[LBird]

Vin Maratty wrote:

Well, as a Marxist I believe ALL ideas come from material conditions …

Well, as a Marxist, too, I believe ALL ideas come from humans.I think you are confusing Engels' philosophical ideas with Marx's.Perhaps this is the real discussion that we all need to have, Vin. It's creeping into every thread, mostly (but not entirely) due to me, I admit.For me, I'll only accept your proposition when it can be shown that even ONE idea (never mind 'ALL') has come from material conditions (or 'rocks', as they are better known). Humans produce ideas – some 'fit', some don't.There is an interesting discussion to be had about why some ideas 'fit' (and who defines 'fit'), but the ideas originate in human creativity, not inanimate, unconscious 'matter'.Rocks don't do dialogue, comrade.

[LBird]

robbo203 wrote:

Well, yes, sure there is a biological basis to this in the sense that obviously consciousness – in this case , awareness of ourselves as individuals – is dependent on the brain.

But 'consciousness' or 'awareness' doesn't necessarily mean 'individuality'.The fact that you are interpreting this as 'individuality' is a social product of your experience in this society, and, I would argue, ruling class ideas.But, I won't keep labouring the point: I've given some pointers to societies which interpret this differently, and I'll leave the issue alone, now. Thanks for the comradely discussion, robbo!

[LBird]

gnome wrote:

The seemingly different results as indicated by the 2010 Conference resolution and the subsequent Party Poll later the same year merely serves to indicate that within the Party, as elsewhere, providing the 'right' question is asked the 'right' answer can be obtained.

Yeah, it's the old 'plebiscite' problem. And proof that 'theory determines what counts as a fact'!Humans, eh? I'm sure that we Communists are going to have to factor them into our considerations one day.

[LBird]

Vin Maratty wrote:

Not sure what you are saying. Exploitation is immoral from the point of view of the exploited but moral from the point of view of the exploiters? So morality is an expression/reflection of class interests ? That means it is morally OK for me to extract surplus value if I come into money but it becomes immoral if I go bust?

Does this all come as a surprise, Vin? That 'morality' is socially-based?

Vin Maratty wrote:

I apologise if I sound facetious but it is not my intention, comrade

No, you don't sound 'facetious', Vin, just bewildered! If morality doesn't come from society (and hence, for us, classes), from where does it originate?The planet Morality? God? Priests with special knowledge? The Leninist Party of Professional Revolutionaries Who Know All?You're not going to tell us it's those with access to 'Scientific Socialism (TM Messrs Engels & Lenin)' who also know about 'Scientific Morality', are you, Vin?I apologise for my facetiousness, Vin. It's a fair cop.Exploitation is a moral category, used to explain to humans the motions of wealth from the workers who create it, to the bosses who appropriate it. By the way, 'workers' and 'bosses' are moral categories, too.If this is bad news for you, I'm sorry, comrade. The sooner we get away from 'hard economics' (and rocks talking to us, as for DiaMat-ists), the better. Humans are involved, in every sense, comrade: materially, ideologically, morally.

[LBird]

Vin Maratty wrote:

Is the Extraction of Surplus Value Immoral?

From the point of view of which class?From the point of view of the bourgeoisie, no.From the point of view of the proletariat, yes.Morality is a product of humans and their society, not something handed down from outside society, eg., by a 'god'. There are no universal moral ideals.Thus, 'exploitation is immoral'.Humans make the rules, not 'the concrete', 'the material', or 'objective science'.We create our knowledge; this includes our scientific and our moral knowledge.

[LBird]

robbo203 wrote:

All this nonsense about socialism having nothing to do with morality and scientific socialism being some kind of "value free" construct is just so much old fashioned 19th century mechanistic-cum-postivisitic thinking and despite Marx's supposed repudiation of morality his writings are literally suffused with a moral condemnation of capitalism. How can you possibly condemn exploitation and seek to end it without this implying a moral perspective? ….Class morality!. Now thats what we need.

I'm with robbo on this one.Which also implies 'class science', of course!

[LBird]

robbo, since we both agree that ‘individualism’ is entirely historical, I think we can leave that concept alone.But, when we come to your ‘individuality’ as ‘transhistorical’, even you concede that it isn’t.

robbo203 wrote:

Individuality is something different. It has to do with the inner life of the person, the sense of self hood. This is something that is both historical and trans-historical.

So, even ‘individuality’ is ‘both historical and trans-historical’, not just simply ‘transhistorical’. But then you go further:

robbo203 wrote:

That is why I contend that this aspect of individuality is trans historical. It is a necessary built-in aspect of infant development in all human societies. Of course the content of our inner lives is also historically contingent and subject to social influence.

[my bold]So, the apparent essence of ‘individuality’ is ‘inner life’ and ‘self hood’, which is the bit which is ‘transhistorical’. But… even this you concede is ‘historically contingent and subject to social influence’.It seems to me that your thesis depends upon identifying just what the ‘necessary built-in aspect of infant development in all human societies’ consists of. You identify this as ‘individuality’, but I’m not so sure. It seems to me to be perfectly possible to identify this ‘necessary aspect’ with purely biological functions: that is, the infant ‘in all human societies’ must be taught to feed and water itself, keep itself warm, etc. This is a long way from any notions of ‘individuality’ in any modern sense; after all, most animals go through this process of ‘necessary self development’, which enables them to exist biologically as a species. That is, without an initial stage of close support from (usually) the mother, the ‘infant’ (child/pup/kitten/etc.) would die.The philosophical background to my doubt about your thesis is Marxism. This is an essentially historical ideology, which stresses modes of production and the emergence of ideologies that ‘fit’ with specific ‘real’ circumstances of life. Further, Marx stresses the changes in ideologies over time.So, any theories of ‘individuality’ which focus on the unbroken line between, say, the Ancient Greeks or Christianity, are suspect from the start, from this perspective. I’m sure you’re aware that bourgeois thinkers constantly stress the link between the past and now, in an academic attempt to legitimise what exists ‘now’ by emphasising how little has changed from ‘then’. Ideologically, bourgeois thinkers are compelled to stress the stability and similarity of the ‘transhistorical’, as opposed to the instability and difference of the ‘historical’.I’m not accusing you of ‘bourgeois deviationism’, but merely trying to give some philosophical justification for my doubts!Further, I regard Freud as a quintessential bourgeois ideologist, so I’m very wary of anyone using his ideas to bolster other theses. ALB has mentioned this wariness, too.To finish, given the evidence I’ve provided from Anderson and Callinicos, about societies where humans are regarded as ‘tools’ and as ‘multiplicities’ which extend beyond their own skins, I’m still not convinced about the value for Communists to use a theory of ‘transhistorical individuality’. I think both our ideological basis (theoretical assumptions) and the historical and anthropological evidence from societies other than capitalist society, argue against your stance, comrade.To summarise, ‘individuality’ is a close ideological cousin of ‘individualism’, in my opinion. At best, it is only a biological concept, rather than a social one which is of use for understanding human society and its history.

[LBird]

DJP wrote:

You might like this LBird:http://philosophynow.org/issues/97/How_Old_is_the_Self

This is a link to the actual article:http://fsrcoin.com/Jaynes.htm

[LBird]

robbo203 wrote:

But I wasn't talking about "!individualism"! I agree – individualism is a relatively recent ideological phenomenon and, as I pointed out earlier, closely associated with the rise of capitalism. Individuality, on the other hand, means something quite different to individualism and I attempted to explain the difference in an earlier post I maintain that individuality is part historical and part trans-historical in the sense that it is an inevitable outcome of a socialisation process which happens in every society.

robbo, I’m not sure about your distinction between ‘individualism’ and ‘individuality’. Could you give me a brief summary of what you consider the essential differences to be? I’d be inclined to think that you are drawing a distinction between ‘ideology’ and ‘biology’, but at the moment this is just a guess. I don’t think that this distinction can be maintained, but if that’s not the point you are making, then ignore me on that point!Meanwhile, I’m providing some quotes, to give you some idea of where I’m coming from, with my questioning of your ‘transhistorical’ use of ‘individuality’.

Callinicos, Making History, p. 17, wrote:

However, cultures seem to have existed where conceiving ‘each one of us’ as ‘many’ was deeply embedded in everyday discourse. A. W. H. Adkins argues that Homeric Greece was one such culture:

Adkins wrote:

The Homeric psuché has no specific mental or emotional functions in life: it is simply that whose presence ensures that the individual is alive. To observe the mental and emotional activity of Homeric man, we must turn to…other words…whose conventional renderings, all of which are somewhat misleading, are thumos, ‘spirit’; kradie, etor, ker, ‘heart’; phrenes, ‘mind’ or (physiologically) ‘diaphragm’, or ‘lungs’; nõos, ‘mind’. The manner in which these words are used, if we take it seriously, reveals a psychological landscape quite different from our own. We are accustomed to emphasize the ‘I’ which ‘takes decisions’, and ideas such as ‘will’ or ‘intention’. In Homer, there is much less emphasis on the ‘I’ or decisions: the Greek words just mentioned take the foreground, and enjoy a remarkable amount of democratic freedom. Men frequently ‘act as their kradie and thumos bids them’…

Callinicos, Making History, pp. 18-9, wrote:

Habermas’s account of mythical thought was drawn from the work of anthropologists. But rarely has what he had in mind been better described than by Carlo Levi in his portrait of the peasants of the remote Lucanian village to which he was exiled under Mussolini in the 1930s:

Levi wrote:

They are literally pagani, ‘pagans’, or countrymen, as distinguished from city-dwellers. The deities of the state and the city can find no worshippers here on the land, where the wolf and the ancient black boar reign supreme, where there is no wall between the world of men and the world of animals and spirits, between the leaves of the trees above and the roots below. They cannot have even an awareness of themselves as individuals, here where all things are held together by acting upon one another, and each one is a power unto itself, working imperceptibly, where there is no barrier that cannot be broken down by magic. They live submerged in a world that rolls on independent of their will, where man is in no way separate from his sun, his beast, his malaria, where there can be neither happiness, as literary devotees of the land conceive it, nor hope, because these two are adjuncts of personality and here there is only the grim passivity of a sorrowful Nature…. To the peasants everything has a double meaning…. People, trees, animals, even objects and words have a double life. Only reason, religion, and history have clear-cut meanings…. And in the peasants’ world there is no room for reason, religion, and history. There is no room for religion, because to them everything participates in divinity, everything is actually, not merely symbolically, divine: Christ and the goat; the heavens above, and the beasts of the field below; everything is bound up in natural magic. Even the ceremonies of the church become pagan rites, celebrating the existence of inanimate things, which the peasants endow with a soul, and the innumerable earthy divinities of the village.

[my bold]The distance between such ways of thinking and the ‘orthodox conception of agents’ is evident.

I hope this helps to outline to you my difficulties, robbo

[LBird]

DJP wrote:

LBird wrote:

Would you like to give the rest of us the benefit of your 'training', DJP, and explain how either 'individualism' or 'the concept of an individual' are 'transhistorical', as robbo203 suggests?

My expert training tells me to tell you to re-read post 48. 

Wow! And that's what 'philosophy training' gives one, eh? Boy, I'm impressed.Anyone else care to discuss robbo203's suggestion about 'transhistorical individualism', and my counter-suggestion about 'historically specific individualism'?

[LBird]

DJP wrote:

LOL You're not getting the wrong end of the stick again are you!? …. I should know I am a trained philosopher after all.Also the concept of an individual and 'individualism' is not the same thing….

Would you like to give the rest of us the benefit of your 'training', DJP, and explain how either 'individualism' or 'the concept of an individual' are 'transhistorical', as robbo203 suggests?

[LBird]

robbo203 wrote:

Perhaps I didnt make myself clear enough. What I was trying to say was that individuality has both a historical and a transhistorical aspect. Even the agricultural slave in Ancient Rome which you refer to has some sense of himself or herself as a distinct individual never mind what his or her master may think. My point being that individuation is inevitably part of a socialisation process that happens in every society and in that sense is transhistorical. Human societies are not bee colonies. Individuality does not need to be stressed in that sense; it is an emergent property of socialisation. Where it is stressed then perhaps we are talking about the historical aspect of individuality…You might want to argue that individuality is always historical in that it is always stressed – more in some societies and less in others – but that is not the same as saying individuality is entirely historical

No, I think you're making yourself clear, robbo. I just think that I disagree.I see 'individualism' as a product of a particular society, and not as any sort of 'transhistorical' factor in humans.Societies in the past didn't have the concept of 'individual' in the sense we have. Your view about agricultural slaves, it seems to me, is just transposing the way we think now onto the past.Ruling classes always try to 'eternalise' their rule, and present their ideas as 'natural'. I think that this is what happens when people view the past through the lens of our 'ruling ideas' from the present. I regard 'individualism' as historically specific. That's why Descartes' claim of 'I doubt, therefore I think; I think, therefore I am' was so revolutionary. It represented a way of thinking that was entirely new. Before that 'individuals' didn't 'think'; it was left to their 'betters' (like the pope and lords) to do that!This is why I think Anderson's words are so revealing: some humans were 'tools', to the Roman ruling class. When people are treated in a certain way, they act in that way. That is what 'socialisation' is all about.I'm reminded of ruling class ideas when I see episodes of the 60s cartoon, The Flintstones. Many people really think that in the stone age people lived just like in 60s America. Husband going to work, wife at home, couple of kids, family pet, own nuclear family home/cave, neighbours, boss at work, holidays, vacations, etc., etc.No, in the past, people thought differently, and understood themselves and their societies in very different ways to ours.That's one of the reasons that I'm a Communist: I think 'things change', and that includes ideologies.PS. I should quickly say, robbo, that I'm not accusing you of seeing The Flintstones like that! For illustrative purposes only, comrades!

[LBird]

robbo203 wrote:

The point Im trying to make is that individuality is to an extent is transhistorical in the sense that it is the outcome of an inevitable process of socialisation that occurs in all societies.

[my bold]Isn't this a contradictory statement?If a society doesn't stress 'individuality' in its socialisation processes, why should notions of 'individuality' emerge?No, I think 'individuality' is entirely historical.

Perry Anderson, Passages, pp. 24-5 wrote:

…in Roman theory, the agricultural slave was designated an instrumentum vocale, the speaking tool, one grade away from the livestock that constituted an instrumentum semi-vocale, and two from the implement which was an instrumentum mutum.

Talk about ‘calling a spade, a spade’!Spade, sheep, slave, citizen. No ‘individuality’ there. A gradation which places some humans as tools.I think you underestimate the particularity of ‘individuality’, robbo. It’s entirely an ideological and historical construct, not some biological and transhistorical truth.

[LBird]

PCES wrote:

Also, you have a point about induction. Obviously just observing statistics and not talking about where they come from or what they 'mean' is fruitless, and probably somewhat conservative. However, what we mean is that the facts should be taught…

But… the claim that 'facts should be taught' is induction.Do the 'facts' present themselves to the PCES, completely unbidden? The problem here is that 'facts' are selected for presentation by humans employing a theory, the parameters of which determine what counts as a 'fact'.

PCES wrote:

Right now a particular theory is drummed into students…

Yes, the correct method is to 'drum several theories into students'! Since theory is inescapable, students must be exposed to as many conflicting theories as possible, the better both to identify their own (which they are probably unware of, and often deny having) which they presently employ, and to allow them to explore others and thus have a choice which one they intend to employ to select 'the facts'. This builds critical faculties, both of themselves and others.

PCES wrote:

The result is that the student thinks first in terms of theory and then in terms of the real world when it should surely be the other way around.

Doh!No, everybody (not just students) thinks first in terms of theory. Those who deny this are merely ignorant of their theory. Society teaches us 'theory' by socialisation, and to leave it unexamined is a methodological error.The theory will determine what counts as 'the real world'; the other way round is our old friend 'induction'.

PCES wrote:

But obviously all of this requries a grounding in ethics, philosophy and so forth. In fact, we believe economcis should start with the study of value.

Well, I'm sure all of us here would agree… but then we're open Communists!Unless the PCES is open about its political aims (in an ideological, philosophical, methodological sense, not 'policy'), then I fear that you will go astray. Pretence is not a good starting point. There is no 'objective' position in the universe, so we must expose our stance, our relationship to our focus of study.The biggest pretence in 'economics' (sic) is that it is an 'objective' science. This notion has been dead in physics since Einstein, and the sooner the lesson spreads to the various 'social sciences', the better.Perhaps you should adjust PCES to mean 'Pre-Communist Economics Society'.We all know that won't happen because the bourgeois myth of 'objective enquiry' in academia must be maintained. It's a lie, it's always been a lie, and whilst it continues, we are prolonging the lie.The professors won't be happy unless you adhere to their stance. You'll be castigated as 'biased' and, god forbid, 'political'!Embrace the truth, and expose their ideological biases, too. Good luck!

[LBird]

ALB wrote:

but as you say:

Quote:

To start, it bears repeating that as a society we do not have political aims. We are not lobbying to get rid of central banks, overthrow capitalism, save the planet or what have you. We are not merely pushing to have “Marx and Keynes”, or any other thinker in economics, taught simply because we happen to like them.

Fair enough.

Oh no, not the eternal myth of the unbiased observer!Theory (and ideology) determine 'what we observe'. There is no privileged position in either the universe or society, for physics or economics.All university societies 'have political aims'. To deny this is already a political position. A conservative one.Not 'fair enough', ALB!

[Author]

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