Talk:The Meaning of Socialism

Needed: An outline of this book.
It is still an important book after forty years of devastation caused market fundamentalism. Michael Luntley critiques the notion that the absolute rule of profit seeking is a reliable guide to how an economy can best serve society.

A toothless Labour Party may well be inspired to effective opposition by being reminded of dangers when the "impersonal market" guides social policies.

In terms of analytic sociology, Chapter 3, Section 6 makes a fundamentally important point: Any argument, if pursued to its logical limits reaches a "rock-bottom" position where no logical/scientific justification can be given. Luntley gives the example of the factual improvability, at rock-bottom, of the existence of the external world (p.97, para.2). The significance of this statement lies in validating the claim that an individual's subjective world has equal reality-status with that of the so called objective world.

Janosabel (talk) 13:45, 23 November 2022 (UTC)

Questions are more important than answers
Ask good questions and you are likely to get good answers What are good questions? This meta question is answered here in the context of the problems that beset social sciences: Why are the social sciences so deficient in finding solutions to social problems when compared to the “hard” sciences like engineering or architecture...?

The book The Meaning of Socialism by Michael Luntley may be able to give the best answer to this question. The answer in summary may even be in the first section of Chapter 3, Criticising Traditions: solving the problem in social theory, 1. A tale of two problems. [my addition: and two realities: objective and subjective]


 * Apologies if this topic does not seem to fit here. I think it does, since the content was triggered by reading the first section of Chapter 3 and it may provoke some interesting talk.

Janosabel (talk) 21:35, 30 November 2022 (UTC)