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Oh No — Not Philip Zimbardo also!
- BD: If anyone is interested in similar ideas, Zimbardo’s Stanford Prison Experiment and similar studies … give food for thought about authoritarianism. Don’t personally agree with Zimbardo’s take on his findings and the alternative interpretation by Erich Fromm is quite interesting, pointing out that the majority of the prison officer students did not join in the abusive processes, although they did not intervene.
When I mentioned “Stanley Milgram and his ilk” I intended to corral celebrity psychologist Philip Zimbardo alongside him. The antidote for both of them is Rutger Bregman’s Humandkind — read Bregman’s exposé of Philip Zimbardo’s fraudulence/hoax in Chapter 7.
Oh No — Not Stanley Milgram!
To dispel any illusion of Stanley Milgram and his ilk, read Human Kind: A Hopeful History by Rutger Bregman — an essential read for anyone striving to bring about a cooperative society founded upon common ownership and democratic control of the world’s resources.
From “Chapter 8. Stanley Milgram and the Shock Machine”:
- I know of no other study as cynical, as depressing and at the same time as famous as [Stanley Milgram’s] experiments at the shock machine. By the time I’d completed a few months’ research, I reckoned I’d gathered enough ammunition to settle with his legacy. For starters, there are his personal archives, recently opened to the public. It turns out that they contain quite a bit of dirty laundry.
When I heard that archival material was available, Gina Perry told me during my visit to Melbourne, ‘I was eager to look behind the scenes’ (This is the same Gina Perry who exposed the Robbers Cave Experiment as a fraud; see Chapter 7.) And so began what Perry called ‘a process of disillusionment’, culminating in a scathing book documenting her findings. What she uncovered had turned her from Milgram fan into fierce critic.
Let’s first take a look at what Perry found. Again, it’s the story of a driven psychologist chasing prestige and acclaim. A man who misled and manipulated to get the results he wanted. A man who deliberately inflicted serious distress on trusting people who only wanted to help.
- lBird. “I haven’t ‘recommended’ anything. I’ve merely assumed that … can read critically.”
When, lBird, have you ever assumed a socialist member could “read critically” except, conveniently, now when you’ve been put on the spot.
Your “helpful” 161 page defence of Popperian falsificationism (Amazon, £96.15!) is easy to understand, if you can tolerate its academicism. Yet, embarrassingly, you misunderstand it.
What hope is there for your democratically mandated universal “Truth” — scientific and aesthetic — if its isolated champion naively undermines his own position?
Well might we squirm at the implication — scientific and aesthetic — of your uninformed/misinformed vote on the mandated universal “Truth” of barely tractable problems like those of the Langlands Project, the Millennium Prize, protein folding, dark energy, ad infinitum, …
No. It is not a “philosophical” matter of us being anti-democratic over the universally mandated “Truth” of science. It is a practical matter of us accepting the implications of a society based upon common ownership and democratic control of the world’s resources.
Contrary to your defended assertions of there being an exploited “working class” in such a society, we hold that no classes are possible — there are no grounds for their existence — in a democratic society so constituted. In such a society we all work collectively and take practical decisions democratically.
But we don’t mandate the impossible — universal “Truth” — enforced by your infamous thought control.
* * *
As to the drivel about there being no scientific method…
That wasn’t Marx’s view. Rather he considered his Capital to be a scientific treatise, just as he likewise designated the works of Smith and Ricardo.
The time is well nigh for confronting Marx’s scientific method — the method of descent and ascent…
* * *
Finally, lBird, you characteristically misunderstand the Marxian quote that you lifted, context free, from marxists.org.
Here is Marx, mid flight, in 1847 talking about a still-unformed/unconscious proletariat in France that he sees as destined in the future to resolve, in practice, the theoretical [surplus value] crisis in bourgeois “political economy”. When the proletariat moves in its class interest it will realize the implications of bourgeois economic science in its revolutionary practice, and make political economy of class society impossible.
Bourgeois political economy in crisis is the science that Marx is here talking about — not science in general. Here’s the wider context…
- Just as the economists are the scientific representatives of the bourgeois class, so the Socialists and Communists are the theoreticians of the proletarian class.
- So long as the proletariat is not yet sufficiently developed to constitute itself as a class, and consequently so long as the struggle itself of the proletariat with the bourgeoisie has not yet assumed a political character, and the productive forces are not yet sufficiently developed in the bosom of the bourgeoisie itself to enable us to catch a glimpse of the material conditions necessary for the emancipation of the proletariat and for the formation of a new society, these theoreticians are merely utopians who, to meet the wants of the oppressed classes, improvise systems and go in search of a regenerating science.
- But in the measure that history moves forward, and with it the struggle of the proletariat assumes clearer outlines, they no longer need to seek science in their minds; they have only to take note of what is happening before their eyes and to become its mouthpiece.
- So long as they look for science and merely make systems, so long as they are at the beginning of the struggle, they see in poverty nothing but poverty, without seeing in it the revolutionary, subversive side, which will overthrow the old society.
- From this moment, [political economy] science, which is a product of the historical movement, has associated itself consciously with it, has ceased to be doctrinaire and has become revolutionary.
Back to Popper!
- lBird. “Furthermore, Popper has been demolished by Feyerabend, Lakatos and many others, who’ve I’ve quoted many times.”
lBird kicks an own goal.
lBird reads what he wants into his recommendation: Gunnar Andersson’s “Criticism of the History of Science”.
If he actually understood the book, he might have discovered its reactionary defence of anti-Marx “philosopher” Karl Popper’s falsificationism against the attacks on it by “Feyerabend, Lakatos and many others, who [lBird] has quoted many times.”
But instead lBird confidently commends to us ignorant socialists an academic proof that Karl Popper demolished “Feyerabend, Lakatos and many others, who [lBird] has quoted many times.”
Tragic!
Lizzie: “it’s not only votes that count but politically conscious ones at that!”
False. Your slick paraphrase garbles what I carefully wrote.
Politically conscious votes — endorsement of a political party’s cunning plan to remedy capitalism’s ills — are the ones that actually do count under capitalism.
The Socialist Party seeks only class conscious votes — the votes that count toward establishing Socialism.
That is why I carefully distinguished the necessity of the Socialist Party’s electoral integrity from the electoral duplicity of the vote-cadging rest to fabricate a false “political consciousness”, of which Lizzie is a sad casualty.
The Socialist Party seeks votes from people who agree with its Object and Declaration of Principles (https://www.worldsocialism.org/spgb/our-object-and-declaration-principles/).
The Party encourages votes that are cast consciously for Socialism, and actively discourages all other votes.
Its political integrity is an essential exemplar of the Socialism it seeks to establish.
Consequently the Party’s electoral activity is diametrically opposed to that of every other political party and candidate who inevitably find themselves in the desperate position of having to spout vote-catching political drivel about curing social ills that the Socialist Party holds to be indissoluble to the capitalist mode of production.
Lizzy’s “non-derisory” polling results for such political parties and candidates are not indicative of genuine support. They are indicative measures of the political duping of a socially ignorant electorate — which is the theme of this thread.
Lizzy’s “non-derisory” results can never be permanent attainments. The history of capitalist elections reveals them to be volatile, and capable of spiriting away as capitalism turns and twists.
Rather, it is precisely Lizzy’s “non-derisory” results that turn out to be permanently “derisory”.
Lizzy parades her brilliance before us mingled with malicious glee. Pity might be humanly acceptable but Lizzy’s sneering inhumanity merits only our pity.
“Childlike views on science”
- “If it was true that the world is spinnin’ round on its axle so quick as that, if a man started out from Calais to fly to Dover, by the time he got to England he’d find ‘imself in North America, or p’r’aps farther off still”.
Tressell paints these capitalists as buffoons. Nevertheless they are confronting the foundational contradiction of modern physics, here expressed in technical terms…
Suppose that you dropped a ball from the Leaning Tower of Pisa, about 50 metres up.
It takes 3 seconds for a ball to fall 50 m from rest (Galileo’s equations of falling bodies):
- ½ g t2 = 50 metres; or t = 3 seconds
In those 3 seconds, a spinning Earth would move about 1 km to the East (geometry of a spherical Earth of radius R):
- 2π R cosine(<Pisa’s latitude>) / 24 hours = 1 km in 3 seconds
Now the Leaning Tower is connected to the Earth.
But what about the falling ball? It is apparently unconnected to the Earth. Why doesn’t it hit the ground a kilometre to the West of the Leaning Tower?
The contradictory answers…
- because the Earth doesn’t spin — Aristotle around 300 BCE;
- because an object in “free fall” is in reality “unfree” in the sense that it inherits a spinning Earth’s [tangential and rotational] motion — Galileo reached this conclusion around 1900 years later.
Modern astronomical science had arisen out of the self-consciously anti-physical epicycles of Ptolemy and Copernicus through the proto-physical ellipses of Kepler’s planetary laws.
Galileo’s investigations laid the solid physical foundations of modern astronomy, which Newton extended to the Solar System and beyond.
Coriolis Effect
Postscript. The Earth’s rotation has a minor influence on the path of a “free falling” ball — the “Coriolis effect” — which amounts to a 6 mm deflection in a 50 m fall at the latitude of Pisa; but that is another story.
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Actually, the charity lady is Mrs M.B. Sile — imbecile.
This is satire. The lady is named, like many of Robert Tressell’s characters, for the role she plays under capitalism, here in an imbecilic charity.
- … a jumbled list of items of expenditure, subscriptions, donations, legacies, and collections, winding up with “the general summary showed a balance in hand of £178.4.6’. (They always kept a good balance in hand because of the Secretary’s salary and the rent of the offices.)
After this very explicit financial statement came the most important part of the report: “Thanks are expressed to Sir Graball D’Encloseland for a donation of 2 guineas. Mrs Grosare, 1 guinea. Mrs Starvem, Hospital tickets. Lady Slumrent, letter of admission to Convalescent Home. Mrs Knobrane, 1 guinea. Mrs M.B. Sile, 1 guinea. Mrs M.T. Head, 1 guinea. Mrs Sledging, gifts of clothing”—and so on for another quarter of a column, the whole concluding with a vote of thanks to the Secretary and an urgent appeal to the charitable public for more funds to enable the Society to continue its noble work.
Meantime, in spite of this and kindred organizations the conditions of the under-paid poverty stricken and unemployed workers remained the same. Although the people who got the grocery and coal orders, the “Nourishment”, and the cast-off clothes and boots, were very glad to have them, yet these things did far more harm than good. They humiliated, degraded and pauperized those who received them, and the existence of the societies prevented the problem being grappled with in a sane and practical manner. The people lacked the necessaries of life: the necessaries of life are produced by Work: these people were willing to work, but were prevented from doing so by the idiotic system of society which these “charitable” people are determined to do their best to perpetuate.
If the people who expect to be praised and glorified for being charitable were never to give another farthing it would be far better for the industrious poor, because then the community as a whole would be compelled to deal with the absurd and unnecessary state of affairs that exists today—millions of people living and dying in wretchedness and poverty in an age when science and machinery have made it possible to produce such an abundance of everything that everyone might enjoy plenty and comfort. If it were not for all this so-called charity the starving unemployed men all over the country would demand to be allowed to work and produce the things they are perishing for want of, instead of being—as they are now—content to wear their masters’ cast-off clothing and to eat the crumbs that fall from his table.
“Ragged trousered” is a euphemism for “ragged arsed” (= a “down-and-out”). The author’s pen name suggests the trestle on which painters stand when working overhead. The name of the protagonist, Frank Owen, hints at “utopian socialist” Robert Owen.
The most accursed nickname is reserved for Mr Hunter, the general foreman or “manager” of Rushton [= rush it on ] & Co., Builders and Decorators. Behind his back, the men call him Nimrod — “the mighty hunter [= overseer] before the Lord [=Rushton]” (Genesis 10: 8-12).
This extraordinary novel repays returning to from time to time.
Here is the Juice Media’s take on Israel & Gaza…
- Impotence of capitalist rights to life, liberty and property to solve international contradictions:
- Impotence of international capitalist law to prevent war, and its concomitant civilian targeting, civilian hostages, and national occupation.
As Marx (Capital Vol. 1) pointed out in the class struggle over the limits of the working day
- There is here, therefore, an antinomy, right against right, both equally bearing the seal of the law of exchanges. Between equal rights force decides.
Unfortunately the Juice Media, who are superb exposers of capitalist “shit-fuckery”, consider that nationalist propaganda disseminated by nationalist government and media “has been the cause of every major war this century”.
But nationalist propaganda is not a “bug” but a “feature” of capitalism. The root cause is the capitalist mode of production itself. Socialism is, as for all pressing social problems under capitalism, the only viable solution.
National anthems, even when multi-lingual, invariably call upon God’s guidance and military might. France’s La Marseillaise is one of the few secular exceptions.
The state of Oklahoma’s anthem is another exception. It was lifted straight out of the musical Oklahoma! (Rodgers and Hammerstein: Broadway 1943; movie 1955). The official anthem starts at timestamp 00:45.
When Australian Labor prime minister Gough Whitlam was removing “God Save the Queen”, he floated the possibility of Waltzing Matilda, a bush ballad about a swagman [an itinerant] who “steals” a wandering jumbuck [sheep] from a squatter [a land-grabber of Aboriginal territories for cattle stations, and who typically, in outback Queensland, finished up bound to foreign (UK) capital].
Waltzing Matilda was deemed infra dig for the official national anthem, but it fondly remained the unofficial one.
Recently, the inclusive We are Australian by the Seekers is another unofficial Australian anthem.
