Guy Robinson, science and philosophy

[Louis Proyect <lnp3@xxxxxxxxx>]

Over the past week or so I have been corresponding with Guy Robinson, the
author of "Philosophy and Mystification". Guy had gotten in touch with me
after discovering my write-up of his talk at a book party at the Brecht
Forum in NYC a couple of years ago. The article appears below.

Meanwhile, Guy has been looking for a publisher to take on a paperback
version of the book. This makes a lot of sense since the Routledge
hardcover is over $60. If anybody has any suggestions, please contact Guy
at: DalkeyGuy@xxxxxxxx

He has also sent me a couple of very interesting articles in the same vein
that I have put out on Marxmail.org:

1. "Ahistorical Materialism"
(http://www.marxmail.org/Ahistorical_Materialism.htm)

2. "Reconstructing Science"
(http://www.marxmail.org/Reconstructing_Science.htm)


My write-up:

Marxism and the Enlightenment

A couple of months ago I attended a talk at NYC's Brecht Forum on
"Philosophy and Marxism" which is relevant to this discussion. The speaker
was Guy Robinson, who taught philosophy in British universities for 25
years. He retired in 1982 and moved to Nicaragua where he worked with
construction brigades. He now lived in Dublin and his new book "Philosophy
and Mystification" had just been published by Routledge.

Robinson's main point was that modern philosophy evolved in order to meet
the needs of the rising bourgeoisie. It aspires to be universal but
conceals the very particular and historical needs of the class which was
coming to power in the age of Descartes. One of the purposes of Marxism is
to make this connection and expose the class bias of bourgeois philosophy.

One of the schools of thought that Marxism vies with in this project is
post-structuralism or postmodernism. The pomos are also interested in
showing that the claims of universality are specious. Robinson described
the pomos in pithy terms, as "hunters of zeitgeists," who try to capture
historical trends as if they were animal specimens to pin on the wall like
trophies. In the process of debunking "universality," the pomos also trash
history. This is where Marxists and pomos part company, as well as on the
issue of class.

Marxism has an entirely different agenda. Robinson says that a plain way of
describing its mission is to clarify things that we already know. Marx's
description of this project is found in the preface to the German Ideology:

"Hitherto men have constantly made up for themselves false conceptions
about themselves, about what they are and what they ought to be. They have
arranged their relationships according to their ideas of God, of normal
man, etc. The phantoms of their brains have got out of their hands. They,
the creators, have bowed down before their creations. Let us liberate them
from the chimeras, the ideas, dogmas, imaginary beings under the yoke of
which they are pining away. Let us revolt against the rule of thoughts. Let
us teach men, says one, to exchange these imaginations for thoughts which
correspond to the essence of man; says the second, to take up a critical
attitude to them; says the third, to knock them out of their heads; and -
existing reality will collapse."

Robinson gave an example of the clarifying function of Marxism. He said
that the term "Artificial Intelligence" is a bourgeois mystification. It
presumes that there is some sort of distinction between machines and
intelligence, when in reality all machines exhibit some sort of
intelligence. The source of it is the human labor which invests
intelligence in the artifact to begin with. Positing some sort of duality
between machine and intelligence is only possible in a society where a deep
state of alienation exists between labor and the products of our labor.

Robinson then proceeded to knock bourgeois philosophy off its pedestal. Its
whole purpose was to sanctify private property and the pursuit of profit.
In order to do this, it was necessary to conduct ideological warfare
against the feudal world view. John Locke's philosophy revolved around this
project, especially in its promotion of the idea of the "social contract."
Against the arbitrary rules of a Church-run society, the bourgeoisie needed
rationality and individual rights. Without rationality and individual
rights, capitalist property relations could not be safeguarded.

In order to diminish the role of the Church and the feudal aristocracy, a
totally new view of the universe had to be constructed. Instrumental to
this was a new view of nature, which was seen as transcendent and outside
of humanity, but not sacred. Scientists would replace priests in this new
world-view, since they alone had the ability to explain the natural order.
Newton becomes a key figure in the general assault on the old order.

If nature is conscripted on behalf of the rising bourgeoisie, the natural
tendency is toward what Robinson calls bourgeois materialism. Against this
generally progressive philosophical current, he posits historical
materialism. The difference between bourgeois and historical materialism is
that the latter mode of thought does not see nature as transcendent but as
something that society interacts with dialectically. Nature is always being
transformed through labor. Furthermore, science in bourgeois society is
always qualified by its social role, as Thomas Kuhn argues. The purpose of
socialism is to liberate science from its class ties and make it available
for the transformation of society.





Louis Proyect
Marxism mailing list: http://www.marxmail.org