Socialism

Posted: 15 Mar 2005 11:05 pm Post subject:

How does a person learn to do dialectics? I understand that it is a scientific way of viewing history and current events.

Sol

Posted: 16 Mar 2005 02:29 pm Post subject:

Sol

It's not really something that you need to learn how to do. It comes upon you naturally but it's not somethng that you go looking for. I didn't learn that I was diabetic until I was 49 years old (type 2) I thinks it mostly from being overweight and inactive.

Dave

Posted: 17 Mar 2005 12:16 am Post subject:

Uh Dave, I wrote "DIELECTICS" not diabetics. I was wondering how a person can learn of this science that applies to historical materialism. No doubt you misunderstood what I was talking about. That's okay because I have misread a lot of things over the years.

Social

Posted: 17 Mar 2005 02:42 am Post subject:

Oh my God, that's even worse:)

Yeah I knew what you were writing.

Let's just say it's a way of looking at things. Take a look at:

http://www.marco-learningsystems.com/pages/sawyer/dielectics.html

Don't loose sleep over it.

If you're really interested in delving into Marx I would suggest not starting with Hegel unless you have a hard time going to sleep at night then read up on dielitics till the sheep come home.

Dave

Posted: 17 Mar 2005 09:24 pm Post subject:

Social, pay no attention to Dave. He's trying to drive everyone crazy :-)

Dialectics is the practice of looking at motion and change in terms of the interaction of opposites, polar extremes that may pull on each other, different positions which have partial truths but won't arrive at a more complete truth until they merge somehow, and things like that.

One of the skills it involves is to recognize when "quantity turns into quality", that is, when the number or amount of something makes the difference whether something will be transformed into its opposite. For example, freedom of speech being transformed by the concentration of wealth into more of a freedom for the few people who own the media, with the rest of the people denied access to the media, so the variable quantity of something is all it took to transform a kind of freedom into a kind of oppression. Another common example is "individual choice". The conservative will say that an individual is either allowed to make a choice or not, and everyone who has a choice has freedom. A dialectical approach will show that people are often given restricted choices among "lesser evils", such as taking a hazardous job or having no job at all -- and then a choice has been transformed into no-choice.

Formal logic as taught in philosophy or math books isn't set up to handle problems like that. It can handle: if given that A implies B, and then we find A, then we will know B. It's not suited to handle how A in the past can be gradually transformed into not-A in the future.

A dialectical view of history will show that the success of something can lead to it becoming obsolete, such as capitalist class being so successful at organizing the workers into large production units, that this has left the capitalist out of the production process, as nothing but an absentee owner, whom the workers can decide that they don't need anymore. Things often "contain the seeds of their own destruction."

Posted: 17 Mar 2005 10:14 pm Post subject:

Thank you Mike. In my pagan studies I have come accross what is called polarity. It can be complete opposites, or at odds, or complementary that one cannot exist without the other and balance exist.

Social

Posted: 17 Mar 2005 11:08 pm Post subject:

an excerpt from Engels' pamphlet Socialism: Utopian and Scientific ... the pamphlet itself is an excerpt from his book Anti-Duhring ...

To the metaphysician, things and their mental reflexes, ideas,
are isolated, are to be be considered one after the other and
apart from each other, are objects of investigation fixed, rigid,
given once for all. He thinks in absolutely irreconcilable
antitheses. His communication is 'yea, yea; nay, nay'; for
whatsoever is more than these cometh of evil. For him, a thing
either exists or does not exist; a thing cannot at the same time
be itself and something else. Positive and negative absolutely
exclude on another; cause and effect stand in a rigid antithesis,
one to the other.

At first sight, this mode of thinking seems to us very luminous,
because it is that of so-called sound commonsense. Only sound
commonsense, respectable fellow that he is, in the homely realm of
his own four walls, has very wonderful adventures directly he
ventures out into the wide world of research. And the
metaphysical mode of thought, justifiable and necessary as it is
in a number of domains whose extent varies according to the nature
of the particular object of investigation, sooner or later reaches
a limit, beyond which it becomes one-sided, restricted, abstract,
lost in insoluble contradictions. In the contemplation of
individual things, it forgets the connection between them; in the
contemplation of their existence, it forgets the beginning and end
of that existence; of their repose, if forgets their motion. It
cannot see the woods for the trees.

Posted: 18 Mar 2005 04:03 am Post subject:

Mike wrote:

Things often "contain the seeds of their own destruction."

Dave responds:

My teachers at school must have been Hegelian for they would always tell me, Dave you are your own worst enemy. I figured that was a good thing for I did not want to become my own best enemy. That would have been more polarity than a person could stand.

Dave

Posted: 18 Mar 2005 09:53 am Post subject:

Perhaps I should have rephrashed what I wrote that dielectics is going to prove as difficult as the pagan studies. What I have chosen to learn has not proved an opiate to accept social conditions as they currently are. For me it has helped me to look more into Marxist thought. I am not going to go into what paganism is considering most of it is fluff with the general population but I am not into learning the fluffy stuff. Anyways, thanks for the explaining dielectics.

Social

Posted: 19 Mar 2005 12:42 am Post subject:

I would refer everyone to read Engles essay entitled Ludwig Feuerbach in which he deals with (in a very readable format) the topics of Idealism Materialism and Dielectical Materialism.

http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1886/ludwig-feuerbach/index.htm

Dave

Posted: 22 Mar 2005 09:39 pm Post subject:

Dave

Just to say your comment about your teachers being Hegelian was very funny and I couldn't stop laughing for ages. I told Dan and he found it funny too.

The fact that we find such stuff to be hilarious shows what sad bastards we are...

Richard

Posted: 25 Mar 2005 10:49 am Post subject:

Glad you liked it.

Dave

Posted: 14 Apr 2005 12:05 pm Post subject:

Sorry for the previous posts since this is about the materialist conception of history.

Social

Posted: 10 Nov 2005 07:16 pm Post subject:

Posted: 11 Nov 2005 09:11 am Post subject:

"The materialist doctrine that men are products of circumstances and upbringing, and that, therefore, changed men are products of other circumstances and changed upbringing, forgets that it is men who change circumstances and that it is essential to educate the educator himself."

Marx, from _Theses on Feuerbach_

"We know that movements make men, but men make movements. Movements cannot exist unless they are carried on by men; in the last analysis it is the human hand and the human brain that serve as the instruments of revolutions."

De Leon, from _Reform or Revolution_

Posted: 11 Nov 2005 09:16 am Post subject:

We know that history determines consciousness, and we know that consciousness determines history. It may be the case that we won't have a solution to this paradox until, many years in the future, we will have a detailed neurological model of how the human brain works. Without knowing much more about how the brain produces consciousness, social science tends to be a mass of statistical data, with just a few proposed conclusions, and even these few conclusions are untestable.

Posted: 11 Nov 2005 12:44 pm Post subject:

This doesn't go to the nub of your analysis but I don't think the history determines consciousness and consciousness determines history statements are in fact contradictory. (ANALOGY ALERT!!) You can can change your circumstances like move to NYC, and living in NYC more than likely will change you. And if not you yourself, your offspring.

The quote from Marx and the quote from DeLeon, they are saying the same thing. Yes?

"Without knowing much more about how the brain produces consciousness, social science tends to be a mass of statistical data, with just a few proposed conclusions, and even these few conclusions are untestable."

ANALOGY ALERT!! Untestable in the same manner that big bang is untestable? We can see the afterglow of what we think was the big bang, and the hypothesis does not seem to be disproven by anything else (that I am aware of anyway) so our best hunch is that there was a big bang. Evolution of life seems to be in the same category - sure some predictions have been made and that they have come out true, such as the length of a nose of a bug but very difficult to replicate. People with a "religious" opposition can always see or pretend to see holes in the idea but religion or religion type thought (Or non-thought) patterns are a significant part of the mix of our social makeup and have always been. It's a brake to social progress but perhaps it's a useful brake, I don't know.

I do know that my consciousness tells me that there needs to be an epochal change for humanity to survive as we know it. That an epochal change will come there seems little doubt (at least to me). What I am about and assume that we are about is to try to convince people that they can create an improved form of society when it does happen - I guess when people finally realize that it can be changed, that will hasten that day.

But I didn't see or understand in what you wrote that there was something in Marx about the materialist conception of history that does not seem well founded anymore.

dave

Posted: 12 Nov 2005 08:56 pm Post subject:

It's not that the MCH "does not seem well founded anymore", but that it always was a corrective addition to something nearly absent. At one time college History 101 contained almost no materialism at all. The history of ideas was assumed to be the whole story. For example, the development of religion through stages of nature-animism to polytheism to monotheism was just that people happened to think of this, and people happened to start believing in that. No one would start the explanation with material facts, that this nomadic tribe hunted with bows, that this city-state had agriculture and domesticated animals, etc. Today it's more acceptable as a "mainstream" idea to put some materialism into it. If a lecturer on comparative religion were to say that Hindus original declared the cow to be sacred because they needed milk more than they needed beef, no one would be shocked. Well, the truth usually turns later out to be somewhere between two endpoints, with the result that each of two ideological enemies were half right. Now that college History 101 contains more materialism, maybe Marxists should check themselves for the need for a bit more philosophical idealism. Not the superstitious parts, of course, but considering the strength of the "subjective factors." Maybe reality isn't exactly that well-described "economic base" with a frosting of "ideological superstructure" slathered over it.

Posted: 13 Nov 2005 03:50 am Post subject:

Posted: 13 Nov 2005 12:44 pm Post subject:

If we check a typical book about comparative political theories or philosophy, written by an editor who attempts to be objective, we usually see Marx's interpretation of history presented like this: There is most fundamentally an underlying layer, called the "economic base". The bottom substrate of the base is the "mode" (also called the "means") of production -- gathering, agriculture, or industry. On top of the mode is the layer of the "relations" of production (tribal socialism, slavery, feudalism, capitalism, industrial socialism). Those two layers together make up the economic base. On top of the economic base there is the "ideological superstructure." The superstructure consists of law, morality, religion, philosophy, scientific theories, art, and perhaps other things.

This whole model of the superstructure growing upon and out of the base is tempting to accept, because any model that is easy to visualize tends to be appealing. It's easy to visualize layers which grow out of other layers, since we are all familiar with moss on a rock, or mushrooms on a fallen log.

However, there are problems. The model can't be used reliably to answer practical questions. It rarely answers the matter of should we do this or should we do that instead. When it does answer it, the answer can't be tested for validity. A hypothesis isn't scientific unless it can be either verified or falsified, and done so by an independent investigator who has no stake in seeing to it that the hypothesis is verified or falsified.

Therefore the historical theory becomes a heuristic. Heuristics are problem solving techniques which are general in nature, such as "write down the givens and what you want to find", "draw a diagram", "try stating the problem backwards", etc. Every conception of history, materialist or otherwise, reduces to a heuristic. It fails to converge into an applicable formula. Using either an idealist or a materialist explanation, we could easily offer plausible explanations for the revolution of 1776, the U.S. war between the states, and other events. Can we cite even one bit of prescriptive advice that the MCH has given us and which assuredly will help the advent of socialism? Where's the "science" that we have been promising ourselves?

I think that Marxian economics is also a heuristic. Has it provided even one solution to a practical problem? Okay, we can see from the Marxian economics that the capitalist's claim, that sitting on one's butt and being idle is the true source of the creation of wealth, is false; instead, labor is the source of wealth. Okay, then, what are the other thousand pages for?

(More later.)

Posted: 13 Nov 2005 03:09 pm Post subject:

There was an age when philosophical discussions meant something - it seems like a lot of Marx was in refutation of others' statements. There seemed to be a feeling that if one could only get it right everyone would see it and class ruled society would end, hopefully that will finally prove true.

But it does seem that the materialist conception of history is now universally accepted. What no revolution? Not yet.

Analogy alert!! Life evolution in a nutshell is that offspring are born different from their parents and different from their siblings. If the change favors survival then that stock will have a higher likelihood at surviving and passing on the change. Repeated generations and here we are with all of the other survivors.

Capitalism and its consequences is closing in on the entire world - national boundaries and cultures are like nothing. The big question - can one of the many mutations occurring in the world society lead to a democratic cooperative organism wherein the private property system, the state, the wages system, class rule etc. "are like nothing" AND will that change or changes favor survival?

That is how I see it. But these questions do not keep me up at night. I point out the contradictions (more than contradictions but antagonisms) in society and state what I think should be instead. There is no science no matter how well applied, that I know of, that will tell me specifically what I should do, or what we should do that would be most effective in having those changes occur. Heuristics, as you put it, are the best that anyone can ever do in such cases.

imho

dave

Posted: 14 Nov 2005 09:45 am Post subject:

I wonder how socialist literature and oratory in 1850 would have been different if they knew that socialism wouldn't have arrived by 2000.

I wonder how socialist literature and oratory today would be different if we knew that socialism still won't have arrived by 2150.

Posted: 14 Nov 2005 10:14 am Post subject:

From various documents archived at marxists.org ...

Anyone see any "social science" here?

"I hope that the German socialist party will be in power in ten years or so."

-- Engels, April 1892

"For me the time is approaching when our party will be called upon to take over the government. Towards the end of the century you may perhaps see this event come about."

-- Engels, May 1893

"If the growth of our party continues at its normal rate we shall have a majority between the years 1900 and 1910."

-- Engels, June 1893

Posted: 15 Nov 2005 11:45 am Post subject:

What was it that Lennin said about the Romanovs being in power for another 300 years?

Socialism does not exist but the material conditions for its existence are present, and the reasons for the existence are increasing - and there is no longer a fake socialist state in either Russia or China to have to explain away.

Do I know that socialism will exist? I do not. Do I think that I should advocate for socialism, I do. Is there anything else that I can effectively do, after a while I hope to do more.

We should try to be scientific as much as practical and where we can't be 100% scientific we'll have to make do at least with logic.

dave

Posted: 15 Nov 2005 06:57 pm Post subject:

SLP articles often project that there will one day be a social crisis that causes the working class to adopt socialism. However, in times of crisis, people may instead put their faith in a right-wing reactionary. At the moment when socialist ideas were at their overall peak in popularity, the unexpected happened -- workers elected Hitler to the office of Chancellor.

Is there anything socialists can do or say to steer events better?

Posted: 15 Nov 2005 07:10 pm Post subject:

I'm looking at the statement that a revolution can occur only "when outwork social institutions prevent further social progress." -- the SLP's [withdrawn] pamphlet "Questions Most Frequently Asked....", 1975 edition, page 59. (Marx said the same thing frequently.)

There's something wrong here. If "social progress" is to mean something on the humanitarian side, such as real democracy and freedom, then this point of preventing "further social progress" happened over a century years ago. On the other hand, if "social progress" refers to industrial progress, there is NO point where further progress is prevented -- several advances in quantum physics were made under the Third Reich -- this computer network came into existence in the modern U.S. I would have to conclude that capitalism's prevention of "further progress" can't be of any help in speeding the day of the socialist revolution.

Posted: 16 Nov 2005 10:38 pm Post subject:

Do you have the quotations?

dave

Posted: 17 Nov 2005 09:33 am Post subject:

OCR from the "Socialism : Questions Most Frequently Asked And Their Answers", 1975, pp. 59-60

34. Why hasn't the Socialist Labor Party "gotten anywhere" in over 80 years?

The question stems from a failure to understand the nature of revolutions and the mission of a revolutionary Socialist political party.

Revolutions cannot be made to order, nor can their realization be fixed at such and such a time. The time is long past when revolutions can be attributed merely to agitators or political parties. These are indeed indispensable, but in the long view they are but the agents of historical forces and the executioners of history's purposes. A revolution takes place only (a) when outworn social institutions prevent further social progress, and (b) when the revolutionary class is equipped with the knowledge necessary for the establishment of the new society and is organized accordingly.

The conditions that will make a social revolution in America imperative are developing rapidly. The mission of the revolutionary party of Socialism is to develop a workable program, and prepare the workers for the consummation of the revolutionary act. The Socialist Labor Party has developed that program, the only program whereby the American workers can effect their emancipation. Furthermore, the Socialist Labor Party is supplementing social and economic developments with its educational program for workers who, of course, must organize to put a finish to capitalism and establish Socialism.

This educational program is carried on by every legitimate means available to the Socialist Labor Party — public lectures; study classes; widespread distribution of leaflets; street sales of pamphlets, and its official organ, the WEEKLY PEOPLE; as well as the use of radio and television whenever and wherever possible.

The work the Socialist Labor Party has done during the decades has not only been great and fruitful, but also absolutely indispensable to the victory of Socialism. To carry on its work of agitation, education and organization, it has built the most solid, self-disciplined Marxist organization, which, for scientific Socialist integrity, has no like in the whole world. Its extensive literature — the result of decades of effort — embodies an irrefutable analysis of capitalist society, spells out the true class interests of the working class, outlines the Socialist organs of social administration and fully explains the program for accomplishing the change to Socialism.

There have been many parties that offered programs filled with reform bait. They all failed and eventually disappeared, though momentarily some of them gathered within their folds millions of supporters. The problems they promised to solve, however, have not disappeared. They have grown worse. The Socialist Labor Parry alone survives, stronger, more determined than ever.

Posted: 17 Nov 2005 01:06 pm Post subject:

Do you have the Marx quote?

The SLP answer is a bit self serving as to the indispensiblness of a revolutionary party. It would be nice to have such but that cannot mean that SIU cannot happen without a party preceding it.

thanks

dave

Posted: 17 Nov 2005 05:36 pm Post subject:

I searched but I can't find the Marx text I'm thinking of. Paraphrased: No revolution ever occurs until no further progress is possible under the old system.

Posted: 17 Nov 2005 05:53 pm Post subject:

The SLP answer would tend to let the party off the hook if they screw up. Remember, 1975 was before the party would participate in large demonstrations. If this helped to hurl the party furhter into obscurity, one could always say that "history" has not yet reached "the critical juncture" when the working class will awaken. Then there's the little problem that it takes decades of study to make one of the party's top writers and public speakers, but commit one behavioral infraction you'll be kicked out of the party in the blink of an eye. And there's the little problem that so many party members refuse to to associate with former party members who had resigned for either personal or ideological reasons, you know, those trouble makers like Michael A. Lepore and David A. Searles with whom we should avoid fraternizing lest they contaminate us with their habits of "unorganizational conduct." Are these stances right or wrong? If the party wriggles still deeper into obscurity, one can always offer the explanation that "history" has not yet reached the "critical juncture" when all of the the workers will one day leap up and become socialists.

Posted: 17 Nov 2005 06:08 pm Post subject:

Here's one example, but not the one I was thinking of.

In his address "On the History of the Communist League" (1885), Engels quotes something, apparently quoting Marx and Engels from elsewhere.

"With this general prosperity, in which the productive forces of bourgeois society develop as luxuriantly as is at all possible within bourgeois relationships, there can be no talk of a real revolution. Such a revolution is only possible in the periods when both these factors, the modern productive forces and the bourgeois productive forms, come in collision with each other."

What's that supposed to mean? We're waiting for capitalism to come into collision or conflict with the forces of production themselves?

Any meaning at all, or Hegelian gibberish?

Posted: 17 Nov 2005 06:20 pm Post subject:

Another place where we're gazing into the sky as we wait for the advent of the day when capitalism will outgrow the forces of production.

Engels' 1888 preface to Marx's 1848 "On the Question of Free Trade":

"To him, Free Trade is the normal condition of modern capitalist
production. Only under Free Trade can the immense productive powers of
steam, of electricity, of machinery, be full developed; and the quicker
the pace of this development, the sooner and the more fully will be
realized its inevitable results; society splits up into two classes,
capitalists here, wage-laborers there; hereditary wealth on one side,
hereditary poverty on the other; supply outstripping demand, the markets
being unable to absorb the ever growing mass of the production of
industry; an ever recurring cycle of prosperity, glut, crisis, panic,
chronic depression, and gradual revival of trade, the harbinger not of
permanent improvement but of renewed overproduction and crisis; in
short, productive forces expanding to such a degree that they rebel, as
against unbearable fetters, against the social institutions under which
they are put in motion; the only possible solution: a social revolution,
freeing the social productive forces from the fetters of an antiquated
social order, and the actual producers, the great mass of the people,
from wage slavery. And because Free Trade is the natural, the normal
atmosphere for this historical evolution, the economic medium in which
the conditions for the inevitable social revolution will be the soonest
created -- for this reason, and for this alone, did Marx declare in
favor of Free Trade."

Posted: 17 Nov 2005 07:25 pm Post subject:

I don't take stock in any of that stuff. Those who know, or who may think that they know when the revolution is going to happen or may happen or can't happen should first demonstrate their credentials of prediction by posting in advance, the horses that will win place and show in each of the races in next year's tripple crown races. Come on Feitlebaum!!

I heard a saying a long time ago - maybe it's Debbs - Revolutions are hot when the factory chimneys are cold - sounds great - But then I leaned some little about reality when I read ages ago a study reported on in the magazine of the Museum of Natural History of slave revolts in the West Indies - that slave revolts were more associated with good times.

It doesn't make one bit of difference, when the train pulls into the stattion, if there's room I'll get on.

dave

Posted: 17 Nov 2005 10:03 pm Post subject:

Posted: 18 Nov 2005 05:06 am Post subject:

Okay, so we can't predict things, we don't have a reliable formula to help differentiate reform and revolution, and we don't have a reliable strategy for educating our opponents. I'm looking for what do we have to justify use of the phrase "scientific socialism."

Posted: 18 Nov 2005 01:53 pm Post subject:

Justify the term "scientific socialism"?

Badges? We don't need no stinking badges!

Science is a justification in and of itself - apply it to whatever - there's a science to it - including horse races - but science has it's limitations in being able to predict - in being able to show the way to discovery progress to say finding a cure for AIDS, Caner, etc.

We can scientifically apply ideas such as the materialist conception of history and pretty well conclude that no manner or number of reforms is going to solve the internal oppositions created in society by the continuation of capitalism. It has been hypothesized by DeLeon that the next logical state in development is the SIU. Any tests that we can put that to - only historical tests.

It would be gratifying to be able to show in a computer simulation (SIU Sim) how it could work - and i would not discourage anyone from trying that.

But the how to proceed thing has never, for some reason, seemed that complicated to me - maybe I don't have the intelligence to see its actual complexity, if it in fact is complex. The workers have to establish the SIU - we put the SIU idea out there. That's our job - whether it's one, two or a million of us, the job should be the same.

IMHO

dave

Posted: 18 Nov 2005 10:34 pm Post subject:

You're right. I was affected by too many critics who kept demanding this of me: "'Scientific' socialism? Okay, if it's scientific, let's see you perform an experiment to test a hypothesis." I did answer many of this in this way, but in the past few days I had momentarily forgotten -- that social science and physical science have different purposes and methods.

Posted: 19 Nov 2005 02:36 pm Post subject:

Science is a tool of investigation - there is no internal "purpose" to science except as it is applied to some particular question The method of science is pretty much, as you describe heuristic. Look at how many centuries it took to uncover even the simple Newtonian Laws.

ANALOGY ALERT!!!

I love this story - it demonstrates the human inability at omniscience. I read this once in a history of science. How true it is I don't know, but it rings true -

Galileo supposedly dropped the pairs of objects off of the tower of Pizza to prove that different weights of the same material will fall equally fast. At that moment - he came so close but did not see the next even more profound law that objects of different material and different weight also fall equally fast.

It tells us to keep all of our perceptions active and that when we have drawn our conclusions that we must force ourselves to ask, what am I failing to perceive?

And didn't the term scientific socialism come about to distinguish ourselves from the utopians? That socialism can establish itself simply because it's a wonderful idea - (the brotherhood of man, agape love and all that) without a resolution of the class struggle. "The history of all hitherto existing society is the history of class struggles."

Is the utopian view established as truth? That certainly is not scientifically established - if it was - we could happily fold up shop and join the love fest Scientists are skeptics we look at the previous forms of society and the present and hypothesize that the growth of and resolutions of class struggle over the means of wealth production to be determinant as to social structure and relations. It seems to be a logical hypothesis.

Can we perform artificial tests on this hypothesis? I don't think so - but that doesn’t not render the hypothesis to be unscientific. On the contrary, it does seem that various schemes have been tried to get around resolving the class struggle - without any success. In science as in law often there are no real proofs - only evidence on one side of a question or the other. The difference is that Scientists are wedded to the evidence, and yes even try to read between the lines - but discipline not the desired outcome is the driving force.

As one can guess – a political party of scientists is not likely or even desirable - perhaps instead of a party we need simply a league of SIU advocates.

imho

dave

Posted: 20 Nov 2005 10:39 am Post subject:

Yes, true that the term scientific socialism was chosen to distinguish from the utopians. Actually, Marx didn't say that socialism is a science, he said scientific socialism, which is a different assertion. It was Engels who kept complimenting Marx by saying that, beginning with Marx, socialism "became a science" (for example, Engels' speech at Marx's funeral).

As you noted, any practice in life can be done scientifically or unscientifically. It is being done scientifically if people investigate a particular question (how to win a horse race, how to build a classless society, how to describe the orbits of the planets) by learning as much as possible from experiences and modifying their methods. It is a scientific modification of methods to abandon, or at least expose the severe limitations of, the utopian communes.

Not all sciences can make predictions, e.g., knowledge about natural selection doesn't let one predict where evolution will lead; it only permits after-the-fact explanations -- postdictions rather than predictions.

However, Marxism has made a few accurate predictions. Conservative historians and economists are astounded by the correctness of Marx's 1840s descriptions of todays globalization and his 1870s descriptions of todays economic boom-bust cycles. It's also a predictive process when we always knew, from the premise that the state is always the committee of the ruling class, that, for example, all the people who expected a grand New Age from every personnel change, such as Jimmy Carter defeating Ronald Reagan, etc., were going to disappointed to find the same old business-as-usual.

Posted: 24 Feb 2006 10:54 pm Post subject:

MCH says that consciousness (and everything else) as opposed to consciousness. It discounts big idea theories.

In this context - I had a thought to the contrary-

I have been going through a series of incidents in my advocacy for my children to obtain proper services including to receive accommodations for my daughter to be able to go to college - and I have been runing up against a string of bureaucratic assholes - who if I did not know better or if I was the least bit paranoid I would say that these poeple when they get up in the morning say to themselves what can I do today to totally fuck children with disabilties over and deprive them of what they are entitled to under the law.

Not only in this context - I also see (to me, and I suppose to the two of you also see) this revolutionary idea is just just sitting here - and the only excuse that we have that it has yet to be implemented is that the material conditions aren't ready for it? Does this make sense?

We can't blame it on the idiots at the SLP - I don't care how many they expelled - the idea was golden and should have been picked up on despite the SLP. What are we, fucking muggles, that only we can see it?

What the hell is going on?

This is going to sound totally nuts - but the only conclusion that I have that makes any sense whatsoever is that we are simply in a "dark age" for want of a better term. Whatever the dark ages actually were, we must be in one now.

Am I ready for the loony bin or what?

Posted: 25 Feb 2006 01:27 pm Post subject:

Posted: 25 Feb 2006 01:50 pm Post subject:

One piece of evidence that we're in a dark age is that many workers are opposed to their own class interests. I started thinking about this during the Reagan administration, when working class people who couldn't afford heating oil cheered Reagan for deregulating the oil businesses and allowing them to raise prices further. Instead of identifying with their own life conditions, they got vicarious pleasure from daydreaming about "The Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous" (the hot TV program of the '80s). This is still going on, of course. At every supermarket, many people who count their pennies up and down the aisles quickly forget their woes as soon as they see a tabloid with stories about the Movie Stars and the Royal Family on sale at the checkout counter.

No doubt about it -- human history is stalled. This will break, but we can't tell whether it will be in three years or three hundred years. All we can do is disseminate the right "memes" (to appropriate a term from Richard Dawkins).

Posted: 25 Feb 2006 01:56 pm Post subject:

Define "muggles." Evil or Very Mad

Posted: 26 Feb 2006 01:50 am Post subject:

from Harry Potter:

http://www.hp-lexicon.org/muggle.html

Muggles are for the most part oblivious to the entire society of magical people which exists alongside their own.

Part of the reason for this is that Muggles simply don't believe that magic exists, which means they find non-magical reasons for the things that happen to them [1]. Another part of the reason is that the Ministry of Magic works very hard to keep the Muggles in the dark. When a Muggle sees a dragon, for example, the Ministry sends operatives called Obliviators to use Memory Charms to make the Muggle forget all about it. The Ministry hides some Wizarding places with Muggle-Repelling charms; this is why Muggles don't see Hogwarts for what it is. Many witches and wizards look upon Muggles kindly, but some see Muggles as nothing but a nuisance and a bother. The Ministry enforces a Muggle Protection Act to ensure that all of the Wizarding World stays securely hidden from Muggle eyes. To most witches and wizards, Muggle society is essentially unknown. When they try to act like Muggles, the results can be humorous indeed. Hogwarts teaches a class called Muggle Studies where students learn about the ways that Muggles live and how they survive without magic.

Posted: 25 Mar 2006 10:16 am Post subject:

I have a question:

It is often said that "material conditions" do not exist for a revolution.

1. What is material conditions? I been looking through Historical Materialism and it's meaning:

Posted: 25 Mar 2006 11:36 am Post subject:

Of course I have been reading that the capitalist gradually took power politically. I hope you understand what I am implying. Socialism does not have the dynamics for a new economic system which the capitalist did have in the past. We rely on the concept of revolution. Why?

Posted: 25 Mar 2006 08:43 pm Post subject:

John wrote: "It is often said that "material conditions" do not exist for a revolution. "

dave writes:

I don't follow. There can be a revoution under these material conditions. But of course we could always say that since the revolution has not happened then the material conditions don't exit for one, but that is too much backward reasoning for me. Analogy alert - it's not like having a certain amount of certain types of gasses in a containiner at a certain pressure and heat and kaboom. We can reason there that the material conditons did exist for the reaction. If it doesn't go boom you can deduce that the material conditions did not exist - but simply because of no boom you can't say which condition was lacking or was just in the right proportion.

I would dare say that there are enough variables concerning the upcoming revolution that we can have no idea what the trigger will be.

John writes:

"If then what would cause the working people to awake. I 've read that once unemployment and lack of sustenience (like 19th century England) happens that the working class will wake up."

dave writes:

remember the first scientific statement: "I don't know." How could anyone possibly know what the tip will be? Isn't the almost certain prospect that sea level will rise by 20 feet within some of our lifetimes enough to piss people off to forment a revolution? It would seem to me that it would be, but I guess not. Who knows that the the present unrest in France won't spread?

John wrote:

"I have been reading that the capitalist gradually took power politically."

dave writes:

We're not talking about political power - the capitalist became gradually economically strong enough to overthrow feudalism. But the capitalists' economic power is our economic power, as soon as we say that it is.

John wrote:

Socialism does not have the dynamics for a new economic system which the capitalist did have in the past.

dave writes:

The new economic system already exists, we just need to run that system for ourselves.

Posted: 25 Mar 2006 10:51 pm Post subject:

Thanks Dave for making that much more understandable. I read a lot of post on Rev Left and the term "material conditions" comes up as futuristic circumstances being that they don't exist now. Your analogy really helped too. Very Happy

Posted: 26 Mar 2006 11:41 am Post subject:

The material conditions for a socialist revolution exist now, and have existed since the late 1800s or the early 1900s. These material conditions are such things as: industry is developed enough so that a change to a new system could permit all workers to be much more affluent -- there is objectively "enough to go around" except for the results of irrational distribution ... ownership of industry is relatively concentrated into the hands of a few ... there are numerous workplaces where hundreds or even thousands of workers perform specialized tasks to perform a common product.

Whe the U.S. was founded, the material conditions existed for a bourgeois republic to overthrow feudalism and monarchy, but the material conditions for socialism didn't exist. When the U.S. was founded, most production took place in small shops or on small farms. Most people were self-employed. There was no Fordism -- the modern assembly line.
The historical mission of capitalism was not yet complete. In fact, the economy was just beginning to become a capitlaist one. Marx explains why:

"Capitalist production only then really begins, as we have already seen, when each individual capitalist employs simultaneously a comparatively large number of labourers; when consequently the labour-process is carried on on an extensive scale and yields, relatively, large quantities of products. A greater number of labourers working together, at the same time, in one place (or, if you will, in the same field of labour), in order to produce the same sort of commodity under the mastership of one capitalist, constitutes, both historically and logically, the starting-point of capitalist production." (from "Capital", Chapter 13)

If someone was in favor of socialism in 1776, that would have been utopianism, because the material prerequisites were absent.

Today, revolutionary ideas are not utopian, because they are practicable.

So, then, why aren't the workers now open-minded about the concept of socialism? Not due to material condition, but due to ideological conditions:
Marx and Engels explained in _The German Ideology_:

"The ideas of the ruling class are, in every epoch, the ruling ideas; i.e., the class which is the ruling material force of society is, at the same time, its ruling intellectual force. The class which has the means of material production at its disposal, has control, at the same time, over the means of mental production, so that, thereby, generally speaking, the ideas of those who lack the means of mental production are subject to it."

Capitalist control of the means of _mental_ production (mainly, the schools and the media) is currently the only thing sustaining the popular acceptance of capitalist ownership of all of the other means of production.

Posted: 26 Mar 2006 12:20 pm Post subject:

John wrote to me:

"Your analogy really helped too."

dave writes:

That's it. I'm going to go out and shoot myself.

I would have much preferred that you had said some to the effect of:

Dave your anaogy did nothing but promote mindlessness. A social revolution is not a chemical reaction or the firing of a gun (trigger) or the tipping over of some material object.

Posted: 26 Mar 2006 12:29 pm Post subject:

Through the leverage of federal funding the capitalist class is redefining even the meaning of education to two narrow skills at the expense of all others.

NYTimes article today:

Schools Cut Back Subjects to Push Reading and Math
By SAM DILLON
Trying to meet the requirements of No Child Left Behind, thousands of schools are reducing class time spent on other subjects...

Posted: 28 Mar 2006 02:38 pm Post subject:

In this society, educational instititutions, both government and private, are in the business of recommending some students and not others to prospective employers. The guidance office is a filtering process for the job interviewer. This shows a conflict of interest. This cannot coexist with the goal of helping the individual student reach his or her full potential.

And what kind of workers do employers want the schools to pump out? Not the kind who have learned to think independently and critically, but the kind who are good at memorizing detailed procedures and then implementing them. This is why, for example, history curricula focus on the memorization of names and dates, instead of creative investigation into causes and effects. The school is a training academy for people who are expected to fill the jobs that require mindless and rote repetition.

Posted: 28 Mar 2006 10:43 pm Post subject:

I sort of figured that the conditions for a socialist society existed. But there are people who think that it won't be for another 150 years or more.

Posted: 29 Mar 2006 01:58 am Post subject:

If the red sox can win the series in one year and the white sox the next truly anything can happen.

Posted: 30 Mar 2006 01:46 pm Post subject:

Posted: 02 Apr 2006 12:58 pm Post subject:

John wrote:

Perhaps when things do get much worse they just may have a change of heart.

dave writes:

It's an inviting theory but I reject it for several reasons.

First I don't think that it has been demonstrated that when economic conditions get worse that the masses make intellegent choices as to government.

Second, the fact of exploitation in and of itself, and the fact there is an undenable and inexorable downward trend with regard to those who live by selling their labor power, ought to be sufficient to convince a specific person of the need for socialism. If it isn't, imho, that person will never be a part of a force that pushes for socialism, but will merely be a person who will go along. Perhaps, that person's own discovery couse might eventually lead him or her to the conclusion of the need for socialism, but then again perhaps not. I don't tell him or her that, but I just exend my energies in other ways than trying to convince that specific person.

Third, it puts us in the position of appearing to hope that things will get worse in order to bring on the revolution. In no way do we want things to get worse, and in no way do we want to be taggged with this idea. IF capitalism could work I would work for it, but I have long ago concluded (and this conclusion has only been re-enforced over the years) that it cannot work.

dave