Larry and all,
I have been to one World Social Forum about 10 years ago in Porto Alegre, Brasil. At that time, it was extremely disorganized and so the major political discussions that took place were in small classrooms or listeting to stars in huge rooms. They had a "wall" on which people put proposals for action, and some group then took it to write documents about what went on. On the other had, afterwards, there was some serious discussion on the website among those who write a lot--but not among most of the 25000 or more who attended.
On the last day, by chance, I waited in a hotel bar for a friend from Porto Alegre to meet me. During the 90 minutes I waited, I watched stars like Chomsky moving from table to table hold ing "high level discussions." It was clear that the massive "democracy" of the meeting was a setting for the elites to do their planning and lobbying together. It was a fun event and I met some nice people, but it was not politics of the kind you were alluding to.
I have heard better reports about the US Social Forum, but they tend to be from people among those who organize the events. (I am sure Chomsky and Medea Benjamin would describe the Porto Alegre Forum differently from what I said based on their different social role.)
Does anyone here have better information about the US Social Forum?
I would add that from about 1969 - 1979, I was involved with what was at that time the International Socialists, and I think we usually did very good work in the real world and had serious and realistic internal and external political discussions. That stopped being true around 1978 and 79, and I left them in 79. I say this because I think that the "anti-partyist" political perspective is mistaken, as is the perspective of "building the revolutionary party" as that is usually conceived.
best
sam
-----Original Message-----
From: Larry Romsted <[log in to unmask]>
To: SCIENCE-FOR-THE-PEOPLE <[log in to unmask]>
Sent: Fri, Jan 11, 2013 5:07 am
Subject: Re: Dialectics in Science: An Interview with Helena Sheehan
Kamran:
There is one part of what you wrote that I am not sure what you mean, and if I understand correctly, I am not sure I agree. (That should be a sufficient number of qualifiers.)
I think it is about time that (eco)socialists (I now consider myself ecological socialist for some of the same reasons stated above) begin to cooperate worldwide in a manner similar how scientists have so successfully. In my experience, that is how class struggle leftwing currents have emerged and succeeded in contrast to dogmatic --isms of all kinds. I also think that is how Che Guevara began to think about "Marxism" in the Cuban revolution in the 1960s.
My experience with scientists, primarily chemists and mostly physical organic and colloid and surface chemists, is that during meeting we seldom disagree much and mostly present information. Ideas are seldom contested and when they are it makes people nervous.
At these meetings talk about the "politics of science" over beers mostly in terms of the difficulties of getting funding or discussing in a detached way our relation to our governments in terms of their treatment of scientists and science institutions (how bad is your bureaucracy). My experience tells me that scientists are not good role models for international organizing except that they have lots of meetings. Scientific collaborations sometimes do develop out of these meetings. On the flip side, scientists from industry often cannot talk about the details of their research because their company will not let them.
What about the "world social forums" that take place about once a year often in Brazil? Are they a better model for avoiding sectarianism, but having real political discussions? I have never been to one.
Larry
From: Kamran Nayeri <[log in to unmask]>
Reply-To: Science for the People Discussion List <[log in to unmask]>
Date: Thursday, January 10, 2013 2:35 PM
To: <[log in to unmask]>).
Subject: Re: Dialectics in Science: An Interview with Helena Sheehan
Thanks to all who contributed ideas in response to my questions posted yesterday. They are genuine questions for me and I tend to think that they are useful to ponder by anyone who spent part of her life in the socialist movement, any part of it.
The problem with --isms in the socialist movement is that it has continually fractured and divide us undermining the task of radical social change that we all come to believe in originally from as a moral stance and/or practical necessity.
Marx himself was aware of these problems as can be verified by his life and work. For example, he and Engels wrote in the Communist Manifesto (1847): "The Communists do not form a separate party opposed to the other working-class parties." Marx insisted “the emancipation of the working classes must be conquered by the working classes themselves.” (Rules and Administrative Regulations of the International Workingmen’s Association, 1867.
History has shown that making a doctrine out of Marx's teaching has proved a disaster. Instead, we could learn from Marx's philosophy, ethics, and method and try to apply it to the problems of our day. We can also learn from the history of direct producers and the oppressed and efforts to break out of the class/capitalist system.
Dick Levins comment below is a good starting point as is Richard Lewontin and his The Dialectical Biologist (Especially, see the last chapter).
I think it is about time that (eco)socialists (I now consider myself ecological socialist for some of the same reasons stated above) begin to cooperate worldwide in a manner similar how scientists have so successfully. In my experience, that is how class struggle leftwing currents have emerged and succeeded in contrast to dogmatic --isms of all kinds. I also think that is how Che Guevara began to think about "Marxism" in the Cuban revolution in the 1960s.
Kamran
On Thu, Jan 10, 2013 at 10:34 AM, Levins, Richard <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
A short answer might be: 1) We approach all questions of analysis from the vantage point of the producers, the oppressed, the excluded.
2) No matter how small the problem we consider, we always ask, how does the rest of the world fit in?
3) Things are the way they are because they got that way, were not always that way, need not be that way for ever.
4) If a question can receive two equally convincing and incompatible answers, the question was badly posed.
5) When two truly just, liberating causes conflict they are both asking for too little.
6) All theories are wrong that promote, justify, or ignore injustice.
7) All the tools we invent to study the world can also be turned to examine ourselves.
Marx and Engels stressed "scientific" socialism as starting from an analysis of the world as it was developing, against utopian socialism that started with our wishes, usually the inverse of our most deeply felt and perceived misery.
On Jan 9, 2013, at 11:03 PM, Kamran Nayeri <[log in to unmask]>
wrote:
I need to review this long exchange to understand the issues raised better. But let me put a question to you. Is there anything called Marxism that most Marxists agree on? Second, if there is--is "Marxism" scientific? If yes, in what sense?
Kamran
On Wed, Jan 9, 2013 at 8:29 AM, Thomas Smith <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
Dear Tom,
Might you send this to Science for the People list? For some reason, AOL is giving my address as an aim address rather than my netscape address, so I was rejected.
thanks
sam
-----Original Message-----
From: sam4wp <[log in to unmask]>
To: SCIENCE-FOR-THE-PEOPLE <[log in to unmask]>
Sent: Wed, Jan 9, 2013 10:16 am
Subject: Re: Dialectics in Science: An Interview with Helena Sheehan
Dear Tom and all,
This goes back to how you define "working class." (I have an article coming out in Against the Current on that, by the way, and can send it to anyone who asks)
The great majority of the poor are members of the working class--not of the lumpenproletariat. This is true not only in South Africa but in most of the world. And in many parts of the USA, I would add, the Latinos are a very large part of the working class however you define that term.
Hal Draper, in his books on Karl Marx's Theory of Revolution, had a very nice discussion of how Marx defined and used the term lumpenproletariat, by the way. I learned a lot from it.
best
sam
-----Original Message-----
From: Thomas Smith <[log in to unmask]>
To: SCIENCE-FOR-THE-PEOPLE <[log in to unmask]>
Sent: Wed, Jan 9, 2013 6:16 am
Subject: Re: Dialectics in Science: An Interview with Helena Sheehan
Dear Mandi,
I would refer you not only to Michael Parenti, who talks here about category C, the “billion poor,”
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KitvwJBRw2Q
, but also Richard Chilicote
http://www.amazon.com/Globalization-Unmasked-Imperialism-21st-Century/dp/1856499391
You seem to be hinting that this poor should be able to become their own agency In the struggle to “alter or overturn the status quo” in their favor. Here again, the classics are vitally important, because, unless you consider Mao a classic thinker—I do not, and here I agree with David Westman (except for the part about Trotsky)—none of these people, including Fanon, romanticize the poor’s magical power to do so on their own. Unfortunately so many “Leftists” today do so, including even to some degree Mike Davis, who talks about Latinos, for example, “reinventing” cities of the United States. All by themselves. Amazing! I’m actually doing some writing about this magical, Wagner-Nietzsche like thinking
The lumpen propletariat, as Marx and Engels, and many other socialists, pointed out, do not have the capacity by themselves to carry out a revolution. Neither, contrary to Fanon, do the peasantry. It is only the working class that can do that. Now how that working class can be liberated from their bureaucratic misleaders, and how they can be encouraged to embrace a socialist ideology, and to reach out to the poor in order to offer them leadership—those are questions that were once worked out well in Russia in 1917. But conditions have changed, cultures vary, so there are enormous practical problems with that task—especially against the resistance of the bourgeoisie and its military and its intelligence apparatuses—that have to be worked out in each country.
Getting back to Science—the classics are NOT very good on science. There is great ambiguity here, and that is why many Leftists in the U.S. blind themselves to the dangers of establishment science. Stanley Aronowitz has written a wonderful book however, SCIENCE AS POWER, which very ably attempts to create a Leftist view of science which is fully cognizant of these dangers. I just saw Stanley at his 80th birthday party, by the way—he looks very healthy and he says he has a lot more projects to pursue.
Tom
From: Science for the People Discussion List [mailto:[log in to unmask]]On Behalf Of Mandi Smallhorne
Sent: Wednesday, January 09, 2013 3:21 AM
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Re: Dialectics in Science: An Interview with Helena Sheehan
Yes, you’re dead right, I haven’t read much of Poulantzas, just chunks quoted here and there. Nor have I re-read any PolSci classics for a long time. Living in and around a struggle for human rights (sadly, aluta continua), I did not find I needed to do so. I do not consider myself an intellectual, and not being an academic or one of the lefty gods, I have no personal stake at all in coming up with ‘something new’. As a South African lefty who has seen one long and noble fight become mired in the swamp of neoliberal globalised economics and values, however, I DO strongly feel there is room and to spare for something new that will EFFECTIVELY alter or overturn the status quo in favour of the poor, especially the non-working poor, of whom we have so many.
I did not, BTW say that the classics are not worth reading; I said they need to be built on. And how about addressing the issues I raise – the impact of IT and globalisation, and all that has changed because of them?
From: Science for the People Discussion List [mailto:[log in to unmask]]On Behalf Of Thomas Smith
Sent: 08 January 2013 08:10 PM
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Re: Dialectics in Science: An Interview with Helena Sheehan
Obviously you haven’t read Poulantzas, nor thought very deeply about these issues. The middle class intellectual is frantic to maintain the illusion that she or he can come up with something new. Thus anyone who believes the classics are still worth reading are reduced to the status of Bible-thumping “evangelicals.” Thanks for the compliment, yourself.
From: Science for the People Discussion List [mailto:[log in to unmask]]On Behalf Of Mandi Smallhorne
Sent: Tuesday, January 08, 2013 9:30 AM
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Re: Dialectics in Science: An Interview with Helena Sheehan
Well, merci du compliment, I don’t think!
Gramsci died in the 30s. Poulantzas died in 1979 (even Sartre managed to outlive him by a whisker!)... 10 years before the fall of the Berlin Wall, way before the advent of the information technology stuff that’s made so much so different. And I’m afraid I simply don’t think that anything written about globalisation before somewhere around 2000 can begin to deal with the massive shifts it has created in its fullest flowering.
Obviously not everything written in the early 20th century or the 19th is outdated, but it needs so much to be built on rather than preserved in amber and fought over by its reverent evangelicals.
From: Science for the People Discussion List [mailto:[log in to unmask]]On Behalf Of Thomas Smith
Sent: 08 January 2013 01:55 PM
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Re: Dialectics in Science: An Interview with Helena Sheehan
Mandi I think that’s a bunch of trendy nonsense. As Sartre wrote, capitalism still is the “horizon” against which we must work, and the basic contours of capitalist society: exploitation, the workers vs. the capitalist class, the separation of civil society and state, the formation and function of the state as ably analyzed by Poulantzas (updated by him for the contemporary period of globalization), the need to be precise with our politics, and not form permanent alliances with petit-bourgeois and outright bourgeois parties and groups, the need, despite the silly communist voice crap (I think I actually know those guys—they think they can reinvent the wheel), for permanent revolution, etc. ,etc. Marxism is STILL relevant as updated by people like Lenin, Trotsky, Poulantzas, Sartre, Gramsci.
From: Science for the People Discussion List [mailto:[log in to unmask]]On Behalf Of Mandi Smallhorne
Sent: Tuesday, January 08, 2013 2:08 AM
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Re: Dialectics in Science: An Interview with Helena Sheehan
Indeed and indeed. I have just been reading a whole slew of history books around the late 19th and early 20th centuries, and marvelling at how very different circumstances where then – hugely so in the case of Russia, but almost as much in the rest of the world (imagine a world where the Speaker could give up his political career as a matter of conscience, because the USA had decided to engage in imperialist behaviour... !) The working class in the North was so different, class was so set in stone – today I am sure Marx would’ve written a different theory. Where is our Marx for today? Why do so many lefties (here I think specifically of an online forum I’m involved with here in South Africa) waste so much time and energy quarrelling about terminology a century old?
Mandi
From: Science for the People Discussion List [mailto:[log in to unmask]]On Behalf Of herb fox
Sent: 07 January 2013 11:22 PM
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Re: Dialectics in Science: An Interview with Helena Sheehan
Oh my, what century are we in?
A revisionist is one who revises an existing belief system. Marx famously said "Don't call me a Marxist." He never constructed a belief system. He did do a superb job defining ideology, explaining capitalism, offering a historiography based on class relations, transforming Hegel's dialectics into a materialist based dialectics, and some other wonderful analyses and conjectures. It follows that those who use the concept of revisionism are asserting that there is a dogma. Indeed Lenin himself used the expression dogma in referring to "Marxism." Capitalism will be replaced, because it is demonstrating its failure to improve and enrich the lives of humans on this planet and it is destroying the ability of the planet to support the species. Marx, were he alive today, would surely be a "revisionist," desperately trying to overcome those who for lack of imagination have constructed dogmas with names like Maxism, Leninism, Stalinism, Trotskyism, Etc. There are so many developments since his time, in culture, class structure, etc, around which he would put his wonderful analytical ability to help us understand and develop program. It is highly unlikely that he would join any of the existing groups; and it is likely he would be in the library, not in the street, just as he did in writing Das Kapital.
Assuming that subscribers to this list recognize that science has been very much integrated into the current socio-economic structure and ideology of capitalism, and want science to serve the 99% of the population, it seems appropriate that we put ourselves to two tasks: (1) find ways to use our science and technology to aid and be responsive to the 99% in the daily struggles against injustice, and (2) use our imagination to contribute to envisioning an alternate organization of society that will be meaningful enough to a majority to grasp its imagination and motivate it to struggle for it. What form that struggle will take we will only know when it happens; but it is highly unlikely it will be like any previous struggle. Take note that the Bolsheviks operated in a country which was still culturally feudal and in which there was a revolutionary movement to which it gave leadership. There has not to this day been any taking of power by an organization that mobilized the majority of the population in a conscious struggle against a massively hegemonic capitalist superstructure.
The ahistoric application of language and experiences to the real situation in this country at this time, especially in light of the massive mindfuck that penetrates the majority, will go nowhere. What is needed is a change in popular consciousness and sectarians with their private language are not likely to accomplish that.
herb
On 1/7/2013 7:46 AM, Sam Friedman wrote:
What this interchange has taught me is:
1. There is no agreement about what Marxism is on this list.
2. Some on this list have very strong opinions on this and related issues.
Similarly, one or more of the people contributing to this discussion have used the term revolution. It is not at all clear to me that there is widespread agreement on the list about what a revolution is; which of the many changes of governments and other aspects of nations the various people would consider to be "revolutions;" or what people see as the desirable outcome of "revolution."
Nor do I get any sense of the practical activities that these differences lead to in various people's cases.
If people want to get serious about these discussions, these seem like worthwhile starting points--for brief postings, not for huge ones no one will read.
best
sam
-----Original Message-----
From: Thomas Smith <[log in to unmask]>
To: SCIENCE-FOR-THE-PEOPLE <[log in to unmask]>
Sent: Mon, Jan 7, 2013 6:35 am
Subject: Re: Dialectics in Science: An Interview with Helena Sheehan
Just glanced at this. I do not believe that Trotsky was in any way shape or
form a "revisionist" along the lines of Bernstein, Kautsky, Stalin, or Mao.
Of course, I am open to evidence to the contrary. But what I belive has
happened however is that many people who call themselves Trotskyists are in
fact revisionist followers of Michel Pablo, who believed in liquidating into
the Stalinist movement. The Pabloite USFI sections in many other ways became
Trotskyist in name only. For example, adaptation to black nationalism in the
United States, uncritical hero worship of Third World Stalinists (and even
of bourgeois Third World Bonapartists like Chavez or Hussein), Sovietophobic
affinity for openly fascist anti-Soviet groups (like the Forest Brothers),
or its opposite, Sovietophilia (as in the case of the Spartacist League's
Jim Robertson, with his love affair of the East German bureaucrats);
abandonment of the transitional program, liquidation into a social
democratic, Shachmanite swamp like Solidarity in the U.S., which both the
FIT and the Trotskyist League have done, etc.
-----Original Message-----
From: Science for the People Discussion List
[mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of David Westman
Sent: Monday, January 07, 2013 1:11 AM
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Re: Dialectics in Science: An Interview with Helena Sheehan
Larry, neither Marx nor Engels used the term revisionism because the
non-scientific socialists they dealt with were of a pre-Marxian sort
(although Lasalle adopted some of Marx's theoretical work in a distorted
form similar to 20th century revisionism, and sought to reach an agreement
with Bismark in a way similar to the political tactics of 20th
century revisionists as well). The term "revisionism" first came up
at the turn of the 20th century in reference to Eduard Bernstein, who was
once Engels secretary and in 1900 published a book with the theme that "the
movement is everything and the final goal is nothing", and Francois
Millerand, who shocked socialists by agreeing to join a bourgeois
government. For a more thorough explanation of this issue, see
Lenin's essay "Marxism and Revisionism" which explains it very well.
I will go into Lars Lih at another time.
David Westman
On 1/6/2013 9:08 PM, Romsted, Laurence wrote:
> Ok. This exchange between David and Carrol is for me an example of the
> problem of thinking and talking (and shouting) about revisionism.
>
> 1. What is revisionism re Marx? (I have some idea, but I am not sure
> what you two mean).
>
> 2. Certainly to call someone a revisionist at any type of meeting I
> attend would make sense to almost no one.
>
> 3. Who is Lars Lith and why do you two disagree about the significance
> of his writing? His being an "academic petty-fogger" has a nice ring,
> but it helps me not at all understand his weaknesses.
>
> Larry
>
>
>
>
> On 1/6/13 11:10 PM, "David Westman" <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
>
>> On the contrary, revisionism is an ever-present danger during the
>> struggle for socialist revolution. And it is especially true today
>> when we are faced with the monumental task of clearing up a century's
>> worth of confusion due to the influence of
>> Stalinist/Trotskyist/Maoist revisionism which caused tremendous damage to
the working class
>> struggle. And as for Lars Lih, he is just another "armchair
>> socialist", an academic petty-fogger who has never considered what
>> the real tasks of the revolution require.
>>
>> David Westman
>>
>> On 1/6/2013 7:51 PM, Carrol Cox wrote:
>>> As (if) a new mass left resistance grows, the kind of issue
>>> represented, a century ago, by "Revisionism" may, probably will, arise.
>>> But to shout "revisionist" at the present time is as futile as an
>>> argument over Royalism. Debates around Marx, Marxism, Socialism,
>>> Revolution have left that ancient quarrel far behind and pointless.
>>> As a start, David might read Lars Lih's wonderful book on Lenin & WITBD.
>>> These ancient scholastic quarrels among socialists are as depressing
>>> as the massing of liberals around Austerity and Repression (as long
>>> as Obama can be the Enforcer).
>>>
>>> Carrol
>>>
>>>> -----Original Message-----
>>>> From: Science for the People Discussion List
>>>> [mailto:SCIENCE-FOR-THE- [log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of S. E.
>>>> Anderson
>>>> Sent: Sunday, January 06, 2013 4:01 PM
>>>> To: [log in to unmask]
>>>> Subject: Re: Dialectics in Science: An Interview with Helena
>>>> Sheehan
>>>>
>>>> David,
>>>>
>>>> Within the article, I posted a foto of Ms Sheehan at a pro Syriza
>>>> rally. I think this indicates that she has an "activist strain in
>>>> her thought." As for the revisionism you have mentioned, that may
>>>> not have been her intent to raise within this interview on a
>>>> subject rarely every mentioned within mainstream/corporate academia
>>>> and media.
>>>>
>>>> I think it is a small and useful breakthru- especially for
>>>> circulation and discussion with the US science and academic circles
>>>> because here it is so deeply anticommunist and anti-intellectual.
>>>>
>>>> It will be interesting to hear from others on this listserv about
>>>> the value of this interview and our struggle to develop a Science
>>>> for the People Movement.
>>>>
>>>> Happy New Year of Struggle,
>>>>
>>>> Sam Anderson
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> -----Original Message-----
>>>> From: David Westman
>>>> Sent: Jan 4, 2013 4:54 PM
>>>> To: [log in to unmask]
>>>> Subject: Re: Dialectics in Science: An Interview with Helena
>>>> Sheehan
>>>>
>>>> This is a provocative posting, thank you Sam! But the problem that
>>>> she does not consider is the existence of revisionist deviations
>>>> from Marxism, particularly the Bernstein-Kautsky revisionism of the
>>>> early 20th Century and the later Stalin-Trotsky-Mao revisionism of
>>>> the mid 20th Century.
>>>> These two
>>>> revisionist trends which created mockeries of Marxism were
>>>> responsible for confusing people about the real revolutionary
>>>> content of
>>>> Marx, Engels, and Lenin. And she does not seem to have an activist
>>>> strain in
>>>> her thought - for her, there is no need to consider anew the tasks
>>>> for organization of the proletariat, and to found a modern
>>>> anti-revisionist party which commits itself to a renewed effort to
>>>> organize for revolution.
>>>> Marx's
>>>> Theses on Feuerbach provide us with a very clear justification why
>>>> Marx favored such an activist role, not just a contemplative one:
>>>>
>>>> First Thesis on Feuerbach:
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> The chief defect of all hitherto existing materialism that of
>>>> Feuerbach included is that the thing, reality, sensuousness, is
>>>> conceived only in the form of the object or of contemplation, but
>>>> not as sensuous human activity, practice, not subjectively. Hence,
>>>> in contradistinction to materialism, the active side was developed
>>>> abstractly by idealism which, of course, does not know real,
>>>> sensuous activity as such.
>>>>
>>>> Feuerbach wants sensuous objects, really distinct from the thought
>>>> objects, but he does not conceive human activity itself as
>>>> objective activity.
>>>> Hence, in The Essence of Christianity
>>>> <http://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/feuerbach/works/essence/
>>>> ind ex.htm> , he regards the theoretical attitude as the only
>>>> genuinely human attitude, while practice is conceived and fixed
>>>> only in its dirty-judaical manifestation. Hence he does not grasp
>>>> the significance of ³revolutionary², of ³practical-critical²,
>>>> activity.
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> David Westman
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> On 1/4/2013 11:22 AM, S E ANDERSON wrote:
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> Dialectics in Science: An Interview with Helena Sheehan
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> by Ben Campbell on December 15, 2012
>>>>
>>>> in featured <http://www.thenorthstar.info/?cat=868> ,
interview
>>>> <http://www.thenorthstar.info/?cat=269>
>>>>
>>>> While today¹s left has frayed into many strands, there was a
time
>>>> when the left presented, or at least aspired to present, a coherent
>>>> Weltanschauung <http://www.merriam-
>>>> webster.com/dictionary/weltanschauung> . This was Marxism, founded
>>>> on Karl Marx¹s brilliant synthesis of materialism and the
>>>> philosophy of G.W.F.
>>>> Hegel, which led him and his collaborator Friedrich Engels to an
>>>> unprecedented coalescence of existing human knowledge.
>>>>
>>>> Today¹s crisis of capitalism has, unsurprisingly, led to a
>>>> renewed interest in Marxism. Yet any ³return to Marx² will not be
>>>> found in an exegesis of ancient texts but in grounding Marx¹s
>>>> materialist dialectic in the present. Just as Marx critiqued
>>>> 19th-century advances by incorporating them into his thought, so
>>>> too must the most promising developments of the last century be
>>>> synthesized into a radical understanding for the present.
>>>> Unfortunately, today¹s left has for too long been relegated to
>>>> social and cultural studies, ceding the ³hard² discourse in
>>>> economics and science to a new generation of vulgar scientistic
>>>> ³quants². The resulting left has too often neglected a dialectical
>>>> critique, in favor of a dichotomous relation to science.
>>>>
>>>> It was not always so. In an attempt to recover some of the
lost
>>>> spirit of the scientific left, I will be interviewing subjects at
>>>> the interface of science and the left. I begin today with Helena
>>>> Sheehan, Professor Emerita at Dublin City University. Her research
>>>> interests include science studies and the history of Marxism, and
>>>> she is the author of Marxism and the Philosophy of Science: A
>>>> Critical History (available on her website
>>>> <http://webpages.dcu.ie/%7Esheehanh/mxphsc.htm> ).
>>>>
>>>> Ben Campbell: The advances of 19th-century science were
>>>> inseparable from the rise of ³materialist² philosophy. While Marx
>>>> certainly belongs to this tradition, he was also strongly
>>>> influenced by German idealism, specifically the dialectical system
>>>> of G.W.F. Hegel. What did a ³dialectical² materialism mean for
>>>> Marx, and how did he see it as an advance over the materialism of
>>>> his day?
>>>>
>>>> Helena Sheehan: The materialist philosophy of the 19th
century
>>>> was tending in a positivist direction. It was inclined to stress
>>>> induction and to get stuck in a play of particulars. Marxism pulled
>>>> this in the direction of a more historicist and more holistic
>>>> materialism. It was an approach that overcame myopia, one that
>>>> looked to the whole and didn¹t get lost in the parts.
>>>>
>>>> BC: You¹ve written, ³It is no accident that Marxism made its
>>>> entry onto the historical stage at the same historical moment as
>>>> Darwinism.² What do you mean by this, and what do you see as the
>>>> connection between these two monumental figures?
>>>>
>>>> HS: The idea of evolution was an idea whose time had come.
>>>> It was in the air. Historical conditions ripen and set the
>>>> intellectual agenda.
>>>> Great thinkers are those who are awake to the historical process,
>>>> those who gather up what is struggling for expression. Marx and
>>>> Darwin were both great thinkers in this sense, although others were
>>>> also coming to the same conclusions. Marx and Engels were far
>>>> bolder than Darwin, carrying forward the realization of a
>>>> naturalistic and developmental process beyond the origin of
>>>> biological species into the realm of socio-historical institutions
>>>> and human thought.
>>>>
>>>> BC: Engels also wrote extensively on science, particularly
in his
>>>> manuscript Dialectics of Nature
>>>> <http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1883/don/index.htm> ,
>>>> unfinished and unpublished during his lifetime. What is it about
>>>> this document, and Engels more generally, that has been so
>>>> controversial in the history of Marxism¹s relation to science?
>>>>
>>>> HS: There is a tension in Marxist philosophy between its
roots in
>>>> the history of philosophy and its commitment to empirical
>>>> knowledge. For the best Marxist thinkers, certainly for Marx and
>>>> Engels themselves, it has been a creative interaction. However,
>>>> some of those pulling toward German idealist philosophy,
>>>> particularly that of Kant and Hegel, have brought into Marxism a
>>>> hostility to the natural sciences, influenced by the Methodenstreit
>>>> <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Methodenstreit> , an antagonistic
>>>> conceptualization of the humanities versus the sciences, which has
>>>> played out in various forms over the decades.
>>>>
>>>> The critique of positivism has been bloated to an
anti-science
>>>> stance. The tendency of some to counterpose a humanistic Marx to a
>>>> positivist Engels is not supported by historical evidence, as I
>>>> have demonstrated at some length in my book.
>>>>
>>>> BC: It seems to me that this synthesis of dialectical
philosophy
>>>> with materialism has always been contentious. On one hand, as you
>>>> say, there is the danger of reducing an anti-positivist stance to
>>>> an anti- scientific stance. On the other hand, there is the threat
>>>> of ³the dialectic² being reduced to a mere rhetorical flourish for
>>>> an otherwise bare scientism.
>>>> Other writers, like John Bellamy Foster, have argued that Marxism
>>>> after Marx and Engels split along these lines. Do you agree with
>>>> this assessment?
>>>> After
>>>> Marx and Engels, what or who best demonstrated the potential of a
>>>> ³dialectical² science to transcend this divide?
>>>>
>>>> <http://www.thenorthstar.info/wp-
>>>> content/uploads/2012/12/bernal.jpg>
>>>>
>>>> HS: No, I don¹t agree with it. There have always been those
who
>>>> synthesized these two streams. Most familiar to me is the 1930s
>>>> British Marxism of Bernal
>>>> <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Desmond_Bernal> , Haldane
>>>> <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/J._B._S._Haldane> , Caudwell
>>>> <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christopher_Caudwell> , and others,
>>>> and
>>>> post-
>>>> war Eastern European Marxism. Regarding the latter, it suffered
>>>> from the orthodoxy of parties in power, but it wasn¹t all
>>>> catechetical dogmatism. In the United States, Richard Levins
>>>> <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_Levins>
>>>> and Richard Lewontin <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_Lewontin> .
>>>> This would still characterize my own position today.
>>>>
>>>> BC: Yet despite the ability of some to transcend it, there
does
>>>> seem to have historically been much ambiguity concerning what a
>>>> ³materialist dialectic² would really entail. Some, like philosopher
>>>> David Bakhurst, have traced
>>>> <http://books.google.com/books/about/Consciousness_and_Revolution_i
>>>> n_ Soviet_P.html?id=ZY_r3yYCmsAC> some of this ambiguity back to
>>>> the philosophical writings of Lenin. Bakhurst argues that while
>>>> Lenin appeared at times to advocate a ³radical Hegelian realism²,
>>>> at other times his philosophy failed to transcend a rather vulgar
>>>> materialism. How did any such ambiguities in Lenin¹s own writings
>>>> contribute to subsequent debates in Soviet science?
>>>>
>>>> HS: Yes, I would agree with that. Lenin could be very
>>>> philosophically and politically sophisticated, but I never thought
>>>> his philosophical position quite gelled. Some of his texts on
>>>> reflection theory were epistemologically crude. As to the effect on
>>>> Soviet debates, these were beset by the tendency to deal with
>>>> writings of Marx, Engels, and Lenin as sacred texts. This
>>>> rigidified further after the Bolshevization of all academic
>>>> discipline, when there had to be one and only one legitimate
>>>> Marxist position on every question. A quote from Lenin stopped any
>>>> further debate.
>>>>
>>>> BC: Such talk about the rigidity of Soviet science
inevitably
>>>> leads to the specter of T.D. Lysenko. For readers who may not be
>>>> familiar, could you briefly describe Lysenko¹s work? How would you
>>>> respond to those who use Lysenko as a cautionary tale about the
>>>> danger posed by Marxism or dialectical thinking to biology?
>>>>
>>>> HS: T.D. Lysenko (18981976) was a Ukrainian agronomist who
came
>>>> to prominence in the U.S.S.R. in 1927 when his experiments in
>>>> winter planting of peas were sensationalized by Pravda. He became
>>>> lionized as a scientist close to his peasant roots who could serve
>>>> the needs of Soviet agriculture in the spirit of the first
>>>> Five-Year Plan. He then advanced the technique of vernalization to
>>>> a theory of the phasic development of plants and then to a whole
>>>> alternative approach to biology. This was in the context of wider
>>>> debates in international science about genetics and evolution,
>>>> about heredity and environment, about inheritance of acquired
>>>> characteristics. It was also in the context of the Bolshevization
>>>> of academic disciplines and the search for a proletarian biology
>>>> and the purges of academic institutions.
>>>>
>>>> The issues were many and complex. There has been a tendency
to
>>>> flatten them all out into Lysenkoism as a cautionary tale against
>>>> philosophical or political ³interference² in science. However, I
>>>> believe that philosophy and politics are relevant to the theory and
>>>> practice of science.
>>>> Lysenkoism is a cautionary tale in the perils and pitfalls of
>>>> certain approaches to that.
>>>>
>>>> BC: If we turn from the Soviet philosophy of science to that
of
>>>> the non-Marxist West, you see a greater reluctance to mix
>>>> philosophy with the content of science. Instead, a lot of canonical
>>>> ³philosophy of science² (e.g., Popper, Kuhn, Lakatos, Feyerabend)
>>>> has more to do with scientific method. What does Marxism, with its
>>>> emphasis on contradiction, have to say about the scientific method?
>>>> I wonder specifically about Lakatos¹ background
>>>> <https://www.dukeupress.edu/Catalog/ViewProduct.php?productid=5986&
>>>> v iewby=subject&categoryid=542&sort=newest> in Hegelian Marxism
>>>> and whether there are affinities there.
>>>>
>>>> HS: One big difference between these two traditions in
philosophy
>>>> of science is that Marxism pursued questions of worldview,
>>>> exploring the philosophical implications of the empirical sciences,
>>>> setting it apart from the narrow methodologism of the other
>>>> tradition.
>>>>
>>>> However, Marxism also addressed questions of scientific
method.
>>>> There is an elaborate literature dealing with epistemological
>>>> questions from a Marxist point of view. There have been many
>>>> debates, but the mainstream position would be critical realism.
>>>> What is distinctive about Marxism in this sphere is how it cuts
>>>> through the dualism of realism versus social constructivism.
>>>> Marxism has made the strongest claims of any intellectual tradition
>>>> before or since about the socio-historical character of science,
>>>> yet always affirmed its cognitive achievements.
>>>>
>>>> The fact that Lakatos had a background in Marxism made him
>>>> inclined to take a wider view than his later colleagues, but I find
>>>> that he left a lot to be desired in that respect. Nevertheless,
>>>> contra Feyerabend, I think that the project of specifying
>>>> demarcation criteria, so central to the neo-positivist project, is
>>>> a crucially important task.
>>>>
>>>> BC: Karl Popper famously invoked a ³falsifiability²
criterion as
>>>> a means of solving the demarcation problem, which refers to the
>>>> question of how to distinguish science from non-science (or if that
>>>> is even possible).
>>>> Popper¹s solution has influenced many scientists but has been
>>>> strongly critiqued in philosophical circles. How does a Marxist
>>>> approach inform this demarcation problem?
>>>>
>>>> HS: There is a need for criteria to distinguish between
>>>> legitimate and illegitimate claims to knowledge. The positivist and
>>>> neo-
>>>> positivist traditions contributed much to the formulation of such
>>>> criteria.
>>>> They did so, however, from a base that was too narrow, employing
>>>> criteria that were too restricted, leaving out of the picture too
>>>> much that was all too real, excluding historical, psychological,
>>>> sociological, metaphysical dimensions as irrelevant. Marxism agrees
>>>> with the emphasis on empirical evidence and logical coherence, but
>>>> brings the broader context to bear. It synthesizes the best of
>>>> other epistemological positions: logical empiricism, rationalism,
>>>> social constructivism.
>>>>
>>>> BC: Today, Marxism stands at its weakest historically, right
as
>>>> the global economic crash seems to have most vindicated it.
>>>> Similarly, Marxism has almost no direct influence on 21st-century
>>>> science, yet discoveries and perspectives seem increasingly
>>>> ³dialectical² (e.g., biological emphases on complex systems,
>>>> emergence, and circular causality). What do you make of the
>>>> situation at present? Would it be possible to develop a
>>>> ³dialectical² or even ³Marxist² science without Marxism as a
>>>> political force?
>>>> Or will science always be fragmented and one-sided so long as there
>>>> remains no significant political challenge to capital?
>>>>
>>>> <http://www.thenorthstar.info/wp-
>>>> content/uploads/2012/12/sheehansyriza.jpg>
>>>>
>>>> Helena Sheehan at SYRIZA solidarity rally
>>>>
>>>> HS: Yes, Marxism is at a low ebb as far as overt influence
is
>>>> concerned, precisely at a time when its analysis is most relevant
>>>> and even most vindicated.
>>>>
>>>> I think that people can come to many of the same
realizations and
>>>> conclusions as Marxists without calling themselves Marxists.
>>>> However, I don¹t think there can be any fully meaningful analysis
>>>> of science that does not analyze it in relation to the dominant
>>>> mode of production.
>>>> Such an analysis shows how the capitalist mode of production brings
>>>> about intellectual fragmentation as well as economic exploitation
>>>> and social disintegration.
>>>>
>>>> I don¹t think that left parties having any chance of taking
power
>>>> in the future will be Marxist parties in the old sense, although
>>>> Marxism will likely be a force within them. I am thinking
>>>> particularly of SYRIZA, with whom I¹ve been intensively engaged
>>>> lately. One of the leading thinkers in SYRIZA is Aristides Baltas,
>>>> a Marxist and a philosopher of science.
>>>>
>>>> Thank you, Helena.
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> <http://www.thenorthstar.info/wp-
>>>> content/uploads/2012/12/heinrichhoerle_monumentunknownprothesis.jpg
>>>> Monument to the Unknown Prothesis, by Heinrich Hoerle
>>>> (1930)
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> author- "The Black Holocaust for Beginners"
>>>> http://blackeducator.blogspot.com
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