Out of sheer curiosity

[Holden Caulfield]

Do you subscribe to the whole 'dialectics' thing?

Also it would be a hoot if you gave your ideology as well.

cheers,

Holden

[Holden Caulfield]

I'll go first, im not a follower of this particular religion, partly because when actually thought about it doesn't make sense to a materialist like myself.

[Rosa Lichtenstein]

You might want to change the wording to 'Do you accept dialectical materialism?' since your question is heavily biased.

For example, comrades who accept dialectical materialism do not see it as mystical, so naturally they are going to tick 'No', or abstain.

If you want an accurate response, you need to make your question neutral.

[LOLseph Stalin]

I don't really understand it and since you asked, I'm a Trot.

[Holden Caulfield]

You might want to change the wording to 'Do you accept dialectical materialism?' since your question is heavily biased.

For example, comrades who accept dialectical materialism do not see it as mystical, so naturally they are going to tick 'No', or abstain.

If you want an accurate response, you need to make your question neutral. i was only kidding with the question, but if people are so humorless they need it changed then the mods can do their thang.

[Holden Caulfield]

What the hell? Why are dialectics described as mystical? This poll is not impartial.
i was only kidding with the question, but if people are so humorless they need it changed then the mods can do their thang. ;)

[Decolonize The Left]

I voted I don't even understand it because the whole thing makes absolutely no sense. It's totally detached from material reality and makes attempting to understand the conditions of the working-class very difficult.

- August

[LOLseph Stalin]

i was only kidding with the question, but if people are so humorless they need it changed then the mods can do their thang.

Apperently so. What happened to light-hearted humor?

[Vahanian]

Ive tried to understand them but i just cant get it


Apperently so. What happened to light-hearted humor?

the Stalinists purged it

[Rosa Lichtenstein]

Zero King:


The best way to actually understand dialectics is to read Marxist literature, preferably by Engels, Marx and Lenin. Through that you will understand dialectics and how they are used. To start off though, I would recommend the "ABC of dialectical materialism" by Leon Trotsky, found at marxists.org (for some reason it won't let me give the direct link).

Unfortunately, as many threads here show, this theory makes no sense at all.

I have listed these threads here:

http://homepage.ntlworld.com/rosa.l/RevLeft.htm

Alternatively, you can simply check this out:

http://www.revleft.com/vb/nti-dialectics-made-t103349/index.html

[Louise Michel]

i was only kidding with the question, but if people are so humorless they need it changed then the mods can do their thang.

You should never make jokes in public. You never know who's listening! Be safe, be paranoid.

[commyrebel]

I'll go first, im not a follower of this particular religion, partly because when actually thought about it doesn't make sense to a materialist like myself. its not a religion its a philosophy

[LOLseph Stalin]

its not a religion its a philosophy

We've been over this. It was meant as a joke.

[JimmyJazz]

I voted "I don't understand it", but I'm sure by now that I don't understand it because it doesn't make sense.

So, nope.

[Dooga Aetrus Blackrazor]

According to Wikipedia:


Everything is transient and finite, existing in the medium of time (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Time) (this idea is not accepted by all dialecticians).
Everything is made out of opposing forces/opposing sides (contradictions).
Gradual changes lead to turning points, where one force overcomes the other (quantitative change leads to qualitative change).
Change moves in 3D spirals not 2D circles. (Sometimes referred to as "negation of the negation")

Dialectical materialism with respect to Marx. Looking at everything with the perspective of class struggle is a way of looking at things. It doesn't necessarily mean everything that happens is based on class struggle. I accept or deny specific Marxist ideas without adopting this principle so I just don't see any reason to get into it.

As for dialectic in general, I don't really know much about it. Based on the four points, I would say this:

1. I would disagree.
2. Seems true.
3. Seems true.
4. Change moves in 4D so I disagree there, too.

[Rosa Lichtenstein]

Dooga, if this is so:


Change moves in 4D so I disagree there, too.

then change would in fact be impossible -- or rather, change would merely represent our subjective view of successive orthogonal hyperplane slices through a four-dimensional manifold, but it would not be 'objective'.

In 4D all points in the manifold of space-time coexist, and since change requires the passage pf time, which does not really happen in 4D, there can be no change.

This is one reason why soviet philosophers rejected Relativity as a physical theory, and regarded it as merely a mathematical model.

[black magick hustla]

i changed the title of the poll. i dont really care if they get offended or not but i think it would be more effective like this.

i voted no. i mean i dont really understand it but not because of ignorance but because its nonsense and not even the master dialecticians understand themselves

[Rosa Lichtenstein]

Marmot, you seem to have mis-spelt 'subscribe'.

[apathy maybe]

According to Wikipedia:


Everything is transient and finite, existing in the medium of time (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Time) (this idea is not accepted by all dialecticians).
Everything is made out of opposing forces/opposing sides (contradictions).
Gradual changes lead to turning points, where one force overcomes the other (quantitative change leads to qualitative change).
Change moves in 3D spirals not 2D circles. (Sometimes referred to as "negation of the negation")

Dialectical materialism with respect to Marx. Looking at everything with the perspective of class struggle is a way of looking at things. It doesn't necessarily mean everything that happens is based on class struggle. I accept or deny specific Marxist ideas without adopting this principle so I just don't see any reason to get into it.

As for dialectic in general, I don't really know much about it. Based on the four points, I would say this:

1. I would disagree.
2. Seems true.
3. Seems true.
4. Change moves in 4D so I disagree there, too.
Based on the definition here, I would have to say that I don't support it, and I think it is a crock of shit. I used to (when I was young and stupid) think that everything had an opposite. Except, that well, not everything does.
What is the opposite of "roller skates"? "Non-roller skates"? That doesn't make sense.

As for change moving in spirals (rather than circles :lol:), seems like a religious idea, don't Hindus think something like that? More to the point, to accept this idea, you would have to accept it without evidence. Meh, etc.

[Rosa Lichtenstein]

AM:


don't Hindus think something like that? More to the point, to accept this idea, you would have to accept it without evidence. Meh, etc.

In fact, the majority of mystics do.

You will find most of dialectics here, too:

http://www.gnostic.org/kybalionhtm/kybalion.htm

The Kybalion is the third most sacred book of Hermeticism.

http://www.marxists.org/reference/subject/philosophy/works/en/magee.htm

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hermeticism

[Hit The North]

According to Wikipedia:


Everything is transient and finite, existing in the medium of time (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Time) (this idea is not accepted by all dialecticians).
Everything is made out of opposing forces/opposing sides (contradictions).
Gradual changes lead to turning points, where one force overcomes the other (quantitative change leads to qualitative change).
Change moves in 3D spirals not 2D circles. (Sometimes referred to as "negation of the negation")

Dialectical materialism with respect to Marx. Looking at everything with the perspective of class struggle is a way of looking at things. It doesn't necessarily mean everything that happens is based on class struggle. I accept or deny specific Marxist ideas without adopting this principle so I just don't see any reason to get into it.

As for dialectic in general, I don't really know much about it. Based on the four points, I would say this:

1. I would disagree.
2. Seems true.
3. Seems true.
4. Change moves in 4D so I disagree there, too.

Strangely, the first proposition that you reject is the only one I would endorse. Of course "everything" exists in time and has a history, whether we're discussing nature or human society.

The second proposition is obviously untrue when transposed to the world of objects; although there is evidence that Marx employed it to make sense of motion, comparing the circulation of commodities with the ellipse in Das Kapital (page 198, Penguin Classics edition); and, of course, his statements about the contradictory interactions between forces and relations of production which underpins the movement of human history.

The third proposition is true in some circumstances, but not a universal law.

The fourth proposition is analogical rather than actual and is counterposed to earlier propsoitions that history moves in circles (of eternal return) or a progressive straight line (as in the thinking of some Enlightenment thinkers).

I've voted 'no' on the basis that the question is asking me to endorse a metaphysical system of thought called 'dialectical materialism' which is applicable at all times and in all circumstances, to all things. This, as Rosa has pointed out in various places, goes against the spirit of Marx's method.

[Rosa Lichtenstein]

BTB:


Strangely, the first proposition that you reject is the only one I would endorse. Of course "everything" exists in time and has a history, whether we're discussing nature or human society.

Even though it is aprioristic and dogmatic, and violates these declarations:


"Finally, for me there could be no question of superimposing the laws of dialectics on nature but of discovering them in it and developing them from it." [Engels (1976) Anti-Duhring, p.13. Bold emphasis added.]

"All three are developed by Hegel in his idealist fashion as mere laws of thought: the first, in the first part of his Logic, in the Doctrine of Being; the second fills the whole of the second and by far the most important part of his Logic, the Doctrine of Essence; finally the third figures as the fundamental law for the construction of the whole system. The mistake lies in the fact that these laws are foisted on nature and history as laws of thought, and not deduced from them. This is the source of the whole forced and often outrageous treatment; the universe, willy-nilly, is made out to be arranged in accordance with a system of thought which itself is only the product of a definite stage of evolution of human thought." [Engels (1954) Dialectics of Natur, p.62. Bold emphasis alone added.]

"We all agree that in every field of science, in natural and historical science, one must proceed from the given facts, in natural science therefore from the various material forms of motion of matter; that therefore in theoretical natural science too the interconnections are not to be built into the facts but to be discovered in them, and when discovered to be verified as far as possible by experiment.

"Just as little can it be a question of maintaining the dogmatic content of the Hegelian system as it was preached by the Berlin Hegelians of the older and younger line." [Ibid., p.47.]

"The general results of the investigation of the world are obtained at the end of this investigation, hence are not principles, points of departure, but results, conclusions. To construct the latter in one's head, take them as the basis from which to start, and then reconstruct the world from them in one's head is ideology, an ideology which tainted every species of materialism hitherto existing.... As Dühring proceeds from "principles" instead of facts he is an ideologist, and can screen his being one only by formulating his propositions in such general and vacuous terms that they appear axiomatic, flat. Moreover, nothing can be concluded from them; one can only read something into them...." [Marx and Engels (1987), Collected Works Volume 25, p.597.]

"[The laws of dialectics] are not, as Marx and Engels were quick to insist, a substitute for the difficult empirical task of tracing the development of real contradictions, not a suprahistorical master key whose only advantage is to turn up when no real historical knowledge is available." [Rees (1998) The Algebra of Revolution, p.9.]

"'[The dialectic is not a] magic master key for all questions.' The dialectic is not a calculator into which it is possible to punch the problem and allow it to compute the solution. This would be an idealist method. A materialist dialectic must grow from a patient, empirical examination of the facts and not be imposed on them…." [Ibid., p.271. Bold emphasis added.]

"The dialectic does not liberate the investigator from painstaking study of the facts, quite the contrary: it requires it." [Trotsky (1986), p.92. Bold emphasis added]

"Dialectics and materialism are the basic elements in the Marxist cognition of the world. But this does not mean at all that they can be applied to any sphere of knowledge, like an ever ready master key. Dialectics cannot be imposed on facts; it has to be deduced from facts, from their nature and development…." [Trotsky (1973) Problems of Everyday Life, p.233. Bold emphasis added.]

"Whenever any Marxist attempted to transmute the theory of Marx into a universal master key and ignore all other spheres of learning, Vladimir Ilyich would rebuke him with the expressive phrase 'Komchvanstvo' ('communist swagger')." [Ibid., p.221.]

"A consistent materialism cannot proceed from principles which are validated by appeal to abstract reason, intuition, self-evidence or some other subjective or purely theoretical source. Idealisms may do this. But the materialist philosophy has to be based upon evidence taken from objective material sources and verified by demonstration in practice...." [Novack (1965) The Origin of Materialism, p.17. Bold emphasis added.]

"Our party philosophy, then, has a right to lay claim to truth. For it is the only philosophy which is based on a standpoint which demands that we should always seek to understand things just as they are…without disguises and without fantasy….

"Marxism, therefore, seeks to base our ideas of things on nothing but the actual investigation of them, arising from and tested by experience and practice. It does not invent a 'system' as previous philosophers have done, and then try to make everything fit into it…." [Cornforth (1976) Materialism and the Dialectical Method, pp.14-15. Bold emphases added.]

If you agree with the above, you will find you have to reject item (1), too.

[Hit The North]

Item 1 is a proposition which obviously needs to be confirmed or disconfirmed through enquiry. Evidence from the social sciences demonstrates that human society is subject to change and variation through time. Natural science demonstrates the same about nature. Otherwise how could we talk about a "natural history"?

[Rosa Lichtenstein]

BTB:


Item 1 is a proposition which obviously needs to be confirmed or disconfirmed through enquiry. Evidence from the social sciences demonstrates that human society is subject to change and variation through time. Natural science demonstrates the same about nature. Otherwise how could we talk about a "natural history"?

In fact, it is no less dogmatic than the many other things dialecticians say:


Everything is transient and finite, existing in the medium of time.

How do you propose to 'verify' this?

How do you suggest we 'get outside' of time to see if we have missed something?

How do you propose to last forever to see if everything is 'finite' and 'transient'?

But, this does not stop dialecticians treating this thesis as if it were true.

In fact, these ideas were invented by ruling-class mystics (like Heraclitus and Hegel) who derived them from a few 'thought experiments' long before any evidence to speak of was available. Dialecticians just copied these doctrines, presenting us with little or no evidence to back them up. And that is how things still stand today.

This is just how I pictured things in an earlier post:


1) The founders of this quasi-religion weren't workers; they came from a class that educated their children in the classics and in philosophy. This tradition taught that behind appearances there is a hidden world, accessible to thought alone, which is more real than the material universe we see around us.

This way of seeing things was invented by ideologues of the ruling class, who viewed reality this way. They invented it because if you belong to, benefit from or help run a society which is based on gross inequality, oppression and exploitation, you can keep order in several ways.

The first and most obvious way is through violence. This will work for a time, but it is not only fraught with danger, it is costly and it stifles innovation (among other things).

Another way is to persuade the majority (or a significant section of "opinion formers" and administrators, at least) that the present order either works for their benefit, is ordained of the 'gods', or that it is 'natural' and cannot be fought, reformed or negotiated with.

Hence, a world-view is necessary for the ruling-class to carry on ruling in the same old way. While the content of this ruling ideology may have changed with each change in the mode of production, its form has remained largely the same for thousands of years: Ultimate Truth is ascertainable by thought alone, and it can therefore be imposed on reality dogmatically.

So, these non-worker founders of our movement, who had been educated to believe there was this hidden world that governed everything, looked for principles in that invisible world that told them that change was inevitable, and part of the cosmic order. Enter dialectics, courtesy of the dogmatic ideas of a ruling-class mystic called Hegel.

2) That allowed the founders of this quasi-religion to think of themselves as special, as prophets of the new order, which workers, alas, could not quite grasp because of their defective education and reliance on ordinary language and 'common sense'.

Fortunately, history had predisposed these prophets to ascertain the truth about reality for them, which meant they were their 'naturally-ordained' leaders. That in turn meant these 'leaders' were also teachers of the 'ignorant masses', who could thus legitimately substitute themselves for the unwashed majority -- in 'their own interests', you understand, since the masses were too caught up in 'commodity fetishism' to see the truth for themselves.

And that is why DM is a world-view.

It is also why dialecticians cling on to this theory like grim death (and become very emotional (and abusive!) when it is attacked by yours truly), since it provides them with a source of consolation that, despite outward appearances to the contrary, and because this hidden world tells them that dialectical Marxism will one day be a success, everything is in fact peachy, and nothing in the core theory needs changing -- in spite of the fact that that core theory says everything changes! Hence, it is ossified into a dogma, and imposed on reality. A rather nice unity of opposites for you to ponder.

So, this 'theory' insulates the militant mind from the facts.

In that case:

Dialectics is the sigh of the depressed dialectician, the heart of a heartless world. It is the opiate of the party. The abolition of dialectics as the illusory happiness of the party hack is required for their real happiness. The demand to give up the illusion about its condition is the demand to give up a condition which needs illusions.

Unfortunately, these sad characters will need (materialist) workers to rescue them from themselves.

[Dooga Aetrus Blackrazor]

Dooga, if this is so:



then change would in fact be impossible -- or rather, change would merely represent our subjective view of successive orthogonal hyperplane slices through a four-dimensional manifold, but it would not be 'objective'.

In 4D all points in the manifold of space-time coexist, and since change requires the passage pf time, which does not really happen in 4D, there can be no change.

This is one reason why soviet philosophers rejected Relativity as a physical theory, and regarded it as merely a mathematical model.

It's not how we currently think of things, but I have difficulty considering how it can be dismissed. It seems to solve questions of identity rather accurately.

[Rosa Lichtenstein]

Dooga:


It's not how we currently think of things, but I have difficulty considering how it can be dismissed. It seems to solve questions of identity rather accurately

It is in fact a widely held theory:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eternalism_(philosophy_of_time)

http://philsci-archive.pitt.edu/archive/00002408/01/Petkov-BlockUniverse.pdf

http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/time/#3D4Con

[You'll have to copy and paste the last link into your address bar, since the anonymsier RevLeft uses ignores '#' sub-links.]

[Hit The North]

Rosa

the fact that we cannot step outside of time and last forever, means that for us, as a species, all things are transient and finite.

Or are you proposing that there's such a thing as objective knowledge which is accessible independently of a human perspective?

[apathy maybe]

Or are you proposing that there's such a thing as objective knowledge which is accessible independently of a human perspective?
Ignoring the rest of the argument between the two of you, I'm just going to latch on to this...

I would say that there is such a thing as an objective world. I would also suggest that it isn't accessible by humans (I've read of too many studies on how your brain makes stuff up to believe that it could be). Is it accessible by anyone (including super advanced aliens)? I doubt it. Even super advanced aliens have the same problem that they are inhabiting the same universe, and thus (I don't think) could have objective knowledge of said universe.

But, it doesn't detract from that there is a universe that existed for many (billions of?) years before humans came along, and will probably exist for (billions of?) years after all humans, indeed, all life that has originated on Earth, has long gone.

[Hit The North]

AM:
I would say that there is such a thing as an objective world. Sure, but that's a different proposition to how we can know about it. Moreover, to argue that there is an independent reality separate from human perception falls into the same errors of a-priori dogma Rosa discusses.

[apathy maybe]

AM: Sure, but that's a different proposition to how we can know about it. Moreover, to argue that there is an independent reality separate from human perception falls into the same errors of a-priori dogma Rosa discusses.
Well, I am arguing that no one inside the universe can access the objective world.

And yes, I am dogmatic about arguing that humans aren't special in any way shape or form compared to the rest of the universe. There isn't anything special that makes human observation necessary for the universe to exist.

[Hit The North]

AM:
And yes, I am dogmatic about arguing that humans aren't special in any way shape or form compared to the rest of the universe. There isn't anything special that makes human observation necessary for the universe to exist. I doubt anyone in this thread has argued such an idealist position. Nevertheless that doesn't mean that human beings are not more special than lumps of dung. I'll follow Marx in arguing that human beings have a special relationship to nature which other animals just don't have, however.

[black magick hustla]

the issue of "objective and subjective" reality is a confused issue. To make such a blanket statement it implies we must be outside our minds to make such a judgement. Thus any sort of discussion like this quickly degenerates into nonsense. It is akin to theologians arguing about a god outside space and time when our words and concepts were created in a reality of space and time, thus making the language we know unsuitable for this type of communication.

[black magick hustla]

in short philosophy is garbage

[Rosa Lichtenstein]

BTB:


the fact that we cannot step outside of time and last forever, means that for us, as a species, all things are transient and finite.

In that case, you are confusing our subjective view of things with the way they might really be. Moreover, thesis one says this:


Everything is transient and finite, existing in the medium of time.

It does not say:


For us, everything is transient and finite, existing in the medium of time.

Anyway, confining ourselves to this universe, how do you know that 'everything is finite and transient'?

The most you can say is that 'up to now it seems that all things are transient, etc.'

But not even that is known for certain. For example, protons and electrons do not decay. In fact, as far as we know, Protons last 10^18 times longer than the known universe:


Proton decay has not been observed. There is currently no evidence that proton decay occurs.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Proton_decay

http://pdg.lbl.gov/2008/tables/rpp2008-tab-baryons-N.pdf

http://hyperphysics.phy-astr.gsu.edu/hbase/particles/proton.html

The same is true of electrons and photons:


However, the electron is thought to be stable on theoretical grounds; an electron decaying into a neutrino and photon would mean that electric charge is not conserved.[66] The experimental lower bound for the electron's mean lifetime is 4.6 × 10^26 years, with a 90% confidence interval

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electron

http://hyperphysics.phy-astr.gsu.edu/Hbase/particles/lepton.html#c2


The photon is massless has no electric charge, and does not decay spontaneously in empty space.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Photon


Or are you proposing that there's such a thing as objective knowledge which is accessible independently of a human perspective?

It seems to me that this is precisely what you are proposing.

As for me, I take no stance on this, since to do so would be to advance yet another a priori theseis about reality.

[Rosa Lichtenstein]

AM:


Well, I am arguing that no one inside the universe can access the objective world.

Do you know this as an objective fact?

If so, then at least one human being, namely you, can access objective truth.

If not, then we can ignore this as subjective opinion.

[Hit The North]

Rosa, I have no problem with attaching "up until now" or "as far as we know" to the proposition. Would that then make it a posteriori?

[Rosa Lichtenstein]

BTB:


Rosa, I have no problem with attaching "up until now" or "as far as we know" to the proposition. Would that then make it a posteriori?

Fine, but Engels, Lenin, Plekhanov, Trotsky, and a host of other dialecticians did not do this, and were quite happy to impose their a priori theses on reality (despite saying that this was something they never did).

I suspect you will soon be accused of 'not understanding dialectics'. :lol:

[apathy maybe]

AM:



Do you know this as an objective fact?

If so, then at least one human being, namely you, can access objective truth.

If not, then we can ignore this as subjective opinion.

Of course I don't know it as objective fact. And if you are going to start ignoring subjective opinion, then feel free to ignore everything from everybody, including yourself.

[black magick hustla]

Of course I don't know it as objective fact. And if you are going to start ignoring subjective opinion, then feel free to ignore everything from everybody, including yourself.

how do you know everything is subjective opinion. are you god? can you see from outside and say "yep everything is subjective"?

apathy maybe posted above. Is that subjective? how the hell do you know?

[Rosa Lichtenstein]

AM:


And if you are going to start ignoring subjective opinion, then feel free to ignore everything from everybody, including yourself.

I only ignore those who try to tell us about all of reality, but then when pressed, hide behind banal subjectivism.

[mikelepore]

I have a problem with saying yes or no to whether I agree with an "-ism" where the name is used instead of a specific proposition. Do I agree with Engels' assertion that the polarity of positive and negative electric charges is the same universal law as the polarity of ruling classes and ruled classes? No, I don't agree with that. I think it's a false analogy. If that's not what the forum posters mean by "dialectical", then I don't know what claim is being refered to, until the central thesis is put into words.

[Bilan]

I don't "subscribe" to it, but I think that in some instances Dialectics is good, but I think it was said by Leo in another thread, that it's not a universal theory, and shouldn't be treated as such.
My understanding of it is, however, very elementary compared to a lot of others, but from my understanding of it, in particular, in relation to human society and internal structures, it makes sense.
I'm sure Rosa has written about how this is wrong, but I've not yet found the time, nor the interest (linked mainly to my elementary understanding of Dialectics to want to read a critique of something that I don't know that much about in the first place).

I'm a Marxist, being sucked in by the Communist Left.

[RedAnarchist]

I voted the third option, because I have no idea about even the basics of DM.

[Trystan]

I don't understand it. I've looked at it a little, didn't get it. Something about theses and antitheses becoming syntheses. Meh . . .

My ideology: socialism. Of the libertarian type.

[Rosa Lichtenstein]

Trystan:


Something about theses and antitheses becoming syntheses. Meh . . .

Actually, this has nothing whatsoever to do with dialectics:

http://www.revleft.com/vb/showpost.php?p=707195&postcount=7

[JohnnyC]

I'm currently in process of re-reading Anti-Dühring, last time I read it I paid little attention to dialectics and the first part of the book.Even though I understand basics of dialectical materialism, I still want to read more about it before I start making conclusions and begin reading criticism of it.

[Rosa Lichtenstein]

JohhnyC, then make sure you read these threads, where the dialectical parts of this book by Engels are taken apart:

http://www.revleft.com/vb/nti-dialectics-made-t67725/index.html

http://www.revleft.com/vb/anti-duhring-t80412/index.html

[Incendiarism]

I understand it somewhat, and think it's pretty awesome

I no longer follow any tradition

[JohnnyC]

JohhnyC, then make sure you read these threads, where the dialectical parts of this book by Engels are taken apart:

http://www.revleft.com/vb/nti-dialectics-made-t67725/index.html

http://www.revleft.com/vb/anti-duhring-t80412/index.html

Thanks Rosa, I will.It was actually your criticism of DM in other threads (and on your site), that made me really interested in forming correct and materialistic opinion about it.I think you are doing a great job of making people (anti) DM aware. :)

[Charles Xavier]

If you want to learn more on Dialectical Materialism without conservations being derailed by Rosa, please join in the Dialectical Materialism group.

[Captain Shiny Sides]

I voted no, I don't subscribe to DiaMat.

[Rosa Lichtenstein]

TAII:


If you want to learn more on Dialectical Materialism without conservations being derailed by Rosa, please join in the Dialectical Materialism group.

You are only saying that because you can't respond to my criticism.

[Rebel_Serigan]

Nope, mainly because materialism is just a practice of trying to better yourself through the appearance of wealth or power or whatever. in the end all people will realize that everything is really just everyone's. If someone needs food and you have food do you share it? Of course the right wingers will say no, after all they should get thier won food because it's social darwinism or some other excuse for greed. I have never been any kind of materialist and I never will be. I just keep singing Imagine over in my head until it fades away in a cloud of muzzel smoke.

[black magick hustla]

obvious troll is obvious

[Rosa Lichtenstein]

Rebel Serigan:


Nope, mainly because materialism is just a practice of trying to better yourself through the appearance of wealth or power or whatever. in the end all people will realize that everything is really just everyone's. If someone needs food and you have food do you share it? Of course the right wingers will say no, after all they should get thier won food because it's social darwinism or some other excuse for greed. I have never been any kind of materialist and I never will be. I just keep singing Imagine over in my head until it fades away in a cloud of muzzel smoke.

I think you have confused the technical use of the term 'materialism' with it's everyday use.

When we use the term we do not refer to the desire to acquire material goods, but to the development of humanity in its relation to the material world and the social forms that this throws up.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Historical_materialism

Contrast that with the following:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economic_materialism

[Sickle-A]

I think the dialectics are inarguable-Capitalism must and will inevitably fail. It's the materialism that I take issue with...

[black magick hustla]

what problems do you have with materialism? if you have problems with materialism means that you probably have to depend on more dubious stuff like metaphysics

[Enragé]

as far as i understand it (i think i have a decent grasp), i do agree with it. But maybe that's just because the shit i've read which claims to be dialectic is pretty damn good (even the bourgeois crap is ok).

Ideology: anarchist with trotskyite sympathies.

[PRC-UTE]

I voted yes, and I uphold Marx, Engels, Lenin, and Connolly.

Dialectical reasoning and contradictions are a useful tool in the right situations. See Capital or the German Ideology to get an idea of the useful application of DM.

There's been some good posts explaining the limitations of dialectics. I would like to see more of these constructive criticisms, because it's occurred to me that many comrades claiming to use dialectics have not been criticised by those capable of doing so very often, and so poor quality work has not been checked.

That said, most critiques have been rather weak because they are either meaningless slurs ("mystics"), or critiques using another unstated philosophical tradition as a starting point (one example: saying that dialectics doesn't conform to formal logic or common sense is beside the point) or are highly interpretive readings of Marx that no one familiar with the author will accept. Calling the theory a religion is silly and does those using this slur no favours. Dialectical materialism was a culturally specific critique of other ideologies, first and foremost.

However its given limitations aren't the issue for me as much as the conclusions it points to: contradictions inherit in capitalism leading to its destruction and replacement with socialism.

I don't use dialectics in every situation where formal logic will do, but formal logic is not useful in all areas of life either.

[Rosa Lichtenstein]

PRC:


Dialectical reasoning and contradictions are a useful tool in the right situations. See Capital or the German Ideology to get an idea of the useful application of DM.

Certainly, he used Hegelian jargon in the German Ideology (but these empty phrases do no work there, and can easily be ignored/dropped with no loss of content), and we already know Marx abandoned the serious use of these empty words in Das Kapital. And no wonder -- if dialectics were true, change would be impossible:

http://www.revleft.com/vb/showpost.php?p=1350764&postcount=23

http://www.revleft.com/vb/showpost.php?p=1350765&postcount=24


I would like to see more of these constructive criticisms, because it's occurred to me that many comrades claiming to use dialectics have not been criticised by those capable of doing so very often, and so poor quality work has not been checked.

What's stopping you? If it is indeed of 'poor quality' it should be easy to neutralise.

Or, is it not the case that since not one of you mystics has responded effectively to this 'poor quality work', that it is not so poor after all?


That said, most critiques have been rather weak because they are either meaningless slurs ("mystics"), or critiques using another unstated philosophical tradition as a starting point (one example: saying that dialectics doesn't conform to formal logic or common sense is beside the point) or are highly interpretive readings of Marx that no one familiar with the author will accept. Calling the theory a religion is silly and does those using this slur no favours. Dialectical materialism was a culturally specific critique of other ideologies, first and foremost.

Who has said that dialectics doesn't 'conform to formal logic'?

The problem is that dialecticians make claims about logic that are demonstrably false, and they never back them up with a single reference to a logic text.

And we know why: they are either 1) fibbing, 2) merely copying what they have read in some book or article on dialectics without checking it, 3) or they know no logic themselves --, or all three.

And who has said that dialectics does not conform to 'common sense'?

The problem with you mystics (if I am allowed to use that 'meaningless phrase' for now) is that you have to make stuff up all the time; you certainly cannot handle the truth about your 'theory'.


Dialectical materialism was a culturally specific critique of other ideologies, first and foremost.

And it is rather poor even at that! Unless you know otherwise, of course...


However its given limitations aren't the issue for me as much as the conclusions it points to: contradictions inherit in capitalism leading to its destruction and replacement with socialism.

Despite being asked literally scores of times here at RevLeft, and hundreds of times elsewhere, not one of you can tell us why the things you say are 'contradictions' are indeed contradictions to begin with.

But, the dialectical Holy Books (check out the first link above) tell us that things change because of a 'struggle of opposites', and that they also change into those opposites (and these opposites inevitably turn into each other).

So, if capitalism is to change into socialism, socialism must already exist, or they can't 'struggle' with one another.

But, if socialism already exists, then there is no need for capitalism to change into it! Moreover, us socialists can give up the fight for socialism, since it must already be here (somewhere -- have you looked hard enough for it? Check behind the sofa...).

Alternatively, if all opposites change into one another, then not only must capitalism change into socialism, socialism must change into capitalism!

In that case, why bother being socialists? Capitalism will never end, according to this brilliant 'theory'!!


I don't use dialectics in every situation where formal logic will do, but formal logic is not useful in all areas of life either.

Where have you found formal logic [FL] of any use!? You are making stuff up again, you naughty boy...

Anyway, even if you have used FL, dialectical logic is useful nowhere at all.

Or, if you think otherwise, please be the first person at RevLeft (despite us materialist frequently asking for an example, just one!) to tell us where and how it has any practical use at all.

[Hyacinth]

I voted "I don't even understand it", since, inasmuch as dialectics is nonsense, and hence does not consist of well-formed propositions, it isn't even false.

[Bright Banana Beard]

I will say it is not making sense when all thing have it? but they do have it? how can we confirm it?

[Rosa Lichtenstein]

^^^ Have what?

[PRC-UTE]

I voted "I don't even understand it", since, inasmuch as dialectics is nonsense, and hence does not consist of well-formed propositions, it isn't even false.

So is Marxism nonsense?

[Rosa Lichtenstein]

PRC:


So is Marxism nonsense?

Why do you persist in deliberately misreading us anti-dialecticians?

Hyacinth is attacking this Hegelian, parasitical dogma, not Marxism.

Read it again:


inasmuch as dialectics is nonsense

I have highlighted the important bit, in case you miss it again.

[Hyacinth]

So is Marxism nonsense?
Are you going out of your way to prove Rosa's point in the other thread (and many others) that you just don't listen? For the record, and for the last time, Marxism=/=dialectics; dialectics was something that was imposed, with much harm, into the Marxist system. I have yet to see convincing arguments that the few cases in Capital where Marx does employ Hegelian terminology that this is to be understood dialectically. That being said, *even if* Marx was committed to dialectics, Marx *is not* god, and Marxism *is not* a religion; if Marx made a mistake, such as by incorporating dialectical nonsense, this is to be eschewed from Marxism. Marxism, taken as a science, i.e. as an empirical investigation of history and society, is subject, like all sciences, to change, revision, and improvement. Which is what those of us who oppose dialectics are trying to do, by extirpate this dead dogma from Marxism.

[Rosa Lichtenstein]

It's OK, Hyacinth, I have had over 25 years of this sort of stuff from dialecticians. The ones here are in fact amateurs at this game!

Why do you think I quote Max Eastman in my signature: dialectics really does rot the brains of far too many good comrades.

And, bless them, they all mean to prove Eastman right...

[PRC-UTE]

Are you going out of your way to prove Rosa's point in the other thread (and many others) that you just don't listen? For the record, and for the last time, Marxism=/=dialectics; dialectics was something that was imposed, with much harm, into the Marxist system. I have yet to see convincing arguments that the few cases in Capital where Marx does employ Hegelian terminology that this is to be understood dialectically. That being said, *even if* Marx was committed to dialectics, Marx *is not* god, and Marxism *is not* a religion; if Marx made a mistake, such as by incorporating dialectical nonsense, this is to be eschewed from Marxism. Marxism, taken as a science, i.e. as an empirical investigation of history and society, is subject, like all sciences, to change, revision, and improvement. Which is what those of us who oppose dialectics are trying to do, by extirpate this dead dogma from Marxism.

Dialectics was something Marx used, his entire formula of why capitalism will undermine itself and why this will produce socialism is a contradiction and a dialectical process of interaction between base and superstructure. however "Dialectical Materialism" as a "world integral outlook" was added later, which we've gone over before. Anyway, it's pretty absurd to argue that a mind like Marx didn't grasp the whole time he was turning Hegelian theory on its head that he was just using mystical religious nonsense, etc. The real problem here is something call solipsism, but I don't expect Rosa or her cult of followers to admit to it. Just because you don't understand what a contradiction is doesn't mean Marx or others don't.

Thanks for telling me that Marx isn't a god. I guess now I can stop growing this beard to appear in his image? :rolleyes: The problem with saying that we can ignore aspects of Marx's method is that this particular area of his thinking- the bit about contradictions, aside from being empirically incorrect, leads one to the same conclusions as Bernstein. The conclusion that if capitalism will not result in a terminal crisis as a result of being undermined by its own contradictions, then revolution is not on history's agenda.

Trying to explain away Marx's dialectics as mere jargon is not easy to pull off. Since he admitted he was utilising dialectics in private letters to Engels. You should see how Rosa L explains that one away!!

[PRC-UTE]

PRC:

Certainly, he used Hegelian jargon in the German Ideology (but these empty phrases do no work there, and can easily be ignored/dropped with no loss of content), and we already know Marx abandoned the serious use of these empty words in Das Kapital. And no wonder: if dialectics were true, change would be impossible:

Dropped or ignored with no loss of content? What of Engels stating in the German Ideology that the bourgeoisie comes into capitalism finding its antithesis, the proletariat...can that be dropped?



In that case, why bother being socialists? Capitalism will never end, according to this brilliant 'theory'!!


:lol: stop pulling this out of nowhere. dialectics says the opposite.



Or, if you think otherwise, please be the first person at RevLeft (despite us materialist frequently asking for an example, just one!) to tell us where and how it has any practical use at all.

in fact Luis H, Gilhyle, and Bob the Builder have all demonstrated the idea of dialectical contradiction and why it predicts capitalism's demise clearly.

[Rosa Lichtenstein]

PRC:


Dropped or ignored with no loss of content? What of Engels stating in the German Ideology that the bourgeoisie comes into capitalism finding its antithesis, the proletariat...can that be dropped?

No, but the word 'antithesis' can, since the proletariat is not part of an argument, as is the case with an 'antithesis'.

Unless you think that the proletariat arose out of an argument!:lol:


in fact Luis H, Gilhyle, and Bob the Builder have all demonstrated the idea of dialectical contradiction and why it predicts capitalism's demise clearly.

Well, they tried (rather pathetically) but found their arguments trashed by yours truly.

Unless, of course, you can show otherwise, or can provide the links where they won the argument...

I can supply the ones where I demolished theirs; I have listed them all here:

http://homepage.ntlworld.com/rosa.l/RevLeft.htm


stop pulling this out of nowhere. dialectics says the opposite.

No, as I have shown here (in an argument not one of you can answer), the dialectical holy men argued that everything changes because of a 'struggle' between opposites, and they all change into their opposites.

So, in order to do that, socialism and capitalism must exist side by side (or they can't 'struggle').

Capitalism must, therefore, change into socialism and socalism must change into capitalism.

In other words, according to this earth-shattering 'theory', capitalism is eternal... http://www.mysmiley.net/imgs/smile/scared/scared0017.gif

Here are the details, read them and weep:

http://www.revleft.com/vb/showpost.php?p=1350764&postcount=23

http://www.revleft.com/vb/showpost.php?p=1350765&postcount=24

[Rosa Lichtenstein]

PRC:


Trying to explain away Marx's dialectics as mere jargon is not easy to pull off. Since he admitted he was utilising dialectics in private letters to Engels. You should see how Rosa L explains that one away!!

But, once more, we need not speculate, for Marx (not me) very helpfully told us what 'his method' was.

Here it is again (perhaps you haven't seen this before?):


"After a quotation from the preface to my 'Criticism of Political Economy,' Berlin, 1859, pp. IV-VII, where I discuss the materialistic basis of my method, the writer goes on:*

'The one thing which is of moment to Marx, is to find the law of the phenomena with whose investigation he is concerned; and not only is that law of moment to him, which governs these phenomena, in so far as they have a definite form and mutual connexion within a given historical period. Of still greater moment to him is the law of their variation, of their development, i.e., of their transition from one form into another, from one series of connexions into a different one. This law once discovered, he investigates in detail the effects in which it manifests itself in social life. Consequently, Marx only troubles himself about one thing: to show, by rigid scientific investigation, the necessity of successive determinate orders of social conditions, and to establish, as impartially as possible, the facts that serve him for fundamental starting-points. For this it is quite enough, if he proves, at the same time, both the necessity of the present order of things, and the necessity of another order into which the first must inevitably pass over; and this all the same, whether men believe or do not believe it, whether they are conscious or unconscious of it. Marx treats the social movement as a process of natural history, governed by laws not only independent of human will, consciousness and intelligence, but rather, on the contrary, determining that will, consciousness and intelligence. ... If in the history of civilisation the conscious element plays a part so subordinate, then it is self-evident that a critical inquiry whose subject-matter is civilisation, can, less than anything else, have for its basis any form of, or any result of, consciousness. That is to say, that not the idea, but the material phenomenon alone can serve as its starting-point. Such an inquiry will confine itself to the confrontation and the comparison of a fact, not with ideas, but with another fact. For this inquiry, the one thing of moment is, that both facts be investigated as accurately as possible, and that they actually form, each with respect to the other, different momenta of an evolution; but most important of all is the rigid analysis of the series of successions, of the sequences and concatenations in which the different stages of such an evolution present themselves. But it will be said, the general laws of economic life are one and the same, no matter whether they are applied to the present or the past. This Marx directly denies. According to him, such abstract laws do not exist. On the contrary, in his opinion every historical period has laws of its own.... As soon as society has outlived a given period of development, and is passing over from one given stage to another, it begins to be subject also to other laws. In a word, economic life offers us a phenomenon analogous to the history of evolution in other branches of biology. The old economists misunderstood the nature of economic laws when they likened them to the laws of physics and chemistry. A more thorough analysis of phenomena shows that social organisms differ among themselves as fundamentally as plants or animals. Nay, one and the same phenomenon falls under quite different laws in consequence of the different structure of those organisms as a whole, of the variations of their individual organs, of the different conditions in which those organs function, &c. Marx, e.g., denies that the law of population is the same at all times and in all places. He asserts, on the contrary, that every stage of development has its own law of population. ... With the varying degree of development of productive power, social conditions and the laws governing them vary too. Whilst Marx sets himself the task of following and explaining from this point of view the economic system established by the sway of capital, he is only formulating, in a strictly scientific manner, the aim that every accurate investigation into economic life must have. The scientific value of such an inquiry lies in the disclosing of the special laws that regulate the origin, existence, development, death of a given social organism and its replacement by another and higher one. And it is this value that, in point of fact, Marx's book has.'

"Whilst the writer pictures what he takes to be actually my method, in this striking and [as far as concerns my own application of it] generous way, what else is he picturing but the dialectic method?" [Marx (1976), pp.101-02. Bold emphases added.]

You will note that Marx calls this the 'dialectic method', and 'his method', but it is also clear that it bears no relation to the sort of dialectics you have had forced down your throat, for in it there is not one ounce of Hegel -- no quantity turning into quality, no contradictions, no negation of the negation, no unities of opposites, no totality...

So, Marx's method has had Hegel totally extirpated. For Marx, putting Hegel on 'his feet' is to crush his head.

And of the few terms Marx uses of Hegel's in Das Kapital, he tells us this:


"and even, here and there in the chapter on the theory of value, coquetted with the mode of expression peculiar to him."

So, the 'rational core' of the dialectic has not one atom of Hegel in it, and Marx merely 'coquetted' with a few bits of Hegelian jargon in Das Kapital.

Now, this is all from Marx's published work. No letter can countermand this.

So, if he 'coquetted' with Hegelian jargon in Das Kapital, his most important work, bar none, he is hardly going to use it seriously in a letter. In which case, his 'coquetting' continued in his letters.

Unless, of course, you can find a serious use of such jargon in a work Marx (not Engels) published after Das Kapiatal.

If you can, I will moderate my allegations.

If not, you will have to moderate yours.

[Hyacinth]

Dialectics was something Marx used, his entire formula of why capitalism will undermine itself and why this will produce socialism is a contradiction and a dialectical process of interaction between base and superstructure. however "Dialectical Materialism" as a "world integral outlook" was added later, which we've gone over before. Anyway, it's pretty absurd to argue that a mind like Marx didn't grasp the whole time he was turning Hegelian theory on its head that he was just using mystical religious nonsense, etc. The real problem here is something call solipsism, but I don't expect Rosa or her cult of followers to admit to it. Just because you don't understand what a contradiction is doesn't mean Marx or others don't.
Rosa, in her quote of Marx, has adequately handled this objection. Marx explains his method outright, and while he calls it dialectical, it bares no resemblance to the sort of nonsense that others later attributed to him; i.e. it looks nothing like the sort of system that has the law of negation, opposites, transformation, and all that. Just because there is a terminological similarity between Marx and Hegel, or Marx and latter dialectical materialists, or between Hegel and Plato (they both used the term 'dialectics'), does not imply that the concepts they used this term to express were the same.


Thanks for telling me that Marx isn't a god. I guess now I can stop growing this beard to appear in his image? :rolleyes: The problem with saying that we can ignore aspects of Marx's method is that this particular area of his thinking- the bit about contradictions, aside from being empirically incorrect, leads one to the same conclusions as Bernstein. The conclusion that if capitalism will not result in a terminal crisis as a result of being undermined by its own contradictions, then revolution is not on history's agenda.
I fail to see what Bernstein's error was aside from being empirically incorrect, as you say. If Marxism is a scientific theory then it is subject to verification and falsification; if you import dialectics into it, which is metaphysical (and like all metaphysics, nonsense) you actually withdraw the claims made by Marxism from being checked by experience.


Trying to explain away Marx's dialectics as mere jargon is not easy to pull off. Since he admitted he was utilising dialectics in private letters to Engels. You should see how Rosa L explains that one away!!
What is at issue is what Marx meant by 'dialectics'. Regardless, I'm not particulalry interested in debating Marx exegesis: if Marx was committed to dailectics, inasmuch as he was committed to dialectics, he was in error, and that error is to be corrected. So you could conclusively prove to me that Marx was committed to dialectics and it wouldn't make a smidgen of difference, since what is primarily at issue is not what Marx thought, but whether or not dialectics makes sense, and if it does, whether or not it is true.

[Hyacinth]

It is interesting to observe that you can use dialectics (of the Hegelian variety or of the "materialist" [sic] variety) to prove absolutely anything, as is evidenced by its historical uses: as Hegel demonstrated with it that Prussian despotism is the highest form of democracy, or the Stalinists to justify all the various, and flipflopping, policies undertaken in the Soviet Union, or the Trotskyists to argue that the Soviet Union was a degenerate worker's state, and the list goes on and on and on. Now, the reason one is able to draw all these contradictiory conclusions from dialectics is because it is self-contradictory ("like everything else" :lol: if you believe dialectics), and classically everything, and hence anything, follows from a contradiction. Hegel's system proved to be very useful politically, since it allows one to demonstrate whatever one wants; in short, it is outright sophistry, but through its—to quote Schopenhauer—"outrageous misuse of language ... and ... most stupefying verbiage" it attempts to disguise its sophistical character.

[S.O.I]

Change moves in 3D spirals not 2D circles. (Sometimes referred to as "negation of the negation")



yes! finally my suspects of the universal nature are come to surface

[Invariance]

Unless, of course, you can find a serious use of such jargon in a work Marx (not Engels) published after Das Kapital

For example, in Capital, Volume 1:


In so far as the surplus-value, of which the additional capital, No. 1, consists, is the result of the purchase of labour-power with part of the original capital, a purchase that conformed to the laws of the exchange of commodities, and that, from a legal standpoint, pre-supposes nothing beyond the free disposal, on the part of the labourer, of his own capacities, and on the part of the owner of money or commodities, of the values that belong to him; in so far as the additional capital, No. 2, &c., is the mere result of No. 1, and, therefore, a consequence of the above conditions; in so far as each single transaction invariably conforms to the laws of the exchange of commodities, the capitalist buying labour-power, the labourer selling it, and we will assume at its real value; in so far as all this is true, it is evident that the laws of appropriation or of private property, laws that are based on the production and circulation of commodities, become by their own inner and inexorable dialectic changed into their very opposite.

For example, in Volume 3:


The market must, therefore, be continually extended, so that its interrelations and the conditions regulating them assume more and more the form of a natural law working independently of the producer, and become ever more uncontrollable. This internal contradiction seeks to resolve itself through expansion of the outlying field of production. But the more productiveness develops, the more it finds itself at variance with the narrow basis on which the conditions of consumption rest. It is no contradiction at all on this self-contradictory basis that there should be an excess of capital simultaneously with a growing surplus of population. For while a combination of these two would, indeed, increase the mass of produced surplus-value, it would at the same time intensify the contradiction between the conditions under which this surplus-value is produced and those under which it is realised.

and later

These two elements embraced by the process of accumulation, however, are not to be regarded merely as existing side by side in repose, as Ricardo does. They contain a contradiction which manifests itself in contradictory tendencies and phenomena. These antagonistic agencies counteract each other simultaneously.

and


This is the abolition of the capitalist mode of production within the capitalist mode of production itself, and hence a self-dissolving contradiction, which prima facie represents a mere phase of transition to a new form of production. It manifests itself as such a contradiction in its effects. It establishes a monopoly in certain spheres and thereby requires state interference. It reproduces a new financial aristocracy, a new variety of parasites in the shape of promoters, speculators and simply nominal directors; a whole system of swindling and cheating by means of corporation promotion, stock issuance, and stock speculation. It is private production without the control of private property.

The chapter itself is called 'Exposition of the Internal Contradictions of the Law.'

And I could find many more examples. Clearly he was still using such 'jargon' in his later (albeit unpublished at the time) writings.

[gilhyle]

Rosa, in her quote of Marx, has adequately handled this objection. Marx explains his method outright, and while he calls it dialectical, it bares no resemblance to the sort of nonsense that others later attributed to him; i.e. it looks nothing like the sort of system that has the law of negation, opposites, transformation, and all that.

Hard to follow, Hyacinth, since Marx uses some of those very terms in the same Volume from which Rosa quotes a text which supposedly bears no relation to those ideas....but we have been over this a thousand times.

If I was asked if I subscribe to anti-dialectics, I would (unsurprisingly) vote 'No'.

If I am asked if I subscribe to dialectical materialism, I also vote 'No'.

Per se, I subscribe to neither. Rather I treat the issue of what general propositions I articulate not as a theoretical question, (i.e. not as a matter for 'subscription') but as a practical question of this world - I articulate the critical concepts of general form which I perceive will most effectively deny the ideological notions which interfere with the building of a working class movement. If there is no anti-dialectical ideology - no need for dialectics.

[Rosa Lichtenstein]

Vinnie:


The chapter itself is called 'Exposition of the Internal Contradictions of the Law.'

And I could find many more examples. Clearly he was still using such 'jargon' in his later (albeit unpublished at the time) writings.

Who said he never used this jargon? However, Marx (not me) also told us that he was merely 'coquetting' with Hegelian jargon in Das Kapital.

And, as we have established here many times, unpublished remarks cannot be used to countermand published comments -- so, he was still 'coquetting' in these unpublished works.

But thanks for this one:


In so far as the surplus-value, of which the additional capital, No. 1, consists, is the result of the purchase of labour-power with part of the original capital, a purchase that conformed to the laws of the exchange of commodities, and that, from a legal standpoint, pre-supposes nothing beyond the free disposal, on the part of the labourer, of his own capacities, and on the part of the owner of money or commodities, of the values that belong to him; in so far as the additional capital, No. 2, &c., is the mere result of No. 1, and, therefore, a consequence of the above conditions; in so far as each single transaction invariably conforms to the laws of the exchange of commodities, the capitalist buying labour-power, the labourer selling it, and we will assume at its real value; in so far as all this is true, it is evident that the laws of appropriation or of private property, laws that are based on the production and circulation of commodities, become by their own inner and inexorable dialectic changed into their very opposite.

As I have shown here many times (links below), this would make change impossible, so it is no wonder Marx merely 'coquetted' with this gobbledygook.

Quotes:

http://www.revleft.com/vb/showpost.php?p=1401000&postcount=76

Argument:

http://www.revleft.com/vb/showpost.php?p=1401001&postcount=77

[Rosa Lichtenstein]

Gil:


Hard to follow, Hyacinth, since Marx uses some of those very terms in the same Volume from which Rosa quotes a text which supposedly bears no relation to those ideas....but we have been over this a thousand times.

And we have shown just as many times that Marx abandoned the 'dialectic' as you mystics understand (or, rather, fail to understand, since you can't explain) it.


If I was asked if I subscribe to anti-dialectics, I would (unsurprisingly) vote 'No'.

If I am asked if I subscribe to dialectical materialism, I also vote 'No'.

Per se, I subscribe to neither. Rather I treat the issue of what general propositions I articulate not as a theoretical question, (i.e. not as a matter for 'subscription') but as a practical question of this world - I articulate the critical concepts of general form which I perceive will most effectively deny the ideological notions which interfere with the building of a working class movement. If there is no anti-dialectical ideology - no need for dialectics.

And yet, you still cannot explan this mystical creed, or show how it can be used to help change the world, despite being asked many times..

[gilhyle]

And yet, you still cannot explan this mystical creed, or show how it can be used to help change the world, despite being asked many times..

Not everything needs to be defined as you have been told - and as you believe yourself when it suits you.

[Rosa Lichtenstein]

Gil, still in 'make stuff up' mode:


Not everything needs to be defined as you have been told - and as you believe yourself when it suits you.

Where did I ask for a definition?

Here is what I said, with the relevant word highlighted so that your rapidly dwindling eyesight is not taxed too much:


And yet, you still cannot explain this mystical creed, or show how it can be used to help change the world, despite being asked many times.

[Spelling corrected.]

In that case, perhaps this site might help you:

http://www.specsavers.co.uk/?gclid=CK6flI-ckpoCFUiT3wodXyd1MQ

Or maybe you do not understand the word 'explain', or you have confused it with 'define'.

In that case, this site could be more to the point:

http://www.surgerydoor.co.uk/medical_conditions/Indices/B/brain_surgery_.htm

[gilhyle]

Still surviving on pedantry....hand on heart, can you say you have not argued repeatedly on this matter by seeking definitions ? Can you even now say what an explanation is as opposed to a definition ?

[Rosa Lichtenstein]

Gil


Still surviving on pedantry

You would not survive long in a real intellectiual discipline.

Indeed, your sort of attitude would not be tolerated for one second in the sciences, or in any other branch of genuine knowledge. Can you imagine the fuss if someone were to argue that it does not matter what the Magna Carta said, or when the Battle of the Nile was fought, or what the Declaration of Independence actually contained, or what the exact wording of Newton's Second Law was, or whether "G", the Gravitational Constant, was 6.6742 x 10^-11 or 6.7642 x 10^-11 Mm^2kg^-2, or indeed something else? Would we accept this sort of excuse from someone who said it did not matter what the precise wording of a contract in law happened to be? Or, that it did not really matter what Marx meant by "variable capital", or that he "pedantically" distinguished use-value from exchange-value -- or more pointedly, the "relative form" from the "equivalent form" of value --, we should be able to make do with anyone's guess? And how would we react if someone said, "Who cares if there are serious mistakes in that policeman's evidence against those strikers"? Or if someone else retorted "Big deal if there are a few errors in this or that e-mail address/web page URL, or in that mathematical proof! And who cares whether there is a difference between rest mass and inertial mass in Physics! What are you, some kind of pedant?"


hand on heart, can you say you have not argued repeatedly on this matter by seeking definitions ?

Not on this topic -- since we haven't debated it before.

I only ask for certain obscure terms from your mystical theory to be defined so that we know what you lot are banging on about, but you lot consistently shy away even from this.

Still, this does not stop you lying, does it?


Can you even now say what an explanation is as opposed to a definition ?

I'll condescend to answer your questions when you answer mine (some hope!)

[gilhyle]

Consider this:


I only ask for certain obscure terms from your mystical theory to be defined so that we know what you lot are banging on about

and this


you do not need to define everything to get an argument going (otherwise you will soon get bogged down over the definition of 'definition', to say nothing of the definiton of 'word').


You would not survive long in a real intellectiual discipline.

Ah yes, as distinct from your good self who has survived so well in the intellectual discipline of......blogging.

[Rosa Lichtenstein]

Gil (quoting me):


you do not need to define everything to get an argument going (otherwise you will soon get bogged down over the definition of 'definition', to say nothing of the definiton of 'word').

Well spotted.

1) You failed to note I was not talking to a Hermeticist, like you. With regard to the latter, since it is impossible to figure out what on earth they/you are banging on about, definitions are essential.

2) Anyway, even if not everything needs defining (as I indicated), the mystical jargon you lot use does -- except, of course, it is not possible to define nonsensical expressions (except stipulatively).


Ah yes, as distinct from your good self who has survived so well in the intellectual discipline of......blogging.

1) I do not 'blog'

2) But, even if you were right, you would still not survive long in a real intellectual discipline -- your thought is far too sloppy.

[gilhyle]

You failed to note I was not talking to a Hermeticist, like you.

Yes I am conscious that you adopt different standards in this way when speaking to different audiences....it is because I did spot that that I quoted it back to you.


since it is impossible to figure out what on earth they/you are banging on about, definitions are essential.


Since you do think it impossible, this socratic demand for definition is hypocritical and since you have yourself just pointed out the problem with the socratic method it is doubly hypocriticaly....thrice so since it contradicts your Wittgensteinian creed.


I do not 'blog'

Thats what you think.


you would still not survive long in a real intellectual discipline -- your thought is far too sloppy.

You have a ridiculously romantic notion of the standards of intellectual debate within late capitalism. However, As to what I post here, I actually agree with you - if I ever wanted to publish anything I would be much more precise and careful in what I say. Since I dont, Im not. But as I pointed out to you long ago the editorial quality of your own stuff is also very low. Your crying out for a half decent editor....Id almost do it, just to get what your saying clear ! But since you would not trust me, you should get someone you do trust. Id say JimFarr could do a good job on it. (might have that name wrong)

[Rosa Lichtenstein]

Gil:


Yes I am conscious that you adopt different standards in this way when speaking to different audiences....it is because I did spot that that I quoted it back to you.

And...?


Since you do think it impossible, this socratic demand for definition is hypocritical and since you have yourself just pointed out the problem with the socratic method it is doubly hypocriticaly....thrice so since it contradicts your Wittgensteinian creed.

What 'Wittgensteinian creed' is that?


Thats what you think.

Show otherwise then.


You have a ridiculously romantic notion of the standards of intellectual debate within late capitalism. However, As to what I post here, I actually agree with you - if I ever wanted to publish anything I would be much more precise and careful in what I say. Since I dont, Im not. But as I pointed out to you long ago the editorial quality of your own stuff is also very low. Your crying out for a half decent editor....Id almost do it, just to get what your saying clear ! But since you would not trust me, you should get someone you do trust. Id say JimFarr could do a good job on it. (might have that name wrong)

Since you have shown no little skill in misunderstanding even the simplest things I say, compounded by a mendacious propensity to make stuff up and lie about me and my ideas, I don't think we need any lectures from you.

[disobey]

IMHO it's not important in the slightest to understanding anything. I understand it to be an attempt to form a rational, scientific basis to orthodox Marxism - which isn't required, because morality and human nature are too complex to be explained in such abstract terms, so why bother with it?

[gilhyle]

Show otherwise then

http://homepage.ntlworld.com/rosa.l/ (http://homepage.ntlworld.com/rosa.l/)

[Rosa Lichtenstein]

Gil:


http://homepage.ntlworld.com/rosa.l/

And that shows what?

[gilhyle]

read the blog at this link

[Rosa Lichtenstein]

Gil:


read the blog at this link

There isn't one.

[Bilan]

[Spelling corrected.]

In that case, perhaps this site might help you:

http://www.specsavers.co.uk/?gclid=CK6flI-ckpoCFUiT3wodXyd1MQ

Or maybe you do not understand the word 'explain', or you have confused it with 'define'.

In that case, this site could be more to the point:

http://www.surgerydoor.co.uk/medical_conditions/Indices/B/brain_surgery_.htm

This is not an argument, this is purely a personal attack.
If you can discredit it, and want to, then do it. But this sort of crap does not suffice.

[Rosa Lichtenstein]

Bilan:


This is not an argument, this is purely a personal attack.
If you can discredit it, and want to, then do it. But this sort of crap does not suffice.

I gave up trying to argue with Gil three years ago; he/she ignores what I have to say, and then lies about me and my ideas.

So, if you do not like my tactics, I should care...

[Hit The North]

So your main tactic is evasion. Big deal.

[Rosa Lichtenstein]

BTB:


So your main tactic is evasion.

I have merely copied your tactic, and that of Gil, here.