twc
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So please explain:If the social superstructure is pure bias, how that pure bias comes about.Why anyone should support the pure socialist bias.
Nothing to do with ideas becoming a material force.Everything to do with material conditions, in the form of our necessary social existence, determining our social superstructure — (under capitalism, our socially necessary laws; our functional conception of the very process of our existence depending on private ownership and control of the means of social reproduction [something, by the way, that I see the remarkable political economist Andrew Kliman, to whom we are all in debt for his reclamation of Marx from the Sraffians, seems to discount] and the conceptions of money, capital, property and right that necessarily result from this, and hold mental sway over us so long as we consider them as necessarily so).So, do you think that our Objective has no deterministic force? Do you repudiate it? Just what are you really implying? This is the nub of the issue.I haven't Marx's intro to Capital Vol 1, where I am writing on an iPhone, but I recall the bit about no social system ever being replaced until it has exhausted its potential. Capitalism hasn't yet — China, India, the Arab world, Africa, South America have yet to come on board before we all collectively sink the ship.Courage man, and patience!Social determinism holds us back for the time being. We may not see social determinism turn in our favour in our brief lifetime. But then again it may. When it does turn, the old social system will have exhausted its possibilities, and will be powerless to withstand it.For the moment capitalism has plenty of room to move, and people recognize this, and so, on their own rational terms, find little reason to heed our message.That's why it's essential for socialists to stick to our Principles and Object.
Ugly "Truths"Well then, it was also an "obituary" for Marx and the SPGB. It certainly harmed the SPA.There could be no uglier truth than that we are biased, and our bias is wrong — whatever a "wrong" bias can ever be in the context that all is bias.But as far as ugly truths go — and they go awfully far — there is no uglier truth than that we are wrong.Not deterministic? Look at our Object and Declaration of Principles. Please don't tell me our Object isn't deterministic. If our Object isn't deterministic, socialism has no hope whatsoever on the foundation of our Object. In which case, socialism has no hope.Blow me down. Human agency. Do you think the determinism of human society doesn't involve human agency. Human agency is the substance of social determinism.Instead of determinism, it's consciousness that's lacking. Only consciousness. Some of us hold with Marx that social being determines consciousness.That's Marx's mighty determined determinism, if you ask me. Only consciousness! Only determinism!Otherwise, we might as well subscribe to Royden's ugly "truth" that this insubstantial pageant is all mere ugly bias.Oh mankind, what have we come to!
This post is relevant to both threads.Royden ArticleReference: http://www.reasoninrevolt.net.au/objects/pdf/d0483.pdf
alanjjohnstone wrote:I have pointed out on a discussion list, the SPA wrote its own obituary in 1948.Please cite a reference to your post.
pgb wrote:It is an unusual piece because of a very forthright, honest and up-front tone, which I haven't found in other issues of Socialist Comment.The only thing forthright, honest and up-front in tone about the article is its statement that the socialist case of the SPA, of the SPGB and of Marx has been put for a century, and the world has rejected it, and that we now should reconsider the socialist case of the SPA, of the SPGB, and of Marx because it’s just our bias, opinion, ideology — and is probably wrong.The only explanation I can imagine for the EC letting it through was difficulty of communication between scattered EC members, some of whose advice to reject was overridden or possibly not sought, and the desire for the Party to publish post haste a historical appraisal of world socialism for the centenary celebration of the “The Communist Manifesto”.Why thoroughly likable Jack Topp agreed to publish the article is beyond me. Perhaps it was his general magnanimity. [Jack was a perpetual, and so familiar, sight at Melbourne Trades Hall. He was the only layman that future prime minister Hawke, when long-term industrial advocate and head of the Australian Council of Trade Unions (ACTU), relied on for industrial and legal opinion, and he nurtured future ACTU advocate and Federal treasurer Ralph Willis.]For or AgainstIt certainly is a demoralizing article for the world socialist case; and the author, by disavowing its Object and Declaration of Principles, the sole conditions of Party membership, is thereby placing himself outside and against the Party he’s ostensibly writing inside and for.Your finding merit in the Royden article plays into my hand, and provides the missing substantiation that the ex-SPGB pair moved from inside to outside, and from for to against, the SPA, Marx and the SPGB.ObituaryIf Royden was being forthright, honest and up-front in tone in writing an obituary on the SPA, then he was also being forthright, honest and up-front in tone in writing an obituary for Marx, and for the SPGB. If one is dead, so are they all, and that includes the SPGB.This makes my central, but contrary, point in this thread. If everything is opinion, or bias, or ideology, then we are all as much opinionated, biased and ideological as the next.If so, we have an insubstantial basis for dumping an existing world social system [presumably merely the result of someone-else’s former bias, opinion, ideology] for a non-existing world social system [presumably merely the fantasy of our own bias, opinion, ideology].That, of course, is nonsense.Socialism is materialist and deterministic, or not at all. The only obituary we strive for is capitalism’s.
Royden ArticleReference: http://www.reasoninrevolt.net.au/objects/pdf/d0483.pdf
alanjjohnstone wrote:I have pointed out on a discussion list, the SPA wrote its own obituary in 1948.Please cite a reference to your post.
pgb wrote:It is an unusual piece because of a very forthright, honest and up-front tone, which I haven't found in other issues of Socialist Comment.The only thing forthright, honest and up-front in tone about the article is its statement that the socialist case of the SPA, of the SPGB and of Marx has been put for a century, and the world has rejected it, and that we now should reconsider the socialist case of the SPA, of the SPGB, and of Marx because it’s just our bias, opinion, ideology — and is probably wrong.The only explanation I can imagine for the EC letting it through was difficulty of communication between scattered EC members, some of whose advice to reject was overridden or possibly not sought, and the desire for the Party to publish post haste a historical appraisal of world socialism for the centenary celebration of the “The Communist Manifesto”.Why thoroughly likable Jack Topp agreed to publish the article is beyond me. Perhaps it was his general magnanimity. [Jack was a perpetual, and so familiar, sight at Melbourne Trades Hall. He was the only layman that future prime minister Hawke, when long-term industrial advocate and head of the Australian Council of Trade Unions (ACTU), relied on for industrial and legal opinion, and he nurtured future ACTU advocate and Federal treasurer Ralph Willis.]For or AgainstIt certainly is a demoralizing article for the world socialist case; and the author, by disavowing its Object and Declaration of Principles, the sole conditions of Party membership, is thereby placing himself outside and against the Party he’s ostensibly writing inside and for.Your finding merit in the Royden article plays into my hand, and provides the missing substantiation that the ex-SPGB pair moved from inside to outside, and from for to against, the SPA, Marx and the SPGB.ObituaryIf Royden was being forthright, honest and up-front in tone in writing an obituary on the SPA, then he was also being forthright, honest and up-front in tone in writing an obituary for Marx, and for the SPGB. If one is dead, so are they all, and that includes the SPGB.This makes my central, but contrary, point in the Materialism thread. If everything is opinion, or bias, or ideology, then we are all as much opinionated, biased and ideological as the next.If so, we have an insubstantial basis for dumping an existing world social system [presumably merely the result of someone-else’s former bias, opinion, ideology] for a non-existing world social system [presumably merely the fantasy of our own bias, opinion, ideology].That, of course, is nonsense.Socialism is materialist and deterministic, or not at all. The only obituary we strive for is capitalism’s.
ALB,Please don't knock the spelling of our nation. We set high national standards in everything.Our nation re-introduced the imperial honour of knighthoods. Damnit, I knew Dame Edna wasn't a real one. [Last week]Our nation legislated expressly for the right to be a bigot. This overturns a politically inconvenient application of race vilification law. [Last week]Our nation's navy "turns back the boats" of refugees, pops the illegal immigrants into sealed orange life-craft, and sends those "unwanted" national invaders back to some-one-else's nation. [This year]I warn you, our Queen's representative, the new Governor General, is a military man! [Yesterday]And, surely, "U" realize that there's no YOU in "LABOR".
I truly appreciate your detailed history of the relationship between the SPA and the Australian Seamen's Union, aspects of which I was unaware of. For a child, these were ancient history.I was going on the sketchy details I gleaned from the Casey obituary, and found in Clarke's rebuttal of the Thesis 11 attack on the SPA in relation to ex-member Dawson printing Pannekoek's post-War book on "Council Communism", page proofs of which were still piled high in Charlie Sundberg's backyard garden shed into the 80s.I have no reason whatsoever to dispute your far more knowledgable account of the SPA and the Australian Seamen's Union.Having witnessed Clarke's dismissal of radical historian Rowan Cahill's centenary history of the Union, "dictated to him by the great Elliot", I believe that the fine historian's big book is not always trustworthy nor objective in interpretation of periods in its history, especially those of SPA influence, if not "dominance" in your sense.Clarke let me know that he personally could no longer have got a job on the ships under the Communist "dominated" Union. I am fascinated by the fact that other labour historians have now discussed this turbulent era. I must look them up.
pgb wrote:Throughout the 1940s and early 1950s the SPA existed in name only and in Post Box numbers in Sydney and Melbourne. Its only significant activity was the publication of a 4-page paper Socialist Comment between 1943 and 1948 largely through the dedicated efforts of Clarke (editor of the Union journal in 1935). Johnson had no part in this.Yes. The war disrupted Party activity, and scattered members. On return, many drifted away, even if keeping in personal contact.
pgb wrote:It wasn't until 1956 that the SPA was resurrected as a functioning Party (but only in Sydney) with the arrival from New Zealand of two ex-members of the SPGB. They joined the SPGB in 1943 and 1946, not in the Depression years as you claim.Yes. I accept your correction unreservedly.
pgb wrote:As set out in a letter printed in the Socialist Standard in October 2004 written by me and co-signed by J Thorburn (ex Glasgow Branch), the revived Sydney Branch of the SPA was a very active Branch, holding indoor and outdoor meetings, debating with other, mainly left-wing groups (this was the year of the CPSU 20th Congress and the Soviet invasion of Hungary, so many ex-CPAers were looking for new directions), and selling the Standard and many SPGB pamphlets.Yes. I accept your account unreservedly.
pgb wrote:Your description of these ex-SPGBers as "intellectual poseurs" with their "gung-ho brand of egotistical bravado proselytising" that eventually "brought the Australian world socialist party to its knees" is absurd, and a calumny against very able and dedicated socialists.I hereby retract my exaggerated claim.I cannot bring myself to retract it unreservedly, but neither can I offer evidence to substantiate it.By way of explanation, my claim stems from the relayed exasperation, and perhaps my childish distorted misinterpretation of it, of a long-term member, from a different generation. That, as I recall, was his eventual opinion of these two, but by then there was no blood lost between them either. [Of you, his relayed opinion was high.]
pgb wrote:The SPA was never brought to its knees by these comrades; it died from want of interest on the part of the Australian working class who had absolutely zero interest in the SPGB brand of revolutionary politics and doctrinaire Marxism.Sadly, true.
pgb wrote:It is a bitter irony that you of all people, who presents himself as a materialist, should blame the decline of the SPA not on the material conditions of life in capitalist Australia, but on the imagined personal flaws and failings of the members who did most to rebuild it.I do confess, when confronted by your account, my personal shame in having hung pent-up dirty linen on the line.Yes, it is ironic that I brought it up in response to attacks against materialism and determinism, when these are the only substantial foundations we have, and proselytizing without them for Socialism is meaningless, just wishful thinking.
pgb wrote:Shame.I accept most of your criticism. I hereby apologize to past warriors under almost insuperable odds. I agree that it was shameful for me to have brought up, for long-held personal reasons, something harmful to the reputation of others, and for which I cannot offer substantial evidence.
ALB (1) wrote:Part of the case we put against UKIP yesterday evening:twc wrote:Surely we didn't do that!ALB (2) wrote:I hope you are not under the impression that it was our banner.Oh, that’s exactly how I did [mis]read quote ALB (1). Quote ALB (2) now makes complete SPGB sense.Sorry, I hadn’t appreciated that the SPGB debate had attracted such a crowd.
Materialist Marx
twc wrote:Because the charge has been laid by an avowed anti-materialist, it is worth pointing out that class ideology can only be a materialist position, along the lines that social condition determines social ideology.The bold text is present in my original but was omitted in your copy, and was dodged by you in your “improved” rephrasing. The bold text explains precisely why I made the claim.In case that alone wasn’t sufficiently convincing, I elaborated as follows .
twc wrote:No idealist could credibly maintain that social ideology determines social condition throughout an entire social epoch, or mode of production. No idealist could credibly argue that class ideology has the social power to determine a man’s social condition as that of a worker, a serf, or a slave, simply because he holds such conceptions of himself. No idealist could credibly maintain that a man in the social condition of worker, serf or slave could become a capitalist, lord or master, merely by thinking “ideologically” like a capitalist, lord or master.I finally pointed out that these were the hot-topic political considerations that turned the boy Marx into the materialist we should know today. Ironical put-downs of the great philosophes (such putdowns are common practice of the Left) have been kept in italics.
twc wrote:Class-ideology turns out not to be idealist at all, but the oldest political form of materialism.This, of course, was already recognized by those bête noir 18th century materialist philosophes, Diderot, Holbach, La Mettrie, Condorcet, etc., who expressed it in plain language as “opinion governs the world”. These detested fellows already proved that if social classes have their own social-class ideologies — and these pre-French revolutionaries knew a thing or two about social-class ideologies — then social-class ideology must be the product of social-class condition, and not social-class condition the product of social-class ideology.Marx was weaned on such French materialism — remarkable stuff — in his Rhineland youth , and spent his entire lifetime exploring the far-more complex nature of social consciousness that is raised upon the foundation of a social mode of production.alanjjohnstone wrote:What's the use of being right [i.e. correct] if no-one can be bothered to listen?So it’s better to be wrong [i.e. incorrect] and appeal to moral outrage.Moral outrage, for, is the twin of moral outrage, against. They both operate at the same emotional level.Have you ever met a bigot who wasn't morally outraged?Capitalism settles moral outrage by legislation, in the interests of capital, and not in any perceived interests of morality.The issue of capitalism’s self-inflicted “humanitarian” crises, and this is being perceived as such through the lens of moral indignation, conclusively proves that the socialist case is not a moral one, in the outraged sense appealed to.Moralizing over capitalism’s self-inflicted “humanitarian” problems leads to an impossible political morass under capitalism; intellectually theorizing against them descends into moral idiocy. We all finish up more tightly bound to what we fail to defeat.There is only one solution, which ALB says was the essence of the meeting.It is a pity the banner (which I confess is only a token) weakens the issue inside the hall.[Spelling was only a side issue.]
Surely we didn't do that!You say it's only a part, and maybe the part is more fully explained by the wider context of the debate.However, it strikes me as ill-conceived.Firstly, borders and nations are not the real problem, but are consequences of the real problem, which is private class ownership and control of the means of life under capitalism.Secondly, expletives are ineffectual for removing national borders. On the other hand, expletives are effectual in conveying to supporters of national borders just how ineffectual the opposition to them is.Thirdly, national borders will survive so long as national capital finds them indispensable to the needs of capital.Fourthly, capital is becoming increasingly globalized. It is conceivable that national capital could be consumed by global capital, which is far less concerned for the traditional niceties of borders and nations.Fifthly, capitalism could ultimately operate at a level that dispenses with current nations and borders, and so thereby solve for itself, by itself, in its own interests, without resorting to expletives, the problem of archaic local borders, by removing nations as antiquated baggage impeding capital. Global capital would then give us something bigger to swear at.Sixthly, legality is a capitalist category, and not a socialist one. In rational capitalist terms, foreign humans are illegal when a capitalist nation legislates and proclaims them to be illegal.If a capitalist nation considers that it must protect its national borders against entry by those it deems may threaten the interests of national capital, how else can national capital be expected to operate? By closing borders and controlling entry, national capital acts perfectly legally, since national capital ultimately decides what's nationally legal.In a nation, legality can only be changed by legislation, i.e. by reform.Surely we are not implying that national capital can afford to act humanely against its interest? If so, our socialist case is sunk. We have always argued that capital is inhuman by nature.Out of context, this banner reeks of indignation and reformism — We demand "Open our borders, legally", which is surely not the intention — indistinguishable from Left reformism.[By the way, "illegal" is spelt like this.]
Marcos,[Apologies for getting your name wrong, initially.]Principles of CommunismI think it's inappropriate to judge a youthful Engels harshly by that socialist "catechism", the Principles of Communism [1847/8?]. This is tantamount to holding the slightly older Marx, eternally responsible for the reformism of the Immediate Demands at the back of the Manifesto [1848], reformist demands that the mature Marx totally repudiated.Either both Marx and Engels are equally guilty of immaturity — an immaturity that we are only able to recognize because we can view it from the vantage point of the maturity they bequeathed to us — or neither of them is guilty.To me, the Principles hardly matter politically today, just like the Demands. They served their immediate purpose, and have now passed their use-by date, except as an interesting document of the period, and as the first tangible precursor of the SPGB's own Declaration of Principles.As such, the Principles are historically precious to us. If other people choose to willfully misread them today, the author himself can hardly be held responsible.Engels, himself, openly admitted embarrassment in later prefaces to reprints/translations of the Manifesto, but he also acknowledged that the Manifesto had by then become a world-historical document, which should no longer be changed, but simply read now in the context of its time.I see no problem with Engels's sane approach at all. He also expressed amazement that many of the ideas that he and Marx toyed with in their youth proved successful in their maturity, and we are eternally grateful to them for that. Their youthful mistakes should be seen as just that.HeterosexismSuch feminist accusation is the sort of thing so beloved of the Left. Just reread the Origin of the Family, Private Property and the State and see if you can sustain the charge, except tendentiously.This charge can be more readily made of Marx. Look how he opposed Virginia Woodhull's attendance at the Conference of the International , and see what he wrote of her bourgeois politics, consistently from his class against her sex point of view. To be consistent, condemn Marx over Engels.On the other hand, Engels's Origin champions the discovery of mother-right by Bachofen. Engels champions the discovery of matriarchy throughout the human race by Morgan. Engels is the first person to recognize that many of the most groundbreaking discoveries were domestic — weaving, pottery, cooking, etc — and so were probably made by women, and that 19th century misogynist academics had unthinkingly mis-attributed to men, simply because men often appropriated them, later in class-based society.Engels, I think following Marx asserts point blank that the degree of civilization of a society can be read in the status of women . A 19th century man, who defiantly stated this, can only churlishly be called heterosexist . Pull another one!Of course, in his domestic life, he was slave to his Irish working class women folk. He also never took advantage of the working class women in his employ, which he tells was unconscionable common practice in 19th century factories — a sort of droit du seigneur of the capitalist class.As to Marx's Ethnographic Notebooks, they are just that, notebooks, in which jumbled English quotations elicit English notes that elide into French quotations that elicit French notes, and so on though a dozen European languages, including Russian.Engels made something out of the jumble, because it was far too explosively socialist to drop. Surely you are not seriously suggesting that Engels should have let the whole thing pass. Engels, above all scholars, until the mid 20th century, knew how to recognize group marriage for the loose thing it is in the flesh, and not the academic thing it is on paper.To falsely claim that Engels only used Morgan's Iroquois data is nonsense. Have you ever looked at Morgan's Tables of Consanguinity and Affinity Throughout the Human Race? He compiled these 1000 pages of kinship data from questionnaires and reports of countless missionaries, explorers, proto-anthropologists from all over Australia, the Pacific, Africa, the Americas, etc. Engels understood the complex structure of Morgan's Tables [which structure, anthropologist Claude Levi-Strauss used as one of the bulwarks of 20th century Structuralism] and which complex structure continues to befuddle modern university students, and even graduates, of anthropology today. So much for the amateur Engels. He was intellectually amazing.At the start of his career, the 24-year old Engels founded the science of sociology from scratch — no doubts about that — with his extraordinary readable Conditions of the Working Class in England in 1844. At the end of his career, he pioneered anthropology. Of course, academic anthropologists oppose him. How could German social democrats know more about anthropology than they? But are the academic anthropologists right, especially now that they study contaminated societies?Of course there are unwarranted anthropological conclusions, but who could have done otherwise. For the misses there are remarkable hits. There are errors, but they are mostly brilliant for the inception of a science. The science of anthropology tacitly recognizes Engels by stoutly refusing to acknowledge its indisputable founder Morgan, who it shuns as tainted by too close association with Marx, i.e. with Engels.So there are errors, big deal! But sticking to the Iroquois is not one of them, and seeing the ancient kinship relations surviving into the Roman gens and Fratries, as Morgan discovered, as Marx concurred, and as Engels told working men and women, is not another error. Engels's anthropology is one of socialism's most humanly inspiring chapters. It cannot be ignored by any socialist.Misappropriation by big-C CommunistsWhat a bogus charge.If either of them was mis-appropriated by Lenin, it was more seriously Marx than Engels. In particular, it was Marx's defence of the Paris Commune in the face of combined Franco–Prussian treachery against the people of Paris that was misappropriated. Firstly, what else could Marx have done but defend the working class, but in the process he signed the death warrant of the First International, and he inadvertently set in train the path to bolshevism.Lenin poured over that Marxian document, appropriating its contingent message for that occasion as a universal message for his occasion. Are you going to condemn Marx for Lenin's tactics retroactively? If not, why condemn Engels retroactively?ApologyThis response was written at white heat, without stopping to reread it. I wrote it simply to point out that none of your accusations against Engels is significant, even supposing they are true. There is a tribe of disaffected big-C Communists circling Engels as victim, as scapegoat, to blame everything upon.I claim, until someone can clearly prove otherwise, that this indispensable founder of world socialism, Frederick Engels, deserves far better from us, his direct heirs, beneficiaries and proud descendants.
Limited ConcentrationAs for answering in a few lines. How would you answer, in a few lines, DJP's confident, apparently-impregnable, claim that quantum mechanics is not deterministic? [my post #222]As for regurgitation.Where, for example, have you seen posts #119, #222 or #235 argued before? Are you implying that they're rehashed, copied or plagiarized? If so, show me the originals.Brevity as the Soul of ShitThe doorstop five-second bite is mostly inadequate to deal with serious problems, especially one liners that proclaim, for all the world, what all the world already believes is bleeding obvious.In reply to the haughty Emperor, who chided "Mozart, there's a lot of notes in your music", the intelligent composer — who set to music the revolutionary play that sparked the French Revolution, according to Napoleon — and who performed his court music as servant of inferior social rank, and so socially isolated behind a red cordon along with his players, proclaimed "Indeed, your Highness. But not a note too many!"
