Discussion on World Socialist Web Site 30 comments

Facebook censors WSWS article exposing “Wuhan lab” conspira…

arandomposter33Carolyn Zaremba an hour agoRemoved

The ban on posts from Democratic Power on the WSWS, blamed entirely on a Disqus algorithm, presents socialists with an urgent problem. How can socialists combat censorship with leaders who do not take a strong stance against the censorship of their own movement? Socialists who take the principles of the Fourth International seriously cannot accept leaders that do not actually oppose censorship. Their weakness makes them a very risky liability as leaders of a movement that must stand united against censorship.

arandomposter33OL an hour agoRemoved

This seems to be the only defense of the WSWS decision to censor Democratic Power while shifting blame on to Disqus. We cannot accept the absence of an appeals process for moderation decisions and the absence of any public front page apologies when the facts prove that abuse of moderation privileges in fact led to censorship of opposition views. Without a commitment from the party to democracy for its membership, what hope does it have in a struggle for democracy against the power of large corporations? This internal weakness sabotages the struggle of the socialist movement to combat censorship, precisely when the threat is greatest.

arandomposter33Ledson an hour agoRemoved

The WSWS and Disqus have participated in upholding the same censorship regime they hypocritically criticize. The WSWS must publicly apologize for its censorship of the Democratic Power faction.

arandomposter33Carlos Delgado an hour agoRemoved

Reading this comment convinces me that a very urgent and strong campaign must confront the WSWS over its censorship of Democratic Power. The WSWS goes on carelessly blaming disqus algorithms. My response to the “censored” article has been censored by the WSWS. Not only should the WSWS restore the comment, it should also issue a public apology for allowing its censorship of Democratic Power to go on for so long.

Discussion on World Socialist Web Site 31 comments

Washington Post’s “Wuhan Lab” conspiracy theory stands exposed

arandomposter33 a day agoRemoved

The writer quotes as its authority, “National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases Director Anthony Fauci,” who declared, “A number of very qualified evolutionary biologists have said that everything about the stepwise evolution over time strongly indicates that it evolved in nature and then jumped species.”

Dr. Fauci, appointed to his position during the Reagan Administration, is one of the highest paid federal government employees in the U.S. earning more than the vice president or the chief justice. A royal of sorts, holding his position for 37 years, his scientific opinion represents just that, an opinion.

Marx dealt with a similar problem when he confronted the Hegelians, especially the Left or Young Hegelians. In the German Ideology, he explained that the ruling class had control over the economic levers of society and this gave them power over the dominant ideology while suppressing the ideas of the servant, peasant, or working classes. The Left Hegelians, like the writer of the article, sought to bring about liberal reforms, increased freedom and a more responsive authority, but they did this through attacks on religion, Christianity and the Catholic Church especially, as the source of the power of the ruling class. If they could convince the people to abandon Christianity, then the ruling class would lose all its influence.

Marx broke from this type of thinking and in that way saved the essence of Hegel’s philosophy from the vulgar materialism of the Young Hegelians. In doing so, Marx stood up to the pre-eminent Faucis of his day in the field of philosophy. Rather than accept the US Department of Health or the UN’s World Health Organization as bearers of the highest truth and greatest ideal, as Hegel’s followers would do, Marx would expose them to an even more thorough criticism as the representatives of the various competing ruling classes. This led him not towards an acceptance of Christian values but an appreciation of their contribution to human progress. Virology and the study of infectious diseases might certainly have brought progress in controlling certain diseases, but under the control of the ruling class, this study had always the end of defending and perpetuating their rule.

As Marx wrote in the German Ideology:
“The ideas of the ruling class are in every epoch the ruling ideas, i.e. the class which is the ruling material force of society, is at the same time its ruling intellectual force. The class which has the means of material production at its disposal, has control at the same time over the means of mental production, so that thereby, generally speaking, the ideas of those who lack the means of mental production are subject to it.”

Marx states very clearly here that those who lack the means to produce peer-reviewed scientific papers must be subject to those who do. If we merely accept this ruling intellectual force, we must also accept the ruling material force, and furthermore the armed forces of the police and military. Every one of their decisions must also then receive our support since we cannot prove in their courts, laboratories, and publications that they are wrong, since those means of mental production belong to them.

In the next statement, Marx explains the inner weakness or emptiness of this intellectual force:

“The ruling ideas are nothing more than the ideal expression of the dominant material relationships, the dominant material relationships grasped as ideas; hence of the relationships which make the one class the ruling one, therefore, the ideas of its dominance.”

The ruling ideas are only the ideas which grasp their own dominance. They do not represent material discoveries about the external world but the continuous reaffirmation of their own power. To a revolutionary, this must immediately appear dull and tiresome. To fight with their ideas or to accept them blindly both lead to a New Hegelian idealism which overlooks their material interests as a ruling class.