robbo203
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In many ways one could say that science as we understand the term today grew out of “natural theology” or the religious study of nature which sought to identify divine purpose in the particular forms of nature. This is what the “argument from design” was about. If a watch implied the existence of a watchmaker then how could something much more complex like the human eye not presuppose God?
The argument from design was effectively demolished by Darwin but we should not overlook that much of the original impetus behind scientific discoveries on the part of generations of so called “gentleman scientists” exemplified by the likes of Derham, Paley and Gilbert White – before the era of institutionalised R & D – was driven by religious motives
So I dont think the argument is so cut and dried as is made out. Living in Andalucía, I am reminded of the role of the Muslim Moors in the historical region of Al Andalus in promoting science. Cordoba in the 10th century was the second largest city in Europe and comparatively speaking, a model of enlightenment, civic tolerance (Jews and Christians peacefully worked and lived alongside Muslims until the barbaric Christian Reconquista commenced) AND scientific progress . I read somewhere that there is a theory that the origins of the Renaissance can be traced back to Cordoba rather than the Italian city states
Religion reflects society rather than the other way round. And so does science! The notion that the practice of science is value free, objective, rational and impartial is pure nonsense. Scientists are as much prone to irrational tendencies such as confirmation biases as the rest of us and under capitalism are subject to enormous pressures to deliver results that serve the interests of the profit system, Though I wouldn’t go so far as individuals like Feyerabend in saying science is just another religion with its own high priests and holy dogmas but who can deny there is a smidgeon of truth in it? Look at the controversies surrounding COVID 19.
A healthy scepticism as far as science is concerned is definitely called for. I strongly recommend Carolyn Merchant’s wonderful book The Death of Nature: Women, Ecology, and the Scientific Revolution, published in 1980 which touches on the relationship between science and society.
Is it this one Robin?
Yes that’s one Matt. I wonder what LBird has to say about that one. He might well become and Engels fan
And for us, who aspire to build towards socialism, surely we’re better adopting a scientific ideology that stresses ‘society and nature’ as an intertwined couplet, as did Marx
As did Engels, LBird, though I note you omitted to comment on the quote I provided which sort of dents you anti-Engels bias in quite a big way, dont you think?
LBird you say:
“The bourgeoisie’s separation of ‘society and ‘nature’ was an entirely ideological step. It’s purpose was to keep ‘science’ and ‘nature’ out of the hands of democratic forces, as displayed during the English Revolution of the 1640s.Only the ruling class benefitted from this separation. To maintain it, is to support the ruling class, and separate society into two: those who know and do ‘science’, an elite minority, and those who can’t know and can’t do ‘science’, the vast majority. The role of socialists is to challenge the power of the elite, wherever it is manifested – as it is in their current version of ‘science’. “
With that in mind I wonder what you would make of Engels’ remarkable piece of environmental prose given your hostility to all things Engels:
“Thus at every step we are reminded that we by no means rule over nature like a conqueror over a foreign people, like someone standing outside nature — but that we, with flesh, blood, and brain, belong to nature, and exist in its midst, and that all our mastery of it consists in the fact that we have the advantage over all other beings of being able to know and correctly apply its laws.….in fact, with every day that passes we are learning to understand these laws more correctly and getting to know both the more immediate and the more remote consequences of our interference with the traditional course of nature. … But the more this happens, the more will men not only feel, but also know, their unity with nature, and thus the more impossible will become the senseless and antinatural idea of a contradiction between mind and matter, man and nature, soul and body. “
(The Dialectics of Nature)
Incidentally , I thought we had come to an agreement many months ago that there is bound be a degree of scientific specialisation even in a socialist society. We can’t all become nuclear physicists or brain surgeons – occupations that require many years of training to become competent in. Moreover it is not advisable that we should all even attempt this for obvious reasons – its would represent a massive waste of society’s resources
Your reference to those who know and do ‘science’, an elite minority, and those who can’t know and can’t do ‘science’, the vast majority seems to imply that we should all strive to become nuclear physicists and brain surgeons in order to avoid an elitist state of affairs where some (the elite) know more than others (the majority) in their particular fields of endeavour.
But that’s not practical is it? I dont see any problem with the idea that some individuals are bound to know much more than others in certain branches of scientific knowledge. You can call these individuals an “elite” if you like but the real issue is whether their superior knowledge will translate into power of others. I would say not at all because the fundamental characterises of a socialist society – free access to goods and services produced by the voluntary efforts of people – is what completely removes the possibility of any one group or individual exerting any leverage over another.
Also, the thing about specialists is that whilst they might be specialists in their own particular field of endeavour they are in the same position as the lay majority with respect to other fields of endeavour which have their own “specialists”. So it is a bit misleading and simplistic to talk of a scientific elite vis a vis a non scientific majority. That apart, I think a socialist society will be much more conducive to people in general taking an interest in science but there will still nevertheless be “specialists”, relatively speaking, in the various branches of scientific knowledge. That’s inevitable and frankly it doesn’t pose any problem that I can see
As an aside, I have always taken the view that an applicant to the party must agree with the Party’s case on religion, not that they must not be religious. There is a subtle difference.
I dont quite get that, Bijou – what is the subtle difference?
The Party’s case on religion amongst other things holds that anyone joining the Party must not be religious. Or I have missed something?
We will end up with this kind of nonsense being advocated. It is bad enough with closet Leninists.
I dont agree that the comparison holds at all. We have more than enough built-in safeguards in the guise of our comprehensive membership test to ensure that even individuals who held personal religious beliefs were genuine socialists. If they held closet views that were in contradiction to our basic principles that were subsequently revelated after they joined then there is a simple remedy to hand – you invite them to leave the Party or expel them
I suspect such a situation is very unlikely to arise and if it does arise we have the means to deal with it. In the meanwhile at least we might start growing again as an organisation that is quite possibly facing extinction in a few years time.
Of course people can and do change after they join the Party. Normally they resign if they do Holding atheist views is no guarantee whatsoever that they will not gravitate towards a non socialist point of view whilst in the Party. I know of at least two ex members, both devout atheists, who left the Party to become anarcho-capitalists.
Does that mean on the basis of this evidence that we should require that anyone joining should not hold atheist views? Of course not. So why do we automatically assume that people holding personal religious will not make good socialists?
Incidentally, Robbo, if your proposal is to have any chance of success I wouldn’t tie it to a head-on attack on “science” and “philosophical materialism”. That will get people’s backs up and is a separate issue
I am emphatically not attacking science or the scientific method. What I am attacking is the ridiculous nonsense that scientists – the same goes for socialists – are 100% rational and that people who believe in some deity or whatever must therefore be 100% irrational.
We are, all of us, without exception – you, me, the Pope, and Mr and Mrs Smith next door – a mix of rational and irrational. Anyone who thinks otherwise is deluding themselves
If Lucretius and those Deist bourgeois philosophers you refer to accepted our goal and our democratic method of achieving it along with our opposition to nationalism , sexism, and racism then why the hell should we not admit them? What is more important – achieving socialism and growing the movement to achieve socialism or engaging in some arcane pointless philosophical debate about the meaning of life and whether some entity called god exists?
If we were serious about wanting to achieve socialism, we would want to remove any and all obstacles in the way of growing the movement to help achieve socialism. As it is , we are turning away people who could join this movement and make good socialists and who pose no threat whatsoever to the socialist integrity of this movement. More to the point by our intransigence we are driving them into the welcoming arms of other organisations that dont share our socialist objective
So who exactly is being rational – or irrational?
“Our species cannot hope to extricate itself from its current perilous condition without engaging in rational thinking on the widest possible scale. Religion is one of the main barriers to such an expansion of rational thinking.”
The pragmatic case for amending and softening our approach to religious applicants for membership is persuasive. A sizeable chunk of applicants are rejected because they hold religious beliefs in one form or another. Typically the response on being rejected is one of dismay, particularly in the case of individuals who are very enthusiastic about what we have to say and agree with us on more or less everything else, barring the question of religion. So they drift away , never to be heard of again. By our actions, we have probably driven them into the arms of some reformist political organisation and caused them to become completely disenchanted with socialism as an objective. We have thus strengthened our political opponents.
For a tiny organisation whose numbers are shrinking this is not a rational approach to take – ironically! The above statement is based on a caricature in equating religion with irrationality and science with rationality. But every single human being on this planet, socialists included, is a mixture of rational and irrational thinking. We wouldn’t be humans if we were not. Ever since the publication of Thomas Kuhn’s work <i><b>The Structure of Scientific Revolutions</b></i> (1962), it has become impossible to seriously maintain that the practice of science is not also profoundly influenced by irrational motives
The only form of materialism that should be of any practical interest to socialists -since we are, supposedly, a practical movement, not a philosophical debating club – is historical materialism. Philosophical materialism is just academic navel-gazing. It is perfectly possible to be a historical materialist and hold religious beliefs
It is quite true though that many religions can have pernicious social effects. It is this that should be our sole concern as socialists , not the metaphysics of religion as such which is more or less irrelevant
We can address this question effectively by excluding from membership
- individuals who belong to organised religions
- individuals who subscribe to theistic notions of divine intervention in human affairs
One beneficial consequence of this is that this will encourage individuals to abandon their membership of an organised religion and so we will be able to contribute in a much more effective manner to the decline of organised religion by adopting this stipulation. As things stand, we reinforce the power of organised religion by denying religious applicants the choice of having to abandon their particular church or whatever in order to become a member of our organisation
Finally, it should be remembered that applicants have to meet multiple requirements in order to become a member of this organisation. For example , they cannot support nationalism or the principle of leadership/vanguardism. If some metaphysical belief in spiritual energy or an afterlife or whatever, seriously impacted on these core socialist principles, this would “come out in the wash”.
It all likelihood such beliefs would have zero impact on those principles of ours that really matter. So to that extent our current blanket an all religious applicants is completely superfluous and redundant
We need to focus only on what is obnoxious about religion – that is its social consequences. Arguing that it is irrational or “encourages irrationality” is completely irrelevant and springs from a bourgeois Enlightenment belief that reifies rationality and depicts human beings as fundamentally rational entities whereas the older Medieval view saw rationality as something embedded in the universe itself- the Great Chain of Being. The bourgeois Enlightenment philosophers , as it were, simply relocated or transferred this rationality into the human mind itself, thereby despiritualising Nature and reducing it to dead inert matter available for capitalist exploitation.
How ironic that a revolutionary socialist organisation should follow in the steps of the bourgeois Enlightenment philosophers in reifying “rationality”!
We can also support Richard Wolff. It is also dogmatic to accept everything that Marx and Engels wrote because on their time communes were very popular and many were created by the what Engels called the utopian socialists.
I don’t dogmatically accept everything Marx and Engels wrote -far from it – and nor do I support Richard Wolff and his views on worker coops . All I am saying is that it come across as very dogmatic to assert without even bothering to qualify your statement that coops and communes have been a “complete failure” which is factually incorrect anyway.
If they are a complete failure where does that leave us in the WSM who – if we are to be honest with ourselves – have completely failed to make significant progress in over a century of being politically active. I can’t help noticing that you conspicuously declined to answer this question
I think it would be wise to be a little less smug about ridiculing others for being a complete failure when we are not exactly a shining example of success ourselves
“Peasants communes were tested in Bolivia and Venezuela and it was a complete failure, as well, workers coop were tested in Venezuela and Bolivia and both were a total failure, and workers coop were also tried in Argentina and they failed too.”
We have to be very careful about dismissing worker coops and communes as a “complete failure” when we in the World Socialist Movement have hardly been a raging success! Or are you suggesting we too should be dismissed because we have “completely failed” to make significant progress in the 100 plus years we have been around?
Both Marx and Engels had positive things to say about worker coops and communes. Marx, for instance spoke of coops as constituting a transitional form from the “capitalist mode of production to the associated one” and how the “co-operative factories of the labourers themselves represent within the old form the first sprouts of the new” even if they reproduced “everywhere in their actual organisation all the shortcomings of the prevailing system” (Capital Vol 3)
Similarly with regard to communes Engels wrote:
“When one talks to people about socialism or communism, one very frequently finds that they entirely agree with one regarding the substance of the matter and declare communism to be a very fine thing; “but”, they then say, “it is impossible ever to put such things into practice in real life”. One encounters this objection so frequently that it seems to the writer both useful and necessary to reply to it with a few facts which are still very little known in Germany and which completely and utterly dispose of this objection. For communism, social existence and activity based on community of goods, is not only possible but has actually already been realised in many communities in America and in one place in England, with the greatest success, as we shall see.” http://marxengels.public-archive.net/en/ME0121en.html
Dogmatically dismissing coops and communes as a complete failure strikes me as being neither helpful nor even accurate. Is the giant Mondragon cooperative a “complete failure”? Clearly not. In capitalist terms it is quite successful. There have also been hundreds, if not thousands, of communes around the world that have successfully managed to continue over many years, even decades.
We need a more nuanced understanding of what “success” or “failure” means in this context. Not many people would argue that the purpose of communes or coops is to deliver socialism as we in the WSM understand the term. So the question might be better phrased – can these institutions inadvertently, if not intentionally, assist the spread of socialist ideas by providing examples of lived experiences and practices that go against the grain of capitalist convention and capitalist ideology?
I believe they can – potentially – though it doesn’t necessarily follow that they will. Our job as socialists is not to discourage workers from adopting particular lifestyle choices that they see – in many cases quite rightly in my opinion – as being more congenial than conventional wage slavery but rather to point out that they need to go beyond mere lifestyle choices if they want to bring about a fundamental change in society
Because ultimately that is what is needed insofar as no commune or coop however successful can ever really escape the consequences of operating in a capitalist society
I don’t care what people call themselves, or who they vote for. If you’re living collectively, own the means of your survival, and also provide the labour implicit in that survival .. you’re a communist/socialist as far as I’m concerned. It’s worker ownership and non-surplus productivity
Hi Headbutt
I would agree that to the extent we have to somehow survive in capitalism doing what you suggest above may well be preferable in many ways to conventional wage slavery. I would also go along with the suggestion that it is probably more conducive to developing a communist/socialist outlook
However, I dont think it necessarily follows that you are, or will become, a socialist or communist as a result. There are a wide range of different kinds of intentional communities, some with quite a different purpose or mission to others. Check out this link
Your description could also apply to peasant proprietorship which is still very significant in much of the Global South but could probably be more accurately described as pre-capitalist than post capitalist
I guess the point is that socialism or communism – synonyms as far asclassical Marxism is concerned – is a post capitalist and global system – a stateless, classless moneyless non-market alternative to capitalism. A commune might incorporate some of the features of such a system but is not really a social system as such and cannot really isolate itself from the ramifications of the social system we currently live under – global capitalism
That is not to say there is no benefit in joining a commune or whatever from a pragmatic standpoint and if this is what you have in mind then I would say go for it. However, it is not prerequisite to being a socialist or communist. The vast majority of us who are socialists or communist would fall under the category of being conventional wage slaves though I do know of one or two comrades who have lived , or are living, in communes
Regarding “worker ownership and non-surplus productivity”, if you are referring to producer coops I am rather more sceptical than I am in the case of communes. Though Marx envisaged coops (along with the joint stock company) as being a transitional form en route to a post capitalist society he nevertheless saw them as being very much constrained and limited by the economic laws of capitalism. I live in Spain which is home to what is perhaps the world’s famous cooperative – Mondragon. It has a chain of retail outlets – Eroski supermarkets (one near Malaga which I have occasionally popped into) – which are frankly indistinguishable from any other capitalist supermarket.
Mondragon seems to have steadily moved away from its founding philosophy as it has grown in size. This link might be of interest to you
https://libcom.org/library/myth-mondragon-cooperatives-politics-working-class-life-basque-town
Its a tricky argument and I think one needs to be careful about how one goes about defining terms.
Take the concept of economic growth. As explained earlier, I would argue that this concept is virtually meaningless from the standpoint of meeting human needs. If anything, economic growth detracts from the task of meeting human needs. It diverts vast quantities of human and natural resources away from meeting human needs. And it undermines our ability to sustainably meet these needs in the future because of its destructive impact on our natural environment in the form of climate change, marine pollution etc
I take it as read that all socialists are opposed to economic growth in this sense and to that extent can be called “no-growthers”. But that doesn’t mean we dont want human needs to be adequately met using the technological potential we already possess. On the contrary the argument should be that economic growth defined as increases in national GDP, gets in the way of meeting human needs for the reasons explained.
Therefore we should be very about careful not to unwittingly come across as endorsing the concept of economic growth in critiquing people like the eco-pessimists you refer to who talk about the need for individuals to reduce their carbon footprint. Their problem is that they are not looking at the matter from a social system perspective even if they pay lip service to the idea of attacking “capitalism” in some cases which really just boils down to attacking “greedy corporations” not capitalism as such.
Its not that there is not a need to reduce our carbon footprint at the level of society. For instance, a report has just been released showing that a total of 28 trillion tonnes of ice have disappeared from the surface of the Earth since 1994 which is pretty alarming https://www.msn.com/en-gb/news/uknews/earth-has-lost-28-trillion-tonnes-of-ice-in-less-than-30-years/ar-BB18gUAh But you cant begin to address the question of society’s carbon footprint unless and until you begin to address the nature of the society we live in. If environmentalists want us to reduce our consumption they should direct their comments to the super-rich, not the ordinary person in the street struggling to make a living
This is where we socialists have a role to play. But it doesn’t help if we alienate environmentalists by using the language of the capitalist growth addicts
In the 1970s we confidently proclaimed that socialism would be a world of abundance on the basis of modern technology. Since the recent advent of eco-pessimism with Greens and Christians telling us we have been consuming too much even under capitalism we have been less confident about this.
Abundance is a function of both supply and demand. Demand cannot be deemed infinite or unlimited as the economic textbooks would have it because if that were the case, abundance and, by extension, socialism, would be inherently unrealisable. We would be perpetually living in a condition of scarcity which reinforces and rationalises the continuation of capitalism. It therefore follows that as socialists we need to conceptualise demand as something limited and reasonable, a cultural construction informed by such things as concern for the environment as well as the needs of others.
Consumerism is not about workers “consuming too much” or being “paid too much”. God forbid that we should even think this in a world in which tiny handful of billionaires own as much half of the world’s population combined. Obviously I fully support militant working class trade union action to get as much as they can in the way of wages out of a system that screws them over. What they dont get the super rich parasites get in what is, after all, essentially a zero sum game
The ruling ideas are the ideas of the ruling class. Consumerism is an aspect of this ruling class ideology and is bound up with other aspects of this ideology such as our celebrity culture and the pathetic fawning over the lives of the rich and famous in trashy magazines like Hello or celebrity-oriented TV shows. So we have workers fantasising about a lifestyle of conspicuous consumption, an otherworldly existence of luxury yachts and stately homes which they will never get to see let alone savour, except perhaps on a TV screen. How often have we been told that socialism is impossible because “what if everyone wanted their own luxury yacht or Porsche car?”
In this respect consumerism is thoroughly reactionary. It focusses on the individual, not our class, and it encourages us to emotionally identify and bond with – even imitate to the extent that this is possible – the class that exploits us. By all means let us organise to take back some of the fruits of our labour stolen from us but it would be very wrong, I think, to confuse this with consumerism which means something altogether different…
My objection was to those in the North who say they want to “undevelop” here. Maybe they are only objecting to the consumerism and waste of capitalism but in that case the word “undevelop” is unfortunate as, to most people as well as me, it suggests turning the clock back in some way. The word “degrowth” is even more unfortunate as it suggests a cut in people’s personal consumption.
If “de-growth” suggests a cut in people living standards then presumably “growth” means an increase in living standards . But this does not necessarily follow. For instance “growth” in capitalist terms can mean an increase in economic inequality and, at the same time, static or declining living standards for the majority.
In the literature, “economic growth” simply means an increase in GDP as the summation of the value of all monetised activities occurring within a particular nation state and within a particular time frame. If I employed 1000 labourers to dig a giant hole and then to fill it in again, in practical terms I would have achieved nothing useful but I would nevertheless have contributed to GDP – Gross Domestic Product – and, by extension, to allegedly increasing the living standards of the population (which is measured by dividing GDP by population to arrive at a per capita figure).
However since most economic activity carried on in the formal capitalist economy is completely socially useless from the standpoint of meeting human needs – like our giant hole – and, moreover, is a massive and growing drain on the human and natural resources of the planet, the concept of “growth” and by extension, that of “living standards” is virtually meaningless from a socialist standpoint. We should not encourage the kind of thinking that goes with them
I dont think anyone here would not be in favour of “using modern technology rationally to satisfy people’s needs” but we do need to broaden our conception of needs. We need the exponential increase in the disposal of plastic waste brought about in the name of raising people’s living standards like we need a hole in the head. We should not be reluctant to say this for fear of affronting that holy cow of capitalism – the pursuit of endless growth. We should be much more vigorously unequivocal about opposing capitalist growth and in favour of human-centred approach to development that acknowledges and acts within the constraints of our physical environment
The productivist outlook of Marx and the promethean talk of “increasing the productive forces of society” belongs to the 19th century when it was at least understandable. But the productive potential for socialism has been around for at least century and we should adjust our thinking – and our language – accordingly.
What matters now, increasingly, is the demand side of supply/demand equation and we should not be seen to be inadvertently encouraging, or giving succour to, the consumerist ideology of capitalism and its existentially empty, not to say environmentally irresponsible, quest of consumption for the sake of consumption. Like the proverbial snake eating its own tail, this is not going to get us anywhere
