Economic-centric Ideologies are Pathological!

[Imperius]

The opposing ideological idea I'd like to offer today is one I've mentioned in a previous discussion of Islamism -- namely, the fact that both capitalism and Marxism operate from the pathological assumption that economics trumps all other considerations as the basis of civilization. Julius Evola makes this point well in Men Among the Ruins:


All this is proof of the true pathology of our civilization. The economic factor exercises a hypnosis and a tyranny over modern man. And, as often occurs in hypnosis, what the mind focuses on eventually becomes real. Modern man is making possible what every normal and complete civilization has always regarded as an aberration or as a bad joke—namely, that the economy and the social problem in terms of the economy are his destiny.

Thus, in order to posit a new principle, what is needed is not to oppose one economic formula with another, but instead to radically change attitudes, to reject without compromise the materialistic premises from which the economic factor has been perceived as absolute.

What must be questioned is not the value of this or that economic system, but the value of the economy itself. Thus, despite the fact that the antithesis between capitalism and Marxism dominates the background of recent times, it must be regarded as a pseudo-antithesis. In free-market economies, as well as in Marxist societies, the myth of production and its corollaries (e.g., standardization, monopolies, cartels, technocracy) are subject to the “hegemony” of the economy, becoming the primary factor on which the material conditions of existence are based. Both systems regard as “backward” or as “underdeveloped” those civilizations that do not amount to “civilizations based on labor and production”—namely, those civilizations that, luckily for themselves, have not yet been caught up in the feverish industrial exploitation of every natural resource, the social and productive enslavement of all human possibilities, and the exaltation of technical and industrial standards; in other words, those civilizations that still enjoy a certain space and a relative freedom. Thus, the true antithesis is not between capitalism and Marxism, but between a system in which the economy rules supreme (no matter in what form) and a system in which the economy is subordinated to extra-economic factors, within a wider and more complete order, such as to bestow a deep meaning upon human life and foster the development of its highest possibilities. This is the premise for a true restorative reaction, beyond “Left” and “Right,” beyond capitalism’s abuses and Marxist subversion. The necessary conditions are an inner detoxification, a becoming “normal” again (“normal” in the higher meaning of the term), and a renewed capability to differentiate between base and noble interests. No intervention from the outside can help; any external action at best might accompany this process.This is a point I don't hear made often enough; that Marxism and capitalism both derive from a Western materialistic worldview that is a historic and ideological aberration. When you consider some of the longest-lasting civilizations, such as ancient Egypt with its "maat", imperial China with its Confucian ideology, or Brahmanic India, it's clear that economics takes a backseat to spiritual and philosophical values. Aren't Marxism and capitalism both immature and unsustainable foundations for civilizations, and don't we need to find higher values than economic growth, technological development or class relations if we are to have a sane, humane and viable civilization?

[Loony Le Fist]

The opposing ideological idea I'd like to offer today is one I've mentioned in a previous discussion of Islamism -- namely, the fact that both capitalism and Marxism operate from the pathological assumption that economics trumps all other considerations as the basis of civilization. Julius Evola makes this point well in Men Among the Ruins:


First off, what do you mean by Marxism? Marx was a person with an idea. You don't call classical dynamics Newtonianism or relativity Einstienienism. You don't call Austrian economics, Austrianism.

If you are claiming that socialism operates from the pathological assumption that economics trumps all considerations then you have misunderstood socialism. Socialism seeks to decouple societal function from putting food on the the table. In essence, it's goal is to stop "economics from trumping all considerations." In a capitalist society economics must trump all other considerations.



This is a point I don't hear made often enough; that Marxism and capitalism both derive from a Western materialistic worldview that is a historic and ideological aberration. When you consider some of the longest-lasting civilizations, such as ancient Egypt with its "maat", imperial China with its Confucian ideology, or Brahmanic India, it's clear that economics takes a backseat to spiritual and philosophical values. Aren't Marxism and capitalism both immature and unsustainable foundations for civilizations, and don't we need to find higher values than economic growth, technological development or class relations if we are to have a sane, humane and viable civilization?

I agree that "we need to find higher values than economic growth, technological development or class relations" to have a viable civilization. The problem is that class subjugates us. Wage slavery must end in order to become a "sane, humane and viable civilization". Spiritual (whatever that means) and philosophical values are what drive the current state of affairs. It is only through changing these philosophical values of treating human beings as commodities, and stopping this class warfare by acknowledging that we are all simply people working together towards a goal, that society can truly move forward.

[Trap Queen Voxxy]

You had me anti-economic determinism and anti-civ then lost me by quoting Julius Evola. That dude was crazy and that's saying something considering I love von Däniken.

[Art Vandelay]

You had me anti-economic determinism and anti-civ then lost me by quoting Julius Evola. That dude was crazy and that's saying something considering I love von Däniken.

Please tell me it ain't so?

[Sinister Intents]

Please tell me it ain't so?

I'll be honest I also like von daniken

[Rafiq]

The opposing ideological idea I'd like to offer today is one I've mentioned in a previous discussion of Islamism -- namely, the fact that both capitalism and Marxism operate from the pathological assumption that economics trumps all other considerations as the basis of civilization. Julius Evola makes this point well in Men Among the Ruins:

Ideology can be categorized as a mythological understanding of the world which derives from real existing social relations. In other words, ideology affirms the interest of an existing class, through means which do not make this directly apparent. A totalized understanding of the entire world, which is able to address and encompass, categorize and (falsely) address all worldly phenomena is necessary in manifesting a real class interest. However, the idea you present is not ideological in that it lacks the potency to represent a real, viable class interest. Instead, it is a confused, obscure and dare I say childish proclamation which is unable to function even on an ideological level. Your first mistake is categorizing capitalism - a complex summation of social relations to the mode of production, the process of capital accumulation, and so forth with Marxism, which is what can be called a higher level of consciousness which allows us not only to understanding the nature of human relations, historical change (and therefore everything related to them) but the nature of consciousness itself. Your second mistake is categorizing both of these things as ideologies, capitalism is not an "ideology" but an actual, real existing phenomena, while Marxism is the only means from which we can understand ideology itself. And finally, your third mistake here is then, while pre-supposing the things I've mentioned, espousing that these things operate "from the pathological assumption that economics trumps all other considerations as the basis of civilization". Because capitalism is not an ideology or a belief system, you may be referring to a number of things. Because there are many ideologies which supplement different mode(s) of production in their respective geopolitical confinements, your argument is infinitely more ridiculous. Liberalism as an ideology, the dominant form of capitalist ideology in the modern world, by no means reduces anything to simple 'economic agents' with all of it's espousal of liberty, individual rights, political equality and so forth. Liberalism is just as capable of being passionate and moralistic than any other ideology, as we have seen from the French revolution. What you may be referring to, is some kind of anglo-saxon utilitarianism. I fail to see a pervasive belief that "economics triumph all other considerations as the basis of civilization" in any form of bourgeois thought. As a matter of fact, bourgeois anthropologists, historians and sociologists often consider 'culture', 'religion' and so forth as independent social forces. To a real Marxist, and not to a charlatan who pretends to know what Marxists espouse, something like 'economics' within the context of modern bougeois neoliberal thought is a trivial component of the state-apparatus, i.e. utilitarianism. What we do recognize as the basis of all civilization are the social relations humans have to the mode of production, without which civilization would not have existed in the first place. However, we do recognize the vast complexity of these social forces in relation to the cultures that develop around them, politics and so forth, as well as the dynamic nature of superstition (spirituality) and the means by which it reacts with social relations. But these are things which do not compose any sort of historical totality. Civilization, like history itself, is a product of class struggle. So to speak of Marxism as 'economic centric' only validates the power of Marxism, i.e. you are so embedded in your ideological folly that you cannot even properly conceptualize the existence of the social basis of all life without which you would have no means of espousing such nonsense in the first place! Do you think hunter-gatherers had the linguistic and comprehensive magnitude to espouse such dribble? Because their mode of production was not advanced or specialized enough to enhance the magnitude of their consciousness. Humans are, in the end, simple creatures in that they are bound by their mode(s) of social organization, like any other animal, except our relationship to nature is revolutionary.

We find such ideological dribble in Julius Evola:
Thus, the true antithesis is not between capitalism and Marxism, but between a system in which the economy rules supreme (no matter in what form) and a system in which the economy is subordinated to extra-economic factors, within a wider and more complete order, such as to bestow a deep meaning upon human life and foster the development of its highest possibilities. This is the premise for a true restorative reaction, beyond “Left” and “Right,” beyond capitalism’s abuses and Marxist subversion. The necessary conditions are an inner detoxification, a becoming “normal” again (“normal” in the higher meaning of the term), and a renewed capability to differentiate between base and noble interests. No intervention from the outside can help; any external action at best might accompany this process.

According to Evola, an "economy ruling supreme" can be distinguished by the existence of "the enslavement of all human possibilities and the exultation of industrial or technical standards". What an intellectually irresponsible claim to make, because in those societies we Marxists may deem backward, economics, as Evola puts it, reigns even more supreme in the sense that the intellectual foundations from which understanding their own ideologically embedded presumptions (and therefore economic!) about the world around them! Evola fails to understand a fundemental truth about the Marxist conception of social relations (or 'economics') that it exists in totality and that in no society, especially in asiatic, backward societies does there exist "freedom" from the economy. Freedom from specialized capitalist development does not denote freedom from social relations as a phenomena, be they capitalist or feudal. Such "freedom" is the freedom to enslave, the freedom to remain submissive as an oppressed class in ignorance of the real nature of things, the freedom to remain unchanging and bound by the petty constrains of nature. The absence of mass exploitation of natural resources, and so forth, does not denote a graceful, superior or benevolent society, but a society which has been unable to develop, because of a variety of factors, into a mode of production which necessitates those things. There is no cosmological balance in nature, we remain close to nature so long as we are constrained by it, we should strive to be free of it's repressive functions to our best ability.

Evola, the reactionary, is horrified by capitalism's ability to produce a revolutionary proletariat, an ability to produce an understanding of the world which the glorified despotic civilizations had not the capacity to, which he categorizes as for the better, pre-supposing confused and broken rhetoric which spawned from the same foundations he so greatly despises.


When you consider some of the longest-lasting civilizations, such as ancient Egypt with its "maat", imperial China with its Confucian ideology, or Brahmanic India, it's clear that economics takes a backseat to spiritual and philosophical values.

You pre-suppose idealism to be a viable means of understanding these societies, and then claim that in these societies, social relations were a 'backseat', surprise surprise! The endurance of these civilizations is a crime, it signifies the absence of history, the absence of class struggle and the triumph of the ruling classes in all their resilience and despotic means of rule. It has been not a thousand years of capitalist development, and already we have triumphed the entire summation of human history in every realm of anthropological existence besides "spirituality" (superstition). Such ideology, such spiritual and philosophical values, as you put it, reflect and signify social relations which were unable to encompass them. You assume that capitalism has not a spirituality or ideology of it's own, that because of utilitarian economism we 'know' now. Nothing is farther from the truth. Education, public health, and quality of life may be trivial to you who already has access to all of those things, but to an Indian, or Chinese peasant, or to an Egyptian slave they may perhaps stand at odds with you. How dare you spout such dribble, how dare you pompously declare such nonsense and think yourself to have discovered a new revelation that can challenge Marxism while in fact only having proven your own ideological confusion.


Aren't Marxism and capitalism both immature and unsustainable foundations for civilizations, and don't we need to find higher values than economic growth, technological development or class relations if we are to have a sane, humane and viable civilization?

Capitalism is the highest form of human social organization the world has ever seen, and it's instability will bring forth the triumph of Communism. Class relations to us are not "values", talk of "values" is ideological. Your "values" are all the more embedded in 'class relations' as they reflect an existing, or previously existing class interest (that is to say, you are a reactionary). The advancement of a mode of production, historical change and so forth lays the basis to all development, including philosophical and intellectual development. But here is where you are wrong, Imperius. We Communists care not for any of those things, we have but one goal, and that is power. The conquest of state power on behalf of the revolutionary proletariat is our goal, even if it brings the entirety of the world to ruin. To assert it's class interest upon the whole of society, to emancipate itself from capitalist relations, to maximize itself and conquer the entire world is the goal of the revolutionary proletariat. Our values, our ideology is infinitely superior in that we are the heirs to the world, and the future of civilization. While as Marxists we may recognize the social relations, our will to power derives from our Communism. When the drums of the class war are heard, when the sky closes in on the entire world, when the fight for our cause over the barbarous hordes of capital begins, these trivial, and obscure bourgeois ideologues will eat their own words, they will fall to their knees in despair, tossed to the side will be the variety of bourgeois ideology and politics, and all of the world will be divided into but two.

[Imperius]

Well I'm not sure we can have much of a discussion here, since for you everything apparently begins and ends with the class interests of the proletariat, just as for a monotheist everything begins and ends with God. You made your religious fanaticism crystal clear with this statement:

We Communists care not for any of those things, we have but one goal, and that is power. The conquest of state power on behalf of the revolutionary proletariat is our goal, even if it brings the entirety of the world to ruin. To assert it's class interest upon the whole of society, to emancipate itself from capitalist relations, to maximize itself and conquer the entire world is the goal of the revolutionary proletariat. Our values, our ideology is infinitely superior in that we are the heirs to the world, and the future of civilization. While as Marxists we may recognize the social relations, our will to power derives from our Communism. When the drums of the class war are heard, when the sky closes in on the entire world, when the fight for our cause over the barbarous hordes of capital begins, these trivial, and obscure bourgeois ideologues will eat their own words, they will fall to their knees in despair, tossed to the side will be the variety of bourgeois ideology and politics, and all of the world will be divided into but two.

So in other words, you are a fanatical communist jihadist who has substituted "revolutionary proletariat" for the umma, proletarian "class interest" for sharia law, "class war" for holy war, capitalists and "bourgeois ideologues" for infidels, Communism for Islam. This is quite a revealing statement that I hope your comrades here will read and ponder. If this isn't a statement of pure, fanatical religious nihilism, I don't know what is!

[Trap Queen Voxxy]

Please tell me it ain't so?

You more than anyone should know. Aliens.

[Fourth Internationalist]

Well I'm not sure we can have much of a discussion here, since for you everything apparently begins and ends with the class interests of the proletariat, just as for a monotheist everything begins and ends with God. You made your religious fanaticism crystal clear with this statement:

The class interest of the proletariat, as opposed to God, is not a spiritual being nor a higher power, thus cannot be, by definition, religious. Sure, I can completely understand the craziness with Rafiq's post (I would agree it sounds like religious fanaticism), but just so you know, he makes a lot of posts like that and I wouldn't take them seriously if I were you, let alone use it as an argument that every communist is a communist-Jihadist.

Secondly, the whole point and basis of communism is the proletariat's class interest (ultimately, the liberation of humanity). And the whole point of a religion is a certain deity. Now, just because each has some objective to attain and/or a basis each belief is based on does not mean they are both religions. Otherwise, there is no distinction between ideology and religion.


So in other words, you are a fanatical communist jihadist who has substituted "revolutionary proletariat" for the umma, proletarian "class interest" for sharia law, "class war" for holy war, capitalists and "bourgeois ideologues" for infidels, Communism for Islam. This is quite a revealing statement that I hope your comrades here will read and ponder. If this isn't a statement of pure, fanatical religious nihilism, I don't know what is!

It's just fanaticism, not religious. There was nothing religious in his post.

[Loony Le Fist]

Well I'm not sure we can have much of a discussion here, since for you everything apparently begins and ends with the class interests of the proletariat, just as for a monotheist everything begins and ends with God. You made your religious fanaticism crystal clear with this statement:


Hold your horses bud. What a massive false equivocation you have here. The class interests of a subjugated group are quite visceral and real, unlike a god. Again you are trying to claim that looking out for those that are less capable is somehow a Judeo-Christian derived view. Here are some objections, just off the top of my head:


There are several non-Judeo-Christian belief systems where this does happen to be a value.
The Bible, the religious user manual for Judeo-Christian beliefs, itself can be, and indeed was used, to justify slavery.
Even animals without known religious value systems are known to exhibit certain kinds of altruism.




So in other words, you are a fanatical communist jihadist who has substituted "revolutionary proletariat" for the umma, proletarian "class interest" for sharia law, "class war" for holy war, capitalists and "bourgeois ideologues" for infidels, Communism for Islam. This is quite a revealing statement that I hope your comrades here will read and ponder. If this isn't a statement of pure, fanatical religious nihilism, I don't know what is!

Do not presume to judge everyone here from the musings of a single person. It is clear that you merely trying to take ideas that run contrary to your own by running the poster through the coals by attacking their particular framing of the problem. Although Rafiq's position is zealous, it is undergirded by concern for real existing people.

Rather ironic is how you classify his views as "fanatical religious nihilism". It seems that your view is that human beings are destined for perpetual servitude. You fail to apply skepticism to your own views while applying it others views in a spectacular double standard.

Please stop throwing stones in your glass house.

[Thirsty Crow]

Again you are trying to claim that looking out for those that are less capable is somehow a Judeo-Christian derived view.
This isn't what's communism about, though. It's more like participating in a real movement of class self-empowerment (as opposed to individual remedies) through the destruction of the existing social relations of production.

Now, onto the meat of the OP:


...the fact that both capitalism and Marxism operate from the pathological assumption that economics trumps all other considerations as the basis of civilization.
(Evola bit)
This is a point I don't hear made often enough; that Marxism and capitalism both derive from a Western materialistic worldview that is a historic and ideological aberration.

Capital operates within very specific confines, limits so to speak, which aren't ideological in that they represent values or some kind of ideas - these limits are the rooted social relations, the habitual and even more so constantly reinforced way we humans go about living in this world - and production is our way of living in this world. It is here that class relations actually take form and effect, it is here that activity enabling the development of spirituality and whatnot (the latter doesn't, speaking in terms of causality, make material production secondary, quite the contrary; though of course ideological relations can and do have effect upon the former) - this explains the focus upon the economic social relations. The phenomena with the most far reaching consequences are to be found here; it's not a matter of a degenerate worldview, but in the case of Marxism, of a clear understanding of the human world and how it functions.

With capital, it's a different story, but still you muddy the waters here. Capitalist society, life in capitalist society as it really is led, is the basis of Marxism; but the former has no grand ideological assumptions and/or ideas as its basis. Rather, it is a historical result of a pretty complex web of developments and processes.

And finally, I'd say you have no basis whatsoever to claim that either this "worldview" (the use of "materialistic" is confusing here; are you referring to materialism as a correlate for atheism and a rejection of belief in a Transcendence, or the method of inquiry, or the pursuit of wealth?) or the development of social relations and structures which we call capitalist society is a historical aberration. For this to be possible you would have to posit an inherent purpose to human history, probably decreed from above, which so it happens was forgotten and sidetracked in some weird way. Needless to say, for people holding rather quirky beliefs, this might be a valid belief. Though, there's nothing to support it as evidence (which just might be the least of the problems with this spiritual philosophy of history; it is also apparent that this is a particularly nasty tool of ideological legitimation)

[Loony Le Fist]

This isn't what's communism about, though. It's more like participating in a real movement of class self-empowerment (as opposed to individual remedies) through the destruction of the existing social relations of production.

You stole my thunder, that's what I should have said. I need to stop pulling all nighters. :o

[WelcomeToTheParty]

A physical scientists studies the interactions of particles as the driving forces behind physical systems. Do you accuse them of being pathological? Of course not, because those particles are actually what drive the system. Similarly Marxism is a scientific way of studying society. Marxist social scientists study class interactions as the driving force on society and (lacking the possibility of nice controlled experiments) point to history as proof of that approach's legitimacy. Marxists simply recognize that under capitalism capitalists and workers are necessarily on conflict and that it is in the interests of those workers to overthrow capital.

To the extent that a Marxist would call a non-industrial country underdeveloped they are not making a value judgement, but rather pointing to the fact that capitalism is a necessary result of the internal and external class antagonisms that country faces. Just as a physical scientist doesn't value the giant cloud of gas over the resulting star.

Marxists do not deny the importance of values in holding society together, in fact they have done much to study that very thing (see Gramsci's studies of hegemony). Nor do they value class relations, growth, or technological development as you suggest. Does a physicist value forces? Obviously not, so why would a Marxist value those things in and of themselves? They are just facts that a Marxist analyzes. Being a critical theory Marxism seeks to understand so as to overturn and so growth and technology may be praised for their emancipatory potential, but growth and technological growth could stop right now if the modes of production were in the hands of the proletariat and society decided they brought more harms than good. Under Capitalism no such decision is possible since every capitalist faces the coercive forces of competition forcing them to gain an edge or join the proletariat. Marxism holds that under socialism, contrary to what you suggest, other values like environmental protection and concern for human life can come to the fore and production can become a means to an end rather than an end itself.

There is no end of values that could hold a socialist society together whether it be Liberation Theology, Liberté, Egalité, Fraternité or Peace, Land and Bread and your characterization of Marxism and what it values are just not correct.

[liberlict]

If you don't like economic-centric theories, what do you like? Economics is pretty central to life whether you like it or not.

[Criminalize Heterosexuality]

When you consider some of the longest-lasting civilizations, such as ancient Egypt with its "maat", imperial China with its Confucian ideology, or Brahmanic India, it's clear that economics takes a backseat to spiritual and philosophical values.

Oh, you couldn't have picked worse examples if you tried. First of all, talking about "ancient Egypt", "imperial China" and "Brahmanic India" is completely ahistorical, but this is to be expected when dealing with secret-masters-of-Agartha nonsense. Take China for example. The notion that the various Chinese states from the Qin period (presumably) to the Qing state can be amalgamated into one "imperial China" blob borders on the mental. Now if you were to actually study Chinese history, you would realize how the different states were constrained by their economic circumstances - Qin for example didn't prevail in the late Zhou period because of their superior ideology (credit where credit is due - legalism is more interesting than the caricature version most people are familiar with, but other states in the Summer and Autumn period also adopted an official legalist ideology, Qi for example) but due to their position on the periphery, allowing for uncontested expansion into border regions, and their economic base. Egypt was a civilization only because of economic reasons - without the flooding of the Nile, all the ma'at in the world wouldn't have helped the scattered villages that coalesced into dynastic Egypt. And so on and so on.


Aren't Marxism and capitalism both immature and unsustainable foundations for civilizations, and don't we need to find higher values than economic growth, technological development or class relations if we are to have a sane, humane and viable civilization?

Somehow I don't get the impression that most of us would agree with someone named "Imperius" who cites Evola approvingly on what is sane, humane and viable. Hopefully.


So in other words, you are a fanatical communist jihadist who has substituted "revolutionary proletariat" for the umma, proletarian "class interest" for sharia law, "class war" for holy war, capitalists and "bourgeois ideologues" for infidels, Communism for Islam.

So in other words, they aren't a jihadist at all. I mean, this has to be the laziest argument ever - something sort of sounds like something else, so it is something else. I'm pretty sure you could call an average commercial "Nazism with 'white teeth' substituted for race purity, 'toothpaste' for the Final Solution" and so on. It's ridiculous.


This is quite a revealing statement that I hope your comrades here will read and ponder. If this isn't a statement of pure, fanatical religious nihilism, I don't know what is!

Well - I think both I and Rafiq would challenge the notion that communism is in any way religious, but the charges of nihilism and fanaticism are true enough.


Again you are trying to claim that looking out for those that are less capable is somehow a Judeo-Christian derived view.

The proletariat is more than capable of looking out for itself; it's just that the prevailing ideology prevents that, and that we are incapable of effectively breaking through that ideology.

[liberlict]

A physical scientists studies the interactions of particles as the driving forces behind physical systems. Do you accuse them of being pathological? Of course not, because those particles are actually what drive the system. Similarly Marxism is a scientific way of studying society.


I think Marxism is anti-scientific.

Actual scientists test their theories in laboratories and prove, reformulate, or abandon them according to feedback. Marxism does the opposite of this. It assumes the truth beforehand (communism is good), and no amount of real-world failures of the system mean anything.

[Criminalize Heterosexuality]

I think Marxism is anti-scientific.

Actual scientists test their theories in laboratories and prove, reformulate, or abandon them according to feedback. Marxism does the opposite of this. It assumes the truth beforehand (communism is good), and no amount of real-world failures of the system mean anything.

Marxism has changed to incorporate new data - for example, Lenin's theoretical treatment of imperialism was an addition to existing Marxist theory. Other notions were abandoned - such as Marx's approving comments about the Russian mir and the possibility of a parliamentary revolution in Britain.

Also, Marxism doesn't posit that "communism is good", that's morality-talk. Marxism posits that communism is in the interest of proletarians. As for "real-world failures", no one thinks the Soviet Union reached the communist society, and they never claimed that they did, and many of the "failures" attributed to the Soviet Union are not viewed as failures by much of the left. I mean, oh wow, they imprisoned Solzhenitsyn. How horrible.

[WelcomeToTheParty]

I think Marxism is anti-scientific.

Actual scientists test their theories in laboratories and prove, reformulate, or abandon them according to feedback. Marxism does the opposite of this. It assumes the truth beforehand (communism is good), and no amount of real-world failures of the system mean anything.

Would you say the same about all the social sciences? The inability to preform controlled trials affects each and every one of them and yet useful knowledge is still created. Testing theories through case studies is certainly less rigorous than controlled laboratory trials, but denying social science's legitimacy is tantamount to saying we can never know anything about society or how it works.

Marxist analysis absolutely does not start with the assumption that communism is good. It starts with the commodity and continues through an examination of surplus value, capital and necessary instability of capitalism. Marxism recognizes that workers are oppressed by capital and so that it is in the interest of workers to overthrow capital. That is Marxism the science.

What you call failures of socialism the concept I call specific failures of specific revolutions in specific historical contexts. You basically insist we compare actually existing socialism with some platonic ideal of capitalism. Yet capitalism has it's regular periodic failures and the capitalism of today is not so easily turned back to feudalism as socialism is back to capitalism when surrounded by capitalist states and existing under capitalist hegemony. Revolutionary France existed under the hegemony of feudalism and eventually succumbed to it, but do we call this a failure of capitalism as a concept? Of course not, the bourgeoisie got there in the end. As will the proletariat.

[liberlict]

Would you say the same about all the social sciences?

Yes of course I would say the same of all social siences. As a general rule of thumb, if the discipline ends in 'science' then it's not a science---physics, chemistry, biology, genetic, these are sciences.

If one wants to understand history in a faithfully materialist way, one should consult the works of Stephen Hawking, not ol' Karl.

All these theories about consciousness being determined by relations to means and modes of production, class as the agent of history, alienation etc., fascinating as it all may be, belong firmly to the field of 'wild speculation', and have noting to do with science.

There is, of course, nothing wrong with theorizing. There's only something wring with being ignorant about how science works.




Marxist analysis absolutely does not start with the assumption that communism is good. It starts with the commodity)and continues through an examination of surplus value, capital and necessary instability of capitalism. Marxism recognizes that workers are oppressed by capital and so that it is in the interest of workers to overthrow capital. That is Marxism the science.

Yes interesting no doubt, but it is one of those 'just so' (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Just-so_story)stories.

In science and philosophy, a just-so story, also called an ad hoc fallacy, is an unverifiable and unfalsifiable narrative explanation for a cultural practice, a biological trait, or behavior of humans or other animals. The pejorative[1] nature of the expression is an implicit criticism that reminds the hearer of the essentially fictional and unprovable nature of such an explanation. Such tales are common in folklore and mythology (where they are known as etiological myths—see etiology).

Economics can't really be studied scientifically. The school of thought that tries to is Chicago Economics; They abstract from the real world, try to build a model that can be tested and which can be used to make predictions. However, that remains an abstraction, a simplification that does not describe everything. And sooner or later, the predictions won't come true and the model will have to be scrapped, changed, or refined.

I tend to side with the Austrians, who believe that this physicist-style view is of little value. Economics is about human actions and choices. Unless you understand what is going on in the mind of the individuals who are acting economically, you will never understand economics.

Economics as it is taught today is almost pure mathematics. But there is no point in increasing your precision about something that is mistaken in the first place.




Marxist analysis absolutely does not start with the assumption that communism is good. It starts with the commodity and continues through an examination of surplus value, capital and necessary instability of capitalism. Marxism recognizes that workers are oppressed by capital and so that it is in the interest of workers to overthrow capital. That is Marxism the science.

The 'commodity', as Marx means it, doesn't even have materiality. It's some kind of emergent property of the interrelation between mind and matter in class societies. Once again, fascinating, but science cannot deal with invisible things.

[Tim Cornelis]

Yes of course I would say the same of all social siences. As a general rule of thumb, if the discipline ends in 'science' then it's not a science---physics, chemistry, biology, genetic, these are sciences.

That's a shitty rule of thumb because social science is not a discipline, it's a genre of disciplines. The social sciences are sociology, psychology, economics (none of them end with science) and the natural sciences are physics, chemistry, biology as you mentioned.


If one wants to understand history in a faithfully materialist way, one should consult the works of Stephen Hawking, not ol' Karl.

I don't know anything about natural sciences but I heard Hawking is pretty discredited with his hypothesis that matter of cosmic information is destroyed by black holes.


All these theories about consciousness being determined by relations to means and modes of production, class as the agent of history, alienation etc., fascinating as it all may be, belong firmly to the field of 'wild speculation', and
have noting to do with science.

Says you! But yeah, theory and hypothesis in Marxism are heavily intertwined, quite bothersome. When Marxists weave a particular narrative, factual information is interwoven with hypotheses.


I think Marxism is anti-scientific.

Actual scientists test their theories in laboratories and prove, reformulate, or abandon them according to feedback. Marxism does the opposite of this. It assumes the truth beforehand (communism is good), and no amount of real-world failures of the system mean anything.

This just goes to show that you don't know what Marxism is.

[Criminalize Heterosexuality]

If one wants to understand history in a faithfully materialist way, one should consult the works of Stephen Hawking, not ol' Karl.

The really funny thing is that, not only is Hawking a physicist and not a historian (really, Hawking? most right-wingers would at least mention Oakeshott or Polany), he's not a materialist either. His positivism is pretty much in the vein of Mach and others.


Yes interesting no doubt, but it is one of those 'just so' (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Just-so_story)stories.

In science and philosophy, a just-so story, also called an ad hoc fallacy, is an unverifiable and unfalsifiable narrative explanation for a cultural practice, a biological trait, or behavior of humans or other animals. The pejorative[1] nature of the expression is an implicit criticism that reminds the hearer of the essentially fictional and unprovable nature of such an explanation. Such tales are common in folklore and mythology (where they are known as etiological myths—see etiology).

Well, if you were serious about understanding how science works, you would understand that falsifiability and verifiability are very involved concepts, and that things can appear verifiable or unverifiable depending on the framework used to analyze the discipline in question (i.e. a sophisticated falsificationist like Lakatos would say that some things are falsifiable that a crude falsificationist like Popper would have considered unfalsifiable).

Which is not to say that Marxism is disconnected from the real world. To give an example, in the seventies the completely demoralized and bureaucratized (American) SWP came out with the theory that Cuba, then extremely popular among student radicals, was a "healthy workers' state", a notion that was completely new to Trotskyist politics (SWP has since dropped the charade and abandoned Trotskyism, but outfits like FIT and some elements of USec in America still hold to the theory). And that has direct consequences - it implies that, unlike the Soviet Union, Cuba can sustain itself in its present form indefinitely, without either a political revolution or capitalist counterrevolution.


Economics can't really be studied scientifically. The school of thought that tries to is Chicago Economics; They abstract from the real world, try to build a model that can be tested and which can be used to make predictions. However, that remains an abstraction, a simplification that does not describe everything. And sooner or later, the predictions won't come true and the model will have to be scrapped, changed, or refined.

Gosh, just like every scientific model ever.


The 'commodity', as Marx means it, doesn't even have materiality. It's some kind of emergent property of the interrelation between mind and matter in class societies. Once again, fascinating, but science cannot deal with invisible things.

Commodities are literally material things, albeit material things in a specific social context (just as a knife is a lump of metal in a particular social context). And the notion that science "can't deal with invisible things" is so obviously wrong I don't even know where to start. Let's try things like magnetic fields, potentials, and so on.

[Trap Queen Voxxy]

Def going to make an effort to write a full post tonight but for now ill leave you with this my lovelies<333


That's a shitty rule of thumb because social science is not a discipline, it's a genre of disciplines. The social sciences are sociology, psychology, economics (none of them end with science) and the natural sciences are physics, chemistry, biology as you mentioned.

I disagree with the above in that I wouldn't classify psychology as a social science. It seems more accurate to categorize psychology as an applied science like medicine or veterinary science. Or at the very least a 'soft' science.

[WelcomeToTheParty]

Words


You are so quick to drop your previous charge that Marxism assumes what it means to prove and level a new accusation against it that it seems more that you just "know" Marxism is wrong in your heart than that you've got any kind of coherent argument against it.

As posters have already pointed out your rule of thumb is complete nonsense and I would add that your suggestion that Hawking is in any way qualified to speak on history is similarly ridiculous. Your suggestion that it is fine to theorize in the social sciences, but impossible to provide evidence so as to justify those theories beyond the level of "wild speculation" is absurd. Can a theory about society be proved to the level expected in the natural sciences? Definitely not since controlled trials are obviously impossible, but this is not to say that the historical evidence we do have cannot be used to elevate one theory over another. In dismissing the social sciences you suggest that knowledge about society cannot be produced and yet you clearly privilege the Austrian interpretation of economics over others. Surely that would not be possible if you didn't feel that the weight of evidence was on their side?

In your brief discussion of the Chicago School (which you incorrectly characterize, but that's another discussion) you describe a textbook application of the scientific method only to claim this is proof that economics is not a science in the same breath! The natural sciences reject, change and refine their theories on the basis of evidence constantly, every theory is built on the theories that came before. The existence of a new theory does not mean the old theory was wholly wrong or that it generated no insights and in this vein every refinement of an economic model improves our understanding of the economy.

Your suggestion that "unless you understand what is going on in the mind of the individuals who are acting economically, you will never understand economics" is very much in line with the Chicago School's (or indeed most mainstream economics of the past few decades) obsession with micro foundations in their theories. The necessity of assuming spherical cows in a vacuum (homo-economicus) in these theories based on rationality (as Austrian economics is) has left them completely divorced from a reality that is significantly more complicated. From this obvious disconnect with reality one can proceed in one of two directions. One could suggest that nothing at all can be known about economics because one cannot know the mind of every single person in the economy. Or one could take advantage of aggregates just as they do in the natural sciences with statistical mechanics and through empirical research uncover trends in human behavior that allow us to say something meaningful about the economy. Will this method give you a simple deterministic model that tells you for certain that in the real world if x% this then y% that? Nope! But it will give you tendencies around which the economy is thrown by the many complexities of human societies. That is what the social sciences do and it generates many important insights that you so casually dismiss.

Your Austrian school implicitly denies that humans are social beings conditioned by the society they grow up and exist in and appeals to some platonic idea of human nature that just does not exist. If anyone is being unscientific or anti-materialist or being misled by the just so fallacy in all of this it is you and that school.

We can debate the material bases for claiming "consciousness being determined by relations to means and modes of production, class as the agent of history, alienation" if you wish, but I'd imagine you've had that before and decided that the evidence was unconvincing. At yet to be unconvinced by the evidence is not to deny that the evidence exists, that is an extra you have thrown on top. Similarly commodities absolutely do have a material basis as something produced for sale and profit.

[Imperius]

I make a post claiming that economic-centric ideologies are pathological, and it devolves into a debate about economic theory. This is the pathology I'm talking about!

Let's back up from discussions of economics and proletarian class interests and ask: what is the purpose of your communist ideology? Is it a utilitarian goal of maximizing the material well-being of the most people? Minimizing economic and social inequality? What are your main goals and highest values? Here are some of mine:


Cultivating exceptional individuals, and defending them against the leveling power of collectives. Without these, my other goals are unachievable.
Creating a high culture – to me aesthetics and spirituality are a vital part of life, without which it would be an animalistic exercise hardly worth bothering with.
Building a great civilization – powerful, confident, expansive – by encouraging individual greatness.
Overcoming all limits to happiness, knowledge, power and freedom.

If someone can convince me that communism is the best ideology for realizing my highest values, then I'm all ears. But please note that economics is only a tool for achieving these ends, not an end in itself!

[Tim Cornelis]

I make a post claiming that economic-centric ideologies are pathological, and it devolves into a debate about economic theory. This is the pathology I'm talking about! [/QUOTE

[QUOTE=Imperius;2725544]Let's back up from discussions of economics and proletarian class interests and ask: what is the purpose of your communist ideology? Is it a utilitarian goal of maximizing the material well-being of the most people? Is it to minimize economic and social inequality? What are your first principles or highest values?

Human liberation and proletarian emancipation.



Cultivating exceptional individuals, and defending them against the power of collectives.

Communism is based on the free association of equals and administrate collective affairs collectively and individual affairs individually. The individual will be free from hierarchical and coercive powers imposing their will on the individual. Collective affairs, such as public life, need to be subject to collective control still but this does not abridge personal autonomy.


Creating a high culture – to me aesthetics and spirituality are a vital part of life, without which it would an animalistic exercise hardly worth living.

Communism will reduce the working day and drudgery, leaving the individual free to develop their talents and wants freely.


Building a great civilization – powerful, confident, expansive – by encouraging individual greatness.

I imagine communism would look similar to the Venus Project sketches, although I do not concern myself with such futuristic blueprints.


Overcoming all limits to happiness, knowledge, power and freedom!

Limits on happiness include unnecessary drudgery and work, limits to power include disempowerment resulting from it being monopolised by capital and the state, limits to freedom, the same. Communism is based on the free association of equals and administrate collective affairs collectively and individual affairs individually. It maximises freedom by eliminating coercive powers and hierarchy, it enhances chances of happiness by eliminating financial concerns, and stress resulting from this, (poverty, debt, hunger, an obnoxious manager or boss, a rigid work ethos), and reducing the work day immensely, it empowers people by allowing them direct participation in administrating collective affairs and decision-making generally -- through this communism also provides a real community which is linked to eliminating alienation.

[Criminalize Heterosexuality]

I make a post claiming that economic-centric ideologies are pathological, and it devolves into a debate about economic theory. This is the pathology I'm talking about!

Except several people responded to your initial claims.


Let's back up from discussions of economics and proletarian class interests and ask: what is the purpose of your communist ideology?

That's like asking "let's back up from discussion of cooking and ask: what is the purpose of your oven?", it makes no sense.

Anyway, you know that old libertarian nonsense, "Conservatives want the government to be your daddy, liberals want it to be your mommy, libertarians want it to treat you like a grown man."? And the usual rejoinder "Libertarians want to kill mommy and daddy so they can have ice cream for dinner."?

Well, communists want to kill everyone else so that the proletariat can have all the ice cream ever.


If someone can convince me that communism is the best ideology for realizing my highest values, then I'm all ears. But please note that economics is only a tool for achieving these ends, not an end in itself!

Any sort of communism that involves spirituality, a "powerful expansive civilization" and Great Men isn't worthy of the name, really.

[Loony Le Fist]

...

Cultivating exceptional individuals, and defending them against the leveling power of collectives. Without these, my other goals are unachievable.
Creating a high culture – to me aesthetics and spirituality are a vital part of life, without which it would an animalistic exercise hardly worth living.
Building a great civilization – powerful, confident, expansive – by encouraging individual greatness.
Overcoming all limits to happiness, knowledge, power and freedom.

If someone can convince me that communism is the best ideology for realizing my highest values, then I'm all ears. But please note that economics is only a tool for achieving these ends, not an end in itself!

I'll address these one by one.


Collectives are part of the natural organization of human beings. We are social creatures. I think you have to support your claim that collectives create limits on happiness and knowledge.
I'll grant you that aesthetics are nice, but art doesn't put food on the table, or clothes on your back. Nonetheless, I would agree that it is vital to the development of culture and does serve an important purpose. But I just don't see how you are deriving that the development of these aspects of society can only develop through rugged individualism.
You need to define what you mean by "powerful, confident, expansive". Depending on your take, I suppose we can agree. But if you are speaking of imperialism, then I would have to disagree. The minor differences between human beings just doesn't justify some people having all that much authority over anyone else.
No disagreements here. Except that there will always be some limits on freedom, since living in a society inevitably brings our freedoms into conflict.


Addressing your first point further, there is a greater power of being part of groups of people: solidarity. There is knowledge you gain from interacting from others. No individual is an island. I would argue nearly the opposite: happiness, knowledge and personal power are impossible without collectives. From who would you obtain this knowledge to achieve a great society? The vast majority of people have something to contribute to society if equipped with the proper tools. Reason: there just isn't enough genetic variation between humans to support the idea that somehow some persons are that much less capable than others. I will grant that collectives perhaps might place limits on one individuals power over another, but individuals having a whole lot of power over another just isn't all that justified for aforementioned reasons.

Perhaps you can elaborate more on what you mean by point 3. And I think you need to expand on why you feel only a rugged individualist society can achieve these goals. You seem to be claiming that exceptional individuals cannot exist in a collectivist society, and I wonder how you deriving that.

[Imperius]

What is it about the proletariat that makes so many of you elevate them to the status of Chosen People, Master Race, or even God? How much time have you actually spent around the proletariat? I certainly don't find them to be worthy of this kind of worship. You all keep denying it, but what is this obsession if not religious fanaticism? Maybe the communist battle cry should be "proletariat akbar"?

[Red Economist]

Aren't Marxism and capitalism both immature and unsustainable foundations for civilizations, and don't we need to find higher values than economic growth, technological development or class relations if we are to have a sane, humane and viable civilization?

yes. capitalism represents a very limited scope of human development- but these limits are economic and must be overcome through economic development. Marxism- as a theory- is primarily a branch of political-economy focusing on the tasks of reaching a point where humanity can begin to live without fear of these limits. It has therefore not achieved a level of development which humanity really deserves, because it has had to focus on the immediate tasks of building a society in which people are free from such constraints. A sane, humane and viable civilisation is one where everyone can pursue those higher values, not just an elite few. Regrettably in the twentieth century, the opportunity for cultural and intellectual freedom was wasted under communism through political repression and control.


So in other words, you are a fanatical communist jihadist who has substituted "revolutionary proletariat" for the umma, proletarian "class interest" for sharia law, "class war" for holy war, capitalists and "bourgeois ideologues" for infidels, Communism for Islam. This is quite a revealing statement that I hope your comrades here will read and ponder. If this isn't a statement of pure, fanatical religious nihilism, I don't know what is!

I cannot speak for Rafiq, but there is a correspondence between the ideas you're comparing. The class struggle is objective to the will of the individual and does repeat itself in varying forms through out history, but changes according to the classes involved and the interests and institutions they are fighting for. Communism wants to abolish social organization based on class and class struggle. But, we have our fanatics as much as any other ideology.


Let's back up from discussions of economics and proletarian class interests and ask: what is the purpose of your communist ideology? Is it a utilitarian goal of maximizing the material well-being of the most people? Minimizing economic and social inequality? What are your main goals and highest values?

The goal of communism is to make people 'free' in the sense that they are free to act in accordance with their interests. To be free to pursue high ideals, they must have the means to live comfortably.


Cultivating exceptional individuals, and defending them against the leveling power of collectives. Without these, my other goals are unachievable.

For the most part, 'exceptional individuals' are members of the ruling class who exercise the 'leveling' power to force the collective to do as they wish. These 'exceptional individuals' are free, only in so far as they oppress and exploit everyone else, who is reduced to an anonymous collective mass without individuality because they are driven by the necessity of satisfying their and their ruler's requirements. Rather, the collective is the creative force of mankind as the economic force- which creates the means to produce and to satisfy man's requirement.




Creating a high culture – to me aesthetics and spirituality are a vital part of life, without which it would an animalistic exercise hardly worth bothering with.


"exceptional individuals" alone- especially if what makes them exceptional is intellect- cannot subsist without these basic economic requirements. The task of communism is the realization of all human talents based on the assumption that men and women are by nature equal and are made unequal by social conditions.




Building a great civilization – powerful, confident, expansive – by encouraging individual greatness.


It is important to understand the role of economics in giving people the means by which to achieve 'power', 'confidence' and the 'expansion' of human capacities. The power to create and to harness the forces of nature- not to master others- is true power and it is scientific, technological and economic. You cannot achieve this 'greatness' without first mastering the mundane tasks of satisfying the base requirements of humanity, so that society has a solid basis on which to build a great civilization.




Overcoming all limits to happiness, knowledge, power and freedom.


The nature of these limits are economic in so far as we are always in need of the means to pursue our ends. As human beings, we stand in a perpetual state of trying to overcome these limits; the process of over-coming them is an infinite process of human development and growth and is the motivation for our development. The limits are not finite and there is no fixed point in which mankind achieves a kind of 'perfection'. economics and human labor is the imperfect means to pursue ideal ends; communism represents a stage in development in which these limits have been sufficiently overcome for most or all people to pursue those ends.



If someone can convince me that communism is the best ideology for realizing my highest values, then I'm all ears. But please note that economics is only a tool for achieving these ends, not an end in itself!

Most of your values- whilst representing often admirable qualities- represent deeply elitist tendencies which are in conflict with the egalitarianism and collectivism of communist ideology. logically, you would only become a communist through an appreciation that 'ordinary' people perform very necessary and economic functions which none of us can live without and do so, without the freedom or dignity that exploitation affords the ruling class.
The importance of economics is in trying to escape the necessity of a purely economic and subsistence existence, so that on the basis of a high productivity of labor, people will be free (in the sense of having the time) to pursue these goals. we must first of all have food, shelter, clothes etc, before we can pursue science,politics, philosophy, law and culture and this constitutes a materialist conception of history.

[Criminalize Heterosexuality]

What is it about the proletariat that makes so many of you elevate them to the status of Chosen People, Master Race, or even God? You all keep denying it, but what is this obsession if not religious fanaticism? Maybe the communist battle cry should be "proletariat akbar"?

Most of us - I would hope - are members of the proletariat, and are concerned with our own interest. And the proletariat is the only class that has both a clear objective interest in a communist society and the social power to carry out a socialist revolution.

[Red Economist]

What is it about the proletariat that makes so many of you elevate them to the status of Chosen People, Master Race, or even God? You all keep denying it, but what is this obsession if not religious fanaticism? Maybe the communist battle cry should be "proletariat akbar"?

The recognition that the most productive section of mankind is most able to build a better society, if it is willing to over-come it's servitude. It has a humanist mask- but it is still a considerable act of faith in the better part of humanity given the many extraordinary evils we are capable of- both as an ideology and as a species.

[Loony Le Fist]

What is it about the proletariat that makes so many of you elevate them to the status of Chosen People, Master Race, or even God? How much time have you actually spent around the proletariat? I certainly don't find them to be worthy of this kind of worship. You all keep denying it, but what is this obsession if not religious fanaticism? Maybe the communist battle cry should be "proletariat akbar"?

No one is worthy of worship and I don't see anyone making or even implying this claim. Hyperbole much?

[WelcomeToTheParty]

Words

Have you even been reading the responses? Marxism is a science that traces the development of society through class struggle and the changing organization of production. It has no values, it simply recognizes that the proletariat is the most numerous class under capitalism and that it is in their interest to seize the means of production. Do you call a physicist pathological when they insist on explaining the evolution of a physical system in terms of basic particles? Marxists can have any number of reasons for supporting socialism, but Marxism the methodology makes no moral claims.

You cannot ask us to show how your values are comparable with communism when your first stated value is an opposition to collectives which you assert possess some "leveling power" which you (again) assert makes the achievement of your other goals impossible. Nor can you insist that we argue that a great civilization is built by encouraging individual greatness if you truly wish to engage.

If you will restate your goals as:


Cultivating exceptional individuals
Creating a high culture
Building a great civilization – powerful, confident, expansive
Overcoming all limits to happiness, knowledge, power and freedom.

which outlines the ends without assuming the means then perhaps we can have a fruitful discussion.

I would love for you to point out where someone has suggested that economics is an end in and of itself as well.

[liberlict]

Your suggestion that it is fine to theorize in the social sciences, but impossible to provide evidence so as to justify those theories beyond the level of "wild speculation" is absurd. Can a theory about society be proved to the level expected in the natural sciences? Definitely not since controlled trials are obviously impossible, but this is not to say that the historical evidence we do have cannot be used to elevate one theory over another.

Oh absolutely. But what I was getting at, is that there are many social-sciences and theories of history, but only Marxism masquerades as a science with no respect for how science actually works.

[WelcomeToTheParty]

Oh absolutely. But what I was getting at, is that there are many social-sciences and theories of history, but only Marxism masquerades as a science with no respect for how science actually works.

Social sciences are science, you yourself talked about the application of the scientific method with regard to Economics. Marxism is a social science. Therefore Marxism is a science. You have yet to give any explanation for why Marxism only "masquerades as a science" that holds up to scrutiny. Why even bother posting if you're not going to engage with the arguments being made?

[liberlict]

Def going to make an effort to write a full post tonight but for now ill leave you with this my lovelies<333



I disagree with the above in that I wouldn't classify psychology as a social science. It seems more accurate to categorize psychology as an applied science like medicine or veterinary science. Or at the very least a 'soft' science.

Perhaps, but if you read all the wildly differing fields and approaches to psychology, CBT, Psychoanalysis, evolutionary psychology, you can see that it's a pretty open field.

What you notice about 'harder sciences', like physics and chemistry and such, is that the most basic principles are taken for granted. It's just the esoteric details that are disputed by the leaders of the field.

With 'soft' sciences, like economics say, there are all sorts of theories competing with each other over fundamental principles. The lack of any real fundamental, dependable axiom is probably what makes a 'science' 'soft', imo.

[liberlict]

Social sciences are science, you yourself talked about the application of the scientific method with regard to Economics. Marxism is a social science. Therefore Marxism is a science. You have yet to give any explanation for why Marxism only "masquerades as a science" that holds up to scrutiny. Why even bother posting if you're not going to engage with the arguments being made?

What you are doing here is equating social science and science. This is the only problem I have with it.

If you really can't see how social-scientific theories are different and completely impotent compared to physical sciences then I think you need to rethink things.

[liberlict]

How do you guys feel about Analytic Marxism (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Analytical_Marxists) who, as I understand their stated goals, try to make Marxism more scientific?

[Criminalize Heterosexuality]

How do you guys feel about Analytic Marxism (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Analytical_Marxists) who, as I understand their stated goals, try to make Marxism more scientific?

Neo-Cohenite revisionists.


With 'soft' sciences, like economics say, there are all sorts of theories competing with each other over fundamental principles.

Just like in physics or turn-of-the-century biology (turn of the century before the last... I'm old). Of course, to us there is no debate in economics; we do not recognize bourgeois political economy as scientific.

[#FF0000]

How do you guys feel about Analytic Marxism (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Analytical_Marxists) who, as I understand their stated goals, try to make Marxism more scientific?

GA Cohen is the only analytic marxist dude I like. But I don't like Analytic philosophy in general.

I don't like continental philosophy either. :mellow:

[liberlict]

Neo-Cohenite revisionists.



So that's a bad thing?



we do not recognize bourgeois political economy as scientific.

Wasn't Marx a bourgeois political economist?

[liberlict]

GA Cohen is the only analytic marxist dude I like. But I don't like Analytic philosophy in general.

I don't like continental philosophy either. :mellow:

That's gotta be rough. :D

[Thirsty Crow]

What is it about the proletariat that makes so many of you elevate them to the status of Chosen People, Master Race, or even God? How much time have you actually spent around the proletariat?Nope, that elevating is a figment of your imagination.
Communists, on the other hand - who so happen to be proletarians, though of course not every single communist out there, far from it - recognize that the class division in modern society, the positions classes occupy vis-a-vis both each other and the means of social development and production, pretty much makes it impossible for any other class to radically transform society in its own interest - since the interest at hand is tied in with the maintenance of capitalist society. The working class is different in this regard as the only social class that is potentially revolutionary.

And I've spent my time around workers, sure. What does this, though, have to do with anything? It's not like I idolize some such image.

But yeah, I have no doubt that you'll fail to engage with this point. That's, after all, what your contribution here boils down to.


What you are doing here is equating social science and science. This is the only problem I have with it.

If you really can't see how social-scientific theories are different and completely impotent compared to physical sciences then I think you need to rethink things.
In other words, here you're claiming that social life cannot be studied in a scientific manner. Otherwise, it would be hard to understand this imputation of impotency in comparison to physical sciences.
I don't think this is the case actually. Of course, the procedures and the object of social sciences are different than that of the physical, but they need to and indeed do have a common basis.

[WelcomeToTheParty]

What you are doing here is equating social science and science. This is the only problem I have with it.

If you really can't see how social-scientific theories are different and completely impotent compared to physical sciences then I think you need to rethink things.

I wrote a detailed rebuttal to your suggestion that social science isn't science. The best you can manage is: Nu uh! I think you need to rethink things.

You can't just assert something like that and expect your arguments to hold any weight.

[liberlict]

I don't think this is the case actually. Of course, the procedures and the object of social sciences are different than that of the physical, but they need to and indeed do have a common basis.

Yeah social scientists can and do crunch statistics with the best of them. But a truly materialist account of history involves so many variables that it's a hopeless task. Unfortunately, most sociologists these days are post-modernists and deconstructions who reject the Enlightenment Project and 'scientism' altogether.

[Thirsty Crow]

Yeah social scientists can and do crunch statistics with the best of them. But a truly materialist account of history involves so many variables that it's a hopeless task. Unfortunately, most sociologists these days are post-modernists and deconstructions who reject the Enlightenment Project and 'scientism' altogether.
Well, it might be a very difficult task, no argument from me here. But the point is that one cannot draw the line in principle between the areas which can and which cannot be studied scientifically (which also implies a collective, collaborative effort in tackling this difficult task which can result in better and more complete knowledge). Anyway, I'm not so ready to declare it a hopeless task; rather, I see it as vitally important, but yes - difficult.

And you'll hear no argument from me especially in relation to what you claim about post-modernists and deconstructionists :grin:

[Jimmie Higgins]

What is it about the proletariat that makes so many of you elevate them to the status of Chosen People, Master Race, or even God?what are workers... Is there anything inherent that makes someone a worker? No, it's a relationship in society to the way a society reproduces itself, keeps going. But for workers that relationship is one where she/he must be kept in a position of needing to find wage work and so this requires repression and oppression and so on by those who want to maintain this kind of order in society.


How much time have you actually spent around the proletariat?what a strange question. Um, every day and night of my life.


I certainly don't find them to be worthy of this kind of worship. and no one worships them. There's even derogatory names among working class revolutionaries that give supernatural or idealized views of the class in itself: workerist, etc. workers are an incredibly diverse, and often divided, group of folks. We compete with each other to survive, unless we build solidarity and make collective demands, and so it causes a lot of friction and divisions and it's an uphill battle for workers to unite together, but when we are able to, it has an incredibly powerful potential.


You all keep denying it, but what is this obsession if not religious fanaticism? Maybe the communist battle cry should be "proletariat akbar"?you are essentially trolling, not making an argument. Pathology, religious fanaticism... These are not actual arguments, but rather trite deflections from having to even consider the legitimacy or illegitimacy of an ideology. It's a lazy attempt by someone with some pretty elitist views of the world to just dismiss what they find disagreeable.

You call it "denial" when people repeatedly explain that our class focus has nothing to do with worshiping some group of people for the hell of it (or even because some of us happen to be workers), and everything to do with the relationships in society that make this present one function as it does. It seems like you are the one with the dogmatic forgone conclusion if you make a statement and then claim anyone who disagrees is just in denial of that obvious truth.



Cultivating exceptional individuals, and defending them against the leveling power of collectives. Without these, my other goals are unachievable.
Creating a high culture – to me aesthetics and spirituality are a vital part of life, without which it would be an animalistic exercise hardly worth bothering with.
Building a great civilization – powerful, confident, expansive – by encouraging individual greatness.
Overcoming all limits to happiness, knowledge, power and freedom.

If someone can convince me that communism is the best ideology for realizing my highest values, then I'm all ears. But please note that economics is only a tool for achieving these ends, not an end in itself!

1. As was said I think earlier, learning is collective. What do "exceptional individuals" learn? Collective lessons of contemporaries and people in the past. I also think the idea that collectives hold back "individuals" is nonsense capitalist dogma used to justify inequality. If you look back at history, you will see the same arguments made about the education or advancement of blacks, women, or Catholics leading to a "degradation" of society. It's just a form of social Darwinism really.

If you want individuals to all have the chance to be able to develop themselves, then actually communism would be the only way to do this. People who are busy dealing with two jobs, debts, people without access to resources, people without free time are NOT going to ever live to their potential.

2. Aesthetics are not vital to life in the way food and shelter and sex are, but I think most people would agree that culture, pop or "high" are important aspects of an enjoyable life. But how does this emerge in society? Peasants and slaves try to enrich their lives as much as possible and there are some cultural things which are handed down in forms of folk and craft cultures, but what we know of as high art as well as commercial art is dependent on people having access to training, time, and materials to develop themselves. So again, wouldn't a society where all the population could develop themselves as they choose produce more and varied cultures? Wouldn't a life today where someone works multiple jobs or has no access to the owners and gatekeepers of high art be "animalistic" according to you? So why would you support capitalism?

3. This point is just too abstract to comment on. How would strong, confident, etc, really be quantified? Your description could apply to roman empires, dictatorships, ect. And no society is based on strong individuals... At least no large societies with many moving "parts".

4. Well this certainly doesn't describe capitalism. I think most people would consider their working conditions as a "limit on their freedom". I think the mass-incarceration of people in the u.s. Is probably a limit on freedom. I think education inequality, privatization, and underfunding limit knowledge. I think the private ownership of the things necessary for people to live limits power and freedom.

The point of "communism" is a universal access to collective social production (to each... From each). It has nothing to do with workers specifically, it's a human-wide freedom from people holding repressive or economic power over others.

The focus on workers is the point of Marxists and some kinds of anarchists... Not because workers are supernaturally blessed or better people, but because they are the part of society that can produce without exploiting other groups, they would have no need to control others, just a need to cooperate and make collective, democratic, decisions. It is the group in society who potentially can solve their own problems (exploitation and repression) through universal freedom, communism.

[argeiphontes]

Marxism is not a science. Sociology is a science. Marxism (historical and dialectical materialism) is a theoretical framework within sociology. Marx's critique of political economy falls under modern economics.

Its theories or models, historical and dialectical materialism, happen to be subject to Popper's criticisms, but nevertheless it's a set of theories and not a science in an of itself.

[argeiphontes]

If one wants to understand history in a faithfully materialist way, one should consult the works of Stephen Hawking, not ol' Karl.


Right, but there is no way to do this since they're on different levels of explanation of emergent phenomena. It doesn't matter that the universe is, Marxism's tenets could still be true.



All these theories about consciousness being determined by relations to means and modes of production, class as the agent of history, alienation etc., fascinating as it all may be, belong firmly to the field of 'wild speculation', and have noting to do with science.


They're just post-hoc explanations and justifications. What does the theory of dialectical materialism say about who the next president of the US will be? Or something like that. The theories only work backwards when you cherry pick what you want to include.



Yes interesting no doubt, but it is one of those 'just so' (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Just-so_story)stories.

In science and philosophy, a just-so story, also called an ad hoc fallacy, is an unverifiable and unfalsifiable narrative explanation for a cultural practice, a biological trait, or behavior of humans or other animals. The pejorative[1] nature of the expression is an implicit criticism that reminds the hearer of the essentially fictional and unprovable nature of such an explanation. Such tales are common in folklore and mythology (where they are known as etiological myths—see etiology).


Yes.



Economics can't really be studied scientifically.


That's probably right. At the very least, I would say that it's possible to come up with multiple internally coherent models of economics that vary according to their normative bases.

[WelcomeToTheParty]

Sociology is a science. Marxism (historical and dialectical materialism) is a theoretical framework within sociology. Marx's critique of political economy falls under modern economics.

If you must be pedantic then sure, Marxism is a specific approach to the scientific study of society (not just economics as you suggest). I'm not sure how you can accept sociology as a science here only to reject the possibility of economics being scientific in your next post, it doesn't make any sense. All social sciences come up against Popper, but clearly useful knowledge is created and theories can be tested although with less certainty than the natural sciences.



What does the theory of dialectical materialism say about who the next president of the US will be? Or something like that. The theories only work backwards when you cherry pick what you want to include.

Asking a sociological theory to predict who the next president will be is like asking physics which particle will be in a certain space at time t in a large chaotic system, i.e. it's ridiculous. Marxism studies structures and trends and while you could certainly examine the American political space through class and the effects on class consciousness of things like religion and the American dream even that isn't going to give you a vote count on election day. Your going to need to justify your suggestion that the theories only work backwards with cherry picking, you can't just make an assertion like that without proof and expect it to hold weight.

[Criminalize Heterosexuality]

So that's a bad thing?

Pretty bad.

By the way, when I called analytical "Marxists" "neo-Cohenites", I wasn't referring to G. A. Cohen, but H. Cohen, the founder of the neo-Kantian movement. Analytical "Marxists" are in a sense the intellectual successors of the neo-Kantians - both start from a fashionable bourgeois philosophical framework - Kantianism by way of Reinhold in the case of the neo-Kantians and a half-digested positivism in the case of A. M. - and try to fit revolutionary theory in this framework, in the end arriving at a very milquetoast social-democracy. To their credit, though, most of the neo-Kantians did not consider themselves Marxists, so they were at least more consistent than Analytical "Marxists" (and their epistemology isn't as drearily boring, but that's not saying much).


Wasn't Marx a bourgeois political economist?

...no?

"Bourgeois political economy" refers to the political economists who explicitly supported capitalism (so they should be distinguished both from Marx and, for example, Mueller). Marx himself was not bourgeois - so there is no meaning in which this sentence is true.

The point was that Marxists do not consider Keynesians, the Austrian school, etc. to be representatives of a scientific economy.


Marxism is not a science. Sociology is a science. Marxism (historical and dialectical materialism) is a theoretical framework within sociology. Marx's critique of political economy falls under modern economics.

Its theories or models, historical and dialectical materialism, happen to be subject to Popper's criticisms, but nevertheless it's a set of theories and not a science in an of itself.

Quite frankly, Popper is shit.

Marxism is "subject to Popper's criticism" (no shit - "disproving" Marxism was explicitly one of his goals) but so is evolutionary theory (which he himself admits). That is why no one takes him seriously as a philosopher of science anymore. Certain turn-of-the-century (twentieth century in this case) popular science writers appealed to Popper as if his work was the holy writ, but this is no excuse to be lazy and ignore the vast majority of philosophy of science - if you want to talk about the philosophy of science, of course.

[liberlict]

The point was that Marxists do not consider Keynesians, the Austrian school, etc. to be representatives of a scientific economy.




Ahh ok.


By the way, when I called analytical "Marxists" "neo-Cohenites", I wasn't referring to G. A. Cohen, but H. Cohen, the founder of the neo-Kantian movement. Analytical "Marxists" are in a sense the intellectual successors of the neo-Kantians - both start from a fashionable bourgeois philosophical framework - Kantianism by way of Reinhold in the case of the neo-Kantians and a half-digested positivism in the case of A. M. - and try to fit revolutionary theory in this framework, in the end arriving at a very milquetoast social-democracy. To their credit, though, most of the neo-Kantians did not consider themselves Marxists, so they were at least more consistent than Analytical "Marxists" (and their epistemology isn't as drearily boring, but that's not saying much).

Oh. I don't know much about them so I can't comment. But I understand they were/are trying to make Marxism scientific according to modern standards rather than the dialectical 'science' that influenced Marx. This seemed like a laudable goal to me when I read about it.

[liberlict]

Here's Wikipedia's summary of scientific method, for everyone's edification including mine.

"The scientific method is a body of techniques for investigating phenomena, acquiring new knowledge, or correcting and integrating previous knowledge. To be termed scientific, a method of inquiry must be based on empirical and measurable evidence subject to specific principles of reasoning. The Oxford English Dictionary defines the scientific method as: "a method or procedure that has characterized natural science since the 17th century, consisting in systematic observation, measurement, and experiment, and the formulation, testing, and modification of hypotheses."

The chief characteristic which distinguishes the scientific method from other methods of acquiring knowledge is that scientists seek to let reality speak for itself, supporting a theory when a theory's predictions are confirmed and challenging a theory when its predictions prove false. Although procedures vary from one field of inquiry to another, identifiable features distinguish scientific inquiry from other methods of obtaining knowledge. Scientific researchers propose hypotheses as explanations of phenomena and design experimental studies to test these hypotheses via predictions which can be derived from them. These steps must be repeatable to guard against mistake or confusion in any particular experimenter. Theories that encompass wider domains of inquiry may bind many independently derived hypotheses together in a coherent, supportive structure. Theories, in turn, may help form new hypotheses or place groups of hypotheses into context.

Scientific inquiry is generally intended to be as objective as possible in order to reduce biased interpretations of results. Another basic expectation is to document, archive, and share all data and methodology so they are available for careful scrutiny by other scientists, giving them the opportunity to verify the results by attempting to reproduce them. This practice, called full disclosure, also allows statistical measures of the reliability of the data to be established (when data is sampled or compared to chance)."

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scientific_method

[liberlict]

And you'll hear no argument from me especially in relation to what you claim about post-modernists and deconstructionists :grin:

This is right on (but ignore the 'Marxism' in the title, he's not talking about Marxism at all).

VjNJX64cBOE

I'd go gay for Chomsky.