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Materialism or StructuralismSo now you are back-tracking on Levi-Strauss also.You didn’t say outright that Levi-Strauss originated the thought. But since you knew Engels did originate the thought, we can only assume the reason you attributed it to Levi-Strauss instead of to Engels was because he [of the raw and cooked] must surpass him [of the origin of the family] in your estimation of each’s relevance to primitive kinship relations. Fair enough, your call.Well, Levi-Strauss certainly surpasses Engels by retreating backwards into philosophical dualism—your territory—in its trendy 1970s form, structuralism. For Levi-Strauss, primitive kinship structures objectify deep structures within our brain. We are to some extent trapped, as with dualist Kant, by the structural constitution of our brain. I naturally assumed you, as confirmed dualist, would lap up stuff of this ilk. But you’ve lost your appetite.Instead you back-track once more, protesting innocence that butter wouldn’t melt in your mouth “it was only food for thought”! Only, but like Castoriadis — trash Marx only “to show up twc”, so that’s OK. Dismiss Engels, but only as “food for thought, so that’s OK.What sort of thought could it be food for? Levi-Straussian dualist structuralism instead of Engelsian materialism.
Robbo, you want to move on from Castoriadis to cover your deception. Not so fast!In response to my exposé of his nonsense, you were forced to change tack and say that you happen to agree that Castoriadis is merely trashing me—which is a minor matter, about which I have no concern whatsoever.But the truth is that Castoriadis is, and always was, directly trashing Marx—which is a major matter—and you happen to agree with Castoriadis against Marx. [The consequence that Castoriadis’s direct trashing of Marx is an indirect trashing of me is merely incidental.]So I’m quite prepared to linger over Castoriadis’s direct trashing of Marx until we settle the matter. It is far too important an issue to let slip on disingenuous spurious grounds that you introduced him only to trash me, when it was quite evident that Karl Marx could only be collateral damage in such an unbelievably stupid exercise. So I am led to repeat, this riposte of yours is totally unbelievable Jesuitical casuistry.You know as well as I do that we’ve got all the time in the world in which to examine your other charges against Marx later on. They are not going to go away.So stop and confront your deception over Marx. It’s your agreement with Castoriadis trashing Marx that cries out for defence. Would you have me do otherwise than defend him, or go along with the treacherous ride?Even if you prefer to move on and cover your tracks, I’m simply not going to let you. The issue is central to socialism, and what we all supposedly stand for. Trashing MarxI remind you that Castoriadis directly trashes Marx by falling back upon the world as contingent and messy, while Marxian science is abstractly pure and rational.Ultimately this is a variant on the perennial theme that appearance is irrational. Everybody knows that, but it has always been the spur to science.It was Hegel who proclaimed “that which is actual is rational, and that which is rational is actual".That is the war cry of all science, including Marx’s scientific socialism.That’s precisely why, for Marx, science is the critique of appearance — the rational critique of the irrational.That is why, for Marxian critics, all their critiques urged against him rely on the bleeding obvious, the patent irrationality of the phenomena [appearance] that doesn’t agree with Marx’s pure rational theoretical principles. It was never meant to.Accepting the irrationality of phenomena without question is what Marx called fetishism, the falling for appearance, and the worst fetish of all fetishes is that which comes in the insidious guise of the rational, as in money, capital, etc.To get beyond fetishism is precisely why Marx’s science must be the critique of appearance, whether in its messy irrational guise or in its insidious rational guise. FetishismBut if, with Castoriadis, we can’t mount a rational critique of the irrational phenomena, socialists have little choice but to take the irrational phenomena at face value — to fetishize appearance.Politically, this leaves us falling back upon the bleeding obvious solution of voluntarism, what Marx called Banquism, or what we today would call Leninism or Leftism.It is precisely to counter such dangerous political irrationalism that, as I pointed out, Marx gave his life to remove socialism’s dependence upon emotion or, worse still, upon morality. And I stand by that statement.Standing by it has absolutely nothing to do with your imaginary claims that I thereby discount morality or emotion. That is merely your acting out the disgusting analogue of the religious person who says if you don’t rely on god, you can’t be moral. Both are nonsense and based on insularity of “thought” otherwise known as bigotry. Bigotry sits well with irrationalism, which can avoid responsibility.It is invariably those who parade morality who least honour it, partly because they consider themselves sole custodians of it. Hence your three or four summoning cries to quickly move on from Castoriadis. Do you imagine that you can run away so quickly without bearing any responsibility for trashing Marx? Just a Little on Making the Irrational RationalScience is always rational and pure, but must pollute itself in the process of dealing with contingency.In the paradigm case of Newton’s Principia we find him setting out three highly pure “laws of motion” that had been abstracted by generations of precursors — the famous giants on whose shoulders he stood.First Newton applies his pure principles—imposes them as the ignorant Castoriadis complains—upon the purity of the heavens, the solar system, from which he abstracted them. What absurdity for Castoriadis to suggest he should never do this. But what else can one expect from an impractical carping philosopher.Newton then brings his pure principles down to our impure Earth, where motion is impeded by friction, and the tides bulge out of the pure sphere, etc. He succeeds beyond all expectation here, because he has created a pure abstract rationality in order to describe, comprehend and show us how to “control” the impure concrete irrational world, of which Earth is a prime messy “irrational” example.Show me one philosopher who can rank with this achievement. Perhaps in modern times only Hegel can, since all the rest since him stand on his shoulders, and find that he anticipated them long before they were born.What Newton did in the Principia is precisely what Marx saw Hegel doing in the Logic. Moving from abstract non-determination [pure Being] to more concrete determination [Determinate Being, etc.], and ultimately tripping himself up by imagining that pure abstraction must finally by concatenation of determination upon determination, make itself so “abstractly determinate”, or concrete, so that the Reason of [behind] the world has no choice but to give birth to the concrete world of Nature, i.e. ultimately concretize itself.Now this conclusion of Hegel’s strikes us, as it did Marx, as nonsense. But Hegel’s methodology of seeing the subject as process, as self-evolving out of itself by itself, is the crucial insight into comprehending all phenomena as autonomous but dependent. It is Hegel’s organicism.Marx takes society as his subject, and treats it as evolving autonomously out of itself by itself but obviously dependent on the world it finds itself inhabiting.Consequently Marx sees consciousness as society’s consciousness, and he wants to comprehend how that consciousness comes into being, and what determines it.And so he develops a rational, abstract, useful, vulnerable and testable science of it based upon the materialist conception of history.It sets off on its life journey pristine pure but, like Newton and Hegel, ultimately pollutes itself by messing with the world, as it delves deeper into the mire of concrete contingent reality, which it uses its pure rationality to explain, since humans can only comprehend the rational by thought [even though, of course, we can appropriate the irrational by emotion, etc.]But Castoriadis exemplifies stupidity in two ways.He criticizes the abstract pure foundation.He denies the possibility of rational explanation of the irrational.This is the hallmark of all critiques of Marx. They all boil down to these two criticisms. RepresentationWith Robbo and Bird, criticism of Marx takes a Kantian form, the usual genus, that we cannot really ever know the world beyond our internal representation of it. For Kant, there is our mental or nuomenal world of representation, and our concrete of phenomenal world (which we can’t ultimately know).It is because Engels met this position head on that he is scorned by those who think he is too obtuse to recognize that we are trapped inside our own virtual world. Well, Engels argues against this trap, and against those who think there’s no access to the world beyond, and they respond to him by turning up their intellectual noses at such a “philosophical” simpleton.And Engels has the great virtue of writing in the simple direct language of a scientist, he just has to be wrong for the nuomenal sophisticates.But Marx, as well as Engels (following the lead of Hegel, who showed the way forward) rejected Kantianism. For Marx human practice inhabits the phenomenal world, and human practice is ultimately social practice, and so subservient to the social process itself of which it is a part.And social practice tests our representation and changes it. But we’ll examine more carefully what Marx means by “determines” in this context in a future post on base–superstructure determinism.Just a warning to the unwary. Marx is developing an abstract foundation and is not describing contingent phenomena as they appear to us. So any criticism of his account in the Preface to the Critique that assumes he is describing irrational phenomena as they appear to us, simply misunderstands what he is trying to do as a scientist.Any fool can see that the foundation of science is “wrong”. It can never correspond to the concrete irrationality that it has been abstracted from and that it is intended to be “imposed” [to Castoriadis’s incomprehension] back upon to make rational sense of it.Having fallen for Castoriadis, it’s quite appropriate that you also fall for another post-Kantian, the anthropologist Levi-Strauss and his deep structures-of-the-brain Structuralisme, which is similar to Chomsky, Piaget, and the whole tribe of 1970s post-Kantian structuralists.But please don’t attribute your phrase about kinship as being original to Levi-Strauss. That was Engels’s discovery before Levi-Strauss was born. Engels even states it in the most accessible of all places, as footnote to the opening paragraph of the Communist Manifesto, and you have no excuse whatsoever for misattributing it to Levi-Strauss apart from personal contempt for Engels. If you want a truly wonderful account of human morality, you could do worse than read Engels’s Origin of the Family.But Engels and the founder of it all, Lewis Henry Morgan, didn’t rely on representational structures in the brain to fashion our phenomenal world, which is what Levi-Strauss needed.Finally, for now, I am reminded of Schopenhauer, Kant’s true successor, who imagined that music, as pure feeling, allowed us to escape our virtual nuomenal world and experience the actual phenomenal world.¹ Kant had ambiguously, as is the way of all dualists, left us unsure whether or not we could really know the phenomenal world.That’s why I asked you whether you believed exploitation was phenomenal or only nuomenal. You sort of squibbed the issue, just like all dualists when pressed. Footnote¹ I have a personal interest in the composer Richard Wagner, erstwhile revolutionary associate of Bakunin, who wrote music inspired by the philosopher Feuerbach, but was later introduced by Marx’s buddy the revolutionary poet, Georg Herwegh, to the post-Kantian philosopher Schopenhauer, and discovered the latter’s “theory” that pure music through feeling lets us burrow out of our inner nuomenal world into the external phenomenal world. [Wagner was also mentor to Nietzsche, who turned violently against him.]For Schopenhauer, music was the wormhole linking our two otherwise parallel universes of the nuomen and the phenomenon. If you read Lukacs [one of Lakatos’s mentors] you’ll see he made the Party the equivalent of Schopenhauer’s wormhole into the phenomenal world. Both, are of course, nonsense.We have been crippled by unaccountable philosophers for far too long. It’s time to return to Marxian science, and that is why I attack your philosophy
Pannekoek was an Avowed Materialist in Marx’s SenseSorry to disappoint you but Pannekoek agreed entirely with Marx’s scientific method of “descent from the concrete to the abstract in order to ascend from the abstract to the concrete”—as Marx called it—just as I presented it here, and just as Castoriadis didn’t have a clue about what Marx was doing, and ignorantly attacked what he failed to comprehend.Lenin was never in the hunt, and his book on Empiriocriticism is pure drivel.
You can bloody well wait.Do you really imagine that someone can just wade through Castoriadis’s crap in five minutes, and provide a coherent critique of it. Since no-one else on the planet has bothered to dissect him, mostly because his fellows are all philosophers of sorts and probably agree with him, why should it only take five minutes.Like all science it takes work. Not like philosophy which can waffle on without constraint.Well, you fell for Castoriadis hook, line and sinker, or you wouldn’t have given him such prominence. Now you back-track from him. Your integrity has immediately sunk in my estimation. You wouldn’t have proferred his critique of Marx if you thought it wasn’t devastating. Now you lack the guts to stick to your guns, yet won’t admit as much, but instead make the feeble excuse that “Castoriadis was not central to my argument”. What unbelievable Jesuitical casuistry.Well, some of Castoriadis was obviously central to your argument, and so tell me which bits were, and then prove that you were right and that Castoriadis has demolished Marx’s materialist conception of history, and Marx’s Capital, which is its working out for capitalism. Has he or hasn’t he demolished Marx, or are you going to back-track even further once you contemplate the implications of your stupidity in trusting an avowed anti-Marxist non-scientific demolition of Marx, the practical vulnerable scientist.Furthermore, please show me that Marx simply imposed a confident 19th century globalism upon the nature of the capitalist process of production and distribution, and that it is 19th century reductionist positivism. Prove it, just don’t just say it! That was your great clincher. Castoriadis’s masterstroke! Are you running away from that too? How central or peripheral was that cheap jibe?And, if you think I got Castoriadis wrong, don’t just say so like an impractical and unhelpful philosopher, but show me where I got him wrong like a practical and helpful scientist. In other words, you be prepared to make yourself useful and vulnerable.As to not answering the rest of your points. You can wait. If I promise to get to your points, I’ll get to them.Now, you answer my last point about your ambivalent relationship to the DOP and Obj, which were essentially formulated by Marx [ask ALB if you want assurance on this score] as consequences of and in accordance with what for you is reductionist 19th century positivism. How do you square that with your socialist position? One of them’s got to give.
Castoriadis. “Marxism does not therefore transcend
the philosophy of history. It is merely another philosophy of
history.”Answer. Castoriadis is not a scientist. His critique
is that of the non-scientist perplexed by the methods of science.Science, unlike philosophy, is intended to be useful, to be practical, and so it
must be testable.Philosophy, on the other hand, is under no obligation to be useful, practical or
testable.Castoriadis makes the mistake of criticizing science by criticizing its
foundation — in Marx’s case, criticising the materialist conception
of history as if it were the science itself.He disagrees with Marx’s abstract foundation. Now, if he were a
practical scientist, he would simply go away and abstract his own better foundation
from the phenomena of history, and create his own abstract foundation upon which to
raise his own alternative science of history. That would be the scientific
end of the story.But Castoriadis mistakenly thinks he’s got to criticize the foundation
abstraction because it looks plain wrongheaded to him.But practical science cannot work by criticizing the foundation. It can
only work by building the science from the foundation up, and then criticizing the
science. You’ve got to give a science time and scope to prove its
worth.Consequently, once a scientific base has been chosen, scientists have no choice
but to treat it as sacrosanct and build the science upon it. It is the
scientific structure raised upon this abstract foundation that is scientifically
vulnerable and testable and open to attack.Finally, contrary to Castoriadis, the materialist conception of history
does therefore transcend a “philosophy of history” in the simple sense
that it is a science, a vulnerable working tool, that can be tested.Castoriadis. “The rationality it seems to extract
from the facts is a rationality which it actually imposes upon them.”Answer. Well, of course it does. This is the
non-scientist perplexed by the only way science can proceed, except that he
imagines that it’s wrong to do so.Abstraction from phenomena in order to apply back —“impose” in
Castoriadis’s language — is entirely deliberate and entirely
sensible.(twc.2)Why else would you bother to make abstraction in the first place?
There is only one reason for abstracting from concrete phenomena, and that is to
be able to recognize and comprehend other concrete instances of the same class of
phenomena we haven’t yet come across. We don’t keep that
secret. We apply it back upon similar phenomena to comprehend them.For example, we abstract from tigers something like “big ferocious cat
with stripes”. That’s our abstraction from concrete
phenomena. Once we have assimilated the abstraction, however good or
imperfect it may be, we apply it back on new concrete instances that we’ve
never encountered before, and hopefully we can now recognize other tigers whenever
we encounter them, and take appropriate action.There’s nothing mysterious about the abstraction process. What we
take away we apply. Or we take in order to put back. We do this all
the time.The only difference is that scientists do it consciously and systematically.
Thus Castoriadis, the non scientist, is simply describing the really simple way
all theoretical science works, because it’s the only way science can
work.Of course, Castoriadis thinks that we abstract “facts” as he
miscalls them. That is wrong. We simply do not abstract
“facts”. Facts are our descriptions of phenomena and inhabit a
different conceptual realm from our abstractions.Abstractions cannot be facts, because they are abstracted from numerous
“facts” in order to explain each of those numerous facts and other
instances of them.Castoriadis. “The ‘historical necessity’ of which it
speaks (in the usual sense of this expression, namely that of a concatenation of
facts leading history towards progress) in no way differs, philosophically
speaking, from hegelian Reason.”Answer. The same criticism can be made of Darwinism. All
explanation rests upon abstract necessity, or determinism. Necessity is the
other abstraction science makes from processes (twc.3).That’s simply the way science abstracts necessity from phenomena.
Newton did, Darwin did, etc. Popper used the same argument against Darwin.It’s because abstract determinism, or necessity, is dynamic that we
can’t test the abstract foundation without seeing how it develops
dynamically.Castoriadis. “In both cases one is dealing with a
truly theological type of human alienation. A communist Providence, which
would so have pre-ordained history as to produce our freedom, is nevertheless a
Providence.”Answer. Then, for Castoriadis, all deterministic science is
Providence.Castoriadis. “In both cases one eliminates the
central concern of any reflexion: the rationality of the (natural or
historical) world, by providing oneself in advance with a rationally constructed
world.”Answer. Correct, one constructs in advance a rationally
constructed world. So do all practical working scientists, like Euclid, Newton,
Darwin and the quantum mechanicists, etc.Castoriadis’s implication is that they should have constructed an
irrational world. This is the same drivel as Sorel.All science provides in advance a rationally constructed world.
Castoriadis had only to ask himself if anyone attempts to comprehend the world,
practically, how impractical would it be to pre-construct an irrational world, and
then test it rationality.Science is not a philosophical toy, but a practical human enterprise.
It’s hard enough as it is, without starting out making it irrational.In short, Castoriadis does not comprehend Marx’s scientific motivation as
the critique of appearance.Sure, Castoriadis, the world of appearance is chaotic and contingent.
That’s precisely why we construct a science to comprehend it practically, and
why we shun a philosophy that does not aim for practical utility.All abstraction is pure and totally rational, and that is the inescapable price
we must pay. It is the application, the working out, of the science that has
the unenviable task of deriving and explaining the contingent.Castoriadis. “A history that would be rational from
beginning to end – and through and through – would be more massively
incomprehensible than the history we know. Its whole rationality would be
founded on a total irrationality, for it would be in the nature of pure fact, and
of fact so brutal, solid and all-embracing that we should suffocate under
it””Answer. That is the nature of all science. Take
Newton. His three laws are perfect, and yet his first doesn’t apply to
anything concrete at all. The very same critique could be offered against
Darwin, etc.Castoriadis. “This was the science that the founders
of “scientific socialism” had sucked into their bones; the science of elegant
universalism, of cosmological laws to which there were no exceptions, of systems
that would encompass the whole of reality in their net. — no
exceptions!”Answer. What rubbish. This can be said of any
science.Castoriadis mistakenly assumes that necessary pure abstraction must be messy and
contingent. Please explain how any practical science could operate if its
foundational abstractions weren’t pure. They are, after all,
abstractions.Castoriadis. “The very structure of this kind of
thinking reflected the confident ambitions of a capitalism in full development. In
the air was the promise that life itself would soon be amenable to the same
mathematical manipulations that had successfully predicted the motions of the
stars, the combinations of the atoms and the propagation of light” (C.
Castoriadis, Introduction to History as Creation , Solidarity Pamphlet, London
1978. p.4)Answer. Utter philosophical infantilism.
Marx wrote:Of course the method of presentation must differ in form from that of inquiry.
The latter has to appropriate the material in detail, to analyse its different
forms of development, to trace out their inner connexion. Only after this work is
done, can the actual movement be adequately described. If this is done
successfully, if the life of the subject-matter is ideally reflected as in a
mirror, then it may appear as if we had before us a mere a priori
construction.Conclusions
I challenge you point blank to show clearly that anything Castoriadis says is not
misguided.I consider your bourgeois anti-Marxist to be a scientific ignoramus.
I am appalled. What is truly disturbing is how you fell for such a stupid
person against the intelligent Marx!And how, oh how, can you seriously square any of this abject philosophical
misunderstanding of science and of Marx with the SPGB DOP and
Obj?Robbo, that’s why I reserved a consecutive spot for Part 2 — the details. It’s a pity my numbered cross references will be split across pages, but that can’t be helped.You’ll just have to wait.You just trashed most of Marx. It’s easy to destroy. Building takes a little longer.Rest assured, unlike you, I will answer every last point you make.
Robbo Denies Exploitation is Objective
robbo203 wrote:The point that I am getting at is that [exploitation] is, at bottom, a value judgement, not simply a cold mathematical calculation that workers are exploited in terms of socially necessary labour time.This is bourgeois idiocy.In the concrete world, an employer’s conception of exploitation is forced upon him by the relentless pressure of capitalist competition. An employer is compelled, like a marionette, to act out Marx’s abstraction of his social position. He must continually make cold mathematical calculation, precisely in terms of labour time, to lower running costs, and from time-to-time make terrifyingly objective “judgements” on the “value” to his profit-making enterprise of his employees. He mightn’t like doing it, but that’s what keeps his business and him up and running.In the concrete world, an employee’s conception of exploitation is doubly constrained by the relentless pressure of capitalist competition and of fellow-worker competition for the right to be exploited. He is forced to act out Marx’s abstraction of his social position. He is compelled to groom himself as a suitable candidate for exploitation because it puts a roof over his head and food in his belly. He mightn’t like doing it, but that’s just the way the world is for a worker.Where in the name of socialism is there anything remotely approaching genuine “value judgement” in that? ObjectivePeople can disagree on their evaluation of any phenomenon, but still agree on its objectivity. For if something is objective, it is accessible to others.In the American Civil War [a class war between two ruling classes], the industrial-capitalist North and the slave-holding South¹ fought over opposing forms of exploitation, and neither doubted the objectivity of each other’s form.Each hypocritically exposed the “unethical” nature of the other’s variety of exploitation. Unsentimental anti-chattel-slave exploitation opposed equally unsentimental anti-wage-slave exploitation. Accusation and counter-accusation were both objectively true, and so unanswerable, except by force.“We are now engaged” in a class war between a ruling and a ruled class. If the ruled class harbours “philosophical” doubts over the objectivity of exploitation, this can only reflect (1) that capitalist–working-class exploitation is barely on the social agenda, and (2) the working class is still content for [class-divided] society to make up its working-class mind for it.The very fact that human exploitation can be raised to the status of an “intellectual proposition”, over which it is possible to have “views” and “values”, is tangible proof to a materialist that exploitation is not only objective concretely but also intellectually. Marx was Aware of Every Criticism Subsequently Made of HimFor Marx, science is the practice of the critique of appearance.In his quest to unmask bourgeois appearance, Marx was omnivorous, devouring every view and counter-view on capitalist appearance [phenomena] that he could lay his hands on in the British Museum and elsewhere—just look at his Theories of Surplus Value—from capitalism’s deepest and bravest thinkers to its hired “prize fighters”.He worked in the tradition of Hegel, for whom “science cannot reject a non-true knowledge just because it considers it to be a vulgar [apologetic] point of view.”Thus, we find Marx writing “Ricardo’s ruthlessness was not only scientifically justified but also a scientific necessity from his point of view”.Just pause to consider Marx justifying exploitation, in the context of Ricardo’s science, and we see what little intellectual store he placed upon “value judgement”. He is equally detached about Aristotle’s “natural slave” theory. Such lack of sentiment, where you might expect him to explode, is comprehensible for an historical materialist for whom people are products of their social environment.²Every counter-view to Marx that you hurl at him here, Marx had encountered by perennial genus and species long before you ever stumbled across its “modern” ephemeral rehash.Marx confronted a complete catalogue of counter-views while reaching the materialist conclusion “that neither legal relations nor political forms could be comprehended, whether by themselves or on the basis of a so-called general development of the human mind, but that on the contrary they originate in the material conditions of life … the anatomy of which has to be sought in political economy.”Make no mistake, Marx stands on comfortably equal footing with his “modern” critics, and has the supreme advantage over them of knowing them, and their heritage, far better than they know him.It is therefore simply a matter of whether Castoriadis can genuinely go toe-to-toe with Marx and last the distance, or Levi-Strauss can, etc. But first things first. Robbo’s “Response”Firstly, robbo, you chose not to answer #77. Squibbed it. I mention this so that there can be no misunderstanding, and I’m not letting you claim you did.To answer your response, I need to categorize your substantiated claims:(robbo.1) the materialist conception of history is false.(robbo.2) base–superstructure determinism is false.(robbo.3) the objectivity of capitalist social relations is false.(robbo.4) we must therefore rely on emotion and morality. Marx’s MethodTo answer your claims, I need to teach a little science, and so I’ll slip in my far too brief itemized summary of Marx’s method:(twc.1) We conceive appearance as a process.(twc.2) We abstract determinism from processes to conceive their unifying dynamics — the changing fluidity of the persistent thing.(twc.3) We abstract categories from processes to categorize their unifying statics — the persistent thingness of the fluid change.(twc.4) We develop abstract theory [concept] of processes in which our determinism operates abstractly upon our categories and produces abstract appearance [phenomena].(twc: 5). We can test in practice our abstract appearance against the phenomena of the world. Marx’s ScienceFinally, here is the [enumerated] excerpt from Capital Volume 1:(marx.1) “Vico says, human history differs from natural history in this, that we have made the former, but not the latter.”(marx.2) “Technology discloses man’s mode of dealing with Nature, the process of production by which he sustains his life, and thereby also lays bare the mode of formation of his social relations, and of the mental conceptions that flow from them.”(marx.3) “Every history (even the history of religion) that fails to take account of this material basis, is uncritical.”(marx.4) “It is, in reality, much easier to discover (marx.4α) by analysis the earthly core of the misty creations of religion,than, conversely, it is, (marx.4β) to develop from the actual relations of life the corresponding celestialised forms of those relations.”(marx.5) “The latter method is the only materialistic, and therefore the only scientific one.”(marx.6) “The weak points in the abstract materialism of natural science, a materialism that excludes history and its process are at once evident from the abstract and ideological conceptions of its spokesmen, whenever they venture beyond the bounds of their own speciality.”To be continued in next post Footnotes¹ The South was unsentimentally aided and abetted by sections of British industrial capital whose profits depended on Southern cotton. ↩ [Back]² The ancient world left us few arguments against slavery as an institution, but many outraged accounts of cruel masters or sympathetic accounts of kind ones, and instances of raising civil-service slaves to gods for general worship in imperial Rome, all of which reveals a “value judgement” that tacitly accepted the ancient institution of slavery as a whole, just as did the ante-bellum South.On the inefficacy of sentimentality, which is relevant to the main topic of this thread, and parallels the inefficacy of reformism, I quote the following (of uncertain origin) — he who consoles a slave in his servitude does his master an incalculable service. ↩ [Back]
[11] PASSING THE BUCK — WHAT WENT WRONG WITH THE SAVE THE SEAMEN FUND (Continuation)Clarke’s response immediately followed Orr’s letter in the 25 October 1935 Seamen’s Journal.Response
Seamans Journal, Clarke wrote:WE REPLYIn our last issue we published a list of “Things to Remember” in connection with the recent “Murada” dispute.Mr. Orr takes exception to some of the points and, by conveniently coupling two pars¹ together, concocts an allegation of insincerity and dishonesty against his organisation.While we cannot accept responsibility for the distorted interpretations Mr. Orr places upon our statements, we hasten to deny any charge of dishonesty or insincerity on the part of the Miners’ Union.Let us see, then, what is behind Mr. Orr’s disclaimer. During the “Murada” dispute, many spurious claims were made by some members of our Union, and an attempt was made to lull the general membership into a false sense of security.We exposed some of these claims in the article referred to by Mr. Orr and, had he read the par. in question, he would not have made the objections in his letter.We said:— “The £250 alleged to have been RECEIVED from the Miners’ Union never turned up. Neither did the £50 alleged to come from the Printing Trades’ Union, ALTHOUGH MEETINGS IN SYDNEY WERE TOLD BY MEMBERS OF THE STRIKE COMMITTEE² THAT THE MONEY HAD BEEN RECEIVED.”Had Mr. Orr read the words we have emphasized he would understand that whatever charges, the par. contained, were aimed at the people who told the meetings THAT THE MONEY HAD BEEN RECEIVED.Surely he will not object to our exposure of people who deliberately misrepresented the facts to the Seamen. More especially when he learns that, later, a meeting was told that the cheque for £250 from the Miners’ Union should be sent to the Sugar Workers, who were on strike in Queensland.If the friends³ of Mr. Orr desire to mislead the Seamen in regard to the Miners’ Union, he should take his friends to task, and not those ⁴ who correct their false statements.Why Mr. Orr objects to the second par. we cannot say, unless the “cap fitted”. For his information, we point out that the Seamen were told that:—The Waterside Workers’ Union had promised support.The Tramways Union at a “Mass” meting in Melbourne had promised support.The Australian Railways Union had decided to support the Seamen, etc.⁵The statement regarding the Waterside Workers was not true. There was no “mass” meeting of the Tramways Union. The rank and file of the A.R.U.⁶ did not discuss the question.In reference to the “promised support” from the Waterside Workers, the “Marine Worker” for October 10th [1935] admitted the falsity of the misleading statements and said:— “This was incorrect, although the spokesman erred in not having ascertained whether the communication was an official one or otherwise. Again, on the last day of the struggle, a similar incident was recorded … Here again the information was taken as being correct; later events proved it was not.”Here again we have a crude confession of clumsy error and malicious lying from their official organ.If Mr. Orr really desires to “eliminate suspicion and defeatism from the ranks of the trade union movement and inspire confidence and solidarity in the workers”, he cannot consistently do so and at the same time support directly or, indirectly, those who, in order to further their own ends, unblushingly spread the most infamous lies among members of the Seamen’s Union. W. J. Clarke, Editor.Editor’s Notes¹ “par” = paragraph. A reference to the ‘Second “Murada” Report’. ↩ [Back]² Allegations made by members of the MMM. ↩ [Back]³ William Orr was a prominent member of the MMM. ↩ [Back]⁴ “those who correct” = Clarke, in defence of the Union. ↩ [Back]⁵ Clarke inserts the handwritten annotation “All of which were lies”. ↩ [Back]⁶ A.R.U. Australian Railways Union. ↩ [Back]↩ [Table of Contents] [Proofread: 27 April 2014. Validated XHTML 1.0 Strict: 27 April 2014] THE 1935 SEAMEN’S STRIKE — Installment 11
[12] THE NEW AWARD*[Meanwhile, Mr Justice G. J. Dethridge, Chief Judge of the Federal Arbitration Court, finalized a new Seamen’s Award. This Award, no matter what its provisions, was guaranteed to provide an automatic cue for another MMM [dis]organised strike.The Australasian Seamen’s Journal of 25th November, 1935, carried the following appraisal of the Award, signed by the Union’s Committee of Management.¹ ]
Seamens Journal, 25 Nov, 1935 wrote:THE NEW AWARD²The Arbitration Court has delivered its final Award which is to govern Seamen in the Interstate Trade. The rates of pay operate as from the 1st of November, 1935, and the working conditions from the 1st December, 1935, and will continue to operate until 31st December, 1938.Those clauses which appear to be an improvement on the previous Award or Agreement, and those that disclose a loss are enumerated in order to simplify—or make easy—comparison.Many of the clauses are not commented upon by the Committee of Management; although they may appear in different language, [they] are in essence identical with the old ones; comment, therefore, on those clauses is unnecessary.³So far as it has been possible to sift and measure the altered conditions and rates of pay, we have classified as far as possible the gains and losses. We are unable at the present stage to compute the magnitude gained or lost of each individual item, [as] this will be better revealed in the process of practical application.It will be noted that the Award provides penal clauses. These clauses have been copied more or less from the Arbitration Act, which whether such penal clauses were in the Award or not, would still have force. Some minor improvements we have passed over without comment. The chief losses and gains are:— LOSSESOvertime Rates. Clause 10. Overtime rates have been reduced from 2/9 to 2/6.Working Cargo. Clause 19. Keeping steam for cargo, Skippers of Holds, Hatches and Beams, are not regarded as cargo work.Night Watchman. Clause 26. Hours for Night Watchman, from 6 pm to 7 am. Hourly rate reduced by 3d, and 4d less in assisting shifting ship.Deferred Sailing. Not included in present Award, but employers under penalty if breach is committed. GAINSIncrease in Wages, per MonthAble Seamen, Firemen, Trimmers, Donkeymen, Greasers, Lamptrimmers, Wipers, Oilburners, and Firemen Greasers— Increase in wages … … £1 5 0Fireman’s Attendant, over 21 years of age— Increase … … £3 2 6Fireman’s Attendant, under 21 years— Increase in wages … … £1 15 0Deckhand’s Attendant, over 21 years— Increase … … £3 2 6Deckhand’s Attendant, over 18 and under 21— Increase … … £1 15 0Ordinary Seaman, over 21— Increase … … £3 2 6Ordinary Seaman, over 18 and under 21— Increase in wages … … £1 15 0Ordinary Seaman, under 18 years of age— Increase in wages … … £1 15 0Deckhand Attendant, under 18— Increase in wages … … £1 15 0N.B.—For the month of November deduct 2/6 from the above rates.Clause 4. Mainports. Additional Mainports:—Bowen, Auckland, Wellington, Dunedin, Suva, Honolulu, San Francisco, Vancouver, Port Moresby and Samarai, Rabaul, Kaveing, Madang, Salamoa, Tulagi, Makambo, Gavutu, Gizo, Faisi, Vila.Short Term of Employment. Clause 9. 25 per cent. additional wage for short terms of employment for less than 14 days.Meal and Bed Allowance. Clause 11. Increase from 6/6 per day to 8/6 per day away from homeport. 2/– increase in bed allowance, but the increase in bed allowance does not apply at home port.Shipwreck Gift. Clause 14. Shipwreck gift of up to £20 in case of effects being lost through shipwreck. This becomes operative on March 31st, 1936.Boiler Work. Clause 16. 1/– per hour additional rates for performance of such work in port.Trimming Coal Out of Bunker Space. Clause 17. Trimming coal outside of bunker space, if work performed on watch, 1/– per hour; 3/6 when off watch.Shipwrecked Employees. Clause 18. Compensation for loss of employment through shipwreck, not less than two months’ wages and victualling allowance, unless members refuse to accept employment offered by the Employer.Working Cargo in Port. Clause 19. Right of refusal to perform this work in port if Waterside Workers are available. If Waterside Workers are not available the additional wage for performing this work is 2/– per hour between the hours of 7 am and 5 pm, and 2/6 per hour on Sundays and Holidays for Mails, Passengers’ Luggage and Motor Cars, and 3/9 per hour for Ordinary Cargo.Treating Ships in Port as Being at Sea. Clause 22, Sub-clause (1). Ships cannot be treated [as being] at Sea in Mainport, even although vessel may arrive and depart again on same day and watches cannot be kept under circumstances except in those ports mentioned in this clause.Saturday Afternoon Off. Clause 23, Sub-clause (11). Saturday afternoon off in port under certain conditions.Mooring and Unmooring. No mention of this in the Award. This work is classed as ordinary hours of labor for the day and Overtime payment claim able in future if performed after eight hours have already been completed.Setting Watches for Stokehold and Engine-Room. Clause 23, Sub-clause (9). Setting watches for these departments two hours prior to intended departure instead of three hours as previously.Sundays. Clause 28, Sub-clause (2). Minimum of three hours’ overtime payment if required to come aboard in home port on Sundays and Holidays. Clause 28 (c). 3/9 per hour overtime rates for working General cargo.Holidays. Clause 29. Anzac Day, additional Holiday at sea; also further improvement.Leave of Absence. Clause 31. Although the 14 days’ annual leave has not been actually extended, the present clause is an improvement upon the old clause when leave is granted during time when ordinary Holidays intervene, such as Xmas time and Easter Holidays.Meals on Sundays and Holidays. Clause 33. Meals must be cooked for crew when ship is in port on Sundays and Holidays in future; if not, the meal allowance as provided must be paid for.Bilges and Tubes. Clause 37. If bilges are cleaned by men at sea at night when on watch, 2/– per hour extra. If done off watch at night at sea, 4/6 per hour. If Tubes are cleaned at sea, 2/– per hour extra during ordinary working hours; if done outside ordinary working hours or off watch, 4/6 per hour.Discharging Ashes, Clause 37. Ashes made in port to be discharged prior to departure in all ships in future whereas in the past, this only applied to passenger ships.Work in Engine-room and Stokehold. Clause 39. If ship is in port and treated as at sea, no member of the Stokehold to be taken in the Engine-room except for assisting in repairs to Machinery.Hatches Off at Sea. Clauses 42 and 45. Provides for comprehensive safety measures. No vessel is allowed prior to arrival to take hatches off until within Harbour limits of a port. Hatches must also be battened down prior to leaving Harbour limits of a port.Cargo Gear at Sea. Clause 43. Cargo gear must not be rigged up elsewhere than within the harbour limits of a port.Cargo Gear at Night. Clause 44. Cargo gear must not be rigged at night except for passengers’ luggage and mails.Guarding Open Hatches. Open hatches shall be guarded by a rail or similar means.Bedding. Clause 51. In addition to bed and blankets, sheets are to be supplied, also pillow slips, and clean sheets, and pillow slips must be issued each week. Members joining ship must be supplied with clean bedding, etc.Consecutive Duty. Clause 24, Sub-clause (5). This clause provides for ten hours off duty instead of eight as previously.Conveyance Whilst at Anchorage. Clause 55. Conveyance to be supplied by Employer for convenience of members desiring to go ashore when laying at anchorage.Sickness. Clause 57. This clause now provides for continuation of wages and maintenance when returned to the Homeport before recovery, until certified recovered. Section 132 of the Navigation Act and our old Agreement only provided for wages and not maintenance after a seaman had returned to the Homeport before recovery.Discharge at Other Port. Clause 68. All moneys to be paid immediately upon discharge proceeding to the Homeport, inclusive of overtime and bed allowance, also wages accruing during travelling time. Note.—Unless Seamen are returned to the Homeport by steamer they are also entitled to 4/– bed allowance per night whilst travelling. Committee of Management RecommendationThe Award is the result of Constitutional procedure adopted by the Union through Arbitration Court Machinery. Opinions may considerably vary among members as to whether the Union’s efforts in utilizing this machinery to improve conditions have been worth while. Your Committee of Management, after weighing the pros and cons of the old Agreement with that of the new Award, have no hesitation in recommending the adoption of the new Award, on the grounds that they view the new Award from the point of appreciable improvement in the total result. Acceptance of AwardIn order to obtain a true opinion as to whether the Award should be accepted, your Committee of Management has unanimously agreed that the best course to adopt would be for members to decide this issue by plebiscite. With this object in view a vote of the members will be taken on this question conjointly with the Annual General Elections for Official positions. In order that members might acquaint themselves fully with the new Award before the vote is taken, the C.O.M. decided that it should be published in this issue of the “Seamen’s Journal”.As Mr Byrne, the West Australian Representative, was not summoned to the Committee of Management Meeting, his signature does not appear hereunder. William Casey, Queensland Branch. James Schofield, Newcastle Branch. Chris. Herbert, Sydney Branch. Harry O’Neill, South Australian Branch. W. J. Clarke, Presiding Officer. Jacob Johnson, General Secretary.Editor’s Notes* Text in italics indicates Clarke’s 1980s underlining of his 1935 original. ↩ [Back]¹ Committee of Management [C.O.M.] Union Branch officials tasked with negotiating the Award on behalf of the Union. As stated here “The Award is the result of Constitutional procedure adopted by the Union through Arbitration Court Machinery”. The signatories’ names and their branches appear at the bottom. ↩ [Back]² This appraisal is interesting (apart from both its intrinsic content and the spurious grounds it gave for provoking renewed MMM-inspired strike action) for its incidental insight into the conditions of working seamen in the 1930s. ↩ [Back]³ I’ve moved the following long paragraph from the text into this footnote, since its content is incidental to the Award: “Regarding members sailing out of Mackay and ports North of Mackay, they are not covered by this Award. The Union has asked for the exclusion of them from the provision of this Award on the grounds that the Judge intimated that he was not prepared to grant the 10 per cent tropical allowance
as they were not applicable to other employees in the Industry, such as the Marine Cooks, Merchant Service Guild, Marine Engineers, etc. Members in the port of Mackay and North of Mackay will, therefore, continue to work under the provisions of the old Award and local Agreements until such time as the Union makes application for a new Award to cover this section of our members in the Queensland State Arbitration Court, or until the Union makes further suitable arrangements with the Employers.” ↩ [Back]↩ [Table of Contents] [Proofread: 27 April 2014. Validated XHTML 1.0 Strict: 27 April 2014] THE 1935 SEAMEN’S STRIKE — Installment 12That is mere smokescreen — a pathetic squib for not facing up to the moral imperative of defending one’s view, following one’s own science wherever it may lead. Show scientific integrity and moral courage and simply test your view.If you squib out, why should anyone respect you? Maybe you haven’t given the point consideration, and need time to do it justice. That's fine. But if you run for cover, and hide behind a barrage of sneer hoping that somehow the issue will go away, you are sadly mistaken, and proved — despite your bluster — to be a moral coward before all and sundry,If you won’t test your view, why should anyone else bother with it?Stop hiding and answer #77.
So it’s “the makings of a good discussion”! What dilettante puerility! Seek bourgeois edification on philosophical puzzles elsewhere.It is with no pleasure that I enter the threads you derail.Marx’s conception of science is too precious to discuss carefully with a proven sneerer. His profound thought plumbs the depths of appearance for essence, and so offers a perfect target for sneerers. By comparison, the vulgarities of bourgeois thought are impervious to sneering, because they remain satisfied with surface appearance, the tacitly-agreed phenomena recognized by us all.You earn your stripes, and answer #77.
LBird wrote:As for us Communists, we're throwing away our 150 years' head start, and reverting to 19th century 'scientific socialism'.Drivel. Stop feeling sorry for yourself!Show us the might of your ideological science, by answering the question I posed in #77.Bourgeois philosophy is insidious because it perfectly reflects the dominant thought of our society, and so appears perfectly correct. Falling for its might is absolutely evident in the postings of DJP, Robbo and especially yourself.You reflect the Kantian aspects that are latent in the scientific philosophy of Popper [who is an avowed Kantian] and his offspring [Lukacs trained] Lakatos and the absurdist Feyerabend.For 18th century Kant, we humans can never know what’s out there beyond our untrustworthy mental representation of it.You might recall that it was precisely such Kantian critiques of Marx that laid the foundations of anti-Marxian revisionism in the 1890s, although Bernstein courteously waited decent months after Engels died before he blurted out the revisionist truth that Marxian materialism was bunkum.Marx’s materialist science [as outlined in #77] is the practice of the critique of appearance: “All science would be superfluous if appearance [phenomena] and essence coincided”.For Marx, essence determines appearance — base determines superstructure; social being determines consciousness.We conceive appearance as a process.We abstract determinism from processes to conceive their unifying dynamics — the changing fluidity of the persistent thing.We abstract categories from processes to categorize their unifying statics — the persistent thingness of the fluid change.We develop abstract theory [concept] of processes in which our determinism operates abstractly upon our categories and produces abstract appearance [phenomena].We can test in practice our abstract appearance against the phenomena of the world.This is merely a systematic form of the way each of us comprehends and navigates the world on a daily basis. It is what gives us the confidence to avoid falling down holes in the pavement or of walking into closed doors.I am quite prepared to engage with you further, but first please answer #77.[Note to admin — the # numbers are unreliable when you are writing/editing. I had formerly written #80 for what now is labelled #77.]
