New Special Issue: Postcards from Copenhagen

Read Special Issue 54

Anil Ananthaswamy’s reportage of the Copenhagen Interpretation of Quantum Theory:
a critique by Jim Schofield.

For, the whole period of my published criticisms of the Copenhagen Interpretation of Quantum Theory, the writer of this paper has had to deal with a regular series of articles in New Scientist by Anil Ananthaswamy, who trenchantly writes in support of this now generally accepted, but clearly idealist, view of Sub Atomic Reality.

In an important way, I have to thank Anil, for he not only presented me with diverse targets to deal with - such as in his contributions on Mathematics, but also, by such excursions, allowed my much wider philosophical and historical stances to be dealt with in tandem with my Physics-based criticisms. So, in his own seeking for wider confirmations of his preferred stance, he made my position all the easier to express.

And, this is because not only Copenhagen, but also the Classical stances in Mathematics and the Sciences, have all been stymied by the same illegitimate amalgam of Pragmatism, Idealism, and Materialism - all of which (and also including Formal Logic) have persistently been further damagingly distorted by the universally agreed-to Principle of Plurality.

But, the most pernicious component, when it comes to dealing with the inevitable contradictions generated by this amalgam, has certainly been Pragmatism - “If it works, it is right!”, as the legitimising stepping-stones across each-and-every illegitimate transfer - always blanking-out the contradictions with a pragmatic by- pass.

As the reader can imagine, specialists usually rigorously keep to where they can justify their differing stances, and only make brief and narrow ventures into other disciplines to excuse their pragmatic hops over evident difficulties: but then finally, Copenhagen ended that old “solution”, for good.

Truly Major philosophical changes were unavoidable, which, in the case of Copenhagen, meant a dumping of the Materialist component in the amalgam, and a switch to considering Formal Equations as the primary, driving Truths of Reality!

The original source of all the problems, which finally came-home-to-roost in the 20th century, was, of course, the highly successful, pre-intellectual method termed Pragmatism, which was then coupled with the first of Mankind’s brilliant intellectual achievements - Mathematics!

For, this was wholly idealist from the very start - via the Euclidian Geometry of the Ancient Greeks.

So, as each pro-Copenhagen article appeared in New Scientist, I immediately responded via a dedicated review, so that now I have almost a dozen responses - all published on the SHAPE presence on the Web.

So, with the latest of these on the Origins of Mathematics, I felt a whole issue of the SHAPE Journal should be allocated to re-releasing these responses.

All of Anil’s original articles are clearly mentioned and available via New Scientist if required.

Support the East Ukrainian Revolution!

I have a strong suspicion that the story being peddled throughout the West about the uprising in eastern Ukraine is a lie. What we have there is, I believe, a Revolution! 

While the Ukrainian Middle Class in Kiev and to the west want the privileges and wealth of their counterparts in Europe (and expect to get it if they can join the European Community) the mainly ethnic Russians in the industrial East of the country want nothing of the kind!

Indeed, I am daily seeing socialist reactions not only there, but also in Russia itself. 

The West is purposely drawing upon decades of fostered hatred during the Cold War, and liken what is happening now down to the ex-bureaucrat oligarcs in Russia.

But they are most worried about the peoples in those countries, currently being shown the way by their brothers and sisters in East Ukraine.

Great stuff! 

Tories!!

When watching discussions on the television, and being told that “both sides of the argument” have been adequately covered, I cannot help getting very angry indeed.

For that is absolutely never the case!

For the problem supposedly “being addressed” is always, yes absolutely always, diverted into some area of prejudice, or alternatively some dishonest, supposedly moral imperative, which means, and is intended to assure, that those who need to be adequately informed are being misled to a significant and deliberate extent. The real issues are never addressed!

Indeed, when some millionaire starts talking about charity, public spiritedness, and concern for the future of our country, he is clearly lying!

Why? It is because he is not one of us: he is a TORY.

Do you think he earned his millions? Of course he didn’t! You earned them for him!

All their wealth was created by ordinary people, going to work every day, but never getting the real value of their contributions. That almost always goes to the owners! And when the profits aren’t flowing as they would like, they will sack “unproductive workers” wholesale, and then denounce them for lazily living off the State!

And when some scapegoat is selected to hive off (via totally proved misdemeanours) the antagonism of the people. These denizens of the public-good denounce their erstwhile colleagues for ”overstepping the mark”, “mis-selling", or “not giving sufficient information”.

Now these sound more like hapless errors than what they really are, for not only were they doing what they did on purpose, but also the very denouncers do exactly the same sort of things all the time. They are just much better at hiding it all, AND, crucially, not getting caught!

You must have noticed how comfortably even these proved sinners “land upon their feet”, and not only get well-paid sinecures somewhere or other, but remain as part of the same milieu – the Owners Of The Country!

Even the description “for the benefit of the country” doesn’t mean for the majority of the population, it means for Capitalism, and for “WE” (meaning the Tories) that run this show, and make our fortunes.

They "believe" that without their own increasing wealth, there would be no crumbs from their tables to sustain the proletariat (or “Plebs” as they are sometimes called!)

Literally nowhere in the Mass Media is there a contrary view.

And, all newspapers, from Local to National, are pro-capitalist. The very best that you can expect is a liberal, or moralist criticism of behaviours, but never a tirade against the Economic System that rewards such dishonesty!

All TV stations are also pro-capitalist, and, of course, owned by millionaires.

Such an imbalance of literally many thousands to one, in delivering so-called News, means that the public is massively and purposefully misinformed.

And, newspapers like the SUN pander to racism and prejudice, while doing what they can to make even more money out of peddling both “naked ladies” and lies - all for he benefit of their men in politics, and behind them, the owners of this country. Have you not noticed the clone-like nature of all the UK's political leaders - Cameron, Osborne, Clegg and even Milliband? And they are all very similar concoctions, are they not? And, they are each and every one PRO-CAPITALIST!

Interestingly, it was a Labour Government, which helped to rescue Capitalism in 2008. Yet the Tories talk about that as typical of Labour’s waste of National Resources. Yet, if Brown and Co. had not persuaded world leaders to do likewise, then Capitalism would have been finished.

I feel that every News Programme should have another superimposed commentator (as they do for the deaf), but this one representing the rest of us – constantly pointing out, “But, he’s a TORY, He doesn’t give a damn for ordinary working people, He is lying, as usual", and other such valuable additions.

What Next For Turkey?

Yet another country in the Islamic world is in crisis. Perhaps the biggest country in the Middle East - Turkey - has also toppled into a state of crisis, seemingly over a park being earmarked for development into some sort of mall. Yet, of course, it is much more than that.

The discontent is country-wide, and the usual tactic of the ruling class, a turn to an Islamic state, is again coming to the fore. But though the peasants feel it will help them, the city-dwellers are sure it will take away what they have gained, and instead of the future they envisaged, there could be a retreat to a deprived past. Turkey is truly at a crossroads.

The dictatorial and religious tendencies of the current Prime Minister, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, are clearly opposed by the rising middle class, educated workers and city-dwellers generally, and it looks like another pulse in the so-called Arab Spring - the general move towards revolution for an entire civilization.

Listening to the various political commentators, even those on Middle Eastern TV stations such as Al Jazeera, you would think that the threatened uprising could never happen. Turkey is a democracy, we are told. Half the population are rural peasants that back the Islamist Prime Minister, we are assured, while the other (roughly) 50% live in cities, the workers and the middle class, who are lead by disaffected students, who know what they want, and it isn't an Islamic State! This impasse cannot be traversed! This is what we are told, but, of course, they are mistaken.

A Revolution is always an alliance of differing groups who come together with a unifying common purpose. The red flags in evidence at these various demonstrations are not all Turkish flags, some are emblems of the socialists and communists - the appearance of 'hammers and sickles' proved it. Clearly there is some culture of socialist ideas evident within Turkish society, and hence there may be real revolutionaries amongst them, who can correctly interpret what is emerging on a national scale. 

In Russia in 1917, with a successful defeat of the 1905 revolution behind them, the general consensus seemed to be that with the forced abdication of the Czar, enough was enough, and the vast preponderance of peasants would ensure that no social revolution could occur to take things further. Yet, the Russian revolutionaries knew what was necessary, and they knew that they must win the peasants to their cause, by including their most heartfelt demand in their battle cries. The demand became "Peace, Bread and Land!" - wedded to the demands of the working class there would be a turning over of private farmland into the hands of those that worked it - the peasants. They would own their own plots, and the vast majority of the national army were peasants - they not only were for peace, but would own their own land, and had the arms-in-hand to achieve it.

The leadership of the Turkish people must be won by those who understand revolution, and can present the appropriate demands to unify the peasants, workers and middle class to eject the reactionary government, for a just society.

Victory to the Turkish People!

Reportage, Activism and Theory

You can’t have one without the others!

I always remember, as a young student, listening to a speech by Gerry Healy of the then Socialist Labour League, a Trotskyist Revolutionary Party affiliated to the International Committee of the Fourth International, and his answer to a question about the rights and wrongs of a particular strike, which caused him to respond with, “What you don’t seem to understand”, he affirmed, “is that the bosses are always wrong!” Such a response took the questioner by surprise, for he expected a rational, or even moral, explanation, for that was how he arrived at his political positions and “beliefs”. But Healy didn’t come from that background at all. He knew the enemy and their lying ways, and knew that you had to fight them with Working Class action, AND also that, to be a Marxist meant that that you were always on the side of the Working Class, and against the Ruling Class on every single issue!

But though he was right to answer the Middle Class student in that way, he was wrong when it came to training a Marxist Revolutionary Leadership for the Working Class, for those would have to go well beyond Trade Union consciousness: they would have to understand deeply about Capitalism, and even more fundamentally, would have to become both a Marxist Philosopher and a Trained Marxist analyst and theorist. And that would involve the necessary Philosophy – including both Holism and Dialectical Materialism, which would have to be their steadfast yet developing worldview, in order to supply their required methodology for dealing with all problems at all levels. The gut reaction may place a speaker, like Healy, on the right track, but the preparation of a revolutionary leadership required a great deal more than that.

After a lifetime in and around revolutionary politics, I finally realised that those who currently profess to be Marxists were NOT doing what Marx and Engels, and later Lenin and Trotsky, knew to be imperative. They were neither developing Marxism (absolutely essential), nor training a new cadre to be Marxist in the Leninist sense. They weren’t, and still aren’t, equipping a leadership, and hence they were failing the Working Class.

Now, I have just finished reading the most detailed (and extensive) Marxist essay on Syria (written January 2013), which was a serious and competent delivery of much that we need to know. It was, by far, the best that I have read, but it gave no clues as to what Marxism really is – and by that I mean it did not reveal its philosophy and method. The dialectics of a tract by Marx were absent. You either took what the writer revealed, or you didn’t.

There wasn’t an evident and unstoppable imperative of a superior philosophy clearly in action, and that, as Lenin himself was well aware, is vital! He didn’t write Materialism and Empirio Criticism as a filler between vital political activities. He wrote it because he was attempting to train a Marxist cadre, and even colleagues like Lunacharsky (later Commissar for Education in the Revolutionary Regime) were tarnished with the positivist brush of Henri Poincaré and Ernst Mach.

It seemed to me that there are many sides to the essential activities of Marxist revolutionaries. The common denominators to all groups who profess to be such are Reportage and Activism the first must inform of the facts before any appropriate action is decided upon. BUT both will be flawed without the essential ground provided by the Marxist Philosophy, and its methods. For the World is in constant change, and a Marxist cannot just “look up” appropriate measures: he has to re-invent them as things change. In the midst of a revolution, the revolutionary will be changing “what has to be done” by the hour!

What characterised Lenin was this sound Marxist basis and analysis. In the midst of the Russian February Phase, only his philosophy and method saw “what had to be done”, and in his April Theses, he turned the whole Party around.

Finally, in the turmoil of fast transforming Reality, he usually knew what to do. No time for reportage or even political activism then! The correct analysis of the moment, and the right immediate actions were essential. Without his solid and brilliant philosophy, he simply could not have done it.

I, therefore, ask, with respect, the writer of that excellent piece of Marxist reportage (**see reference below), “Where is the Marxist Philosophy?” Needless to say, I ask because I am attempting to contribute towards that standpoint and theory via my expertise as a scientist and teacher, plus 50 years in the revolutionary movement.

Jim Schofield : A Marxist Philosopher - March 2013

References:

** Economic & Philosophic Science Review (EPSR) on the internet article dated January 2013

Also several Special Issues and individual articles by Jim Schofield on SHAPE Journal, SHAPE Blog and SHAPE Channel on YouTube