twc
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MBellamare wrote:I will comment on creative-power…Much of what is going on [in our ‘post-modern’ capitalist society] is transpiring outside or beyond the Marxist definition labor-power and the law of value (to me, that’s the problem in a nutshell).
That’s how capitalist society appears to everyone: price and profit motivate everything; value and surplus-value motivate nothing, and the theory of capital is inapplicable in our ‘post-whatever’ society.It’s no different from how capitalist society showed itself to Marx himself, although he refused to adopt the vulgar criterion of l’art pompier and mistake the appearance, or sign of the beast, for the beast itself.Capitalist economics is the ‘science’ that revels in the capitalist world of appearance.There you’ll discover your own ‘novel’ perception enshrined in two of its three commandments, namely that (1) human behavior is driven by perceived outcomes, which (2) motivate profit maximizing.Capitalist economics quantifies the “unquantifiable”, because it faithfully mirrors what its quantifying practitioners actually manage to do in practice, and they are perfectly capable of transforming anything into a desirable possession that can be price-tagged and traded for profit.In capitalist economics — a ‘science’ effectively written by the diarists of capitalist practice — you’ll find your own ‘novel’ creative-power conceived as a quantifiable ‘commodity’ called intellectual capital, and codified as human, structural and relational capital.The sign on the beast may read “unquantifiable”, but the profit-seeking capitalist estimates it and sells it nonetheless.The sole activity left for a critic trapped inside the capitalist conceptual world, is to protest loudly over the perceived ‘injustice’ and ‘immorality’ of established market practice that has long since been enshrined as ‘just’ and ‘moral’.The real answer emerges from Marx’s Capital, but that requires a lengthier article. For the meantime, read the Wikipedia entry on “Fictitious Capital”.
Alan, I respect your intention.However, I write in conformance with our Declaration of Principles in pursuit of our Object.I embrace Clause 7, and do not embrace “alleged labour or avowedly capitalist” opponents.It is impossible for a Socialist to “resolve” [= get mutual agreement on] Socialism with someone who disagrees with our Declaration of Principles and Object.It is impossible to demand that others will always “follow and understand discussion”, even with personal effort.In honouring your intention, I submit to the Forum moderator in conformance with Forum rules. In return I expect not to chafe under personal micromanagement in an open Forum.
Michel Luc Bellemare wrote:The SPGB Forum claims that structural-anarchism economics is linked to the currency-crank economists who believe that value can be created out of thin-air by the central banks, etc.I claim it is founded on the same ground as Marxist economics, namely, labor-power, or “more specifically and more broadly speaking” upon creative-power.[twc: Consequently he is actually claiming that it is founded on different grounds from Marxist economics]The ruling enterprising-networks of capitalism establish values, prices and wages arbitrarily.[twc: Consequently he is actually claiming that the central banks, etc. create value out of thin air].So Michel Luc Bellemare rebuts the SPGB Forum by affirming the SPGB Forum!Such blindspot delusion betrays the crank who neither detects nor prevents himself contradicting himself to save himself.Bellemare wants to base economics, “more broadly” than Marx, upon creative-power.The virtue of creative-power as value is that it is unquantifiable. It is value that has no value, that lacks value, that is valueless.As a foundation for comprehending a social mode of production, nebulous creative-power is indistinguishable from “central banking thin-air”. It cannot support a social system in the way that quantifiably expended labour-power is inescapably condemned by natural necessity to. At most creative-power can only found non-economics.Any imaginative talent can create the fiction it seeks, by any means he/she “theoretically” desires, upon the rock-solid [sic] foundation of valueless value.The appropriate way for any talent to proceed “theoretically” with the rarefied thin-air of creative-power is by expending equally rarefied hot-air on it — the vaporific literary drivel that Marx spent his entire scientific life opposing.Forget Bellemare’s vapid creative-power for unravelling the complexities and the constraints upon the capitalist class’s carve up of the surplus-value it extracts from the working class.Let Bellemare first demonstrate that he can tackle some difficult economic problem and provide a uniquely creative-power based non-obvious solution.Until then his unquantifiable creative-power “economics” rightly languishes as a virginal fantasy — pristinely crank economics grounded in its author’s creative imagination.
Michel Luc Bellemare Ph.d wrote:Consequently, in the end, it is the ruling enterprising-networks of capitalism that, arbitrarily, establish values [sic], prices and wages.“Consequently, in the end,” it is Michel Luc Bellemare Ph.d who proves Structural-Anarchism Economics is currency crank economics in which value not only “can be created” — as the mere average run-of-the-mill currency crank asserts— but “actually is created”, arbitrarily, by the “ruling enterprising-networks of capitalism” — e.g., the central banks!
A clue to the intended end-of-the-19th-century “socialist party” is given by the author’s attack on 19th century “socialist” Robert Cunninghame Graham.Cunninghame Graham’s political career and his close associations with radicals (Morris, Shaw, Hardie, Burns, Besant, Eleanor Marx, …), writers (Conrad, Shaw, Chesterton, …), artists (Rothenstein, Whistler, …) are summarised: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Bontine_Cunninghame_GrahamBefore getting to the intended “socialist party”, it’s hard not to notice that the article appeared in Marx’s old US newspaper, the New York Daily Tribune, that was founded in the 1840s by Horace Greeley and was edited, in Marx's era, by Charles Dana (who, in the 1840s, supported Proudhon’s crank mutualist-banking scheme which Marx, and history, demolished, but which still rises today).The article makes mildly interesting reading today, a century after the Boer War, and a quarter of a century after the collapse of white political rule in Southern Africa.Basically, the writer is condemning Cunninghame Graham’s pro-Boer, anti-British stance over the Boer War, and [his perceived implication] that the US should intervene militarily on the side of the Boers.Byron Farwell, in “Taking Sides in the Boer War”, exposes the political dilemma posed by any US military intervention for Boer independence: http://www.americanheritage.com/content/taking-sides-boer-war
Farwell wrote:“The [US] administration’s position was understandable. It would have been hypocritical indeed for the American government to side with the Boers fighting for their independence from Britain while at the same time continuing to hunt down and kill Filipinos who were fighting for their independence from us. The situations in South Africa and the Philippines were embarrassingly similar.”Cunninghame Graham’s friend, the novelist, Joseph Conrad, was less virulently opposed to British military aggression, seeing anti-British German influence at work among the Boers. Such are the puzzles, hypocracies and irresolvable contradictions inherent in the Capitalist mindset.Politically, Cunninghame Graham finished up founding the Scottish National Party.Now consider which end-of-the-19th-century “socialist party” the writer is referring to…Perhaps, through Cunninghame Graham’s joint membership of the Scottish Labour Party with Keir Hardie, the writer is referring to Hardie’s Independent Labour Party — the ILP.Needless to say, Cunninghame Graham has nothing essential in common with the Socialist Party of Great Britain.
LBird wrote:To 'appropriate', 'analyse' and 'trace out', is to apply a 'theory' to 'the material' ('material', here, meaning 'our selected object of study', not 'matter').If one 'appropriates, analyses and traces out' with contrasting 'theories', one will get differing 'inquiry', 'presentation' and 'description'.Marx Disowns LBirdConsider what Marx actually saysThe method of inquiry has to appropriate the material in detail, to analyze its different forms of development, to trace out their inner connexionOnly after this work is done, can the actual movement be adequately described.If this is done successfully, if the life [process] of the subject-matter is ideally reflected as in a mirror,then [the presentation of the scientific theory] may appear as if we had before us a mere a priori construction.Marx is defending Capital against the attack that it is merely his personal subjective, a priori, construction.Notice that LBird is championing, in his quote 2 (above), the same charge of a priorism that Marx is expressly repudiating in his quote 4 (above).Strike One!I discussed Marx’s scientific method in post https://www.worldsocialism.org/spgb/forum/general-discussion/marx‘s-scientific-method.Marx’s quote 1 summarises scientific analysis. Capital’s early chapters are his scientific analysis of the concrete phenomena, or sensual appearance, of capitalist society.Scientific analysis corresponds to Marx’s “descent from the concrete to the abstract”, or “essence out of appearance”, (roughly) Thomas Kuhn’s “revolutionary science”.Marx’s quote 2 summarises the abstract foundation, or essence, upon which a science is based. The theory of surplus value is the abstract foundation, or essence, of Capital Volumes 1, 2 and 3.Marx’s quote 3 summarises scientific synthesis. The aim of Capital is to progressively reveal essence in appearance, or the abstract in the concrete, by unifying capitalist phenomena as instances of the law of surplus value.Scientific synthesis corresponds to Marx’s “ascent from the abstract to the concrete”, or “appearance out of essence”, (roughly) Thomas Kuhn’s “normal science”.(For the philosophers… Hegel’s Logic, by the upside-down method characteristic of Idealism, synthesises concrete Nature out of pure abstraction by progressive thought determinations. That, of course, is Marx’s famous critique of Hegel’s Idealism.)For Marx, the aim of science isto reduce sensuous appearance to essence by scientific analysis.to derive sensuous appearance from essence by scientific synthesis.Consequently essence and appearance don’t correspond, except through the life process of a theory.Thus, LBird is quite wrong. To ‘appropriate’, ‘analyse’ and ‘trace out’, is not to apply a 'theory' to ‘the material’. It is not synthetic at all. The whole point is to avoid prior synthesis by bracketing it out [in Husserl’s sense]. That’s the point of abstraction.Marx is here describing the act of abstraction that generates the foundation of a theory, upon which to synthesise a coherent description of apparently incoherent phenomena.Strike Two!Marx makes it clear that a scientific theory is a dynamic abstraction founded on laws of motion that mirrors the apparently incoherent development of concrete processes by deriving them coherently from their abstracted essences. LBird denies this.Strike Three!
LBird advocates “democratic communism” in whichSocial Truth is determined by universal democracy.Social groups cannot hold elite ideas.Social discourse outlaws mathematics because it is elitist.Social Truth, once agreed, is enforced universally.Social production roles are allotted by universal democracy.Social consumption goods are allocated by universal democracy.These social rules follow from an epistemological theory called “idealism–materialism”.Idealism–materialism implies that ideas precede actions. The terms don’t commute, so that idealism–materialism leads to socialism, but materialism–idealism prevents socialism.LBird believes Marx used the word “material” as a synonym for the word “production”, which begs the question of why he called “Book 1. The Process of Production of Capital” instead of “The Process of Materialisation of Capital” and Parts 3, 4 and 5, the “Production of Surplus Value”, rather than the “Materialisation of Surplus Value”. [Probably, because as LBird claims, Marx couldn’t write, or write clearly, was generally confused, and the opening three chapters of Capital are incomprehensible.]To proceed… Idealism–materialism implies idealism–productionism, which implies that ideas produce the world. This is the pure Idealist half of his idealism–materialism.LBird then relies on a standard materialist assertion that the ideas of the working class are correct because the working class comprises the producers (or materialisers). This is the pure Materialist half of his idealism–materialism, although he’ll never admit this because, for him, materialism is an elitist philosophy.Now, the masterstroke… To overcome the elitism he believes is inherent in materialism, LBird needs a universal thought police. It becomes everyone’s duty under “democratic communism” to enforce the Truth of every social idea that determines social production (= social materializations).All science, all art, all social intercourse (bedroom not exempted ) will be voted on for its social Truth, indexed against subversion, and socially enforced by everyone.Sympo, LBird asks you to judge. Is his idealism–materialism and “democratic communism” the blueprint of a new Marx, or the terrifying delirium of a self-absorbed dogmatic crank?LBird has submitted over ten-thousand posts on this same theme, day-in day-out, for over four years. He’s got a better run here than he might expect elsewhere, partly because the Party is democratic in decision making — except that it falls well short of LBird’s insistence that it take a democratic vote on whether Pluto is a planet — and the Party is averse to shutting down discussion.But it has to temper its aversion to shutting down discussion to defend itself from LBird’s unstoppable shutting down threads by perpetually hijacking them down his hobby-horse cul-de-sac of voting on everything, or face being “outed” as a closet fascist.To me, LBird is a dangerous crank, who has long outstayed his welcome. Let LBird go elsewhere, perhaps by crowd funding, to independently promote his idealist–materialist “democratic communism”, which has failed to take root here.From my point of view, a society that can only survive by policing thought is not worth fighting for.
LBird wrote:And the 'theory' that your party does espouse, 'materialism' (or, 'practice and theory'), says that workers can't change their world (and by 'world', Marx means their physical universe).It is LBird who doesn’t get it.The Party has always had a theoretical platform — its century old Object and Declaration of Principles — that is based on Marxian theory, and was partly written by Marx himself.Membership of the Party depends on adherence to its theoretical Obj and Dop. Activity is subservient to it. The Obj and Dop are the theory of Party practice, and have always been, for over a century.There is no other political party whose practice is so tightly aligned to its theory. No other Party exemplifies LBird’s highly vaunted unity of theory and practice. None!The other Parties that once had an Obj and Dop rapidly repudiated, disavowed, them.LBird, show us your own platform, your Object and Declaration of Principles. Carefully explain your Obj and your Dop.LBird’s own self-professed practice doesn’t conform to his own trumpeted theory, for he proudly boasts of telling workers to vote Labour. Is that practice before theory? Or is that just plain LBird confusion?LBird’s critique of practice without theory makes perfect sense against militant voluntarism that he actually advocates — for voluntarism blindly seeks to learn from mistakes, because it denies the might of the social laws that sustain capitalist reproduction so long as its working class accepts and fights for capitalism and rejects and opposes socialism.But materialism does not say workers can’t change their world. That is LBird’s vivid imagination. The Socialist party is not a leftist organisation seeking to wring impossible concessions from capitalism.Grow up, LBird, and comprehend the Party and its history of theory and practice over the past century and more.The Party rightly cautions against leftist voluntarism — which you take to be opposing activity — that sacred concept of yours, which for you is, mistakenly, entirely Idealist in your kindergarten misreading of Marx’s Thesis I.On identical grounds, for identical reasons, Marx scorned hot-headed Blanquists who were eager to do “something”, they knew not what when, as he said, the times for voluntarist action were unpropitious.That is the only caution that materialism can give.Freedom is the recognition of necessity (which you hotly deny) and successful activity is always bound by necessity.Sadly, educating a socialist working class is about the only rational activity, for the moment, that is available to a Socialist party bound by its century old Obj and Dop. Which is why Alan wants to water it down.You are quite correct in saying that thought precedes action (except for involuntary reaction). That is the palpable, totally obvious, form of appearance that materialism explains.Idealism, at least Idealism of the vulgar variety, mistakes such obvious appearance for reality.On the other hand, materialism scientifically challenges philosophical idealsm (all in the mind, only), for which thought can only ground thought, and seeks the grounding of thought in a world beyond thought.That’s precisely why Engels (Plato et al.) assert that materialism and idealism are irreconcilable. Either thought grounds itself, and finds its truth within itself, or it is grounded in the exteriority of itself, in the that-sidedness, in the other, in the non-subjective world of action — the material world.The grounding of thought in something beyond thought is materialist, and it has very little to do with atoms (as you ignorantly pontificate).Such a historical materialism, as Marx’s, which is grounded in the necessary social practice of social production and reproduction, encourages the working class to recognise what it is up against, and to comprehend the implications of its social action.
Dunayeskaya might just as well have said Marx was the most religious of the atheists, and the most atheistic of the religious. Such oracular pronouncements get us nowhere beyond confusion.On the other hand, read how mercilessly the young Marx ultimately rips into Hegel who, if we pursue Dunayeskaya’s vulgar game, is far and away the most materialistic of the idealists, for he really does ground the material world, and its development, in the development of the Idea, and so is forced to make the unfolding Idea take the material world extremely seriously.As for “unthinking communism that completely negates the personality of man” might that not be the variety of unthinking communism under universal thought control, subject to a regimen of from each as universally ordered, to each as universally doled out?
Of course the Bolsheviks made “history” — but only in the narrow insignificant sense. In the broad significant sense, the Bolsheviks didn’t make socialism; they made capitalism instead. They were socialist “also rans”.Making socialism is what matters when we are talking about the Bolsheviks and history. That was the celebrated task they set themselves, and they failed miserably at their self-assigned task, lying through their teeth all the while about what they knew they actually doing, while significant history was inexorably unmaking them.In terms of the significant class relations of ownership and control of the means of life, the foundation of a mode of production, the situation after the Bolsheviks is identical to what it would have been had Kerensky prevailed instead of the Bolsheviks. They simply shored up capitalist relationships of ownership and control in Russia.Such is the significant mode-of-production level of making history that they made against their own political propaganda.A child in nappies knows, at the insignificant level, that the Bolsheviks, like the local football team, made the other sort of “history”.
LBird wrote:The materialists – twc, robbo, Vin, Tim, YMS, etc. – claim that Pluto itself tells them that it is a 'planet'.They claim that this is an 'objective fact'.They deny that humans created 'the planet Pluto', and can change it.They deny that 'the planet Pluto' has a history, dependent upon social factors.What incoherent hysterical rant!Sorry, but nobody, outside of your weird imagination, would ever make the absurd claim that Pluto itself tells us that it is a ‘planet’.What Marx claims is that the act of observation is an objective act. The interpretation of the objective act is another matter, but that interpretation ultimately derives its objectivity, by descent, from the objectivity of the observation. There is no other ultimate means of thought acquiring objectivity. Thought must prove itself in practice!No, they claim that they observed its photographic image wandering relative to the stellar background over consecutive photographic plates, to which a planetary orbit could be fitted by spherical projection that conformed to Kepler’s laws of planetary motion. Hence a prosaic scientist would claim it was a planet. If this humdrum procedure breaks every high-falutin’ rule of philosophical discourse, then so much the worse for high-falutin’ scholastic philosophical discourse.No. But some folks may naturally get sentimentally het up over losing a favourite planet of their childhood, but such folks temper their disappointment by knowing that their favourite former-planet is totally indifferent to the IAU decision to demote its planetary status. And, what a fabulously fascinating body this demoted planet turns out to be. It has taken its ‘revenge’ to the enjoyment of all. Only an anti-scientific ignoramus thinks something political is at stake when a remote icy rock is re-classified on objective classificatory criteria.
[quote-LBird]Let’s keep it simple.So-called ‘Natural laws’ are products of the society that creates them.So, being our products, we can ‘abolish'’ them, and replace them with ‘natural laws’ suited to our needs, interests and purposes, as we create them through our social theory and practice.Simple Marxism, twc. ‘Nature’, as we know it, is currently a class construct. ‘Nature’, as we don’t know it, is, as Marx said, ‘nothing for us’.[/quote]It is not that simple. Marx wrote the materialist text in Post #21, wherein Marx writes:“Natural laws cannot be abolished.”“What can change, under historically different circumstances, is only the form in which these laws assert themselves.”“the history of the theory of value shows that the concept of the value relation has always been the same — i.e. more or less clearly understood”“the process of human thought itself grows out of conditions — is itself a natural process — thinking that really comprehends must always be the same”Marx is explaining to Dr Ludwig Kugelmann his scientific method in Capital Vol. 1. His explanation refutes pontificator LBird.
