DJP
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This can be said in a lot plainer language.
Ontology is about what exists.
Epistemology is about what we can know about what exists.‘Materialism’, in the ontological sense, is the claim that everything is ‘matter’, ‘material’, or ‘physical’ (though what ‘matter’ or ‘material’ or ‘the physical’ might be is left open).
If you take ‘materialist epistemology’ to mean that the laws of physics can explain everything, then ‘materialist epistemology’ would be something that is plainly false.
Though, I don’t think the political struggle for socialism rests on any of this.
FWIW It doesn’t seem that private messaging is possible on this version of the forum? But not that I have any messages I want to send.
Yes, I noticed that stuff about the origins of socialism too. I don’t think it’s historically correct.
And scientists now, I’m not sure how much it would have been the case in Kautsky’s time, are largely drawn from the working class, not the ‘bourgeois intelligentsia’.
I guess the criticised passage could be read as saying that socialist consciousness arises automatically out of the development of capitalism, and that is how Kautsky is reading it. But I agree, it doesn’t have to be read that way.
Kautsky says that the working class can’t develop socialist consciousness without socialist education (largely provided by a socialist party which would be largely composed of working class people).
Lenin says that since there are only two ideologies (capitalist and socialist), the socialist party is required to stop the working class doing what it would do otherwise – falling under the influence of capitalist ideology. Already in this we can see a difference.
Kautsky might have had a schoolmaster like attitude, but that is different from being a vanguardist in the sense that we describe the Bolsheviks. I’ve not found anything that would support that idea. If others have, please show me.
“You have provided no evidence that Kautsky took working class self-emancipation seriously, or at all.”
Well no, I didn’t then – I was writing a short forum comment not a masters thesis. But the passage you mention is precisely the one which Lewis thinks has been mistranslated or misrepresented.
From “Karl Kautsky on Democracy and Republicanism” translated by Ben Lewis, footnote by the translator on pg 175
Most English-speaking readers will be familiar with the Russian translation of urwüchsig, as it appears in the famous Kautsky passage quoted by V.I. Lenin in his 1902 pamphlet What is to be done?: ‘In this way, socialist awareness is something brought in to class struggle of the proletariat from without (von Außen Hineingetragenes) and not something that emerges from the class struggle in stikhiinyi [elemental fashion – urwüchsig]. Correspondingly, the old Hainfeld programme [of Austrian social democracy written by Victor Adler and endorsed by Kautsky in 1889] said with complete justice that the task of social democracy is bringing to the proletariat (literally: filling the proletariat up with) the awareness of its position and the awareness of its task’ (quoted in Lih 2008, p. 710). Urwüchsig is often translated as ‘elemental’ or ‘primitive’. This underlines how in this text Kautsky uses it to denote the working-class movement in its most elemental form: i.e., the immediate conflict between the worker and the boss. The above passage is as controversial as it is misrepresented. Numerous anarchists, syndicalists and modern-day Trotskyists see in this passage irrefutable proof of the ‘elitism’ of both Kautsky and Lenin and their distrust of the ‘spontaneous’ working-class movement. However, as can be seen in his discussion of French socialism here, the point Kautsky is mak- ing is that the working class must move beyond this to create a rounded world view if it is to emancipate itself. This is something which does not simply emerge from the conflict between boss and worker. It presupposes the proletariat organising itself in an independent political organisation, which aims at capturing state power and has a revolutionary outlook in respect of all classes in society as a whole – something in which, as Kautsky underlines, all of the tendencies of French socialism at the time were lacking.
If Kautsky was so sure that the working class couldn’t achieve socialism on their own means why was he so keen on democracy, freedom of the press, freedom of assembly etc? If he was a vangardist like Lenin why would he have been critical of the Bolshevik seizure of the state?
Perhaps, in this aspect (in reference to the article above) Kautsky and Lenin (or at least the Lenin of 1901) and the SPGB do align i.e. the case for socialism needs to be consciously elicited and won’t come automatically out of struggles over pay and conditions.
The divergence is in the role of the party. Only the SPGB and Kautsky take self-emancipation seriously.
I have just finished reading a book I mentioned on another thread “Karl Kautsky on Democracy and Republicanism” translated by Ben Lewis. There is a cheaper version published by Haymarket books.
It is worth reading as he gives a defence of the revolutionary use of parliament that is in line with the SPGB view.
There is also a passage on Kautsky’s supposed vanguardism. It seems he has suffered from a bad translation. Kautsky’s argument was that socialist consciousness couldn’t automatically arise from within purely economic struggles, not that it couldn’t arise from within the working class in general. Lenin’s vanguardism represents a break, not a continuation of, his adherence with the Kautsky’s teachings.
Perhaps just posting a general reminder to behave (or posting nothing at all) would have been better in this case. Individuals posting their personal moral judgements about other users definitely does not contribute to the quality of a forum.
I also realise this post is contributing to the growing pile of shit posts.
“So, we will never stop fighting for the kind of society John Lennon described in his song: Imagine.”
I thought Marxist-Lennonism was something we were supposed to be against?
“Not. Going. To. Happen.”
That could be true. But what’s your motivation for continually posting here if you believe that’s the case? An empathetic concern about us wasting our leisure time?
Thought this article on monism which was published today might be of interest…
https://iai.tv/articles/quantum-physics-reveals-the-unity-of-the-universe-heinrich-pas-auid-2584
Sagan’s ‘Cosmos’ is great to watch, but what he wrote about the human brain / mind (that it has different layers, each representing a different stage of evolution – with a ‘lizard brain’ at the centre) is bunk and was never an accepted theory, even when he put it out. I can’t remember if any of this made it into the TV series?
Marx isn’t Dietzgen and Dietzgen’s views are pretty much those of modern philosophy of science.
Another similar way to think about it is “the map is not the territory”. All we are doing, and all we can do when we describe the world is make conceptual maps of it. But maps are always just descriptions not the world as it really is. How good the map is is determined by how well you can use it to do whatever task you are using it for.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Map%E2%80%93territory_relation
“So what would a modern scientific materialist say space is?
Not matter?”Well according to that source of not always accurate information, Wikipedia; “in everyday as well as scientific usage, matter generally includes atoms and anything made up of them, and any particles (or combination of particles) that act as if they have both rest mass and volume. However it does not include massless particles such as photons, or other energy phenomena or waves such as light or heat.”
“I think that what Pannekoek was trying to say was that atoms at that point were theoretical non observal concepts inferred from observal phenomenon.”
No, he wasn’t saying that. What he was saying isn’t changed by developments in microscopes.
Following Dietzgen, he’s talking about how in order to make sense of the world and operate within it, we chop up the observable world of phenomena and abstract it into different categories and concepts in our minds. What he said about atoms could be said about anything else.
i.e You don’t “see atoms”, you perceive some phenomena and use the concept of “atom” to make sense of it.
