Zederbaum
24th April 2013, 08:53
We posted two longish articles on capitalism, science, and socialism on the Spirit of Contradiction.
The first looks at the relationship between science and the mode of production, using a framework of old school Orthodox Marxism or, if you prefer, Kautskyism ;)
(http://spiritofcontradiction.eu/rowan-duffy/2013/04/17/science-and-socialism)
The second is more about the philosophy of scientific practice itself and argues against post-modernist conceptions.
(http://spiritofcontradiction.eu/rowan-duffy/2013/04/18/the-philosophy-of-science)
You can get an idea of the argument from this excerpt:
...Socialist societies won’t be born instantaneously and at the same time, so a prolonged period of competition with capitalist societies, centred on productive capability, is likely. It follows that the socialist or co-operative mode of production will not be exempt from the pressures of social selection. Should they fail to compete with alternative modes, there will be a selection process in favour of the alternatives and socialism will fade from existence.
There is zero prospect of achieving economic superiority unless every last ounce of technical capability can be squeezed out of scientific research and the advantage that technology currently gives to capitalist production will have to be appropriated by co-operatives and other socialist bodies so that they, rather than capitalists, benefit from the selective advantage of technical superiority conferred by institutional application of methodological naturalism.
This entails a structural harnessing of science and even increasing its allotted resources to unprecedented levels: more training, more funding, more equipment, and greater integration of its results into public policy, e.g. taking action at a much earlier stage around issues such as climate change. Such high levels of investment entails ideological justification, which in practice will require intellectual justification for science itself and a positive attitude towards technical progress.
........
Science can no more to be dismissed as a lackey of capitalism than can gender equality simply because women’s entry into the capitalist workforce is completely congruent with and even helpful to capitalism.
From the historical vantage point, from which we can survey the old agrarian empires of Rome, Islam, and China, capitalism is the revolutionary force in history. But it is not the end of the history. The technological consequences it makes possible and the changes in social relations that it engenders set the stage for the further evolution of society away from capitalism itself. In an era in which the capitalist mode of production is so overwhelmingly dominant this can be hard to imagine, but the liberation of the mass of humanity from dire poverty, from antiquated superstitions, from institutionalised inequality enables a higher social life and the mode of production, capitalism, which made all that possible will at some point be the same force that inhibits their full realisation.
In pre-capitalist cultures, science is the domain of the dilettante and philosopher. The socialist aim is to build a higher civilisation which necessarily requires a more advanced mode of production and just as we aren’t looking to recreate a world of small peasants replete with patriarchal norms, we aren’t aiming to go backwards to non-scientific ways of understanding the world which would cripple its economic foundations and condemn us to not only an unhealthily large dose of ignorance but to the recreation of class society.
The first looks at the relationship between science and the mode of production, using a framework of old school Orthodox Marxism or, if you prefer, Kautskyism ;)
(http://spiritofcontradiction.eu/rowan-duffy/2013/04/17/science-and-socialism)
The second is more about the philosophy of scientific practice itself and argues against post-modernist conceptions.
(http://spiritofcontradiction.eu/rowan-duffy/2013/04/18/the-philosophy-of-science)
You can get an idea of the argument from this excerpt:
...Socialist societies won’t be born instantaneously and at the same time, so a prolonged period of competition with capitalist societies, centred on productive capability, is likely. It follows that the socialist or co-operative mode of production will not be exempt from the pressures of social selection. Should they fail to compete with alternative modes, there will be a selection process in favour of the alternatives and socialism will fade from existence.
There is zero prospect of achieving economic superiority unless every last ounce of technical capability can be squeezed out of scientific research and the advantage that technology currently gives to capitalist production will have to be appropriated by co-operatives and other socialist bodies so that they, rather than capitalists, benefit from the selective advantage of technical superiority conferred by institutional application of methodological naturalism.
This entails a structural harnessing of science and even increasing its allotted resources to unprecedented levels: more training, more funding, more equipment, and greater integration of its results into public policy, e.g. taking action at a much earlier stage around issues such as climate change. Such high levels of investment entails ideological justification, which in practice will require intellectual justification for science itself and a positive attitude towards technical progress.
........
Science can no more to be dismissed as a lackey of capitalism than can gender equality simply because women’s entry into the capitalist workforce is completely congruent with and even helpful to capitalism.
From the historical vantage point, from which we can survey the old agrarian empires of Rome, Islam, and China, capitalism is the revolutionary force in history. But it is not the end of the history. The technological consequences it makes possible and the changes in social relations that it engenders set the stage for the further evolution of society away from capitalism itself. In an era in which the capitalist mode of production is so overwhelmingly dominant this can be hard to imagine, but the liberation of the mass of humanity from dire poverty, from antiquated superstitions, from institutionalised inequality enables a higher social life and the mode of production, capitalism, which made all that possible will at some point be the same force that inhibits their full realisation.
In pre-capitalist cultures, science is the domain of the dilettante and philosopher. The socialist aim is to build a higher civilisation which necessarily requires a more advanced mode of production and just as we aren’t looking to recreate a world of small peasants replete with patriarchal norms, we aren’t aiming to go backwards to non-scientific ways of understanding the world which would cripple its economic foundations and condemn us to not only an unhealthily large dose of ignorance but to the recreation of class society.