LBird
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alanjjohnstone wrote: “But look through forum archives when the definition we sometimes use “according to self-defined needs” was challenged on the grounds that it will be society as a whole and not individuals which will decide free access.”
Yeah, ‘self’ refers to the ‘subject’ that creates, and the creating subject for Marx was humanity (ie. ‘social individuals’, not ‘biological individuals’ as for bourgeois ideology), and any ‘defining’ by the creating subject must be democratic.
Within democratic communism, ‘self-defined needs’ will be determined democratically.
Anyone who wants ‘individuals’ defining their own isolated needs for themselves, should stick to the system of ‘social production’ most suited to that ideology, ie. capitalism.
‘Freedom’ in any sphere is a social, not an individual, definition. And all definitions are always social, because definitions are a social product.
ALB wrote: “Yes, and what they mean by scarcity isn’t the normal meaning, i.e a shortage of something, but the non-existence of “sheer abundance” (of everything growing on trees). So, for them, “scarcity” will always exist with some form of market system the best way to deal with it.”
This is quite possibly the single most important ideological lesson for democratic communists to take note of – the meaning of ‘scarcity’.
The critical challenge to this ‘normal meaning’ is a lesson in challenging other ‘normal meanings’ throughout any discussions with bourgeois ideologists, including within physics, maths or logic, and not just ‘economics’.
‘Definitions’ are a critical battleground, prior to the content of any discussion.
David David wrote: “In Short, what is definition of economics by Karl Marx?”
I think that the shortest and most accurate answer is ‘social production’.
But this covers much more than the narrow bourgeois discipline of ‘economics’, or ‘the market’, and involves ‘social production’ in its widest meaning, covering both ‘stuff’ and ideas, and being inherently political, involving democracy if we are talking about ‘social production’ within communism (unlike ‘economics’, which pretends to be ‘non-political’ and ‘non-ideological’).
Matthew Culbert earlier wrote: “Your fear of technocratic, scientific or bureaucratic specialists forming into ‘elites’ is way off the mark, as specialists will be themselves part of society, not some privileged section,but also subject to recallable delegation, in such cases say, where they move from local into regional bodies.”
Matthew Culbert later wrote: “He seems to have a problem accepting, just because it is a <b>classless, commonly owned</b> society, that there are <b>no elite</b> interests will form <b>over</b> the people.”
Perhaps it’s better for me to clarify what I regard as the problem, because I think Matthew is missing my political point.
Both of your statements are focused on a socialist society that’s come into existence, and as far as that goes, I agree, rather than disagree (as you seem to be suggesting) with the points you’re making.
My criticism involves the social process of building that socialist society – that is, the process of production (by us now) rather than the product as an ideal.
Because I agree with Marx’s method of ‘theory and practice’, I think that if we have a theory, which we put into practice, then the product will be shaped by the theory which is put into practice.
To get to my key political point, if the theory that we espouse, now, in our efforts to build for a democratic socialism (of the sort embodied in your statements above), does not contain the theoretical seeds of democratic socialism, then we are going to find it impossible to build a democratic socialism. The society we build will reflect the theory we base our efforts upon.
It’s my political, philosophical and ideological opinion that ‘materialism’ (of the sort put forward by Engels, and taken forward by Kautsky, Plekhanov and Lenin) does not contain the seeds of your socialism outlined in your quotes, above.
As an example, your political characterisation of ‘specialists’ as ‘recallable delegates’ (which I agree with politically) would mean that the ‘specialists’ would do as they are told by their democratic delegators (which I would charaterise as the SPGB’s notion of ‘generalists’). That is, it’s the generalists who would be giving the specialists the aims, purposes, interests, theories, concepts, and methods of the generalists. There would not be (and could not be) specialists who themselves tell the rest of us what aims, purposes, interests, theories, concepts and methods are suitable for building our ‘better world’.
This political power, though, goes against everything that the bourgeois have said about their ‘science’ for 300 years, and their ideological argument that ‘The World’, ‘The Universe’, ‘Real Reality’, etc. already exists, and so can’t be changed. The prizefighters of the bourgeoisie (economists, physicists, mathematicians, etc.) insist that they are all simply dealing with ‘reality’, which ‘exists’ and can’t be changed, and simply ‘discovering’ ‘what exists’, already. And they claim to have a politically-neutral ‘scientific’ method, which, if it does exist, can clearly be employed by ‘specialists’, an elite, outside of the social control of the masses, the ‘generalists’.
Our political problem is that ‘materialism’ is precisely an ideology required to maintain these political beliefs in a disinterested, non-ideological, politically-neutral body of ‘specialists’, who themselves determine their aims, purposes, …etc, and it argues that to do otherwise (ie, what you and I are suggesting, ‘recallable delegates’ in all academic fields) would be to destroy the very foundations of science.
I can sum all of this up by saying that, unless our ‘theory’ is from the start conducive to our hoped-for practice and product, then the outcome, socialism, will not be of the sort that is outlined in your political statements, which I agree with.
‘Materialism’ is not that ‘theory’. Our ‘theory’ must be democratic from the outset.
Matthew Culbert wrote: “Of course truth will exist, but it would be in context of its being a live changing one, subject to interrogation and reinterpretation, in light of new knowledge and challenging of its veracity and not some absolute entity, which is impossible in any case.
Your fear of technocratic, scientific or bureaucratic specialists forming into ‘elites’ is way off the mark, as specialists will be themselves part of society, not some privileged section,but also subject to recallable delegation, in such cases say, where they move from local into regional bodies.
I think there will be much more educated interrogation of any findings and resource allocation will be a democratic process which will be surely allowing for some degree of ephemeral or speculative or research largesse on the part of allocations.”
It’s a shame that you haven’t been party to these discussions regularly over the past few years, Matthew, because there’s little to politically disagree with, in your post, (other than your characterisation of my personal ‘fear’, but we can let that lie, because the political content of the post).
Certainly, your post provides an excellent basis for further political discussion, if you’ve a mind to continue. I must say, a breath of fresh air! 🙂
Matthew Culbert wrote: “who will control truth production within socialism?‘.
No one and everyone. ‘Truth’ production is only a part of a manufacturing process in a class society surely?”
Thanks for your straightforward answer, Matthew.
I partially agree, in that ‘everyone’ will control truth production within socialism – but… how could ‘no one’ control truth production? This would suggest that ‘truth’ produces itself, if there is no active human agent involved in the process. You would have to give a political explanation of ‘what’ and ‘how’ this ‘non-one produced truth’ emerges for humans, and why humanity must remain passive in this process.
Your latter statement seems to suggest that ‘truth’ is only manufactured within class society – but wouldn’t ‘truth’ exist within socialism? Surely we’d democratically manufacture ‘truth’ to our interests, aims, and purposes, using our democratic science?
The real political problem underlying the ideology that ‘truth’ produces itself, or that ‘truth’ won’t exist in the future, is that that would leave the field of ‘truth production’ (because it must be socially produced) open to an elite – who’ll surely claim, of course, that they aren’t actively doing this, but simply ‘discovering’ it, which will mean that their elite interests will be served by their political control of the process.
Marx’s emphasis was upon social production, by an active humanity, by democratic methods, that can change its products. This political and ideological stance, which I agree with, would be undone by an ideology that suggested ‘truth’ simply sits outside of humanity (which would thus remain passive), or that an elite, according to its own interests, using undemocratic methods, is the part of society to do this social production. Plus, any change in ‘truth’ would not be under our political control. I’m sure that none of these political beliefs would have satisfied Marx, and they certainly don’t satisfy me.
If I’ve misunderstood your post, please correct me.
alanjjohnstone wrote: “And we will continue to let you ask and pose those questions and to say we have never engaged…just how many members and how many times have we answered…you may disregard what we say, but don’t say we have never engaged with you in discussion.”
Well, I’d be obliged, alan, if you could point me to the political answer to the political question ‘who will control truth production within socialism?‘.
No-one has ever engaged, no-one has ever answered…
As you say, I can continue to ask, and the SPGB can continue to ignore, but I think that I’m justified in saying that youse have never engaged in a political discussion.
Abuse, ignorance and quips, maybe, but never political answers.
Bijou Drains wrote: “I think you’ll find that that’s your perception of the truth.”
No, mate, it’s not ‘my’ anything.
I’m asking a political question about ‘truth’. This is what I keep trying to explain (and I’ve said this dozens of times), but for some reason I’m failing to persuade youse to engage in a political discussion about ‘power’ and who determines what is ‘truth’, and how.
Why a political discussion on the site of a political party (and one that claims to be interested in socialism) turns to considerations of ‘individual perception’, rather than about ‘politics’ (social power and social ideologies), mystifies me. Well, it did originally, but I’ve come to realise that ‘individualism’ seems to be dominant here.
These are ontological and epistemological questions, about ‘who determines’ what ‘truth’ means (and thus, who will determine this within any democratic socialist society of the future). There must be a better ‘official’ party answer, than blaming ‘individuals’, or even turning to the bible for succour. There are a number of theories of truth, and as a democratic I’m interested whether the SPGB espouses a ‘democratic theory of truth production’ – apparently not.
I can’t make any of youse give a political answer to these political questions, but it makes one wonder what’s the point of the party having a site online, but not engaging in critical political discussion.
What’s more, your last quip, I entirely agree with – ‘dialectics’ is simple ‘bullshit baffles brains’ – an old army saying! 😛
ALB wrote: “There is an amusing story in the christian part of the bible. Jesus is brought before the Roman Governor, Pontius Pilate, and tells him “I am the truth”. Pilate replies “What is the truth?” and asks the crowd outside to vote on it. They decide that the truth is that Jesus is not the truth. Which actually happened to be true, though not because they voted that it was.”
So the SPGB is quoting the bible, in response to political questions about democracy within socialism?
This just gets better! 😛
Brian wrote: “…he’s concluded the specialists by definition constitute an elite.”
Well, in political terms, Brian, ‘an elite’ is precisely what ‘specialists’ are.
Unless you are prepared to state that the decisions of the ‘specialists’ will be subject to the democratic control of ‘generalists’ – that is, that ‘generalists’ as a political force know better about any ‘specialism’ than do the ‘specialists’. This means that the assumptions, aims, theories, methods and practices of the ‘specialists’ will be dictated by the ‘generalists’.
If you disagree with this democratic belief in the power of the ‘generalists’, all well and good – but then announce that clearly, that there will be an elite within your version of ‘socialism’ that will be outside of our democratic control.
It’s odd that the SPGB has come out in force to defend, not ‘democracy’, not ‘socialism’, not ‘producers’, but… ‘Science’, and its elite.
I suspect that it’s the ‘Science’ in the non-Marxist term ‘Scientific Socialism’ that attracts the sort of thinkers who join the SPGB. If there’s a clash between ‘socialism’ and ‘science’, it’s the ‘science’ that takes precedence.
It’s clear from any attempt to argue for Marx’s ‘democratic socialism’ (because in any contest between a supposedly ahistoric, asocial ‘science’ and ‘democracy’, Marx’s ideas favour the ‘democracy’) that it is always met by Engelsist ‘materialists’ who regard this ‘social productionism’ as ‘post-modernism’.
The SPGB is defending elite bourgeois science, not democratic socialism.
This should give the membership pause for thought… that you’re not defending ‘democracy’… but it seems that your ideology is preventing you from seeing the political problems that you cannot answer, never mind solve.
Bijou Drains wrote: “Ironic thing is that L Bird proposes this system where the whole would vote on what is truth…”
The real irony is that Bijou considers himself to be democrat, but won’t tell us which elite would produce truth, and how they would do it within socialism, without the participation of the democratic producers.
No-one in the SPGB seems prepared to answer this question. Again, ironic, for a party with a reputation for democracy.
And, it’s a answer that would differentiate the SPGB from the Leninists – if it were different to Lenin’s, that is.
alanjjohnstone wrote: “The material conditions and situation will eventually determine the actual practice of any idea or theory.”
This is where we all came in, mate! 😛
You still can’t explain how ‘material conditions’ determine human ideas or theories.
Because you can’t explain this (and it is not possible to, because it’s not true), so your belief is based upon faith, not any current ‘science’.
Two things, really:
- Bourgeois ‘science’ has moved on since the 18th century heyday of ‘matter determining humans’, which meant that humans were clockwork.
- Marx clearly believed that ‘social production’ was at the heart of what determines any human ‘idea and theory’, not ‘matter’. If ‘matter determines’, we couldn’t change whatever matter determined, and Marx put ‘change’ at the heart of his philosophy.
No-one who examines these issues any more, looks to ‘materialism’ – even the bourgeoisie have replaced that dead ideology. The supposed ‘socialists’ who adhere to Engels’ ‘materialism’ are dying out, because it’s been thoroughly discredited in the eyes of anyone who takes an interest in these issues. Of course, those who either don’t or can’t (allegedly) take an interest in philosophy, will be left to live out their lives, left behind by the developments of the 20th century (never mind the 21st!).
Don’t you think that your party’s inability to engage with me in a political and philosophical discussion tells you something about why your party is dying out? I, for one, take no pleasure in saying this – the SPGB’s emphasis on ‘democratic’ methods, as opposed to Leninist Central Committee diktats, should be a breath of fresh air, to new, young, workers trying to find out about socialism. Unfortunately, as I’ve discovered, your ‘democracy’ doesn’t extend any further than that of Lenin’s Materialism and Empirio-Criticism of 1908, because you’d agree with every word of that completely anti-democratic, elite philosophy. And any worker who wants democracy to be at the heart of any politics that they get involved in, will be repulsed by ‘materialism’, not least because the present education system is more critical than ‘materialists’ can handle, and workers having been educated since 1900 have access to books.
And don’t forget, I’m not opposed to you and the SPGB on principle – I’m a Democratic Communist and influenced by Marx, but the ‘Marx’ I read clearly isn’t the one that SPGB supporters read (if they do even read Marx and Engels, which sometimes, I very much doubt).
Whilst you’re waiting for ‘material conditions’ to ‘determine’ humanity’s ‘idea or theory’, the world will pass you by. As for your novel concept of ‘actual practice’… that must be opposed to ‘human practice’, because, as Marx argued, humans employ ‘theory and practice’ – that is, ‘actual theory and practice’, to use your bizarre formulation.
How did Marx’s ideas, about ‘active humanity’ socially producing its own ‘better world’, deteriorate into ‘matter determining’ a passive humanity faced by an unchangeable ‘real world in itself’?
I’ll let you guess just who started that bandwagon rolling – one clue: he had no idea what Marx’s unified ‘idealist-materialist’ philosophical views were, and his name begins with an ‘E’.
Well… a second – his method was ‘practice and theory’, which is yours too, alan. Apparently.
alanjjohnstone wrote: “… determine what we produce without me understanding or participating in all the ins and outs of the process…I’m well use to the ignorance of the majority everytime …”
alan, don’t you think that these statements are contradictory? Apparently, your ignorance about the workings of social production within socialism you deem will be acceptable, whereas you condemn this within capitalism, where it’s entirely explicable. Surely being ‘without understanding or participation’ is precisely what we are fighting in the present mode of social production?
alanjjohnstone wrote: “But what I get irritated by is Lbird often critiques us for not exercising democracy – workers democracy. He sort of claims that we are akin to the technocrats, placing ourselves above our fellow-workers as an elite, imposing our opinions and power upon fellow-workers. Yes, there is a fundamental difference in the knowledge held by a Socialist Party member and all other fellow-workers and it does have an effect.
We possess class consciousness and we do view the world around us in all its manifestations very differently from some one who has not acquired this awareness, which we describe as being a materialist. I’m not going to enter too much into the different philosophical interpretations of the term and prefer its broader meaning of social evolution.
I plead guilty to having a deeper political and economic insight into my life and the lives of family friands and neighbours.” [my bold]
You’re completely right here alan, I do claim that your political stance is elitist – look at the first pair of statements that you made.
And I think that you’re wrong about there being a ‘fundamental difference’ between the SPGB and ‘all fellow workers’ – the sorts of political arguments that are being made here display identical forms of political consciousness with ‘the man in the street’ – ‘materialism’ is the 18th century philosophy that permeates our society, and just like them, you don’t (and won’t) think ‘too much’ about your ideology, which reflects ruling class interests, as we’d expect.
I’m afraid your ‘insight’ is non-existent, in comparison to many outside the SPGB, ordinary workers who do take an interest in these political and philosophical issues, and many are not even socialists. Shouldn’t that be worrying, that it’s not ‘socialists’ within our class that are at the cutting edge of critical thinking about ‘insight’?
alanjjohnstone wrote: “It keeps resulting in strong disagreements and usually I am the one who is accused of holding fanciful ideas and not reflecting the way things are in the “real” world. But contrary to accusation, I am a democrat, I do not enforce minority views on the majority. I rely upon education and persuasion. I do take upon that role of teacher. Another important difference. Yet I desist from exercising any role of leadership, demanding they follow.
If someone wants to go on believing the sun goes around the earth – so be it, he or she can, if so wished. But I will not be trusting them to be an astronomer. Nor entrusting my health in the hands of someone who advocates homeopathic cures. I will decide such decisions. And hopefully there will be a democratic structure about how such professions admit and approve entrants.
This is what I learned in the Socialist Party where I happily absorbed ideas from my mentors, sometimes somewhat reluctantly. I am still on a learning curve”
These statements show to me that you still haven’t learned that these discussions are about ‘social power’, that is, ‘politics’.
You still seem to think that it’s about you, as an individual ‘I’, making your decisions, alone, and having to be wary of ‘dodgy individuals’, like ‘flat-earthers’.
I don’t understand how within socialism, you think there will be ‘individuals’ with such powers. The notions of ‘science’ will have been decided by all of us, democratically, and will be changed, if needed, democratically – by discussion, debate, disagreement and decision-making. In this political context, how will there be anyone with the power to socially produce and teach ‘geocentric’ cosmology, if we’ve put that to bed (in a scientific sense)? Furthermore, if, in the future, it is scientifically proven (ie. by democratic socialist science) that we do live in a geocentric planetary system, how could you continue to believe, against all evidence, all scientific opinion, that ‘we go round the sun’? Think about that for a moment – that’s all bourgeois science does now, tells us ‘The Truth’, and most simply passively accept this ‘Truth’, without ever digging into it – much like you propose doing in socialism, if your statement earlier is recounted. The difference is socialism will be that the determination of whether ‘heliocentric’ or ‘geocentric’ will be decided by us all, by our scientific methods. No-one will be believing the current bourgeois myth that ‘Science Knows Reality’ – they’ll have been critically educated to follow Marx’s lead, and ‘Doubt Everything’, and know that we humans socially produce ‘our reality’, a ‘reality-for-us’ that we can change, if it suits our aims, purposes and needs. They’ll know that there isn’t an elite with a ‘special consciousness’ that is denied to the majority of us.
If ‘science’ within socialism isn’t democratic, and a social activity within which everyone participates, what will everyone be doing? If socialism isn’t the active participation by all in their social production, what is it?
Sometimes, I get the feeling that posters here regard socialism as the realisation of the bourgeois ideological aim of ‘freeing individuals from society’, where everyone ‘does just as they feel like, all the time’. But there will be social imperatives upon us, as long as humans exist (as Marx made plain), so we can never escape, as the US survivalists hope to do, the participation in ‘Society’, seen as an oppressor of ‘individual freedom’.
As I said to robbo earlier, the more we deepen these conversations, the more we clarify just what we mean by ‘socialism’, the more I feel justified in pressing these political issues about ‘the social production and control of science’, because it clarifies for me, at least, my political differences with the SPGB. I must admit, the key issue for me is ‘democracy’, and I had thought that most members/sympathisers would share this concern, but most seem to be more animated, like you, with ‘individual power’. To me, this is a bourgeois myth, and look to Marx’s concept of the ‘social individual’, who is a collective producer, not a ‘free individual’ outside of political society.
Politics, eh?
robbo203 wrote: “LBird , though I oppose your idea that the truth has to be electable for the reasons given it does not follow that I conceive of truth as being outside of social production or that it is unchanging”
No it doesn’t, and I was only suggesting that it was an option for you to argue that.
But… if you’re now agreeing that ‘truth is socially produced’, and that ‘truth does change’…
…’who’ do you regard as ‘the social producers’, ‘how’ do they ‘change truth’?
In a political sense, since ‘production’ is powerful, and the ‘power to make change’ is a political power, who should have the social control of these powers?
At least I always give a clear political answer: in socialism, the only acceptable ‘social power’ is the ‘social producers’ themselves, and the only acceptable method of ‘political control’ is ‘democracy’.
If you disagree with these political statements, about ‘who’ and ‘how’, you need to give a clear political answer as to your position, rather than, when I attempt to give a reasonable guess, just state that ‘it does not follow’.
For you, what does follow these political questions about socialism? If ‘truth is not electable’ (which means that the social producers would have no collective say about its production), who would be the producer of ‘truth’, and what (obviously, if not democratic) elite method would they employ?
Once again, to be clear, I’m asking a political question, about power within socialism (and indeed, within any workers’ movement within capitalism, as it prefigured the socialism it was attempting to build).
robbo203 wrote: “I will grant (as I have above) that the purpose of science has to be under democratic control but truth? No I cant see any rhyme or reason for that at all (unless you mean by this something quite different that has completely escaped me). ”
First of all, robbo, thanks for engaging with the real political questions. I’m glad we seem to have put behind us the misapprehension that ignorant brutes will conduct surgery, if these political questions are asked of ‘experts’.
Perhaps the political importance of ‘the social production of truth’ has completely escaped you, as you seem to suggest is possible.
The political issue is, if truth isn’t under democratic control, whose control is it under?
You’re entitled, of course, to argue that ‘truth’ is something outside of social production, and that this ‘truth’ doesn’t have a history (which would imply that ‘truth’ changes), and that, outside of democratic control, there is an elite who can access this unchanging ‘truth’, because they have a method which is politically neutral.
But… if you were to argue this about ‘truth’ (that it isn’t a social product, that it doesn’t change with society and over time, and only an elite can tell the rest of us what is the ‘truth’ on any issue)… then not only wouldn’t it be Marx’s view (which you might put to one side, if you’re not a Marxist), but it would mean that you would have to ignore what we know, and have done for over a hundred years, that ‘truth’ changes, that the bourgeois elite who claimed to ‘know Truth’ were shown to be wrong within their own physics, maths and logic at the end of the nineteenth century, and you would have to champion the ‘elite science’, which has got the world into the mess that we’re all in now.
The ‘rhyme or reason’ for this is the issue of ‘democratic control of production’. As far as I’m aware, that’s the very definition of socialism.
I’m tempted to think that our political disagreements are more profound than simply the issue of ‘science’, but are tied up in our differing conceptions of ‘democratic socialism’. I have to say (and I think this applies to some other posters, too), that I think that ‘socialism’ is about ‘how we socially produce’, whereas for you ‘socialism’ is about individuals and their ‘freedom’.
These aren’t mutually exclusive, of course, but I’d want to build a democratic society which can realise ‘individual freedom’, which doesn’t currently exist. That means, any workers’ movement building towards ‘socialism’ would have to discuss both what ‘individual freedom’ is (it isn’t as obvious as bourgeois, ruling class ideology currently makes out) and how we would socially produce it (it won’t simply ‘exist’ or ‘happen’).
In a nutshell, I’m interested in the ‘building process’ (and any ‘science’ which will be a key part of that process). Whatever ‘socialism’ will be, it will be as different from the current capitalist society as that was from what preceded it. I think that you make too many assumptions that much of capitalist ideology (and here of course I include ‘science’) will simply be carried over into your form of ‘socialism’. On the contrary, I expect a revolutionising of our world, including its ‘thought’.
