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Challenge to the Anti-MaterialistsStuart explains the Soviet Union’s failure to introduce socialism as the consequence of a lapsed morality, commenting that a materialist explanation sends “shivers down his spine”.LBird explains the Soviet Union’s failure to introduce socialism as the consequence of a false materialist philosophy, because a materialist explanation is necessarily anti-democratic, and if we accept materialist explanations “we are all f—d”.It’s hard to know how Robbo explains the Soviet Union, but we do know that he stands above “crude” materialist explanations.It’s equally hard to know how Steve Colborn explains it, but we do know he openly scoffs at the explanatory power of the materialist conception of history.I challenge each of you opponents of the SPGB’s materialist explanation of the Soviet Union to demonstrate, to all of us, the power of your alternative anti-materialist explanation of its history. Here’s your chance to prove the superiority of your alternative pro-idealist explanatory powers that you’ve hitherto extolled but never revealed. ProblemExplain non-materialistically the failure of the Soviet Union to implement socialism.Demonstrate in your own favourite chosen explanatory terms its failure, e.g., because offailed morality, orfalse materialist philosophy, orfalse dialectics, orwhatever alternative to the SPGB’s 90-year old materialist case you hold, and want to convince us of being the primary cause of the Soviet Union’s failure to implement socialism.Hic Rhodus!
robbo wrote:I note you have evaded the completely the thoroughly bourgeois implications of the argument that socialism is purely a matter of what is in our "self interests".No, I’ve never subscribed to “self interest”.An edit of my #213 unfortunately crossed with your #214. Apologies. However, have a go at responding to it.Primitive accumulation is, for me, the crowning scientific predictive achievement of Volume 1. This demoralizing process is taking place all around the world, with the same callous brutality.Stuart misdiagnoses the Soviet Union as a failure of morality. But Marx explains why morality was a necessary casualty of the unavoidable Soviet primitive accumulation of capital.I appreciate that Marx’s testable prediction relates to a transition from feudalism to capitalism, but it is such confirmation of scientific predictability that is our only guide to the efficacy of our science, and the only reliable source of our confidence in it. Confidence instilled by successful applications of Marx’s materialist science far outweighs confidence imbibed from idealist morality.I thereby gain scientific confidence in our Object, something that morality cannot give me, no matter how sincere. Above all, it is Marx’s materialist science that underpins the sought-for morality consequent upon our Object, and we need confidence, more than hope, that it can deliver the socialist goods.You may not agree with me, but my stated materialist position conforms to none of the stereotypical nonsense you charge me with.
robbo203 wrote:As I’ve said several times now the relevant criterion has to do with whom one morally identifies. A proletarian morality implies a proletariat as the object of one's moral identification. Just as a nationalist morality presupposes "the nation" as the object of moral identification.You rationalize morality as depending on who you identify with. That is morality by Rafferty’s rules.In Marx’s Volume 1 paradigm scenario, how would you decide between opposing moralities. In a class society, force decides, but force, for an identificatory moralist, such as your moral self, is the opposite of morality,You want to turn the class struggle into one of morality transcendent of capitalism, and yet you have never once acknowledged that our materialist Object is the only guarantee we have of realizing a morality transcendent of capitalism.Without that you are calling on proletarians to assemble around something you apparently don’t acknowledge can be implemented objectively, but only subjectively. That’s why you can repeat your idealist morality calls until the cows come home, and I’ll treat them with the contempt subjective moral suasion deserves.The class struggle is only moral if its morality is capable of being realized, and is immoral otherwise. Proletarian morality does not exist, just like socialism does not exist, and both must be proven to continuously reproduce themselves as social necessity, or it is immoral to strive for them.One does not consciously conduct a social revolution from one world-wide mode of production into another based on the flimsy pretext of morality that is, without science, incapable of proving it can ever be realized except in the feverish imagination of those whose morality consists, apparently, in primarily identifying with a social class.
Lewis Henry Morgan wrote:The dissolution of society bids fair to become the termination of a career of which property is the end and aim; because such a career contains the elements of self-destruction. Democracy in government, brotherhood in society, equality in rights and privileges, and universal education, foreshadow the next higher plane of society to which experience, intelligence and knowledge are steadily tending. It will be a revival, in a higher form, of the liberty, equality and fraternity of the ancient gentes.If you mean no more than Morgan, then I agree.But to talk of morality under capitalism is to talk of an evanescent or vulgarized thing, that is almost always a ploy, or bond of emotional selfishness, in a world where the sole nexus between man and his fellow is naked cash payment. It is to abuse the word, because the action it connotes has become debased by the society wherein it can only be acted out. That is an awful situation, but don’t shoot the messenger for alerting you to the reality.Every social movement lays claim to morality above all else. You get upset when I refuse to go down that disreputable path. Well you’ll just have to live with it. I refuse to play the soppy game when all sides play the morality card, and you simply play the “more morality than thou” joker.Either discuss morality theoretically, or not at all. By the way, I assume that you are aware of Trivers’s 1970s biological “altruism” that, of course, has scant relation to human altruism, but can only be negated theoretically, and not emotionally.
So you are at-bottom an “individual, self-aware, conscious, empathetic, sympathetic creature”, like the rest of humanity at-bottom.At-bottom humanity is powerless when its false perception of itself arises out of at-bottom necessary human practice under capitalism, now and forever it lasts. The Party is one of the few havens that offers scope for at-bottom humanity to flourish under capitalism.But you, an at-bottom human specimen of humanity, must accordingly give liberally to all at-bottom deserving charities, and support all at-bottom human reforms for all the at-bottom inhuman ills that beset the rest of at-bottom human humanity. That is the immediate expression of everything you stated, and that the Party at-bottom opposes.All the humanity in the world is powerless to stop “primitively accumulating” capitalism wherever it emerges—formerly in Britain, recently in the Soviet Union, and currently in Africa, the Arab world, etc.—from dispossessing its future working class, bloodshed and all. It has no choice, and morality is the casualty, and capitalism the victor over feudal [or tribal] morality’s corpse.Primitive accumulation’s task is to convert feudal [or tribal] morality into capitalist morality, and it must succeed in removing the feudal [or tribal] perceptions of moral usury from capital, whose profit, interest and rent must be perceived as moral right, and only deviations from commonly-agreed social standards perceived as immoral.If you don’t agree that the necessity of capitalism must, and does, turn morality inside out, please show me how capitalism can be brought into existence humanely, when its sole object is inhumane—to rob and to rule for private gain.Morality that is not useful to necessary social reproduction is immorality. Social utility is the sole arbiter, the practical solution to a social problem.Marx observed that, when equal rights oppose each other, force decides. That’s why socialism, which transcends bourgeois rights and morality, will not be based on right or morality. Mankind will arbitrate its problems practically.You uncomprehendingly (just like the moral preacher whose bigotry extends to telling me I can’t be moral without him) assume that I must have no feelings for my fellows to pursue the materialist case. Grow up, and argue intelligently, not at-bottom like a duplicitous advertising, real-estate or used-car agent.
The Socialist Party, from the early 1920s onwards, has categorized the Soviet Union, as “state capitalism”. That’s exactly what it was/is as a static description.However, what it more importantly was/is, as dynamic determinism instead of mere static description, is a perfect instance of the “primitive accumulation of capital” working its inexorable way through all the ideas and morals of its actors. Materialism in deterministic operation.Marx’s “primitive accumulation of capital” is in many ways the crowning predictive achievement of Capital Volume 1, giving us confidence in his science and its methodology for achieving socialism. That is precisely why such an apparently irrelevant-to-production process concludes Volume 1.“Primitive accumulation" is accumulation for the few at the expense of the many—by dispossession of the many. It is never quick, never nice and always brutal, and the more clinically executed the more terrifyingly concrete its idealist “humanity”.Capitalism cannot function without a working class, and so its first priority, consciously or unconsciously, is to free its potential working class from any existing ownership of independent means of production. Capitalism must first turn the working class it’s going to exploit into a class dependent on it alone. “Primitive accumulation of capital” is for most of us, the making of the working class,It’s what we see occurring all around the “developing” world. Toy arguments based on sympathy for the victims of this terrible process are misplaced bourgeois indulgences, as piously hollow as the feigned sympathy of the professional burier of the dead for his corpses. Like death, the accumulation process is necessary to capitalism, and so is inevitable.I’m afraid the only solution is to comprehend world social processes, horrible as they are, and work to transcend a deterministically anti-social world, because it is divided into social classes.
stuart wrote:SocialistPunk and Robin are so obviously right that it's worth wondering why we're having the argument at all.So it’s self evident. In which case it can only be common prejudice or bigotry. Nothing else in this contingent world is self evident!
stuart wrote:The argument that morality is bunk is bourgeois! Thoroughly bourgeois!On the contrary, overt morality is essential to a conniving society like capitalism. Overt, and ostentatious, morality, of your obvious kind, is inextricably built into capitalism. It drips from the capitalist air you breathe, because it is indispensable to the functioning of class oppression. That’s where you pick it up your overt, ostentatious, morality from; unlike Marx who saw through capitalist appearance and exposed its rotten core.I’m sorry, but you and robbo are falling for the veneer of capitalism, even while convincing yourself you aren’t by giving lip service to its rotten core.
stuart wrote:The argument may sound all up your arse and philosophical, but it matters, as the history of Bolshevism and Stalinism readily attest.Bolshevism and Stalinism could equally be condemned for being too zealous in their morality, like you and robbo.Actually, of course, they were going through one of that most terrible and protracted phases of human social transition, called the “primitive accumulation of capital”, which is currently working its terrifying way through Muslim, Asiatic, African, and South American nations, but swept through the Soviet block in the 20th century, and Britain, France, Germany, earlier.As Marx said “capitalism comes into the world dripping in blood from head to foot”. But it comes in through horribly protracted revolution heralding decades of ruthless “primitive accumulation”—a great practical testing ground for your theory of morality—and “bloody” well disproves it.
SP wrote:So what if people thousands of miles away are being slaughtered by a brutal regime. Or what if a serial killer is running riot in America again, or homosexuals being stoned to death in Brunei. What concern is it to you, me or anyone else on this forum?What are you planning to do to the serial killer, or to the stoners-to-death, or to “your” own national brutal regime perpetrating “your” national slaughter “thousands of miles away”?You can’t ignore human practical sociability.If you want to transcend relying on insipid emotion that can be twisted, for-and-against, wringing your heart to shreds, the stock in trade of charities, religions, politicians, advertising agents—tendentious liars of all stripes—you need human practical socialism.
SP wrote:So what if people thousands of miles away are being slaughtered by a brutal regime. Or what if a serial killer is running riot in America again, or homosexuals being stoned to death in Brunei. What concern is it to you, me or anyone else on this forum?Well, you tell me what that has to do with socialism and war, which was the point of discussion.
SocialistPunk, #403, wrote:What I was looking for, and it may not be available, was some sort of actual historical, anthropology based explanation or addition.From a founder of anthropology [along with Bachofen and Morgan].Engels “Origin of the Family, Private Property and the State” https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/download/pdf/origin_family.pdf.Related is Kautsky’s “Foundations of Christianity” http://www.marxists.org/archive/kautsky/1908/christ/.Interesting article on (1) by Chris Knight, “Early human kinship was matrilineal” http://www.cpgb.org.uk/home/weekly-worker/ww930/supplement-early-human-kinship-was-matrilineal
SocialistPunk wrote:What makes [war] slaughtering each other for anything [either] wrong or right?Nothing outside of the opposing interests of all parties involved.
Marx wrote:Between equal rights force decides.War is conflict resolution between rival capitalists for ownership and control of the means of social reproduction.Yet another reason for opposing the violent capitalist social system.
The clearest instance of my point is Marx.Capital Volume 1 is pure theory abstracted from the capitalist production process, and is based upon the theoretical abstraction that “commodities exchange at their value”.Capital Volume 3 is the contingent application of the Volume 1 pure theory back upon the concrete capitalist production process it was abstracted from. And all of a sudden “commodities exchange at their price of production”. Consequently, Bohm-Bawerk gleefully crowed that Marx refutes himself.You have been making the same charge against me as Böhm-Bawerk made against Marx, in this case against my defence of the determinism of the materialist conception of history.And like all such “greedy reductionism”, which is a perfect analogy, you immediately assume that I must be wrong to defend what is clearly refuted by the contingent concrete world, whereas you want to “greedily reduce” pure abstract theory to impure concrete contingency.I am defending the materialist conception of history as an abstract scientific principle in opposition to these contrary “interpretations” that take the principle to be a description of the concrete contingency it was abstracted from, all of which ‘interpretations’ make the same categorical mistake, based as they are on the same anti-scientific misconception as Böhm-Bawerk.
[6] GENERAL SECRETARY’S PAGEIn the same issue of the “Seamen’s Journal”, General Secretary Jacob Johnson submitted his report on the “Murada” strike.¹
Seamens Journal, 25 Sept 1935, wrote:General Secretary’s Page THE LAST SEAMEN’S STRIKE² & THE MINORITY MOVEMENTTo be taken to task by the Minority Movement after the failure of a strike for which they themselves were responsible is nothing new.Their condemnation of others and glorification of themselves after such events can usually be found in such organs as the “Worker’s Weekly”, “Marine Worker”, and “Red Leader”, etc.It has been a tactic practiced by the Communist Party from the time of its birth in this country, and handed down to its offspring, the Minority Movement, and other illegitimate bodies in the Trades Union Movement, in order to smoke-screen their own blunders, and smother the lies, deception and misrepresentation in which they usually indulge during most strike issues, as was the case with them during the last [i.e. “Murada”] Seamen’s strike. [Minority Movement’s Accusations]The “Marine Worker” of September 5th [1935] reports that the Seamen’s strike would have been a success had it not been for Johnson, Clarke,³ etc. [This is] the old [Communist] story over again, History has repeated itself. The other fellows are to blame, not them.Referring to the Minority Movement in our August issue, did we not tell our readers: “If a Union move is a success, although they (the Minority Movement) might never participate in it, they claim the kudos; and in the event of failure they attribute the failure to others”.Little did we think, when we⁴ wrote those lines, that a practical demonstration would again prove the truth of the words at such an early date. [What Sort of Failure?]The “Marine Worker” bemoans the fact that [for them] the strike was a failure.What they mean by “a failure” is that[1] all the seamen did not walk out of the ships sheep-like upon the command of the Minority Movement[2] the strike lasted only three weeks. [Whose Failure]Anticipating success in an issue on propaganda based upon deliberate lies and misrepresentation of facts is typical of Minority Movement ignorance. It is to expect a house built upon a rotten foundation to withstand the fury of a cyclone. The practical impossibility of this is a lesson which has not yet been learnt by the M.M. and its followers.Referring to them in our August issue of the “Journal”, we said “lying with them, appears a virtue, and truth a vice”. [Scotching a Lie]Brazenly, without even a blush on his face, the Minority Movement’s main spokesman [Joe Keenan] in order to gull members into a false sense of security, commenced his lying campaign at one of the first meetings after the commencement of the strike, by stating that the Waterside Workers in Melbourne had promised us their full moral and financial support.This deliberate lie was exposed a few days layer, when I [Jacob Johnson] received the following lettergram⁵ from Mr Turley, the General Secretary of the Waterside Workers:“RE YOUR DISPUTE WITH SHIPOWNERS [STOP]. I ADVISE YOU MY FEDERATION WILL NOT BECOME INVOLVED OR DIRECTLY AFFECTED IN ANY WAY UNLESS AND UNTIL DEFINITELY INSTRUCTED BY THE A.C.T.U.⁶ AS THE PROPERLY CONSTITUTED INDUSTRIAL AUTHORITY TO DEAL WITH SUCH MATTERS AFFECTING MARITIME OR TRANSPORT UNIONS. TURLEY, GENERAL SECRETARY, WATERSIDE WORKERS’ FEDERATION MELBOURNE.”
At a subsequent meeting, the same spokesman [Joe Keenan] informed members that the SYDNEY Branch of the Waterside Workers had carried a resolution pledging us full support in “our struggle”. Not knowing what had taken place, I was unable to dispute this [allegation] at the time the statement was made, but immediately after the meeting I wrote the following letter:“Mr B. Mullins, Waterside Workers’ Federation, Sussex Street, Sydney.Dear Sir, At a mass meeting of members of the Seamen’s Union held in the basement of the Sydney Town Hall on Wednesday, the 14th instant, it was reported by Mr. Keenan, one of the members of our Strike Committee, that the Sydney Branch of your Federation had pledged its full support to the Seamen’s Union in its present dispute. I shall be extremely obliged if you will write and inform me whether your Union has considered this matter and, if so, the nature of the resolution carried. Thanking you in anticipation, Yours faithfully, (Signed) JACOB JOHNSON, General Secretary”The reply was as follows:“Waterside Workers’ Federation of Australia Sydney Branch. Secretary: G. B. Mullins, M.L.C.⁷ 60–66 Sussex Street, Sydney, 16th August, 1935.Jacob Johnson, Esq.,⁸ General Secretary, Seamen’s Union, 12 King Street, Sydney.Dear Sir, In reply to your letter of yesterday’s date, I have written to inform you that the statement which you attribute to Mr. Keenan, a member of the Seamen’s Strike Committee, that the above branch at its meeting last Wednesday carried a resolution pledging its full support in the present dispute is not in accordance with the facts. I may add that when the matter of the strike was mentioned at the meeting a resolution was adopted by a two-to-one majority, deferring consideration pending receipt of official correspondence from your Union. I am Yours respectfully, (Signed) G. B. MULLINS, Secretary.” [A Whopper of Deception]Undaunted by the exposure of these deliberate lies, the same individual [Keenan], about thirty minutes before the strike was finally called off on 24th August, made a last desperate attempt or continue the farcical issue by appealing to about 1,200 members not to declare the strike off, as by doing so they were deserting their “comrades” the crew of the “MUNGANA”, who, he said, had been gaoled in Port Kembla for refusing to take the vessel to sea.This mean, low and contemptible lie was exposed when, on enquiry, we found, after the meeting, that the “MUNGANA”, instead of her crew being gaoled, had actually sailed from Port Kembla the previous day with her full original crew.Many of our members were, no doubt, fooled by the deceptive and lying propaganda of the Minority Movement in the last strike issue. Some of them might even be fooled by them again in future, but we have little doubt that the majority will not allow themselves to become the easy catspaws of their lying and distorted propaganda, as was the case in the last strike. [Advice to the Militant Minority Movement]“Cheats” some people will have it “never prosper”. Whether or not this is borne out by the facts does not concern us for the time being. What we are concerned about, however, is not to allow the Minority Movement, by cheating, lying and deceptive propaganda, to undermine the prestige and solidarity of the Seamen’s Union and, by the use of these methods, further their own ends.Honesty of purpose and speaking the truth is alien to the Minority Movement. Once they learn that, at its best, only remote temporary success is achievable by trickery and dissemination of lying propaganda, and that in the final analysis such methods must fail and only bring disrepute upon themselves, they might become useful in the Trades Union Movement.Whether or not they are amenable to such reform, time alone will be the deciding factor.In the meantime, however, let us remind them that the Seamen’s Union will not tolerate its policy being dictated by the Communist Party, through its agents and hirelings in the Minority Movement, or any of its other auxiliaries.The Seamen’s Union is quite capable of mapping out its own destiny without their advice and interference. Their intrigue, lies, corrupt practices, skite and bombast does not in any way impress us as being fearful opponents, as they have chosen to travel a path which — instead of gaining converts — must inevitably lead to them being despised by anyone possessed of a grain of decency as time goes on.Undeterred by the Minority Movement attempt to smash the Seamen’s Union, we calmly proceed with our reconstructive work in the Union,⁹ commenced a few years ago, being firmly convinced notwithstanding their noise that the vast majority of members will support us in this issue. Jacob Johnson General Secretary.
↩ [Table of Contents] Editor’s Notes¹ The style of the General Secretary’s report bears the stamp of Clarke’s editing, and was probably written in collaboration with Clarke. ↩ [Back]² “The Last Strike” [= The “Murada” Strike]. The reasonable presumption is that the strike was now over, since the men agreed to call it off after the shipowners unconditionally lifted their work ban against employing the “Murada” men. ↩ [Back]³ Clarke has scrubbed out of his copy of the “Seamen’s Journal” the additional names Turley and [illegible]. [Turley, as General Secretary of the Waterside Workers Federation, was presumably being blamed by the M.M. for his Union’s decision not to send the M.M.’s claimed financial support to help fighting the “Murada” strike.] ↩ [Back]⁴ The use of “we” implies the Union [or its General Secretary, Jacob Johnson]. ↩ [Back]⁵ Lettergram. Postal message transmitted [by morse code] over telegraph wire, and so kept to a minimum length. Text was UPPERCASE, and was charged by the word. Sentences terminated conventionally with the tag-word “STOP”. ↩ [Back]⁶ A.C.T.U. Australian Council of Trade Unions. Governing body of the Australian trade union movement. ↩ [Back]⁷ M.L.C. [parliamentary honorific title ≡ Member of the Legislative Council]. The upper house of the NSW State Parliament. ↩ [Back]⁸ Esq. [= Esquire] Common honorific for a lay person, in lieu of a title. ↩ [Back]⁹ Reconstructive work. [to come.] ↩ [Back] ↩ [Table of Contents] THE 1935 AUSTRALIAN SEAMEN’S STRIKE — Installment 6
