>2015
>people still think that history is determined by ideas and ideologies
Kill me
The supreme truth of history, as illuminated by Karl Marx (PBUH)
1.Social progress is driven by progress in the material, productive forces a society has at its disposal (technology, labour, capital goods, etc.)
2.Humans are inevitably involved in production relations (roughly speaking, economic relationships or institutions), which constitute our most decisive social relations.
3.Production relations progress, with a degree of inevitability, following and corresponding to the development of the productive forces.
4.Relations of production help determine the degree and types of the development of the forces of production. For example, capitalism tends to increase the rate at which the forces develop and stresses the accumulation of capital.
5.Both productive forces and production relations progress independently of mankind's strategic intentions or will.
6.The superstructure—the cultural and institutional features of a society, its ideological materials—is ultimately an expression of the mode of production (which combines both the forces and relations of production) on which the society is founded.
7.Every type of state is a powerful institution of the ruling class; the state is an instrument which one class uses to secure its rule and enforce its preferred production relations (and its exploitation) onto society.
8.State power is usually only transferred from one class to another by social and political upheaval.
9.When a given style of production relations no longer supports further progress in the productive forces, either further progress is strangled, or 'revolution' must occur.
10.The actual historical process is not predetermined but depends on the class struggle, especially the organization and consciousness of the working class.
>marxism
>any kind of materialistic worldview
>ever
![220px-Emile_Durkheim[1].jpg](https://i.imgur.com/TPwIcXd.jpg "220px-Emile_Durkheim[1].jpg")
>>873161
Interesting ideas, but I severely hope they won't get a hold among angsty rebels who use it to justify some sort of humanitarian autocracies. Surely, this fad will die out soon enough so us who take social change seriously will be left alone to actually conduct science.
t. Émile Durkheim
>>873161
>science
>not part of production
The steam engine would like a word.
>>873161
I could post a thread about the theory of humors every day, but that wouldn't make it true or not outdated
>>873247
The steam engine was not invented by a scientist but by an instrument maker without any scientific theory.
>>873283
>When he was eighteen, his mother died and his father's health began to fail. Watt travelled to London to study instrument-making for a year, then returned to Scotland, settling in the major commercial city of Glasgow intent on setting up his own instrument-making business. He made and repaired brass reflecting quadrants, parallel rulers, scales, parts for telescopes, and barometers, among other things. Because he had not served at least seven years as an apprentice, the Glasgow Guild of Hammermen (which had jurisdiction over any artisans using hammers) blocked his application,[10] despite there being no other mathematical instrument makers in Scotland.[11]
It's his proper trait. Also if you think 18./19. century engineers were scientists your should do some reading on that matter.
>>873302
You're just splitting hairs. Archimedes never had a PhD. that doesn't make him not a scientist. Watt certainly used the scientific method in his inventions
>>873326
No, he actually based his design on previous models from which he improved greatly. Stop using words you don't understand.
>>873326
>Watt certainly used the scientific method in his inventions
Prove it.
Also you are saying science is defined by its methods when one could argue that it is also by its goals and has a sociological component to it. Especially in the UK in the 19th century there were huge debates between scientists and engineers about who could deliver better results and for a time it seemed like the engineers could win the debate precisely because of people like Watt and Newcomen who both sides considered to be engineers/inventors.
>it believes in the materialism spook
hatjoke.jpg
>>873283
Confirmed for BTFO.
>>873161
>history is determined by ideas and ideologies
The problem is people vastly overinflating the significance of their heartfelt ideals, not that history is never determined by ideas or even ideologies and religions.
There is also the fact that ideas can spread quickly and the efficacy of ideas depends largely on the environment, so when making comparisons between 2 countries or something there is a tendency to view environment as all important due to it being the deciding factor. This does not mean that new ideas like renaissance humanism or scientific method did not have a huge impact on every country.
For example it is not that France in the 18th century did not appreciate the merits of Britain's industrial revolution, but the continental bourgeoise drew much of their revolutionary enlightenment ideals from their flourishing British counterparts and likewise many brilliant French scientists benefited British industrialists.
>>873161
>people still think that history is determined by ideas and ideologies
Man makes his own history but not in the circumstances of his choosing.
Read Thompson's critique of Althusser.
>>875251
I personally think that theory has a wealth to offer us.
>>875397
>I personally think
Nice idealism.
>>875409
It acknowledges a social relationship.
>>875413
It expresses a relationship between symbols, more than anything.
>>875433
Are you rejecting symbolic logic as idealism?
>>875437
Yes. Are you suggesting symbolic logic is a social relation arising directly from the social relations of production and reproduction and/or that symbolic logic is an analysis of those social relations proceeding from the relations of social production and reproduction?
>>875441
No, I'm suggesting that it's an academically acceptable way to analyze relationships between logical entities within an ultimately arbitrary framework of agreed-upon inference rules, axioms, definitons, etc.
>>875446
I'm sorry, I understood from the fact that this was a historical materialism thread that we were analysing worth through the lens of the social practice of historical materialism, or the attempt to produce a "disciplinary" practice of historical materialism; not whether I would attempt to run you out of a university.
You also unnecessarily personalise things.
"Am I rejecting" Yes of course I fucking do.
Very different question to "is it academically acceptable".
>>873698
>>The problem is people vastly overinflating the significance of their heartfelt ideals,
only because of the fantasy, by the occidental humanist, of the free thinkers, which does everything he can to claim that the pinnacle of the humanity is ''ideas'' and their communication, and that action is less empowering than thinking, relying on
>>873698
>>the fact that ideas can spread quickly and the efficacy of ideas depends largely on the environment,
so he does as much as possible to set up a society where ideas spread quickly.
only because
>>875251
What does it mean to make your own history, though?
Take for example Cao Cao, whose name is synonymous with willpower and pragmatism. He shrewdly navigated all social situations, cynically toyed with customs and traditions, tried his hand at mastering every skill and discipline his society acknowledged. He went with the flow when convenient but he never hesitated to forge his own path through brute force.
But what was his goal in the end? He wanted to be (or have his son become) Emperor of China, or generally accumulate prestige and wealth for himself and his family (in the form of court titles, offices, salaries, fiefs, and brass towers full of harem girls.) It's not like "Emperor of China" is some transcendental concept ingrained in our genome, and being named Minister of Whatever is just an interface in the virtual sense. I hope you see where I'm going with this.
If your starting point, your resources, your capabilities, your options and your destination are all predetermined how the hell are you making your own anything?
Not even Marxists believe the base is dominant anymore, which is why their path to power is generally based on changing the superstructure of society nowadays.
>>875458
t.someone who's never read or talked to any modern Marxists
>>875448
>You also unnecessarily personalise things.
Well, we're two people communicating with each other, aren't we? I don't really find it 'unnecessary' to think of you as a person and refer to you that way.
I would think that you cared about what was academically acceptable on some level.
>"Am I rejecting" Yes of course I fucking do
On what particular grounds? Don't just tell me "It isn't historical materialism," I'm not claiming it can function in place of it, I'm asking you why you reject symbolic logic. Is it on purely philosophical grounds, on logical grounds, or on the grounds that it conflicts with theories you accept to be true? I'm inclined to think it's the last, but I'm quite prepared to be told I'm wrong.
I'm sorry if this seems overly aggressive to you, I'm trying to foster a discussion with you.
>>875464
But I did read modern Marxists. Relevant ones, not that ones that circlejerk at student unions.
>>875470
>marxists
>relevant
lad
>>875456
Looks like you're
a) talking about the circumstances not of our choosing
b) Mistaking "Man in general" in the quote for an individual man.
>>875458
Try some value form analysis, labour history, autonomism.
>>875467
>I would think that you cared about what was academically acceptable on some level.
Yes and when we've shot the presidents and vice-chancellors…
…the academy is a social relation, not the result of my consciousness.
>>875467
Symbolic logic can't reduce the records of the present or the written records of the past into discussions on the social relationships and their change in a timely manner. This is both due to the slipperyness of language AND the vast amount of language which would need to be analysed. To this extent symbolic logic is useless for the large volume of purposive ends which historical materialists would wish to use it for, and its exercise tends to produce metaphysics of no account.
>>875470
>Laclau
Tendential reading eh mate.
>>875486
>Yes and when we've shot the presidents and vice-chancellors…
There are degrees of 'care.'
>…the academy is a social relation, not the result of my consciousness.
Fair enough.
>To this extent symbolic logic is useless for the large volume of purposive ends which historical materialists would wish to use it for, and its exercise tends to produce metaphysics of no account.
Granted.
>>875493
In any case, anyone who makes their work quota of students and publications is a colleague who needs to be unionised and brought into a consciousness of their need to collectively control their own labours. I have no problems with colleagues in different disciplines exercising their discipline any more than an electrician has with a plumber.
But as far as what ways of knowing help unionise, and develop workers social control, I'd argue that historical materialism gestures best towards this way of knowing which we can only come to know in struggle (praxis).
>>875498
>I'd argue that historical materialism gestures best towards this way of knowing which we can only come to know in struggle (praxis).
I would have to agree. Logicians certainly aren't concerned with these things.
>>875510
Epistemologists and ontologists can be though. And they tend to work better when they've read logics.
Plus logics help with machine systems, etc.
>>875514
What do you think of Bernie Sanders, if you think anything of him?
>>875526
Prior to the 25 year rule? A pissant bourgeois student activist, and a parliamentary cretin giving left cover to a decrepit bourgeois parliamentary party from the only electorate in the United States that would even dare elect someone tinged with labourism to those leather benches where elsewhere the labour movement goes to lie in state and be mourned.
>>875533
Seems like a fair assessment. Are you an IWW fan?
>>875542
When they're effective. Their analysis and ideology and programme at least aren't odious. So when they're effective, I'm a fan.
>>875533
The Democratic Party; where movements go to die.
>>875578
It's a graveyard, a slaughterhouse, and a factory-farm all at once.
>>873161
memes drive human action. Fite me faget
>>875753
>2016
>Not being a memetic materialist
The content and form of memes emerges from the historically and economically determinate circumstances of their production. Memes are a product of human action and can be used to motivate it, but are not themselves a prime mover.
>>875753
DNA OF THE SOUL
