stuartw2112
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DJP, you're right, this is no reason to accept idealism or dualism either. Why accept or believe anything? Just keep an open mind and look and think. Or, as Alan puts it, doubt everything.
Pick a commodity up, turn it this way and that, weigh it, prod it, you'll never discover a single molecule of value. Pick up the commodity's price tag. Same thing. Look at the list of prices in the FT. Watch commodities change hands. Nope, still can't see no value. This is why we need what Marx grandly calls "the power of abstraction", or that most people would call "to think about it". (Do thoughts exist? Can't see them, can't weigh them…)The point is that what science can discover is limited or constrained by the instruments it uses to look at the world. This is obvious. It is also limited and constrained by the main instrument is uses to look at the world, which is the human nervous system itself. What limits, what constraints? It's not obvious! We have to think about it. Perhaps our thinking too is constrained, limited… then what?Or as a thing doing the rounds on Facebook points out, the existence of the rainbow depends on the conical photoreceptors in our eyes. To animals without cones, the rainbow doesn't exist. We create the rainbow! You might pity the poor animals without those receptors. But we are animals too, and what is it that we can't see? Well, just about everything! If there's one big problem with materialism, it's this: material doesn't exist. Or if it does, we're not at all sure what it is. And it moves in very mysterious ways. As LBird says, just read some science if you doubt this.
LBird is obviously right, I'm surprised people are arguing against. I'm surprised to read your argument, DJP, because I know you've read Capital, and in the very first chapter of Capital, while laying the basis for his value theory, Marx admits that "value" is very much like your invisible elephant: unobservable and intangible.
Well, if that's your view, you're welcome to it. You do know what it sounds like to a neutral observer though, don't you? It's the kind of thing people knock on your door to tell you. I just hope you don't put anything of the kind into your election broadcast, and focus instead on your criticism of capitalism and vision of the alternative.
I don’t suppose it’s possible to settle the dispute by appeal to the evidence, as I don’t suppose there is any. But my view – that a general population-wide openness to left ideas,in part created by the work of voices in the mass media, leads to openness to all left ideas more generally – seems more reasonable than yours (that about 50 people slogging away over 100 years are finally seeing the fruits of their labour). Also, didn’t the SPGB exist before the left, as defined by you, even got started? That would seem to speak against your idea that you’d be doing just fine if it wasn’t for them.
If this is a breakthrough of some kind, and I hope it is, and if you get a positive response, and I hope you do, then the people you'll have to thank are those who are starting to make a left voice credible again by making it a part of the national consciousness, particularly in the mass media. So, Owen Jones, to take probably the most important example; the late Bob Crow, to take another; and, to a much lesser extent but maybe significant extent, Left Unity. You're welcome!
Hi Robin,I did start to write a lengthy reply to your points, but reading it back I saw that we were just going round in circles and I was restating things I've already said. So I spared everyone! Our disagreements all seem to hinge on what we mean when we use such words as "reformism" and "socialism", and on what exactly we are supposed to learn from "history", eg, the recent history of the social democratic parties. I can't fit my views or my estimation of "what is to be done" within your logical framework.PS Here are Left Unity's candidates:http://leftunity.org/meet-left-unitys-local-election-candidates/Stuart
Have followed this debate with interest. I think any neutral but informed observer would have to conclude that Robin and LBird are absolutely right, and those attacking them with such vitriol are doing so because they are attached to an outdated religious dogma known as "materialism", and see any deviation from this dogma, even if it is grounded in modern science, as being some kind of heresy, to be burnt to the ground with scorn and invective. I wonder why it is that materialists need to engage in such ideological dispute anyway? What difference does it make to the mode of production if Robin is a bourgeois moralising idiot? And why do people who don't believe in morality criticise so strongly the moral failings of their opponents? Such puzzles!
PS One final final point. I've just been discussing this with a historian, and she says that you're reading history backwards from a determined (and imagined) end point. From the point of view of Paradise, history shows that reformism is a complete failure – true. But from the point of view of people who have no faith in the End Times, it must be hard or next to impossible to show that reformism has been anything other than an incredible success story – a story of a long, slow and arduous march, with many setbacks, but basically one of progress. Anyway, really am going now, pick this up next time… Cheers
Hi RobinThanks for your reply. I have read it more carefully and given it more consideration than this short reply will make it seem – sorry about that, but pressure of other (reformist!) work calls, and I'll have to leave it here for now. Perhaps we can pick the discussion up again in a month or so. All I'll say as a concluding remark is that it makes absolutely no sense to me to rule in campaigns trying to save the local hospital but rule out action on the political field that would have that result. Also that we should stop appealing to the lessons of history, since what those are clearly depends on the teacher, or perhaps on the predilections of the student. My reading of (especially recent) history is that the sleep of reformism brings forth monsters. I've yet to read a single historian who has reached anything like your or the SPGB's conclusions. TTFN
Going to have to leave this forum for a bit due to pressure of other work. Just quick reply to Alan: I'm not saying capitalism isn't a disaster for the environment – of course it is. Just that we should be careful when claiming the only options are socialism or death – it's probably not true, and most people seem to choose death! By the way, I agree with you that spiritual transformation is a necessary part of the struggle for socialism. TTFN
Vin, yes of course agree with that. The class struggle always had a moral element too though of course. Alan, good points, I owe you a reply when I have more time!
The most interesting and difficult part of the question had been missed here. It is not to be found in dead debates about 19th century philosophy, or in the question whether socialism has a moral element (obviously it does) or should be made logically (how else? Illogically?). It is whether the survival of our species hangs on the question. This is more difficult. Those who argue that strong government intervention and subsidy of alternatives are enough to sufficiently protect the environment would seem to have history on their side. If climate change is a special case the argument would have to be made. And even if it could be shown that the survival of our species hangs in the balance and socialism is the answer, there is evidence that it is not a good idea to say so – despair over our future is not a good motivator and tends to make people less rather than more likely to act. Greens in this country and gay rights campaigners in the US, for example, have both found that it pays to appeal more to people's sense of morality and fair play than it does to make reasoned scientific arguments about how doomed we are or how about unreasonable our beliefs are.
The "materialist conception of history" seems to be treated like some kind of religion round these parts – I was taken to task for "contradicting" it elsewhere, as if it were chipped into tablets of stone. No historian, not even those sympathetic to Marx, takes it all that seriously. It's a sometimes useful starting point, an interesting guide to thinking, nothing more. It tells us next to fuck all about the real problems of history and is next to no help at all in the doing of it. And, to make my last point yet again, it has nothing at all to do with the question that started this thread.
