LBird
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ZJW wrote: “Bijou Drains and/or Bird:
Some many years later now — I just looked up to see if Vygotsky had ever been mentioned on this forum (yes, 12 times), a question: what value do you find in him?”
I’m interested in establishing to what extent Vygotsky was following Marx’s views. I’ve tried to interest Bijou Drains in discussion about this (because I think BD probably knows more about Vygotsky than I do), but, perhaps because I think Marx’s views have to be established first, we haven’t been able to take this forward.
Perhaps if you start a new thread on ‘Marx and Vygotsky’, we might be able to establish how ‘valuable’ Vygotsky would be for us now.
Bijou Drains wrote: “A point that I am certain that my antagonist/partner in crime, L Bird would, possibly for once, support me!”
‘Possibly for once‘? I always support your use of humour in discussions, BD! Even taking the piss out of me!
In fact, I’d elect you to a higher status! [to keep mod happy, about course of this topic, and my democratic concerns regarding ‘differentiation’]
[edit] BD for the status of ‘Chief-head-the-ball’!
Bijou Drains wrote: “LB (much as I love you and your cookie ideas dearly) – Having spent many years of fruitless attempts to engage with you about your frankly bizarre ideas regarding the requirement of holding plebiscites about scientific theory, claims that you can provide no evidence of any living person supporting, ideas which you have provided no supporting evidence or citable quotations from any noted political source to back up your proposed system of universal plebiscites, claims that are based purely based on your self assertion that Marx thought this, or Marx said the other, I have given up any attempt to engage you in any rational or productive debate.”
I’m not sure why someone as bright and often as funny as you should continue to repeat the ‘straw man’ approach to political debate.
Instead of engaging with (and, if necessary, criticising) what I write, you all seem to adopt the same method as (unfortunately, as I’ve said before) Lenin and his ‘materialism’. That is, make up an position that the opponent doesn’t hold, slander the opponent with personal insults, and put forward a frankly outdated argument that convinces no-one. That’s what Lenin did in his Materialism and Emperiocriticism, and is what you’re doing now. No-one now reads Lenin’s works for political enlightenment, only for lessons of how-not-to-do politics and philosophy.
Anyone who’s followed my posts has found hundreds of ‘supporting evidence and citable quotations’, covering Marx, Engels, politics, philosophy, physics, logic, psychology, etc. These cover Kant, Labriola, Sorel, Brzozowski, Dietzgen, Bogdanov, Lukacs, Untermann, Korsch, Pannekoek, Einstein, Bohr, Schrodinger, Heisenberg, Vygotsky, Fleck, Zilsel, Kuhn, Lakatos, Feyerabend, Smolin, to name a few, and not including the many historians, because even I’m tiring of trying to reason with you with evidence.
Still, to end on a positive note, I agree that having a pint (or several), would probably turn out to be a good laugh. I always enjoy it when your more subtle sense of humour is given an outing, even when it’s directed at me.
As for the complexity of debating politics and philosophy, though, mate, you’re clearly in the right party!
Bijou Drains wrote: “Understanding sarcasm deoesn’t seem to be your strong suit does it, Birdy boy.”
And understanding that you’re being given the benefit of the doubt doesn’t seem to be yours, Drainy content!
BD wrote: “I suppose it’s because most people take your views and ideas seriously (Sarcasm alert- Sarcasm alart-Sarcasm alert!)”
I suppose it’s because I am trying to take your views and ideas seriously (Politics alert – Philosophy alert – Socialism alert!)
Is this really the low standard of political engagement that the SPGB sets itself? Piss-taking is no substitute for educated debate.
So, no political discussion about ‘Status Differentiation in a Socialist Society’, and especially the role of democracy in that differentiation?
robbo203 wrote: “To keep it simple, society is not going to vote on what I eat for breakfast or what clothes I put on when I get up in the morning, is it?”
You’re having the same problem as Bijou Drains, robbo.
The difference between ‘personal, individual consumption’ and ‘social production’.
Conflating the two is a common conservative tactic – “The Communists will force you to share your underpants!”. “The Communists will collectivise your window-boxes!”.
Bijou Drains wrote: “No doubt, in L Bird world we will have to have a full world wide plebiscite before we fall in love.”
Thanks, BD, you’ve confirmed my suspicions!
You can’t tell the difference between ‘social production’ and ‘individual emotion’!
Seriously, though, unless you address the political issue (is democratic production fundamental to a future socialist society?), then we’ll never get onto discussing Vygotsky, for example. I know that you’ve some interest in him, but we’ve never managed to discuss him and his Marxism.
robbo203 wrote: “The point about status or esteem is that it tends to reflect the values and concerns of the society in question.”
I entirely agree, robbo.
So, how does ‘society’ determine its ‘values and concerns’, if not democratically?
robbo203 wrote: “This absurd bourgeois obsession with quantifying everything, – counting heads – apart from being totally impractical, completely misses the point.”
If you regard ‘democracy’ as a ‘bourgeois obsession’, I think any study of capitalist society (and many earlier ones) would disprove your claim. Indeed, ‘democracy’ is a revolutionary obsession. As to your ‘point’, you’ll have to expand.
robbo203 wrote: “Society’s dominant values which will arise quite naturally out of the interactions of individuals…“.
But how, robbo? This political claim makes humanity passive and ‘nature’ the active subject. That is, that ‘individuals’ ‘naturally’ (ie. without political input) produce (non-political and non-ideological) ‘values’. That is, non-social values.
Once again, the focus from a contributor is upon ‘individuals’, not society (and its production, politics, ideologies and cultures).
And if ‘values’ emerge ‘naturally’, how can we change them? We are the conscious active subject, not ‘nature’. We are consciously active nature – any ‘nature’ not produced by us is, to quote Marx, a nothing for us.
Bijou Drains wrote: “I think L Bird struggles with the concept of diversity and divergency. Socialism (to my mind) is about the liberation from uniformity and Homogeneity of capitalism. I personally don’t want a McDonaldisation of society.”
And I think that BD struggles with the concept of democratic production!
Socialism (to Marx’s and my mind) is about democratic production. If BD regards ‘democracy’ as ‘MacDonaldisation’, then that says more about his ideological outlook regarding the potential of the masses.
Democracy implies ‘diversity and divergency’ – it’s supposed to be only conservatives who detest ‘democracy’ as producing ‘uniformity’ and mediocrity.
The longer I read posts written by contributors to this site, the more I realise that ‘democracy’ is seen as a threat, not a solution, by many, if not all. The problem seems to be that ‘individualism’ is valued here much more highly than ‘democratic production’, which was Marx’s fundamental political and philosophical concern.
Which is fair enough – a concern with individualism – but the party should more open about this focus, and its differences with Marx’s fundamental concerns (note BD’s continued return to the question about the ‘self’ – ‘self esteem’, the determination of ‘matter’ by an individual’s own kick, for eg.)
It’d make political discussion much more worthwhile, easy, and indeed comradely.
robbo203 wrote: “Democracy requires the practical involvement of empirical individuals making choices. Otherwise, the term is meaningless”
Yes, ‘individuals‘, collectively, not an ‘individual’, alone.
robbo203 wrote: “The only way you can acquire the esteem and respect of your fellows…” [my bold]
Perhaps this would be better phrased as ‘can be given‘, because that emphasises that the ‘active subject’ is the community, not an individual.
That is, the decision on what counts as ‘esteemable’ and ‘repectable’ is a social decision, not one that an individual can determine for themself, and impose on the passive majority.
In effect, ‘esteem and respect’ are democratically elected, not chosen by an individual.
alanjjohnstone quoted:
“Humans aren’t just pawns on a chessboard of material conditions. We’ve been actively experimenting from the get-go.”
Spot on, alan. Marx’s viewpoint. Humanity as an actively conscious subject, changing its ‘material conditions’, not merely passively reflecting them.
‘Non-fungible’ supposedly means ‘unique’.
This is a claim that we know to be untrue, as anything that humans socially reproduce, they can replicate (even if initially it seems to be difficult or impossible – perhaps the breaking of the Enigma code by Bletchley Park is a recent example of this human ability).
So, we can start from the premise that some capitalists are trying to pretend they have something ‘unique’ (and therefore, they claim, ‘valuable’, which they can sell to the unwary). ‘Non-fungible’ is a bluff.
Perhaps this article gives a glimpse of where it will all end:
ALB wrote: “This Wikipedia entry about “non-fungible tokens” throws some useful light on the subject we are discussing here.”
Links to definition: “A non-fungible token (NFT) is a unique and non-interchangeable unit of data stored on a blockchain, a form of digital ledger.”
This is a theoretical definition, of a social product within our present day capitalist society.
I think that Marx would argue that we can change both the definition and the product (the ‘token’) to suit our own interests, needs and purposes. That is, we can accept, amend or reject them, based upon our democratically-expressed views, just as we can any ‘metaverse’ that we produce.
It’s certainly possible to imagine and produce a ‘metaverse’ that is entirely helpful to humans. Or indeed otherwise, if we want damage or danger to ourselves to be part of our lives.
It should be our collective choice.
Bijou Drains wrote: “Just because a human produced their material reality…” [my bold]
Your claim is nothing to do with Marx, BD.
Marx’s views start from the assumption (which is political, philosophical and ideological) of ‘social production’, which involves ‘social individuals’. This is a fundamentally socio-historic framework, not one based upon isolated, biological individuals.
Your statement regarding ‘a human’ is based upon a mythical non-social, non-historical biological being – otherwise, you’d have to make clear the specific society and place in time in which your ‘a human’ did their ‘production’.
Bijou Drains wrote: “…there is nothing to imply that those humans can change it.”
But the whole point of Marx’s views is that he did believe that the ‘producer’ could change their ‘product’. If you don’t agree with Marx on this issue, that’s a valid point to make, but then we should discuss your differences with Marx. I, for one, agree with Marx on this issue, as it’s the whole basis of his democratic politics.
Bijou Drains wrote: “Human beings with schizophrenia have their own reality which is often very different from the reality of most other people, this does not mean that they can change their reality.”
Once again, you are starting from a isolated, socially damaged, individual, and not from a mode of production that produced them.
On the contrary, if a society produces schizophrenia in some of its social individuals, that society can change that production, and both prevent that production in the first place, and do something to help those damaged people who have been produced in the past.For Marx, the active subject who produces, is a social entity, not an isolated, biological individual. Which is why the socio-historical product ‘matter’ can’t be determined, as Dr. Johnson claimed, by simply ‘kicking it’. Johnson was a bourgeois ideologist, and wanted to encourage a non-thinking, individual biological senses’ reaction to an existing world, which can’t be changed. ‘Matter’ is the equivalent in bourgeois physics to ‘Property’ in bourgeois economics. Neither concept is meant to be under our democratic productive control.
Wez wrote: “As usual he deliberately misunderstands me. As even he must know Marx regarded socialist consciousness as the FIRST time in history where we are aware of material reality…“.
I’m not ‘misunderstanding’ you, Wez. I can read and understand exactly what you’re writing.
My objection is that your claim about Marx is not true.
For Marx, humans produce their ‘material reality’, which implies we can change it.
Humans always have done this, and always will. What’s revolutionary in Marx is that he claims that the building of socialist consciousness and its practical implementation will be the first time in history where humanity democratically controls its own production and products.
Whilst our production is not democratic, an elite minority create a ‘material reality’ which serves their interests, needs and purposes.
