Lew
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LBird: ‘Lew admits writing: “…accept maths and logic as objectively given.”’
For the third time, I wrote that in the post-capitalist future “people may decide to reject Bird’s prescription and accept maths and logic as objectively given.”
I’m finished with this nonsense. I had thought Bird had given an undertaking not to keep hijacking threads.
Lew wrote: “…must be objectively true.”
Who made this claim, Lew? I didn’t.
I made the claim, which I think the full post above makes clear.
‘Lew wrote: “…maths and logic as objectively given.”’
No, I wrote that in the post-capitalist future “people may decide to reject Bird’s prescription and accept maths and logic as objectively given.”
Once again Bird dodges the issue. For while he is happy for truth to be democratically decided in the future, what he says now must be objectively true. Otherwise what he says is meaningless. This is the paradox of the “post-truth” (or post-modernist) position.
LBird: Workers would need to discuss and decide upon which version(s) of ‘maths’ and ‘logic’ would be most suited to their own interests and purposes, before attempting to employ them
And, after due deliberation, people may decide to reject Bird’s prescription and accept maths and logic as objectively given.
LBird: Those wanting to leave ‘maths’ to the ‘experts’ are on the wrong political and philosophical road.
If only LBird would stop giving his ‘expert’ advice about what people in a post-capitalist society can and cannot do.
LBird: “No, Marx argued that humanly produced social conditions change social conditions.”
Yet again you don’t cite any evidence, and its a tautology anyway. Here is Marx:
“The mode of production of material life conditions the social, political and intellectual life process in general. It is not the consciousness of men that determines their being, but, on the contrary, their social being that determines their consciousness.”
https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1859/critique-pol-economy/preface-abs.htmLBird: He didn’t separate ‘ideas’ from ‘conditions’.
Nobody has suggested that we should or can separate ideas from conditions.
LBird: We are the active ‘changer’ of ‘conditions’; we are not the ‘passive’ recipient of ‘active’ conditions.
Again, the WSM has not argued against this, and it would be rather pointless having a WSM if we did. I think you are conflating consciousness, ideas and mind.
“For Marx though, ‘mind’ is a socio-historical product, and its production can be changed by humans, which is why socialism is possible.”
Mind, or the collection of thoughts, is a social product. Without society there is no mind. There is no such thing as a physical, a biological, or a non-social mind. The ideas, or the thoughts, of any given epoch are determined in general by the social conditions of that epoch, which also includes relics of past ideas. As these conditions change so do the ideas, over a longer or shorter time.
“I wonder why you guys still think it’s worth contesting elections in the current climate? Surely there are better, and more cost effective ways of getting publicity? Like paying for a leaflet drop when there isn’t an election for example.”
Why would it be “more cost effective” to pay for a leaflet drop when there isn’t an election than when there is an election?
Lew
Windscribe is probably the best free VPN, though it does have a data limit:
https://windscribe.com/features/use-for-free
Lew
Robbo asked ‘Where did Marx talk about the need for scientific theorising to be subject to democratic control?’
To which bird replied: ‘I’ve genuinely answered all the questions in your post, previously. You’re just ignoring what I say, so there doesn’t seem much point giving the same answers again’ (#209936)
Members of this forum shouldn’t be fooled by this bluster. I’ve asked this question before and Bird has never given an answer. Part of the problem is that he often claims to be quoting Marx but we have no way of knowing.
The nearest he has come to answering the question is in an earlier post in this thread (#209844). In answer to Robbo’s question (yet again) about where Marx said science would be put to a popular vote, Bird said:
“I believe in the ideology of ‘revolutionary science’, which, because of Marx’s politics, I assume means ‘democratic science’”.
Bird puts ‘revolutionary science’ in quotation marks as though he quoting Marx. As usual he provides no references, let alone a link. Note also that it his assumption about what Marx thought, leaving to one side the matter of whether this assumption is true.
Of all the many books on Marx, none that I’m aware of support Bird’s postmodernist notion of truth – that if enough people decide something is true, then it is true. Of course Bird may have discovered something in Marx that everybody else has missed. But until he provides that evidence we have no reason to believe what he is saying is true.
interesting youtube link for those with a younger and functional brain to mull over: https://youtu.be/06yja21V7xg
This is the person in the video:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paul_Weston_(politician)
I find the title of this thread deeply troubling. As I understand it, socialists are opposed to nationalism but we are not “anti” any nationalism in particular. For instance, we wouldn’t (I hope) say that we were anti-Scottish independence or anti-Catalan independence. That would mean socialists taking up a position as bad as the nationalists.
Since we are not “anti” any other nationalism but apparently we are “Anti-Zionist” the non-socialist observer could gain the impression that we are anti-Semitic.
Although a number of countries have claimed to have established “socialism”, none (as far as I’m aware) have claimed to have established communism. Of course some Leninists will say they have established a lower form of communism (cf State and Revolution), but this arcane distinction has not caught on in popular debate. I doubt if Musk is aware of it.
In view of this it seems odd that we have not made more of the fact that no country in the world has ever claimed to have established communism.
Buddhism is the world’s fourth largest religion, and along with other non-theistic religions, does not entail a belief in the existence of a supernatural entity that intervenes in nature and human affairs.
“It still allows them to kill Muslims. It is the age old use of all religion in secular affairs. Where ‘believers’ are manipulated.”
I’m not defending Buddhism, Matt. I think it is possibly the most objectionable of all religions. But according to that car-crash Conference resolution which you posted there is nothing objectionable in what the Myanmar Buddhists believe as they persecute the Rohingya Muslims.
“The following resolution was passed at our 2003 Conference: ‘The Socialist Party takes a non-theistic, materialist approach to things, in particular to society and social change. Religious people believe in the existence of at least one supernatural entity that intervenes in nature and human affairs.”
Buddhism is the world’s fourth largest religion, and along with other non-theistic religions, does not entail a belief in the existence of a supernatural entity that intervenes in nature and human affairs.
“Socialists hold that we live only once. Religious people believe in some afterlife. Clearly the two are incompatible.”
Clearly they are incompatible, but that assertion does not explain why they cannot be socialists.
Lew
