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title: 'stub-of-political-thesis-intro'
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+++ date = "2018-12-14T14:07:32Z" title = "My Attempt to Write a
Political Introduction to My Thesis" +++
The purpose of this thesis is to make an intervention into the world
socialist movement. I aim to speak to the socialist movement as a whole,
not just to the centre of imperialism, but also to the oppressed nations
in the periphery of the global imperialist system. This thesis aims to
start a discussion in the left as it begins its effort to rebuild and
orient itself to the masses of working people in the twenty-first
century. I argue that:
A. Humans can have correct beliefs about moral propositions, and that
they can and do act in morally correct ways. In other words, moral
realism is correct.
In this thesis I will be completely agnostic about what kinds of systems
of morality, or what particular moral propositions are correct. In this
thesis I am merely attempting to construct an ontology that proves moral
realism is true in general. The intended purpose of the ontology
developed in this thesis is to then go on to further prove in some later
project that moral absolutism and moral universalism are correct. The
former is the philosophical position that all actions may be evaluated
as right or wrong, and the latter is the ethical view that the morality
of actions is independent of any culture or custom.
I further argue that:
B. All that metaphysically exists is the world pictured by modern
science. This includes the contemporary 'hard sciences', like
physics, biology, chemistry, neuro-cognitive science, etc. It also
includes the 'soft' sciences, such as social sciences like political
science, history, anthropology, and sociology. That is to say, the
correct picture of the world for which I argue is a naturalist one.
I assert strictly that only 'nature' exists.
The ontology which I construct in this thesis I call 'dialectical
naturalism'. Another way of expressing the position I take in this
thesis is 'naturalistic moral realism'. My theory is a metaphysical one,
as well as a political one. I want to contribute to the physical
awakening of the twenty-first century socialist movement by trying to
stimulate (or provoke, or invite...) its philosophical awakening. Murray
Bookchin too called the philosophical component of his theory of
Communalism "Dialectical Naturalism". This thesis presents a philosophy
that is broadly congruent with Bookchin, except that it takes off from a
completely different starting point. I discovered Bookchin's dialectical
naturalism too late in order to incorporate his discoveries and
conclusions. Nevertheless I feel the objective conditions of the
socialist struggle are proving his philosophy of dialectical naturalism
correct---and this is why I developed a very similar system using
completely different tools, and without any knowledge of Bookchin at all
at the time. My theory is metaphysical because I do not wish to simply
argue that the human world takes itself to be a certain way merely
discursively, but that the universe is a certain way whether particular
individual humans believe it or not.
Let me explain why I believe it is necessary to adopt a strongly
metaphysical theory about the nature of human morality.
The late 1970s saw the beginning of the political assault from the
capitalist ruling class, which is called 'neoliberalism'. Then, in the
early 1990s, the Soviet bloc, and the Soviet Union, collapsed. These two
historical events brought about a massive restructuring of the balance
of global class forces. The economic and political power of capital
massively increased, at the expense of the power the global working
class had established since the end of the second world war. This
produced a massive degeneration in the political progressiveness of the
philosophical and political work that was produced in universities. I
believe there is a direct chain of causation between the onset of
neoliberalism, and the emergence of philosophical movements such as
post-modernism, post- structuralism, post-Marxism, and post- and
anti-humanism.
I believe that post-modernist philosophy has a dominant position in the
moral and political philosophy curriculum for political activists going
through university. All of these theories are strongly relativistic, at
best non-naturalist, and strongly anti-metaphysical. These philosophies
argue that the concepts of Truth and Objectivity in the practical world
of politics are strongly associated with totalitarianism,
authoritarianism, and mass genocide. Post-modernism argues that there is
no such thing as objective political economic conditions. It further
holds that broad concepts such as Truth are to be treated in strongly
relativistic ways. In other words, there are no such things which are
'universally good' for humans. Post-modernism rejects the idea that the
meaning of history can be one way or another, or that history
'progresses' anywhere.
Post-modernism also only treats of meaning in human social intercourse
as a 'discourse'---mere verbalisms. By 'verbalism' I mean the same thing
as Alasdair Macintyre when he talks about emotivistic assertions.
Post-modernism easily agrees with emotivism when it claims that human
moral propositions might appear to be entities that establish objective
moral facts, but in fact have the same ontological status as cheering on
or booing at a football team: "Yay! To the privatisation of public
services!", "Boo! To government corruption!" The name for this position
in moral philosophy is 'moral anti-realism'. The political argument that
post-modernism makes for 'discourse' is that moral anti-realism is more
democratic. Post-modernism argues that attempting to establish the
existence of objectively true moral facts leads to totalitarian
political systems. If we do away with all talk of good things which are
objectively correct, then we are able to have a kinder, more
pluralistic, and open society. But I argue that moral anti-realism
collapses into moral nihilism. I suppose post-modernism is attempting to
argue for what Richard Rorty called 'ironism'. Ironism is the idea that
no-one really truly knows if their political convictions are correct,
and that one is constantly going through a process of criticising and
replacing their political convictions with ones that they think might be
better. This is a commonplace in Western society. Supposedly everyone is
'always learning how to be a better activist', and 'is never really
finished learning how to be a good activist'. I argue that this attitude
to political activity is incredibly dangerous.
It leads to the conclusion that nothing is actually really morally
correct, and that we're always bumbling along in political discussions,
and that our political beliefs and arguments are like the way we might
tolerate someone's distaste for capsicum, or delight for certain kinds
of weather.