robbo203
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LBird wrote:And whether the social product of the proletariat's theory and practice is 'true' or not, can only be decided by the producers themselves. Often, a 'knowledge product' of 'science' can be 'true' in one historical era (or decade!) and 'false' in another, so its status can only be determined by a vote. Only the producers can change the status of a socio-historical product.Is this Marxist, class-based, democratic, social productionist model of the 'scientific method' the one that you, too, argue for?
Apart from your stupid impractical and utterly pointless idea of billions of people voting on the truth of tens of thousands scientific theories there is not much I would disagree with in the "idealist-materialist" approach you outline as I've made clear countless times. Indeed I was pushing this argument on this forum long before you first appeared on this forum.The fact that scientific knowledge is socially produced does not in any way validate your crackpot theory of voting on scientific theories. There are lots things that are "socially produced" that we dont need to vote upon, The sewage system in Shanghai is a social prodict but does that mean the citizens of Upper Volta or Guinea Bissau have a vested interest in voting on the precise configuration of this system. Of course not I keep on saying this but you still haven't got your head around this basic point that democracy is about practical decisions that impact on our lives. It is NOT about theories or whether they are truthful or not. What is true for one person may not be for another and a vote is not going to alter that fact in any way. So why are you so obsessed with the idea of a voting on the truth of a scientific theory, eh? But my main point is this and I note you have studiously evaded it – you are NOT an idealist materialist . You are an idealist and nothing more since you clearly believe matter cannot exist outside of human beings perception of it and consequently nothing existed before human beings appeared on the scene. Your whole argument is totally opposed to the "idealism materialism" you claim to espouse and as such is totally opposed to everything Marx wrote on the matter as well.
LBird wrote:Matt wrote:Quit the games and answer the question. It is bad enough posts aren't trimmed and we have to read all this.Yeah, robbo and YMS, "quit the games and answer the question"!Tell us what your social theory and practice is. What is your ideology and method?Good 'intervention', Matt! They don't like 'intervention', the 'materialists'!
Matt's riposte was directed at you LBird in case you hadnt realised this. My philosopy is what you call "idealism-materialism" since I hold that science is never value free and that the facts are always selected in accordance with our preexisting theories. Your philosopy on the other hand is pure idealism and opposed to everything Marx wrote. You seriously maintain that the material world cannot exist without human perception so that prior to the evolution of human beings, nothing existed according to you. There was not, nor could there ever be, anything called matter. Galaxies and black holes never existed before we came along. The dinasours are simply a creation of our own imagination and never actually existed. The fossil record must a complete fraud according to your line of idealist thinking. You have far more in common with a Jehovah Witness than a Marxist, LBird
ALB wrote:It could only denote a "proto class". Anyway, I'm searching for what Engels actually did say.Here's how the section on 'The Emergence of Class Society' in Chapter 3 of our Ecology and Socialism pamphlet speculates on how class society might have arisen from another once purely technical social role, storing surpluses once agricultural evolved (rather than defence):Quote:The existence of a common store becomes another aspect of the society's material conditions of production and requires a social arrangement for managing this store – collecting and redistributing the surpluses. The usual arrangement seems to have been to confer this responsibility on a particular family. Arguments can go on as to whether being given this responsibility made the head of the family concerned "the chief" or whether this responsibility was conferred on a family whose head had already acquired this status for other reasons – perhaps military or religious. But the fact remains that this role of collecting and redistributing surpluses was one that had to be filled if all the members of the society were to be able to meet their basic needs as of right.The Emergence Of Class Society It is easy to imagine how over time this coordinating role in distribution could become a source of privileged consumption for the chief and his family. The duty to contribute any surplus products to the common storehouse could become a duty to contribute this to the chief, and the chief and his family could come to consume an excessive amount of the stores at the expense of redistributing them to those in need. This tendency for what was originally a necessary technical function to evolve into a social privilege would have been even more pronounced when the technical coordinating role concerned production rather than simply distribution, as was the case when large-scale irrigation works had to be managed so that agriculture could be practised. This was what happened with the agriculture that was practised, for instance, in the Nile, Euphrates and other river valleys.Yes, the argument that the technical coordination of large scale irrigation projects gave rise to the state is one that Wittfogel put forward in his account of "hydraulic civilisations" in riverine enviroments such as the ones you cite. In this case the technical role of overssing the project evolved into a social role in which the overseers – typically a priestly caste with a knowlege of such things as astonomy – emerged as a ruling class. At what point did the state emerge in this process of social transformation, though? Regarding the storage of food surpluses there is an interestung article here. http://www.pnas.org/content/106/27/10966.full This paxssage is of particular interest: Third, excavations at Dhra′ indicate that the granaries were located in extramural locations between other buildings. Elsewhere Kuijt (11) argues that starting at 10,500 cal B.P. food storage starts to be located inside houses, and that by 9,500 cal B.P. dedicated storage rooms appear in Neolithic villages. These data may reflect evolving systems of ownership and property, with PPNA granaries being used and owned communally with later food storage systems becoming part of household or individual based systems. Fourth, these sophisticated storage systems with subfloor ventilation are a precocious development that precedes the emergence of almost all of the other elements of the Near Eastern Neolithic package—domestication, large-scale sedentary communities, and the entrenchment of some degree of social differentiation Food storage is an essential development for food production, sedentism and farming, and represents a major evolutionary threshold for human civilization (12). Archaeologists have only recently started to document food storage among cultures before the appearance fully developed agro-pastoralist economies, and assess whether, when, or even if, people were able to regularly store food beyond their annual consumption needs, including banking grain to overcome spoilage, and to provide seed for planting and potential years of crop failure. In some cases storage necessitates, or is necessary for, changes in social systems, invoked both in increasing corporate activities and for the development of hierarchical structures. Storage also represents a critical form of risk management and economic intensification
LBird wrote:robbo203 wrote:LBird wrote:robbo203 wrote:I can read perfectly well LBird. Stop playing games . Refer me to your alleged answer to the question I posed above. I genuinely cannot find your answer amongst the the tons of stuff you have written. Where is it?Yes, robbo, at the bottom of the snake, in box 42.
What are you on about. Post number 42 on this thread is by Capitalist Pig, not you. Can toy kindly copy and paste your response to my question
Snakes and ladders is a 'game', robbo.And '42' is the answer to life, the universe and everything.I'm playing a 'game', just like you, robbo.
I see. So in response to a serious question all you can offer is a puerile retort like this. So you lied through your teeth about having answered my question – didnt you LBird? – and you prefer to display your elitist contempt for others by mocking the questions they ask you in good faith. By all means continue playing your silly "game", LBird, At least now we know never to take you seriously ever again
LBird wrote:robbo203 wrote:I can read perfectly well LBird. Stop playing games . Refer me to your alleged answer to the question I posed above. I genuinely cannot find your answer amongst the the tons of stuff you have written. Where is it?Yes, robbo, at the bottom of the snake, in box 42.
What are you on about. Post number 42 on this thread is by Capitalist Pig, not you. Can toy kindly copy and paste your response to my question
LBird wrote:robbo203 wrote:LBird wrote:robbo203 wrote:LBird is hiding his pure idealist ideology which puts him at odds with "idealism-materialism" by refusing to explain what existed prior to the evolution of human consciousness …You'll have to read the answer that I've already given, robbo.You might not like it, but it's there.When you show that you understand my answer (not 'agree with', but just understand), we can continue to discuss these epistemological issues.We're not getting anywhere by you ignoring (or, worse, failing to understand) what I write.I'm happy to help – try to understand the various claims for the 'subject-object' relationship. I follow Marx on his view of this relationship. I don't hide my ideology.
But you havent provided an answer to the question I posed – what existed before human consciousness evolved if not matter? If you have provided an answer show me where it is . Copy and paste it here for all to see!
If you can't read and understand the first time, a second won't help.You'll have to read for yourself. I can't read for you.
I can read perfectly well LBird. Stop playing games . Refer me to your alleged answer to the question I posed above. I genuinely cannot find your answer amongst the the tons of stuff you have written. Where is it?
LBird wrote:robbo203 wrote:LBird is hiding his pure idealist ideology which puts him at odds with "idealism-materialism" by refusing to explain what existed prior to the evolution of human consciousness …You'll have to read the answer that I've already given, robbo.You might not like it, but it's there.When you show that you understand my answer (not 'agree with', but just understand), we can continue to discuss these epistemological issues.We're not getting anywhere by you ignoring (or, worse, failing to understand) what I write.I'm happy to help – try to understand the various claims for the 'subject-object' relationship. I follow Marx on his view of this relationship. I don't hide my ideology.
But you havent provided an answer to the question I posed – what existed before human consciousness evolved if not matter? If you have provided an answer show me where it is . Copy and paste it here for all to see!
ALB wrote:Your link to Pearce's article doesn't seem to work. This (hopefully) does:https://www.marxists.org/archive/pearce/2002/xx/asiaticmode.htmlI wonder if Engels was just making a point about a situation which eventually led on to the evolution of a state (as, presumably, armed bodies of men over and above the rest of society at the service of some minority)Problem is, though, that this "minority" surely denotes the existence of class society so that in this formulation, it would be class division that leads to, or precedes, the state. The classic MCH position, if you like According to Pearce, however, Engels himself seems to have accepted “that the state arose in primitive-communist society, before any division into classes, because of the need for defence . In other words, the state preceded class division. This is the basic problem I'm referring to. Which of these positions is correct or is it a case of both being inextricably linked and part of the same process? If so, what are the theoretical implications of this for the MCH itself and its base-superstructure model of society?
LBird wrote:'Materialism' hides a complete contempt for the masses, and it is fundamentally undemocratic, and thus anti-socialist.Why are you hiding your ideology and method? What have you to fear from telling workers your theory and practice?LBird is hiding his pure idealist ideology which puts him at odds with "idealism-materialism" by refusing to explain what existed prior to the evolution of human consciousness and our ability to perceive, if not matter which he has confidently asserted on this forum cannot exist apart from our human perceptions and is thus nothing more than a manifestation of our human perceptionsI think everyone basically accepts on this forum that there is no such thing as a "value free science" and so would comfortably fit in with Lbirds' epithet, "idealism- materialism". The oddball in this debate is LBird himself who is NOT an "idealist materialist" but an idealist, pure and simple
gnome wrote:robbo203 wrote:Twford John wrote:By the way, Jim D'Arcy bought Head Office, and he wasn't making a 'capital investment'.I maybe wrong about this but I vaguely recall in Barltrop's book The Monument which I read years ago that it was an elderly female comrade in Edinburgh with a cat called Karl Marx who put down the money for 52 Clapham High St!
It seems that Frank Offord also contributed in some way although it's not entirely clear who actually put down the money to enable the party to acquire the premises.
Socialist Standard wrote:Frank Offord was Party auditor for a number of years, and was one of the back room boys of the Party. Some of his early life had been spent in China, and he wrote and spoke on various aspects of the conditions there. Together with the late Ted Kersley, he was the mainspring of the New Premises Committee, and it was he who discovered our present Head Office at 52 Clapham High Street. When the lease at Rugby Chambers expired it was this Committee that organised the move, much of the expense of which was paid by Frank out of his own pocket. It was he who introduced films to be used in conjunction with socialist lectures. Ill-health prevented him in the last few years from carrying on any Party activity.Interesting. So who was the elderly woman from Edinbugh then – the one who lived with Karl Marx (the cat, that is)?
Twford John wrote:By the way, Jim D'Arcy bought Head Office, and he wasn't making a 'capital investment'.I maybe wrong about this but I vaguely recall in Barltrop's book The Monument which I read years ago that it was an elderly female comrade in Edinburgh with a cat called Karl Marx who put down the money for 52 Clapham High St!
LBird wrote:robbo203 wrote:Im still waiting for LBird's answer. Why is he so coy about providing an answer?You'll have to read my answer, robbo, as opposed to ignoring it, and substituting your own terms for Marx's.
Where is your answer? It does not appear to be on this forum. Can you refer me to your post explaining what existed before human consciousness evolved, if not matter (given that you have openly stated that matter could not exist independently of our ability to perceive it,)
robbo203 wrote:Since LBird has claimed that matter does NOT have an existence independent of our perception of it, I would be interested to know whether LBird believes anything at all existed before the evolution of human consciousness and our ability to perceive. If LBird seriously believes that this could not possibly be matter since matter could not exist independently of our ability to perceive it, could he please explain what exactly it was that existed prior to our existence as a species, if not matter? I await his answer with bated breath (sarcasm alert)Im still waiting for LBird's answer. Why is he so coy about providing an answer?
Since LBird has claimed that matter does NOT have an existence independent of our perception of it, I would be interested to know whether LBird believes anything at all existed before the evolution of human consciousness and our ability to perceive. If LBird seriously believes that this could not possibly be matter since matter could not exist independently of our ability to perceive it, could he please explain what exactly it was that existed prior to our existence as a species, if not matter? I await his answer with bated breath (sarcasm alert)
LBird wrote:robbo203 wrote:For example, in response to Tim's question " Do you believe that matter has an existence independent of your perception of it?", LBird confidently asserted that it does not. Now clearly this is nonsense. Presumably LBird accepts that before human beings evolved on this planet or indeed before life and living things appeared, there was matter. So in a formal sense obviously matter exists independently of our perception of it.'Matter' is obviously speaking directly to robbo, here.robbo clearly states that 'matter exists independently'.So, he clearly arguing, unlike Marx, that 'matter is not a social product'.
You are very muddled LBird. Youve not really grasped the point at all and you misread Marx completely. When Marx talks of matter being a social product he is referring to our apprehension of matter. Meaning we cannot understand matter in a purely objective sense. Our understanding of matter is conditioned by our preconception of it. It is in this special sense only that Marx suggests matter is not independent of us. He is referring to the concept of matter, how we grasp it, intellectually speaking. Marx is definitely not saying, as you are, that matter itself does not exist outside of the ideas we hold about matter – only that we can never understand or grasp matter outside of these ideas which are themselves socially produced. What you are claiming is a ludicrous distortion of Marx. In effect you are saying that before human beings existed and entertained thoughts about matter, there was no matter and you are atrributing this view – laughably – to Marx! TWC is right. You are a straightforward Berkelean idealist, not an "idealist materialist"
