allowed of their being really and impartially investigated within the bounds of the bourgeois horizon. In so far as Political Economy remains within that horizon, in so far, i.e., as the capitalist regime is looked upon as the absolutely final form of social production, instead of as a passing historical phase of its evolution, Political Economy can remain a science only so long as the class struggle is latent or manifests itself only in isolated and sporadic phenomena.

Marx wrote:

 It sounded the knell of scientific bourgeois economy. It was thenceforth no longer a question, whether this theorem or that was true, but whether it was useful to capital or harmful, expedient or inexpedient, politically dangerous or not. In place of disinterested inquirers, there were hired prize fighters; in place of genuine scientific research, the bad conscience and the evil intent of apologetic.

I Wonder if Lbird will continue to support the Leninist notion of the subordination of science and theory to partisan needs?But I suppose humpty will go to work again on this:

Marx wrote:

After a quotation from the preface to my “Criticism of Political Economy,” Berlin, 1859, pp. IV-VII, where I discuss the materialistic basis of my method,

Of course, where Marx wrote 'materialistic' he meant 'ballet shoes'.And of course, famously:

Marx wrote:

My dialectic method is not only different from the Hegelian, but is its direct opposite. To Hegel, the life process of the human brain, i.e., the process of thinking, which, under the name of “the Idea,” he even transforms into an independent subject, is the demiurgos of the real world, and the real world is only the external, phenomenal form of “the Idea.” With me, on the contrary, the ideal is nothing else than the material world reflected by the human mind, and translated into forms of thought.

Now, this is considered, published comment, meant to illuminate the reading of Capital (note the misreading stemming from the casual 'reflected' missing out the accompanying 'translating' that leads to Leninist interpretations).  I don't subscribe to the early Marx v. Later Marx view, I think they are one in the same).  But, I think it is celar that Marx did not consider all science to be ideological."as objects independent of him". — Marx

[Anonymous]

This is really funny. We have about 2,697  views and 208 reply on this topics, and we have   179 view and  7 reply on socialism and democracy,  and  a few respond to others topics that really are related  to the interest of the working class, which means that , we are more interested on intellectual discussions than on the real issues of the working class

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