Issue 78 - The Systems Theory of Everything IV

Issue 78 of SHAPE Journal now available 

Issue 78 contains the fourth instalment of Jim Schofield's Systems Theory of Everything.

This series of issues attempts to set out the first definitive account of Jim Schofield’s new Systems Approach to Science. The various papers collected here, and over the next few editions of this journal, explore the proposed theory and explain why it is such a radical departure from the current universally applied scientific method. 

The series of papers continues to investigate how Systems and their Laws Emerge and Evolve, and why a Marxist approach is necessary to untangle it all.


Contents:

Introducing Schofield’s Systems Theory

Empirical Laws within Science

New Emergences and Imposed Calamities

Multi-Level Law and its Evolution

Emergences and Evolution

Mechanisms of Development

Where are the Marxists?

Cause and Law

Where are the Marxists??

And why we need interdisciplinary Marxist Theory NOW

In this profound period of mounting crises, the self-professed Pro-Working-Class" Marxists, can, it appears, no longer see the woods for the trees!

The very long trajectory of Working Class Politics - from the remarkable Revelations of Karl Marx - to the disappointing political situation we find ourselves in today - has apparently arrived at what seems to be a General Terminal Denouement, with the Climate Crisis and the Ever-Mounting War in Ukraine!

The Soviet Union has long since fallen and China, while purportedly still a Communist State, quietly and undemonstratively chases trade with a still Capitalist Rest-of-the-World, as the Sole Policy for its People. The Socialist Perspective seems to have no place to go!

The World has changed radically to become more like the situation in 1939, when a Nazi-ruled Germany invaded Poland. A new World War is increasingly highly possible now, just as occurred then, but though at that time Britain still had a powerful World Empire, and the Prior Economic Crisis Worldwide was finally fading in a seemingly general recovery.

But NOW there is a Gigantic World Economic Crisis brewing, while both the West, as well as the Hawks in Russia, are itching for a New World War, to supposedly solve the Economic and Political Problems facing the Capitalist Class, along with "The Fruits of Victory", BUT WITHOUT the necessary wherewithal to sustain it, especially as such a Conflict will inevitably vastly speed-up a truly enormous Multi-Sided Cataclysm - not only Economically, but unavoidably also coupled with the mounting Climate Catastrophe too.

And the powers-that-be are already well aware of that eventuality, but because of it, they undoubtedly need to vastly consolidate their Positions and Strength, and to do it while the Working Class still have absolutely NO effective Trades Unions, and NO Revolutionary Parties to lead them in precipitating the necessary Revolution!

For the inevitably coming Crises will certainly change the state of play dramatically! And the Automation that has seemingly replaced the Work Force in much Production, will not mend itself when their minders and fixers are flocking into the Newly Growing Unions, and the rejuvenation of True Marxist Revolutionary Parties of the Working Class begin to grow like Topsy!

The current "seemingly insane" drives of the Ruling Classes demonstrate their obvious realisation of what is increasingly inevitable, and if unprepared-for, could result in their Demise! A Victorious and well-equipped professional Army would be necessary to defeat a rampant Working Class - as the Nazis proved in Germany, after World War One.

The Restricted War, which Putin is waging, doesn't suit the opposing Countries, and today there is evidence that powerful interests in Russia itself feel the same: Remember their Working Class lived in a Socialist country for 74 years before the Victory of the Capitalist Oligarchs. They too will flood-into Working Class Parties when they are necessarily strongly repressed from above!

Russia's army in Ukraine

And who might then be waiting in the wings - China!

(and why is China currently having to deal with a new virulent form of COVID after they dealt so effectively with it when it first emerged? Can you guess how it arrived?)

Now, you would think that there are enough regular commentators around, who call themseves "Marxists" to work on some sort of strategy - but there are in fact literally none who explain things the way I have done here, and what is more, they hardly mention the increasingly important and rapidly changing Contexts, for what is clearly developing totally unhindered!

Yet it had always been the strength of Real Committed Marxists that they also always situate developments in the Delivering Contexts, as they in the end, often, deliver the more unusual consequences! And, the reason for this, is that in them, and even their evident absences within most others:  they have a particular set of preferred outcomes which they strongly signal, while ignoring those that they would rather didn't happen!

Now Richard Wolff is a celebrated "Marxist", but I could find No Trace of a pro Working Class Stance in his comments upon the War in The Ukraine. And a Prior analysis of the way things were developing in the Context involved, should have been what he established FIRST!

As has become increasingly clear, Thinkers upon these matters are always too Single-Discipline based to arrive at a Real Marxist Analysis. They find the same things Marx discovered in History, BUT only within their own Specialist Areas!

And that is never enough!

To cope with the problems of today, both the actual pertetrators AND those seeking Objective Solutions, DID it with their Subject-Blinkers on! And, because of the unavoidable biases involved in both approaches, the problems were NEVER solved, either by the Capitalists in charge, or adequately addressed by the Discipline-limited "professed Marxists"!

For, the cricial limitations of ALL Restricted Approaches, is that by so doing, only a cut-down version of the presently-existing-situation, which occupies ONLY a Single Level within Reality-as-is, will actually deliver a finite solution, BUT always limited to that Precise Context alone.

This relation within a Limited Context and its associated useable Rationalities, is, of course, the root if the Problem - and gives the illusion of" Absolute Truth!" But it certainly isn't so! And we must say Why!

The reason is that these Restricted Situations were in the earlier Evolution of Reality-as-is Absolutely Correct: BUT then ceased to be so as New and Different Levels emerged that changed things fundamentally. Yet these were add-ons at Different New Levels, so the old version could even then be taken as an Approximation to the Modified Current Truth.

Needless to say, this always confused early Thinkers, when it was finally updated, and they didn't for a long time realise the Division of Absolute Truth over Several Levels! They didn't even see the Levels, but instead interpreted them as Different Disciplines!

Clearly, the whole range of commentators of the current increasingly critical situation, are, whether supporters of the Status quo, OR perhaps surprisingly, even any avowed "Marxist" Critics - they are all, nevertheless still very far from capable of fulfilling their various, intended, and supposedly-opposite objectives - as both of these opposing groups never really address the problems caused in any way that could lead to a sound resolution.

The once reliable trust that could be put in the Marxian Socialists, is, I'm afraid, more or less dissipated by their current inability to both explain and then direct arrived-at solutions, to what will undoubtedly be inflicted upon us, in the coming period!

And, the reasons for the failures of both intensions of the perpetrators, and the inflicted-upon recipients of what has been delivered, wrongly characterise what was actually involved, and where it would lead! The Perpetrators know only what they can do, and that isn't enough to accurately know what effects it will have! While the recipients using extracted Laws taken from wrongly conceptually considered remedial actions, which, therefore, don't get the expected effects right either!

Both sides use Laws extracted in only partly defined ways, for the recipients, and based upon a very different prior experience, by the perpetrators. For in both sets if actions, Wholly New Emergences, when they will happen for the very first time, are absolutely NEVER predictable: so, what will happen is unknowable!

And, because of a multiplicity of these events, there will be NOT a single outcome, but a range of possible outcomes with different probabilities of each happening!

Now, where have we seen this before? Is it not in Quantum Theory?

And, at this stage of the Mess wrought by a rampant, blinkered Capitalism, the Significant Damages to the Environment, and its resiliance-to-recover from such things, has, by now, gone TOO FAR, and Significant Climate Change is already knocking at the door, simultaneously with such a destruction of its means to recover, that a Major Calamity appears unavoidable.

For the Working Class to re-arm with the very latest Developments in Understanding such Situations AND, of course, intervene in them, there is still much to be done!!

Indeed, without the Significant Extention of what Marx brilliantly initiated, and Lenin further developed, of the profound theoretical basis - we have no way of Understanding the complex dynamic Systems and multiple levels involved. Yet this vital theory could not be both further, adequately and necessarily developed, without the current conscious extensions of these ideas into All The Sciences that Marx and Lenin had never addressed - and are NOW being so-extended by this theorist!

The lack that these omissions inflicted upon this Important Body of Theory, is clearly indicated by the oft applied appellation of the term "Scientific Socialism" to Marxism, which is most certainly Untrue, as neither Marx or Lenin, nor anyone else, ever criticised the means and methods of Science from the correct Dialectical Materialist base to, for the very first time, establish such Laws from a philosophical standpoint - as a Socialist Science!

For Science - as was, could never be competent as a basis for that Fundamental Philosophical Stance. And even before this New Turn, the old Causal Laws, so achieved, were regularly added to, by supposedly New Purely Empirical Laws - with Absolutely NO Causal Explanations evidently possible for them.

All attempts to discover such interpretations met with Total Failure, and this caused most physicists great difficulties - for they profoundly believed that all such Laws MUST have Causal Explanations. But, the Positivists Henri Poincare and Ernst Mach insisted that these Empirical Laws should be given equal status with the preferred Causal Laws, within their Empirio Criticism Approach. And though this, at the time, was rejected, the following vast increase in these Empirical Laws, in the Sub Atomic Realm, persuaded the majority of physicists to agree: it rapidly became the norm for all Science!

Jim Schofield's work on Marxist Systems Theory

The Systems Theory of Everything

And, it was only recently, that the Emergence of what is termed Systems Theory proved that Causal Explanations were indeed possible, but NOT residing at the very same Level: for as they were associated ONLY with Systems-of-these-Processes, they were situated at the higher Level of Systems modifications!

Indeed, all of the Sciences were shot through with these systems modifications: reductionist Science was NOT the reliable basis that it used to be assumed to be!

Indeed, the Systems modifications turned out to be many and various and torpedoed the long resorted-to assumption that the tiniest causal relations just were the same but multiplied-up in all bulk situations.

It just isn't true!

AND, most important of all: without the full addressing of ALL the interactions in all bulk situations, the very Natural Stabilities that occur and their Tumultuous Collapses - particularly in Revolutions - will Absolutely Never be understood.

Indeed, even more generally an Important Turn has finally actually been initiated, that had been a very long time in getting to the stage, when Explanatory Theories, across-the-board, could finally deal with their long disabling restrictions, and become more generally applicable!

Marxists must now embrace a holistic Systems approach if they are to deal with any of the problems facing us as a species today. 

Leeds Marxist Society on the Parkinson steps, University of Leeds

Systems-based Marxism

Hinting at a New Philosophy for both Science and Politics

There will be many who vigorously reject how the last essay in this important series ended, with Lenin standing on the rostrum of the All Russia Congress of Soviets, declaring “We shall now construct The Socialist Order!” I’m sure this radical and polemical tone will put many off what I have to say about Science.

Lenin has always been a divisive figure, but he had long understood the real universal significance of Dialectical Materialism - the most remarkable and indeed revolutionary contribution of Karl Marx. For, though Marx had never taken the crucial step of congenitally extending his profound philosophcial contributions into The Sciences, Lenin, did indeed know better!

For, very much earlier in the 20th century than the Russian Revolution, Lenin had himself, via his own brilliant book Materialism and Empirio Criticism, taken on the crucial task of debunking the contributions of Henri Poincare and Ernst Mach, the physicists who had insisted in their own version of Positivism, in which all the aspects of Physics which relied solely upon empirical evidence alone, with NO associated attempts at Explanation, should be given the Exact Same Weight and Status as the very different Causally Explained Laws, which always included full associated Explanations!

And, it was this undoubted major retreat, that finally “opened the door” to both Relativity and Quantum Theory, which were clearly “legitimised” if the claims of the positivists, were right!

When I arrived at University as a first year Physics student in 1958, I was immediately totally aghast, at literally everything my Physics Lecturers “taught”, who never made any attempt to Explain Anything: they merely gave empirical evidence and coupled it with the New clearly Positivist Stance, along with sophisticated Mathematics, which to them was wholly sufficient. But it wasn’t enough for me!

At school I had always been branded “the gifted mathematician”, who could “do it all” in that discipline. I had obtained 4 different “A” Levels in Mathematics, along with 3 others at the same Level. I had always found Mathematics very easy, and I was similarly successful in all of my subsequent three years of Mathematics at University! BUT, I had chosen Physics as my main subject there - because, it alone had always attempted to Explain Reality! I had eagerly looked forward to the much higher standard of Explanation that I thought I would get at University: but it turned out to be abysmal.

I endeavoured to get explanations, but the lecturers were never available - there were, after all, almost 100 students in my year, so such individual attention was NEVER available. We did, however, have access to post graduate Demonstrators, but they just dismissed my questions with “Is the Mathematics too difficult for you?”. And, at my insistence that it wasn’t that I couldn’d “do the math”, so, could they show me the required Explanations for why the Mathematics worked: they soon got angry, and, of course, always had the support of the other students present!

So, I took to long periods in the excellent University Library, but there was nothing available in the Physics Section that could give me answers. So I switched to Philosophy instead, and there I very quickly found Lenin’s aforementioned book on Physics.

I thought I had found the answer, but nobody on my Physics course wanted to know! So, I joined the Communist Party to try and find out more about Lenin’s work. But even there, I never found a single person who would even discuss it with me. So, I continued to seek more answers in Marxist literature, but Lenin’s Book was all I found there!

And all the other self-proclained Marxist tendencies were no better. Politics and Science, it seemed, were mutually incompatible (or taken together, appeared to be beyond any single consistent understanding).

But clearly, in the way that such Marxists seemed to argue, they always insisted that they were being “very scientific!” Clearly, what was being called “scientific” in their “Reasoning” was definitely something else! It appeared to involve only the Mathematical Rationality of the Greeks, along with most modern scientists, that is, of course, not-at-all Holistic, but definitely merely Pluralistic, involving exclusively Fixed Laws, due to the artificially imposed restrictions upon ALL of their studied Situations.

Literally all such “reasoning” was erroneous, as Marx’s criticisms of most reasoning tried hard to dispel - but, with Marx himself being an Historian and Philosopher, he did not comprehensively identify and codemn the still-remaining Plurality, as such, so he too was unaware of the still involved and numerous False Bases still used almost universally in most Consequent Reasoning.

Lenin’s crucial lesson, in his valuable book, was NOT yet integrated, as it should have been by then, into an appropriately revised Modern Dialectical Materialism.

He had been on his own in genuinely developing Marx’s work. It was, therefore, no surprise, on many subsequent key occasions, that Lenin, wholly alone, managed to correctly interpret dynamic situations, as were regularly proved correct by subsequent actual developments! Just telling everyone Newly Discerned Truths is never enough: they have, also, to realise why they usually got things wrong! Lenin, himself, always had his finger upon the true pulse of the Developing Revolution, and within the White Heat of constant, incipient Change, he was effectively forced to insist upon his arrived at analyses - there was no time for Education Classes!

But Lenin was no dictator: his credentials were always being confirmed by Events. While, far inferior leaders, like Stalin, also insisted upon their required conclusions! They seemed on the face of it to be like Lenin’s style of conclusions, but, in fact, they never ever were! And, with Lenin’s tragic and premature death, the most valuable link to the most developed Marxism was lost!

In a long career in Revolutionary Poltics, I rapidly achieved leadership positions, but was never, at that time, really educated into appreciating Lenin’s Developments in Marxism: so, I too suffered from the usual inadequacies. Indeed, only in retirement did I have the time to study Lenin’s methods properly. And, without the vital revelations of Modern Systems Theory I would not have cracked it yet!

For, so-called Science still was wholly restricted to the Bottom-Up Approach, which was supposed to reductively explain All Causality - but instead it was only by what happened at the Atomic and Molecular Level (initially only dealt with in Chemistry, but, thereafter, presumed to determine everything in all other Higher Levels too), and nothing created above that Level was considered to be Causally important, at all. But, that was obviously wholly incorrect, and many Levels both above and below the one in question are always causally-active - though involving Bottom-Up Causalities, actually only occurring within the Levels, BUT then delivering consequent Top-Down Causalities which were active Between the Levels!

And, such an Approach necessarily omitted all the significant Changes occurring in transforming Development, which are, therefore, NEVER predictable in advance of them actually happening (a vital aspect of all Bottom-Up Causality): for they alone deliver the Wholly New - such as Life, Man, Thinking and even Social Revolutions.

As they didn’t even exist before: they are clearly created for the very first time, along with and within the Wholly New Development!

You can see the difficulty here for Holistic Politicians - for they can never promise beforehand, all the anticipated and fought-for Revolutionary Gains! What they actually deliver, are always solely the consequences of the effective creative actions, which more than anything else equips Mankind to make the future, even though all they can say is that it will be better than the the System before.

Now, all the teaching I encountered in all of my own Education, as well as in every single post I obtained, as an educator myself, whether in Schools, Colleges or Universities, had everything generally still clinging to the established Pluralist Stance, in all the scientific subjects I had to teach.

And, of course, no developmental conceptions were even possible: for that stance could never actually explain any Real Qualitative Change! So, there was no such thing as the Emergence of the Wholly New; all Laws were necessarily Fixed, and, to ensure this, all experiments had to be severely restricted and rigidly controlled, so that the Laws - thereby revealed - would conform to the unavoidably involved agenda!

The Real Laws of Reality-as-is were never addressed, during six decades spent in Science Education!

Now, let us be crystal clear in this assessment, Plurality works very well for many things, which is why it is rarely if ever questioned - it works perfectly for Technology and seemlessly for Production, because we can rigidly control all of the Systems involved.

BUT, surely the crucial purpose of Science is not to merely make things but to Understand the Natural World, Understand the many Systems we don’t or can’t control, and to Understand Real World Causality. With Plurality that was impossible to ever achieve!

So, a Theoretical Explanation of exactly WHY things happened as they did could never be revealed by the usual scientific methods! And, of course, there were consequences for this dominant Philosophical Stance throughout the other major areas of Study too, such as History, Philosophy and, of course, Politics.

For, everything undoubtedy evolves, and the dynamics of all their changes are unobtainable with the usual Pluralist prejudices severely distorting All Real Qualitative Development!

And we need to Understand how Natural Systems evolve now, more than ever. We need to Understand how and why they fail... by far and away the most devastating avalanches of so-called Natural Crises, are now, all over the place, due increasingly to the many decisions that are attempts to solve other problems we don’t really understand, but actually only accelerate the speed of Natural Threats that, instead of being under our control, are now swooping headlong towards unstoppable disaster.

The most obvious of these problems is Climate Change - which is already very close to terminally undermining many of the Actively Balanced Systems of importantly maintained and life-preserving Stabilities, on which the Level of Human Civilization relies.

While, elsewhere the urgent push for ever higher profits, in order to allay possible economic collapse, is also simultaneously undermining the need for the better safety measures needed to deal with Climate Changes’s many damaging affects - such as flooding and pollution.

Attempts to balance the economic system without a working Systems Theory causes unforeseen problems at all different Social Levels. For example, over-zealous cuts in safety-measures within Maternity Hospitals in Shropshire, led to delays in essential Ceasarian Sections in problem Births, and the avoidable deaths of several babies.

And, of course, let us not forget the Covid Pandemic - which was very badly handled by pro Capitalist Governments the world over, and which inevitably led to thousands of deaths of old and infirm people! But you see, doing what was right for the majority of People was no good for Profits and an Economic System reliant on perpetual growth - so that largely determined Government policies including a rush to return to maximal profit making - much too soon. And the effect upon the Care Systems for the old, infirm and disabled not only made it widely inadequate, but also drove many of the very best carers to despair, and an increasing number of exits from that profession, into less upsetting and exploitative alternatives.

This is just one example of the many labour shortages caused by criminal mismanagement of the economic system during this period.

Sadly modern Marxists have no answers to any of these problems either. It is vital that we now take a Holistic and Materialist Systems Approach to both Science and Politics, before it is too late, and these life support systems collapse for good.

This short essay is taken from Issue 77 of SHAPE Journal - The Systems Theory of Everything II - It is also available on ResearchGate. 

Issue 76: Development

Read Issue 76 of SHAPE Journal

...

This edition looks at evolutionary development, but certainly not in the usual and expected ways. Jim Schofield's new Systems Approach to Science reconfigures how we think about how both natural and social systems change over time.

From the revolutionary tool use of Early Man, to the problems of solving Climate Change today, from the mysteries of Sub-atomic Physics to the unknown Origin of Life on Earth, this discursive series of essays plots a path through the many flaws in current Human Understanding, to reveal the vital need to appreciate systems holistically for the first time.

Revolution and Emergence are just as important to understanding Life's development, as genetics and incremental Evolution. How do such vast systems become stable in the first place, what finally makes them collapse, and how does that process lead to the Wholly New?

The initial conceptions by Human Beings, as with all the other simultaneously-existing living-creatures, assumed the Constancy of their Common World - and this intial assumption, in the Sole Case of Mankind alone, was then increasingly challenged, by their own, if initially meagre, sucesses in dealing with that World.

Now, such real developments, that were achieved, did not ever come easily, so there was nothing automatic about our progression. Indeed, it was also clear that they were difficult to “get right”, and Reality-as-is, was also definitely composed of multiple features, some of which seemed Contradictory...

Issue 75: The Origin of Systems

The Origin of Systems 

by Jim Schofield

Issue 75 Editorial:

The Origin of Systems is a new series of papers by philosopher Jim Schofield, exploring several options for a complete overhaul of both Science and Materialist Dialectics.

We must turn our efforts to the holistic study of complex systems and what Schofield calls “Systems Effects” via the “Systems Approach”, if we’re to turn a corner in our understanding and finally break free from the shackles of reductionist Pluralist thinking.

It soon becomes apparent that we know very little about how natural systems actually come to be, how they evolve over time, what keeps them going over hundreds or even millions of years, and what finally precipitates their collapse. Only a Holist approach stands a chance of answering these vital questions about Reality.

And as the vast systems of Capitalism and our Global Climate begin to collapse, a Holistic understanding of Systems in general, will become vital for our survival as a species.

As Schofield writes in this issue: “Our so-called Explanations, are often far from the mark, due to their being totally unaware of the Real Full Processes of Development, behind Reality. And this leads to many mistaken conclusions, rarely addressing the absolutely vital, self-made and inevitable mounting Crises of our remarkable History, in all its causes, both positive and increasingly dangerous! So without, the Key Revolution in Real Understanding, that we await, this remarkable Development, this unfathomable work of the Evolution of Matter - culminating here in us, in Human Beings, and in this society - could easily end in an existential catastrophe.”

The Origin of Systems, as a piece of theoretical writing, is extremely ambitious in scope, but ambition is certainly needed now, when a Revolution in how we think, is needed for our survival.

Art Director’s note - Tomás Saraceno

This month’s issue deals with the complexity and interconnectedness of natural systems, and our worrying inability to understand them through current scientific methods. As always in SHAPE Journal, we try and chose the work of great and thought-provoking artists to accompany the theory text, not to illustrate the ideas discussed obviously or directly, but to form a parallel but relevant narrative on the core concepts involved.

For The Origin of Systems we chose the work of installation artist Tomás Saraceno. He originally trained as an architect, and his intricate and immersive works seem to literally build bridges between science and art. Saraceno certainly sees the Earth as a complicated and vast system, we must try and understand, describing it as “the fastest vehicle that ever existed”. His work is concerned about the threat to natural environments and ecosystems, also taking inspiration from neural communication networks, origin theories, sub atomic physics and spiders.

Read Issue 75 of SHAPE Journal here... 

Socialism, Science & Energy

 

Beating the Pandemic, Economic Depression and Climate Change - only Socialism and Nuclear Fusion can do it!

Deep down, everyone now knows that Capitalism and its Ruling Oligarchs will definitely never beat the combined threat of the Current Slump and the Global Covid19 Pandemic, because to do it would have to end their Worldwide Dominance. Look at the almost incessant Wars in the last couple of centuries - absolutely ALL OF THEM to maintain, extend or transfer that particular mode of wealth and power.

NO - All the usual past "solutions" cannot possibly solve it - and Capitalism is fundamentally opposed to what is necessary to reverse catastrophic climate change. 

The current multiple crises facing humanity are too devastating to be addressed in the old ways (scientific, social or economic), for many of these crises are now becoming existential - the continuance of the Human Race now solidly embarked upon a series of terminal swoops towards a guaranteed oblivion!

We need both

The Rule of the People

&

Nuclear Fusion

to totally reorient things and finally break forever the malignant Power of a Ruling Capitalist Class.

Nothing else can do it!

AND, for the first time in human history, this is now clearly possible. The pieces of the puzzle exist, at least.

However the Super Rich will never cede The World to its Working Classes. They have proved that they will go to World War to maintain their wealth, position and privilege. Remember it wasn't the Nazis that dropped Two Atomic Bombs upon civilians, but the United States of America, who dropped them on Hiroshima and Nagasaki after the war had already been won - primarily as a warning to the communists.

But for many decades the various committed activists and political organisations, on different fronts, have insisted upon their perceived Crisis as the Primary Danger, and have refused to join forces with the many other movements, but with the present devastating simultaneous many-sided Crises all coming together at once, the insistence upon separate struggles is quite obviously self-defeating and WRONG.

For now, the very best of the Nuclear Fusion Scientists has joined the fray in earnest, with the leading Focus Fusion Group, around Eric Lerner, coming out with a new video linking Energy Generation and the Fight for Socialism as crucial allies in the Overall Struggle!

A United Front of all the Fighting Organisations must be forged to remove the Common Enemy - the Ruling Billionaires.

And the means to remove ALL the causes of the Existential Crises is now clearly imminent and Led by One of Us!

The world must be reclaimed and saved for the majority of the population. Look at the mess The Ruling Class are making of Fighting Covid 19 and the Slump!

FIGHT

for

Socialism, Democracy & a Future! NOW!

A Dialectics of Climate Change?

Dialectical Materialism is the only methodology capable of grappling system-wide qualitative change.

Multi-Factor Cyclic Systems

and their Forms of Stability & Change

The current crucial climate debate surrounding what was always called, until recently, "Global Warming", is complicated by the multi-cycle nature of our world's weather systems, as they are affected both externally, primarily by the Sun, and internally by the composition and movements of Earth's atmosphere. 

This too is modified both from within as well as from the outside, influenced by both natural and Man-Made systems, and occurring usually at tempos so very different, at least initially, to the actual life-spans of individual human beings, BUT nevertheless entirely capable of succumbing to cataclysmic overall, planet-wide transformations - though more often only suffering from recoverable Crisis Interludes.

Such complications are then used to demote all such negative interludes as being solely due to quite normal oscillations to-and-fro of any complex, multi-part varying system - but one which, nevertheless, self-corrects to a "normal-settled-stability" - and is consequently "Nothing to worry about".

And such a conclusion is the only possible one, if and only if, the usually assumed Principle of Plurality, is true: for it allows ONLY Fixed Laws, and Stability as its inevitable outcomes in almost every varying Interlude.

So, the problem is, that without the appropriate philosophic stance, for a real changing and developing Reality, it will always be impossible to know where the situation actually is dynamically, and whether the current crisis is temporary or terminal!

The problem is, of course, dialectical, involving the unavoidable causal interactions of multiple simultaneous factors, which can, and indeed do, wholly dissociate in what is termed an Emergence or Revolution, of what appeared to be a wholly stable, even permanent situation.

The best Mankind will ever be able to do in such situations, is monitor those crises, both as they occur now, and as they have in the past, as ultimately providing sufficient evidence of some interpretable forms, as are generally left behind in the resultant surfaces of the ground, which are later turned into permanent records, sometimes revealed, but also ever more often fairly deeply buried beneath our feet.

Geologist researching past cataclysms in Greenland

Clearly, Philosophy, is NOT as the idealists see it - merely the Discipline of Human Thought - but, on the contrary, it is the Discipline for our Understanding of Everything, including Material Reality, and its indisputable ongoing Development.

But, crucially, the long established stance, in both all the Sciences, and in most Reasoning, has, for millennia, been what we call Plurality, which can only ever deal with a trajectory of merely Quantitative Change, whereas, for example, the whole clearly evident Emergence of Life, from NON-Living Matter, simply must totally refute such a simplifying stance, as being wholly inappropriate - for actual Qualitative Changes would MOST certainly have occurred, in such dramatic developments, which would have to physically and chemically explain such Qualitative Changes - always totally impossible via Plurality.

Indeed, though the development of the very first Intellectual Discipline - Mathematics, was made possible only via the invented special relational-premises of the Greeks, they were Totally Pluralist, and could never be the basis of any other Intellectual Disciplines, which just have to handle Qualitative Changes causally, rather than merely descriptively, and after the fact, so enabling at least the overall trajectories of such changes to be made sense of.

But, as distinct from damaging total calamities, the vast majority of natural situations are NOT straightforward avalanches of Change, but always involve whole sets of multiple simultaneous and interacting processes - usually significantly always involving whole sequences of differing Cycles, though, at the same time, of similar Qualitative Changes, resulting in very unusual trajectories involving both long-lasting interludes of "Balanced Stabilities", which were preceded in their final formation, by a series of multiple Crises, and always, at some terminating stage, are totally dismantled in a general, everything-involved dissolution, which then rather quickly builds a wholly new Balanced Stability upon the changed products and properties of that Dissolution.

Emergence theory is an extension of Dialectical Materialism by this author (Jim Schofield)

Now, the Earth, as an affected body within the Solar System is NOT as Newton might have believed, majorly determined by Geometry and Gravitation, but also subject to other influences and past collisions, to maybe cause its Spin, its axis Tilt, and its capture of a Moon, plus an evidently constant Solar Wind of energetic Charged Particles from the sun, and whatever caused it to develop an internal Magnetism and extensive Magnetic Field.

And, just to concentrate upon its Global Atmosphere, with constant angular momentum throughout, but with different radii beteen the Equator and areas closer to the Poles, the surface will be moving at very different speeds an affecting the local atmospheres differently.

While the different angles of the Sun's rays onto its curved surface as well as the Day/Night on/off nature of that Radiation will all affect various areas of the Atmosphere differently too!

Finally the Earth's Orbit around the Sun is elliptical rather than circular so there will be Yearly variations in the radiation reaching earth at different times and places.

Indeed, all of these will be modified by the Earth's Spin, there will be multiple cycles, all of them constantly repeated but at different rates and different amounts of external heating from the Sun!

And the Question must arise, "Why is the Weather usually so ordered, within a season, and what might both make this happen, and, alternatively sometimes appear to approach chaos?"

Avoiding Global Catastrophe

We Must Unify the Struggles of the Left

Two significant problems currently stand in the way of the essential political actions absolutely necessary to dispense with the clearly evident causes that produce most of the debilitating issues of today - which together can only be due to the Capitalist System, underpinning all of the difficult aspects and problems that we encounter.

For nothing less could possibly make any real and lasting difference!

But, being confronted with such a seemingly impossible-to-achieve solution will always then impel people to focus their anger-and-actions upon a current single evident problem (climate change, refugee crisis, Palestine, Brexit, fracking, stop the war coalition) now being addressed. And the apparent lack of any wide-ranging, integrating stance, more or less guarantees the inevitable downturn and final ebbing away of support in all such individual-and-separated actions.

The first difficulty is that clearly and evident separation of all the necessary and growing struggles, which, when so isolated from one another, and with no evident, overall-solving-objective available, can never individually have the necessary wherewithal to actually visualise any real Change-in-the-System, and, no matter how legitimate those single issues are, they will definitely only swiftly build to a maximum, and then decline, ENTIRELY due to each isolated struggle's unavoidable Lack of achieving any Persisting Success!

Surely, the dynamism of such struggles has to be understood to address this recurring problem?

For, the "purely moral" isolation often involved does NOT naturally indicate a necessary wider scaling-up-of Protest, into something both more general, and with a wider range of other related and important struggles - with common causes.

And crucially, a unifying-political-form of organisation, encompassing the extended, clearly-related range of issues, and a consequent coherent, comprehensive and integrated Programme of what has to be done, AND ALSO, necessarily, a series of Objectives to be concretely achieved, on-the-road to a Final permanent Political Transformation of the situation, will be vital in sustaining the necessary momentum of all the struggles.

I was immediately energised by the Extinction Rebellion response to the clearly accelerating Global Warming and consequent Climate Change (caused by the unsustainable growth of Global Capitalism), and the also clearly evident increasing undermining of the usual Climate Stability, into instead the possibly catastrophic outcomes for both the Planet and its Peoples.

The recent official attempts to re-frame Extinction Rebellion as extremist, even terrorist in nature, really reveals that power feels threatened by this mass mobilisation of school children!

I have been involved in a wide variety of such struggles, all my adult Life, and have seen the Rise and Fall of totally legitimate, but almost always separated movements, which, even when they succeeded, have NEVER left behind a sufficient political change to defend and maintain any gains. So, though the solution seems clear enough - the Unity of such Struggles is never ever achieved both concretely or organisationally!

YET, the argument frequently and vigorously insisted upon by many organisers of such actions is that widening the struggles will drive away supporters of this particular individual issue, and hence cause it to fail...

NO! it will fail precisely because the wider basis for the problem still remains, and at the first opportunity any gains will be removed again.

I was greatly stimulated by the remarkable actions of those energised to both help, and then to vigorously demonstrate, after the terrible Grenfell Fire Disaster in London: there were many angry, energetic, articulate and organising people powerfully moved to do what they could.

But it rose to a crescendo, and finally ebbed away.

Such great people should have been integrated into a bigger force-for-change, but where are they now?

What a waste of love, energy and talent!

Now, we have to reveal exactly why this never happens.

I am a Working Class person, who got an Education and thereafter a series of posts in Educational institutions, from Schools to Universities, in three different countries. I was, throughout my adult life, involved in political struggles, and consequently ended up involved in one organisation or another, but though they all had what they considered was an overall unifying stance, the leaders both didn't, and indeed couldn't, have meant it.

The leaders were invariably from the Wrong Class!

And, the level of understanding of these leaders, though often sophisticated, and well-read, was always inadequate to powerfully energise both their members, and those they were attempting to help or recruit.

I have subsequently met many of my past-colleagues from such organisations, again later in life, and they had all reverted-to-Class, and found my continuing commitments embarrassing, and even often pretended that they didn't recognise me, and kept out of my way!

So I was, over time, in a variety of Political Parties.

NOTE: I am a physicist, but a steadfast opponent of the then and now current Copenhagen Stance, which is still today the consensus position in Modern Sub Atomic Physics, so, in my youth, I looked around for an alternative stance! I finally found it in a book entitled Materialism and Empirio Criticism, which criticised the at-the-time-of-its-writing, increasingly popular ideas of Henri Poincaré and Ernst Mach, who were termed Positivists. The stance of the writer of that book, a certain V. I. Lenin, was brilliant, philosophically, but he was no physicist. So, finding out that Lenin was a Marxist, I joined the Communist Party, expecting to find what I needed there.

But it wasn't available!

It took me some time to find out, but I never found anyone who wanted to discuss the problem, and finally realised that the version of Marxism which they subscribed-to, resided solely in a series of books covering a particular area of studies, which certainly did not include Physics! No one was an active practising Marxist, though they all insisted that they were.

And throughout my political life, in various Parties, I found the very same problem. A consistent, coherent and comprehensive stance was simply not involved.

So, more generally, the separation of struggles COULD NOT be integrated via a shared theoretical stance - for nobody involved seemed to have one.

Now, even supposing such a comprehensive Marxist Stance actually existed, and I could understand it, several difficulties were still inevitable...

Not least was its comprehensive application to Modern Physics - a truly mommoth task: then a facility for applying it to political compaigns and objectives, and finally, perhaps most difficult of all, the means by which all the various struggles including new ones (as they arose) could be presented from an integrated critical position - absolutely essential to formulating the correct policies for them all, and sufficiently energising to my auditors to integrate them all into a coherent and extendable overall campaign.

I feel I have finally got somewhere with the first two of these objectives.

But now, at 80 years old, and almost blind, I feel I will not complete the third...

That, perhaps, will be your task!

Avoiding Global Catastrophe by Unifying the Struggles of the Left

Extinction Rebellion must challenge Capitalism or it will achieve nothing.

Two significant problems currently stand in the way of the essential political actions absolutely necessary to dispense with the clearly evident causes of both accelerated climate change and profound social inequality - the Capitalist System that dominates our planet.

For nothing less could possibly make any real and lasting difference!

However, being confronted with such a seemingly impossible-to-achieve solution (global system change, no less) will always then impel everyone to focus their anger-and-actions upon a current single issue or evident problem which seem capable of being addressed. And, the apparent lack of any wide-ranging and integrating stance for our activism, more or less guarantees the inevitable downturn and final ebbing-away of support in all such individual-and-separated endeavours! The underlying cause isn't dealt with and so these burgeoning movements can ultimately achieve nothing.

The first difficulty is that clearly and evident separation of all the necessary and growing struggles, which, when so isolated from one another, and with no evident, overall-solving-objective available, can never individually have the necessary wherewithal to actually visualise any real change-in-the-system, and no matter how legitimate those single issues are, they will definitely only swiftly build to a maximum, and then decline, ENTIRELY due to each isolated struggle's unavoidable lack of achieving any persisting success.

Surely, the dynamism of such struggles just HAS to be understood!

For, the "purely moral" isolation often involved does NOT naturally indicate a necessary wider scaling-up of protest into something both more general, and with a wider range of other related and important struggles - with common causes. And crucially, a unifying-political-form of organisation, encompassing the extended, clearly-related range of issues, and a consequent coherent, comprehensive and integrated Programme of what has to be done, AND ALSO, necessarily, a series of clear Objectives to be concretely achieved, on-the-road to a Final permanent Political Transformation of the situation, will be vital in sustaining the necessary momentum of all the struggles.

I was immediately energised by the Extinction Rebellion response to the clearly accelerating Global Warming and consequent Climate Change, and the also clearly evident increasing undermining of the usual Climate Stability, into instead the possibly catastrophic outcomes for both the Planet and its Peoples.

I have been involved in a wide variety of such political struggles all my adult Life, and have seen the rise and fall of many totally legitimate, but almost always separated social movements, which, even when they succeeded, NEVER left behind a sufficient political Change to defend and maintain those gains! So, while the solution seems clear,  the Unity of such Struggles required is never ever achieved both concretely or organisationally.

YET, the argument frequently and vigorously insisted upon by many organisers of such actions is that the widening the struggles will drive away supporters of this particular individual struggle, and hence cause it to fail! This is certainly the flawed reasoning behind trying to keep Extinction Rebellion "apolitical" - which basically means, don't criticise Capitalism!

Quite the opposite - it will fail precisely because the basis for the problem still remains, and at the first opportunity any gains will be removed again.

I was greatly stimulated by the remarkable actions of those energised to both help, and then to vigorously organise and demonstrate after the terrible Grenfell Fire Disaster in London: there were many angry, energetic, articulate and organising people powerfully moved to do whatever they could.

Justice for Grenfell

But, like so many other protest movements, it rose to a crescendo, then finally ebbed away...

Such great people (mostly powerful grassroots voices from that community) should have been integrated into a force-for-change, but where are they now?

What a waste of love, energy and talent!

Now, we have to reveal exactly why this never happens.

I am a Working Class person, who got an Education and thereafter a series of posts in Educational institutions, from Schools to Universities, in three different countries. I was, throughout my adult life, involved in such struggles, and consequently ended up involved in one organisation or another, but though they all had what they considered was an overall unifying stance, the leaders both didn't, and indeed couldn't, have meant it.

These people were invariably from the Wrong Class!

And, the level of understanding, though often sophisticated, and well-read, was always inadequate to powerfully energise both their members, and those they were attempting to help or recruit.

I have subsequently met many of my past-colleagues again later in life, and they had all reverted-to-Class, and they found my continuing political commitments embarrassing, and even often pretended that they didn't recognise me, and kept out of my way!

So I was, over time, in a variety of different leftwing Political Parties - but none, in the end, could do anything.

I came to revolutionary politics via an odd route. Despite my working class roots as I was far from class-conscious as a youth. 

I am a physicist, but a steadfast opponent of the then and now current Copenhagen Stance, which is still today the consensus position in Modern Sub Atomic Physics, so, in my youth, I looked around for an alternative stance. I finally found it in a book entitled Materialism and Empirio-Criticism, which criticised the at-the-time-of-its-writing, increasingly popular ideas of Henri Poincaré and Ernst Mach, who were termed Positivists.

The stance of the writer of that book, a certain V. I. Lenin, was brilliant, philosophically, but he was no physicist.

Lenin's Materialism and Empirio-Criticism

So, finding out that Lenin was a Marxist, I joined the Communist Party, expecting to find what I needed there... But it wasn't available!

It took me some time to find out, but I never found anyone who wanted to discuss the problem, and finally realised that the version of Marxism which they subscribed-to, resided solely in a series of books covering a particular area of studies - and that certainly did not include Physics!

No one was an active practicisng Marxist, though they all insisted that they were. And throughout my political life, in various Parties, I found the very same problem. A consistent, coherent and comprehensive stance was simply not involved.

So, more generally, the separation of struggles COULD NOT be integrated via a shared theoretical stance - for nobody involved seemed to have one!

Now, even supposing such a comprehensive Marxist Stance actually existed, and I could understand it, several difficulties were still inevitable. Not least was its comprehensive application to Modern Physics - a truly mammoth task: then a facility for applying it to political campaigns and objectives, and finally, perhaps most difficult of all, the means by which all the various struggles including new ones (as they arose) could be presented from an integrated critical position - absolutely essential to formulating the correct policies for them all, and sufficiently energising to my auditors to integrate them all into a coherent and extendable overall campaign.

I feel I have finally got somewhere with the first two of these objectives.

But now, at 80 years old, and almost blind, I feel I will not complete the third...

That, perhaps, will be your task!

_________________________________________________________________________________

Harriet Fraad is good on this, demonstrating how current political issues of racial and sexual discrimination intersect profoundly with class oppression through a long (and continuing) history of exploitation and invasion by the rich and dominant ruling class.