Sadly, a young man in England has been diagnosed with stage IV cancer — and he really is an atheist in a metaphorical foxhole, and it hasn’t changed his opinion of religion.
Between now and last Wednesday I’ve worried about various things, but one thought that stands out is religion. Before I go into more depth, I’ll stress that I’m an atheist. Religion, the way I see it, is a reactionary and backward tendency that has stood alongside man throughout history, yet has always blinded communities and corrupted rational thought. As society has advanced, so has our depth of knowledge and understanding of the world and, as a result, religious influence has decreased in many ways, but that’s not to say it isn’t an issue. The Israeli-Palestinian conflict, the persisting cultural backwardness in the southern USA, and the political situation in Iraq, Saudi Arabia or Iran are all different manifestations of the same illness. Religion does to society what cancer is doing to my spine.
I must gently correct him on one thing, though: we have persisting cultural backwardness in the Northern USA, too. But otherwise, speak it, brother!
He doesn’t object to friends and family praying for him, and has reached out to a deity (who hasn’t answered) himself, but he has his own ideology that provides a good constructive metaphor for his condition. He’s a strong Marxist.
As it happens, I have little reason to believe there’s a lot going on in heaven for me. On Wednesday I was told my that my cancer, on a I – IV grading system, fell into the most aggressive, Grade IV category. No one could commit to giving me a death date, but I’m left with the impressesion that, after chemotherapy, radiotherapy and physiotherapy (to regain movement), all of which should begin next week, I’ll have months to live. This was obviously terrible news, though it perhaps takes some of the pressure off as it makes me more assured in my godlessness, and I also can’t help but feel slightly proud that it’s my spinal cells which have done this. In revolutionary terms, they definitely quality as extremists. They’d dwarf the various coups in Argentina, which overthrew and replaced different governments in the region, or the revolutionary movements in the little communist countries like Vietnam or Afghanistan. My cells certainly take after the Bolsheviks here; if the February Revolution was my initial diagnosis, the October Revolution was my conversation two days ago. The shooting of the Romanov family is yet to come, but we sure these cells will take no prisoners there either. It’s also interesting to see that, due to their rapid growth and malignancy, they follow in the internationalist line, bent on spreading the revolution worldwide. Ideologically speaking, I can’t really complain.
The idea that cancer is revolutionary is an interesting one, and valid — these definitely are cells that are overthrowing the existing order and are tearing apart the bonds of convention.
However, I would also point out that the healthy multicellular body represents a proletarian paradise. There are no bosses (the brain may think it is, but it’s really just a servant of the whole, and it too is made up cooperating cells working to generate the illusion of self), and the entirety of the body is a mass of cells in mutual harmony. All parts are necessary and appreciated, and all cells are fed according to their need.
Marx thought evolutionary theory was the product of a nation of bourgeois shopkeepers, and he was actually quite right: there has long been a focus on conflict and competition, a rather capitalistic perspective. But multicellularity is the end result of cooperation and mutual aid, in which individual cells joined collectives to stand strong against the forces of the environment. I am more in sympathy with Kropotkin than many of Darwin’s heirs on this point (Darwin himself had a more complex view of the subject).
In that sense, cancer is more of a reactionary counter-revolution, in which a few cells abandon the bonds of trust to selfishly exploit their neighbors and the resources of the whole. If they succeed, the whole system will crash, leading to the deaths of trillions of cells…including the greedy and short-sighted cancerous reactionaries.
The struggle for life is also a fight for the welfare of the masses. It is the restoration of harmony and cooperation to all of the cells of the body. I wish my comrade in the Leeds General Infirmary well, and if he should fall, let us all remember that he fell in glorious struggle, as a communal entity resisting an exploitive few.
I wonder what he’s actually got. He describes it as grade IV (as well as, presumably, stage IV), which sounds like it should be the worst. Except that sometimes very aggressive tumors are more vulnerable to chemotherapy, like corporations that get overly greedy and overt in their exploitation are easier to shoot down than those that make at least a claim to being “good corporate citizens”. Maybe he’s got something like a Ewing’s sarcoma that can be taken down with chemotherapy. By what he’s said it sounds unlikely, but I hope that science can find some of that mercy that god doesn’t appear to be handing out to him today.
Both Marx and Engels did in fact accept Darwin’s theory of evolution, and praised it as destroying the last remnants of teleological thinking. Marx did however argue that many of Darwin’s explanations were laden with historically specific 19th century bourgeois customs, and so could not be wholly correct in their depiction of a very old process. Nevertheless, he was a champion of Darwinian evolution and event sent Darwin a copy of Das Kapital.
I would link you to Marx’s letters about Darwin, but they have been removed from marxists.org due to some asinine copyright laws (I possess copies of it in books though).
Darwin’s letter to Marx is still publicly available.
Dear Sir:
I thank you for the honour which you have done me by sending me your great work on Capital; & I heartily wish that I was more worthy to receive it, by understanding more of the deep and important subject of political Economy. Though our studies have been so different, I believe that we both earnestly desire the extension of Knowledge, & that this is in the long run sure to add to the happiness of Mankind.
I remain, Dear Sir
Yours faithfully,
Charles Darwin
And a snippet from a letter Marx wrote:
“Darwin’s work is most important and suits my purpose in that it provides a basis in natural science for the historical class struggle… Despite all shortcomings, it is here that, for the first time, “teleology” in natural science is not only dealt a mortal blow but its rational meaning is empirically explained.”
Ah some of the letters are back up!
Here’s Engels confirming your view:
https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1875/letters/75_11_17-ab.htm
My take away from this is even a Marxist considers Marxism cancerous…good to know. I have yet to here a Marxist get out of the problems with the labour theory of value and as such it is such a non starter.
So cancer is like libertarianism. After all, why be a kidney, pissing your life away in service of some community when you could be something so much bigger!
When I was “ooop north” and listening to student Marxists, I always got the impression that the revolution itself was their motivation, not the new society that they would build from the ruins of the old. Seems he’s unexpectedly proud of his spinal cancer cells for being revolutionary and for attempting the boldest revolution, regardless of what the end result is. Which will be the painful death of the revolutionaries along with the old guard.
Still, it’s an interesting way of looking at it, and it sure as hell beats being morbidly depressed about it.
Mike, the labor theory of value is but one aspect of Marx’s work (of which he took over from Ricardo and Adam Smith). To categorically reject a body of work from one theory is reckless, just as it would be reckless to categorically reject Darwin for the rightful criticisms PZ has raised. Nonetheless, Marx’s economic work has great predictive and explanatory power, and the labor theory of value has proven empirically to be quite substantial.
http://www.inf.ufpr.br/tla06/slep/eua…
https://libcom.org/files/kliman.pdf
http://reality.gn.apc.org/econ/Zachar…
http://users.wfu.edu/cottrell/eea97.pdf
Sorry, two of those links were pasted incorrectly:
http://www.inf.ufpr.br/tla06/slep/eua.pdf
http://reality.gn.apc.org/econ/Zachariah_LabourValue.pdf
Like all other paradises, the proletarean paradise is a myth that falls apart the second you start questioning the particulars. I know this especially well since I grew up in what was supposed to be one.
“From each according to ability, to each according to need.”
That’s a nice slogan to put on a bumper sticker, but how does it translate into actual policy that guides the course of people’s lives? There are a lot of unresolved questions contained within that slogan alone, and I remember them being hotly debated even in Soviet Russia (to the extent that anything could be debated there without resulting in a criminal prosecution).
Like, who determines what your abilities are, and, more importantly, what you “need”? You? Me? A committee of your colleagues and neighbors? The legislature? Or — since we are supposed to have a society where no one has an authority over anyone and everything is addressed cooperatively — do we just decide every one of those questions via a popular referendum? What if the majority in a referendum departs from Marxist principles, what do we do then? What happens to “cells” that refuse to cooperate in one way or another, even on a small personal issue? Do we deem them “cancer”? Kill them? “Re-educate” them? Diagnose them with “slow-going schitzophrenia” and hospitalize them indefinitely?
How do you even define the term “need” — that is, when we are talking about human beings, and not cells? Is a “need” something that’s required for bare survival, or can some degree of desire for personal gratification be characterised as a “need”? Like, would you or society really need for you to be more or less free to express certain views — in a society where everyone cooperates on everything and therefore, all must share common goals and adhere to the same set of ideas? Do you need privacy? Do you need vacations? Do you need good food? Do you need a private bathroom? Do you need your own private residence, or will a cot in a shared flat do? Do you need a TV when you have a radio? Do you need purpose-made toilet tissue, or should you be expected to use cut-up newspapers? Do you need to be a biologist, if there is a shortage of, I don’t know, cobblers, and you’d be just as capable of being that? Do you need to live where you want to live, or should you be subjected to the “propiska”? And again, who gets to answer those questions and determine the course of your life?
I suspect that a lot of people may perceive this as nitpicking — but that’s because for all the problems of life in the West, there are a lot of these small freedoms and conveniences that people here take for granted; and Marxism is so much grander when you think about it in sweeping terms, and ignore the particulars! But if you live in a society that’s actually trying to apply the Marxist philosophy to policy and everyday life, all these “small” questions become hot-button issues. What are abilities? What are needs? Do the needs of the collective trump individual needs? And if so, is it always the case? Who decides?
@6 EigenSprocketUK:
That’s a particularly bizarre subset of Marxism, whose adherents believe an ideal society is one in a state of perpetual revolution. Historically, if you look at War Communism, followed by the Great Purges — that’s their wet dream. Of course, in my experience, most people who embrace this view are privileged white kids who romanticize mass violence and ignore the fact that in this kind of a regime, they would be much likelier to find themselves crushed by terror, than wield it against others.
It’s always funny to watch how the right-wingers come completely out of their socks whenever Marx is mentioned.
Actually, I find right-wingers and Marxists have a lot in common. That doesn’t negate the fact, however, that there is spectacular ignorance about Marxism on the left, as well.
I wouldn’t call the multicellular body a proletarian paradise; all that mutual cooperation often requires cells to die for the greater good.
That said, cancer cells are very analogous to libertarians/Randians. If they could talk, they would take pride in being “self-sufficient” and rant about how all the other cells – the ones that sustain them – are all “moochers.” Cancer is basically what happens when cells go Galt— and it works out for them about as well as “going Galt” would work out for any of the people who like to talk about doing it.
Well put. PZ, you’re a gift.
@anarchobyron
Marx theories are interesting and they provide insight, especially in terms of describing how societies in the industrial era worked. However, his prescriptions for how to move society along/ideal society are fatally flawed because of the LTV is fundamentally wrong. Marx requires the LVT to work in order to spin out the following central doctrines:
1. Commodity fetishism
2. How the relations of capital are inherently exploit workers.
3. the justification of communal ownership of the means of productions.
Without LTV Marx can not get any of those off the ground and as such his position is a nonstarter. If you have a way of spinning out, say, a Marxist notion of exploitation without the LTV I’m all ears.
Now as for why the LTV is wrong, as far as I know no one has been able to solve the transformation problem, nor how to handle cases in a person is clear laboring but also clearly not adding value; to wit, taking a sledge hammer of Michelangelo’s David. Nor has the great contradiction been solved, i.e. labor intensive industries should have higher profits, but don’t.
Regardless of that, I am not an economist; I am a philosopher (literally, that’s my academic background) and as such I am going to give great weight to what economist say on this point. At this moment the denominate theory is marginalism (an offshoot of the subjective theory of value) and the LTV is a bad joke, dismissed by most economists as the economic version of intelligent design.
I skimmed your links, they seem to be standard apologia.
and for the record, the labor theory of value falls out of Locke’s Labor theory of property from the 2nd treatise but antecedents go back as far as St. Aquinas. Smith and Ricardo were the first to present a fully formed formal version.
An adult brain weight 2% of the whole body yet receives 20% of its energy. I’d say that the Brain is right to believe itself the oligarchic overlord of the human body.
Transformation problem was actually solved a long time by the TSSI (temporal single systems interpretation) reading of that chapter (9?) of Volume III. Andrew Kliman wrote a book detailing the debate called ‘Reclaiming Marx’s’ capital. Anyway, it’s not a real problem.
PZ:
I second every word of this. Max, I’ve come late to your writing, but I have been enjoying reading. All my best hopes, Max, and good luck.
@anarchobyron
Kliman tries to solve it but unfortunately TSSI is not supported by the text of Das Kapital and Reclaiming Marx’s Capital was painful from that reason. Furthermore, the TSSI is extremely ad hoc should be dismissed out of hand for that reason anyway.
Regardless, let’s me grant that particular problem was solved. Now, address the heart of my post:
At this moment the denominate theory is marginalism (an offshoot of the subjective theory of value) and the LTV is a bad joke, dismissed by most economists as the economic version of intelligent design.
Jake Harban:
I hope this thought occurred to Ayn Rand when she was diagnosed with lung cancer.
The way the labor theory of value treats profits always interested me, because it seemed like Marx accidentally left an opening for them when admitting the whole “replacement cost of capital” factor. If you assume that the workers are providing all of the inputs into production (including capital), or that the replacement cost of capital should only be the exact nominal value of capital invested into, then profits would be parasitic. But if you have to convince others to give you the capital versus other potential uses they might have for it, then profits are inherent in the system – they’re part of the replacement cost of capital.
You’d have to completely reject the idea that any investment spending should be made by individuals or groups on the basis of whether they consider it worthy to do so, and have funding distributed essentially as a grant or bureaucracy-style allocations.
Moggie:
That’s a pretty shit thing to say, especially in a thread which is about a young man with stage IV cancer. Well, if any of you commenting can be arsed to remember that, at least.
“Regardless, let’s me grant that particular problem was solved. Now, address the heart of my post:
At this moment the denominate theory is marginalism (an offshoot of the subjective theory of value) and the LTV is a bad joke, dismissed by most economists as the economic version of intelligent design.”
There’s nothing really to comment on, appeals to authority and ad populum arguments ought to always be met with suspicion and independent thought. Just because X believes Y, it doesn’t follow that Y is true.
Hmm. I always thought the gonads were the royalty. Only the cells in the gonads get to reproduce in a manner that ensures their descendant’s long term survival. Pretty much every other cell is in a lineage that’s going to end up extinct, and they spend their entire lives supporting the gonads. Granted, when all the cells are near identical clones, that’s not a big distinction evolution-wise. On the other hand, cancerous cells highlight quite dramatically that near identical clones doesn’t mean identical clones.
While I used to buy the point above, I cannot accept it anymore.
Religion, or lack thereof, seems to have little or no correlation with social justice or “blinding communities”.
It’s an exaggeration to say it always does that, but there’s no mention of “social justice” in there. Follow on to the next sentence:
It’s blinding and corrupting, as well as reactionary and backward, in terms of our epistemic relationships with the world. It makes it more difficult for people to rationally understand the world around them and engage with it appropriately. When religions have been less influential at certain times and places, we’ve been less hindered by them and have been able to make some progress.
That’s what you’re saying you don’t accept. Why?
The effects this has on other aspects of culture, more specifically our concepts of justice, are not always direct or obvious, nor are they always negative, but they are real. So, we could argue about the extent of that too, but they are two different claims that we shouldn’t conflate. Religious beliefs are false and often very badly reasoned, and that by itself inhibits various kinds of progress in a culture. Yes or no?
If that can also prevent or stifle non-religious thought in a culture, because people aren’t in isolation and do influence one another (including but not limited to silencing dissent, coercion, murder, etc.), you would expect to see things like atheists being irrational shitheads who support injustice — because religion negatively influences them in all sorts of ways. They could all also have other sources, or their own independent sources, for bad ideas, but it’s not like you must reject the existence of the negative effects of religion on this basis. Saying that the correlation is low (not clear at all that it actually is) thus doesn’t tell me much, about what sort of causal story you would accept and what you wouldn’t accept.
@amused #9:
But isn’t the problem in your example the fact that Soviet Russia never reached that stage? It got stuck in the authoritarian suppression-of-counter-revolution stage (forgive my ignorance; I forget the correct term) and, mostly thanks to Stalin, turned into what was effectively a succession of dictatorships.
Amused:
I want to add to what Rich Woods said, although I agree with that point too. I don’t care much about Marxism, nor I do I want to defend it really, so please take this as it is. I’d say Rawls is much more useful and more coherent, if I had to pick just one.
I don’t see why the idea would need to be that somebody has to determine what your abilities are. You just do what you can. Nobody decides what you can do. There just are things you can do. The theory (however faulty) is that value does come from each that way, not laying out some kind of an organizational structure or decision-making process about whatever that happens to be. It’s not like, if you don’t have the ability produce something, any sort of decision from elsewhere that you do have that ability could override that. You still don’t in fact have that ability.
This is a much harder one, but it should (not that Marx thought anything like this) be easy enough to understand that similarly, individuals and their societies do in fact have certain needs. Somebody else deciding that you don’t “really” need it could be mistaken — you still do really need it, and they are wrong about that. You might be mistaken about what your own actual needs are too. That’s unavoidable, no matter what sort of realistic approach we take about it.
But this doesn’t argue against the basic idea that people do have abilities and needs, or against the idea that political systems ought to reflect that fact in some way or another. I mean you wouldn’t want to say that shouldn’t even talk about about them, right? What should we say about them, at the most general level?
I’d agree that, like any other slogan, it’s nowhere near enough to be usefully applied to making very many concrete and specific choices. It’s certainly not holy scripture, given to us by the prophet Marx, carved in stone, and isn’t susceptible to further criticism or analysis. I think it’s fairer to think of it as more like generic abstract principle, or a guideline within which you can make more specific political decisions, and ask whether it is valid at that level. Okay, it leaves lots of things open to interpretation, sometimes very bad interpretations… but is that really a problem with the theory itself? Exactly how rigid do you think it should’ve been?
You’re implicitly assuming here that some don’t get to ask and answer those kinds of questions. Why assume that? Why can’t everyone? Nowhere in the slogan does it say “this person/group can ask such things but nobody else can” or anything like that. You’re not arguing with Marxism here — you could make the same comments about any ethical claim whatsoever, if doesn’t bother to specify a “who” that can make the decisions. That doesn’t mean those claims are somehow faulty or useless. Those are just a different set of questions.
I don’t agree here. I think you’re more than a little confused if you believe a political philosophy is going to give you definite answers about every last detail of public policy. That’s not what they are for. You sometimes just have to try out different things, to see what works and what doesn’t, at giving you the kinds of results you were looking to get from your political system. That’s what day-to-day politics and government is for. Stating in advance what must work based on first principles, before having tried anything or getting any evidence that those can be properly applied in this specific way in this specific situation, is not an approach that we should’ve considered reliable in the first place.
Besides, capitalist countries, or those in “the West” or for that matter at any place in history, have been just as susceptible to this (and active in trying to sort out the problems however they can) as any others have been. We all have our fair share of unexamined dogmas and our hot-button issues about the nit-picky details. (I mean, look at the mess that is the US political landscape for just a small taste of that. What did the founding fathers think, or how do we interpret the 2nd amendment?) It’s certainly not a criticism that you could apply uniquely to Marxism, if you’re going to be criticizing any political or moral philosophies for doing something they’re usually not intended to do.
I’ve never understood where the saying “There are no atheists in foxholes.” came from. If you read any World War I literature, there were a lot of people in foxholes (and trenches) who lost their faith having watched what was happening around them. I gather others increased their faith as religious thought can provide a certain kind of strength in the face of serious horrors. The saying should probably run: “There are no agnostics in foxholes.”
Jeff L:
My gonads are in a specimen jar somewhere, thus making them quite unnecessary to my survival. The brain still wears the crown. Pun intended.
Anarcho-syndicalism (often considered the only thing left of the Sparts, but truly beyond left v. right) posits that ALL forms of governance, from the far right to the far left, exist for only one purpose: to protect, preserve, and enhance the privileges of their elites. Hard to argue with the premise. And the two attempts at anarcho-syndicalism in history (Paraguay in the mid-19th century and the autonomous Zapatista communities in Mexico today) fared pretty well, except for two functions: internal policing and external defense. In the former, not much was needed, in that crime was almost non-existent. In the latter, oooops — nothing a bully next door hates more than a happy neighbor. Since the 1870s, capitalism has tried to equate anarchism with chaos, as opposed to anti-capitalist…..and has largely succeeded in the public’s mind. Anarchism = crazy, rather than anarchism = not believing that the guys bossing you around have your best interests in mind.
But I find the cancer metaphor to be REALLY interesting to play with here. And not that it’s a funny sort of interesting. Cancer sucks. Most of my family has it or has died from it or will die from it. But I’d hate to call cancer the anarchy. I’d rather see it as the governance, looking out for its elites, while the anarchy is anything that says FUCK YOU to it.
To clarify ambiguous grammar, heh heh, there be virtually nothing left of the Sparts, but what I meant was “to the Left” of the Sparts.
There is a Clive Barker short story called “The Body Politic”, in one of his “Books of Blood” collections of short stories, that takes that conceit of “hey, what would happen if the parts of our bodies decided they weren’t taking orders off our brains no more?” and runs with it in ways only Clive Barker can…
Yeah, yeah. Tell it to Henrietta Lacks’ cervical cells. You still can, you know. They’re surviving nicely in labs around the world and have arguably spawned a new species. (Sadly, Ms. Lacks is not still around.)
Cancer isn´t marxism, cancer is libertarianism.
Yes. Rejecting any regulation, even though the sustainability of the system as a whole – whose resources you use – depends on regulation and will eventually fail without it.
@kaleberg #30:
I could make a few guesses, but they’d only be guesses. I’d much prefer to quote the best rebuttal I’ve heard when that flaky aphorism has been trotted out as an attack on atheism: “There are no atheists in the foxholes because the atheists are in the slit trenches. A slit trench provides better cover than does a foxhole plus prayer.”