Young Master Smeet
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Short answer, IIRC the party poll itself merely affirmed that the cofnerence result should be enforced, rather than affirming an express policy. Teh second answer is that since the mebers who wanted to go to the wall over the issue have all left, and the majority never don't give a damn about the name. Who, after all, cares about what the name on the the Head Office Feaces is?
Because our enemies could vote maliciously, and choosig the worst candidates, or even worse, voting to cause confusion. We can hold our committee members to account, and our fellow members if they behave in such a way as to disrupt the objects of the party: we can't expell non-members.
Open primaries are a terrible idea, they are a form of state assimilation of political parties, that removes control of the party from an active membership and hands it over to a bureaucratic elite (also, in the states, a party has to qualify for registration for primaries). Also, the issue of avoiding spoiler votes raises its head. Tories could vote and select terrible candidates. We have the membership test and formal membership for a reason: accountability. We want to know that the people taking decisions for our organisation know what it stands for, and share the essential ideas that we exist to promote.
The Morning Star have been wetting themselves over the Kurdish Republic of Rojava:http://www.morningstaronline.co.uk/a-8069-Kurds-keep-resisting-Isis-attack-on-Rojava#.VDPiD9jgdhc
As I said, it can't occur on a ballot paper (and I don't agree it's always likely to occur generally). Socialist Pubnk is right, we have to read the motion in such a way as to make it effective.
To take a comparative method:An Animist society might well just (reasonably, and scientifically) believe that the sea moves through the instigatioin of people (and lets rememebr, animals are people here) since people make things happen. they're just invisible people we call spirits. All they know is sometimes they get angry, and need to be placated.A theistic society, being more hierarchical, believes that a king has ruled, and the seas move according to his will. We can discover the mind of this king/god through what the sea does.An inductive society, perhaps more sea faring than the others, observes that the tides are usually high or low at a certain point in the calendar, or when a certain star is in the sky at sunset (stone age polynesian island tribes could do this).A scientific society would apply the inductive knowledge of tide times hitherto, and could add in knowledge of gravity and motion, and say that by predicting the motions of the moon we can calculate the axial tilt of the earth and it's effect on the fluid dynamics of the oceans (also with regard to proximity to the sun and the relative expansion of the water as it heats and cools). That is, applying theory proven in other areas to make predictions regarding the tides. Adding in the effect of wind (calculated from astronomy and meteorology) we could predict freak flooding. Maybe, even further, such a society might build on reclaimed land, and might need to predict the effects of reclamation on the volume and height of water in an estuary (as in London).
Yes, science is human activity, but reality exists, and determines (even if only in the sense of putting a boundary to) what we can say about it. (A statement like that, I'd have thought, is epistemology, btw, that's what I thought I was discussing).So, in an epistemological vein, can we vote to stop the tides? It's a simple case, maybe you could use it to illustrate what you're trying to convey to us.
Grammar is important in philosophy, and critical realism is a species of realism much as historical materialism is a species of materialism: they share the essential features of their genus. Humans produce their enviornment, but not in conditions of their own choosing. the only way we can shape our discourse of the world is by the facts that we cannot ignore. We cannot vote the tides to turn.If there is an exterior world then ultimately, it determines what we can say about it, whether one person says a thing or a thousand. It is possible to be right against the party.
Just a thought, but without a conference resolution I don't think "Of Great britain" can appear on a logo. the extant resolution is to prefer "The Socialist Party" where confusion isn unklikely to occur. Since a logo is used on all occasions, I think that applies, and, specifically, as the Millies can't contest elections as the Socialist Party, on a ballot paper we have to prefer the non-Great Britain version.
Chuckie wrote:is conceived only in the form of the object or of contemplation, but not as sensuous human activity, practice, not subjectively.the above does not invalidate the notion that there is an exterior world, merely that the interior, the thoughts and ideas are part of the lived material world as well. Realism commits you to a real empirical world.
Critical is the adjective, realism the noun, you are still committed to all the tennets of realism. Especially as the existence of an exterior world is an essential premise of realism.
LBird wrote:When Marx and Engels mention ‘material’, they are talking about different things: Marx is talking about humans producing their environment, whereas Engels is talking about ‘matter’, outside of human consciousness.Which, as a critical realist you also hold to, that's what realism means, that thre is matter outside of human consciousness. Marx did talk of Materialism, not least in the Holy Family, and the critique is not negative, since he expressely notes that materialism leads to communism. he also co-wrote the German Ideology, which has plenty to say on materialism.So, lets recap here: no-one has argued against democracy in society, democratic organisation of scientific institutions and organisations, the only question has been one of deciding the status of scientfiic fact (I mean, we can democraticaly decide the names of planets, the units of measure, we could re-organise the periodic table to our hearts content; but as previously stated, we cannot vote for the tides to turn, and it that you have to address, as a philosophic principle).
To which I reply, for the umnpteenth time, power is less relevant than interest: power is an anarchist concern. In the world today we make our own minds up (when we choose to do so) based on the evidence and learning before us. Political power favours the capitalist class because the working class actively suports capitalism, and sees it as being in their best interests. They have their say in that through the ballot box, and through the involvement of the workers in organised political parties like the Tory party.There is an ongoing discoursive struggle for meaning and control of the descriptions of that system, and certain words: welfare, immigration, terrorism, are loaded with contested meanings and inferences, and the ongoing discoursive battle to decide what is real (which is, if you've been paying attention, royal, the royalty that settles disputes in the end).Many workers in science struggle through their trade unions to control those work places, and to protect the freedom to direct their own research areas.If you're asking philsoophical qwuestions, I can only say you seem to be formulating them very badly, the equivilent of 'Life, the universe and everything?' (the answer is 42, btw). I'd say if pushed that in general a certain "materialism" is now the predominate theory, even the Tories no longer maintain that problems are down to individual wickedness or original sin, even if they do not consciousless espouse materialism (and indeed would be deeply against it), that said, most Tories these days are liberals in disguise anyway.Anyway, the point is that you notions of democracy seem limited, and don't account for the quality as well as the quantity of opinion (and I don't mean quality as in expertise, but strnength of feeling: a vote on fixing Wiunterval dinner does not elicit thje same responses as, say, votes on abortion).
Maybe there is some miscommunication going on here. You say that people will be stopped from practising science, which AFAICS is an impossibility, science is thinking and discussion, it can't be stopped. People living in the real world will decide, just as they do now, because socialism will have to be built out of the practice of the world as it is now to make it into the world that will become. Each will decide for themself in social conditions not of their choosing.
Society will stop them reading books? Reading journal articles? Take out their eyes? Confiscate their pen and paper? Really? Will science databases be restricted? Datasets? Really?As for Mengele, what an absurd absurdum. There is no valid conmparison between experimenting on humans and sticking thermometers in waterfalls.
