great expectations

[skitty]

I've been wandering through here to learn; and to find worthwhile books to read. It seems as though a lot of time is spent discussing doctrine and trying to decide what tendency fits the moment. I wonder how many people believe that any of this can be realised in practice? Is this simply mental exercise among kindred spirits?

[Aziz]

Hey man, I am an Anarchist too, I do as you asked believe this is all a realisable goal, as a worker I see that my class produces everything in society, we are the productive force, all that it would take to end all misery and suffering and create a society where the human race can flourish is for us, the workers to take control of the means of production and claim the helms of society and abolish class, state and all other oppressive institutions.

However do not let your political beliefs stop you from going out and having fun, no matter if your a wage slave, when your idea of fun becomes discussing dry academia and arguing about the Moscow trials or the folly of state capitalism with other people on the internet, Anarchism stops being about improving your conditions as a worker and becomes some weird retro fetish.

Anyone on this site refers to a communist country on state, tell them they are doing it wrong and shake a Durruti fist at them.

[Positivist]

When your idea of fun becomes discussing dry academia and arguing about the Moscow trials or the folly of state capitalism with other people on the internet.

Unless of course you enjoy discussing historical events.

[Aziz]

Unless of course you enjoy discussing historical events.

Discussing or rather denying Stalinist abuses while providing sources from the Stalin society crosses the threshold into the realm of isolated nut case syndrome, along with people who heavily invest their time in "debunking" the holocaust and arguing about the effectiveness of crystals and yoga.

[JPSartre12]

I've been wandering through here to learn; and to find worthwhile books to read. It seems as though a lot of time is spent discussing doctrine and trying to decide what tendency fits the moment. I wonder how many people believe that any of this can be realised in practice? Is this simply mental exercise among kindred spirits?

We can be reasonably certain that what we're saying and debating here on Revleft is accurate. We can't be 100% sure as to what the future would look like, but when we look at the present and see all of the problems with capitalism (its contradictions, exploitation, that it's destructive and unsustainable, etc) and look at the past (the historical and material conditions of the Soviet Union, China, Cuba, various revolutions, comparing economic systems, etc), we can make vague predictions.

I'm not sure what the future holds exactly, but I know that capitalism won't last.

[The Idler]

Some of us do talk to people outside of revleft.

[skitty]

I never meant to imply that asociality and agoraphobia were epidemic here. At least not among the anarchists.

[#FF0000]

Is this simply mental exercise among kindred spirits?

Let's be real -- there is a lot of navel gazing going on here.

But that's sort of what I think one should expect around here. This isn't really a platform for organizing, you know! People are involved with their projects off the site, oftentimes working with people who aren't necessarily anti-capitalists, and then they come here to argue about Stalin with nerds like themselves.

But yeah, if you're looking for worthwhile books and texts for starters, then I'd suggest heading over to marxists.org and taking a look at the "Selected Marxists" section, and perusing that for a bit.

[Mr. Natural]

It's true that Revleft is not a platform for organizing, but it should be. The human species is succumbing to capitalism without any effective opposition, and this is way beyond unacceptable. If Revleft is not an appropriate place to discuss getting organized, what is?

Can comrades suggest alternative sites where revolutionaries are discussing revolutionary organizing theory and getting organized? Perhaps I've missed something. I hope so but know better.

The stark fact is that current anarchists/Marxists haven't a clue as to how to organize. This is obvious. If we did, that is what we would be discussing. And doing.

I expect comrades to admit to themselves that we have no idea how to organize and to open their minds to new, radical, revolutionary ideas and theories in response. Clearly it is time to re-revolutionize anarchism and Marxism.

I find my answers to humanity's impending destruction in the new sciences of organization. Life has an organization that we who must learn to organize must learn. I found my answers in the theoretical physicist Fritjof Capra's Web of Life (1996), which brings systems-complexity science and the organization of life to Earth for popular understanding.

Marx and Engels nailed capitalism, but they sure as hell were unable to organize against it, and 150 years later there is still no anarchism/socialism/communism anywhere. I expect comrades to take this ugly reality very, very seriously and to admit to themselves that the left has historically lacked an effective revolutionary organizing theory.

What is missing from scientific socialism? The sciences of the organization of life (thus socialism).

My red-green best.

[Hit The North]

The stark fact is that current anarchists/Marxists haven't a clue as to how to organize. This is obvious. If we did, that is what we would be discussing. And doing.



Then tell us how you think it should be done drawn from your study of Capra. But you'll have to go beyond issuing abstract proclamations such as


Life has an organization that we who must learn to organize must learn.(sic)

That is less meaningful than saying the capitalist class organises itself as a central power and the working class must do likewise. Or arguing that hierarchy necessarily perpetuates inequality and domination and that, therefore, the workers must organize themselves in flat organizational structures.

Seems to me that before you attack Marxists and Anarchists for their lack of organizational nouse that you at least have the courtesy to develop some concrete organizational principles of your own.

Best regards
FTC

[Zukunftsmusik]

Some of us do talk to people outside of revleft.

who are these people? I've never heard of them.

[skitty]

I wonder if enough wealth and influence have accumulated at the top that effective opposition is impossible?

[Mr. Natural]

Skitty, while thinking through a response to Fuck The Clock, I want to respond to your comment re-capitalism accumulating prohibitive wealth and influence at the top.

Well, capitalism is a system gone global, and it has thereby enveloped, invaded, and overwhelmed all forms of life with its systemic relations. The accumulation of power by the ruling class is but one manifestation of capitalism's organizational relations controlling humanity. Capitalist relations imprison and enslave us all, and that includes the "ruling" class that is in fact ruled by capitalist relations. I'm not shedding many tears for the bourgeoisie, but I do feel it important for the left to acknowledge that capitalism is a system organized with inhuman, anti-life relations, and that this imprisonment includes the ruling class.

Or do comrades believe ruling class fucks have a good life? If you do, aren't you manifesting capitalist relational mindfuck? Aren't you saying material goods are the good life, while in a truly good life material "wealth" would only serve to support living social/communal human relations? Marx remarked that the truly wealthy person is not the person who has much but who is much.

The organizational relations of capitalism are opposed to living relations. Capitalism functions as a cancer of living systems, and so the antidote to capitalist relations would be to organize in the pattern of life.

The organization of life and communism are the same. Both emphasize self-organization at the grassroots level into various communal systems in which the parts are internally networked into a living system with which the rest of life is engaged. Think soviets and anarchist communes. Think revolutionary processes.

So what is life's universal pattern of organization--the pattern by which matter and people come to life? Capra's triangle models this organization, and I'm addressing the triangle in my post to FTC.

Welcome to Revleft! My red-green best.

[Mr. Natural]

Fuck The Clock, Thanks for your interest. But how do I engage your and others' skepticism? Your objections to my post point to the heart of the difficulties you and everyone else is having with my attempts to discuss life's material organization and develop a revolutionary organizing theory leading to praxis.

I was forced to conclude several years ago that perception of the universal pattern of organization of life on Earth requires a deeply radical paradigm shift in human consciousness. We must learn to see and employ the organizational relations to which we are "naturally" blind. The organization of matter in a living system is as essential as the matter, itself, and this organization is considered to be an abstraction because we can't see it. Indeed, our consciousness has great difficulty in even conceiving of organizational relations, and I found Capra's Web of Life to be essential in grappling with this problem.

You wrote, "You'll have to go beyond issuing abstract proclamations such as, 'Life has an organization that we who must learn to organize must learn'."

I find you are presenting an abstraction when you write, "The capitalist class organizes itself as a central power and the working class must do likewise." Isn't this an empty "abstraction" as the history of the left would suggest? Just how might the working class organize itself into a "central power"? The working class and left intellectuals have never been able to accomplish this feat, and I now must insist that Capra's triangle "de-abstracts" and models life's organization for popular understanding and use. The triangle makes bottom-up anarchist/communist revolutionary processes possible.

In the meantime however, Marxism, anarchism, the materialist dialectic, communist revolution, etc., are all "abstractions" that have been unable to develop material organization, roots, and life.

You wrote, "Seems to me that before you attack Marxists and anarchists for their lack of organizational nous that you at least have the courtesy to develop some concrete organizational principles of your own."

Well, I'm not "attacking" leftists. I'm saying, "Wake up to the organization of life, communism, and revolutionary processes." Damn, that's our job description!

And I have already presented Capra's triangle several times at Revleft to near-universal silences broken by occasional howls of kneejerk, outraged disbelief. FTC, I know this sounds hokey to you and everyone else, but these difficulties emanate from that perception/consciousness paradigm shift problem. What I'm presenting is so alien to consciousness that it becomes either incomprehensible or is felt as a threat to readers' minds and worldviews.

So here goes another sincere, scientific attempt to present the organization of life and communism to Revlefters:

The life process is created by and composed of living systems. Living systems are self-organizing, integrated wholes that exist in dynamic interdependence with each other and physical environmental forces. Another definition of living systems is "self-generating networks."

Earth's living systems have a universal pattern of organization that was established some 4 billion years ago when organic matter autocatalyzed (self-organized) into semi-living chemical systems (protocells) that were then able to evolve in steps into bacteria--the first true living systems. These bacteria have since evolved/emerged into the astounding variety of life we see today, but all of this life has the same pattern of organization.

It is worth briefly noting that the real, natural, scientific phenomena of self-organization and emergence so essential to life are absent from neo-Darwinian evolutionary theory as well as revolutionary organizing theory. Both are incomplete, as is human perception/consciousness. This isn't coincidental.

Life's pattern of organization is the means by which matter (people are matter) comes to life on Earth, and the life process contains many revolutionary processes. So what is this universal pattern of organization of life--the organization the left must learn to use?

Capra's triangle models life's unseen organizational relations to we who must employ them in the design of our lives and communities. To accomplish this, the triangle reductively splits life's inseparable pattern of organization into three "parts," which makes this organization "visible" to our consciousness--a consciousness that sees life's things but misses the organization that brings those things to life.

Capra's triangle places the categories of Pattern, Matter, and Process at its angles. People are to view their situations in terms of these categories and then rearrange their various systems to conform to life's organizational pattern.

So what are the Pattern, Matter, and Process categories that we have reductively abstracted from the inseparable unity of life's organization? All living systems are physical stuff (Matter) network-Patterned with its Process (life activity, what it does; in human terms, its meaning and purpose). Thus what a living system is is what it does. Being and doing are a unity. The surfperch (Matter) I caught yesterday are network-Patterned internally into the living system of a surfperch that is able to dynamically engage its environment to obtain the energy and conditions necessary to its being (Process). The surfperch's environment is composed of other living systems with which it is dynamically interdependent, and the self-organizing living systems of this "external" environment consider the surfperch as part of their "external" environment in turn. These inseparable "internal" and "external" relations mean that life is a bootstrap of living systems whose organizational relations keep themselves and the life process going.

But let's cut through all this complexity with a couple of simple reductionist questions.
1: Is life a systemic process created by and composed of living systems?
2: Are all living systems self-organized matter network-patterned with what they do?

If neither you nor anyone else can find exceptions to the above two "rules," I invite you to explore and accept them. If comrades can pass the consciousness barrier they will be able to employ the triangle to assess their situation and design living anarchist/communist communities and processes that begin to move out of the cancer of capitalism into a realized human future. I believe people can learn to self-organize (together) into living material relations, and that doing so would constitute a human revolutionary renaissance.

Capra's triangle cuts through the complexity of life to present life's simple organizational pattern to we who must get organized A founder of this science, the Nobel laureate, Murray Gell-Mann, simply states, "Life is surface complexity arising out of deep simplicity."

My red-green best.

[Mr. Natural]

I know what I'm attempting to present goes beyond difficult. It's that human consciousness problem I doubt anyone accepts, but it's real, and comrades are really resistant to engaging anything I write about the self-organization of matter into living systems on Earth (this process includes human brains and their emergent phenomena of mind and consciousness).

So I made it "easy" for comrades and posted two simple questions. 1: "Is life a systemic process created by and composed of living systems?" I defined living systems earlier in the post as "self-organizing, integrated wholes existing in dynamic interdependence with each other and physical environmental forces."

Well, is the life process created by and composed of living systems, the base unit of which is the cell?

Question 2: "Are all living systems self-organized matter network-patterned with what they do?" This is the organization modeled by Capra's triangle. I gave the example of a surfperch whose internal components self-organize into the surfperch that is able to engage its environment to obtain the energy and conditions necessary to maintain its being and that of its components. The life process is a dynamic bootstrap of such living systems.

If the answer to those two questions is "Yes," then Capra's triangle is a valid and viable model of life's universal pattern of organization and can be developed into the revolutionary, popularly accessible mental tool necessary to bottom-up revolutionary processes.

If you answer "No" to the two questions, please tell me where you disagree. I believe you are quite wrong, and working this disagreement out could open eyes and minds to revolutionary processes.

In any case, Marx and the materialist dialectic understand life and society as organic, systemic processes. See Bertell Ollman's Dance of the Dialectic (2003). Are Marx and the materialist dialectic wrong? Could be. Are they?

My red-green best.

[The_Red_Spark]

I think it depends on the individual "tendency" and its relation to material conditions that exist today. I think it can appear to be nothing more than people kicking around ideas and pushing dogmatic positions, but it can and should be the genesis for political action and organization. I think that for some people there can be no basis for the realization of their goals because it is not possible at this historical moment. Other preconditions must be met in order for leaps of progress. Regardless of the possibility of realization; I think it is important to expound theory in order to have it formulated into a solid position and that contributions to that effect are being made here by various people that will hone these ideas into a realizable position at some point and time. That is a necessary step.

Others lay within the realm of possibility but lack true direction and a unified, organized, and feasible approach. This seems to plague the left in general. We are more prone to spontaneity, like the Occupy protests, than a cohesively planned action complete with established tactics and with concrete goals. I won't elaborate at this point on what I feel are the predominate reasons.

Until the organization and correct approach come to fruition this site serves the purpose of refining positions and spreading class consciousness. I feel that this is a good start and has endless potential. Personally, I would work with anyone who wants to create a positive plan for peaceful political action. I find it unfortunate that it seems to be the opposite with a lot of people.

I must say that I am intrigued by the posts of Mr. Natural.

[skitty]

Well, Mr. Natural, I've ordered Web of Life and am about to jump down the rabbit hole!

[Mr. Natural]

Damn! I got a positive reception to the concept of Capra's triangle! Thanks, Skitty and The Red Spark (and Lynx?). My statement that "I have presented Capra's triangle several times at Revleft to near-universal silences broken by occasional howls of kneejerk, outraged disbelief" is now invalid.

Skitty, the only other Revlefter to pick up Capra's Web of Life remarked something to the effect that it should be required reading for the left. However, I haven't heard anything more from him, and he was about to read Chapter 7, in which Capra first presents his triadic concept of life's universal pattern of organization.

Incidentally, I recently ordered David Harvey's Companion to Marx's Capital, which was recommended by Igor. I believe I have a good general idea of Marxist economics, but this should help me with those pesky details and provide some mental polish. We're all students/teachers, teachers/students, aren't we? Marx and Engels were.

In reading Web, you will become one of the few leftists anywhere who has engaged the new sciences of the organization of life (and the cosmos). Yet, Marx and Engels revered science and eagerly sought new developments. Marx's voluminous scientific notebooks have yet to be published, and Engels exceeded even Marx in his thirst for science. Evolution was the first of the new sciences of organization and the only one available to the founders of Marxism, and they jumped all over it.

That current Marxists have so resolutely avoided this new science should be a scandal and is, indeed, a gross contradiction. Engels at Marx's graveside: "Science was for Marx a historically dynamic, revolutionary force."

So let's take a quick look at "reading Capra." His Web promoted raging revolutionary brainstorms in my mind a dozen years ago that have yet to subside. I have spent the subsequent years obsessively researching and following the tracks of the organization of life, community, and revolution wherever they led, but have been unable to engage others.

The gist of all of this is that matter has self-organized into living systems and the life process on Earth. People are self-organizing material systems, too; we are "children of the universe" and the life process. However, we must consciously design our lives in the pattern of life, while the other living systems do this automatically. Other living systems inherently have the necessary "ecological mind" that humanity has yet to develop.

Capra's triangle is that "ecological mind."

In reading Web, do as Capra suggests and apply life's organization to human social systems (and mind and consciousness). Don't human social systems arise from the self-organization of matter (people are matter), and don't consciousness and mind arise from the brain's material (neuronal) self-organization?

The self-organization of matter into life on Earth has a universal pattern of organization whether we are considering cells, baboons and the troops they form, humans and our social systems, or brains and the consciousness and mind that emerge. Human constructs, though, whether physical (social systems) or mental, must be successfully patterned after and integrated into life's organizational pattern.

And humanity hasn't had a clue and has gotten almost irredemiably off track with its Frankenstein socio-economic system of capitalism. Life produces for community; capitalism destroys human and non-human community to manufacture its runaway profit. The capitalist system is a cancer of living systems.

Web of Life is very clearly written for a popular readership, but is also full of deeply radical profundities that challenge the organization of human consciousness. I have read and studied Web a dozen times at least, and have now written more in my copy than Capra. Each journey through Web provides me with deep new insights into the simple organization underlying the complexity of life but makes me even more frustrated that I cannot introduce this revolutionary science to revolutionaries.

So you're about to become a pioneer in understanding the organization of life, Skitty. You're the one! All living systems self-organize (albeit in a seamless dynamic interdependence with others) and you are going to self-organize your mind to engage systems-complexity science and Capra.

I have given numerous copies of Web to others over the years and have a brand new copy on hand I wish I could give to you. I can't do that, but I can offer to help clear up the passages and concepts that you will surely experience as mindboggling, such as Maturana and Varela on autopoiesis and consciousness. Don't forget that you are having to engage ecological, holistic concepts with humanity's reductive perception/consciousness, and please don't forget I've been working at this for a long time.

I'm intensely interested in learning how you experience Capra, and would eventually like to get some sort of thread going on this with you, The Red Spark, and others. But that's getting well ahead of your self-assigned homework project.

My red-green best!

[Lynx]

It's on my reading list, this is all I can say for now.

[The_Red_Spark]

I like the concept and I will have to get a copy to make a final analysis. It sounds very interesting. Thanks for sharing this with us Mr. Natural.

[Mr. Natural]

Skitty, The Red Spark, Lynx, Thanks for your open but critical minds, comrades! I'm juiced! Open minds are rare on the left nowadays (and everywhere else) despite the left's obvious paralysis. So let's get something going.

A brief personal note. I'm no one's guru. Living systems, (people are living systems) self-organize in dynamic interdependence with others, and thus persons must become their own gurus (in dynamic interdependence with others).

My job is to bring Capra's triangle--the model for life's universal pattern of organization--to the minds of others so they can employ it with the others of their lives to design and create living anarchist/communist communities that will begin to move out of capitalism into a realized human future.

I am apparently the only Marxist to have read Capra's Web of Life and engaged systems-complexity science, the culmination of the new sciences of organization. It is also apparent that the left (and science) have never before attempted to apply life's pattern of organization to the organization of human community/society. The Bolshevik, Alexander Bogdanov, attempted to develop a universal science of organization that he called "tektology," but the science of his time was inadequate to the task. He was also heatedly opposed by Lenin, who saw Bogdanov as straying from the revolutionary path.

The science of our time is adequate to revolutionary theory and we are pioneers in investigating it. Capra's triangle is our wondrous scientific mental tool: it enables our reductive human perception/consciousness to "see" life's organization and apply it to our lives. Nothing like the triangle has existed before, and I cannot find that such a mental tool has even been contemplated.

But Capra's triangle is real and available for investigation and development, and it is in accord with the Marxist materialist dialectic, which views life and society as organic, systemic processes. Indeed, Capra's triangle embodies the dialectic; it makes it whole and usable. The triangle adds one critical word to Marx's and Engels' definition of the dialectic, which becomes "the science of the general laws of the organization, motion and development of nature, human society, and thought." (Anti-Duhring)

Capra's triangle and the new sciences of organization are in agreement with Marxism, the materialist dialectic, and communism. It's way past time for the left to recognize this and develop a revolutionary organizing theory that leads to revolutionary organizing.

Why not us? It would be oodles of fun and energized engagement, and there's no one else at present. Besides, it's our job description. My red-green best.

[Hit The North]

You wrote, "You'll have to go beyond issuing abstract proclamations such as, 'Life has an organization that we who must learn to organize must learn'."

I find you are presenting an abstraction when you write, "The capitalist class organizes itself as a central power and the working class must do likewise." Isn't this an empty "abstraction" as the history of the left would suggest?

Well I was positing it as an abstract principle of organisation, but one that at least pertains to the class struggle and may be useful to actual workers engaged in struggle, not to some grand principle of "life" which seems to have little to do with the class struggle at all.


Just how might the working class organize itself into a "central power"?
For better or worse, it underpins the Leninist conception of the party and the construction of a workers state as a central power operating in favour of the working class. I'm not saying it's correct but it at least has the virtue of presenting definite organisational principles and doesn't just tail off into metaphysics. Does Capra even write about the class struggle? If not, then how is his work more instructive than, say, Lenin's What Is to Be Done or April Theses?


You wrote, "Seems to me that before you attack Marxists and anarchists for their lack of organizational nous that you at least have the courtesy to develop some concrete organizational principles of your own."And the challenge remains, despite much of what you write below.


And I have already presented Capra's triangle several times at Revleft to near-universal silences broken by occasional howls of kneejerk, outraged disbelief. FTC, I know this sounds hokey to you and everyone else, but these difficulties emanate from that perception/consciousness paradigm shift problem. What I'm presenting is so alien to consciousness that it becomes either incomprehensible or is felt as a threat to readers' minds and worldviews.Forgive me, but I think your presentation of Capra's ideas are not as "incomprehensible" of "threatening" to your readers on RevLeft as you suppose. Appeals to "natural forms of human organisation" are as old as utopian thinking itself. The problem is that, for human beings, there is no such thing. As Marx points out human beings change their environment and in the process change themselves. This is the dialectic at the heart of human history. There is no return to some pre-established pattern set 4 billion years ago.

I think we've had this discussion before and basically you are attempting to employ a metaphor drawn from biological systems and apply it to human society in a way that is reductive and incapable of being realistically translated into human terms. So, for instance:


Life's pattern of organization is the means by which matter (people are matter) comes to life on Earth, and the life process contains many revolutionary processes. So what is this universal pattern of organization of life--the organization the left must learn to use?
Yes, people are matter and a gas cloud is matter. How does a study of the internal organisation of a gas cloud help to clarify how people should organise themselves and, more to the point, how the proletariat should organise itself against capitalism?


Capra's triangle places the categories of Pattern, Matter, and Process at its angles. People are to view their situations in terms of these categories and then rearrange their various systems to conform to life's organizational pattern.This might be a fruitful method of analysing particular organizational patterns but this doesn't necessarily mean that there are universal patterns that pertain to all modes of organisation. Otherwise we could analyse the patterns of organization inherent in a bacterial culture and transpose it unproblematically to the organisation of a multi-media network conglomerate. Obviously this is untenable.


Thus what a living system is is what it does. Being and doing are a unity.
What do you mean by a unity of being and doing. Is a toad a toad because it does toady things? So how does this insight apply to human beings? If I am employed as a lathe turner does this make me just a lathe turner? Is this what you mean by the "unity of being and doing?" If I sit and refuse to turn the lathe am I still a lathe turner? Am I a lathe tuner when I turn out for my local Sunday league football team? Or when I take my kids to the movies?


But let's cut through all this complexity with a couple of simple reductionist questions.
1: Is life a systemic process created by and composed of living systems?
2: Are all living systems self-organized matter network-patterned with what they do?Whatever the answer, why are these important questions for a proletariat enslaved by capital? Perhaps this is your answer:



I believe people can learn to self-organize (together) into living material relations, and that doing so would constitute a human revolutionary renaissance.
But what does it mean to "self-organise"? Do I do it alone or in relation to other self-organising individuals? If the latter, then how do we integrate our self organisation? What is the difference between self-organising and group-organising? How does the proletariat self-organise when it is enmeshed in capitalist social relations and is dominated by those relations? Do they just need to pick up and read Capra's book? Is it just a glorified self-help manual?

[Hit The North]

The triangle adds one critical word to Marx's and Engels' definition of the dialectic, which becomes "the science of the general laws of the organization, motion and development of nature, human society, and thought." (Anti-Duhring)



Not really. The organisation of matter can be read into its motion. The reason Engels emphasises motion is an attempt to do away with the idea that systems organise in stable, unchanging patterns.

[The_Red_Spark]

Not really. The organisation of matter can be read into its motion. The reason Engels emphasises motion is an attempt to do away with the idea that systems organise in stable, unchanging patterns.
Can you please provide a quote for me. I would greatly appreciate the chance to read this quote by Engels in context. If you cannot provide the quote can you provide a link to the chapter or page that this is on. I have not read the Anti-Duhring yet.

[The Idler]

Only really the World Socialist Movement and its companion parties seem to treat consciousness as anywhere near as important as material conditions as you seem to. Have you checked them out?

[skitty]

Some time ago I read Negri's "Multitude" and "Commonwealth" and can't remember if there might be organizational similarities with "Web"; but not down to the molecular level? Any thoughts on Negri in general?

[Mr. Natural]

Idler, Thanks for the links and your comradely "helpfulness." I don't have a Facebook account and the link to books of 2011 just recycles, but I googled World Socialist Movement and World socialist Party of the United States and will do some exploring to find potentially kindred revolutionary sensibilities.

I didn't find what you were referring to as WSM's consideration of consciousness as well as material relations, though. Can you elaborate?

In any case, consciousness emerges from the material self-organization of the human brain and body in dynamic interdependence with their environment. Thus human consciousness and intellect are gained from relations with surrounding material systems and conditions, and a globalized capitalism now provides our surrounding material conditions. Our internal material "mental" organization thus becomes organized by capitalist relations.

This is capitalist mindfuck gone apeshit. Capitalism now provides the mental area within which we all now think as well as live, and a sterile conservatism has settled over humanity. The left, sadly, is a prominent example of this at present.

Human consciousness is also inherently conservative due to the nature of living systems. Consciousness emerges from the material self-organization of the living system of the brain, and living systems preserve their organization by selectively admitting elements (ideas) that are consonant with their "selves" and self-maintenance. Thus alien ideas tend to get rejected out of hand, and anarchism and communism and Capra's triangle are alien ideas

Marx and Engels were well aware of this problem, as evidenced by their concept of the fetishism of commodities and this following quotation, which is representative of many others: "The mode of production of material life conditions the social, political and intellectual life process in general. It is not the consciousness of men that determines their being, but on the contrary, their social being that determines their consciousness." (Preface, A Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy) Or, from The German Ideology: "The ideas of the ruling class are in every epoch theruling ideas: i.e., the class which is the ruling material force of society, is at the s ame time its ruling intellectual force.

All of this is very systemic. Marx and Engels are viewing capitalism as a system, and systems shape their parts, particularly in a closed system such as global capitalism. The concept of historical materialism is rooted in understanding how the socio-economic systems of our lives shape our lives, and that we must artfully learn to create and live in community/communism.

The concept of "false consciousness" is imbedded in Marxism, but I don't know whether this term was original with the original Marxists or came later. Can some comrade help on this?

My red-green best.

[Hit The North]

The concept of "false consciousness" is imbedded in Marxism, but I don't know whether this term was original with the original Marxists or came later. Can some comrade help on this?


Mr. Natural, you might find this article useful: http://marxmyths.org/joseph-mccarney/article.htm

[Mr. Natural]

Skitty, I had to do some homework on Hardt and Negri to reply to you. I have six pages of notes taken from their Empire (2000) and have been distantly intrigued by their concept of "multitude," which seems to approach what I see as a necessary reworking of the Marxist concept of class, but I had experienced these two in general as difficult academic philosophers who ultimately do not go anywhere.

Upon re-reading my notes, I find Hardt and Negri have a very systemic approach to global capitalism and its effects. Excellent! Life is systems, systems, systems, and we who must create the social systems of our lives in the pattern of organization of living systems must come to understand basic systems theory. Otherwise, we become too easily trapped in our systems whether they are familial, religious, political, socio-economic, etc., and these two authors emphasize global capitalism's systemic control of its human parts.

Hardt and Negri emphasize that people are integrated into capitalism's power structure [system] and capitalist "intervention has been internalized and universalized." This is so correct, and I see its manifestations everywhere. The capitalist system has triumphed and become a closed, entropic system that shapes its people-parts and their minds with little reciprocal system-shaping by those people.

As for "multitude," here is how Negri defined it in a debate with Alex Callinicos: "We call multitude all the workers who are put to work inside society to create profit." This expanded definition includes the peasantry, that group of workers whose neglect so negatively compromised Marxism-Leninism in the Soviet Union.

"Class" and revisions of the traditional Marxist definition of class are a red hot button issue at Revleft and the left in general. Obviously, though, glboal capitalism has moved past the "industrial working class" stage of revolution. Capitalist labor has been transformed, and although the traditional working class still exists and needs to organize on that basis, there are other "working classes" now, and the concept of multitude recognizes this.

However, the "multitude class" according to Negri does not include workers in the home, for instance, and I would suggest basing the "new class" in the broad Marxist sense of relationship to the means of production. In a broad sense, we are all proletarians now: we all live and work and think within global capitalism. Even the unemployed--the reserve army of the unemployed--serve their capitalist systemic function.

So all of us "work" for capitalism in relations that maintain The System, and all of us are headed for extinction or a New Stone Age without anything to hunt and gather on a devastated planet. This is a universal human problem of the greatest urgency; the ruling class, too, has been captured by capitalist relations and faces imminent destruction. Whether we own or work for the company store or are begging for cash on its doorstep, that for-profit-not-people store runs and is ruining our lives.

So what might multitude have to do with the self-organization of molecules into living systems on Earth? Molecules self-organize into living cells and this self-organization of living systems into "higher" organizational relations includes cells to tissues to organs to systems (respiratory, auto-immune, etc) to bodies, to social systems such as herds and political parties, to ecosystems, and to our planetary biosphere as a self-regulating ecosystem. Our planet is then part of our solar system and all these systems are part of our dynamically interdependent universe.

Systems, systems, systems, and on Earth, all living systems--cells to biosphere--are self-organized in the pattern modeled by Capra's triangle.

So the multitude constitutes a living system of sorts that has been developed by capitalist relations, and the revolutionary antidote to capitalism is for people of the multitude to learn to organize in life's pattern against the capitalist system. The people-molecules of The System must self-organize out of capitalism into living anarchist/communist systems.

I haven't employed any Marxist terminology, but this is a deeply Marxist, revolutionary vision and project.

My red-green best.

[Mr. Natural]

Fuck The Clock, Your three posts are much appreciated. I experience you as a fount of Marxology delivered with style and wit, and your "debates" with the dearly departed Rosa L are Revleft classics.

We continue to disagree on "organization," but now I have some substance to reply to--much substance, and I'll probably not be able to answer your long post item by item until tomorrow.

In response to my statement that Capra's triangle supplies the underlying organization to the dialectic's motion and development, you wrote, "The organization of matter can be read into its motion. The reason Engels emphasized motion is an attempt to do away with the idea that systems organize in stable, unchanging patterns."

I absolutely agree with you on that second sentence. Marx and Engels and the materialist dialectic, in opposition to the reductionist science and philosophy of their era, viewed life and society as living, organic, systemic processes. Engels (and Marx: Anti-Duhring was a collaborative effort) saw life and society as alive, and living systems move and develop. Motion and development are integral to the science of evolution that Marx and Engels embraced, and they recognized that their historical materialism was a similar process of motion and development.

And organization. Organization creates the motion and development. The self-organization of matter into living systems creates systems that move and develop in dynamic interdependence with each other and the life process. The organization of living systems enables them to engage their environment (move) to obtain the necessary energy and relations that maintain their being, and to reproduce and evolve (develop).

A machine such as a bicycle must have an appropriate organization if it (and you) are to move.

Capitalism is organized to produce for profit gained from uncompensated labor; living systems self-organize to maintain themselves in dynamic equilibrium (motion and development) within the life process. Capitalism is organized to produce for a profit taken from the communities of life; life is organized to generate a sustainable surplus (ecological profit) with which it generates and maintains its communities. Life is community, whether it is the internal organization of a cell or the external organization of cells into organs and organs into bodies. All are "communities."

And anarchism/communism represent human self-organization into community. My red-green best.

[The Idler]

Ok sounds like autonomism John Holloway style cracking capitalism might be more your sort of bag. Anyways check out
https://www.google.co.uk/search?q=consciousness+material+conditions+site%3A worldsocialism.org
in particular
http://www.worldsocialism.org/spgb/socialist-standard/1970s/1973/no-829-september-1973/men-ideas-and-society
and
http://www.worldsocialism.org/spgb/socialist-standard/1920s/1920/no-195-november-1920/commodity-struggle-or-class-struggle
I think there was a debate audio on resistancemp3 at a Marxism festival between Callinicos, Zizek and Holloway

[Mr. Natural]

Fuck The Clock, Others, In catching up with FTC's questions, I'll start with his last question, which takes us to the beginning and continuing organization of life on Earth: "What does it mean to 'self-organise'?"

The natural phenomenon of self-organization, so central and essential to life, wasn't scientifically uncovered until Ilya Prigogine revealed it with his theory of dissipative structures in 1967. Dissipative material structures (systems) take in energy and expel waste to maintain their being as they maintain a continuing dynamic interdependence with their surround. Examples of dissipative structures are cells and hurricanes.

Then in an astounding development with echoes of Darwin and Wallace, the Chilean neuroscientists Maturana and Varela, working in their very different field without any knowledge of Prigogine, made their own discovery of self-organization a year later and called it "autopoiesis" (self-making).

I'll note in passing that Capra has sat down with Prigogine, Maturana, and Varela, and discussed their theories with them at length. Never underestimate Capra. You will be wrong. He is a master of living organization: and here is how he describes self-organization in Uncommon Wisdom: Conversations With Remarkable People (1988):
"According to Prigogine ... the patterns of organization characteristic of living systems can be summarized in terms of a single dynamic principle, the principle of self-organization. A living organism is a self-organizing system, which means that its order is not imposed by the environment but is established by the system itself. In other words, self-organizing systems exhibit a certain degree of autonomy. This does not mean that they are isolated from their environment; on the contrary, they interact with it continually, but this interaction does not determine their organization; they are self-organizing."

Living systems are dynamically interdependent with each other and the physical environment, but their internal organization determines how they behave in response to environmental stimuli. Physical systems react to the environment; living systems act according to their organization in response to environmental triggers. Here is how M. Mitchell Waldrop describes this in his excellent Complexity: The Emerging Science at the Edge of Order and Chaos (1992), using an example supplied by Richard Dawkins:
"If you take a rock and toss it into the air, it traces out a nice parabola. It's at the mercy of the laws of physics. It can only make a simple response to the forces that are acting on it from the outside. But if you take a bird and throw it into the air, its behavior is nothing like that. It flies off into the trees somewhere. The same forces are operating on this bird. But there's an awful lot of internal information processing going on that's responsible for its behavior. And that's true even if you go down to simple cells: they aren't just doing what inanimate matter does. They aren't just responding to simple forces."

So living systems are self-organized while in dynamic interdependence with their environment. This is life's paradox and it is our human paradox: we are social individuals. Living systems are independently dependent.

Here's another example of self-organization. If you run up and kick a dog you are triggering a response, but the dog's self-organization that includes its breed and life history will determine how it responds. If you kicked my dog it would probably run from you, but I would run to you. Both dog and I would be responding according to our self-organization, and we would also be finding out how your self-organization would respond to my defense of my dog.

The newly-revealed scientific concept of self-organization is the heart and mind of life. The pre-biological evolutionary scenario--molecular evolution--has only been partially scientifically confirmed, but it is consonant with everything we know about life and its organization. In this scenario, organic molecules that were present in Earth's primordial atmosphere autocatalyzed (self-organized) into primitive cells that were then able to evolve in chemical steps to emerge into bacteria, the first true living systems.

This is getting complex, isn't it? Well, Capra's triangle cuts through the complexity to model the pattern of self-organization that brings matter to life on Earth. And yes, this is reductionist in the sense that it reduces the complexity of life to its organizational "rules," but this is a "reductionism" that reveals the origin of life's dynamically interdependent complexity, and not the reductionism of the anti-dialecticians that views life as a collection of separate things. There is no separate life.

Capra's triangle asserts that the life process is created by and composed of living systems: self-organized material systems that are seamlessly network-patterned with their life activity (what they do; in human terms, their meaning and purpose). This only seems exotic because our human perception/consciousness do not see organization--the organization Capra's triangle potentially makes visible to we who must organize our lives in the pattern of life.

Well, aren't people self-organized material systems existing in dynamic interdependence with our environment of other such people, other living beings and systems, and physical environmental forces? And don't we create and live in social systems/communities that are self-organized material systems existing in dynamic interdependence with the rest of life?

Capra's triangle is the "formula" for community, and life is community created by and composed of various living communal systems. A football team is a "community" organized in the triangle's pattern. A football team is a living system whose people-parts self-organize into the formation best able to engage the opposition--its environment. Thus a football team consists of matter network-patterned with its life activity (meaning, purpose).

An effective left political party would also employ the same pattern of organization. It would network-patttern its matter (people and resources) to most effectively engage its capitalist environment and create anarchist/communist groups and processes.

We self-organize in life's pattern of organization all the time, but we don't see that pattern and don't realize that's what we are doing. Now we must learn to do this consciously and in opposition to capitalism's malignant organization.

The human species must learn to see the organization of life, community, and revolutionary processes, and Capra's triangle makes this possible. This then answers your question, FTC, as to the importance of my statement that "life has an organization." Allow me to expand that remark into a full statement: Life has a universal pattern of organization by which matter self-organizes into living systems, and Capra's triangle makes this pattern visible and usable to we material beings who must consciously create our lives in the pattern of life.

I really, really believe the triangle can enable people to sit down together and design forms of revolutionary community that would be self-organized matter network-patterned with their purpose. Formal brainstorming sessions are organized in this manner and accomplish a similar task. People come together in brainstorms to form a mental living system (the group; a "brain") that designs a physical living system (a project) that they then bring to life in the real world.

Does Capra have anything to say about class conflict? No. Capra is a left-liberal who has written six good pages on Marxism in his Turning Point (1982), but who admits he hasn't the aptitude for politics. This turns out to be his Achilles heel, too, for although he advocated applying his living systems theory to human social systems, he failed to do this with his triangle. It took a dirty commie rat such as myself to come along and see the full potential of his creation. I immediately applied his triangle to human social systems and revolutionary processes, and it worked and has been working increasingly well for me in the abstract for a dozen years.

More dirty commie rats are needed to gnaw on the triangle. Capra offers us an "emerging theory of living systems that offers a unified view of mind, matter, and life." This is quintessentially revolutionary, and revolutionaries need to engage Capra and the triangle and thereby "come to life." The triangle also brings the materiaist dialectic to life and praxis.

I'll clear up any unanswered questions from FTC in another post. My red-green best

[Mr. Natural]

Idler, Thanks again for the links and the reference to autonomism, of which I was aware but knew little.

Now I know a bit more of autonomism, and it indeed has resemblances to the organization of life Capra's triangle portrays. Autonomists live by their own organization within the society at large, and not separately. This is in accord with the new sciences of organization that reveal living systems self-organize in dynamic interdependence with their environment.

Autonomists also organize from the bottom up, as does life. This is critically important, for if they weren't organized from the roots, living systems would lose contact with their base elements as they increased in complexity and developed "higher" levels of organization. This happens with all top-down systems; bureaucracies are notorious for losing connections with their lower elements.

The living systems of life develop "higher" organizational levels as increasing complexity requires, but they remain rooted in their base organization. Cells become multi-cellular organisms that develop "higher level" brains when complexity increases beyond a point, and human brains have developed that work with so much complexity that they have doubled back on themselves into a problematic self-reflective consciousness that is split from the automatic ecological integration the rest of life enjoys. Humans must learn to consciously design ecological lives. In any case, the organizational levels of living systems defy "higher and lower": their organization is a networked roundabout.

I just called you a "networked roundabout," Idler. Are you feeling the heat of my flames?

My red-green, flamed-out best.

[Workers-Control-Over-Prod]

This is a stupid thread.

[The Idler]

Sounds a bit like unnecessarily complex explanations but yeah Negri and Holloway tend to do this too. I think Situationists aswell maybe. Maybe something like the publications Endnotes, Troploin, Aufheben or Jacobin might be your thing.
Yours,
A networked roundabout feeling the heat

[MarxSchmarx]

Some of us do talk to people outside of revleft.


who are these people? I've never heard of them.


This is a stupid thread.

I know a lot of this is meant to be tongue and cheek, but do mind the admonition in the faq



Please do not post any one-line posts like "I agree", "Good point", "Hear, Hear", or whatever to increase your post count. If you have nothing productive to say, don't say it!Let's try to stay on topic, and if you have a critique let's try to flush it out rather than relying on snide commentary.

[Mr. Natural]

Idler, I'm trying to unpack life's complexity by tracking it to its simple organizational roots, the simple organizational roots I believe Capra's triangle uncovers for us all to see and use. I'm aware my posts are often dense and overlong, but there is much to explain. In any case, I appreciate comments that illuminate my difficulties in introducing Capra's triangle to others.

I'm working with and attempting to show the "mechanics" of Murray Gell-Mann's aphorism that life is "surface complexity arising out of deep simplicity." Capra's triangle models that deep organizational simplicity, and this is a revolutionary organization that applies to all life forms, including anarchist/communist revolutionary processes and the communal societies to come.

Well, are we not life (and networked roundabouts)? Capra's triangle models the universal pattern of organization for the many different, effective groups and projects autonomists might initiate, for instance. Life's vast complexity emerges from simple organizational roots.

My red-green, networked, roundabout best.