Z A Jordan and Marx’s epistemology

[Anonymous]

How many times, or how long have we discussed this endless  cockfight  in  this forum ? Nobody is going to win this fight, we can go into an eternal chain reaction and we are not  going to get into an agreement on this topicWhile we are wasting time on this intellectual masturbation, we are placing on the side many social, political  and economical issues that are taking place around the world.

[Young Master Smeet]

Kind of relevent to this discussion:http://existentialcomics.com/comic/164I think the basic problem with Lbird's misreading of Marx is that essentially Lbird abolishes the thing for us.  I'm rather reminded of an old Ropyal Insitution Christmas lecture, I think it was trying to demonstrate how smell works, using a "handedness" metaphor, imagine a wall of right hands, and some lefts hands, and some paws and some tentacles and other weirdly shaped appendages.  Now, each hand/appendage, can only shake with a like and opposite hand/appendage.  Although we define, through our senses and our being in the world, the thing for us, there has to be some thing there for us to grasp: and that includes abstractions and hought objects like numbers.I'd like Lbird to contemplate this:

Marx wrote:

Hunger is a natural need; it therefore needs a nature outside itself, an object outside itself, in order to satisfy itself, to be stilled. Hunger is an acknowledged need of my body for an object existing outside it, indispensable to its integration and to the expression of its essential being. The sun is the object of the plant – an indispensable object to it, confirming its life – just as the plant is an object of the sun, being an expression of the life-awakening power of the sun, of the sun’s objective essential power.A being which does not have its nature outside itself is not a natural being, and plays no part in the system of nature. A being which has no object outside itself is not an objective being. A being which is not itself an object for some third being has no being for its object; i.e., it is not objectively related. Its being is not objective.

It is difficult to square this notin of objects without the self, and the sun being the object of the plant, with the notion that all objects are humanly created.

[LBird]

YMS, you'll have to read what I've already written, because I'm tiring of repeating myself. Just like robbo, you are refusing to read what I write (and what Marx and Jordan write), and substitute what your ideology tells you that we three should write.It'd be better for all concerned if you openly state your ideology, because then we could compare your assumptions and concepts with Marx's assumptions and concepts (which I share – but then, I don't either hide my ideology or pretend not to have one).One piece of helpful advice that I'd give youse: the concept of 'object' for 'materialism', and the concept of 'object' for Marx, are very different.For 'materialism', 'object' exists outside of any relation to a 'subject'.For Marx, 'object' is produced by (ie. comes into 'existence-for') a 'subject'.So, for 'materialism', 'existence' relates to an object (an 'object-in-itself').So, for Marx, 'existence-for' relates to a relationship between 'subject-object' (an 'object-for-a-subject').I don't mind you, robbo, Vin or mcolome1 saying that they don't agree with Marx, but at least try to understand his epistemology. Marx's views are relational.

[Young Master Smeet]

Lbird, I do read your comments, and when I ask for genuine questions and clarifications I'm met with accusation or obstruction.  The problem is when i read what Marx wrote, and what you say he said, i see a variance.  "A being which does not have its nature outside itself is not a natural being" is pretty plain for Chucky.A relationship for necesarily implies properties (we've been over this several tiems) which your view would deny, since you cannot admit without your whole argument crashign down) that inogranic nature brings anything to the party.

Lbird wrote:

For Marx, 'object' is produced by (ie. comes into 'existence-for') a 'subject'.

Citation needed.  

[Young Master Smeet]

buggerit I'll provide my own citations:

Chucksie Bums wrote:

Man is directly a natural being. As a natural being and as a living natural being he is on the one hand endowed with natural powers, vital powers – he is an active natural being. These forces exist in him as tendencies and abilities – as instincts. On the other hand, as a natural, corporeal, sensuous objective being he is a suffering, conditioned and limited creature, like animals and plants. That is to say, the objects of his instincts exist outside him, as objects independent of him; yet these objects are objects that he needs – essential objects, indispensable to the manifestation and confirmation of his essential powers. To say that man is a corporeal, living, real, sensuous, objective being full of natural vigour is to say that he has real, sensuous objects as the object of his being or of his life, or that he can only express his life in real, sensuous objects. To be objective, natural and sensuous, and at the same time to have object, nature and sense outside oneself, or oneself to be object, nature and sense for a third party, is one and the same thing.

And

Charlie Mouse wrote:

Whenever real, corporeal man, man with his feet firmly on the solid ground, man exhaling and inhaling all the forces of nature, posits his real, objective essential powers as alien objects by his externalisation, it is not the act of positing which is the subject in this process: it is the subjectivity of objective essential powers, whose action, therefore, must also be something objective. An objective being acts objectively, and he would not act objectively if the objective did not reside in the very nature of his being. He only creates or posits objects, because he is posited by objects – because at bottom he is nature. In the act of positing, therefore, this objective being does not fall from his state of “pure activity” into a creating of the object; on the contrary, his objective product only confirms his objective activity, his activity as the activity of an objective, natural being.

Man doesn't create the objects, he transforms nature into his objects.  Quite a fundamental misreading, I think.

[LBird]

Young Master Smeet wrote:

Lbird, I do read your comments, and when I ask for genuine questions and clarifications I'm met with accusation or obstruction.  The problem is …

I don't think that you read my comments as I write them, but through your own beliefs, which differ from mine.I don't think that you ask genuine questions and clarifications, because it's clear that your questions often have nothing to do with what either I, Marx or Jordan write, but what you wish that we'd written.The only obstructions that you're meeting are built by your own ideology, because I've constantly answered your questions, given quotes, and tried to use analogies to explain. You simply won't read what I write.And, 'the problem is…', you hold to an ideology that I don't, and because you are hiding that ideology (perhaps unconsciously, giving you the benefit of the doubt), you are hiding the assumptions, concepts, theories, beliefs, etc. that we don't share.You're a 'materialist, YMS, and neither Marx nor I are. Unless you examine your assumptions and contrast them with Marx's (for example, 'object' versus 'object-for'), then you'll remain in the dark.Perhaps you are happy to be in the dark, but I am not, and wish to understand how Marx's epistemology provides a way for workers to democratically control their own production.

[Young Master Smeet]

LBird wrote:

I don't think that you ask genuine questions and clarifications, because it's clear that your questions often have nothing to do with what either I, Marx or Jordan write, but what you wish that we'd written.

There is always the possibility, if multiple people fail to understand what you write, that the problem may be in the way that you communicate.  For example, when I try to go to the text, the accepted way of resolving exegetic disputes, you simply say that people who disagree with you have a different ideology, rather than seeking to prove a hermeneutic basis for your assertions.My ideology is that of a Marxist and a humanist, I consider that human beings exist within the world, that ideas are cultural and material, that ideology is lived.  Our unconscious exists in the world around us, which is structured semiotically through deferred meaning.  I agreed with the Bakhtin school that signs are polyphonic and contested, meaning is historical.  I agree with Serle that language is intentional and not merely algorithmic.

[LBird]

Young Master Smeet wrote:

My ideology is that of a Marxist and a humanist, I consider that human beings exist within the world, that ideas are cultural and material, that ideology is lived.  Our unconscious exists in the world around us, which is structured semiotically through deferred meaning.  I agreed with the Bakhtin school that signs are polyphonic and contested, meaning is historical.  I agree with Serle that language is intentional and not merely algorithmic.

All you have to tell us now, YMS, is how this ideology of yours allows workers to democratically control the production of their world, how workers can produce their truth.

[Young Master Smeet]

Emancipated labour, under conditions of common ownership allows for the realisation of unalienated humanity, one that's mental states accord with its lived experience: a practical unity of actions and control over the world and its collective social enviornment, a conscious association that knows itself to be a human community.  Its thought objects would emerge from the discussion between humans, without power, thus enabling discourse to be free and unfettered, a language of a hamanity without distortions needed to keep a subject populaion in check.  The free development of each would be the condition for the free development of all, and each human would be an end in themself.

[LBird]

YMS wrote:

A relationship for necesarily implies properties (we've been over this several tiems) which your view would deny, since you cannot admit without your whole argument crashign down) that inogranic nature brings anything to the party.

YMS, either the subject-object relationship has to be present, and the subject is the 'active side', or the object has 'properties-in-itself'.I'll only say this once more, because you're not reading what I (or Marx or Jordan) write: 'properties' are a product of the relationship (ie. 'properties-for-us') and are not 'properties of objects' (ie. 'properties-in-themselves').If you want 'citations', either read what I've written already in my replies, or Jordan's text, or Marx's works.You are a 'materialist', and your ideology argues that 'properties exist outside of the subject'. Marx does not argue this, because Marx is not a 'materialist'.'Inorganic nature' doesn't have 'properties' – 'properties' are brought into 'existence' for a 'subject'. The subject is the 'active side', so 'properties' are always 'properties-for' an active subject. The active subject produces its world.This is why Marx argues for 'social labour' and 'social production', and always stresses 'relationships' within which we humans are the producers of our reality.As you say, "we've been over this several times", but you won't accept that there is a difference in what we're claiming. I have no problem accepting that we employ differing ideologies, but you don't seem to be able to see where your claims differ from Marx's, no matter how many times (more than 'several') that I (or Jordan) point this out to you.Summary:YMS – 'inorganic nature has properties' – they are 'properties-in-themselves';Marx – 'inorganic nature does not have properties' – they are social products, 'properties-for-us'.

[LBird]

This view of the relationship between subject and object (that the active subject produces the object) is why Marx's epistemology is a revolutionary one, and how and why it differs from the claims of the bourgeoisie. They claim that they 'discover' a 'pre-existing' world of 'objects', of 'things-in-themselves'.If the bourgeoisie are correct, then we can't change 'objective-properties'; if Marx is correct, then we can change 'properties-for-us'.I'm aware that this claim is unfamiliar (or even downright objectionable) to those brainwashed by bourgeois science, but nevertheless it is the underpinning of a revolutionary, democratic epistemology, which can provide the class conscious proletariat with the 'theory' needed for their 'practice', when they set out to change their world.

[Young Master Smeet]

Lbird wrote:

either the subject-object relationship has to be present

What is the relationship?  When I enter into a relationship with a chair, I bring my mass, and the chair brings its molecular structure which is capable of holding its shape under my mass.  Me sitting on it is what makes it a chair.  It is not active, I give the chairiness to it.  However, I cannot launch it at the moon.  A relationship involves two things, if one part adds nothng to the relationship, there is no relationship.  Can you at least agree with that basic premise?  If not, where is it flawed?I've already described how, as I udnerstand it, the thing for us works: a coke can is absically a ball of light, it is our eyes, the way they work, our fingers, the way they feel, our muscles, the way they lift, our chemical receptors that give it smell: all those things that turn it into a cold weighty cylinder with a metallic taste.See, the thing is: if theThing in Itself is irrelevent, since we can never approach it, and so we might as well consider it doesn't exist.  If the thing for us does not give any quality to the subject object relationship, then it might as well not exist, and there is no norganic nature.As for citations: I have readMarx' works, and I give quotes to back up my argument, you always refuse to.Finally, the whole point of this discussion is that I think you are misreading Marx, I think my claims agree with what he (and to a greater or lesser extent Jordan) wrote.

[LBird]

Young Master Smeet wrote:

Emancipated labour, under conditions of common ownership allows for the realisation of unalienated humanity, one that's mental states accord with its lived experience: a practical unity of actions and control over the world and its collective social enviornment, a conscious association that knows itself to be a human community.  Its thought objects would emerge from the discussion between humans, without power, thus enabling discourse to be free and unfettered, a language of a hamanity without distortions needed to keep a subject populaion in check.  The free development of each would be the condition for the free development of all, and each human would be an end in themself.

You'll all notice that YMS never mentions proletariat/workers, democracy or revolution.YMS is a 'materialist' and an individualist, and wishes to realise the bourgeois dream for 'free individuals', and stresses 'practical' rather than 'social theory and practice', and avoids social concepts like 'power'.

[Young Master Smeet]

*Ahem* "Emancipated labour", "Common ownership""Humans, without power": do you see power existing in socialism?  "mental states accord with its lived experience" is that not another way of saying "theory and practice" oh, I think it is.  I also didn't mention moon rockets, calamari nor bovril.

[LBird]

Young Master Smeet wrote:

A relationship involves two things, if one part adds nothng to the relationship, there is no relationship.  Can you at least agree with that basic premise?  If not, where is it flawed?

Your argument is flawed because the 'subject' is the 'active side'.If you wish to 'know' the 'properties' of 'inorganic nature', that is, 'nature-in-itself', then you are separating subject and object.I keep telling you this, what Marx said, and what Jordan says Marx said, but you keep replacing it with your own ideological claim, that 'inorganic nature has properties-in-themselves'.Your claim differs from Marx's. Marx argues for the social production of 'organic nature' (or, 'nature-for-us'). You're arguing for 'nature-in-itself'.

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