CYBEReris posted:

and he's 100% correct

MLSM posted:

How good/important is Theories of Surplus Value compared to Das Kapital and the Grundrisse? Marx described it as the fourth volume of capital, but what more does it offer in addition to the other three volumes, if any?

Algund Eenboom posted:

Cornets and Consilience

by Niles Eldredge

The millennium draws nigh, and, predictably, the silly season has already begun. I am thinking, though, not of the "end is near" types, but rather of the prophecies of an increasingly strident group of gene-entranced evolutionary biologists who insist that everything human—our bodies, our behaviors, our cultural norms—devolves down to the competitive propensities of our genes to represent themselves in the coming generation.

So we find "evolutionary psychologists" like Stephen Pinker telling us that it matters not to the end result how parents rear their children—even though everyone who has ever been a kid knows otherwise. And Richard Dawkins, of "selfish gene" fame, recently appeared in a BBC Horizon film, Darwin's Legacy, telling his viewers that Hitler gave eugenics a bad name. (Though his face held the trace of a sly smile, Dawkins appeared to be serious.) These themes, of course, are not new. Evolutionary biologists have been looking anxiously over their shoulders since the '50s and '60s, when the triumphs of molecular biology began rapidly accumulating. Back then, the Nobel aura of DNA and RNA clearly threatened to take center stage away from the traditional and far less sexy field of population genetics, where mathematically trained geneticists had for decades been specifying the fates of genes in groups of organisms under various experimental, field, and purely theoretical conditions.

Thus evolutionary rhetoric—epitomized by Dawkins's selfish genes, but fashioned into a virtual academic industry with the rise of sociobiology in the 1970s—was forced to confront and somehow embrace the new genetic knowledge. Sociobiologists did so by inventing a brilliant, if skewed, theory that described the biological world as an epiphenomenon of a mad race between genes jockeying for position in the world.

The American playwright Robert Ardrey actually got the ball rolling in 1961, when, in his African Genesis, he reinterpreted paleoanthropologist Raymond Dart's analysis of the cultural and physical remains of the three-million-year-old species Australopithecus africanus as proof of our killer instincts: We murder and wage war, Ardrey believed, because our ancestors did—and such propensities live on in our genes. Likewise, we have been hearing for years that the male desire to rape and philander is purely a vestige of the ineluctable urge to leave as many offspring as possible to the next generation—an urge, of course, that itself reduces to our genes' desire to survive long after we ourselves are dead.

But the most recent hype has centered around the latest book by a man I generally admire very much: Edward O. Wilson. The "father" of sociobiology, Wilson has contributed much to such disparate fields as biogeography, systematics and ecology. My admiration for him stems especially from his diligent passion as a Paul Revere-like spokesman for the earth's vanishing ecosystems and species.

It is thus with something of a heavy heart I confront Wilson's "consilience." Wilson, of course, is well known for his ontological claim that in every conceivable sense and aspect of their being, humans are epiphenomena of the competitive behavior of their genes. What is new with his consilience is the epistemological claim that all ways of knowing the human condition—not just physiology and psychology, but philosophy (especially ethics), theology, economics… indeed, the entire gamut of what we traditionally call "social sciences" and "the humanities"—are in a real and formal sense inadequate insofar as they have not been "reduced"—distilled—to the deeper truths of the genetic shell game.

Consilience, Wilson tells us, means "jumping together"—and his ostensible task is to integrate biology with the humanities to form some grand new synthesis. But in several recent interviews I have seen, Wilson readily admits that what he really has in mind is something quite different: the "reduction" of the humanistic fields into the ontology of evolutionary genetics. The word "consilience" seems an odd choice—not least for its haunting similarity to a favorite word of one of Wilson's chief rivals at Harvard. Stephen Jay Gould uses "conflation" to mean the inappropriate juxtaposition of concepts. Conflation, in essence, means "confusion." So, to my mind, does Wilson's "consilience."

What to make of this word "reduce"? What does it really mean to "reduce" one area of human thought into another? Wilson, for example, claims that human ethical systems do not derive from philosophical first principles, but instead reflect the evolutionary status of human beings as social organisms who simply need sets of rules to get along—and to enable them to leave their genes behind before they die. That both the positive and the negative interactions among social organisms are in part heritable should come to none of us as a complete surprise. We humans have known seemingly forever that we are a form of animal life—albeit a peculiar form whose approach to the exigencies of life has become heavily shaped by something called "culture."

So what I find (so) disturbing about Wilson's thesis is not really the ontological claim that evolutionary biological history—as determined by our genes—has something to do with the human condition. Rape and philandering may indeed have less to do with making babies than with the expression of symbolic issues of power in males—but that simply means that nature does not completely override nurture. It does not follow, though, that there is no biological component at all to human behavior.

Rather, it is the epistemological side of Wilson's consilience gambit that strikes me as almost incomprehensibly silly. The philosopher Ernest Nagel was known for his formal analysis of "reduction" in the sciences. According to Nagel, any exercise in reduction must involve a formal translation of the language of one field into that of another: of chemistry, say, into physics. To reduce the description of a chemical reaction to pure physics would entail describing, say, the equation "2 H2 + O2 = 2 H2O" purely in terms of electrons, protons and neutrons. There's nothing wrong with this enterprise in principle—except that what we're left with doesn't tell us anything about either the quantitative or qualitative properties of water molecules. Moreover, why stop at electrons, protons and neutrons, since they themselves are composed of smaller bits of interactive matter?

Complex systems clearly do exist. They clearly have properties of their own—properties that intrinsically cannot be addressed by the reductionist enterprise no matter how clever. Richard Dawkins, for example, has claimed that ecosystems will ultimately be understood in terms of competition among genes. Ecologists, in contrast, seem distinctly underwhelmed by this prospect, preferring to describe such systems in terms of patterns of matter—energy flow among local populations of microbes, fungi, plants, animals—and in terms of their physical location. Sure, fungal species have evolved physiological adaptations for the adsorption of various forms of dead organic material. But the basic fact that there is an evolutionary history to all of an ecosystem's adaptations is of no direct, immediate relevance to the task of specifying what those internal dynamics are. It is only trivially true that information stored in the genes of each of an ecosystem's organisms underlies those organisms' anatomies and physiologies; there is simply no meaningful way to describe the ecosystem itself through a translation into the genetic "language" of its component organisms.

And so this business of "consilience"—Wilson's raid on the humanities. What, for example, can the evolutionary history of the human gene have to do with human culture? I am writing these thoughts in a room that is bedecked with the best examples from my extensive collection of Victorian and Edwardian cornets. I collect these horns for a variety of reasons, some deeply personal—every time I find one at a flea market, for example, I experience once again the thrill of getting my first horn in grammar school. Other reasons are more analytic: Cornets were invented, and their designs had "evolutionary" histories. They became virtually extinct when radios were invented—all but killing town bands—and when Louis Armstrong switched to the more brilliant sound of the trumpet. So, in my array of cornets I see intriguing parallels with my professional career as an evolutionary-minded paleontologist. My cornets can also be reduced to their value as investments. And then there is the rich emotional enjoyment of making music with my friends on these dear old things.

Am I, like every other organism on the face of the earth, leading an "economic" existence? Meaning, do I do the sorts of things required in our society to make a living, to provide bread for the table to sustain not only my own body but those of my immediate family as well? Sure. Is caring for my children going to help some of my genes make it to the next generation? Sure—possibly. But has the emotional and economic well- being that I can directly identify with my cornet-collecting mania become any the more explicable by acknowledging that I am a living primate mammal who eats and has already reproduced? I don't think so. Economics—an impenetrable maze to me—is the description and analysis of complex systems, subsets of our social organization. Do we compete in the marketplace because, at base, we are animals that need to eat? Sure. Is knowing something about genes going to help economists understand their systems? Wilson sure thinks so—yet in a recent issue of Structural Change and Economic Dynamics devoted to evolutionary models in economic theory, the point was repeatedly made that evolution's relation to economics depends very much on which version of evolutionary theory is chosen. Theories of evolution that try to get by with reducing the process simply to natural selection generation by generation ignore the nature and internal dynamics of large-scale biological systems. Indeed, such notions ignore the very existence of such systems. In contrast, I am of the firm opinion that the course of evolutionary history is changed only when ecosystems are disrupted by physical causes: The greater the destructive event—the global mass extinctions of the geological past, as when the dinosaurs and many other forms of life disappeared abruptly more than 65 million years ago, for example—the greater the eventual evolutionary response. No perturbation, no evolution.

My evolutionary worldview is thus very different from those of Wilson and Dawkins. I take seriously the existence of large-scale systems. Though smaller-scale systems with their own internal dynamics (like natural selection working within populations) do exist as component parts of larger-scale systems, the internal dynamics of the smaller-scale components never yield a usable description of the nature of the larger-scale systems. On the other hand, if we pursue this reductionistic bent, why stop at the level of the gene? Why not reduce all evolutionary biology to chemistry, and then down to physics? When we can describe ecosystems and species in terms of quarks and leptons, we will have the ultimate reductio ad absurdum!

I simply cannot take the epistemological side of consilience seriously at all. And I shudder when I hear Darwin's beautiful and simple idea of natural selection mangled when it is applied simplistically as a moral of how we do and should behave. I feel the same way when I read the gentlemanly E. O. Wilson admonishing us to recast our ethical systems in light of his version of evolutionary biology. He is really not so very far away from the darker side—as when Richard Dawkins tells us on television that Hitler gave eugenics a bad name.

Zodium posted:

AnimeIsTrash posted:

i'm more of a cumtown communist personally

Hefty Leftist posted:

it's (imperialism in the 21st century) a great analysis of trans-national corporations and the global distribution and outsourcing of labor in neoliberalism. i'm finding it particularly hard to digest tho because it's an incredibly in-depth economic analysis so if that's your thing go hog wild

tokin opposition posted:

We're getting off topic again. Which communist leader had the best bussy? (It's mao)

Southpaugh posted:

Under socialism the worker reserves the right to tell you to go gently caress yourself.

Raskolnikov38 posted:

okay that makes more sense because my argument was basically "you're still going to need to someone to direct visitors and answer questions and luggage won't magically stop going missing under socialism, so the receptionist and the person who can tell the baggage handlers to look for a bag are still needed"

Danann posted:

https://twitter.com/strike_dr/status/1511920997833842689

R. Mute posted:

if you think this is petty factionalism or a historical dispute, again, you've never met a trotskyist because you learned marxism exclusively from forums and youtube videos. touch grass and you'll find a trot has pissed all over it.

dead gay comedy forums posted:

there's more than that: they are, in loose definition, degenerated revolutions

trotsky had a good starting framework with his idea of permanent revolution, which, if brought to an essential point, was that a continuous social mobilization towards the revolutionary goal is indispensable for the revolutionary state. Again, if we bring it to the essential part of it, it's a good point imho. A dumb analogy would be that it is the sociological equivalent of telling somebody to pull iron, eat properly, do cardio, but for the body politic.

In Training posted:

this piece isn't anti-BDS. it points out the limitations of a boycott-only approach but does not say it's pointless or should be abandoned.

apropos to nothing posted:

another thing and this is getting away from the question of bds but also on the issue of palestine that i hear debated a lot on "the left" where any nuance is seen as support for israel is the two state/one state issue. two states is what palestinians in palestine support. many on the left like to say there should be one state: palestine, basically saying israel shouldnt exist. ok but like what does that mean? does it mean a new consitution? well id hope so, but is that achieved by changing the name? who controls what a new constitution looks like? does it mean palestinians gaining total hegemony over the political process in the region? well, again in israel+occupied territories palestinians make up ~40% of population so youre talking about a minoritarian rule along ethnic lines, sounds pretty bad to me imo, its basically israel now but flip mode. if youre not talking about that then youre talking about basically integrating the territories together which would then create a state dominated by israelies, just like what exists now but with all of the territory of palestine "legally" occupied, sounds bad. if you mean all the israelis should be removed from the region as theyre all settler colonialists then actually, yeah you are arguing for ethnic cleansing against israelis and thats exactly the argument zionists like to paint the left as having because a lot of ultra left types actually do believe and argue that. they are fringe wackos but theyre what the reactionaries point to as being the left. so basically a two state solution would at least give palestinians national self-determination and its actually what palestinians in palestine want on the whole. i dont see how a one state solution on any grounds that a socialist could support could be achieved in the current situation. thats not to say it couldnt be the case under different circumstances which might arise later, thats true for any and all of this, but just reacting to the political situation as it exists right now.

apropos to nothing posted:

the US is more democratic, than israel. do you believe that ethnic minorities have full democratic rights here? why would you expect palestinians in a single state to have what minorities in every liberal democratic regime lack and which they currently lack in the single state they inhabit? do you think zionism will go away when palestinians and israelis are forced to live under one state when they already live under one state and zionism reigns supreme? palestinians already live in that state and they are second class citizens in an apartheid regime. is that democratic to you? what would you propose as a single state solution that leads to any change in that state of affairs?

apropos to nothing posted:

lol i honestly have no clue what to even make of this or the previous post. do you speak english as a second language? not trying to be a dick but really have no clue what point youre even trying to make and maybe theres a languag barrier. yes i hate democracy, it pisses me the freak off

Yadoppsi posted:

The family model has children socialised to regularly experience solidarity only with their nuclear group as opposed to say the communal creche model of the longhouses of precontact North America. Seriously read On the Origin of Family.

Harold Fjord posted:

The thing about child care facilities is that they are not really communal or communitarian, they are capitalist. You're are alienated from the caregiver and your children are alienated from the other children there.

The Voice of Labor posted:

since I'm the dumbest motherfucker in the room, maybe someone can explain to me why the u.s. is the only capitalist country loving with reproductive rights? like, I get that there's more space to build prisons than in the Europe, but declining birthrates and replacement population and stuff kinda suggest that 'merica isn't the liberal democracy that needs its surplus labor army maintained and expanded, it's japan and south korea...

oh wow, totally coincidentally

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abortion_in_South_Korea

tokin opposition posted:

Atrocious Joe posted:

Jacobin published an article that said some nice things about East Germany so they are getting attacked

https://twitter.com/PatrickIber/status/1538519144492154881?s=20&t=IqVsIHyOLO7XzUjxFvrRiw
https://twitter.com/PatrickIber/status/1538561242339725312?s=20&t=IqVsIHyOLO7XzUjxFvrRiw

these guys all really don't want us to read Lenin for some reason

Kindest Forums User posted:

I was listening to Michael Hudson's interview on Ben Norton's podcast and I had an issue with his analysis of the historical development of capitalism. He keeps on referring to the initial/middle stages of capitalism (industrial capitalism he calls it, the precursor of financial capitalism) as "progressive" ( his descriptor, not mine). This was due to states and corporations increasing welfare through wages and social spending. He's correct, partly, that the material conditions of Metropole workers improved during that time ( and continued through financial capitalism for that matter, which I don't think he mentions). However, these conditions were only improved due to the super exploitation of surplus value in the periphery.

It pissed me off that someone so well respected among leftists for his economic analysis will describe a form as capitalism as "progressive". It seems he should know better since he does a good job of describing the mechanisms of present day imperialism, but somehow forgot about imperialism in the good 'ol days of capitalism. Or did he not forgot and is a social fascist and believes imperialism is good as long as it increases the condition of your native workers, and his critique of financial imperialism only exists because it diverts less and less surplus value from the periphery to the Metropole workers.

Do we need to put Hudson into the trash can or am I being uncharitable of his analysis?

MSDOS KAPITAL posted:

Capitalist dictatorships don't execute capitalists when they gently caress up. China will supplant the West - it's capitalist realism to take that fact and infer that they must therefore be capitalist.

MSDOS KAPITAL posted:

So do we consider any DotP to be capitalist, here? Like I said, this sounds like capitalist realism: everything is capitalism.

I think there is a fundamental difference between the CPC having a controlling interest in 60% of the Chinese economy, and lords of capital poo poo in the West. Namely, that the CPC is acting to remove the profit incentive from those industries while capitalists are exploiting those monopolies to wring as much out of the rest of the economy as they can with them. It's an important distinction, isn't it?

Like sure they are socializing production and using profit incentives to do that, and building up productive capital, but once profit incentive becomes totally dysfunctional (i.e. at the point of monopoly, or some time before) they cut that poo poo out. A system run by capitalists wouldn't do that because the interest of the capitalist is to use that monopoly position to enrich themselves. So the Chinese system has capitalist elements and there are capitalists in China, but the Chinese system is not capital-C Capitalist because capitalists aren't in control of the state. So the reasoning goes, anyway - you can argue that they are secretly capitalist or whatever but pointing to the existence of state-run enterprises in support of that argument is to me at least.

Like the whole point of the turn to socialism, as I understand it, is to appropriate those monopolies and use the advanced productive capacity of them for the benefit of all. That is, to remove the profit incentive from them. Not to break them up or whatever - that's what liberal regimes sometimes do to keep the gravy train rolling a little longer. So the existence of state-controlled monopolies isn't evidence of capitalist elements - precisely the opposite, in fact.

MSDOS KAPITAL posted:

I'm referring to mode of production as well.

unwantedplatypus posted:

"To let things slide for the sake of peace and friendship when a person has clearly gone wrong, and refrain from principled argument because he is an old acquaintance, a fellow townsman, a schoolmate, a close friend, a loved one, an old colleague or old subordinate. Or to touch on the matter lightly instead of going into it thoroughly, so as to keep on good terms. The result is that both the organization and the individual are harmed. This is one type of liberalism."

Wow Mao sounds like a socially out-of-touch goon. Doesn't he know you have to meet people where they are?

Fish of hemp posted:

Soviet Union in the 1980's was not economic power house. It was very good at producing tanks, guns, spaceships and helicopters, but sometimes people want jeans and soda.

Sunny Side Up posted:

I like graeber but I want to pick up Kuruma’s Genesis of Money next

Aeolius posted:

This seems to argue both things at once; do we mean Marx's argument is a logical one, or a wrong-historical one? Is there a passage you'd highlight as particularly egregious?

Falstaff posted:

Would you care to summarize this argument? I'm not familiar with it.

Communist Thoughts posted:

This part of the labour value theory I don't really get at the moment, because plenty of things that take less labour are sold for more than things that took more or the same labour to produce.
Or are we talking some idealised value thats seperate from their actual value at sale?

V. Illych L. posted:

sure - you can have a commodity of a decorative painting. that would come in under the LTV. however, if anyone else than duchamp tried making a urinal it would just be a urinal. duchamp's actual urinal would cost you more; tracey emins' bed would cost you more if it were made *by tracey emins in an official capacity as Art* than if reproduced, even perfectly, etc. it's its own weird thing

unwantedplatypus posted:

Don't know where else to post about this, but the CPUSA hosted a virtual international conference today. I decided to tune in and it was kinda cool to see that they got spokespeople, videos, or written statements from the the communist parties in China, Vietnam, Cuba, Swaziland, Portugal, Iraq, Laos, Czech republic, Catalonia, and Cyprus. If you're an american communist we're basically all LARPers at this point, but it was nice hearing from more extant and established movements.

CPUSA Web Site posted:

Get Out the Vote!

Sign the pledge below to vote and help mobilize the #VoteAgainstFascism in November!

unwantedplatypus posted:

Did you go and see the clip we're talking about or are you basing your reaction off of what you assumed Sims said; based off of the discussion in this thread?