LBird
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L. B. Neill wrote: “I said I use post modern theory- I did not say I am form my World View by it- they are just tools.”
Thanks for being honest about your ideology, L. B. At least we all know both yours and mine.
It’d be interesting and informative, though, to ask what ideology does form your ‘World View’?
The answer from me is Marx.
To be clear, Marx’s ideas form both my ‘Science View’ and my ‘World View’.
I’m not sure that there is a difference, but I’m prepared to employ your concepts to give a clear answer.
And… ‘tools’… what other ‘tools’ do you employ, then, other than ‘post structural ideas’ and ‘post modern theory’?
What are your criteria for picking up any ‘tool’, as opposed to any other ‘tool’?
Thomas More wrote: “So Wez, you must think the bourgeoisie led the revolutions in Japan, Russia and China?”
Thomas, if you haven’t already read it, you might be interested in:
Revolution from above: Military Bureaucrats and Development in Japan, Turkey, Egypt, and Peru by Ellen Kay Trimberger (1978)
L. B. Neil wrote: “I use post structural ideas…”
Yeah, that’s were we differ, I think, L. B.
I use Marx’s ideas.
There’s no problem in having differing ideologies – it’s just best, like us, to be open about our ‘theory’, which informs our practice.
We’d both agree on that, I think – that exposing one’s pre-existing assumptions, theories, concepts, methods is a fundamental part of any ‘science’, and has been since at least the late 19 century.
Ozymandias wrote: “Just a small grammatical point here. It’s You’se.
Not Youse.”
I’m afraid you’re wrong. Oz.
‘Youse’ is the plural of ‘you’.
Similar to ‘I/We’ or ‘He/They, there is ‘You/Youse’.
‘Youse’ = second person plural.
There is no apostrophe in a plural – apostrophes are used for omission or possession. It’s a common mistake, though. Often in small shops – “Apple’s for sale”, for example.
I used ‘youse’ to make it clear I was talking to more people than just twc – that is, my advice was for the whole party, not just for twc personally.
Wez, have you read The Origin of Capitalism: a longer view by Ellen Meiksins Wood?
This book is my preferred argument about the origins of capitalism in England. I think that she’d disagree with Hill’s:
“By “feudalism” I mean a form of society in which agriculture is the basis of economy and in which political power is monopolised by a class of landowners. The mass of the population consists of dependent peasants subsisting on the produce of their family holdings. The landowners are maintained by the rent paid by the peasants, which might be in the form of food or labour, as in early days, or (by the sixteenth century) in money.” [my bold]
According to EMW, by the 16th century, England wasn’t ‘feudal’, but already capitalist. The capitalist landowners took rent off tenants, who weren’t ‘peasants’ (who controlled their land, as in France), but ‘farmers’ (who rented their land temporarily from its controllers).
I’m afraid that you’ve come too late to the discussion, twc.
By about 200 years, sadly.
If this response seems harsh to other readers, I’ve tried very hard many times in the past to engage with twc, but his ‘materialist’ ideology really is a religious belief.
But, here’s a ‘why’ for you, and all the other ‘materialists’:
When attempting to discuss ‘science’, why do ‘materialists’ never mention social production, democracy, class, Marx, politics, socialism, proletariat, philosophy, history, society, etc., etc…?
You’re not here to defend any of those, are youse?
You’re here to defend ‘Science’.
Youse should really change the name of your party to the Scientific Party of Great Britain. It would be far more accurate about your fundamental concern.
ALB wrote: “Did you notice what he just said —that human activity meets “resistance” ? What from? Surely not from what some people might call “matter” ie the world independent of humans and their activity?”
Let’s hope that now the constant lying is clear to all.
‘Matter’, as I’ve explained, is not ‘resistance’. The difference has just been explained – ‘matter’ is supposedly ‘independent of activity’, whereas ‘resistance’ is ‘dependent upon activity’.
These are clearly two entirely different concepts. If ALB wants to choose ‘matter’, he’s entirely free to do so, and be open about this choice. But what ALB actually does is set out to confuse others reading, so that they think ‘matter’ and ‘resistance’ are synonymous, and attribute this to Marxists. Beware the materialists.
ALB will never explain how there can be a ‘world independent of humans’.
Marx argued that any world we know is a social product of our activity. So, its ‘existence’ is a product of our activity. We externalise (Marx: ‘entausserung’) our nature.
By ‘independent’, materialists mean ‘outside of one’s brain‘. ALB’s ‘active subject’ is a ‘biological individual’.
By ‘dependent’, Marxists mean ‘produced by humans’ – of course, this ‘social product’ is outside of a biological brain! BUT… it’s not ‘independent’ of human conscious activity… otherwise, we wouldn’t ‘know it’.
‘Matter’ is a concept within bourgeois physics which parallels ‘Private Property’ within bourgeois economics. Both concepts are meant to remove the need to query just who creates these ‘things’.
‘Matter’ simply supposedly pre-exists its social creator… ‘Private Property’ simply supposedly pre-exists its social creator. Clever, elite, individuals simply ‘stumble’ upon ‘matter’ and ‘private property’, both supposedly just sitting there, passively awaiting the first bright bourgeois who ‘discovers’ them.
Robinsonades, Marx called these asocial, ahistorical ‘individuals’…
ALB wrote: “The difference between us and our feathered friend is that he denies this. He argues that “our mental/material world” is entirely constructed by the human social mind out of nothing”
Once again, I have to intervene in the lies told by ‘materialists’.
Three here.
This is not what ‘divides us’. What ‘divides us’ is democracy. ALB, being a ‘materialist’, will not have a democratic method in science. ALB wants an elite to determine ‘science’, which he regards as a non-political, non-social, non-historical activity.
The second is his lie that Marxists argue “that our mental/material world” is entirely constructed by the human social mind”
Marxists argue “that our mental/material world” is entirely constructed by” human social activity, social theory and practice. Materialists always divide ‘theory’ from ‘activity’ in their false accusations. They wish the uninitiated to think Marxists are ‘idealists’, concerned only with ‘mind’. It is a lie. Workers beware the lies of the materialists.
Third lie: “out of nothing“.
Marxists argue that ‘activity’ creates ‘resistance’. These are two sides of the same coin. There can’t be ‘resistance’ without ‘activity’, and ‘activity’ meets its ‘resistance’.
Our world is our creation, created by our social theory and practice, as our social activity meets its resistance, and we produce from this social activity.
I’ve asked ALB to read Bogdanov, who comes closest to Marx in his understanding of ‘activity/resistance’ – but ALB prefers Bogdanov’s arch-enemy, Lenin, and his ‘materialism’.
Any comrades reading this discussion, and interested to understand – please ask questions about Marx, rather than simply accepting the lies of the ‘materialists’. The ‘materialists’ constantly rewrite what they want Marxists to have said, rather than address what Marxists actually write. Lenin is the archetype of this method.
Bijou Drains wrote: “…the sensory nature of human existance, one which you continuously and studiously ignore…”
Right, BD, I’ll give you the benefit of the doubt (reluctantly), and try once more.
I’ve never, ever ‘ignored’ ‘human existence’ – this is either a mistake by you (you haven’t actually read what I’ve written) or a lie by you (you have read, and have decided, like Lenin and all materialists, to slander their democratic opponents). To be comradely, I’ll assume that you’re simply mistaken.
‘Human existence’ is not ‘sensory’ – this suggest a passive humanity, which simply ‘takes in’ ‘what exists’ supposedly ‘outside of itself’.
Marx, just like all the other thinkers within his early life, education and development, regarded ‘humanity’ as active.
That’s why Marx’s central (fundamental?) concept is ‘Labour‘.
This ‘labour’ is not blokes with rolled-up shirt sleeves digging a ditch, but an eternal condition of humanity – if one ‘touches matter’, one is engaging in ‘labour’; if one writes the ‘Principia’, one engages in ‘labour’; if one posits ‘singularity’, one engages in ‘labour’.
‘Labour’ is conscious social activity which produces social products (whether widgets or concepts, ditches or algorithms, kids or gods) – it is nothing whatsoever to do with ‘matter’ or ‘material things’, meaning ‘stuff I can touch’ (and since last time you deliberately ignored my ‘etc.’), ‘see, sniff, hear or taste’.
Now, if you want to stick with 18th century ideology about the ‘sensory’, fair enough, but at least be open enough to declare your ideology. It’s nothing whatsoever to do with Marx, and if you reject Marx, again, fair enough, but, again, say so.
You’re a hopeless devotee of bourgeois science, BD, as are all ‘materialists’.
Marx wasn’t, though. He was a democrat.
L. B. Neill wrote: “We are social beings. We socially construct our mental/material world. We put that construct into practice. Call it social constructivism/ social constructionism.”
Yes, I agree with this, and this could also be called, to make Marx’s contribution clear, social productionism.
Since we humans are the creators of any ‘reality’ that we know, this ‘reality’ is ‘reality-for-us‘. There isn’t a ‘reality’ that we don’t know, which can simply become apparent without our active, conscious, production. Whatever is meant by this unknown reality, it is, according to Marx, a ‘nothing for us’.
But…
L. B. Neill wrote: “…what you see is my reality… So it is matter for me…” [my bold]
Once again, L. B., you contradict yourself (perhaps another ‘logical loop’?) – to be consistent, you’d have to write “…what you see is our reality… So it is matter for us…“.
L. B. Neill wrote: “You see LBird, I agree with you- we are taught to know matter”
Yes, I think that we do, perhaps with some definitional aspects about ‘the active subject’ to be discussed, fundamentally agree.
This social agreement, I believe, can provide the basis of a ‘revolutionary science’ (Marx), a ‘science’ that is fundamentally democratic, and thus suitable for the proletariat in its building for a future democratic socialist society.
You’ll have to read about the physics (or any science) yourself, BD.
I’ve given up trying to reason with those who will not engage in faithful discussion. I’m tired of my arguments being altered, and then the lie being used as a basis for further ‘discussion’. It’s the same method as Lenin employed, and I’ve realised that I’m wasting my time with non-democratic materialists.
Hopefully, if you read what I write further in this discussion with L. B. Neill, then your questions will be answered, even if not to your ideological liking.
L. B. Neill wrote: “Look, I know matter is matter.”
I’m sure that you’re aware that this is precisely what ALB, Bijou Drains, and all ‘materialists’ claim: the primacy of ‘I’, in determining whether ‘matter’ exists of not. So, it is ‘matter-for-me’.
L. B. Neill wrote: “A rock does not tell me it is a rock- my socially informed construct tells me it is a rock.”
But this contradicts your earlier claim. The first claim is that a non-social, non-historical ‘I’ knows ‘matter’.
As it is, I agree with your latter claim. Neither ‘rocks’ nor ‘matter’ talk to us, as biological individuals.
I also agree with Marx, that we are social individuals (not merely biological individuals, sense-impression takers) who are conscious, and that consciousness is a socio-historical product.
If Marx is correct, we should be able to give a socio-historical account of the emergence of ‘matter’, who created it, and why they created it. And if it was created socio-historically, we should be able to give a socio-historical account of its disappearance, of its falling out of ‘existence-for’ a social subject.
We can, of course, give such an account.
Put simply ‘one’ only ‘knows matter’, because ‘one’ has been taught to ‘know matter’.
We can change this teaching, and introduce theories and concepts suitable for the building of a democratic socialist society, where humanity as a whole determines its own ‘reality’.
Or, as for the ‘materialists’, we can leave this power to create our reality in the hands of an elite. But this would divide society into two, as Marx famously warned.
L. B. Neill wrote: “I would prefer a parrot, looking at me square on, challenged my statement- or else it all becomes… immaterial!
Matter has no voice until our thinking gives it so… and yet… it still hurts when you stub your toe on it.
Keep the debate active!!!”
I’m always willing to debate the difference between Marx and ‘materialists’, L. B. Neill. I just hope we can keep it to the issues involved, and stop the personal attacks, which, especially since Lenin, seem to be part and parcel of the elite materialist response to their democratic critics.
Your notion of ‘matter’ being related to ‘stubbing one’s toes on it’, reflects Bijou Drain’s earlier stance. This means that you both regard the ‘active subject’ as a ‘biological individual’. For youse, the determinant of ‘matter’ is a ‘biological individual’s physical experience and opinion’.
But for Marx (and necessarily for democratic socialists), the ‘active subject’ is a ‘social producer’. This is not an ‘individual’, but socio-historical group of humans, and within democratic socialism, humanity.
The key political question is: ‘who (or what) has the power to determine ‘matter’?‘
The ‘materialists’ deliberately pretend that it is a question of ‘biological individuals’ and their ‘touch’ (or any other sense), and pretend that this is the basis of the social activity of ‘physics’. Clearly, it isn’t, because physics (and maths, etc.) are not based upon ‘touch’ (etc.) but upon, as Marx said, social theory and practice. ‘Physics’ is under the political control of an elite, and materialists wish to retain this elite control (otherwise, they would accept democratic voting within physics, and the democratic determination of ‘truth’).
This, again, is what Marx said: the materialists will divide society into two: an elite who allegedly know a ‘matter’ which pre-exists the conscious activity of humanity in producing its knowledge, and a mass who remain ignorant, and can’t be allowed to vote on whether ‘matter’ should ‘exist’ or not.
As we all know, ‘matter’ no longer exists in contemporary physics, since the elite have moved onto ‘mass’ and ‘energy’. There are other alternatives, too.
The key political question for democratic socialists is: how can the determination of the content of our world be determined and changed by an elite, if we hope to build democratic socialist society? Change must be under democratic control.
Our world is the socio-historical product of conscious human activity, and thus we can change it.
ALB wrote: “We don’t often have controversial discussions here but we should, as that’s one of the reasons the forum is for. Most are with our feathered friend but after 5 years of discussing with a parrot this has become rather predictable and boring.”
‘Controversies’ are for those who can think critically, ALB. I suspect that you think that youse ‘don’t often have’ them for good reasons. Reiteration of outdated beliefs is religious thought.
Rather better to be thought, by a materialist, to be a ‘predictable and boring parrot‘, than to be a ‘predictable and boring rock‘. At least the parrot has consciousness.
Good luck with ‘matter’, my pre-Marx, 18th century revivalist.
