[LBird]

Young Master Smeet wrote:

LBird, my point was, though, to go closer to your own example, if people already have a mystified explanation for television, so you explain about components, structure and emergent properties, and then they go: "Ah, so that's where the pixies come in"……At some point though, if people don't want (or feel a need) to give up the Faeries…

Well, if they have difficulty believing that 'tellies aren't worked by pixies or Faeries' (I have my doubts that this is true for the vast majority), then the easy answer is to give another example which involves something that they do themselves, but which they already know isn't done by 'pixies or Faeries'.Say, for example, they collect various flowers and make them into a bouquet, which produces delight in others. Or, that they put their hat, scarf and coat on to produce weatherproofing, for their walk during the rain.Of course, if you're going to argue that you know people who say that pixies picked their mother's day present, rather than themselves, or that the Faeries dress them each winter's morn, we might have a big problem with them.Personally, I think most people will know some structures that are built by themselves, rather than elves/spirits.Once we've achieved that initial understanding, we can move on.

[LBird]

Young Master Smeet, post #9, wrote:

TBH, it's normally the audience who make it over complicated by starting to split hairs, or introducing complex concepts that have been universally assimilated…

It's ironic that you wrote that, YMS, because that's exactly what you've done here:

YMS wrote:

LBird,the actual anaology, though, is rather like the people who believe that when their telly goes on the blink they need to say a prayer to God, spin thrice widdershins and then give the box a good thump on the right side. Trying to explain to them that it is a loose connexion that can be simply fixed would be met with a plaintive cry of 'But where God come into that solution?' Try telling them that they can thump it on the top or the left side would be met wiuth incredulity too.

The analogy is about components, structure and emergent properties. If someone doesn't understand the purpose of the analogy, all they need do is ask, and they can be provide with endless others, which don't involve 'on the blink', 'thumps' or 'loose connections'.Once they've understood that, we can move on. We haven't even really moved from the beginning of the explanation until we've done that.Really, it requires comrades who don't understand 'value' to take this process forward, and then we can see if it is working. I presume that you, YMS, already 'understand' value, so perhaps you're jumping too far ahead of the steps in the explanation.I've never said that some people don't understand 'value' just by reading chapters 1-3 of Capital, but I think that it's unarguable that most people don't. We need to try to remedy that. This attempt is really for that majority, not those who seem to be easily able to understand Marx's opaque ideas. I, for one, don't.

[LBird]

Young Master Smeet wrote:

Sometimes we can't get our ideas across by simplifying them, because they conflict with these widely held beliefs.

I disagree with you, here, YMS. Everyone can understand that a disassembled TV spread in pieces across their lounge carpet will not produce a picture. That is the intial basis for the eventual understanding of 'value'.

[LBird]

Young Master Smeet wrote:

TBH, it's normally the audience who make it over complicated by starting to split hairs, or introducing complex concepts that have been universally assimilated (things like barter lead to money and that sort of thing).

Yeah, you're right, but that happens because the 'audience' doesn't understand the terms/phrases/concepts that are being used to explain 'value', for example (but this applies to all of Marx's ideas). So, they 'split hairs', or introduce 'complex concepts' (but these are often simpler, in fact, for the audience) in a (usually) forlorn bid to try to understand what they're being told.IMO, it's better to start with concepts/ideas/things that they are already familiar with, and once they've got the jist of the method and its underpinnings, then move on to introduce the more unfamiliar Marxian concepts.After all, anyone can understand that if their telly is in bits scattered across their living room floor, then the picture reception by their TV will be terrible!These examples from real life can be given endlessly [please try this for yourselves at home, at this point, comrades], until we generalise from these to give them more 'complex' names: 'bits' are 'components'; telly is 'structure'; and 'picture reception' is an 'emergent property'. After lots of example of all sorts of bits, things made of bits in a particular arrangement, and the effects they then (and only then) produce, we will have prepared for the $64,000 issue.It can't be predicted that hydrogen and oxygen, when combined in a specific chemical relationship, will produce wetness for humans. We could tell the story of the bourgeois firefighters who didn't believe in 'components/structures/emergent properties', and simply poured hydrogen and oxygen onto the raging house fire. We will even predict that the fire didn't go out. This example will go with a bang.Then when we say commodities are related to each other within a socio-economic structure, and this specific structure produces the dangerous emergent property of 'value', they will at least have a chance of getting a 'hook' into what we're saying.

[LBird]

twc wrote:

David Harvey’s naive flounderings in defence of Marxian value are on a par with LBird’s…

Yeah, thank god we have your concise and clear expositions on both 'value' and 'science', twc.

[LBird]

DJP wrote:

LBird wrote:

Here's a link to the last time I tried to explain value. My hesitant attempts to get a group of Communists to discuss a way of explaining 'value', in terms that workers unfamiliar with Marx's language could follow, soon ran into the sand. And it wasn't the first time: LibCom was the same.http://en.internationalism.org/forum/1056/derek-lorenz/6074/capital-best-way-read-it

Thanks for that. It is an interesting approach you suggest but I think it unecessarily complicates things, especially at an early stage. I think comment 21 in that thread sums up my personal feeling about that quite well…

Yeah, to me (alone, apparently!), it seems that to describe a watch, containing watch components in the correct relationship, that allows us to 'tell the time', is an easy way to start to understand 'value'.That is, only when the components of a structure are put together in a specific inter-relationship does that structure produce an emergent property.Or, when the parts of a telly are left lying around on the floor, they don't allow us to watch TV programmes. Or, a castle (with its defence capabilities) is 'bricks, mortar and a drawbridge' built in a certain geographic location which allows the king to dominate his land.This seems a good didactic approach to me, and allows us Communists to begin to explain social stuctures and socio-economic concepts, like Marx's 'value'. But, as with 'comment 21 in that thread', you and LoneLondoner (and many others) disagree with me.All I can say in reply, is that we Communists are not getting our message across to the working class. Marx has been dead 130 years, and most proletarians don't know anything about 'capitalism', never mind 'value'. One way to explain this is to say that 'it's all too difficult for workers to understand, and it should be left to those who have the time and energy to study Capital'. But it seems to me that this leads to the Leninist conception of consciousness, organisation and revolution. Surely the SPGB, which stresses the need for the widest democratic control by workers, should be looking for a way to explain these issues to workers?Simply repeating Marx's words does not work, as a method.

[LBird]

DJP wrote:

Quote:

Value. A social relationship between people which expresses itself as a material relationship between things. The value of a commodity is determined by the quantity of socially necessary abstract labour time needed for its production and reproduction. Price is the monetary expression of value.

Value can either be thought of as the socialy necessary labour embodied in a commodity or, as social relations are mediated through commodieties, command over labour (See Rubin for the latter).As distinct from "use-value" and "exchange-value"Simples?

If you say that to workers, they don't reply "Ah, yeah, simples, I understand 'value' now!"IMO, explanations have to come in a form that the student is already familiar with, so that they can build the new concept/idea onto something that they already understand.Using unfamiliar terms/concepts like 'socially necessary labour', 'commodity', 'social relations', 'use-value' and 'exchange-value' (all meaningless words/phrases to most workers) to explain what 'value' means, doesn't work.Capital was written 150 years ago, and it seems to be impossible to get Communists to actually explain what it means. It doesn't matter how many times I stress 'explain', the response is always to repeat terms that themselves need explaining.BTW, DJP, this isn't aimed at you – I know you're trying to help – but is aimed at us all. We are not explaining. As I've said, your reseponse is depressingly familiar. Everyone does this – they repeat what Marx said, but don't explain what it means.For all the good it does, we might as well use the German original as 'explanation'. Or the Russian version.Here's a link to the last time I tried to explain value. My hesitant attempts to get a group of Communists to discuss a way of explaining 'value', in terms that workers unfamiliar with Marx's language could follow, soon ran into the sand. And it wasn't the first time: LibCom was the same.http://en.internationalism.org/forum/1056/derek-lorenz/6074/capital-best-way-read-itIt's my opinion that our irrelevance will remain the same, until we explain our ideas (as opposed to merely repeating Marx's incomprehensible attempts).

[LBird]

alanjjohnstone wrote:

I don't know anybody who ever claimed they were convinced to become socialists by reading Capital. In fact, i wonder if anybody ever became a socialist by reading Marx. Full Stop.

Yeah, I think you're right, ajj. Most people become Communists because of influences from family and friends, I think.But I also think that to become a serious Communist one has to have some understanding of society and its exploitative structures, and the ideas in Capital can help, if they are explained in plain language. Reading chapters 1-3 is pointless without some help, IMO.I've tried a number of times (on LibCom and the ICC site) to try to do this, to build an explanation of 'value' in simple terms, but it seems to be frowned upon by those who claim to have understood Marx's ideas, that there should be an 'easy way' given to newer comrades rather than by the 'hard labour' they've obviously put in, over years, to come to an understanding.I find this attitude strange amongst Communists, who (one would think) would be keen to make it easier for others to become well-read Communists. But no… it seems to be 'if it isn't hurting, it isn't working' is the prescription.Dunno… perhaps it's just me…

[LBird]

mcolome1 wrote:

On volume one of capital Marx said that some sectors of the working class were reading it, and now most of the workers are reading comics books.

I think that this is a myth, mcolome1. Don't forget, Marx also thought that he had written a book which was comprehensible to workers. Anyone who's tried to read the first three chapters of Capital knows that that opinion is incorrect. Most academics with years of philosophical, political and economic training can't make head nor tail of it. We Communists still need to make it accessible to workers.During the 19th century, many workers couldn't even read: some of my ancestors then signed their wedding certificates with a cross, because they were illiterate. As a young man, I never met anyone who had read any Marx, never mind Capital. In my opinion, more workers now know something of Marx, than in the past. It's still a very small percentage, of course, but far higher than in the 19th and throughout the 20th century. Most workers who had read Marx during that period where under the influence of Stalinism or Maoism, which both misinterpreted Marx to the point that their so-called 'Marxism-Leninism' was worthless, as the collapse of the Eastern Bloc showed. During the 1990 anti-Poll Tax campaign, I met 'Marxists' who argued that Ceausescu was on the right track, and that workers left to their own devices would just steal and destroy everything around them. Better to have continued to read 'comic books' than to believe this sort of anti-working class nonsense, comrade!Perhaps I would go so far as to say that, for the first time, Marx is on the agenda of workers (even though still far too few). But perhaps even that statement is wilful dreaming. We have a long way to go.

[LBird]

mcolome1 wrote:

Marx overestimated the taking of class consciousness of the working class, but in his times that idea was justifiable,  because they did not support capitalism as they do now

I don't think that the 'working class', then or now, actually knew/know what 'capitalism' is. Most workers have no idea about the economic system within which they live and work.That fact is a condemnation of over 100 years of activity (sic) by Communists/Socialists. We are as irrelevent now as we were then.We can't even explain 'value' without telling people they have to read Capital (or even, god forbid, Hegel !).One fine day, Communists will resolve to actually explain to their fellow-workers what the fuck they're talking about.

[LBird]

Brian wrote:

Or, 'How can you have a democracy when a minority own the means of living?'

Yeah, parliamentary democracy means 'One pound, one vote'.We have to argue over the meaning of 'democracy', and insist that until there is 'One person, one vote' in the economy, then 'democracy' will remain the sham that it is, at present, in all countries that profess to be 'democratic'.

[LBird]

DJP wrote:

That's all well and good but it's not an argument for an adoption of epistemic relativism.

No, you’re right in one sense: it’s not an argument for ‘epistemic relativism’; but ‘what it is’, is an argument for ‘Marx’s method’.You are unable to identify this, because for you there are only two approaches: ‘epistemic relativism’ (which is post-modernist, individualist, anything goes, a ‘make it up as you go along’ method) and ‘positivism’ (for which ‘knowledge’ is a reflection of ‘what exists’ or ‘what happened’). For the former, ‘truth’ is what the individual subject says it is; for the latter ‘truth’ is what ‘reality tells us’. For the former, the ‘object’ does not exist, just the ‘individual subject’ together with their own self-created version of ‘knowledge’; for the latter, ‘knowledge’ does not exist, just a reflection or copy of the ‘object’ together with the passive ‘subject’.You are a positivist, DJP.On the contrary, I’m a Marxist, who regards ‘knowledge’ as the creation of the ‘social subject’ using social theory, which proves the ‘truth’ of that ‘knowledge’ by sensuous activity by the active subject. If the sensuous activity does not match the expectation of the social theory, it is rejected. This is also the proper ‘scientific method’, and applies equally to nature and society. This is called ‘Historical Materialism’, which takes activity from idealism and reality from materialism, and combines them in human practice. This is outlined in Marx’s Theses on Feuerbach.

DJP wrote:

Anyhow, you should be able to support your claim without making (failed) appeals to authority.

I tried ‘supporting my claims’ both by referring to Marx, Pannekoek and Schaff, and by giving my own explanations (as again, above). You’ve not tried either to expose your sources or explain in your own words. You’ve not read any philosophy of science (either 19th century Marx or 20th century Popper, Kuhn, Feyerabend, Lakatos, Archer or Bhaskar). You position is based on individual ‘common sense’ type arguments that you’ve passively picked up in society, or “the bleedin’ obvious”, so you don’t have to read about, understand or explain yourself. It just ‘is’. For you ‘science produces the Truth’, a one-off, eternal ‘knowledge’ which is the same as what it explains, rather than a social construction which is a separate entity from the object. Pannekoek warns us about ‘discovery science’.

DJP wrote:

Yes what we refer to as 'knowledge' is a social product but (apart from the world mental) the truth of the matter does not lie in peoples heads.

Once again, you identify ‘truth’ with the ‘object’. This is positivism. And if the ‘social product knowledge’ then isn’t ‘the truth’, what is your “’knowledge’ as a social product”? Your statement that knowledge is a social product but not the truth (that is the object itself, you say) makes your statement meaningless. In effect, you’ve heard some arguments about ‘social knowledge’ which you don’t understand, but just include the phrase as a kind of ‘self-blessing’ to protect yourself, like a garlic clove to ward off vampires.

DJP wrote:

Either the holocaust or armenocide happened or they did not, this true / false fact is not altered by what later generations or states claim or think happened.

Here, again, you’re conflating the events which happened (object) with our understanding of them (knowledge). For you, since knowledge is the same as, and a reflection/copy of, the events, there is no room for the active, creative, human, social subject that creates knowledge by practical, sensuous activity by testing theories against the events. And the ‘events’ don’t simply present themselves to us, but have to be actively sought using selection parameters, as Carr shows with his fisher/fishing/fish analogy (which once again I’d hazard that either you haven’t read, or haven’t understood: you’re the comrade that posted a brilliant video which makes these points extremely well, but apparently you don’t even understand the meaning of what you’re posting: as Einstein argued, we ‘observe’ what we’re ‘told to observe’ by our prior theory).So to return to your point about the Armenocide and Holocaust.Did the people who lived through these events, when taking their last breath before they were killed, say to each other ‘this is the Armenocide/Holocaust’? Was it obvious to all at the time what it meant? Or are the labels ‘Armenocide/Holocaust’ later inventions by historians who, by using theory and examining sources, actively create our ‘knowledge’ of those ‘events’? Won’t the social theories that the historians employ shape the ‘knowledge’ (not the ‘events’)?Why dub them ‘Armenocide/Holocaust’, which focus on national or religious factors (Armenia or Jewishness, both themselves human creations)? Wouldn’t historians using class analysis give the ‘events’ different names, perhaps ‘Workercide 1’ and ‘Workercide 2’, which would refer to the same ‘events’, but place them in a very different framework of understanding? That is, bosses in Ottoman Turkey and Hitlerian Germany killed workers who lived in the geographic location of Armenia or followed the Jewish faith, in an attempt to fool their own workers, that their nationality was more important than their class, and blame foreign workers. And after the ‘events’ in which millions of workers were murdered, later nationalist historians (Armenian and Jewish) then, for their own nationalist purposes, dubbed the ‘events’ as ‘Armenocide’ and ‘Holocaust’, precisely to take away from the FACT that millions of WORKERS died, and bamboozle later workers about those ‘events’. Nationalism is embedded in the very terms.So, let’s look again at DJP’s claim:

DJP wrote:

Either the holocaust or armenocide happened or they did not, this true / false fact is not altered by what later generations or states claim or think happened.

So, we can’t reconstruct our ‘knowledge’ of those ‘events’ from a Communist perspective, according to DJP. They are ‘the holocaust or armenocide’, and this “not altered by what later generations claim happened”.‘Knowledge’ equals ‘object’; Positivist Truth; Discovery Science; Eternal Facts; the denial of creativity to the future proletariat. Such are the fruits of DJP’s ‘method’.No. Knowledge is an entity created by social humans, based upon their theoretical frameworks and active attempts to create understanding. Knowledge is not a passively-imbibed copy of reality.

[LBird]

DJP wrote:

LBird wrote:

The only answer is a 'social' answer. Here's the bad news, comrade: 'societies' differ, and so knowledge is relative to the society which produces it.Oh, sorry, you think 'science' is 'objective', and not 'bourgeois'. Oh well, back to the 19th century…

You've failed to answer the objection.Is the truth or falsity of the Holocaust or the attempted genocide of the Armenians in 1915 relative to socety?Your mistake seems to be to think that the only options are 'niave realism' or all out epistemic relativism.Last chance saloon.

No sign of Marx in the 'Last chance saloon'!

Marx, The German Ideology, Collected Works 5, p. 39, wrote:

In reality and for the practical materialist, i.e. the communist, it is a question of revolutionising the existing world, of practically attacking and changing existing things. When occasionally we find such views with Feuerbach, they are never more than isolated surmises and have much too little influence on his general outlook to be considered here as anything else than embryos capable of development. Feuerbach’s conception of the sensuous world is confined on the one hand to mere contemplation of it, and on the other to mere feeling; he says “Man” instead of “real historical man.” “Man” is really “the German.” In the first case, the contemplation of the sensuous world, he necessarily lights on things which contradict his consciousness and feeling, which disturb the harmony he presupposes, the harmony of all parts of the sensuous world and especially of man and nature. To remove this disturbance, he must take refuge in a double perception, a profane one which only perceives the “flatly obvious” and a higher, philosophical, one which perceives the “true essence” of things. He does not see how the sensuous world around him is, not a thing given direct from all eternity, remaining ever the same, but the product of industry and of the state of society; and, indeed, in the sense that it is an historical product, the result of the activity of a whole succession of generations, each standing on the shoulders of the preceding one, developing its industry and its intercourse, modifying its social system according to the changed needs. Even the objects of the simplest “sensuous certainty” are only given him through social development, industry and commercial intercourse. The cherry-tree, like almost all fruit-trees, was, as is well known, only a few centuries ago transplanted by commerce into our zone, and therefore only by this action of a definite society in a definite age it has become “sensuous certainty” for Feuerbach.

[my bold]http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1845/german-ideology/ch01b.htmThe knowledge of even a 'rock' before your very eyes is a social product, never mind knowledge of events as complex as what we now dub the Holocaust or Armenocide.

[LBird]

DJP wrote:

The "commercialization" model outlined by YMS above can explain how capitalism was spread but cannot explain how it started.

admice, the key difference between 'commercialisation' and 'capitalism' is where it's located.Commerce mainly relates to exchange, whereas capitalism mainly relates to production.So, the presence of 'markets' doesn't mean the presence of capitalism. Buying and selling can be found in all sorts of societies.Wage labour in production is a good guide to the presence of capitalism.

[LBird]

ALB wrote:

I don't think that a majority of workers need to understand value theory before they can establish socialism/communism.It will be enough that they know…. Let's not put the bar for majority socialist/communist understanding too high…. people can talk about the practicalities of organising socialism rather than analysing in great detail how capitalism works and why.

In my opinion, ALB, if 'a majority of workers' can't develop an understanding about 'value', and also 'how' and 'why' capitalism works, then I don't think that Communism is possible.By 'Communism', I mean the democratic control of society by its members. If the majority remain only concerned about 'practical issues', they'll remain in thrall to philosophers, scientists, priests and the new boss (same as the old boss). Communists should be trying to explain, not merely repeat outdated dogma.My failure to get us beyond 19th century positivism (see DJP's post about questions of the Holocaust and Armenocide, etc.), doesn't give me much hope.I'm only too aware of the tensions with other posters that I'm causing by continually asking these questions, and perhaps it's time to leave it alone. I know some posters have supported some of the things that I've argued, and I've had some supportive PMs from others, but the lack of any real development in these questions openly on the threads is wearing me out.Whilst Communists refuse to answer philosophical questions (or, indeed, to recognise that there are questions to be answered), we'll remain an isolated, small, and shrinking, intellectual force in society. It gives me no pleasure at all to come to this recognition.I think I'll go and deal with the entirely practical question of where my next beer is going to come from.

[Author]

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