Socialists against BREXIT

Who shouts loudest for BREXIT? It is the most right-wing Tories and UKIP!

WHY do they want it, exactly? They don't want alliance.

HOW do they put their case? They want to be rid of European "red tape" - by which they mean legislation that defends worker's rights. They want free rein to do as they like as they used to! They want to beat their international competitors by foul means if necessary.

What would an even more right-wing Tory Britain be like?

Two groups are arguing loud and long about the forthcoming Referendum. Both groups are essentially lead by Tories who are only really concerned with profit.

Neither side of this argument is remotely concerned about you. They don't care about the state of the Working Class after 8 long years of depression and cuts. If anything they want to turn the screw even harder. Something is holding them back. 

So why should we support either group of Tories? We shouldn't of course! Many voices on the left are calling for a boycott of the EU Referendum. A plague on both their houses!

Yet, we must defend our class.

WHY are the most right-wing, anti-worker, racist, nationalist groups for BREXIT? They want to Leave to end EU laws which protect the worker, which have slowly been won by left-leaning politicians in the European Union. They see the easiest way to exploit the working class is to leave Europe and set their own laws.

Such laws would almost certainly be PRO-employer, PRO-capitalist and ANTI-worker, ANTI-human rights, with a new far-right Tory-lead cabal in charge, post-referendum. Do you doubt it?

But staying in the EU won't make any difference either. It won't mean the end of capitalism! No indeed! But it will allow Europe-wide alliances of Workers to oppose austerity, to oppose ever-more attacks on their jobs and living standards.

Do you really believe that an newly independent Britain, run by unleashed right-wing politicians will be better for working people in this country? It will be considerably WORSE.

Workers must vote NO to leaving the EU. It shouldn't be seen as a vote for the capitalist EU and all of the things we agree are wrong with it, but a vote against the right, a vote against even worse situations for British workers, isolated from hundreds of millions of potential comrades, with the very same problems across the continent. 

Many socialists, including myself, were against the Common Market when joining it was first suggested - for all the right, pro-working class reasons. But that isn't what this vote is really about.

The worst elements of the Tory Party are manoeuvring to bring even more repressive laws against ordinary people. They reckon they could do whatever they wanted unshackled from EU regulation. And maybe they could.

That is the pressing issue we face at the ballot box.

Please don't misunderstand my position: the EU is no friend of the working class, I am fully aware of this. They have done terrible things recently in Greece. But its parliament does make laws which protect people. Occasional majorities of left-of-centre parties have allowed protective laws to get onto the statute book which the Tories cannot currently get around or overthrow. 

Have you noticed the increase in socialist parties in Europe recently, in Greece, Italy, Spain and Portugal? In a crisis of Capitalism (which this certainly is) we will need to be able to ally with fellow anti-capitalists all over Europe. Freedom of movement is vital. We need to unite the working class across Europe, not isolate ourselves under perpetual Tory rule! 

This capitalist European Union is not OUR Europe, granted. But a United Socialist States of Europe could be! And we need strength to fight capitalism, we need to be in the best position we can be. That isn't on our own.

Many bigger fights are on the horizon. We will need the freedom to unite to win those fights. 

VOTE NO TO LEAVING. 

VOTE REMAIN!

PS. I wrote this piece as a response to increasing socialist voices calling for Brexit. I think this is a mistake. I also think people on the left are confused about this question, and what it might mean for working people. I hope this elucidates on some of the issues. 

Red Shift and the "Quantum Bounce" (PART 1)

Introduction

The current evident interest in the idea of a Black Hole/White Hole Bounce which was suggested in order to “explain” the recently observed bursts of Radio Waves in Space, may sound somewhat like that idea of a collapsing Universe immediately turning into an on-going expansion of a seemingly, completely new one - but the theorists involved in the new suggestions don’t make that connection at all, for they are solely concerned with forcibly-adding as much “evidence” as possible into their pre-existing, purely-formal theories – in this case concerned with Loop Quantum Gravity (perhaps).

Hence, the whole exercise is totally non-physical! It amounts to formal/mathematical research, without an overt physical basis, yet again extrapolating to “infinity and beyond”!

But, surely, what is really required is a physical, explanatory assault upon such concrete data, along with the best possible physical models of what are supposed to be the entities and happenings involved? Any purely formal route is doomed to failure, for it has to be an incorrect path with its purely descriptive premises, so that it cannot take real explanation any further!

The physical premises, for those purely formal theories must be exposed, criticised and replaced, and a truly scientific attempt made to explain such phenomena physically undertaken.

The problem is that the total abandonment of explanatory theories in modern day Physics, leaves current theorists without a model to criticise and improve upon. Forms cannot be criticised! We have to work back from their current theories to expose what physical premises were assumed.

An Intrinsic Red Shift?

The Electric Universe group talk about a cosmic Red Shift that isn’t caused by a Doppler Effect - transforming the frequencies being observed. They assume instead that it is intrinsic to different modes of production within the developing atom.

Now, presumably, the usual explanation of radiation emitted by atoms assumes a particular context – say, in a vacuum, or, if not, they must be making the productions totally independent of any context!

Now, it is most probably the latter, but if a Universal Substrate exists, and is present not only as context for all atoms, but turns out to even be present within all atoms too, things could be different! For then, distortion of that substrate in extreme, external conditions, will definitely affect the electron orbits inside atoms, and cause changes in both emission and absorption frequencies, when such orbital transactions occur. This might be the only intrinsic modification of the emissions and absorptions in radiation, and hence will, in such extreme cases, affect the Red Shift too!

NOTE: As Red Shifts are so common, it would seem that the electron orbits must all be at lower energies, so that transitions down to lower energy levels will also be lower – towards the red end of the spectrum.

Now, we know that Solid, Liquid and Gas concentrations of atoms do not change the characteristic frequencies of emitted or absorbed radiation, so those modes of matter cannot change how atoms normally work! To find intrinsic modifications of the characteristic frequencies, we must consider extreme circumstances not usually encountered in the usual matter-phase modes. But, if those extreme conditions were to affect the Universal Substrate, that would also affect the insides of atoms, whatever phase they were in, and hence deliver the effects we are trying to explain. It could well be that normal phases are not extreme enough to make significant changes to the substrate. What must be involved will be conditions well beyond the usual ones.

It could be when stable concentrations of the Substrate are well outside the normal – in circumstances, for example when Matter is very highly concentrated, as in a Black Hole, or, alternatively, very sparsely concentrated, as at, or “beyond”, the Edge of the Universe! This being the case, we can assume that, within such an entity, the nature of the Substrate inside it can be significantly changed, so that the natural quantised orbits  will occur at different radii, due to different energy levels.

If we also go to the opposite extreme and consider the effects around the edges, then, once more, the electron orbits within the atom will be changed but in the opposite direction, due to the sparse nature of the Substrate.

Now, if these extreme cases are to throw light upon such things as the Red Shift, we will have to consider very carefully, what will be changed.

Obviously, when general radiation is so “red-shifted” (as seems to be the case for distant sources), we must adjust our measurements, to include the fact that we will be looking into the past, sometime long ago as well as far into the distance. It seems that, in this pretty well universal case, we may well be talking about the possible evolution of the Universal Substrate. It is unlikely to have always been there, exactly as we conceive it now!

It must have changed over time, as did everything else, and therefore, could not have been completely unaffected by the developments with which it had to be connected.

Remember, because looking into the distance in Space also means looking into the past, we already have evidence for the developments of Stars and even Galaxies.

For example, if some kind of Big Bang did happen, how does the establishment of the Universal Substrate fit into that changing scenario? And, even if some form of the Substrate preceded that Big Bang, it would unavoidably be successively modified both by that calamitous Event and its following consequences, with effects sweeping outwards from that “Point of Origin”.

In addition, we have to consider a natural “Temperature” of the Substrate over time. In current theories of the Universal Substrate it underpins many phenomena that use it as both sink and source for energy.

So the Substrate could always have contained a measure of Energy, either in the internal orbits of its component units, or in “whole unit” oscillations or translational travel too!

Hence the propagation of other energy would be promoting the internal orbits to levels above those necessary for its initial establishment, and any due to a general state of a region – its so-called “Temperature”!

NOTE: Though a particular unit with a promoted internal orbit will immediately demote it by transferring a quantum to another “empty” unit, when a whole area has all units with extra energy they will effectively equalise to the same internal “Temperature”.

This being the case, we have to consider how propagation would be affected. Remember, we have assumed that the Substrate does not alter the nature the propagation of so-called radiation: whatever it is, it will be propagated  totally unchanged! But first, how does our unit of Substrate manage that, and secondly, how may this be changed by circumstances?

NOTE: If the theories (of this researcher) concerning the role of the Universal Substrate, within an atom, and concerning quantized electrical orbits, are true, then the vortices caused in that substrate, by the orbiting of an electron, will be changed, if the Substrate differs from the classical form during extreme circumstances.

Clearly, if, for example, the density of the Substrate units were significantly changed (for some external reasons) the necessary matching of the orbit with the rotations of its caused vortices to bring about quantized orbits would also change, and the orbits will be at different radii (and different energy levels) though still close to what they were in normal circumstances.

We must determine how the behaviour of the vortices will be affected in a more densely packed Substrate within the atom. Now, if this caused the transitions between energy levels to be slightly lower, the energy of the released radiation would be lass, and the frequency would undergo a Red Shift – one that is intrinsic to the “Atom plus Substrate” system in those conditions. Also, a crucial factor (perhaps within or very close to a Black Hole) could involve a truly massive matter density, which might well distort the relationship between the orbiting electrons and the Substrate.

The more pressing problem is to explain the Red Shift that is merely from distant and past objects, but is internal rather than due to Doppler Shift. How could the radiation be altered either in initial production within the atom, or in transit while being propagated by units of the substrate?

A word about method!

Notice the very different demands upon Theory, between fitting formal (or even statistical) patterns to measured data, and the alternative of explaining that data via physical reasons in some form of concrete analogistic model. The former method is purely formal and includes no content or context information: it is merely a quantitative form-fitting to pre-existing ideal mathematical forms, whereas the latter MUST involve both content and context and explain phenomena in terms of substances and their properties in particular defining conditions.

Arp's Quasar-Galaxy associations challenge the received wisdom on Red Shift

 Addendum:

Halton Arp’s astronomical data may well be crucial in alighting upon a reasonable theory of intrinsic Red Shift. His data will have to be carefully studied, but at his Electric Universe Conference presentation he associated Red Shift with the initial creation and development of galaxies, which he gave evidence to show “budded-off” the hubs of mature galaxies and moved away perpendicular to the plane of the parent galaxy. What were most interesting were the changing Red Shifts as these new-born sub-galaxies moved away, for the Red Shift decline in seemingly quantised steps! It inferred that something determined these particular values, either in initial production or as they changed over time.

An explanation of these data if validated more generally, would imply similar possibilities on a galactic scale to those considered on a sub-atomic one – indeed, with a substrate at all levels.

PART 2 of this paper

Economic Update with Richard Wolff: How Capitalism Changes Intimacy and Family

This radio show featuring Richard Wolff and Dr. Harriet Fraad looks at how capitalism has affected contemporary family life, particularly the issues of the Millennial generation. Worth a listen.

Economic Update

Issue 43: Developing a Holist Approach in Science

Read the issue

I am a professional scientist and mathematician, and also a life-long Marxist philosopher. In the last decade I have finally begun to make substantial progress wherein this diverse background has been brought together into what I call a Holist approach to Science.

It isn’t merely a statement of position. Indeed, it has included a wholly new interpretation of the ill-famed Double Slit Experiments in Physics, as well as related contributions on the Red Shift in Cosmology, and a crucial Theory of Emergences in Philosophy. There was no fitting-up of these areas to an a priori stance by any means. The researches in these areas were crucial in delivering a comprehensive extension of Marxism by a professional in these areas of study.

Needless to say, current work is concentrated upon demolishing the consensus position in Physics - the Copenhagen Interpretation of Quantum Thoery - particularly in the more way-out areas such as Quantum Entanglement, and even Quantization of Electron Orbits in Atoms.

An important part of the remit for this series of papers was established by the tackling of a complete redesign of Stanley Miller’s brilliant holistic experiment concerning establishing processes prior to the Origin of Life on Earth. The great gains of this acheivement are based upon an important set of profound contributions in Philosophy, surprisingly not only on Science, but more generally.

This publication is meant as a basis for those who may consider investigating this amazing and effective alternative approach to the scientific method.

The Fight Back!

What is to be Done: XII

The essential tasks for the Marxists of today

Now, such a reactionary step had to be defeated. Scientists had been aware of a tendency to do this across the board in Science, but these “brilliant” Nuclear Physicists now had come up with a reason.

My first effort was to suggest a classical explanation “in the old style”. Various steps were taken to construct a viable explanation from a definition of the nature of the electron stream, as being solely determined by its Source, via a Diffraction of the electrons at both slits, giving a fan-out of velocities, with the fastest going straight through, and the slowest being inversely proportionately deflected.

So far so good, but if nothing else was involved these fan-out could NOT produce an interference pattern at the detection screen.

What was Missing?

There had to be something BETWEEN the slits and the screen which could deflect electrons, and this “field” would have to be very similar to an interference pattern. What could it be? Nothing had been detected!

But, something MUST be present in that space. It can only be caused by either the “slits” or the moving electron streams” or BOTH, but it does not have to be extensive. If it were initially strong but dropping off very quickly, that would still be sufficient to do the job. Two interfering components (one form each slit) would be involved, and as the effect is known to vanish as the slits are moved apart, it is clear that the mutual effects must at least be the distance apart of the slits in extent. Obviously, the problem that caused such a solution to be immediately discounted was the fact that interference can ONLY be caused by contributing elements that include both positive and negative (i.e. oscillating) parts, so that they can either re-inforce or cancel-out.

Now that sounds like wave motions, but such DO NOT terminate over very short ranges. They impart a momentary disturbance and then move on. But such have certainly NOT been detected over many years of trying and by innumerable researchers.

Do the Phenomena Demand a Substrate?

So we are talking about something NEW!

Let us put asode exactly what it might be for the moment, and instead work out what our required “field” would have to do.

Imagine that TWO components, one from each slit, come together very close the the pair and interfere in a fan out from the slits. The shape would be radial, and would be composed of alternatate reinforced effects and cancelled effects.

The electrons, as we have already established classically, would also produce fan outs due to diffraction by the slits.

Imagine the superimposition of these.

The reinforced fringe regions would deflect the –ve charged electrons, while the cancelled regions would allow the electrons to go straight through. When you work it out, you arrive at “gaps” where the electrons were not deflected, and “field” areas where they were. All electrons would end up in the target regions determined by NO FIELD at the slits., while those determined by ACTUAL FIELDS would deliver NONE.

The result at the detection screen would be the observed fringes.

But, What is it?

Now, of course, there is still a question mark about our postulated post-slit field. But the electrons ARE –ve charged, and are known to produce magnetic fields when in motion, while the proximity of charges are also known to produce induced charges in appropriate materials nearby. We are not exactly whistling in the breeze with these surmises are we?

And, of course, this does produce an Explanation. In this effort the electrons are NOT obeying a disembodied “Probability Wave”, but are generated the fringe effects by physical causative factors.

Remember, scientists throughout the centuries were willing to state such evidence as physically caused, long before they had full and accurate explanations as to the causes. THEY could have taken the route of the New Physicists, but they never did. Were they right? I would have thought that this particular version could be confirmed or denied by appropriate experiments.

New Ideas and Methods

BUT, my second alternative approach is NOT irrevocably based on this attempted explanation. I have also attempted a very different route, via my criticisms of the usual scientific methodology. Indeed, if anything, the following attempt is much more sound, and also delivers the necessary rebuttal to our reactionary scientists and it is not as alarming as it sounds.

It does not throw away the gains of that well established method of Experiment & Explanation (or even the truncated version stopping at the derivation of an equation). What this alternative explanation does is to explain the observed phenomenon via an Emergence-like transition.

The FLAW in their attempted version is the suppression of both the containing Context on the one hand, and the treatment of the negligible factors on the other. These are unavoidable in the usual scientific methodology, and delivers results, while-ever the situation remains, within a stable Context (or Level) and whether by Nature or arranged by us. In addition, having removed, or totally constrained, all systematic minor contributions, we treat both the bundle of negligible minor perturbations and any unknown (because invisible) remaining contributions as mutually contending, and this allows us to remove their effects by merely averaging our results. We can do this because these tend to cancel each other out. But, such averaging is “over time”, and moment by moment, these are evident as seemingly tiny, random perturbations. So we have these Random perturbations which as well as being very small, cancel each other out over time, and our averaging delivers a good sound result (accompanied by a small random error).

Now, elsewhere I have demonstrated that at an emergent boundary of any sort (whether minor as in Changes of State, or major as in a full blown Emergence), what were dominant factors and subject to normal scientific study begin to SUBSIDE, and the minor perturbations GROW in significance until they usurp the situation entirely.

What were tiny zigzags of perturbation, become MAJOR ZIGZAGS which totally swamp the situation.

BUT, they can STILL be predicted by averages, as they were selected as such by our methods. Thus situations can occur where by seemingly inexplicable individual events can be summed to produce predictable results.

That is what happens in the famed Double Slit Experiment. Because we NEVER did know anything about the mutually contending perturbations, they when magnified they are totally inexplicable.

Now, this is only an interlude in a paper with an extensive and wide-ranging remit, so I cannot present the full case here, but it is available in the personal Theoretical Journal The Double Slit by the author.

The crucial point here is how criticism of method traced through from Zeno to Modern Physics reveals the reasons for their failures in this and other crucial areas.

Postscript

This now complete, 12 part series was meant as an introduction to the current Marxist Work delivered by the SHAPE organisation.

Current research and findings are at the forefront of such work, and the very latest is available on-line in the SHAPE Journal, Blog and Youtube Channel. It had become clear that a more basic outline of Marxism was necessary, and the above series was taken from our work 10 years ago as a suitable introduction. So, whether it has triggered an abiding interest, or an avalanche of criticisms, we can offer a substantial range of the very latest developments. This body of work is now available as a Special Issue. Read it all here!

Current Theoretical Work

What is to be Done: XI

The essential tasks for the Marxists of today

The Crisis in Physics

Since my intellectual birth in my late teens at Leeds University, I have struggled unsuccessfully with the idiocy of the reactionary ”revolution” in Sub Atomic Physics. A Reaction that was exactly simultaneous with the rise of Fascism in the World.

I have, in the past, laboured long and unsuccessfully in attempting to correct this massive retrenchment, but have for most of the time been totally unaware of the cause of that retreat, and have largely and unconsciously limited myself to their pluralistic methods to combat these “errors”. Needless to say, I did not succeed. Indeed, it was ONLY when I “tracked back” to philosophical fundamentals, that I began to get anywhere. And the touchstone for me was Zeno’s Paradoxes and the realisation of how significant were our assumptions and premises in erecting explanatory systems.

NOTE: In case my readers think that this was a fairly obvious step, let me vigorously dissuade them. Having read many contributions to the assessment of Zeno’s efforts, I have to say that what he did is almost never understood. The commonest content in articles about these Paradoxes are of the type “Where Zeno went wrong!”. The usual conception of what Zeno was doing was that he was a “spoiler” cleverly undermining the sound basis of Mankind’s achievements with his cleverly constructed contradictions. But, of course, Zeno’s purpose was no such thing. He wanted to draw attention to our unquestioned assumptions, and to show where they led “in extremis”. In missing the point in this way, NONE of them came anywhere near an understanding of the limitations of their own implicit methods. Zeno was, and still is, totally ignored to this day.

My researches kept being driven “ever backwards” to such fundamental elements, and my research into The Processes and Productions of Abstraction began to reveal the nature of man-made Explanation, and the incredible erection of the World of Pure Form alone – Ideality, which has turned out to be for many the actual objective of scientific research.

Double Slit Experiment

At a certain point I began to feel that tackling the Old Enemy might well be within my grasp, and a return to Zeno led me to realise the vital role of plurality in Mankind’s attempts to understand Reality.

In the last period, I have focussed my efforts on the crucial Experiment of Modern Sub Atomic Physics called the Double Slit Experiment.. I commenced to bring all I had learned to bear on this “foundation stone” of the “New Physics”.

I decided on TWO separate and unconnected assaults on this troublesome peak!

Herman Von Helmholtz

Back to Explanation

The first would attempt to explain this phenomenon by purely classical methods. I have always found the pinnacle of Science to be that version pursued in the Victorian Era (My personal Hero being Herman Helmholtz). And, have long been against throwing out the baby with the dirty bathwater. It should NOT have been Victorian Science’s explanatory tradition that was dumped, by Modern Physics, but merely the errors of the past. In other words we should have treated the situation we encountered in the sub Atomic area of study in the same “explanatory” way as previously. So this exercise would be an interesting one.

The second approach would vigorously expose the theoretical assumptions, and all subsequent stages in the erection of the final wholly unprecedented Theory. This would be based on my extensive researches as referred to above, but would be more particular, and address the various steps one at a time to reveal the basis for every one.

Both these lines of research have been successful!

I have not dotted all the “i”s, and crossed all the “t”s as yet, but full solutions are clearly possible.

As far as I can tell by studying the academic literature, mine is the ONLY Marxist attack on the problem. Nobel Laureate Laughlin, Emmeche of the Niels Bohr Institute in Copenhagen and Holland – the leading researcher into this area at the Sante Fe Institute all take an Emergentist standpoint, but none of them are Dialectical Materialists, neither have they understood the bases of this modern reaction, or that these same things are still unchanged in their OWN methodology.

Their chances of success must be as minimal as those who have attempted to explain Life in terms of non-living processes. In spite of their commendable attempts, they seem to me to be doomed to failure.

Let me briefly outline my dual undertakings in this area.

The Key Experiment for the New Physics

The Double Slit Experiment (originally called Young’s Slits) has two versions.

The first uses Light shone through a pair of closely positioned slits in an opaque plate.The separation of these slits is close enough to to produce an interference pattern of fringes on a receiving screen beyond the slits. This is easily classically explained by treating the Light as a Wave Motion.

The second version of this experiment uses not light, but a stream of electrons, and surprisingly the receiving screen again displayed the same sort of interference pattern as with Light.

All hell broke loose!

The Copenhagen Explanation

With Light simply replaced by electrons, the immediate, and simplistic reaction, was to say that electrons must be wave-like in nature. If the stream of electrons was like a wave, then the experimental set up would indeed do exactly the same things. But, of course, this is a very unscientific conclusion. The same results CAN be produced by very different phenomena. That is the basic fact behind mathematics. We don’t assume that all phenomena utilising the same mathematics MUST be produced by the same physical reasons. And such a slight conclusion was also not appropriate here too.

So how can particulate electrons interfere? They can’t of course!

They could, if they were waves, but they are not. The arrivals at the detection screen were definitely of individual and decidedly “local” particles. These arrivals occurred one at a time, but built up to finally deliver the same sort of pattern as would be produced by waves..

Our physicists were perplexed! How could they explain this confusing Experiment?

They did it by abandoning all classical explanation. They were impatient with ”theory”! Many of their number had already found the mathematics to deliver exactly what occurred. Why bother with Theory at all? They therefore proposed a non existent “wave” associated with the electrons as a whole. No such wave was detectable, but that didn’t matter. These revolutionaries were departing from “old Science” into a wholly new approach. The “waves” were not physically present at all, BUT delivered the probabilities as to where the individual electrons would end up.

It was the epitome of a purely maths-driven Science.

WAVEFUNCTIONS?

A Fulfilled Objective

They had found a Pure Form in mathematics that could be easily shoe-horned to deliver the “right numbers” to account for the final cumulative pattern.

And, “If it works, it is right!”, took over. NO explanation was proferred for this, just the fact that it fitted perfectly. Indeed, these physicists stressed that no explanations should ever be attempted. For scientists were condemned for ever even trying to explain.

The New Physics had been born.

Now, after centuries of explanation most scientists world-wide were quite unwilling to abandon what had been achieved over the most significant period in the History of Mankind. But the new physicists were adamant. Explanation must go!

Mathematics was the Truth of all things, and the “old fashioned scientific process” HAD to be truncated as soon as a mathematical form could be fitted to the experimental data. The usually following “explanation phase” had to be dumped...

This post is the eleventh in a blog series entitled "What is to be done?" on the crises in both Marxism and Science, and how a revolution is necessary in both. This body of work is now available as a Special Issue. Read it all here!

Emergence is Key

What is to be Done: X

The essential tasks for the Marxists of today

Now, we must not get embroiled in the many possible diversions which can be brought to notice at this point.

This is NOT a similar “ignoring” as was essential in the pluralistic methods, but a refusal to be scuppered by irresponsible “Yes, buts...” A coherent contribution is always welcomed, but the throwing of rocks without evidence must ALWAYS be excluded. [I have dealt elsewhere with Changes of State (Phase Change), such as in the transitions from solid to liquid, and liquid to gas, but these are accommodated elsewhere, and would only (and perhaps purposely) confuse this current and important narrative, with which we are primarily concerned here.

In addition, I must admit that I am laying the essential groundwork for that most important radical change in the history of Reality, which is termed an Emergence. For where these arise may be seen as somewhat similar to those of Changes of State, but they are NOT identical. Though when attempting to explain Domains of Applicability this is still a fair approach, though applied in a much more limited area. The differences are to do with repeat-ability, and reverse-ability. While Changes of State and “Domain hopping” are reversible, Emergences are NOT. An Emergence is NO local change of phase. It could, I believe, be considered as a “System-wide Revolution”

Instead of a local, formal or organisational-only change, we are here addressing a major flip, which would take the form of a whole series of veritable avalanches, finally precipitating a Whole New Level. And such a Level – the Emergence – would be not only organisational, but also creative and indeed revolutionary.

Now, if such a description seems mystical or airy-fairy, you MUST be directed to consider the first, and totally unique Origin of Life on Earth. That was no mere Change of State, was it?

Did it happen? Indeed it did! And what did it achieve? It created wholly new Forms – living things – which were both self-maintaining and self perpetuating, and which transformed Everything.

They even transformed their own environment, such that the very rocks beneath our feet are the remains of living things (when limestone), or or even the products of living things when they are oxidised minerals, as the necessary free atmospheric Oxygen was only possible with the constant action of Plants during Photosynthesis.

An Emergence then is most certainly a Revolution. It couldn’t possibly described as anything else.

And it also has a more profound element – that can only be called Overall Stability. From one universal environment with its own form of this stability, an Emergence precipitates an entirely NEW environment, with a different but similar stability. So different, indeed, that the new form is packed full of new, never-been-in-existence-before entities, properties and even laws.

Indeed, within the New Level, the old prior Level situation has ceased to exist, and has been replaced by something entirely New.

It is HERE, at this remarkable transition, that the old pluralistic methods fail absolutely, and can provide NO explanations at all for what has appeared and taken over. The old Level dominant relations have gone, and new dominances have arisen. Even the old variables have vanished into that same obscurity as that to which we relegated our old unobservables and negligibles of our prior Level Science.

Indeed, this process, along with the creations of entirely new variables and relations, prohibit the extrapolation of the old precursor Level laws into the new Level. You cannot predict the New Level from the Old due entirely to our methods of analysis, which though practical “within Level”, deliver nothing when Levels change.

The Consequences of Emergences

Thus, we cannot use our old pluralistic methods to explain the Origin of Life, because they do NOT contain the essential factors that are involved in the transition. We had thrown them away!

But even more amazingly, the very Stability of the new Level militates against our wholesale condemnation of those methods.

Why is this?

It is because it re-enables their use “from scratch” at the New Level. The same pluralistic compromises will AGAIN be possible to allow its entities, properties and laws to be isolated, extracted and abstracted in exactly the same way nd with the same pragmatic usefulness, BUT FOR A DIFFERENT WORLD, and hence producing a whole new set of things at the New Level.

AND, it must be stressed, that this resurrection of Plurality infers NO CONTINUITY across the transition.

The system simply DROPPED OUT during transition, but could be effective again within the new Stability, at the New Level.

Yet that Assumption of Continuity is precisely what the vast majority of our researchers assume. They DO expect to be able to explain the Origin of Life from prior non-living processes using the old pluralistic methods.

It is in our Thinking that we are Stymied!

Now, once again, I must stress the difference between Being and Epistemology! The above assertions do not mean, “Give up now you’ll never do it!” Not at all! There is NO doubt that there is a “continuity of cause” between the pre-Life Level and that of Living Things – just as there MUST be between precursor and consequent Levels in every single Emergence. That is indisputable! But what we are revealing here is that such a Continuity is impossible to reveal using our universally accepted pluralistic methods.

It is WE who “wall off” the possibility of our understanding, because of our current inadequate methodology. Being is undoubtedly coherent, but our methods of dealing with it are not!

The impasse (as always) is one self-made by Mankind. We always construct the barriers to our own understanding, by the very methods that we invent to reveal Reality, for in finding ways to bring fragments of Reality into our sphere of affecting it, we simultaneously prohibit the revelation of how Reality itself continually recreates itself in innumerable new Levels of existence.

Our tackling of Reality cannot be direct and obvious, but ONLY consistent with where we are at any particular point in the process. We can NEVER jump out of our situation. Our methods can initially ONLY arise out of what we already know.

But we are Thinking creatures, and we do make break-throughs, and indeed progress!

It is just that such particular required break-throughs are truly MONUMENTAL! To achieve it we have to transcend our previous methodology! AND IT HAS BEEN DONE ALREADY!

A Sucessfully transcended Emergence: but what have we learned?

Momentary and significant transcendences of the sort necessary here HAVE been achieved, and then LOST!

What do you think Lenin did in 1917?

So, let us recap how far we have got in the re-vitalisation of Marxist Theory.

We have deduced that the usual pluralistic methodology of theory development over the whole range of Human endeavour, including Science, is incapable of dealing with the real drivers of Change in Reality, and crucially in its most significant and creative mode – that of an Emergence.

We have, I believe, already demolished that methodology outside of within-Level Stability. That old methodology has fragmented our Understanding into quite separate Level-defined Sciences, and has directed all our gains towards technological Control and Production.

Though attempts to understand still exist, they are also largely emasculated by the universal acceptance of the same pluralistic methods. The best of our scientists have realised the problem, and have taken on the task of opposing the worst excesses of pluralistic Science – as in Quantum Theory & Cosmology for example –BUT they are clearly inadequately equipped to succeed. They have neither understood nor rejected the established methodology, but ONLY its results.

Their standpoints are modern, secular versions of the God-of-the-Gaps “hope”, in that they know what fragments have been achieved by their pluralistic methods, but they merely “expect” that they will be unified in the future by new discoveries – found by the same, old methods, that will “bridge the gaps”

So, how do we Proceed?

I believe that by now it must be clear to the reader that this is a forlorn hope. The waited for “bridging discoveries” are indeed unabtainable by those methods,

What has to be done is to complete the task, and that is no mere “add-on” to old work! It involves the thorough demolition of the old methods, and a root-and-branch overhaul of our methodology to devise a NEW appropriate set of techniques equipped to deal with Emergent Change.

For someone who has been attempting to be a real Marxist for 50 years, such assertions seem unnecessary, but the reverse is true. I have never come across an anlysis of pluralistic assumptions and methods by any Marxist in this very long period. The self-professed Marxists themselves subscribe to these alien methods as if they have no choice in the matter. They embrace the same methodology as their avowed enemies, and true philosophical Marxism dissolves away to be replaced by a sort of moral socialism.

Marx himself in his Poverty of Philosophy, and many other works, condemned Socialists such as Proudhon and his like for their Utopian Socialism, and their totally inadequate philosophical methods. He (like me) arrived at Socialism via Philosophy, but he was aware that Mankind’s knowledge and methodology was “drenched-through” with a totally inadequate approach. He spent whole decades combating such things. But, in spite of their crucial role in the development of his overall Philosophy and Programme for action, we miss all this out to concentrate on his political commitments.

We copy his activism, while ignoring his fundamental philosophical work.

And, sin of all sins, we look to him for ALL the answers. That MUST be the most damning error of all! High-point though Marx was in the Ascent of Man, he was no God. He didn’t have prescience to accurately predict the future and direct our work for the coming centuries.

That MUST be our job!

But, that Task has already been commenced... My efforts, particularly in the last couple of years, have, I believe, begun to indicate what has yet to be done. The most thrilling and demanding task must be in carrying through Hegel’s objective of a Science of Logic – a Logic of Change, and the subsequent orchestration of all the gains of Mankind since the second flowering with Lenin & the Bolsheviks in 1917 into a coherent Whole, PLUS the central crux that is the trajectory of an Emergence. (see The Theory of Emergences in SHAPE Journal)

How does Reality raise its game, and rush to a new creative Level?

Can we tackle “bridging the Gaps” ?

This post is the tenth in a blog series entitled "What is to be done?" on the crises in both Marxism and Science, and how a revolution is necessary in both. This body of work is now available as a Special Issue. Read it all here!

New Special Issue: Entangled Universe

Read the issue

The Entangled Universe article by Anil Anathaswamy in New Scientist (3046) tackles a range of supposedly connected ideas in current Sub Atomic Theory. But, as with that overall stance itself, he joined the increasingly accelerated rush into the mixture of facts, “Laws” and speculation that has become the norm in this confusing area.

Every suggested solution begets yet another “rule of thumb” - designed to enable some sort of regular paths through a limited area, and the overall description is of a plethora of such meta rules which alone defines what can and cannot be done.

Clearly, we are being guided through an alien land, and without the necessary signposts of Physical Ground, to resolve anomalies; we are forced to travel with a dependence upon local maps. You have no single theoretical stance, so you have to keep them all, and decide when and how to jump from one islet to the next!

It is an almighty mess – very like the proliferation of epicycles in the Ptolemaic version of the Solar System, It can give you useable answers but no coherent, consistent and overall Theory.

The Gordian Knot of invention must be severed with a goodly dose of Reality – but how? 

Clearly this is easier said than done, and after a couple of re-reads and copious notes, I realised that attempting to follow Anathaswamy’s stepping stones between the various positions, would not clarify, but only confuse! I decided instead to write a series of separate papers- each one tackling a different bit of this messy article.

But it soon became a large response. I have written 13 short coherent papers each on a different topic, with a total length of some 6,000 words. But I still think it is the best way to deal with the New Scientist article as a helpful review.