[robbo203]

SocialistPunk wrote:

Is the case for socialism, one of morality, cold logic or long term survival of our species?

 All of the above and for a simple reason: humans beings are multifaceted animals, not robots. 'Nuff said

[robbo203]

It looks like you are gonna have some people from the Kurdish PKK turning up at the debate!http://www.revleft.com/vb/spgb-vs-ukip-t187406/index.html?p=2730732#post2730732

[robbo203]

This debate has stirred up a shit storm over on Revleft http://www.revleft.com/vb/spgb-vs-ukip-t187406/index.html?t=187406 Ive taken the  "no platform" brigade to task  but where are members of the SPGB in this debate? The silence seems a  little odd when such an important principle is involved

[robbo203]

ALB wrote:

Merci. It says he comes from Switzerland where he was a member of a Trotskyist group and that in France he is a member of the Nouveau Parti anticapitaliste which is the current embodiment of the Ernst Mandel Trotskyists (whose equivalent in Britain would be, I suppose, "Socialist Resistance", the old IMG).Robbo, I don't think he is advocating either "militarisation" or "financialization" but merely saying that these are ways capitalism can get out of a crisis. This analysis may well be wrong but to accuse him of advocating these would be like accusing us of advocating lower real wages, devaluation of capital, etc for making the point that these are the ways that capitalism gets out of a slump.What I got out of his article was that capitalism will not collapse from some ecological crisis any more than it will from some economic crisis. As he says (using an analogy we have often used ourselves) capitalism will not commit suicide but has to be murdered. It won't die of its own accord, but has to be done to death.

 Well, I didnt want to suggest he was actually "advocating" millitarisation or financialisation and if that was the impression you got from reading what I said then, obviously, I did not express myself clearly enough.  What I was attempting to question was his suggestion, as I read it, that these things are ways in which capitalism can moderate if not exactly eliminate crises, whether of an economic or ecological nature.(Incidentally, I question your comment that "This analysis may well be wrong but to accuse him of advocating these would be like accusing us of advocating lower real wages, devaluation of capital, etc for making the point that these are the ways that capitalism gets out of a slump".  Does militarisation and financialisation play a role analogous to the lowering of real wages etc in the dynamics of specific crises? If so , how?)So, for example, Keucheyan says:Capitalism might well be capable not only of adapting to climate change but of profiting from it. One hears that the capitalist system is confronted with a double crisis: an economic one that started in 2008, and an ecological one, rendering the situation doubly perilous. But one crisis can sometimes serve to solve another.andThe financialisation of catastrophe insurance is supposed to keep budgets balanced. It remains to be seen if this is a sustainable response to the threat. But, from the point of view of the system, it may well be.andLike financialisation, militarisation is about reducing risk and creating a physical and social environment favourable to capitalist accumulation. They are a kind of "antibody" that the system secretes when a menace looms. This doesn't necessarily take the form of shocks of the sort described by Naomi Klein in her book The Shock Doctrine: it is a more gradual process that slowly takes hold of every aspect of social life(my empohasis)Keucheyan seems to be saying, unless I have seriously misread him,  that capitalism can avoid collapse because it is always capable of coming up with effective solutions on its own terms. That is what Im questioning – not his central premiss that capitalism will not collapse. I agree that capitalism will not collapse and has to be got rid of but I dont agree that capitalism is enabled to continue indefinitely and entrench itself indefinitely by the system effectively dealing with the problems that confront it.  Rather, capitalism will continue despite those problems which it will not be able to  solve by sucg means as financialisation and militarisation Which is why I commended his closing remark which seems to be at odds with the whole thrust of his argument – namelyBecause, if the system can survive, it doesn't mean that lives worth living willWhich seems to  imply  that the problems have not been solved even if the system continues

[robbo203]

It is a good article, for sure, but I wouldn't rush to the conclusion that it merits wholesale endorsement.  There are bits of it which to me sound somewhat iffy.   In particular this:"Capitalism might well be capable not only of adapting to climate change but of profiting from it. One hears that the capitalist system is confronted with a double crisis: an economic one that started in 2008, and an ecological one, rendering the situation doubly perilous. But one crisis can sometimes serve to solve another." (my bold)Keucheyan talks of capitalism responding to the challenge of the ecological crisis with two of its favourite weapons: financialisation and militarisation.As far as the latter is concerned, when I heard that I was reminded of the underconsumptionist type argument put forward by people like Tony Cliff  years ago , that capitalism in the post war era was able to stave off economic crisis by, amongst other things, increased spending on weapons.  This notwithstanding the fact that military expenditures by the state comes at a cost, the burden of which is  born by the capitalist class in the form of taxation through which the state acquires its revenue.  Tax the profit making sector of the economy too heavily and you will kill the goose that lays your golden revenue eggs. That is the basis of the argument behinbd the so called Laffer Curve (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Laffer_curve). Of course, increased military spending in the post war era fueled by the cold war did not prevent the return of economic recessions. Similarly with the ecological crisis.  The fact that "environmental parameters" greatly matter to the military does not translate into an  argument for saying that the military has a vested interest in joining with Friends of the  Earth to save the earth.  One only has to mention that the military itself has been directly instrumental in the wanton destruction of much of the ecosphere to see the absurdity of this claimThen  there's that other weapon that Keucheyan refers to:  financialisation.  There has been a lot written lately about the increasing "financialisation of capitalism" – see for example John Bellamy's article in Monthly Review on the subject  – http://monthlyreview.org/2007/04/01/the-financialization-of-capitalism – and perhaps the Socialist Standard  might one day get round to devoting a special issue to the subject. But again I fail to see the force of the argument that Keucheyan is making.  Financialisation does not avert the prospect of crises that is built into the very fabric of capitalism.  If anything it increases the vulnerabluty of the system to crises through the mechanism  of speculative bubbles . Indeed, he himself admits that financialisation is no solution to the problem of financial crisises: In times of crisis, for instance, markets will require simultaneously that wages be cut and that people keep consuming. Opening the flow of credit allows the reconciliation of these two contradictory injunctions – at least until the next financial crisis. (my bold)What Keucheyan seems to be doing is , quite correctly , making the case that capitalism will not collapse of its accord – by toying with, if not exactly embracing the argument that the system can indeed come up with solutions to the problems it faces that at least mitigate if not altogether eliminate those problems – the reformist position,  So he argues Like financialisation, militarisation is about reducing risk and creating a physical and social environment favourable to capitalist accumulation. They are a kind of "antibody" that the system secretes when a menace looms This sounds plausible in theory but what it overlooks is that, in capitalism, competing actors are locked into a kind of logic in which each by pursuing their own separate interests bring about their collective ruin.  The "tragedy of the commons" is the inevitable outcome of a system of market competition.  It is the system itself that creates the very menace against which it purportedly secretes its "antibodies"and this is the point that does not really come through in the article itself. I do agree with his closing remark, though:Because, if the system can survive, it doesn't mean that lives worth living will.

[robbo203]

twc wrote:

Carolyn Merchant, in your quote, describes a concrete social phenomenon.  If proffered as its own ineffable meaning, it is open to any interpretation you please, which possibly suits her purpose.

Hardly.  It places human agency and choice at the centre of a process in which certain ideas spread and gain ground and others die out.  Point being that ideas are "selected for" – not simply "produced".  This denotes an active creative role of human beings in history as opposed to seeing individuals as the merely the product of circumstances. It is in line with Marx's insight that men make their own history albeit out of materials not of their own choosing

twc wrote:

 Peter Stillman, in your quote, advances the brave politics of committed voluntarism through the insipid philosophy of non-committal syncretism.  No actual scientist abandons causality so quickly.  No actual human thinks that determinism really implies no free will.

Really? And there I was thinking there was  indeed a whole bunch of philosophers of  the "incompatibilist" school of thought who do indeed hold  that the one thing negates the other. Look up "incompatibilism" in moral philosophy.  My own position is a middle ground one of compatibilism or soft deteminism as opposed to the hard determinism of people like Ted Honderich.  Actually, Honderich himself believes that even the very idea of free will is meaningless and so he is not strictly an incompatilibilist.  But there are certainly others who are.  You seem here to be supporting the idea of free will in some form (as do I)  yet seem critical of voluntarism.  Which is confusing.  Do you not see a role for a kind of qualified voluntarism?

twc wrote:

Your own “there is no such thing as social being without consciousness”, though equally vapid, has the virtue of bordering on its own disproof.

Thats only because you dont understand what is at stake.  If you eased off on the macho posturing and the tiresome ad hominen line of attack of yours and engaged  more sympathetically with the arguments offered, you might learn something….My experience of debating with people on the Left has led me to conclude that a good many of them do indeed take up a perspective that I would call "mechanical materialism" – the argument that ideas are no more  than the product or "reflection"of "material reality".  So, for instance,  the spread of socialist consciousness upon which the establishment of socialism is absolutely dependent is said to arise out of class struggle rather than the dissemination of socialist ideas.  Whereas i would see it as emphatically the result of BOTH these things.  Clearly, socialist consciousness  does develop out of class struggle – after all, pivotal to the idea of socialism is the overthrow of class relations of production which presupposes our apprehension of "class" in the first place –  but equally  the development and spread of socialist consciousness is a process that rebounds or reacts back on class struggle helping to refine and strengthen it and invest it with a sense of direction and purpose.  There is no certainty whatsoever that the mere existence of an objective conflict of interest between classes will even lead to a sense of class identificaction, let alone a socialist outlook on life.  The influence of nationalist ideology , for instance, could smother such a possibility completely by encouraging individuals to see themselves as part of an entity called the "nation" rather than one called a class.  All of which attests to the importance of spreading ideas.  The seeds of a future socialist movement germinate in the soil of class struggle but they also depend on  the rain of socialist ideas to bring them to lifeI would have thought,as an SPGBer, .you would have been rather sympathetic to this line of thought. I have my criticism of the SPGB but I have never denied that the "abstact propagandism",  which is its trademark,  has an important role to play in the socialist revolution.  Something that sections of the so called revolutionary Left sneeringly  dismiss in vanguardist fashion.  Point is that that ridiculous posture of theirs is precisely the  logical outcome of their own crass mechanically  materialist view of the world

[robbo203]

twc wrote:

Crass Misreading

robbo203 wrote:

the idea that material conditions (or, if you like, the “base” in the base/superstructure model of society) “produce” or give rise to, ideas … derives from a crass misreading of the statement that it is “not consciousness that determines social being but social being that determines consciousness”.

Marx was quite familiar with your preferred non-crass reading, but you delude yourself if you think Marx could ever subscribe to it.  His materialism forbids explanation by pure immediate experience, and commits him to explanation that is mediated by abstraction from experience.

 Get your facts straight first of all.  I did not say Marx himself suggested anything other than what you say above about his "materialism".  I was not referring to Marx  but to others including self styled Marxists who see things differently. Which is precisely why I referred to the latters'  reading of the above statement as a "crass misreading" – that is, a crass misreading of what Marx himself was trying to say.  There is no such thing as social being without consciousness.  Yes, indeed, explanation is always mediated by abstraction from experience , to use your expression.  You seem to have completely missed the point I was making, havent you? I referred you earlier to Peter Stilman's peice on Marx.  Note what the relevant extract says about social being and consciousnessThe second argument for determinism, which builds on Marx’s statement about life determining consciousness, overlooks that statement’s peculiar twist. Marx engages frequently in a kind of contrapuntal statement, where he denies a left-wing Hegelian slogan and then presents his view as the reverse. But Marx’s aphorism — “It is not the consciousness of men that determines their being, but, on the contrary, their social being that determines their consciousness” — presents its assertion asymmetrically. Having denied the left-wing Hegelian stance that consciousness determines being, Marx reverses the terms but adds “social” — and “social being” is not defined but seems to be more extensive than merely forces (or forces and relations) of production and indeed as “social” likely includes consciousnessMarx’s starker statement in The German Ideology — “life is not determined by consciousness, but consciousness by life” (MER, 155) — does not add “social” but does present its own asymmetry. The left-wing Hegelians, pace Marx, think that consciousness determines life, as though consciousness were something independent of life, standing apart from it (like an individualized Geist-like spirit) and shaping it. But Marx in this section rejects the view of consciousness as independent of life (so that he goes on to reject that philosophy can be “an independent branch of knowledge”). Rather, he is trying to make consciousness a part of human life. So, when “life determines consciousness,” Marx is tautologically asserting, as part of his on-going argument, that life (a totality including consciousness) determines consciousness (because it is a part of life). As he himself writes, when we see that “life determines consciousness,” “the starting point … is real living individuals themselves, and consciousness is considered solely as their consciousness” (MER, 155). So these statements do not deny free will so much as they put human consciousness into an intimate relation with other aspects of human life.(http://marxmyths.org/peter-stillman/article.htm)

[robbo203]

DJP wrote:

LBird wrote:

It doesn't seem as if we're going to get to the bottom of Marx's quote, on this thread, now.

It's quite simple. What makes a good a commodity and possess value is not the physical characteristics of the good itself but the social relations between the producers themselves.Now we get to the question of "what is a social relation". I'd say social relations are the aggregate outcome of the actions of people in society. How people act in society depends, to a certain degree on their consciousness and their consciousness is in turn conditioned by the society they are in. Both affect each other in a co-defining relationship.There is nothing in this that leads us to abandoning physicalism (in the metaphysical sense of the word).If you think physicalism is unable to deal with relations you are wrong.

 Up to the last sentence I would go along with what you say but your last sentence is a bit iffy.  Depends what you mean by "deal with" – which I take you to mean "account for".  If, as you say, you subscribe to a non-reductive physicalism (emergence theory) then almost by definition physicalism cannot fully account for, or "deal with", social relations.  There is something in the latter that eludes a purely physicalist explanation – even if the individuals who form social relations between themselves are physical entities.Point is they are more than just physical entities.

[robbo203]

Vin Maratty wrote:

robbo203 wrote:

The point Im getting at is that we should move away from this kind of crass mechanistic notion that material conditions "produce" ideas 

It is not 'crass mechanistic' to say that a material brain is required for thinking with. 

  Thats not what I am saying at all, Vin.  No one is disputing that a brain is required for thinking.  Im talking about something quite different – the idea that material conditions (or, if you like, the "base" in the base/superstructure model of society) "produce" or give rise to, ideas .  This is what I am criticising.  It derives from a crass misreading of the statement that it is not consciousness that determines social being but social being that determines consciousness.  There has never been such a thing as social being without consciousness; consciousness is an intergal part  of our social being.

[robbo203]

Young Master Smeet wrote:

http://www.ilo.org/global/about-the-ilo/newsroom/news/WCMS_202320/lang–en/index.htm

Quote:

The number of unemployed worldwide rose by 4.2 million in 2012 to over 197 million, a 5.9 per cent unemployment rate, according to Global Employment Trends 2013.

Leaving aside the horrific poverty implied in that headline figure, and that the 6% unemployment is not evenly spread, but in some cases much higher, blighting entire cities and countries.  Further:

Quote:

The labour market situation remains particularly bleak for the world’s youth, with almost 74 million people in the 15 to 24 age group unemployed around the world – a 12.6 per cent youth unemployment rate.

Again, that average will be lumpy as well.Yet, with 1 in 20 of the available human work force in enforced idleness, we still produce all the wealth we have, we still have enough wealth, if it were adequately distributed, to feed and clothe everyone; yet the wages system demands toil for some and poverty for others.

 Actually, a more serious problem in terms of the numbers affected is that of underemployment  – particularly in the so called Third World.  This later typically takes an "involutionary" form – to use the term coined by the American cultural anthropologist Clifford Geertz  –  a downsizing or regression in the scale of one's economic activity such as is evident in the case of street hawkers in the informal retail sector in many Third World cities.  So, for instance,  instead of selling boxes of cigarettes you might perhaps sell cigarettes on an individual basis. That way you can tap even  the tiniest of markets, squeeze a sale from even the poorest of customers. The return as far as the individual is concerned is minimal but from a social point of view the waste that it entails is absolutely staggering

[robbo203]

twc wrote:

‘The inseparability of ideas and material conditions’ is deeper than you assume.It may surprise you to learn that the inseparability of thinking-and-being is common consensus among warring idealists and materialists, who nevertheless disagree over whether thinking or being determines the conjunction.

 Why should it neccesarily be one or the other? I mean how would you be able to show, for instance,  that "being" determines "thinking" when thinking or thoughts – consciousness – is always there, right at the very start? There is no such thing as being without consciousness.The point Im getting at is that we should move away from this kind of crass mechanistic notion that material conditions "produce" ideas which the base-superstructure model often, unfortunately,  seems to encourage. Actually this is a form of mysticism.  Ideas are held to be latent  in the mysterious workings of the universe and become manifest in its unfolding.  This is to strip history of any kind of creative aspect and reduce us to the role of passive onlookersA more useful model of historical materialism which acknowleges that ideas do have an influence and an internal development of their own is the one outlined by Marx when he pointed out that men make their own history  but not under conditions of their own making.  This posits the idea of material conditions as a constraint rather than a determinant.One of my favourite quotes which puts across this idea very well is from that wonderful book by Carolyn Merchant  – The Death of Nature: Women , Ecology and the Scientific Revolution:An array of ideas exists available to a given age: some of these for unarticulated  or even unconscious reasons seem plausible to individuals or social groups; others do not.  Some ideas spread; others die out.  But the direction and accumulation of social changes begin to differentiate between  among the spectrum of possibilities so that some ideas assume a more central role in the array, while others move to the periphery.  Out of this differential appeal of ideas that seem most plausible under particular social conditions, cultural transformations developThe only point I would add  to that is that the criterion of "plausibility" is itself a socio-cultural phenomenon and we should resist the temptation to impose on history the comparatively modern and eurocentric idea that individuals constitute themselves as atomistic competing units, fundamentally driven by what they perceive to be their own self interest  and by which yardstick they judge the plausibility of such ideas

[robbo203]

LBird wrote:

robbo203 wrote:

I think this whole dichotomy between ideas and matter is a false dichotomy, anyway. Im not too sure if I would go quite as far as L Bird in talking of "idealist materialism" if by "idealist" is meant the primacy of ideas over material conditions. But I think what he is getting at, and which I support, is really the inseparability of ideas and material conditions.

Just to confirm that we agree on these points, robbo.You're right, 'idealism-materialism' doesn't mean the 'primacy of ideas over material conditions'. As you say, it's 'a false dichotomy'. We could just as easily say 'materialism-idealism', again with the same caveat, that this is not 'the primacy of material conditions over ideas'.I'm merely using the phrase 'idealism-materialism' to polemically counter the myth of Marx's 'materialism'. I do this because it fits better with Marx's proper views, of 'theory and practice', or 'men make history, but not in circumstances of their own choosing', etc. That is, the 'human' is the creative element (theory), and the 'conditions' are limiting or enabling factors (practice). So, 'idealism-materialism', with no 'primacy', just necessary interaction. Or, as you say, 'the inseparability of ideas and material conditions'.

 Ok,  I see what you are saying. It was just a somewhat minor pedantic point on my part to avoid confusion by using some other phrase than "idealism-materialism" which could seem like a contradiction in terms.  But as long as we understand each other….

[robbo203]

Ed wrote:

Robbo asks "can you touch, smell, taste capitalism"I'd answer yes you can. In everything you taste, in everything you see and hear you experience the social relations of capitalism whether it is apparent or not.Is it physical? No. But can ideas manifest into physical reactions. Yes. Ideas or as I prefer and think makes it clearer knowledge (knowledge=ideas) are in themselves material conditions. Perhaps this is L Bird and I agreeing…. Perhaps what I am saying is his idealist-materialism. However where he is severely mistaken and what makes him an idealist is his belief that ideas alone create conditions rather than the other way around.Necessity is the mother of invention comrades……Not individualist geniuses

 I think you contradict yourself here, Ed.  If you agree that capitalism is not physical then how can you touch smell or taste capitalism?  What is not physical cannot be apprehended through our sense perceptions.  What you can do is infer capitalism from what it is you touch smell and taste but that is a mental process.  Yes, it depends on a brain but still it is not something reducible to the brain. Identity Theory hasnt got a leg to stand on – figuratively or literally I think this whole dichotomy between ideas and matter is a false dichotomy, anyway.  Im not too sure if I would go quite as far as L Bird in talking of "idealist materialism" if by "idealist" is meant the primacy of ideas over material conditions.  But I think what he is getting at, and which I support,  is really the inseparability of ideas and material conditions.. You dont have "material conditions" at one point in time and then "ideas" come along at the next point in time having been "produced" by said material conditions.  This is totally misleading and in fact amounts to a kind of mystical version of history in which the meaning of history is immanent and unfolding.  Ironically , the mechanical or crass materialists join hands with the pure idealists in this regard . Mechanical materialism is in fact a species of idealism in my book For as long as human beings have existed ideas have existed. Ideas have always been  there right from the start, shaping history and being shaped by history. It is not that social being determines consciousness in the strict sense of causality  but that social being incorporates consciousness.  How could we even be social without being conscious of it in some way?

[robbo203]

Vin Maratty wrote:

If you don't think society is physical then meaningful conversation is impossible. Moreover,  you are completely twisting what I am saying. I could equally say that it is you  agreeing with Thatcher by saying society doesn't exist. because it is not physical!! What other things in the world  does not have a physical existence?If I smell anything it is a rat. 

 But I ask again , Vin , how is society physical – in what sense? How ? Oh I agree that society is dependent,  or supervenes, upon physical entities called human beings – you cannot have a society without human beings –  but that is NOT the same as saying society is a physical entity.  If it was a physical entity it would share the same quality as individual human beings and thus be empirically apprehensible via sense perception along with human beings.  In short , it would be something separate from specific human beings which you can identity alongside those human beings and in the same way as you might identify other  individual physical human beings But you cannot separate society from human beings in that sense. It is the pattern of relationships that human beings develop between each other..  Therefore by a reductio ad absurdum argument society cannot be physical This is why I argue that society is an emergent property of  inrteracting human beings and why emergence theory is the only viable way of looking at things.  Society is not reducible to the constituent entities that comprise it but is not independent of those entities either.  It exerts "downward causation" as the expression goes – that is to say we as individuals are influenced  by this "thing" called society  (which is proof of the existence of this "thing").  But this  "thing" is not actually a physical thing – if it were it would exist outside of individuals and be apprehensible in just the same way as individual phyical human beings can be apprehended, which is nonsense. Nevertheless it has a quasi objective existence which is the point that Durkheim was getting at with his concept of social facts. Social facts have an objective coercive quality about them and Durkheim demonstrated this in his work "Suicide" in which he argued that certain individuals are more predisposed to commit suicide than others  depending among other things on their religious beliefs (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Suicide_%28book%29) I think the basic problem here is that you are equating objectivity with physicality when really they are not quite the same thing.  We talk about the objective laws of capitalism but they are not actually physical laws – are they? – even if they do have physical consequences and engage physical actors in the shape of you and I

[robbo203]

Vin Maratty wrote:

There is a 'society' Robbo but it is part of the physical world. Such views of ideas were rejected long before the 60s. Are you also saying that we have created 'entities' that exist independent of our social and individual physical material existence?Capitalism is an 'entity' as you call it and we entered into relationships independent of our will and created it. And we can't control it. But it is physical. It exists inside your (our) head, the socialist revolution will prove that.

 How is society "physical" , Vin?  Yes, it "depends" on physical entities – human beings  – and physical organs called brains which reside in these entities.  But  saying something depends on something else does NOT mean it takes on the quality of the latter. Saying capitalism is physical just seem ridiculous to me. Pierre Bourdieu once made the point that every society seeks  the "naturalisation of its own arbitrariness". You are talking that to the point of literal truth in the case of capitalism. How is capitalism "physical" (and how could you get rid of it if it was)? Can you taste  it, smell it , hear it , see it etc  Seems to me you are using the word physical in a manner that is actually pretty meaningless.  If everything was coloured red then red would be a pretty meaningless concept too. And how would you distinguish between capitalism and the individuals that make up capitalist society.  Individuals and their brains are indeed physical entities but the relationships between individuals?  I know capitalism stinks but it would be pushing matters to contend that this denotes a physical quality apprehensible through our sense of smell. If you can't touch , see smell taste or hear capitalism then it seems by your logic capitalism doesnt exist and we are back to Mrs Thatchers aphorism .  Which begs the question – how is it that something that does not exist – society – can have such an obvious effect on those rather strange physical entities we call human beings?

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