Young Master Smeet
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LBird wrote:I think that your colleague is probably a bit of a bluffer.
And herein, ladies and gentlemen, we have LBird's scientific method: theorising in advance (or without or even irrespective) of the facts. They are prepared to make that statement without knowing the person, their background, details or even the precise nature of the discussion.
I was chatting with a colleague who is a student of Hegel, I mentioned these discussions, and he mentioned that basically every bugger and his brother in the 19th century claimed to have resovled the philosophical disctinction between idealism and materialism…
My opinion is that a footballer doesn't fall into the same category as a doctor, teacher, etc. but I accept it is arguable, and it is a valid case (i.e. that campaigners have a legitimate point), the case that Evans has been pubnished and should be allowed to return to his trade, as any hod carrier would, is also valid. I think the determining factor is that part of his trade is publicity and promotion, and he simply cannot do that now, but the club retain hopes of sellign him.IMNSHO everything I say here is my opinion only, and so does not need to be prefaced by an IMNSHO.
LBird, well, i was thinking of
Quote:First part of the paragraph: "Labor is the source of all wealth and all culture."Labor is not the source of all wealth. Nature is just as much the source of use values (and it is surely of such that material wealth consists!) as labor, which itself is only the manifestation of a force of nature, human labor power.Which seems to me, at a basic reading, as being a refuattion of your case of what Marx's views were. If Nature is a producer of use values, that means there is, necesarilly, a nature beyond human production, a reality, if you will.This isn't 'referring back to a bible' but given your proposnsity to read texts sideways (as in your overreading of the theses on Feurbach) going back to the text becomes necessary. All we can establish through this is what Charlie said, but given you make claims about what he said, we do need to test them.
It's not the teacher or Doctors ability to influence, it's also their physical proximity: their work gives them access and power. Yes, it is a judgement call, and one worthy of debate.
1) Utopian socialism isn't necessarilly idealist.2) A qualified thing is still that thing. A footballer can be a Gaelic Footballer, an Association Footballer, and American Footballer or a Rugby Footballer (non-exhaustive list): they are all still footballers.3) Lets look at the letter to Sorge, and add some context. Marx is complaining about
Charlie wrote:half-mature students and super-wise doctors who want to give socialism a “higher ideal” orientation, that is to say, to replace its materialistic basis (which demands serious objective study from anyone who tries to use it) by modern mythology with its goddesses of Justice, Freedom, Equality and Fraternity.additionally Marx defines utopian socialism as
Quote:playing with fancy pictures of the future structure of societyso not idealism (philosophical sense).https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1877/letters/77_10_19.htm
LBird wrote:I know you're still not, so I don't need to ask. Troll.How do you know that? Surely you can't know, since that would imply some sort of truth state of my communoscity?
Last I cehcked we'd agred that we were talkign more or less about the same thing, save for your ideosyncratic desire to use your neologism of idealism-materialism, to which i suggest Neutral Monism as a different term that has historic and wider understood usage for much the same concept, which you rejected with a facile ad hominem. You then wenton to demonstrate a lack of understanding of what a communist is (we can add this to your demonstrated lack of understanding of what idealism is with your suggested metaphors of joining the dots with which you wished to misinform the workers). You have provided no quotes where marx repudiates materialism as such (save, possibly, some misreadings).Anyway, I think, since you're willing to rely on the german Ideology for a phisolosophical basis that we stick to recommending that workers read that to get a sound political grasp.
Russell wrote:The larger events in the political life of the world are determined by the interaction of material conditions and human passions. The operation of the passions on the material conditions is modified by intelligence.looks very much he same as
Quote:But then, for 'materialists', this is a pointless exercise, because they have access to 'The Truth', and the very concept that 'ideas' are required to understand 'material', and thus that both must be examined, because changing 'ideas' changes understanding of 'material', is anathema to 'materialists'.I'd recommend you read Russell. BTW, are you still a Communist?
Anyway, back to Russell:
Quote:The larger events in the political life of the world are determined by the interaction of material conditions and human passions. The operation of the passions on the material conditions is modified by intelligence. The passions themselves may be modified by alien intelligence guided by alien passions. So far, such modification has been wholly unscientific, but it may in time become as precise as engineering.Pretty much what Lbird is saying, AFAICS.
Quote:it is a mistake to attempt to inaugurate Communism in a country where the majority are hostile, or rather, where the active opponents are as strong as the active supporters, because in such a state of opinion a very severe civil war is likely to result. It is necessary to have a great body of opinion favourable to Communism, and a rather weak opposition, before a really successful Communist state can be introduced either by revolution or by more or less constitutional methods.It may be assumed that when Communism is first introduced, the higher technical and business staff will side with the capitalists and attempt sabotage unless they have no hopes of a counter-revolution. For this reason it is very necessary that among wage-earners there should be as wide a diffusion as possible of technical and business education, so that they may be able immediately to take control of big complex industries. In this respect Russia was very badly off, whereas England and America would be much more fortunate.You seem to have misunderstood what part of the sentence I objected to.
Quote:For a communista communist can hold any philosophical view, as long as they believe in the common ownership of wealth, whether they are theistically inspired, idealistically inspired or materialistically inspired, they remain communists. So what you wrote was simple not true, in any sense, and cannot be defended.
LBird wrote:For a Communist, the ideas are as real as the physical.This, of course, is completely untrue and galavanting ignorant rubbish. A communist may be an idealist, seeing communism as the utlimate realisation of the will of god, or the unfurling of the world spirit, the re-unification of humans and faeries. They could maintain that communism is an idea that humans have to open themselves to. They could insist that teh Qabbalah will reveal the word that will create communism opn earth, or the ritual we have to dance to produce communism.
Actually, you may enjoy skimming this:http://www.gutenberg.org/files/17350/17350-h/17350-h.htm#II_IAs Russell says:
Quote:By far the most important aspect of the Russian Revolution is as an attempt to realize Communism. I believe that Communism is necessary to the world, and I believe that the heroism of Russia has fired men's hopes in a way which was essential to the realization of Communism in the future. Regarded as a splendid attempt, without which ultimate success would have been very improbable, Bolshevism deserves the gratitude and admiration of all the progressive part of mankind. But the method by which Moscow aims at establishing Communism is a pioneer method, rough and dangerous, too heroic to count the cost of the opposition it arouses.I hardly think Bertrand Rusell counts as apolitical, now, does he?n Although he was most closely linked with Logical Positivism (IIRC). In any case, neutral monism most closely described what we have been discussing, that there is one stuff in the world and that mind and matter are of equal status.Since when have you been a communist? That comes as a complete surprise to me.
