Thomas_More
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(Continued)
But a man has self-consciousness. We are aware [inside ourselves] of endless debates, resolutions and inhibitions, a constant stream of endless processes. We get a subjective view of the whole process, and because we consciously decide a certain way it seems that we voluntarily choose that way.
But when another person looks at you he sees you objectively. He knows that your conceit of free will won’t hold water, for he can try a few experiments and be sure of his results.
If he starts early enough, he can make you a Catholic or a Buddhist, a Nazi or a Communist.[Paragraph on theology follows]
But there is something more, of greater importance to workingmen.
The chains that bind the modern wage slave to the wheel of capital are not iron, but of more subtle stuff. They take hold upon the mind. The dominance of the few rests on the potency of deceptions, and not the least of these is the myth of “freedom.” The very breath of capitalism is freedom. Freedom to buy and sell wage labour. Freedom to contract. Freedom to pillage and destroy, and to exploit the weak. [The worker] is free to do all sorts of wonderful things – in theory. And in this catalog of catchphrases, half truths and lies, the mystery of free will is no less potent than the rest.
But the most vital argument that the socialist advances against free will is that its acceptance precludes the possibility of a science of sociology. The socialist expounds the principle of laws acting behind social causation. If man is a creature of caprice, if he thinks and acts independently of his heredity and social milieu, then the search for laws supposed to govern human history, economics and social relations is forever doomed to futility. The acceptance of free will is a flat denial of social science. Bourgeois sociology, hampered as it is in scope and application, is sterilized by its attempt to combine popular myth with scientific method.
The Marxist alone is free to uncover social laws and explain class relations without pandering to power and privilege. He is the advance agent of the future. He alone has an incentive to uproot the old decrepit illusions that block the path to mental and economic liberation. Not the least obstructive of these is the fallacy of free will, a theological conception devoid of scientific merit, destined at last to the museum of philosophic curiosities.Extracts from The Western Socialist.
By W.C. Currey.It is claimed by some persons that man has the free and absolute choice in his conduct between several possible alternatives.
That word possible deserves a little attention. Whatever one decides on and does is thereby proved possible. Whatever one does not do is manifestly impossible. It should be clear on this basis alone that whatever one does is the only conceivable “possible.” But before an action takes place it seems to us that there is a variety of possibilities. Why does a man select a particular one? Free will advocates say because he voluntarily chooses to do so.Everyone of us starts on his human career as a microscopic blob of protoplasm. Even before union, the male part is motile. Has a spermatozoon free will? The developing embryo adds new responses daily. Stimuli excite [the newborn baby] its nervous mechanism and it gives the appropriate response.
From conception to cremation the human animal continues to adjust itself to the compulsions acting on it from within and without.(Continue next message).
https://www.gutenberg.org/files/8909/8909-h/8909-h.htm#link2H_4_0018
Holbach. Scroll to chap. XI.
http://knarf.english.upenn.edu/PShelley/mabnotes.html
P.B. Shelley.
http://knarf.english.upenn.edu/Godwin/pj45.html
William Godwin.
I’ve said already that we are not just watching things play out, but are part of them.
I’ll paraphrase Sade and say to you that I am not responsible for my manner of thinking. I cannot change my manner of thinking. I cannot not be as I am. My manner of thinking has evolved with each stage of my life. It is as much part of me as are my organs.
You too cannot change your manner of thinking. Like mine, it may be changed or it may not. Either way, it will continue to be dependent on factors both external and internal. Of the latter, most are unperceived by us. Those of which we perceive their origin have come from conscious experience and learning.
It matters not to me that we hold different positions, which I believe we are bound to. What is important is that we work for socialism, although I consider you and others somewhat deficient in materialism. I will continue, in speaking of Will, to refuse the adjective Free. I will say Will, Volition, and I will continue in daily life to stop everyone who uses the adjective in mid-speech and challenge it, and explain why I challenge it.
I am confident in my materialist position. I also suggest that, if comrades believe in free will, that they drop the barrier to idealists joining the party, so as to be consistent, providing those idealists want world socialism as much as we all do. At least idealists who profess free will are not claiming to be materialists, so I don’t expect the same clarity on the point that I expect from avowed materialists.
So, let’s leave it there.
Actually, in that experiment, when the monkeys were offered a reward if they pressed the REAL electric voltage on other monkeys, they refused. But the humans obeyed when they thought they were giving other humans electric shocks.
