Is Dialectical Materialism a Religion?

[Rosa Lichtenstein]

A recently banned member asked this question (in Learning), but his/her thread was closed before I could interevene.

Dialectical Materialsm [DM] certainly works in ways that make it analogous to religious dogma. Here is what I wrote in a previous thread on this (in answer to the question: 'Why is DM a world-view'?):


There are two interconnected reasons, I think.

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 just such a 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 their reliance on ordinary language and 'common sense'.

Fortunately, history has predisposed these prophets to ascertain the truth about reality for the rest of us, which means that they are our 'naturally-ordained' leaders. That in turn meant these 'leaders' were also teachers of the 'ignorant masses', who could 'legitimately' substitute themselves for the unwashed majority -- in 'their own interests', you understand. This is because the masses are 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 OK, 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; it tells such comrades that reality 'contradicts' outward appearances. Hence, even if Dialectical Marxism appears to be a long-term failure, those with a the equivalent of a dialectical 'third eye' can see the opposite is in fact the case: Dialectical Marxism is a ringing success!

In that case, awkward facts can either be ignored or they can be re-configured into their opposite.

Hence:

DM is the sigh of the depressed dialectician, the heart of a heartless, class-dominated 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.

I stand no chance...

And here, in answer to the question, "Why do DM-fans get so agitated, irrational and emotional when their 'theory' is attacked?":



George Novack records the following meeting with Trotsky in Mexico, in 1937:


"[O]ur discussion glided into the subject of philosophy.... We talked about the best ways of studying dialectical materialism, about Lenin's Materialism and Empirio-Criticism, and about the theoretical backwardness of American radicalism. Trotsky brought forward the name of Max Eastman, who in various works had polemicized against dialectics as a worthless idealist hangover from the Hegelian heritage of Marxism.

"He became tense and agitated. 'Upon going back to the States,' he urged, 'you comrades must at once take up the struggle against Eastman's distortion and repudiation of dialectical materialism. There is nothing more important than this….'

"I was somewhat surprised at the vehemence of his argumentation on this matter at such a moment. As the principal defendant in absentia in the Moscow trials, and because of the dramatic circumstances of his voyage in exile, Trotsky then stood in the centre of international attention. He was fighting for his reputation, liberty, and life against the powerful government of Stalin, bent on his defamation and death. After having been imprisoned and gagged for months by the Norwegian authorities, he had been kept incommunicado for weeks aboard their tanker.

"Yet on the first day after reunion with his cothinkers, he spent more than an hour explaining how important it was for a Marxist movement to have a correct philosophical method and to defend dialectical materialism against its opponents! "[Novack (1978), pp.169-70. Bold emphases added. Spelling changed to conform to UK English.]

Given the mystical nature of this theory, and the emotional attachment to it displayed by DM-fans -- and Marx's own words about religious alienation and the need for consolation (see below) --, Trotsky's semi-religious fervour, his emotional attachment to the dialectic, and his irrationalism become much easier to understand.

The accuracy of Novack's memory is supported by the following comment of Trotsky's:


"...It would not be amiss, therefore, to refer to the fact that my first serious conversation with comrades Shachtman and Warde, in the train immediately after my arrival in Mexico in January 1937, was devoted to the necessity of persistently propagating dialectic materialism. After our American section split from the Socialist Party I insisted most strongly on the earliest possible publication of a theoretical organ, having again in mind the need to educate the party, first and foremost its new members, in the spirit of dialectic materialism. In the United States, I wrote at that time, where the bourgeoisie systematically in stills (sic) vulgar empiricism in the workers, more than anywhere else is it necessary to speed the elevation of the movement to a proper theoretical level. On January 20, 1939, I wrote to comrade Shachtman concerning his joint article with comrade Burnham, 'Intellectuals in Retreat':

'The section on the dialectic is the greatest blow that you, personally, as the editor of the New International could have delivered to Marxist theory.... Good. We will speak about it publicly.'

"Thus a year ago I gave open notice in advance to Shachtman that I intended to wage a public struggle against his eclectic tendencies. At that time there was no talk whatever of the coming opposition; in any case furthest from my mind was the supposition that the philosophic bloc against Marxism prepared the ground for a political bloc against the program of the Fourth International." [Trotsky (1971), p.142. Bold emphases added.]

And further support comes from Max Eastman's testimony:


"Like many great men I have met he [Trotsky] does not seem altogether robust. There is apt to be a frailty associated with great intellect. At any rate, Trotsky, especially in our heated arguments concerning the 'dialectic' in which he becomes excited and wrathful to the point of losing his breath, seems to me at times almost weak. He cannot laugh at my attacks on his philosophy, or be curious about them -- as I imagine Lenin would -- because in that field he is not secure....

"...Yesterday we reached a point of tension in our argument about dialectics that was extreme. Trotsky's throat was throbbing and his face was red; he was in a rage...." [Eastman (1942), p.113.]

Anyone who has discussed dialectics face-to-face with certain leading comrades alive today (whose names I will not divulge, to save their blushes), or on the internet (say at RevLeft) and who has challenged this 'theory', will no doubt recognise in the above something all too familiar: the highly emotive and irrational response one gets from dialecticians when the source of their 'opiate' is attacked. [This follows my own experience, recorded elsewhere at my site (http://anti-dialectics.co.uk/page%2001.htm).]

However, Eastman is surely wrong about Lenin; anyone who reads Materialism and Empirio-Criticism, for example, can see how irrational he, too, was in this area. [On this see, Essay Thirteen Part One (http://anti-dialectics.co.uk/page_13%2001.htm).]

Faith in this theory is not confined to the past; here is part of the Preface to the new edition of RIRE [Reason In Revolt ,published in the summer of 2007]:


"Ted Grant was an incorrigible optimist all his life. Marxists are optimistic by their very nature because of two things: the philosophy of dialectical materialism, and our faith in the working class and the socialist future of humanity. Most people look only at the surface of the events that shape their lives and determine their destiny. Dialectics teaches one to look beyond the immediate, to penetrate beyond the appearance of stability and calm, and to see the seething contradictions and ceaseless movement that lies beneath the surface. The idea of constant change, in which sooner or later everything changes into its opposite enables a Marxist to rise above the immediate situation and to see the broader picture." [Rob Sewell, quoted from here (http://www.marxist.com/preface-engels-nature-wellred.htm). Bold emphases added.]

It looks, therefore, like this rather low grade opiate is continuing to do its job, finding new pushers and yet more junkies by the week.

Nevertheless, for all their major differences, Trotsky and Stalin both loved the 'dialectic'.

Ethan Pollock records a revealing incident in the Kremlin just after the end of World War Two:


"In late December 1946 Joseph Stalin called a meeting of high-level Communist Party personnel.... The opening salvos of the Cold War had already been launched. Earlier in the year Winston Churchill had warned of an iron curtain dividing Europe. Disputes about the political future of Germany, the presence of Soviet troops in Iran, and proposals to control atomic weapons had all contributed to growing tensions between the United States and the USSR. Inside the Soviet Union the devastating effects of the Second World War were painfully obvious: cities remained bombed out and unreconstructed; famine laid waste to the countryside, with millions dying of starvation and many millions more malnourished. All this makes one of the agenda items for the Kremlin meeting surprising: Stalin wanted to discuss the recent prizewinning book History of Western European Philosophy [by Georgii Aleksandrov -- RL]. [Pollock (2006), p.15. Bold emphasis added.]

Pollock then outlines the problems Aleksandrov had experienced over his interpretation of the foreign (i.e., German) roots of DM in an earlier work, and how he had been criticised for not emphasising the "reactionary and bourgeois" nature of the work of German Philosophers like Kant, Fichte and Hegel --, in view of the fight against Fascism (when, of course, during the Hitler-Stalin pact a few years earlier, the opposite line had been peddled). Pollock also describes the detailed and lengthy discussions the Central Committee devoted to Aleksandrov's earlier work years earlier at the height of the war against the Nazis!

It is revealing, therefore, to note that Stalin and his henchmen considered DM to be so important that other more pressing matters could be shelved or delayed in order to make way for discussion about it. In this, of course, Stalin was in total agreement with Trotsky and other leading Dialectical Marxists.

Once more, Marx's comments about religious consolation (see below) make abundantly clear why this is so.

We can see something similar occurring in the case of Nikolai Bukharin. Anyone who reads Philosophical Arabesques will be struck by the semi-religious fervour with which he defends dialectics. In view of Bukharin's serious predicament, this is hardly surprising. But it is nonetheless revealing, since it confirms much of the above: this theory holds the dialectical personality together even in the face of death.

The old saying, "There are no atheists in a foxhole", may be incorrect, but it looks like there might not have been many anti-dialecticians in the Lubyanka waiting on Stalin's mercy. Even hard-headed dialecticians need some form of consolation.

As Helena Sheehan notes in her introduction:


"Perhaps the most remarkable thing about his text is that it was written at all. Condemned not by an enemy but by his own comrades, seeing what had been so magnificently created being so catastrophically destroyed, undergoing shattering interrogations, how was he not totally debilitated by despair? [B]Where did this author get the strength, the composure, the faith in the future that was necessary to write this treatise of Philosophy, this passionate defense of the intellectual tradition of Marxism and the political project of socialist construction?

"Nikolai Ivanovich Bukharin was a tragic true believer...." [Sheehan (2005), pp.7-8. Bold emphases added.]

Once again, Marx, I think, had the answer:


"Religion is, indeed, the self-consciousness and self-esteem of man who has either not yet won through to himself, or has already lost himself again.... Religion is the general theory of this world, its encyclopaedic compendium, its logic in popular form, its spiritual point d'honneur, its enthusiasm, its moral sanction, its solemn complement, and its universal basis of consolation and justification....

"...Religion is the sigh of the oppressed creature, the heart of a heartless world, and the soul of soulless conditions...." [Bold emphases added.]

[Substitute "dialectics" for "religion" in the above to see the point.]

The fact that this doomed comrade chose to spend his last weeks and days expounding and defending this Hermetic theory** (albeit, one that had been given a bogus materialist flip) -- pleading with Stalin not to destroy this work --, just about says it all.


References, links and more details can be found here:

http://anti-dialectics.co.uk/page%2009_02.htm

**On Hermeticism, see the next post.

[Rosa Lichtenstein]

It might prove instructive, too, to compare several of the central tenets of this 'theory' with openly mystical systems of thought.

Here are few section from The Kybalion (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kybalion), the third most important work of Hermetic Mysticism (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hermeticism) -- and it's worth recalling that Hegel was a fully paid-up Hermeticist (http://www.marxists.org/reference/subject/philosophy/works/en/magee.htm):


"CHAPTER X

"POLARITY

"'Everything is dual; everything has poles; everything has its pair of opposites; like and unlike are the same; opposites are identical in nature, but different in degree; extremes meet; all truths are but half-truths; all paradoxes may be reconciled.'

"The great Fourth Hermetic Principle-the Principle of Polarity-embodies the truth that all manifested things have 'two sides; 'two aspects'; 'two poles'; a 'pair of opposites,' with manifold degrees between the two extremes. The old paradoxes, which have ever perplexed the mind of men, are explained by an understanding of this Principle. Man has always recognized something akin to this Principle, and has endeavoured to express it by such sayings, maxims and aphorisms as the following: 'Everything is and isn't, at the same time'; 'all truths are but half-truths'; 'every truth is half-false'; 'there are two sides to everything'; 'there is a reverse side to every shield,' etc., etc.

"The Hermetic Teachings are to the effect that the difference between things seemingly diametrically opposed to each is merely a matter of degree. It teaches that 'the pairs of opposites may be reconciled,' and that 'thesis and antithesis are identical in nature, but different in degree'; and that the 'universal reconciliation of opposites' is effected by a recognition of this Principle of Polarity...

"Then passing on to the Physical Plane, they illustrate the Principle by showing that Heat and Cold are identical in nature, the differences being merely a matter of degrees. The thermometer shows many degrees of temperature, the lowest pole being called 'cold,' and the highest heat.' Between these two poles are many degrees of 'heat' or 'cold,' call them either and you are equally correct.

"The higher of two degrees is always 'warmer, while the lower is always 'colder.' There is no absolute standard-all is a matter of degree. There is no place on the thermometer where heat ceases and cold begins. It is all a matter of higher or lower vibrations. The very terms 'high' and 'low,' which we are compelled to use, are but poles of the same thing-the terms are relative. So with 'East and West'-travel around the world in an eastward direction, and you reach a point which is called west at your starting point, and you return from that westward point. Travel far enough North, and you will find yourself travelling South, or vice versa.

"Light and Darkness are poles of the same thing, with many degrees between them. The musical scale is the same-starting with 'C' you moved upward until you reach another 'C,' and so on, the differences between the two ends of the board being the same, with many degrees between the two extremes. The scale of color is the same-higher and lower vibrations being the only difference between high violet and low red. Large and Small are relative. So are Noise and Quiet; Hard and Soft follow the rule. Likewise Sharp and Dull. Positive and Negative are two poles of the same thing, with countless degrees between them." [Quoted from here (http://www.gnostic.org/kybalionhtm/kybalion10.htm). Spelling altered to agree with UK English. ]

And:



CHAPTER IX

VIBRATION

"'Nothing rests; everything moves; everything vibrates.'

The great Third Hermetic Principle-the Principle of Vibration-embodies the truth that Motion is manifest in everything in the Universe-that nothing is at rest-that everything moves, vibrates, and circles. This Hermetic Principle was recognized by some of the early Greek philosophers who embodied it in their systems. But, then, for centuries it was lost sight of by the thinkers outside of the Hermetic ranks. But in the Nineteenth Century physical science re-discovered the truth and the Twentieth Century scientific discoveries have added additional proof of the correctness and truth of this centuries-old Hermetic doctrine.

"The Hermetic Teachings are that not only is everything in constant movement and vibration, but that the 'differences' between the various manifestations of the universal power are due entirely to the varying rate and mode of vibrations. Not only this, but that even THE ALL [the hermetic equivalent of the "Totality" -- RL], in itself, manifests a constant vibration of such an infinite degree of intensity and rapid motion that it may be practically considered as at rest, the teachers directing the attention of the students to the fact that even on the physical plane a rapidly moving object (such as a revolving wheel) seems to be at rest. The Teachings are to the effect that Spirit is at one end of the Pole of Vibration, the other Pole being certain extremely gross forms of Matter. Between these two poles are millions upon millions of different rates and modes of vibration.

"Modern Science has proven that all that we call Matter and Energy are but 'modes of vibratory motion,' and some of the more advanced scientists are rapidly moving toward the positions of the occultists who hold that the phenomena of Mind are likewise modes of vibration or motion. Let us see what science has to say regarding the question of vibrations in matter and energy.

"In the first place, science teaches that all matter manifests, in some degree, the vibrations arising from temperature or heat. Be an object cold or hot-both being but degrees of the same things -- it manifests certain heat vibrations, and in that sense is in motion and vibration. Then all particles of Matter are in circular movement, from corpuscle to suns. The planets revolve around suns, and many of them turn on their axes. The suns move around greater central points, and these are believed to move around still greater, and so on, ad infinitum. The molecules of which the particular kinds of Matter are composed are in a state of constant vibration and movement around each other and against each other. The molecules are composed of Atoms, which, likewise, are in a state of constant movement and vibration. The atoms are composed of Corpuscles, sometimes called 'electrons,' 'ions,' etc., which also are in a state of rapid motion, revolving around each other, and which manifest a very rapid state and mode of vibration. And, so we see that all forms of Matter manifest Vibration, in accordance with the Hermetic Principle of Vibration.

"And so it is with the various forms of Energy. Science teaches that Light, Heat, Magnetism and Electricity are but forms of vibratory motion connected in some way with, and probably emanating from the Ether. Science does not as yet attempt to explain the nature of the phenomena known as Cohesion, which is the principle of Molecular Attraction; nor Chemical Affinity, which is the principle of Atomic Attraction; nor Gravitation (the greatest mystery of the three), which is the principle of attraction by which every particle or mass of Matter is bound to every other particle or mass. These three forms of Energy are not as yet understood by science, yet the writers incline to the opinion that these too are manifestations of some form of vibratory energy, a fact which the Hermetists (sic) have held and taught for ages past.

"The Universal Ether, which is postulated by science, without its nature being understood clearly, is held by the Hermetists to be but higher manifestation of that which is erroneously called matter-that is to say, Matter at a higher degree of vibration-and is called by them 'The Ethereal Substance.' The Hermetists teach that this Ethereal Substance is of extreme tenuity and elasticity, and pervades universal space, serving as a medium of transmission of waves of vibratory energy, such as heat, light, electricity, magnetism, etc. The Teachings are that The Ethereal Substance is a connecting link between the forms of vibratory energy known as 'Matter' on the one hand, and 'Energy or Force' on the other; and also that it manifests a degree of vibration, in rate and mode, entirely its own." [Quoted from here (http://www.gnostic.org/kybalionhtm/kybalion9.htm).]


Bold added in both cases.

Compare the above with a typical DM-text:


"The Unity and Interpenetration of Opposites

"Everywhere we look in nature, we see the dynamic co-existence of opposing tendencies. This creative tension is what gives life and motion. That was already understood by Heraclitus (c. 500 B.C.) two and a half thousand years ago. It is even present in embryo in certain Oriental religions, as in the idea of the ying and yang in China, and in Buddhism. Dialectics appears here in a mystified form, which nonetheless reflects an intuition of the workings of nature. The Hindu religion contains the germ of a dialectical idea, when it poses the three phases of creation (Brahma), maintenance or order (Vishnu) and destruction or disorder (Shiva). In his interesting book on the mathematics of chaos, Ian Stewart points out that the difference between the gods Shiva, 'the Untamed,' and Vishnu is not the antagonism between good and evil, but that the two principles of harmony and discord together underlie the whole of existence....

"In Heraclitus, all this was in the nature of an inspired guess. Now this hypothesis has been confirmed by a huge amount of examples. The unity of opposites lies at the heart of the atom, and the entire universe is made up of molecules, atoms, and subatomic particles. The matter was very well put by R. P. Feynman: 'All things, even ourselves, are made of fine-grained, enormously strongly interacting plus and minus parts, all neatly balanced out....'

"The question is: how does it happen that a plus and a minus are 'neatly balanced out?' This is a contradictory idea! In elementary mathematics, a plus and a minus do not 'balance out.' They negate each other. Modern physics has uncovered the tremendous forces which lie at the heart of the atom. Why do the contradictory forces of electrons and protons not cancel each other out? Why do atoms not merely fly apart? The current explanation refers to the 'strong force' which holds the atom together. But the fact remains that the unity of opposites lies at the basis of all reality.

"Within the nucleus of an atom, there are two opposing forces, attraction and repulsion. On the one hand, there are electrical repulsions which, if unrestrained, would violently tear the nucleus apart. On the other hand, there are powerful forces of attraction which bind the nuclear particles to each other. This force of attraction, however, has its limits, beyond which it is unable to hold things together. The forces of attraction, unlike repulsion, have a very short reach. In a small nucleus they can keep the forces of disruption in check. But in a large nucleus, the forces of repulsion cannot be easily dominated....

"Nature seems to work in pairs. We have the 'strong' and the 'weak' forces at the subatomic level; attraction and repulsion; north and south in magnetism; positive and negative in electricity; matter and anti-matter; male and female in biology; odd and even in mathematics; even the concept of 'left and right handedness' in relation to the spin of subatomic particles. There is a certain symmetry, in which contradictory tendencies, to quote Feynman, 'balance themselves out,' or, to use the more poetical expression of Heraclitus, 'agree with each other by differing like the opposing tensions of the strings and bow of a musical instrument.' There are two kinds of matter, which can be called positive and negative. Like kinds repel and unlike attract....

"Moreover, everything is in a permanent relation with other things. Even over vast distances, we are affected by light, radiation, gravity. Undetected by our senses, there is a process of interaction, which causes a continual series of changes. Ultra-violet light is able to 'evaporate' electrons from metal surfaces in much the same way as the sun’s rays evaporate water from the ocean. Banesh Hoffmann states: 'It is still a strange and awe-inspiring thought, that you and I are thus rhythmically exchanging particles with one another, and with the earth and the beasts of the earth, and the sun and the moon and the stars, to the uttermost galaxy....'

"The phenomenon of oppositeness exists in physics, where, for example, every particle has its anti-particle (electron and positron, proton and anti-proton, etc.). These are not merely different, but opposites in the most literal sense of the word, being identical in every respect, except one: they have opposite electrical charges—positive and negative. Incidentally, it is a matter of indifference which one is characterised as negative and which positive. The important thing is the relationship between them....

"This universal phenomenon of the unity of opposites is, in reality, the motor-force of all motion and development in nature. It is the reason why it is not necessary to introduce the concept of external impulse to explain movement and change—the fundamental weakness of all mechanistic theories. Movement, which itself involves a contradiction, is only possible as a result of the conflicting tendencies and inner tensions which lie at the heart of all forms of matter.

"The opposing tendencies can exist in a state of uneasy equilibrium for long periods of time, until some change, even a small quantitative change, destroys the equilibrium and gives rise to a critical state which can produce a qualitative transformation. In 1936, Bohr compared the structure of the nucleus to a drop of liquid, for example, a raindrop hanging from a leaf. Here the force of gravity struggles with that of surface tension striving to keep the water molecules together. The addition of just a few more molecules to the liquid renders it unstable. The enlarged droplet begins to shudder, the surface tension is no longer able to hold the mass to the leaf and the whole thing falls." [Woods and Grant, Reason in Revolt (1995), pp.64-68.]

"'Everything Flows'

"Everything is in a constant state of motion, from neutrinos to super-clusters. The earth itself is constantly moving, rotating around the sun once a year, and rotating on its own axis once a day. The sun, in turn, revolves on its axis once in 26 days and, together with all the other stars in our galaxy, travels once around the galaxy in 230 million years. It is probable that still larger structures (clusters of galaxies) also have some kind of overall rotational motion. This seems to be a characteristic of matter right down to the atomic level, where the atoms which make up molecules rotate about each other at varying rates. Inside the atom, electrons rotate around the nucleus at enormous speeds....

"The essential point of dialectical thought is not that it is based on the idea of change and motion but that it views motion and change as phenomena based upon contradiction. Whereas traditional formal logic seeks to banish contradiction, dialectical thought embraces it. Contradiction is an essential feature of all being. It lies at the heart of matter itself. It is the source of all motion, change, life and development. The dialectical law which expresses this idea is the law of the unity and interpenetration of opposites...." [Ibid, pp.45-47. Quotation marks altered to conform to the conventions adopted at my site.]

Bold added.

As Glenn Magee notes:


"Another parallel between Hermeticism and Hegel is the doctrine of internal relations. For the Hermeticists, the cosmos is not a loosely connected, or to use Hegelian language, externally related set of particulars. Rather, everything in the cosmos is internally related, bound up with everything else.... This principle is most clearly expressed in the so-called Emerald Tablet of Hermes Trismegistus, which begins with the famous lines 'As above, so below.' This maxim became the central tenet of Western occultism, for it laid the basis for a doctrine of the unity of the cosmos through sympathies and correspondences between its various levels. The most important implication of this doctrine is the idea that man is the microcosm, in which the whole of the macrocosm is reflected.

"...The universe is an internally related whole pervaded by cosmic energies." [Magee (2001), p.13. Quotation marks altered to conform to the conventions adopted at my site. More on this topic here (http://www.marxists.org/reference/subject/philosophy/works/en/magee.htm).]

Hard to slip a party card between them, isn't it?

Incidentally, the factual basis of the above assertions (advanced by Woods and Grant) are all called into question at my site, here:

http://anti-dialectics.co.uk/page%2004.htm

http://anti-dialectics.co.uk/page%2005.htm

http://anti-dialectics.co.uk/page%2007.htm

http://anti-dialectics.co.uk/page%2008_01.htm

http://anti-dialectics.co.uk/page%2008_02.htm

[S.Artesian]

In its current incarnation, dialectical materialism is more like an ideology than a religion in that an ideology has an answer, actually the same answer, for everything, while a religion insists that it doesn't have the answer for everything, and everything must be accepted on faith.

Minor discrepancy, but it might come in handy some day.

[Rosa Lichtenstein]

Well many religions do think they have answers, but I take your point. However, as I noted, I am following Marx's typology here, in that this theory provides those held in its thrall with consolation, just as it puts each of its acolytes at the very centre of the meaning universe. By that I mean that this theory informs each of its adepts that, under the influence of 'subjective dialectics', they can be part of the cosmic drift of the entire universe (objective dialectics). In this way it endows of each of its disciples with its own form of cosmic significance.

As I noted above:


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 just such a 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 their reliance on ordinary language and 'common sense'.

Fortunately, history has predisposed these prophets to ascertain the truth about reality for the rest of us, which means that they are our 'naturally-ordained' leaders. That in turn meant these 'leaders' were also teachers of the 'ignorant masses', who could 'legitimately' substitute themselves for the unwashed majority -- in 'their own interests', you understand. This is because the masses are 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 OK, 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; it tells such comrades that reality 'contradicts' outward appearances. Hence, even if Dialectical Marxism appears to be a long-term failure, those with a the equivalent of a dialectical 'third eye' can see the opposite is in fact the case: Dialectical Marxism is a ringing success!

In that case, awkward facts can either be ignored or they can be re-configured into their opposite.

[Hit The North]

Well many religions do think they have answers, but I take your point. However, as I noted, I am following Marx's typology here, in that this theory provides those held in its thrall with consolation, just as it puts each of its acolytes at the very centre of the meaning universe. By that I mean that this theory informs each of its adepts that, under the influence of 'subjective dialectics', they can be part of the cosmic drift of the entire universe (objective dialectics). In this way it endows of each of its disciples with its own form of cosmic significance.



Well, this is your interpretation and I've yet to see this explicitly set down in any non-antagonistic writing on the material dialectic. Perhaps you'd like to furnish us with some quotes where the "cosmic significance" of the adherents of this theory is made explicit?

[A.R.Amistad]

Lets define our terms. What is a religion? My personal belief is anything that gives an credence to an outside idealistic force explaining why and how things are. So obviously we have everything from Christianity to Zen that is obviously a religion. But lets take for example objectivity, which I believe is a religion. It is a religion because it stipulates that for the individual to achieve true 'individuality,' to understand the "why" and "how" of their life potential, it must focus on things that are without, not within. When an individual fetishizes any outside entity, God or not, as being ones only key to a fulfilling life, or the only thing that can give purpose to life, it becomes a religion. Say what you want about the "mysticism" of dialectical materialism, it does none of this. First, you'd have to assert that materialism is a religion. This is very possible because when one depends on the interaction of atoms and sub-atomic particles to give purpose to life it becomes a religion. But most scientific materialists are able to ask the right question. If you don't know something about something, don't ask "why" ask "how?" No matter how "mystical" dialectics are or are not, the same can be said about them. Dialectical Materialism doesn't answer the "why" question, it answers the "how question." Religions always seek to first answer the "why" and supplement it with the how. The authentic person seeks to understand the how and then supplement a subjective "why?"

[Rosa Lichtenstein]

BTB:


Well, this is your interpretation and I've yet to see this explicitly set down in any non-antagonistic writing on the material dialectic. Perhaps you'd like to furnish us with some quotes where the "cosmic significance" of the adherents of this theory is made explicit?

I have done this before, and you just ignore them.

You can find scores, if not hundreds of them, here:

http://anti-dialectics.co.uk/page%2002.htm

[Sir Comradical]

It's about as much a religion as christian-rock is "music".

[Rosa Lichtenstein]

AR Amistad:


Lets define our terms. What is a religion? My personal belief is anything that gives an credence to an outside idealistic force explaining why and how things are. So obviously we have everything from Christianity to Zen that is obviously a religion. But lets take for example objectivity, which I believe is a religion. It is a religion because it stipulates that for the individual to achieve true 'individuality,' to understand the "why" and "how" of their life potential, it must focus on things that are without, not within. When an individual fetishizes any outside entity, God or not, as being ones only key to a fulfilling life, or the only thing that can give purpose to life, it becomes a religion.

I prefer Marx's characterisation.


Say what you want about the "mysticism" of dialectical materialism, it does none of this. First, you'd have to assert that materialism is a religion. This is very possible because when one depends on the interaction of atoms and sub-atomic particles to give purpose to life it becomes a religion. But most scientific materialists are able to ask the right question. If you don't know something about something, don't ask "why" ask "how?" No matter how "mystical" dialectics are or are not, the same can be said about them. Dialectical Materialism doesn't answer the "why" question, it answers the "how question." Religions always seek to first answer the "why" and supplement it with the how. The authentic person seeks to understand the how and then supplement a subjective "why?"

And yet, as I have shown, Dialectical Materialism [DM] is a source of consolation for its acolytes. In that sense, it functions in a way that makes it analogous to religious belief, as I alleged.


Dialectical Materialism doesn't answer the "why" question, it answers the "how question."

But it doesn't answer 'how' questions. For example, it's supposed to be the theory of change, but if it were true, change would be impossible, as I have shown.

In fact, from a set of dogmas that no one is allowed to alter (which is odd, given their commitment to universal change), dialecticians have developed a world-view that does what I allege above, and in my first two posts. And it does provide them with a "why" -- in that it puts each of its novitiates right at the centre of the meaning universe, in contact with a process that governs everything in reality, for all of time, and of which they can become a part. Each dialectical disciple can become one with a cosmic process that has only one outcome (via the 'negation of the negation'), as I argue in one of my essays:


The Opiate Of The Party

Method -- Or Methadone?

It is maintained here that DM satisfies the contingent psychological needs of certain sections of the revolutionary movement: those comrades who, because of their class origin/position, and because of the constant failure of Dialectical Marxism, cling to DM in ways that make a drowning man look positively indifferent toward any straws that might randomly drift his way.

[Any who doubt this should try arguing with comrades who are in thrall to this theory. On that, see here (http://anti-dialectics.co.uk/RevLeft.htm).]

As noted earlier, this is because dialectics provides consolation in a way that is analogous to the comfort and reassurance that religious dogma supplies believers: that is, DM provides solace for unrealised hopes, supplies both a psychological defence against disillusion and a handy way of re-configuring defeat as its exact opposite. This is again similar to the way that theists manage to persuade themselves that despite appearances to the contrary, death, disease and suffering is not only beneficial, it confirms the goodness of 'God'! Each system provides its acolytes with a convenient excuse for denying the facts.

In other words, DM is the "opiate" of the Party, the heart of a seemingly hopeless cause.

For the Dialectical Classicists, who lived in a world that is divorced from the day-to-day life and struggle of ordinary workers -- i.e., professional revolutionaries who are not involved in the material world of toil --, HM was clearly not fundamental enough. In fact, such individuals, who (for whatever reason) were cut-off from the world of labour, clearly required their own distinctive world-view, one that has itself been abstracted (cut-off) from the world of 'appearances', and thus from material reality, too.

This world-view must be a theory that adequately represents the (now) alienated experience of these erstwhile 'radicals': it must not only be divorced from ordinary language and common experience, it must be distinguished from working class and/or materialist forms-of-thought. In addition, it must rationalise and confirm the pre-eminent position such individuals arrogate to themselves -- that is, it must ratify their status as leaders of the class.

To that end, it must be a theory that they alone "understand".

Even then, they use this theory to 'prove' that the leaders of other Marxist groups either (1) do not "understand" dialectics or (2) they misuse it. [On that, see here (http://anti-dialectics.co.uk/page%2009_02.htm).]

What better theory, then, to fit the bill than the incomprehensible system Hegel concocted (upside down or 'the right way up)?

DM is thus beyond workers' experience -- not by accident --, but because it's meant to be that way.

Naturally, this not only renders DM immune from refutation, it also transforms it into an ideal intellectual device for getting things the wrong way round (or, indeed, upside down). It is indeed an ideal tool for keeping 'reality' Ideal. Moreover, this 'theory' helps insulate militant minds from the setbacks revolutionaries constantly face.

DM is thus not just the opiate of the party, it expresses the soul of the professional revolutionary. Abstracted not just from the class, but also from humanity itself, this faction within the labour movement naturally finds abstraction conducive to the way it sees the material world, and to the way it regards the working class: as an abstract object of theory, not the subject of history.

That explains, at least, the motivation underlying the belief that DM is the "world-view" of the proletariat -- plainly these 'workers' are now members of an abstract class of proletarians (most of whom, in the concrete world, have never of this theory, and never will)!

Of course, this accounts for its long-term lack of impact on workers.

Fragmentation And The Petty-Bourgeois Personality

The above frame of mind is connected with the way that such individuals find their way into the revolutionary movement.

Unlike most worker-revolutionaries, 'professional' revolutionaries have joined, or have been recruited into the socialist movement (by-and-large) as an expression of their rebellious personality, as a result of their own personal commitment, because of individual alienation from the system, from reading books, or for some other contingent psychological or biographical reason --, but not as a direct result of the class war. That is, they become revolutionaries through their own individual efforts, or those of some other individual (such as a parent, partner or friend) and not (in general) through participation in collective action, or in strikes (etc.) at their own places of work -- if they work.

This means that from the beginning (again, by-and-large), because of their class position and non-working class upbringing, such comrades act and think like individuals. This (1) affects the ideas they form, (2) colours their attitude toward such ideas, (3) affects their activity inside the movement/party, and (4) slants the relationships they form with other revolutionaries.

Indeed, no less an authority than Lenin quotes Kautsky to this effect:


"The problem...that again interests us so keenly today is the antagonism between the intelligentsia and the proletariat. My colleagues [Kautsky is himself an intellectual, a writer and editor] will mostly be indignant that I admit this antagonism. But it actually exists, and, as in other cases, it would be the most inexpedient tactics to try to overcome the fact by denying it. This antagonism is a social one, it relates to classes, not to individuals. The individual intellectual, like the individual capitalist, may identify himself with the proletariat in its class struggle. When he does, he changes his character too. It is not this type of intellectual, who is still an exception among his class, that we shall mainly speak of in what follows. Unless otherwise stated, I shall use the word intellectual to mean only the common run of intellectual who takes the stand of bourgeois society, and who is characteristic of the intelligentsia as a class. This class stands in a certain antagonism to the proletariat.

"This antagonism differs, however, from the antagonism between labour and capital. The intellectual is not a capitalist. True, his standard of life is bourgeois, and he must maintain it if he is not to become a pauper; but at the same time he is compelled to sell the product of his labour, and often his labour-power, and is himself often enough exploited and humiliated by the capitalist. Hence the intellectual does not stand in any economic antagonism to the proletariat. But his status of life and his conditions of labour are not proletarian, and this gives rise to a certain antagonism in sentiments and ideas.

"...Quite different is the case of the intellectual. He does not fight by means of power, but by argument. His weapons are his personal knowledge, his personal ability, his personal convictions. He can attain to any position at all only through his personal qualities. Hence the freest play for his individuality seems to him the prime condition for successful activity. It is only with difficulty that he submits to being a part subordinate to a whole, and then only from necessity, not from inclination. He recognises the need of discipline only for the mass, not for the elect minds. And of course he counts himself among the latter...." [Kautsky quoted in Lenin (1947) One Step Forward, Two Steps Backward, pp.121-23.]

To be sure, Lenin is describing hostile intellectuals, but much of what he says applies to those who become revolutionaries; indeed, this class analysis also applies to Lenin himself, and other petty-bourgeois Dialectical Marxists.

Such comrades thus enter the movement committed to the revolution as an idea, as an expression of their own personal integrity, idiosyncratic alienation and individual goals in life. They are not revolutionaries for proletarian/materialist reasons --, that is, as a result of their direct experience of collective action, or as a direct consequence of working class response to exploitation --, but for individualist (albeit, often very noble) reasons.

This is not to malign them, but to remind readers that this is a class issue.

So, when these comrades encounter DM, it is quite 'natural' for them to latch on to its a priori theses. This is because, as Lenin noted, their class position has already delivered them up as atomised, isolated individuals with no collective identity. This non-negotiable fact is further compounded by the additional fact that these individuals have had their heads filled with "ruling ideas" -- which is plainly the result of the 'superior education' they receive because of their class origin. Hence, ruling ideas dominate their thought almost from the beginning:


"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. 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 individuals composing the ruling class possess among other things consciousness, and therefore think. Insofar, therefore, as they rule as a class and determine the extent and compass of an epoch, it is self-evident that they do this in its whole range, hence among other things rule also as thinkers, as producers of ideas, and regulate the production and distribution of the ideas of their age: thus their ideas are the ruling ideas of the epoch." [Marx and Engels (1970) The German Ideology, pp.64-65.]

As we will see in Essay Twelve Part One (http://anti-dialectics.co.uk/page%2012_01.htm), and the rest of Essay Twelve (summary here (http://anti-dialectics.co.uk/Rest_of_Summary_of_Twelve.htm)), a common thread that runs through the diverse world-views that are conducive to, and patronised by the various ruling-classes that have parasitized humanity over the last five or six thousand years, is the idea that there is an invisible world anterior to experience, underlying 'appearances', which is more real that the world we see around us, and which is accessible to thought alone. Because of this, such ideas have had to be imposed on reality in a dogmatic and a priori manner ever since (plainly because they cannot be read from reality, not least because the world is not a book).

In which case, when these individuals -- who have already been educated to see the world this way before they've even heard of Marxism -- encounter DM, they appropriate its dogmatic a priori theses with ease. The thought-forms this theory encapsulates appear to them to be at once both philosophical and certain (i.e., a priori, and thus self-certifying), in the traditional manner. Moreover, because DM-theses originate from within what seems to them to be a radical philosophical/political tradition they also seem radical -- alas, here they are quite happy to accept appearances at face value!

Manifestly, dialectical concepts could only have arisen from traditional sources (workers do not dream up such nostrums), which sources had already been tainted by countless centuries of ruling-class thought-forms (as Marx noted). This is plainly because traditional thought the only source of developed 'high theory', and these individuals are attracted to this way of seeing things since it promotes the sort of ideas to which these erstwhile radicals are most susceptible. The class background and education such individuals receive mean that ruling-class ideas have already been inserted into their heads, "from the outside", even before they reach their late teens. In that case, this new, Dialectical/Hermetic batch hardly raises an eyebrow. Indeed, it alights on ready soil.

Initially, very little specialist knowledge is needed to 'comprehend' this theory; indeed, no expensive equipment or time-consuming experiments are required. And yet, within hours this superscientific 'world-view' can be grasped by most eager novices (once more, since it relies on thought alone, and thus appears to be 'self-evident'). Literally, in an afternoon, an initiate can study and learn a handful of theses that purport to explain all of reality for all of time.

Just try learning Quantum (or even Newtonian) Mechanics that quickly!

One only has to look at most revolutionary internet sites, for example, to see how they claim to be able to reveal nature's deepest secrets (which are true for all of reality, for all of time) in page or two of homespun 'logic', loose phraseology, and Mickey Mouse Science.

Contrast that with the many months, or even years of hard work it takes to grasp the genuine science of Marxist economics, for example. Contrast it too with the detailed knowledge one requires in order to understand, say, the class structure and development of the ancient world, or medieval society. No 'self-evident' truths here!

Moreover, because this 'theory' is connected with wider historic, or even romantic aims (explored briefly below), such comrades soon become wedded (nay, super-glued) to this doctrine. They become converts. True Believers.

This subjective response to such an easily accessible 'door of perception' now connects dialectics with the revolutionary ego, for it is this theory which guarantees for each of these individuals that their anger at injustice and all the hard work they devote to the cause are not in vain.

On the contrary, this theory guarantees that the life of each of its adepts is capable of assuming cosmic significance. Dialectics places the militant mind at the very centre of the meaning universe -- for it seems to give such social atoms universal meaning, with a set of eternal 'truths'/'laws' to prove it. We might even call this the "Ptolemisation of The Militant Mind" [PTMM], since around this 'theory' all of reality now revolves, put into neat logical order by a few trite a priori theses.

The heady romance of being both a revolutionary and an active participant in the cosmic drift of the entire universe now takes over. Indeed, for all the world, these comrades seem to fall in love with this 'theory'! [This surfaces in the irrational and emotional way they all defend it, when it's attacked -- see below, and here (http://anti-dialectics.co.uk/RevLeft.htm).]

But, the revolutionary ego can only ascend to the next blessed level if it becomes a willing vehicle for the tide of history, a slave to 'the dialectic'.

The dialectic now expresses in its earthly incarnation cosmic forces that have governed material reality from the beginning of time and which are thus written into the fabric of nature, like the word of 'God'.

A Dialectical Logos, if you will.

Or, at least, that's how the DM-Faithful picture it to themselves (on that, see here (http://anti-dialectics.co.uk/page%2002.htm)).

Indeed, the dialectic governs the nature of everything in existence, including even the thoughts of these, the 'least' of its servants -- a process otherwise known as "subjective dialectics".

By becoming slaves to the mysterious 'mediations' that emanate forth from the "Totality" (which, like 'God', cannot be defined (http://anti-dialectics.co.uk/page%2011_01.htm), and which works in mysterious ways), through revolutionary 'good works' ("activity") and pure thoughts ("non-Revisionism"), by joining a movement that cannot fail to alter fundamentally the course of human history, the petty-bourgeois ego is 'born again' to a higher purpose, and with a cosmic mandate.

The dialectical novitiate now emerges as a professional revolutionary --, sometimes even with a shiny new name to prove it. But, certainly with a new persona.

The scales now drop from its eyes.

The Hermetic virus has found another victim.

There is now no way back...

As Max Eastman noted:


"Hegelism is like a mental disease -- you cannot know what it is until you get it, and then you can't know because you have got it."

This now provides such comrades with well-known social psychological motivations, inducements and reinforcements. These, in turn, help convince these Hermetic victims that:

(1) They as individuals can become key figures in history -- actually helping to determine the next direction social evolution will take.

(2) Their personal existence is, after all, not meaningless or for nought.

(3) Whatever it was that caused their alienation from bourgeois society can be rectified, reversed or redeemed through the right sort of acts, thoughts and deeds -- reminiscent of the way that Pelagian forms of 'muscular Christianity' taught that salvation might be had through pure thoughts, good works, and severe treatment of the body.

Dialectics now takes on a role analogous to that which religion assumes in the minds of the masses, giving cosmic significance and consolation to these, its very own petty-bourgeois victims. Same social cause, similar palliative drug.

However, because they have not been recruited from the working class, these social atoms need an internally-generated unifying force -- one provided by a set of self-certifying ideas -- to bind them to the international workers' movement, and the Party. As such, they need a Cosmic Whole to make sense of their social fragmentation. This is where the mysterious "Totality" comes into its own -- but, just like 'God', so mysterious is this "Totality" that not a single one of its slaves can tell us of its nature, even though they all gladly bend the knee to its Contradictory Will.

In stark contrast, workers involved in collective labour have unity forced on them by well-known, external material forces. These compel workers to combine; they do not persuade them to unite as a result of some theory or other. Workers are thus forced to combine out of material necessity, with unity externally-imposed upon them, since this unifying force is a material, not an Ideal force.

In contrast, once more, while history shows that the class war forces workers to unite, it also reveals that it drives these petty-bourgeois revolutionaries apart. In that case, dialectical theory has to replace material struggle as their sole unifying principle; petty-bourgeois/de-classé Marxists are thus supposedly united by a set of ideas. The forces that operate on them are thus quintessentially individualistic, unquestionably ideal and dangerously centrifugal (as Lenin noted earlier, and as we will soon see). But, without this 'theory', the rationale underlying the romantic idea that these comrades stand right at the philosophical centre of the dialectical universe [PTMM] would disappear.

Moreover, because dialectics provides such comrades with an apparently coherent, but paradigmatically traditional picture of reality (i.e., as an a priori theory, dogmatically imposed on reality), it supplies each one with a unique set of motivating factors. Indeed, because this theory is represented individualistically inside each brain, it helps further divide each 'dialectical disciple', one from the next (for reasons explored below).

Militant Martinets

Dialectics, the theory of universal opposites, goes to work on militant minds and helps turn each into a dedicated sectarian and fanatical faction fiend.

Collective discipline is paramount inside Bolshevik-style parties. But, the strong-willed, petty-bourgeois militant that this style of politics attracts is not used to this form of externally-imposed regimentation (since, as Lenin noted, these comrades are attracted by internally-processed and self-certifying ideas), and so fights soon break out, often over minor, even personal issues.

Since childhood, these comrades have been socialised think like social atoms, but in a revolutionary party they have to act like social molecules (which is a psychological feat that lies way beyond their class position). Hence, personal disputes quickly break out and are soon re-configured as political differences -- once more, these are differences over ideas --, which require, and are soon given, theoretical 'justification'.

Unfortunately, these individuals are socially-conditioned egocentrics who, in their own eyes, have a hot-line to dialectical truth (hard-wired into each brain by those self-certifying Hegelian ideas, once more) -- and they cannot help exploiting that fact since this is what defines them as a revolutionary.

In such an ideal environment, the DM-classics, just like the Bible and other assorted Holy Books, soon come into their own.

Again, as Lenin points out, ruling-class theorists, 'intellectuals', have always made a name for themselves by criticising the ideas of other, rival theorists. This is, after all, part of establishing a reputation, and is an essential component in promoting each career -- or, indeed, for defending a patron or some other beneficent section of the ruling-class. Petty-bourgeois capitalists have to rely on their individual skills in order to survive in the face of Big Capital. In like manner, these unfortunate characters have to ply their trade as individual theorists, armed only with ideas. Petty-bourgeois dialecticians thus trade in similarly soiled goods.

So, it was that the dialectical classicists, when they joined the revolutionary movement brought with them this divisive, individualist ruling-class trait. In the market for 'Marxist' ideas, those with the best critical and inventive skills often floated to the top.

The fact that such individuals have very strong characters (otherwise they'd not survive) merely compounds the problem. In order to make their name, and advance their 'revolutionary careers', it becomes important for them to disagree with every other theorist, which they then almost invariably proceed to do. Sectarianism is thus caused by such petty-bourgeois 'atoms'.

But the situation is aggravated by dialectics. What better theory is there then (other than Zen Buddhism, perhaps) that is capable of initiating endless disputation than one that is as contradictory and incomprehensible all in one go, as is the case with 'Materialist Dialectics'? Or, indeed, one that informs all who fall under its hypnotic spell that progress (even in ideas) may only be had through "internal contradiction"?

For Dialectical Marxists, the drive to impose one's views on others becomes irresistible, too. Doctrinal control (i.e., the control of all those inner, privatised ideas lodged in every other atomised party skull) now acts as a surrogate for external control by material forces. Indeed, this desire to control has even been given the grandiloquent name: "democratic centralism" -- a nice 'contradiction-in-terms' for you to ponder.

But, just as genuine religionists soon discovered, mind-control is much easier to secure if appeal is made to impenetrably mysterious doctrines that no one understands, which all must accept and which all must repeat constantly to dull the critical faculties.

Hence, because the party cannot reproduce the class struggle inside its walls, and thus force materialist unity on its cadres externally, it can only control political thought internally (in each head) by turning it into a mind-numbing mantra, insisting on doctrinal purity, and then accusing all those who do not conform to such ideal standards of not "understanding" dialectics.

In this milieu, an Authoritarian Personality (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Authoritarian_personality) type soon emerges in the revolutionary movement to enforce ideological orthodoxy (disguised as part of an endeavour to keep faith with "tradition", which is, un-coincidentally, a noxious trait shared by all known religions). "Tradition" now becomes a watch-word to test the doctrinal purity of party cadres -- especially those who might stray too far from the narrow path which alone leads the select few toward revolutionary salvation.

This naturally leads to more disputes and thus more splits.

[History has indeed shown that the inter-atomic forces of fragmentation that operate between dialectically-distracted comrades far out-weigh their frequent calls for unity.]

All this explains why, to each DM-acolyte, the dialectic is so personal, and so intimately their own possession, and why you can almost feel their hurt when it is comprehensively trashed, as it has been at my site, and at RevLeft.

Hence, any attack on this 'precious jewel' is an attack on the revolutionary ego itself, and must be resisted with all the bile at its command.

And that explains, too, all the abuse you will get if you think to challenge the dialectical doctrines of a single one of these Hermetic Head Cases.

More details here:

http://anti-dialectics.co.uk/page%2009_02.htm

[Hit The North]

Still yet to issue a quotation from Lenin or anyone else which says "I am part of the cosmic drift of the entire universe. In this way it endows me with cosmic significance."

[Rosa Lichtenstein]

BTB:


Still yet to issue a quotation from Lenin or anyone else which says "I am part of the cosmic drift of the entire universe. In this way it endows me with cosmic significance."

He (they) said many things that are the equivalent of this; but you'd know that if you followed the link I posted.

[Buffalo Souljah]

Someone may have already addressed this in a previous post(I did not read through every page of this thread in great detail): In what way are the two (ideology and religion) mutually exclusive?

[Rosa Lichtenstein]

^^^I think you need to start a new thread on this -- in Religion.

[Hit The North]

^^^I think you need to start a new thread on this -- in Religion.

I think you need to address the issue, given that you charge DM as being a religion rather than an ideology. What is the difference in your view and how does that view lead you to conclude that DM is a religion?

[Rosa Lichtenstein]

BTB:


I think you need to address the issue, given that you charge DM as being a religion rather than an ideology. What is the difference in your view and how does that view lead you to conclude that DM is a religion?

And where did I allege DM is a religion?

[S.Artesian]

BTB:



And where did I allege DM is a religion?

Actually you said dialectical materialism is analogous to religion, and I think it's fair to say that you indicated it shares a stronger affinity with religion that it does with the category of "ideology." Maybe I'm wrong, but if I am I know you'll correct me.

You also said in one of your first posts:

"Once again, Marx, I think, had the answer:

Quote:
"Religion is, indeed, the self-consciousness and self-esteem of man who has either not yet won through to himself, or has already lost himself again.... Religion is the general theory of this world, its encyclopaedic compendium, its logic in popular form, its spiritual point d'honneur, its enthusiasm, its moral sanction, its solemn complement, and its universal basis of consolation and justification....

"...Religion is the sigh of the oppressed creature, the heart of a heartless world, and the soul of soulless conditions...." [Bold emphases added.]
[Substitute "dialectics" for "religion" in the above to see the point.]
__________________________

I didn't find anywhere in this thread where you actually state "DM is a religion."

The point of the thread itself is to determine if DM is a religion, or shares certain traits in common with religion that would disqualify DM from being a valid mechanism for concrete analysis, is it not?

You did claim that dialectic materialism gives a sort of false universality-- my term, my interpretation-- akin to religion and BTB is asking you to cite evidence in the works of the DMs where they proclaim this sort of "faith-based" universality-- again that's my interpretation of the current dispute between you and the BTB.

An ideology can be wrong, false, mistaken [actually I think ideologies are inherent false, mistaken, wrong] without being religious. Science can be mistaken and still be science. Certainly persistence in ideology that history has proven false, mistaken [i.e laissez-faire economics, Friedmanism, Ayn Randism etc] devolves usually into one of two "ultimate expressions" one of faith, the other of "biology,"-- i.e. its human nature, the market is the "natural" expression of needs and wants... etc.

Anyway I hope I've made these roiled waters even more roiled.

[Hit The North]

BTB:

And where did I allege DM is a religion?

Where do you not?

[Rosa Lichtenstein]

BTB:


Where do you not?

I failed to deny DM was a squashed tomato, too. I suppose a idiot might then post the following:


I think you need to address the issue, given that you charge DM as being a squashed tomato rather than an ideology. What is the difference in your view and how does that view lead you to conclude that DM is a squashed tomato?

[Rosa Lichtenstein]

S Artesian:


You did claim that dialectic materialism gives a sort of false universality-- my term, my interpretation-- akin to religion and BTB is asking you to cite evidence in the works of the DMs where they proclaim this sort of "faith-based" universality-- again that's my interpretation of the current dispute between you and the BTB.

I also alleged many other things of DM.

As far as BTB is concerned: you are new here. BTB had been asking me such misguided questions for years. When I have answered him, he either fails to read what I post, or he forgets it within minutes, and asks the same things again a few weeks or months later.

So, I now adopt a dismissive approach toward him, and merely direct him to my site (or I take the p*ss out of him). He never goes there, so nothing is lost or gained, since, even if he did, his defective memory would kick in again, and we'd be back to square one.


An ideology can be wrong, false, mistaken [actually I think ideologies are inherent false, mistaken, wrong] without being religious. Science can be mistaken and still be science. Certainly persistence in ideology that history has proven false, mistaken [i.e laissez-faire economics, Friedmanism, Ayn Randism etc] devolves usually into one of two "ultimate expressions" one of faith, the other of "biology,"-- i.e. its human nature, the market is the "natural" expression of needs and wants... etc.

There is little here with which I would want to take issue.

[A.R.Amistad]

"Religion is, indeed, the self-consciousness and self-esteem of man who has either not yet won through to himself, or has already lost himself again.... Religion is the general theory of this world, its encyclopaedic compendium, its logic in popular form, its spiritual point d'honneur, its enthusiasm, its moral sanction, its solemn complement, and its universal basis of consolation and justification....

"...Religion is the sigh of the oppressed creature, the heart of a heartless world, and the soul of soulless conditions...."

I'd like someone to show me how this contradicts what I said

[Hit The North]

BTB:
I failed to deny DM was a squashed tomato, too.

This is true, but then you haven't started a thread entitled 'Is DM a squashed tomato?' and then proceeded to provide "evidence" to that effect, have you?


So, I now adopt a dismissive approach toward him, and merely direct him to my site (or I take the p*ss out of him).


That sums up your relationship with around 98% of those you debate with on the internet, so I rather think the defect is most likely with you.

[Rosa Lichtenstein]

BTB:


This is true, but then you haven't started a thread entitled 'Is DM a squashed tomato?' and then proceeded to provide "evidence" to that effect, have you?

True, I haven't denied it either. So I must believe it according to you.


That sums up your relationship with around 98% of those you debate with on the internet, so I rather think the defect is most likely with you.

No, what a lie!

More like 99.9%, I'd say.

Don't fret: I'll repeat this when you forget it.:)

[Hit The North]

BTB:

True, I haven't denied it either. So I must believe it according to you.


No, because my comment is limited by the context of you making this thread where you appear to be affirming the question. Squashed tomatoes have nothing to do with it.

[Luís Henrique]

Time, I suppose, to raise the hypothesis that it is, in fact, a squashed tomato.

As a metaphor, it is certainly better than "DM is a religion".

Luís Henrique

[JoyDivision]

I was going to write an elaborate post about why DM is nothing like religion, starting with Marx's Feurbachian tendencies, and his definition of a changing man in terms of man's relation to nature, and then I realized it's all pointless.

Why would I defend against such a ridiculous claim. DM is nothing like any religion ever, and is quite oppositional to religious ways of thinking at the level of basic assumption.

End of story, and if people who weren't appalled by the statement didn't post here, this thread woudl be completely ignored.

Let us let it meet it's destiny.

[S.Artesian]

Perhaps a new thread is in order--- "What is Dialectical Materialism?"

[A.R.Amistad]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4ovgccxfEq8

[Comrade Akai]

I find that a lot of people are banned from RevLeft or sent to the OI gulag for having views that CC/the mods disagree with....

[Hit The North]

I find that a lot of people are banned from RevLeft or sent to the OI gulag for having views that CC/the mods disagree with....

Is there any relevance to you posting this comment here?

[A.R.Amistad]

BTB:

Is there any relevance to you posting this comment here?

Rosa L:

A recently banned member asked this question (in Learning), but his/her thread was closed before I could interevene.

[Hit The North]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4ovgccxfEq8

Sorry, but that video is terrible. I wouldn't recommend it to anyone.

[Meridian]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4ovgccxfEq8
Sounds like a religion to me.

"Dialectical materialism is... a theory of reality, that views matter as the sole subject of change, and all change is a product of cosmic conflict between opposites..."

If not a religion, a really bad metaphysical, non-sensical theory.

[A.R.Amistad]

BTB

Sorry, but that video is terrible. I wouldn't recommend it to anyone.

That was in response to comrade Artesian's proposal that someone give people something by which people can have a most basic understanding of what Dialectical Materialism is. I personally found the definitions of the three laws to be quite confusing the way that the video put it.

Meridian

Sounds like a religion to me.

"Dialectical materialism is... a theory of reality, that views matter as the sole subject of change, and all change is a product of cosmic conflict between opposites..."


As long as it remains a theory it cannot be a religion. This doesn't mean it can't be turned into something dogmatic, but in and of itself this definition doesn't make it religious. An theoretical explanation of reality would have been in better taste.


If not a religion, a really bad metaphysical, non-sensical theory.

You'll have to explain what you think is bad, metaphysical and non-sensical about it.

[JoyDivision]

Sounds like a religion to me.

"Dialectical materialism is... a theory of reality, that views matter as the sole subject of change, and all change is a product of cosmic conflict between opposites..."

If not a religion, a really bad metaphysical, non-sensical theory.


Put another way...."Dialectical materialism is a materialist theory of reality that views man as a function of his social identity and the way in which he relates to nature, and so uses this relation to explain changes in human behavior. When man develops the ability to change the way in which he labors the land, it naturally follows that he is going to change the way he interacts with that same land and with other humans. Thus, when the productive forces change, and there is a lag in the corresponding change to the relations of production, there is tension. This tension is resolved with revolution."

[Hit The North]

BTB


That was in response to comrade Artesian's proposal that someone give people something by which people can have a most basic understanding of what Dialectical Materialism is. I personally found the definitions of the three laws to be quite confusing the way that the video put it.



I agree. The examples are so poor that it makes the video worthless as a simple introduction.

[ZeroNowhere]

Put another way...."Dialectical materialism is a materialist theory of reality that views man as a function of his social identity and the way in which he relates to nature, and so uses this relation to explain changes in human behavior. When man develops the ability to change the way in which he labors the land, it naturally follows that he is going to change the way he interacts with that same land and with other humans. Thus, when the productive forces change, and there is a lag in the corresponding change to the relations of production, there is tension. This tension is resolved with revolution."
Isn't something approximating that what is generally referred to as 'historical materialism'?

[A.R.Amistad]

Here's a question to be added, and I think its relevant since most religions are determinist. Is Dialectical Materialism determinist? I don't think it has to be, since the individual in constantly defining itself, so is society as a whole.

[JoyDivision]

Isn't something approximating that what is generally referred to as 'historical materialism'?

Ya, historical materialism is like society as a case study for dialectical materialism. But, there is probably more to it than that, as it seems the point of Materialist dialectics, for Marx, is that case study. Historical materialism grounds materialist dialectics in class struggle.

[Comrade Akai]

Is there any relevance to you posting this comment here?

Indeed there is.


A recently banned member asked this question (in Learning), but his/her thread was closed before I could interevene.

[Comrade Akai]

BTB:


Rosa L:



Lawl, I was ninja'd.:thumbup1:

[S.Artesian]

Ya, historical materialism is like society as a case study for dialectical materialism. But, there is probably more to it than that, as it seems the point of Materialist dialectics, for Marx, is that case study. Historical materialism grounds materialist dialectics in class struggle.

Now that's it, in a nutshell. Right there. Materialist dialectic, Marx's dialectic does not exist separate and apart from the social organization of labor, and the analysis of the social organization of labor..

This is why "contradiction" in Marx's analysis, in his dialectic does not conform to terms, limits, structure, definition of contradiction according to formal logic.

Formal logic, in my understanding would say:

Capitalism does require expanded reproduction of value is contradicted by
Capitalism does not require expanded reproduction of value.

Marx's analysis says the contradiction is based in the social organization of labor as wage-labor and therefore:

Capitalism requires expanded reproduction of value.
Capitalism's expanded reproduction of value diminishes expanded reproduction and creates devaluation.

[Rosa Lichtenstein]

BTB:


No, because my comment is limited by the context of you making this thread where you appear to be affirming the question. Squashed tomatoes have nothing to do with it.

In fact, I was merely copying another title from Learning, from a closed thread of a banned member; the title was his/hers, not mine.

Here is what I said in my OP:


A recently banned member asked this question (in Learning), but his/her thread was closed before I could interevene.

Dialectical Materialsm [DM] certainly works in ways that make it analogous to religious dogma. Here is what I wrote in a previous thread on this (in answer to the question: 'Why is DM a world-view'?):

I think it is pretty clear from that that I am denying it is a religion.

[Rosa Lichtenstein]

S Artesian:


This is why "contradiction" in Marx's analysis, in his dialectic does not conform to terms, limits, structure, definition of contradiction according to formal logic.

Formal logic, in my understanding would say:

Capitalism does require expanded reproduction of value is contradicted by
Capitalism does not require expanded reproduction of value.

Marx's analysis says the contradiction is based in the social organization of labor as wage-labor and therefore:

Capitalism requires expanded reproduction of value.
Capitalism's expanded reproduction of value diminishes expanded reproduction and creates devaluation.

Well, you already know that I think Marx was merely 'coquetting' with this word in Das Kapital, but even supposing he weren't: by what right do you (did he) call the things you say are 'contradictions', contradictions, when they plainly aren't?

[S.Artesian]

S Artesian:



Well, you already know that I think Marx was merely 'coquetting' with this word in Das Kapital, but even supposing he weren't: by what right do you (did he) call the things you say are 'contradictions', contradictions, when they plainly aren't?


I know what you think, Rosa. I call them contradictions for the same reason Marx called them contradictions-- because the relationship of each to the other, i.e. capital and wage-labor, contains the reproduction of both, i.e. capital and wage-labor, and simultaneously, the negation of the relationship itself, i.e. capital and wage-labor.

This is the transposition of dialectic from Hegel's spirit, from consciousness making itself self-conscious, to the historical organization of social labor.

[Rosa Lichtenstein]

S Artesian:


I call them contradictions for the same reason Marx called them contradictions-- because the relationship of each to the other, i.e. capital and wage-labor, contains the reproduction of both, i.e. capital and wage-labor, and simultaneously, the negation of the relationship itself, i.e. capital and wage-labor.

But, Marx gave no reason why he called these 'contradictions'; in fact he simply copied Hegel's use of this term, which, as I have shown, was based on some egregiously defective 'logic'.

So, other than copying this flawed, mystical tradition, there is no good reason to call these 'contradictions'.

[S.Artesian]

S Artesian:



But, Marx gave no reason why he called these 'contradictions'; in fact he simply copied Hegel's use of this term, which, as I have shown, was based on some egregiously defective 'logic'.

So, other than copying this flawed, mystical tradition, there is no good reason to call these 'contradictions'.


I understand that you think to assign "contradiction" to relations in this manner is "flawed," but Marx did do that, and I don't think it's flawed, given that in fact the contradiction contains the identities, the relation between the identities, and the practical development of the negation of the relation in its very reproduction.

That, I believe, is what he means by his "dialectic," what he means in saying he is extracting the rational kernel.

[Rosa Lichtenstein]

S Artesian:


I understand that you think to assign "contradiction" to relations in this manner is "flawed," but Marx did do that, and I don't think it's flawed, given that in fact the contradiction contains the identities, the relation between the identities, and the practical development of the negation of the relation in its very reproduction.

That's not what I said. Here is is again:


in fact he simply copied Hegel's use of this term, which, as I have shown, was based on some egregiously defective 'logic'.

No mention of a 'relation' in there anywhere.

All you have done is reproduce a tiny snippett of Hegel's 'logic'. What we lack is any justification for this odd use of language. Hegel's 'justification' is demonstrably flawed:

http://anti-dialectics.co.uk/Outline_of_errors_Hegel_committed_01.htm

http://anti-dialectics.co.uk/page%2008_03.htm

And Marx didn't even attempt to justify this odd use of language, either -- he merely copied it, as have you.

In fact, his own words condemn distortions such as these:


The philosophers have only to dissolve their language into the ordinary language, from which it is abstracted, in order to recognise it, as the distorted language of the actual world, and to realise that neither thoughts nor language in themselves form a realm of their own, that they are only manifestations of actual life." [Marx and Engels (1970) The German Ideology, p.118. Bold emphases added.]

Which is part of the reason why I claim he merely 'coquetted' with this word.

[S.Artesian]

S Artesian:

No mention of a 'relation' in there anywhere.

All you have done is reproduce a tiny snippett of Hegel's 'logic'. What we lack is any justification for this odd use of language. Hegel's 'justification' is demonstrably flawed:

http://anti-dialectics.co.uk/Outline_of_errors_Hegel_committed_01.htm

http://anti-dialectics.co.uk/page%2008_03.htm

And Marx didn't even attempt to justify this odd use of language, either -- he merely copied it, as have you.

In fact, his own words condemn distortions such as these:

Which is part of the reason why I claim he merely 'coquetted' with this word.

No, we do attempt to justify it. You reject the justification as being further examples of flawed logic.

Right, you didn't mention relation, but in the analysis of capital, in the contradiction of capital of wage-labor, exists the specific historical relationship of classes. Everything, OK not everything, a lot, tons, of Marx's writing about capital is writing about the specific historical relation of wage-labor and capital, which is, IMO where Marx locates the actual material of dialectic [as opposed to dialectical materialism].

We can go around and around on this forever. You think I'm wrong. I understand that. You think you have demonstrated the faulty nature of the dialectic. You think also that Marx abandoned, or extirpated, his previous relationship to Hegel's dialectic, not jsimply "extract[ing] the rational kernel" which I think he did in relocating the "logic," the description of the features, functioning, process of the dialectic to history, to the labor process. I understand that you think that is not the case.

I do not think, however, that your demonstration can account for Marx's persistence in his writings before during and after the publication of Vol 1 in using the words "contradiction," "antagonistic contradiction," "negation" and "immanence." See for example his writings on the proposed Chapter 6 of Vol 1 "Results of the Direct Production Process."

I know you think that since the proposed chapter was not included in the publication, it cannot be cited as evidence that you think is manifested in the published Vol 1.

And I disagree.

[JoyDivision]

But, Marx gave no reason why he called these 'contradictions'; in fact he simply copied Hegel's use of this term, which, as I have shown, was based on some egregiously defective 'logic'.It is a way of describing oppositional forces that are dependent on each other. They simultaneously create the conditions for each other and exist in direct opposition.

He is not laying down social forces that develop independently of each other and just happen to come into opposition to each other at some point. The two social forces do not come from outside and impinge on each other, rather he is saying that Capitalism, by nature, has these oppositional relations. It is the nature of Capitalism, Capitalism is these currents, and they are directly oppositional to each other. Contradiction, for Marx, is an expression of a system that is innately in opposition with itself, and thus self-destructive.

Analogue words do not capture the systemic nature of this refutation. Not tension, or opposition, ect. Rather, capitalism is a social relation characterized by the development of incompatible elements. It's affirmation is its negation.

[Rosa Lichtenstein]

S Artesian:


No, we do attempt to justify it. You reject the justification as being further examples of flawed logic.

Well, I have given my reasons why the logic is flawed; you need to say where I go wrong.


Right, you didn't mention relation, but in the analysis of capital, in the contradiction of capital of wage-labor, exists the specific historical relationship of classes. Everything, OK not everything, a lot, tons, of Marx's writing about capital is writing about the specific historical relation of wage-labor and capital, which is, IMO where Marx locates the actual material of dialectic [as opposed to dialectical materialism].

And yet, no attempt is made to say why any of this warrants the use of the word 'contradiction'


We can go around and around on this forever. You think I'm wrong. I understand that. You think you have demonstrated the faulty nature of the dialectic. You think also that Marx abandoned, or extirpated, his previous relationship to Hegel's dialectic, not jsimply "extract[ing] the rational kernel" which I think he did in relocating the "logic," the description of the features, functioning, process of the dialectic to history, to the labor process. I understand that you think that is not the case.

I do not think, however, that your demonstration can account for Marx's persistence in his writings before during and after the publication of Vol 1 in using the words "contradiction," "antagonistic contradiction," "negation" and "immanence." See for example his writings on the proposed Chapter 6 of Vol 1 "Results of the Direct Production Process."

I know you think that since the proposed chapter was not included in the publication, it cannot be cited as evidence that you think is manifested in the published Vol 1.

The fact that it wasn't published should tell you enough.


And I disagree.

As is your right, but you have yet to justify your disagreement.

[Rosa Lichtenstein]

JD:


It is a way of describing oppositional forces that are dependent on each other. They simultaneously create the conditions for each other and exist in direct opposition.

He is not laying down social forces that develop independently of each other and just happen to come into opposition to each other at some point. The two social forces do not come from outside and impinge on each other, rather he is saying that Capitalism, by nature, has these oppositional relations. It is the nature of Capitalism, Capitalism is these currents, and they are directly oppositional to each other. Contradiction, for Marx, is an expression of a system that is innately in opposition with itself, and thus self-destructive.

Analogue words do not capture the systemic nature of this refutation. Not tension, or opposition, ect. Rather, capitalism is a social relation characterized by the development of incompatible elements. It's affirmation is its negation.

You are the umpteenth mystic who has tried this ploy out, and it doesn't work. You can read why here:

http://anti-dialectics.co.uk/page%2008_02.htm

My counter-argument has been summarised here:

http://www.revleft.com/vb/showpost.php?p=1230027&postcount=37

http://www.revleft.com/vb/showpost.php?p=1230027&postcount=38

http://www.revleft.com/vb/showpost.php?p=1230027&postcount=39

But this argument in over two years old and has been up-dated and clarified in the first link above.

[JoyDivision]

Did you just call me a mystic for explaining what Contradiction means for Marx, and then post 4 links to 4 10 page articles?

LOL

[Rosa Lichtenstein]

JD:


1) Did you just call me a mystic for explaining what Contradiction means for Marx, and then 2) post 4 links to 4 10 page articles?

1) Yes.

2) No, the last three links are to single posts at RevLeft (which when combined amount to less than half a page), written to help numpties like you who seem to have an attention span that rivals that of nervous cat.

[JoyDivision]

So what you're telling me is that you're no longer satisfied by just spam derailing every thread with links to long ass posts that no one gives fuck about, you're now linking multiple times to the same thing in the same post.

How long until you just get it over with and start mailing this garbage to us?

[Rosa Lichtenstein]

JD:


So what 1) you're telling me is that you're no longer satisfied by just 2) spam derailing every thread with links to 3) long ass posts that 4) no one gives fuck about, you're now 5) linking multiple times to the same thing in the same post.

1) Am I?

2) What spam?

3) You're the sort of idiot who'd moan about Das Kapital going on and on for three whole volumes.

4) Can we see the original data sheets of the survey I'm sure you must have done before you arrived at this brave conclusion?

5) Even so, we are still waiting for you to explain what you mean by "unchangeable".


How long until you just get it over with and start mailing this garbage to us?

But I haven't 'mailed' any of your stuff yet.

[Tribune]

I know what you think, Rosa. I call them contradictions for the same reason Marx called them contradictions-- because the relationship of each to the other, i.e. capital and wage-labor, contains the reproduction of both, i.e. capital and wage-labor, and simultaneously, the negation of the relationship itself, i.e. capital and wage-labor.

This is the transposition of dialectic from Hegel's spirit, from consciousness making itself self-conscious, to the historical organization of social labor.

This reads like complete nonsense.

What the hell does "contains the reproduction of both" read like in non-jargon?

Please start there.

And as for this gem, "This is the transposition of dialectic from Hegel's spirit, from consciousness making itself self-conscious, to the historical organization of social labor," it would be super duper sweet if you could type out an analog of that, or whatever you mean to say, in something I can take down to the local loading dock and explain to a guy with real work to do so that he understands how and why we should get together to make life more difficult for his boss.

[S.Artesian]

This reads like complete nonsense.

What the hell does "contains the reproduction of both" read like in non-jargon?

Please start there.

And as for this gem, "This is the transposition of dialectic from Hegel's spirit, from consciousness making itself self-conscious, to the historical organization of social labor," it would be super duper sweet if you could type out an analog of that, or whatever you mean to say, in something I can take down to the local loading dock and explain to a guy with real work to do so that he understands how and why we should get together to make life more difficult for his boss.


Except we're not at the loading dock. You could try taking Rosa's anti-dialectics website down there and get back to us about how well that works out for you.

We're dealing with Hegel's work, a professor, Marx, a PhD and his work-- an feel free to carry the Grundrisse down to the docks, and Vols. 2 & 3, and the Class Struggles in France, and we're dealing with Rosa, another PhD [or so I gather from what I've read], and it looks like we're also dealing with Christopher Koch, a university student I presume.

So so much for your desire to carry something down to the docks. You could carry the little red book, that will fit into your back pocket. I worked on railroads for 30+ years, and did many studies of railroads and their role in capitalist economies-- actually did them for my railroads in planning service changes, and never ceased to marvel how every bit of railroad history seems as if Marx himself had written it. But I didn't carry that down to the hump yard, or the dispatching office, or the signal engineering department,-- what I did carry into my discussions with railroad employees, for example, was the narrative of that history-- what the railroads' meant to the North, and to the South, the difference in their organization, expansion, use in North and South, and why the turning point of the US Civil War is the performance of the railroads in moving the Army of the Potomac from Virginia to Tennessee in 7 days to relieve Rosencrans.

I mean I could talk about the dual identities of the commodity, of the value form, valorisation, and the change in capital's domination of labor from formal to substantive, to what Marx called "the real domination" I could talk about impaired accumulation, rates of surplus value, rates of profit, disproportion, cost prices vs. production prices.. etc. But I save that for 1 on 1 discussions, or group discussion with those who are really interested.

You obviously are not. So no super duper sweetness for you. Trying finding it in your back pocket.

[Tribune]

I've read about 75% of Rosa's work, now. It makes far more sense than dialectics.

Nothing in dialectical theory is necessary, in the struggle for justice. Nothing. If insurrectionists, revolutionaries and resisters didn't use a single bit of dialectics, nothing would change.

But, in using it, they mystify simple problems, and end up like any other group of mystical theologians, attacking each other over interpretations and fealty to doctrine, losing sight of the goal.

[Tribune]

Except we're not at the loading dock. You could try taking Rosa's anti-dialectics website down there and get back to us about how well that works out for you.

We're dealing with Hegel's work, a professor, Marx, a PhD and his work-- an feel free to carry the Grundrisse down to the docks, and Vols. 2 & 3, and the Class Struggles in France, and we're dealing with Rosa, another PhD [or so I gather from what I've read], and it looks like we're also dealing with Christopher Koch, a university student I presume.

So so much for your desire to carry something down to the docks. You could carry the little red book, that will fit into your back pocket. I worked on railroads for 30+ years, and did many studies of railroads and their role in capitalist economies-- actually did them for my railroads in planning service changes, and never ceased to marvel how every bit of railroad history seems as if Marx himself had written it. But I didn't carry that down to the hump yard, or the dispatching office, or the signal engineering department,-- what I did carry into my discussions with railroad employees, for example, was the narrative of that history-- what the railroads' meant to the North, and to the South, the difference in their organization, expansion, use in North and South, and why the turning point of the US Civil War is the performance of the railroads in moving the Army of the Potomac from Virginia to Tennessee in 7 days to relieve Rosencrans.

I mean I could talk about the dual identities of the commodity, of the value form, valorisation, and the change in capital's domination of labor from formal to substantive, to what Marx called "the real domination" I could talk about impaired accumulation, rates of surplus value, rates of profit, disproportion, cost prices vs. production prices.. etc. But I save that for 1 on 1 discussions, or group discussion with those who are really interested.

You obviously are not. So no super duper sweetness for you. Trying finding it in your back pocket.

And I should note that you simple refused to answer the objections.

[S.Artesian]

I've read about 75% of Rosa's work, now. It makes far more sense than dialectics.

Nothing in dialectical theory is necessary, in the struggle for justice. Nothing. If insurrectionists, revolutionaries and resisters didn't use a single bit of dialectics, nothing would change.

But, in using it, they mystify simple problems, and end up like any other group of mystical theologians, attacking each other over interpretations and fealty to doctrine, losing sight of the goal.

You can note that, and I will note that your objections aren't really objections-- they're more the "what trees do they plant?" type of bullshit so common and so boring.

Oh yeah, what are you going to tell your buddies at the "loading docks." That's a real objection to a list thread thread about philosophy.

Makes me think you wouldn't know a loading dock if you ever actually ran into one.

As for nothing would change...you need to talk to Rosa about that, who has proclaimed that dialectics has been a major cause/factor/contributor/element in the defeats of the working class.


Oh...and you might actually want to investigate dialectics and Marx. Might help you understand that Marxism is not at all about a "struggle for justice," justice being, like "rights" specific to the bourgeois order.

That's for those of us who actually think history has something to do with dialectics and Marxism.

Not to put too fine a point on it....

[Rosa Lichtenstein]

S Artesian:


You could try taking Rosa's anti-dialectics website down there and get back to us about how well that works out for you.

1. My site contains and uses few technical/jargonised words (except those I am forced to copy from the theory I am attacking), and what few there are are all linked to dictionaries and/or sites that explain them in the vernacular (or I explain them).

2. My work isn't aimed directly at the working class but at a non-working class theory that has been imposed on the workers' movement by petty-bourgeois theorists and 'leaders'.


As for nothing would change...you need to talk to Rosa about that, who has proclaimed that dialectics has been a major cause/factor/contributor/element in the defeats of the working class.

Where have I claimed that? What I have claimed, as you have been told many times, is that is a reason for the long-term failure of dialectical marxism.

I have never linked this ruling-calss 'theory' to the alleged failures of the working class (since the latter have never adopted this theory).

And as far as the difference between Historical Materialism [HM] and Dialectical Materialism/Materialist Dialectics [DM] is concerned, I have argued this:


It could be objected that the distinction between DM and HM drawn in this Essay is completely spurious; hence, the claims made at this site are hopelessly misguided.

However, as will be argued in Essay Fourteen Part Two, HM contains ideas that are non-sensical only when they are dressed up in DM-clothing. The eminent good sense made by HM -- even as perceived by workers when they encounter it (often in times of struggle) --, testifies to this fact.

But, few militants would ever attempt to agitate strikers with the conundrums found in DM. On a picket line the alleged contradictory nature of motion or the limitations of the 'Law of Identity' do not often crop up. Moreover, no Marxist of any intelligence would use slogans drawn exclusively from DM to communicate with workers. Consider, for example, the following: "The Law of Identity is true only within certain limits and the struggle against the occupation of Iraq!" Or "Change in quantity leads to change in quality (and vice versa) and the campaign to keep hospital HH open!" Or even, "Being is at the same time identical with but different from Nothing, the contradiction resolved by Becoming, and the fight against the Nazis!"

Slogans like these would only be employed by militants of uncommon stupidity and of legendary ineffectiveness. In contrast, active revolutionaries employ ideas drawn exclusively from HM to communicate with workers. Most revolutionary papers, for instance, use ordinary, material language, coupled with concepts drawn from HM, to agitate and propagandise; rarely do they employ DM-phraseology.

Only deeply sectarian rags of exemplary unpopularity and impressive lack of impact use ideas lifted from DM to try to educate and agitate workers. Newsline (the daily paper of the old UK-WRP) used to do this, but like the Dinosaurs it resembled, it is no more. [The Negation of the Negation, it seems, took appropriate revenge.]

It could be objected that no one would actually use slogans drawn from certain areas of HM to agitate workers. Who for example takes Das Kapital onto a picket line? Since that does not mean HM is of no use, the same must be true of DM. For example, who shouts slogans about "Base and Superstructure", or "Relative Surplus Value" on paper sales? Who tries to agitate workers with facts about the role of the peasantry in the decline of feudalism? This means the distinction drawn in this Essay is bogus.

To be sure, while it is true that no one shouts slogans about the relation between "Base and Superstructure" on a paper sale, or prints strike leaflets reminding militants of the role of the peasantry in the decline of feudalism, they still use slogans drawn exclusively from HM --, or which connect with HM and as it relates to current events in the class war.

In contrast, none at all are used from DM.

Admittedly, most revolutionary papers use some terminology drawn from DM (like "contradiction"), but this forms only a very minor part of their output. Anyway, as will be shown in Part Two of this Essay, the use of such words is merely a traditionalist affectation -- indeed, we have to say this since no sense can be given to this use (as we have sen in earlier essays) --, that is, as a sign of 'orthodoxy', or as an 'in-group'/'out-group' marker.

Like Marx in Das Kapital, such papers "coquette" with Hegelian jargon, and only "here and there".

Hence, at least at the level of practice -- where the party interfaces with the working class and material reality --, DM is totally useless....

Consequently, tested in practice (or, rather, tested by being left out of practice), the status of DM is plain for all to see: at best it would be a hindrance; at worst, it would totally isolate revolutionaries and make them look ridiculous.

This shows that the distinction between DM and HM which has been drawn here is not spurious -- in communicating with workers, militants make it all the time.

And as far as communicating with workers is concerned:


However, the intervention of revolutionaries in workers' struggles will of necessity involve the use of concepts drawn from HM, not DM. The problem with the response volunteered above (that is, that it could be argued that workers might become aware of some of these 'Laws' at some point in their lives, by some means -- somehow) is that it still leaves it unclear which laws or concepts specific to DM are of any relevance at all to the class struggle, or are consonant with workers' experience. And it is even more difficult to comprehend why workers would need DM if concepts drawn from HM actually speak to that experience and show them how best to fight back. This is especially so if no sense can be made of DM-theses -- even by its most avid fans.

The fact that HM so easily meshes with the lives of workers is, of course, why some of them become revolutionaries. HM relates to ordinary human beings in a way that DM cannot since it speaks to them in terms with which they can readily connect. In this sense HM captures what they in effect "already know", when they encounter it.

This is because HM is not only consonant with, and dependent upon concepts developed out of material practices that relate to, and underlie human language and communication in general, it speaks to working class oppression and exploitation. This is because the central tenets of HM revolve around the self-emancipation of the working class, just as they depend on collective labour and communal organisation. Since HM is predicated on the social nature of language -- that is, how discourse originated in, and arose out of collective labour --, it cannot help but mesh with workers' experience of exploitation and oppression, as well as with aspects of life and alienation that all of us share as members of the same "form of life". Since ordinary language is the language of the working-class, it cannot avoid reflecting a working-class view of life. [This is not to suggest that there are no distorting forces at work here, but this topic will be taken up in Essay Twelve.]

All of these factors find expression in the language that working people right across the planet have developed over tens of thousands of years out of their material interaction with each other and with the natural and social world. Because of this, HM is capable of explaining to workers, in their own language, the significance of their experience of class society and of how they can fight to win back control over their lives.

This means that HM does not have to be brought to ordinary people from the "outside"; its basic concepts are already present in workers' experience, who, as ordinary human beings, share a collective history and (largely) common class-origin. In that case, all that workers need are reminders.

In this sense -- but now understood more fully -- that the (non-dialectical) revolutionary party can be the memory, not just of the class, but of our entire species. The account given at this site partly explains why this is so. [More details will be added in Essay Twelve.]

As the context indicates, HM speaks to workers because of their experience of oppression and exploitation (and consequent alienation) -- and because it provides them with a social and political account of how these can be eradicated as a result of their own activity, their own struggles.

This is partly why HM makes immediate sense to most workers (when they are ready to listen), and why it appears so obvious to Marxists -- and to anyone who has had to work for a living under Capitalism. In fact, it is difficult to believe that anyone who has had to work for a living under Capitalism could read, say, Marx's 1844 Paris Manuscripts and fail to appreciate the profound insights into their condition that Marx so brilliantly outlines (if they ignore the Hegelian flourishes). [Marx (1975).]

Marx's analysis (here and elsewhere) speaks to workers' collective experience of alienation, their sense of fragmentation from their "species being", aggravated by the division of labour and compounded by class oppression. It also addresses the connection these have with collective and individual self-development, the relationships we have with other human beings (and with nature itself), and thus with our consequential de-humanisation. These profound truths do not really need to be taught (as would be the case if these were merely empirical facts); most human beings (who have to work for a living) just need to be reminded of them -- or perhaps merely of their significance.

As most revolutionaries know, it is not difficult to convince workers (when they are on strike, say) about the realities of class division, the nature of the class struggle, the role of the Police, or of exploitation -- along with a host of other HM-ideas. All that militants need to add to this (apart from the things listed in the next but one paragraph) is a wider generalisation and a deeper analysis.

This means that revolutionaries are not prophets or visionaries, they are organisers and administrators. Anything else would amount to substituting themselves for the class. HM reminds them of this; DM helps them forget it.

Revolutionary politics actually brings to workers a developed theory (HM) that generalises their experience (relating it to previous generations, and others in similar circumstances), providing the tactics, strategy and organisation necessary to further their struggles, and ultimately terminate Capitalism by overthrowing it. In fact, this is all that needs to be "brought to workers".

Because HM is based on and addresses their experience and their suppressed awareness of their own de-humanised condition, their struggle, and in their language, it is actually introduced to workers, as it were, 'from the inside'.

That is why HM, unlike DM, cannot form the ideological basis for substitutionism.

More details here:

http://anti-dialectics.co.uk/page%2009_01.htm

[Tribune]

You can note that, and I will note that your objections aren't really objections-- they're more the "what trees do they plant?" type of bullshit so common and so boring.

Oh yeah, what are you going to tell your buddies at the "loading docks." That's a real objection to a list thread thread about philosophy.

Makes me think you wouldn't know a loading dock if you ever actually ran into one.

As for nothing would change...you need to talk to Rosa about that, who has proclaimed that dialectics has been a major cause/factor/contributor/element in the defeats of the working class.


Oh...and you might actually want to investigate dialectics and Marx. Might help you understand that Marxism is not at all about a "struggle for justice," justice being, like "rights" specific to the bourgeois order.

That's for those of us who actually think history has something to do with dialectics and Marxism.

Not to put too fine a point on it....

So you won't answer my objections on account of you don't want to answer them. Gotcha.

[mikelepore]

Nothing in dialectical theory is necessary, in the struggle for justice. Nothing. If insurrectionists, revolutionaries and resisters didn't use a single bit of dialectics, nothing would change.

When has anyone ever USED it at all? What I always see is a writer cites some few mottos of dialectics, usually sounding as abstract as the I Ching commenting on lightness and darkness, and then the writer says "therefore" and concludes with a summary of the author's own favorite political tactics. I don't see any actual steps leading up to the conclusions. It's called a derivation and yet there is no derivation. Novack's book "Introduction to the Logic of Marxism" (SWP-U.S., 1942) is a typical example of this form.

[JazzRemington]

When has anyone ever USED it at all? What I always see is a writer cites some few mottos of dialectics, usually sounding as abstract as the I Ching commenting on lightness and darkness, and then the writer says "therefore" and concludes with a summary of the author's own favorite political tactics. I don't see any actual steps leading up to the conclusions. It's called a derivation and yet there is no derivation. Novack's book "Introduction to the Logic of Marxism" (SWP-U.S., 1942) is a typical example of this form.

I've noticed it to from the examples given to me. They present what they consider evidence of their theory, but when they do there's nothing strictly dialectical about it. When one points this out, one is ignored or told he doesn't understand.

[Rosa Lichtenstein]

Mike:


When has anyone ever USED it at all? What I always see is a writer cites some few mottos of dialectics, usually sounding as abstract as the I Ching commenting on lightness and darkness, and then the writer says "therefore" and concludes with a summary of the author's own favorite political tactics. I don't see any actual steps leading up to the conclusions. It's called a derivation and yet there is no derivation. Novack's book "Introduction to the Logic of Marxism" (SWP-U.S., 1942) is a typical example of this form.

Well, it has actually been used in many ways, 1) to 'justify' undemocratic centralised control over the communist party, 2) to rationalise class collaboration, and 3) overnight about-turns in strategy and tactics, 4) to show that socialism in one country (SIOC) was possible, 5) to prove the impossibility of SIOC, 6) to demonstrate that the former USSR, for example, was a workers' state, even though the working class were exploited and oppressed there, 7) to prove it was a degenerated workers' state, even though the working class were exploited and oppressed there, 8) to show that it was in fact a state capitalist regime, 9) to argue that other forces could substitute themselves for the working class (the party, the red army, peasant guerrillas, students, nationalist leaders who seemed sympathetic to socialism or who nationalised this or that part of the economy) and create a workers' state (for example in E Europe, China and Cuba), 10) the invasion of Finland...

And that is because this 'theory' can be used to 'justify' anything you like and its opposite (often in the same breath) because it is so 'contradiction-friendly'. See, for example, how Stalin used it:


"It may be said that such a presentation of the question is 'contradictory.' But is there not the same 'contradictoriness' in our presentation of the question of the state? We stand for the withering away of the state. At the same time we stand for the strengthening of the dictatorship of the proletariat, which is the mightiest and strongest state power that has ever existed. The highest development of state power with the object of preparing the conditions for the withering away of state power -- such is the Marxist formula. Is this 'contradictory'? Yes, it is 'contradictory.' But this contradiction us bound up with life, and it fully reflects Marx's dialectics." [Political Report of the Central Committee to the Sixteenth Congress of the CPSU(B), June 27,1930. Bold emphasis added.]

More details here:

http://anti-dialectics.co.uk/page%2009_02.htm

[Tribune]

When has anyone ever USED it at all? What I always see is a writer cites some few mottos of dialectics, usually sounding as abstract as the I Ching commenting on lightness and darkness, and then the writer says "therefore" and concludes with a summary of the author's own favorite political tactics. I don't see any actual steps leading up to the conclusions. It's called a derivation and yet there is no derivation. Novack's book "Introduction to the Logic of Marxism" (SWP-U.S., 1942) is a typical example of this form.

It's use, as Rosa notes below, is always as a justification for a specific position about some event.

Students don't seize an administrative office, anti-war protesters don't take to the streets, laborers don't organize unions because they contain within themselves epiphenomenal dialectical contradictions which must be expressed as actions against historical conditions, so that a synthesis can flow out from their contact with events.

They act because they feel put upon so much that they no longer can take it, or want to take it. They feel oppressed, injured or abused - and they know it, they can communicate it. The mystical dialectic isn't needed to explain that set of facts, anymore then it's needed to explain why a child with a healthy, developing nerve system recoils in pain after burning her hand on a hot stove plate.

And where they don't rise against their suffering - for example, especially, in the States - one only has to look at simple amelioration and intimidation.

[mikelepore]

I'm aware of people just saying "dialectics" as a supposed justification for something. But when has it ever been used to show the actual steps of reasoning that lead to any conclusion at all? Someone isn't USING dialectics if they just repeat a slogan about yin and yang, and then immediately cite that as an excuse to jump to their desired conclusion about an effective political program. For example, In Mao's "On Contradiction" (1937), he recites the usual "motion itself is an contradiction", "positive and negative", etc., he rewords that in a hundred different ways, and then he concludes by claiming the abilty to "... demolish dogmatist ideas which are contrary to the basic principles of Marxism-Leninism and detrimental to our revolutionary cause." Huh? I don't find any reasoning process. A Euclidean proof is an example of what it means to show the individual steps of a reasoning process.

[Tribune]

I'm aware of people just saying "dialectics" as a supposed justification for something. But when has it ever been used to show the actual steps of reasoning that lead to any conclusion at all? Someone isn't USING dialectics if they just repeat a slogan about yin and yang, and then immediately cite that as an excuse to jump to their desired conclusion about an effective political program. For example, In Mao's "On Contradiction" (1937), he recites the usual "motion itself is an contradiction", "positive and negative", etc., he rewords that in a hundred different ways, and then he concludes by claiming the abilty to "... demolish dogmatist ideas which are contrary to the basic principles of Marxism-Leninism and detrimental to our revolutionary cause." Huh? I don't find any reasoning process. A Euclidean proof is an example of what it means to show the individual steps of a reasoning process.

I don't think it ever has, mikelepore. I'll rehash a post I placed yesterday, I guess, for my take on the usefulness of the dialectic:

Dialectician: Historical processes conform to an oppositional divide between that which exists and that which exists within that which exists, but is developing towards the negation of that which exists, so that a new existence, which contains the negation of its negation, and a new newer existence, comes to shape within the old by contradicting it.

Palestinian child, Gaza: "I'm cold, hungry and afraid I'm going to die. My mother is dead, my father a prisoner."

Dialectician: Within the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, the tension of the Israeli whole contains within in it the revolutionary resettlement of the problem of the Palestinian, as well as the co-option of revolutionary tendencies in the Israeli populace, by confronting the contradictions inherent to the domination of the social sphere which divides the parties into oppressors and oppressed, generating the inevitable antithesis, which is Palestinian opposition and revolution.

Israeli soldier, checkpoint: "Stop, sand flea, or I'll shoot." Bang.

Dialectician: So long as the Palestinian cannot recognize his revolutionary potentiality, generated by the Israeli domination, and shape his focus to the development of a dialectical critique of and opposition to the Israeli military domination, the Israeli war machine will not be faced with the contradiction it generates, prolonging the revolutionary tension by substituting it with a non-negation of the negation which preempts the coordination of Palestinian proletarian oppositional forms of box china rhinocerous envelope went to Karl dice Plantagenet.

Palestinian mother, East Jerusalem: "My home, my home..."

[S.Artesian]

So you won't answer my objections on account of you don't want to answer them. Gotcha.

No, because you haven't raised any objections. You've only raised simple-mind, anti-intellectual bullshit, like you're bullshit dialogue concerning a Palestinian and a dialectician.

How does one answer bullshit? Simply but identifying it as bullshit.

[Rosa Lichtenstein]

Mike:


I'm aware of people just saying "dialectics" as a supposed justification for something. But when has it ever been used to show the actual steps of reasoning that lead to any conclusion at all? Someone isn't USING dialectics if they just repeat a slogan about yin and yang, and then immediately cite that as an excuse to jump to their desired conclusion about an effective political program. For example, In Mao's "On Contradiction" (1937), he recites the usual "motion itself is an contradiction", "positive and negative", etc., he rewords that in a hundred different ways, and then he concludes by claiming the ability to "... demolish dogmatist ideas which are contrary to the basic principles of Marxism-Leninism and detrimental to our revolutionary cause." Huh? I don't find any reasoning process. A Euclidean proof is an example of what it means to show the individual steps of a reasoning process.

Yes, I (now!) see what you mean. But, you are nevertheless confusing dialectics with a formal system, which it isn't. It's 'use' is far more diffuse.

[Tribune]

No, because you haven't raised any objections. You've only raised simple-mind, anti-intellectual bullshit, like you're bullshit dialogue concerning a Palestinian and a dialectician.

How does one answer bullshit? Simply but identifying it as bullshit.

Since I refuse to use the language you prefer, typing in obscurantist terms and one trick phrases, expressing my objections in the vague dialects of dialectical mystification, you won't answer them?

Gotcha.

I do quite enjoy the now unconcealed equation, in your logic, of jargon with intellectualism. That's a lovely treat.

[Tribune]

This is precisely why professional revolutionists end up in isolated pockets of sectarian belief and ineffectiveness - because they refuse to come down from the imagined heights of their own alleged enlightenment, thinking themselves some sort of forerunner and vanguard, thinking themselves leaders instead of servants.

This is what the dialectic does - it provides professional revolutionists (as opposed to revolutionaries) with a justification for their self-imposed prophethood - that they possess a secret key, a new tablet of the law, that they alone can bring to the unwashed, anti-intellectual masses.

And it's why they end up burrowed like worms in academia, ranting at each other like Schoolmen, across the gulfs of years and continents, about textual interpretations and apostasy, about which cult is best suited to bring salvation to history, about which former prophet's words now carry a fuller weight of divine law.

[mikelepore]

When the oppression of people leads to a revolution, there may be various ways to describe why it happened. I would bet on psychology as the field that is most likely to figure out why. The last place I would expect to find an explanation is the place where Engels took it in his book 'The Dialectics of Nature', namely, that certain universal laws govern chemical compounds, the formation of the solar system, etc., and the way these same natural laws act in us is what we call historical change. Engels did a noble thing by spending so much time looking into the subject, but, unfortunately, it seems to have turned out that there's nothing there to discover. Dialectics has become like a Rorschach ink blot test, or a reading of the Tarot cards -- whatever it causes people see in the things around them was already within themselves.

[Tribune]

When the oppression of people leads to a revolution, there may be various ways to describe why it happened. I would bet on psychology as the field that is most likely to figure out why. The last place I would expect to find an explanation is the place where Engels took it in his book 'The Dialectics of Nature', namely, that certain universal laws govern chemical compounds, the formation of the solar system, etc., and the way these same natural laws act in us is what we call historical change. Engels did a noble thing by spending so much time looking into the subject, but, unfortunately, it seems to have turned out that there's nothing there to discover. Dialectics has become like a Rorschach ink blot test, or a reading of the Tarot cards -- whatever it causes people see in the things around them was already within themselves.


I agree especially with the comparison to Tarot.

[S.Artesian]

Since I refuse to use the language you prefer, typing in obscurantist terms and one trick phrases, expressing my objections in the vague dialects of dialectical mystification, you won't answer them?

Gotcha.

I do quite enjoy the now unconcealed equation, in your logic, of jargon with intellectualism. That's a lovely treat.


Enjoy whatever you want. Life is short. Your confusion of Marxism with a struggle for "justice" shows how little you understand of both the abstract and the concrete of capitalism.

Your bullshit pretend dialogue between a pretend Palestinian and a pretend "dialectician" shows how dishonest your supposed objections to "dialectics" are.

In this case, your pretend characters like your pretend coworkers at your pretend loading dock are the jargon being deployed to obscure material analysis.

[Tribune]

Enjoy whatever you want. Life is short. Your confusion of Marxism with a struggle for "justice" shows how little you understand of both the abstract and the concrete of capitalism.

Your bullshit pretend dialogue between a pretend Palestinian and a pretend "dialectician" shows how dishonest your supposed objections to "dialectics" are.

In this case, your pretend characters like your pretend coworkers at your pretend loading dock are the jargon being deployed to obscure material analysis.


That's a whole lot of whimbling, because someone doesn't like the pet theory you use to justify your inability to kick start a vanguard revolution.

Good luck with that.

[S.Artesian]

It's use, as Rosa notes below, is always as a justification for a specific position about some event.

Students don't seize an administrative office, anti-war protesters don't take to the streets, laborers don't organize unions because they contain within themselves epiphenomenal dialectical contradictions which must be expressed as actions against historical conditions, so that a synthesis can flow out from their contact with events.

They act because they feel put upon so much that they no longer can take it, or want to take it. They feel oppressed, injured or abused - and they know it, they can communicate it. The mystical dialectic isn't needed to explain that set of facts, anymore then it's needed to explain why a child with a healthy, developing nerve system recoils in pain after burning her hand on a hot stove plate.

And where they don't rise against their suffering - for example, especially, in the States - one only has to look at simple amelioration and intimidation.

Except... people have been oppressed or injured or abused and have rebeled pretty much constantly throughout history. The issue is when why and how these struggle break through their continuous, but isolated, manifestations and become historical, social struggles? And while all your anti-dialectic comrades remain silent on that issue, it is that issue that is the focus of Marx's historical analysis.

What are the precipitating factors in those struggles? What "makes it impossible" for "people to take anymore"? Marx offers a historical analysis, which he clearly regards as based on a dialectic, a contradiction he identifies between the development of the means of production and their social organization, the relations of production.

Marxists who consider Marx's analysis to contain a dialectic- an analysis of the contradictions of the historical development of capitalism- are no more or no less inclined to be "vanguardists" than those who oppose, are neutral, or could care less whether or what that dialectic is.

[Rosa Lichtenstein]

S Artesian:


Except... people have been oppressed or injured or abused and have rebelled pretty much constantly throughout history. The issue is when why and how these struggle break through their continuous, but isolated, manifestations and become historical, social struggles? And while all your anti-dialectic comrades remain silent on that issue, it is that issue that is the focus of Marx's historical analysis.

We don't need to 'remain silent' or even break silence on this, since Marx's theory (Historical Materialism, minus the Hegelian gobbledygook that not one of you can explain) explains it quite well. Dialectics just mystifies it.


What are the precipitating factors in those struggles? What "makes it impossible" for "people to take anymore"? Marx offers a historical analysis, which he clearly regards as based on a dialectic, a contradiction he identifies between the development of the means of production and their social organization, the relations of production.

But what precisely does the word 'contradiction' add to this account that the other, ordinary language terms you and Marx use do not do? You help yourself to this word, but remain silent on what work it does (other than mystify history -- after all, why should a 'contradiction' make anything happen?)


Marxists who consider Marx's analysis to contain a dialectic- an analysis of the contradictions of the historical development of capitalism- are no more or no less inclined to be "vanguardists" than those who oppose, are neutral, or could care less whether or what that dialectic is.

And yet Marx's dialectic, in his own words, or those he endorsed, left this word out -- and in Das Kapital, the very best he could do with this word was 'coquette' with it.

You keep ignoring these salient facts.

[S.Artesian]

S Artesian:



We don't need to 'remain silent' or even break silence on this, since Marx's theory (Historical Materialism, minus the Hegelian gobbledygook that not one of you can explain) explains it quite well. Dialectics just mystifies it.



But what precisely does the word 'contradiction' add to this account that the other, ordinary language terms you and Marx use do not do? You help yourself to this word, but remain silent on what work it does (other than mystify history -- after all, why should a 'contradiction' make anything happen?)



And yet Marx's dialectic, in his own words, or those he endorsed, left this word out -- and in Das Kapital, the very best he could do with this word was 'coquette' with it.

You keep ignoring these salient facts.

We don't have to explain Hegel; we have to explain Marx's dialectic, something we have done numerous times, and which you ignore. Yet when one of your acolytes introduces a completely stupid and immaterial pseudo dialogue between a pretend Palestinian and a pretend dialectical Marxist, you can do nothing other than shake you pom-poms and cheer.

You make much of your supposed adherence to historical materialism, but when your would=be acolyte introduces entirely ahistorical, ideological, notions about "justice" and "people not being able to take anymore" you offer no comment.

As stated numerous times before, Marx uses contradiction because the very same social relationship of labor that creates, facilitates, expands, prompts, accelerates capital's accumulation, also contradicts, opposes, conflicts with and negates the creation, expansion, acceleration of that accumulation.

That's the salient fact about the organization of capital, an organization Marx called "contradiction in motion."

[Rosa Lichtenstein]

S Artesian:


We don't have to explain Hegel;

Where did I say you had? What I said was that none of you can explain a single one of his concepts, even though you are happy to appropriate them uncritically -- unlike Marx.


we have to explain Marx's dialectic, something we have done numerous times, and which you ignore. Yet when one of your acolytes introduces a completely stupid and immaterial pseudo dialogue between a pretend Palestinian and a pretend dialectical Marxist, you can do nothing other than shake you pom-poms and cheer.

And yet, as Marx indicated, 'his method', 'the dialectic method' contains not one atom of Hegel. While your 'dialectic' makes use of 'contradictions', 'unity of opposites', 'quantity passing over into quality', etc., Marx's doesn't. So, whether or not you can 'explain Hegel', you most certainly can't get Marx right (since you ignore his very clear words).


You make much of your supposed adherence to historical materialism, but when your would=be acolyte introduces entirely ahistorical, ideological, notions about "justice" and "people not being able to take anymore" you offer no comment.

The real poison comes from the mystics here, not those who are just learning their trade.

Anyway, I note you don't take issue with the full-blooded mystics here, when they try to tell us that there is a dialectic in nature.


As stated numerous times before, Marx uses contradiction because the very same social relationship of labor that creates, facilitates, expands, prompts, accelerates capital's accumulation, also contradicts, opposes, conflicts with and negates the creation, expansion, acceleration of that accumulation.

As you have been told many times, and as Marx told you (but you just ignore it), he was merely 'coquetting' with this word in Das Kapital.


That's the salient fact about the organization of capital, an organization Marx called "contradiction in motion."

1) The is no contradiction in motion (unless you can show otherwise).

2) He was still 'coquetting'.

[S.Artesian]

Of course I have taken exception to the argument that Marx's dialectic is a meta-theory designed to explain everything from small sub-atomic forces to evolution of the species.

Numerous times.

And Marx does make use of "quantity into quality" in vol 1, of all places of Capital.

Marx wrote quite clearly that he was coquetting with forms of expression peculiar to Hegel in the chapter on value-- which Marx earlier acknowledges as the most difficult chapter, and the one where he could not simply break down the complexity of the issues into linear forms-- which he also states was his intention in volume 1, as it, vol 1 was an introductory essay.

His use, and demonstration of, contradiction, antagonism, conflict, inversion, negation, alienation, appropriation is consistent and continuous throughout his explorations of capital and goes far beyond his explanation for the unavoidable complexity in the chapter on value.

You're reading of the preface/afterward to the 2nd edition amounts to nothing more or less than a deliberate distortion of the meaning of that preface, and disavowal of what Marx clearly demonstrates in all 4 volumes of Capital [TSV having been intended as vol 4].

You ignore, distort, or disavow Marx's own remarks in his correspondence, in his footnotes to vol 1, in the Grundrisse- in favor of your mystical claim that Marx broke with Hegel somewhere between the Grundrisse and vol 1-- a break for which there is no evidence at all, even in the passage Marx quotes approvingly from the Russian reviewer-- who is attempting to put Marx's exploration in even more layman-like terms, after he, that same reviewer criticizes Marx for excess Hegelianism.

But of course we've been all over this many, many times.


And of course, numerous others have explained numerous concepts of Hegel.

[Rosa Lichtenstein]

S Artesian:


Of course I have taken exception to the argument that Marx's dialectic is a meta-theory designed to explain everything from small sub-atomic forces to evolution of the species.

Numerous times.

And Marx does make use of "quantity into quality" in vol 1, of all places of Capital.

1) He had already told he was merely 'coquetting' with this alleged 'law', as you have been told many times, and not just by Marx.

2) This is a problem for you, since Marx applies this 'law' to nature. If so, you will have to agree that either a) there is a dialectic nature, or b) he was just 'coquetting' and did not mean this seriously.


Marx wrote quite clearly that he was coquetting with forms of expression peculiar to Hegel in the chapter on value-- which Marx earlier acknowledges as the most difficult chapter, and the one where he could not simply break down the complexity of the issues into linear forms-- which he also states was his intention in volume 1, as it, vol 1 was an introductory essay.

We have been over this several times. Here it is again:

Here is the passage in question, as it appears in MECW:


"...I therefore openly avowed myself the pupil of that mighty thinker, and even, here and there, in the chapter on the theory of value, coquetted with the mode of expression peculiar to him." [Marx (1976), p.103.]

You will, no doubt, note the comma separating the clauses:


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

Had he meant what you allege, this would have been:


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

The comma clearly indicates that Marx was giving that chapter as an example, but not an exclusive example, of where he was 'coquetting'.

Now, your interpretation would have Marx using Hegelian jargon non-seriously in (arguably) the most important chapter in the book, but elsewhere seriously. That makes no sense at all.

My interpretation not only agrees with the punctuation in the official MECW version, it's also consistent with the summary of 'his method', 'the dialectic method' he added to the Afterword to the second edition, in which there is no trace of Hegel at all.


His use, and demonstration of, contradiction, antagonism, conflict, inversion, negation, alienation, appropriation is consistent and continuous throughout his explorations of capital and goes far beyond his explanation for the unavoidable complexity in the chapter on value.

And yet, your view would have us believe that Marx changed from being non-serious to being serious in his use of this jargon. My interpretation sees Marx's use as consistently 'coquettish' throughout the book.

Your view leaves you with the intractable problem of trying to explain why he suddenly changed from being non-serious in the most important part of Das Kapital, to being serious in the less important part.

And good luck with that one...


You're reading of the preface/afterward to the 2nd edition amounts to nothing more or less than a deliberate distortion of the meaning of that preface, and disavowal of what Marx clearly demonstrates in all 4 volumes of Capital [TSV having been intended as vol 4].

How can it be a 'distortion' if I take it at its face value? Marx tells us that this is 'his method', 'the dialectic method', when it contains no trace of Hegel at all.

Your view just ignores this.


You ignore, distort, or disavow Marx's own remarks in his correspondence, in his footnotes to vol 1, in the Grundrisse- in favor of your mystical claim that Marx broke with Hegel somewhere between the Grundrisse and vol 1-- a break for which there is no evidence at all, even in the passage Marx quotes approvingly from the Russian reviewer-- who is attempting to put Marx's exploration in even more layman-like terms, after he, that same reviewer criticizes Marx for excess Hegelianism.

Well, as I have pointed out to you many times: unfortunately for you, he chose not to publish the Grundrisse, but he did publish this summary of 'the dialectic method', and 'his method', from which every trace of Hegel had been removed.

Now, if you can produce just [B]one published source of Marx's contemporaneous with or subsequent to Das Kapital, that supports this traditional view of yours, I will apologise profusely, and recant.

But you can't.

So, your view finds no support at all in Marx's published writings (contemporaneous with or subsequent to Das Kapital).

In which case, my view is faithful to Marx's more considered thoughts; yours isn't.


a break for which there is no evidence at all, even in the passage Marx quotes approvingly from the Russian reviewer-- who is attempting to put Marx's exploration in even more layman-like terms, after he, that same reviewer criticizes Marx for excess Hegelianism

The 'break' is apparent in Das Kapital. What more do you need?


after he, that same reviewer criticizes Marx for excess Hegelianism

Which is plainly why Marx added this summary to show that the reviewer had misconstrued him, and to point out that any Hegelian terms in Das Kapital should be taken with a pinch of salt, since he was merely 'coquetting' with them.


But of course we've been all over this many, many times.

We can keep going over it as many times as it takes. I'm in no hurry.


And of course, numerous others have explained numerous concepts of Hegel.

1) Like who?

2) The many I have laboured through over the last 25 years or so, who have tried to do this, have merely used yet more unexplained jargon to 'explain' Hegel's jargon. And no wonder: it's not possible to explain mystical concepts.

[S.Artesian]

Come on Rosa, Marx explained numerous concepts of Hegel, Wallace Stevens, explained numerous concepts of Hegel. I think Haldane explaned numerous concepts of Hegel. There is no shortage of those who have explained numerous concepts of Hegel.

To coquette means to flirt, it does not mean to "make a joke of." Marx clearly states he flirts with forms of expression peculiar to Hegel in the chapter on value, the most difficult chapter, because he is, in that chapter, demonstrating precisely the methodology, and value, of dialectic in being able to explore determination, ground,manifestation, appearance, essence etc.

He flirts, utilizes, those forms because he cannot find replacements in layperson's language adequate to the task of exploring the dual identity of the commodity, and the contradictions inherent in the composition of a commodity as both an object and a value, as both a thing and the embodiment of a specific social relation.

And after 1873, Marx's published output declines, with the last 7 years of his life being circumscribed by illnesses that severely limited his work. We have his own remarks in that afterword to the 2nd edition, particularly his concluding remarks on dialectic, at the beginning of that critical period in capitalism known as the long deflation, which attest to his advocacy of dialectics, and not as a joke, but as a weapon. We also have his statements in his correspondence.

[Hit The North]

The 'break' is apparent in Das Kapital. What more do you need?Apart from Rosa never setting out what the details of this 'break' amount to, her argument performs a disservice to Marx by implying that he was an Hegelian up to the writing of Das Kapital, when it is obvious that Marx broke with Hegel as early as 1843 with the Contribution to the Critique of Hegel's Philosophy of Law. Reflecting on this in 1859, Marx wrote:


“My inquiry led me to the conclusion that neither legal relations nor political forms could be comprehended either by themselves or on the basis of a so-called general development of the human mind, but that on the contrary they originate in the material conditions of life, the totality of which Hegel, following the example of English and French thinkers of the eighteenth century, embraces within the term ‘civil society'; that the anatomy of this civil society, however, has to be sought in political economy.” http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1859/critique-pol-economy/preface-abs.htmNow, according to Rosa, after this break with Hegel there was another shift in his thinking which resulted in a further rejection of Hegel. So, come on Rosa, give us the details of this second 'break'.

[Zanthorus]

In addition to what Bob The Builder siad Marx openly attacks Hegel and praises Feuerbach in Critique of Hegel's Philosophy in General from the Paris Manuscripts:


Feuerbach both in his Thesen in the Anekdota and, in detail, in the Philosophie der Zukunft has in principle overthrown the old dialectic and philosophy...

Feuerbach is the only one who has a serious, critical attitude to the Hegelian dialectic and who has made genuine discoveries in this field. He is in fact the true conqueror of the old philosophy. The extent of his achievement, and the unpretentious simplicity with which he, Feuerbach, gives it to the world, stand in striking contrast to the opposite attitude [of the others].

Feuerbach’s great achievement is:

(1) The proof that philosophy is nothing else but religion rendered into thought and expounded by thought, i.e., another form and manner of existence of the estrangement of the essence of man; hence equally to be condemned;

(2) The establishment of true materialism and of real science, by making the social relationship of “man to man” the basic principle of the theory;

(3) His opposing to the negation of the negation, which claims to be the absolute positive, the self-supporting positive, positively based on itself.

[Rosa Lichtenstein]

S Artesian:


Come on Rosa, Marx explained numerous concepts of Hegel, Wallace Stevens, explained numerous concepts of Hegel. I think Haldane explained numerous concepts of Hegel. There is no shortage of those who have explained numerous concepts of Hegel.

As I said, they have 'explained' them by means of yet more jargon -- which, of course, is not to explain them.


To coquette means to flirt, it does not mean to "make a joke of." Marx clearly states he flirts with forms of expression peculiar to Hegel in the chapter on value, the most difficult chapter, because he is, in that chapter, demonstrating precisely the methodology, and value, of dialectic in being able to explore determination, ground, manifestation, appearance, essence etc.

Flirting is a non-serious use of Hegelian jargon -- which is not surprising since, as we already know, Marx endorsed a summary of 'his method', 'the dialectic method', which contained no Hegel at all.

So, no wonder, then, that the very best Marx could do with this jargon is flirt with it.


He flirts, utilizes, those forms because he cannot find replacements in layperson's language adequate to the task of exploring the dual identity of the commodity, and the contradictions inherent in the composition of a commodity as both an object and a value, as both a thing and the embodiment of a specific social relation.

Are you suggesting that Das Kapital is for the 'lay-person'?

Anyway, even if it was, why tell us he's 'flirting' with these words? Why not say 'I'm using terms that are not easy to put in the vernacular'?


And after 1873, Marx's published output declines, with the last 7 years of his life being circumscribed by illnesses that severely limited his work. We have his own remarks in that Afterword to the 2nd edition, particularly his concluding remarks on dialectic, at the beginning of that critical period in capitalism known as the long deflation, which attest to his advocacy of dialectics, and not as a joke, but as a weapon. We also have his statements in his correspondence.

In other words, you can't quote a single published source contemporaneous with or subsequent to Das Kapital that supports the traditional interpretation of that book.

On the other hand, and unfortunately for you, we do have a published source that tells us quite clearly and unambiguously that Marx's method, the 'dialectic method', contains no Hegel at all.

[Rosa Lichtenstein]

BTB:


Apart from Rosa never setting out what the details of this 'break' amount to, her argument performs a disservice to Marx by implying that he was an Hegelian up to the writing of Das Kapital, when it is obvious that Marx broke with Hegel as early as 1843 with the Contribution to the Critique of Hegel's Philosophy of Law. Reflecting on this in 1859, Marx wrote:

I nowhere argue, nor do I even so much as imply, that Marx was a Hegelian up to the writing of Das Kapital. Whatever gave you that odd idea?

And I agree with you about Marx's early break with Hegel.


Now, according to Rosa, after this break with Hegel there was another shift in his thinking which resulted in a further rejection of Hegel. So, come on Rosa, give us the details of this second 'break'.

Can't help you there since this 'second break' is a figment of your imagination.

[S.Artesian]

S Artesian:




Are you suggesting that Das Kapital is for the 'lay-person'?

Anyway, even if it was, why tell us he's 'flirting' with these words? Why not say 'I'm using terms that are not easy to put in the vernacular'?






Absolutely, I'm more than suggesting that vol 1 is for the layperson. I'm insisting on it because Marx says so himself. You need to read a bit more than just your select paragraphs of the afterword of the 2nd edition. Marx explicitly identifies volume 1 as an introduction to his work on capital, directed towards a reader with some, but not expert knowledge-- that's what a layperson is.

As for why he says "coquetting" rather than using your words-- that's because Marx is Marx and you are not Rosa, not by a mile, not by ten miles, not by a light year. Marx wrote the way he wrote because he was Marx. We allow, give, permit, the author his, or her, style. That's why.

[Hit The North]

Can't help you there since this 'second break' is a figment of your imagination.

Then it is a figment of your imagination as you have argued elsewhere that there is a break between the writing in the Grundrisse and the first volume of The Capital.

[Rosa Lichtenstein]

BTB:


Then it is a figment of your imagination as you have argued elsewhere that there is a break between the writing in the Grundrisse and the first volume of The Capital.

Those are words others have used about what I have said (or what I have been alleged to have said). I have quoted those words, but never used them myself to describe my ideas.

[Rosa Lichtenstein]

S Artesian:


Absolutely, I'm more than suggesting that vol 1 is for the layperson. I'm insisting on it because Marx says so himself. You need to read a bit more than just your select paragraphs of the afterword of the 2nd edition. Marx explicitly identifies volume 1 as an introduction to his work on capital, directed towards a reader with some, but not expert knowledge -- that's what a layperson is.

I noice you do not quote Marx to that effect. But, as I also said, and you appear to have overlooked it:


Anyway, even if it was, why tell us he's 'flirting' with these words? Why not say 'I'm using terms that are not easy to put in the vernacular'?

'Flirting' with the trerminally obscure words Hegel inflicited on humanity would be no less confusing for the lay-reader than not flirting with them. So, why 'flirt'?

But, we already know why: since the summary of 'his method, 'the dialectic method', that Marx endorsed contained not one atom of Hegel.

So, and once again, no wonder the very best he could do was 'coquette' with this stuff.


As for why he says "coquetting" rather than using your words-- that's because Marx is Marx and you are not Rosa, not by a mile, not by ten miles, not by a light year. Marx wrote the way he wrote because he was Marx. We allow, give, permit, the author his, or her, style. That's why.

Indeed, and we know why, too. [See above.]

[Tribune]

Except... people have been oppressed or injured or abused and have rebeled pretty much constantly throughout history. The issue is when why and how these struggle break through their continuous, but isolated, manifestations and become historical, social struggles? And while all your anti-dialectic comrades remain silent on that issue, it is that issue that is the focus of Marx's historical analysis.

The dialectic is no more necessary for understanding oppression and resistance than "red plus white equals pink" is necessary for understanding how to fix a two stroke engine.

But you do reveal precisely what your motivation is, and for that I (at the least) am very grateful. You are looking for an over-arching theory of universal struggle which supersedes and transcends the historical examples, and the present possibilities, which actually present themselves.

You are looking to escape, it seems, contingency - and this is precisely counter to that which Marx recommends.


What are the precipitating factors in those struggles? What "makes it impossible" for "people to take anymore"? Marx offers a historical analysis, which he clearly regards as based on a dialectic, a contradiction he identifies between the development of the means of production and their social organization, the relations of production.A universal formula for revolt is a quixotic fool's task.

And as Rosa has repeatedly demonstrated, Marx does not base his analysis on the dialectic. I have read Capital, and looking to verify Rosa's claims to my own satisfaction I find her reading closer to the actual text.

Further, in the end it's ultimately self-defeating to waste time looking for a non-existent, transcendent universal, one which explains human conduct in all place and all times, and cannot fail. Marx's own theory - one of his signature contributions to political economy - is that the human mind is material, and therefore as subject to material and historical influence as a plant is to rainfall. We are contingent creatures.

This urge to flee contingency negates Marx's analysis, it turns Marx on his head, by treating the mind as a universal which can perceive a transcendent dialectical truth, regardless of materiality and material conditions.

Human mentation is not reducible to this universal component. We are subjects of our times. What could have - and did - encourage revolution in 1848 will only get a radicalized unionist arrested, today. The state has changed. Material conditions have changed. Late order capitalism, running up against the persistent reality of the second law of thermodynamics, is not the same as post-Enclosure emergent capitalism. The world, captured in the forward progression of time, is fundamentally different.


Marxists who consider Marx's analysis to contain a dialectic- an analysis of the contradictions of the historical development of capitalism- are no more or no less inclined to be "vanguardists" than those who oppose, are neutral, or could care less whether or what that dialectic is.You are simply restating your need for a transcendent Logos, at this point.

[Hit The North]

Tribune,

You seem to be suggesting that we cannot generalise from the patterns thrown up by our empirical investigation of phenomena such as class struggles. Is that correct?

[Tribune]

Tribune,

You seem to be suggesting that we cannot generalise from the patterns thrown up by our empirical investigation of phenomena such as class struggles. Is that correct?

No.

I'm suggesting that seeking after a transcendent Logos, such as is the search for the ubiquitous application of the dialectic, is not a generalization of experience, but an escape into universalist mysticism.

I take as a sign that this is the case the treatment of the Dialectic as that which cannot fail, that failure arises first from misunderstanding the unfolding of Dialectic processes, from ignorance of this Law Triumphant and Universal, this Logos of Historical Unfolding...

[Hit The North]

No.

I'm suggesting that seeking after a transcendent Logos, such as is the search for the ubiquitous application of the dialectic, is not a generalization of experience, but an escape into universalist mysticism.



Fine, but it would appear that you have read this into S.Artesian's claims, rather than it being implicit in them, but I'll leave him to clarify.

[Tribune]

Fine, but it would appear that you have read this into S.Artesian's claims, rather than it being implicit in them, but I'll leave him to clarify.


I think they are implicit, certainly. I think that dialectical philosophizers in general treat with the Dialectic as a revealed truth* which must be discovered by an enlightened and prophetic elect, who then bring this discovery to the unwashed masses. In certain sectarian Marxist environments the language seems revolutionary, but is in fact merely a restatement of traditional ruling class mysticism, stripped of overt theological references.

I think this is the exact treatment that S.A gives to the Dialectic - as a thing discovered in the mind, by the mind, wholly formed in mental terms, a product entirely of grammar, which is then used as a lens by which historical occurrences are judged, evaluated and systematized.

* - almost exactly like the Logos of stoicism and Johannine Christianity, the One of Plotinism, or the Spirit of Hegel. In point of fact, I think that the Dialectic is exactly the Logos, reconfigured by professional revolutionists for their own comfort, consumption and edification.

[S.Artesian]

Fine, but it would appear that you have read this into S.Artesian's claims, rather than it being implicit in them, but I'll leave him to clarify.

I have no need for a logos, or Hegel's mystical spirit.

I do have need for a materialism that grasps the precipitating force in human society. That force is the social organization of labor and that means the distinction, the separation, and origin and development of the separation between labor, and the conditions of labor-- between social labor and the system of property that encapsulates that labor.

Marx repeatedly states that a revolutionary era commences when the means of production come into conflict with the relations of production. He uses various iterations-- that the productivity of social human labor outgrows the private expropriation of the output of such labor.

It is that precise conflict that is at the core of capital and is developed with every circuit, with every expansion of capitalist accumulation. We can measure it. I have measured it. We can even see that conflict tearing asunder pre-existing social relations and inaugurating social struggles despite the bourgeoisie's own desire to suppress such struggles.

The dialectic that Marx has extracted from Hegel's mystification is not simply method, but method and object, method and subject-- being the analysis of history, and the real make-up of human history, the social labor process.

[Tribune]

I have no need for a logos, or Hegel's mystical spirit.

I do have need for a materialism that grasps the precipitating force in human society. That force is the social organization of labor and that means the distinction, the separation, and origin and development of the separation between labor, and the conditions of labor-- between social labor and the system of property that encapsulates that labor.

Marx repeatedly states that a revolutionary era commences when the means of production come into conflict with the relations of production. He uses various iterations-- that the productivity of social human labor outgrows the private expropriation of the output of such labor.

It is that precise conflict that is at the core of capital and is developed with every circuit, with every expansion of capitalist accumulation. We can measure it. I have measured it. We can even see that conflict tearing asunder pre-existing social relations and inaugurating social struggles despite the bourgeoisie's own desire to suppress such struggles.

The dialectic that Marx has extracted from Hegel's mystification is not simply method, but method and object, method and subject-- being the analysis of history, and the real make-up of human history, the social labor process.

What service does the Dialectic serve that cannot be provided without it?

[S.Artesian]

What service does the Dialectic serve that cannot be provided without it?


I'll answer that once you withdraw your previous ridiculous accusations.

[S.Artesian]

S Artesian:



I noice you do not quote Marx to that effect. But, as I also said, and you appear to have overlooked it:




I answered that over on Chris Koch's thread:


Regarding who's making stuff up and who actually has read something beyond Rosa's version of the afterword to the 2nd edition for dummies, here is what Marx says in the preface to the first editions of volume 1:

"Every beginning is difficult, holds in all sciences. To understand the first chapter, especially the section that contains the analysis of commodities, will, therefore, present the greatest difficulty. That which concerns more especially the analysis of the substance of value and the magnitude of value, I have, as much as it was possible, popularised. [1] (http://www.anonym.to/?http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1867-c1/p1.htm#1) The value-form, whose fully developed shape is the money-form, is very elementary and simple. Nevertheless, the human mind has for more than 2,000 years sought in vain to get to the bottom of it all, whilst on the other hand, to the successful analysis of much more composite and complex forms, there has been at least an approximation. Why? Because the body, as an organic whole, is more easy of study than are the cells of that body. In the analysis of economic forms, moreover, neither microscopes nor chemical reagents are of use. The force of abstraction must replace both. But in bourgeois society, the commodity-form of the product of labour — or value-form of the commodity — is the economic cell-form. To the superficial observer, the analysis of these forms seems to turn upon minutiae. It does in fact deal with minutiae, but they are of the same order as those dealt with in microscopic anatomy.
With the exception of the section of value-form, therefore, this volume cannot stand accused on the score of difficulty. I presuppose, of course, a reader who is willing to learn something new and therefore to think for himself."



Marx's force of abstraction is his material equivalent of Hegel's reason.



So volume 1 as a whole is designed as an introduction, and seeks to minimize the difficulties one will experience in confronting a new science, and learning a new scientific vocabulary... except in Chapter 1, the chapter dealing with the economic cell form, the germ, the genetic material, the DNA of capitalism, Marx can't find any way to avoid the difficulty of actually learning the method of his inquiry, of utilizing the forms of expression peculiar to Hegel in unveiling the fetishism of commodities.


The point is, if you're going to make claims based on afterwords and prefaces, at least have the discipline, the sense of due diligence, and the integrity to read all the goddam prefaces and afterwords. Not everyone is born every minute as a sucker.


"Every beginning is difficult" Marx writes in the preface to the first edition to vol 1. That makes it pretty clear to me that vol 1 is a beginning, an introduction to his science, the material analysis of the labor process.

[Rosa Lichtenstein]

S Artesian:


I answered that over on Chris Koch's thread:

Regarding who's making stuff up and who actually has read something beyond Rosa's version of the Afterword to the 2nd edition for dummies, here is what Marx says in the preface to the first editions of volume 1:

"Every beginning is difficult, holds in all sciences. To understand the first chapter, especially the section that contains the analysis of commodities, will, therefore, present the greatest difficulty. That which concerns more especially the analysis of the substance of value and the magnitude of value, I have, as much as it was possible, popularised. [1] The value-form, whose fully developed shape is the money-form, is very elementary and simple. Nevertheless, the human mind has for more than 2,000 years sought in vain to get to the bottom of it all, whilst on the other hand, to the successful analysis of much more composite and complex forms, there has been at least an approximation. Why? Because the body, as an organic whole, is more easy of study than are the cells of that body. In the analysis of economic forms, moreover, neither microscopes nor chemical reagents are of use. The force of abstraction must replace both. But in bourgeois society, the commodity-form of the product of labour — or value-form of the commodity — is the economic cell-form. To the superficial observer, the analysis of these forms seems to turn upon minutiae. It does in fact deal with minutiae, but they are of the same order as those dealt with in microscopic anatomy.
With the exception of the section of value-form, therefore, this volume cannot stand accused on the score of difficulty. I presuppose, of course, a reader who is willing to learn something new and therefore to think for himself."

Thanks for that, but I did in fact say this:




Anyway, even if it was, why tell us he's 'flirting' with these words? Why not say 'I'm using terms that are not easy to put in the vernacular'?

'Flirting' with the terminally obscure words Hegel inflicted on humanity would be no less confusing for the lay-reader than not flirting with them. So, why 'flirt'?

But, we already know why: since the summary of 'his method, 'the dialectic method', that Marx endorsed contained not one atom of Hegel.

So, and once again, no wonder the very best he could do was 'coquette' with this stuff.

You:


Marx's force of abstraction is his material equivalent of Hegel's reason.

I fail to see how this is so. His method of abstraction in fact resembles Aristotle's, and is defective for all that, too.


So volume 1 as a whole is designed as an introduction, and seeks to minimize the difficulties one will experience in confronting a new science, and learning a new scientific vocabulary... except in Chapter 1, the chapter dealing with the economic cell form, the germ, the genetic material, the DNA of capitalism, Marx can't find any way to avoid the difficulty of actually learning the method of his inquiry, of utilizing the forms of expression peculiar to Hegel in unveiling the fetishism of commodities.

Except, we already know that Marx had abandoned Hegel, as he pointed out by his endorsement of a summary of 'his method', 'the dialectic method', which contains not one atom of Hegel.


The point is, if you're going to make claims based on afterwords and prefaces, at least have the discipline, the sense of due diligence, and the integrity to read all the goddam prefaces and afterwords. Not everyone is born every minute as a sucker.

No need to get heated.

Unlike you, I have read these carefully, and, again unlike you, I take Marx at his word when he indicates he has waved goodbye to Hegel.

You keep ignoring the fact that 'the dialectic method' that Marx endorsed contains no Hegel at all.

So, no wonder he found that the very best he could do was merely 'coquette' with Hegel's useless and incomprehensible jargon.


"Every beginning is difficult" Marx writes in the preface to the first edition to vol 1. That makes it pretty clear to me that vol 1 is a beginning, an introduction to his science, the material analysis of the labor process.

Indeed, but even this 'beginning' had absolutely no Hegel in it.

Now, your case would be far stronger if you could find a published source contemporaneous with, or subsequent to Das Kapital that supports the traditional view you are trying vainly to defend -- but we already know you can't, or you would have done so by now.

[Tribune]

I'll answer that once you withdraw your previous ridiculous accusations.

This is plainly childish.

[S.Artesian]

This is plainly childish.

Look, you raise a whole bunch of bullshit-- starting with your pretend friends at your pretend loading dock, asking what trees we're planting; then you go to your pretend Palestinian being ignored by a pretend dialectician; then you go on to make accusations that those who argue Marx had a dialectic, as separate from those who want to subsume the entire universe in dialectical materialism, are searching, first for an excuse for passivity, and a vanguard, and a passive vanguard, and then for a "logos" -- and then when it is shown in every instance how baseless, ridiculous these assertions are... you want me to tell you, again, "what trees do you plant," what necessary trees.

So show a bit of integrity and admit that you're just a little bit full of shit, and you might have grounds for asking anybody to expain anything to you. Or remain the complete ignoramus you have shown yourself to be and go fuck yourself.

Remember, none of these threads start out with people "preaching" dialectic as a gospel as, a one true way-- they start with someone claiming that Marx extirpated Hegel, that dialectics are rubbish, useless etc. etc.

So.. let's flip the script: what exactly has anti-dialectics provided regarding the analysis of capital that is unique, essential, and beyond the range of dialectic analysis?

[Rosa Lichtenstein]

S Artesian:


So.. let's flip the script: what exactly has anti-dialectics provided regarding the analysis of capital that is unique, essential, and beyond the range of dialectic analysis?

1) Easy: read Marx, especially Das Kapital, which, as we now know, has had Hegel totally extirpated -- except, of course, for those passages where Marx tells us that the very best he could do with Hegel's useless jargon is to 'coquette' with it.

2) There are plenty of analyses of capitalism written by Marxists, who either do not use 'dialectics' (they simply use historical materialism) -- or, at best, who gesture toward it by using a few in-group 'dialectical' terms (which in the end do no work, since they can't) to confirm their 'orthodoxy' -- saving us genuine materialists the job.:)

3) The important thing is to stop the flow of poison into Marxism before the healing process can begin. No one else seems capable of doing this, so this is the number one priority right now -- especially in view of points 1) and 2) above.

Now can we move on? We've witnessed far too much failure, and for far too long, courtesy of the dialectical mystics among us, thank you so very much...

[Tribune]

Look, you raise a whole bunch of bullshit-- starting with your pretend friends at your pretend loading dock, asking what trees we're planting; then you go to your pretend Palestinian being ignored by a pretend dialectician; then you go on to make accusations that those who argue Marx had a dialectic, as separate from those who want to subsume the entire universe in dialectical materialism, are searching, first for an excuse for passivity, and a vanguard, and a passive vanguard, and then for a "logos" -- and then when it is shown in every instance how baseless, ridiculous these assertions are... you want me to tell you, again, "what trees do you plant," what necessary trees.

So show a bit of integrity and admit that you're just a little bit full of shit, and you might have grounds for asking anybody to expain anything to you. Or remain the complete ignoramus you have shown yourself to be and go fuck yourself.

I've had Christians react the same way when someone asks even simple, but unanswerable, questions about the Gospels.

That you need to take this tack, I think, shows an unnecessary defensiveness. That you'd rather be nasty than answer objections seems to demonstrate the paucity of your position.

As for friends on the loading dock, chap - they are real, which is of course why I mentioned them. I don't have the benefit of university education. I came up from the streets, out of foster care, crime and homelessness.

I'm terribly sorry that you think challenges to your position are "bullshit," and that you must react with such childish vulgarity, in the face of them.

But none of this means you've yet actually replied to the objections, from me or anyone else, on this matter.


Remember, none of these threads start out with people "preaching" dialectic as a gospel as, a one true way-- they start with someone claiming that Marx extirpated Hegel, that dialectics are rubbish, useless etc. etc.

So because you come in preaching after someone has challenged your worldview, it's okay to be a nasty person? Funny, that.


So.. let's flip the script: what exactly has anti-dialectics provided regarding the analysis of capital that is unique, essential, and beyond the range of dialectic analysis?

Flipping the script is all you can do, since you can never actually defend the purpose of dialectic "reasoning."

Like all true believers, you retreat to dogma and defensiveness - which is why the alleged vanguard of the revolutionary movement ends up bogged down in silly sectarianism.

[S.Artesian]

I've had Christians react the same way when someone asks even simple, but unanswerable, questions about the Gospels.

That you need to take this tack, I think, shows an unnecessary defensiveness. That you'd rather be nasty than answer objections seems to demonstrate the paucity of your position.

As for friends on the loading dock, chap - they are real, which is of course why I mentioned them. I don't have the benefit of university education. I came up from the streets, out of foster care, crime and homelessness.

I'm terribly sorry that you think challenges to your position are "bullshit," and that you must react with such childish vulgarity, in the face of them.

But none of this means you've yet actually replied to the objections, from me or anyone else, on this matter.



So because you come in preaching after someone has challenged your worldview, it's okay to be a nasty person? Funny, that.



Flipping the script is all you can do, since you can never actually defend the purpose of dialectic "reasoning."

Like all true believers, you retreat to dogma and defensiveness - which is why the alleged vanguard of the revolutionary movement ends up bogged down in silly sectarianism.

You make a series of accusations that are shown to be nothing but distortions and then you accuse me, and others, of being dogmatic and defensive when we call you on your dishonesty, and I do mean dishonesty.

I have nothing to do with any "vanguard" of a revolutionary movement, not being a "Leninist" in the least, except at the point when Lenin was a revolutionist in the most, when he was calling for all power to the soviets, and actually demanded his party support all power to the soviets.

You accuse people of being "religious" and seeking a universe of "spirit," and when that stupid slur is demolished, you then want to know what can be gained by dialectics that can't be gained somewhere else, or somehow else. Except that issue was, is, and never has been the issue that precipitates these discussions. Nobody says, oh why bother with learning the nature of value, or the existences of the commodity both as useful article and a value, as an object and a relation, when I can learn everything I need to know from my pretend buddies at my pretend loading dock. These debates start with some attack on "dialectics" as idealism, mystical, and mystification-- charges that are actually based on the accusers own lack of familiarity with Marx's work, particularly with Marx's own critique of Hegel, and his own "extraction" of the "rational kernel" from Hegel's dialectic.

So what's the point of "knowing" the dialectic? First, we point out that even posing the question this way is ignorant, since Marx's dialectic is not about knowledge, is not a theory of knowledge-- it's a method and subject-- criticism of, and analysis of, the material history of society, which is of course, the ontogenesis of capitalism.

What's the point? Overthrowing capitalism-- moving out of the pretend world of pretend friends at pretend loading docks; imaginary Palestinians and imaginary "dialecticians"; and pretend Marxists who think "justice" is all there is to know about the results and prospects of and for class struggle.

I refer the dishonorable gentleman to my previous answer: Go fuck yourself. If that language seems coarse, abusive, unwarranted, out of place, I can only suggest you've spent far too much time with your pretend friends at your pretend loading dock. In all the years I worked at a real railroad with real railroad workers, when somebody acted like an ignorant asshole, you called him on it. And if he persisted, you told him to go fuck himself.

[S.Artesian]

Now can we move on? We've witnessed far too much failure, and for far too long, courtesy of the dialectical mystics among us, thank you so very much...


Sure we can move on. I only have two questions to ask as we move on: Is there a specific, essential relationship of a form of labor to capital? Does this specific organization of labor both create capital accumulation, or expanded reproduction, and undermine, destroy such accumulation, leading to economic contraction?

That's all you have to answer for me to agree to stop as soon as you agree to stop.

[Rosa Lichtenstein]

S Artesian:


Sure we can move on. I only have two questions to ask as we move on: Is there a specific, essential relationship of a form of labor to capital? Does this specific organization of labor both create capital accumulation, or expanded reproduction, and undermine, destroy such accumulation, leading to economic contraction?

An even better topic would be whether Hegel, by arguing within a well-established ruling-class tradition in philosophy (initiated by Plato), confused linguistic functions with the names of abstract particulars, indeed whether or not Hegel confused the identity of propositions/judgements with that of names or named objects:

But, even if we were to concede that the LOI [Law of Identity] were the following, and applied to propositions:

L1a: p = p,

[Where "p" denotes a proposition, statement or spoken token indicative sentence, (etc.), depending on one's philosophy of logic.]

or perhaps:

L1b: ∀(x) [Fx = Fx],

[Where "∀(ξ)" is the universal quantifier, and "F(ξ)" a one-place, first-level predicate expression], neither of these would have any bearing on the relation they are supposed to have with their alleged negative/'opposite' -- as Lawler alleged --, which might be the case with the following:

L2: p cannot at the same time be p and not be p.

Nor would either have anything to do with so-called "assertibility conditions":

L3: One cannot assert that p is true and at the same time, and in the same respect, assert that p is false.

This is because there are no rules for deriving either L2 or L3 from L1a or L1b (or from the less formal versions of these two), or indeed from anything analogous. And it is not hard to see why. [More on this presently.]

[Of course, L3 could itself be correct (I will pass no opinion on it here), but L2 and L3 certainly do not follow from L1a or L1b, or from their alleged negative versions (or from the less formal versions of the two, as we will soon see).]

Now, if L2 had been:

L2a: p cannot at the same time be identical with p and not be identical with p,

the problems associated with Hegel's 'derivation' would have been a little easier to see. Quantifying across propositions (if that were possible, and if we could make sense of the use of an "=" sign between propositional variables/tokens), we might be able to obtain the following:

L4: ∀(p) [(p = p) -> ¬(p ≠ p)].

[This says: "If a proposition is identical with itself then it is not the case that it is not identical with itself."]

Or, perhaps just this:

L4a: [(p = p) -> ¬(p ≠ p)].

But, exactly how this implies the LOC [Law of Non-Contradition], as Hegel alleges, is still unclear.

Perhaps the following will work. From L4a, by well known rules, we can obtain:

L5: ¬(p = p) v ¬(p ≠ p),

and thus (by De Morgan's rules):

L6: ¬[(p = p) & (p ≠ p)],

and if we now replace "(p = p)" with "Γ" and "(p ≠ p)" with "¬Γ" we could derive the following from L6:

L7: ¬(Γ & ¬Γ).

But, we have as yet no rules for parsing the identity sign in the required manner, i.e., so that (p ≠ p) <-> ¬(p = p). Until we do, this derivation cannot work.

[On the rules we do have, see Bostock (1997), pp.323-33, Lemmon (1993), pp.159-67, and Quine (1974), pp.221-26.]

Even if we did have such rules, in order to obtain L7, the alleged LOI (i.e., "p = p") had to be combined with its supposed Hegelian 'other' (i.e., "¬(p = p)") [or is it "(p ≠ p)"?]), and then with its double negation (i.e., "¬(p ≠ p)") in a conditional. But, as we have seen, it is not too clear how L7 can be derived from "p = p" on its own, or even from its alleged negative form.

However, it is worth pointing out again that if a proposition is not identical with itself, it cannot be a proposition (at least, not one with a determinate content). In that case, nothing could follow from it. On the other hand, if it is identical with itself, it would be an object, not a proposition -- and, plainly, nothing follows from an object.

Either way, we hit another brick wall.

Nevertheless, it could be argued that in logical stencils like, say:

L9: ∀(x) [Fx = Fx],

and:

L10: (∀x)(∀y)(∀F) [(Fx <-> Fy) -> (x = y)],

there is an unambiguous identity sign between propositions, or at least between their signs. So the earlier claims cannot be correct.

But, logicians who use either the equal or the equivalence sign between propositional tokens do not imagine that these physical objects on the page are identical. They variously interpret them as expressing a truth-functional relationship between the results of applying F(ξ), for example, to names or to objects (depending on the philosophy of logic to which they adhere), yielding an identity (or as expressing an equivalence relation) of some sort between abstract objects (i.e., sets, courses of values, graphs, ranges, classes, and the like), or between the truth values of the interpreted sentences that finally emerge as a result, and so on.

Which, as I think you'll agree, is a far more pressing question, since if I'm right we can throw out 'dialectical logic' as thoroughly confused from beginning to end, upside down, or the 'right way up'.


That's all you have to answer for me to agree to stop as soon as you agree to stop.

Dream on...

[S.Artesian]

An even better topic would be whether Hegel, by arguing within a well-established ruling-class tradition in philosophy (initiated by Plato), confused linguistic functions with the names of abstract particulars, indeed whether or not Hegel confused the identity of propositions/judgements with that of names or named objects:

But, even if we were to concede that the LOI [Law of Identity] were the following, and applied to propositions:

L1a: p = p,

[Where "p" denotes a proposition, statement or spoken token indicative sentence, (etc.), depending on one's philosophy of logic.]

or perhaps:

L1b: ∀(x) [Fx = Fx],

[Where "∀(ξ)" is the universal quantifier, and "F(ξ)" a one-place, first-level predicate expression], neither of these would have any bearing on the relation they are supposed to have with their alleged negative/'opposite' -- as Lawler alleged --, which might be the case with the following:

L2: p cannot at the same time be p and not be p.

Nor would either have anything to do with so-called "assertibility conditions":

L3: One cannot assert that p is true and at the same time, and in the same respect, assert that p is false.

This is because there are no rules for deriving either L2 or L3 from L1a or L1b (or from the less formal versions of these two), or indeed from anything analogous. And it is not hard to see why. [More on this presently.]

[Of course, L3 could itself be correct (I will pass no opinion on it here), but L2 and L3 certainly do not follow from L1a or L1b, or from their alleged negative versions (or from the less formal versions of the two, as we will soon see).]

Now, if L2 had been:

L2a: p cannot at the same time be identical with p and not be identical with p,

the problems associated with Hegel's 'derivation' would have been a little easier to see. Quantifying across propositions (if that were possible, and if we could make sense of the use of an "=" sign between propositional variables/tokens), we might be able to obtain the following:

L4: ∀(p) [(p = p) -> ¬(p ≠ p)].

[This says: "If a proposition is identical with itself then it is not the case that it is not identical with itself."]

Or, perhaps just this:

L4a: [(p = p) -> ¬(p ≠ p)].

But, exactly how this implies the LOC [Law of Non-Contradition], as Hegel alleges, is still unclear.

Perhaps the following will work. From L4a, by well known rules, we can obtain:

L5: ¬(p = p) v ¬(p ≠ p),

and thus (by De Morgan's rules):

L6: ¬[(p = p) & (p ≠ p)],

and if we now replace "(p = p)" with "Γ" and "(p ≠ p)" with "¬Γ" we could derive the following from L6:

L7: ¬(Γ & ¬Γ).

But, we have as yet no rules for parsing the identity sign in the required manner, i.e., so that (p ≠ p) <-> ¬(p = p). Until we do, this derivation cannot work.

[On the rules we do have, see Bostock (1997), pp.323-33, Lemmon (1993), pp.159-67, and Quine (1974), pp.221-26.]

Even if we did have such rules, in order to obtain L7, the alleged LOI (i.e., "p = p") had to be combined with its supposed Hegelian 'other' (i.e., "¬(p = p)") [or is it "(p ≠ p)"?]), and then with its double negation (i.e., "¬(p ≠ p)") in a conditional. But, as we have seen, it is not too clear how L7 can be derived from "p = p" on its own, or even from its alleged negative form.

However, it is worth pointing out again that if a proposition is not identical with itself, it cannot be a proposition (at least, not one with a determinate content). In that case, nothing could follow from it. On the other hand, if it is identical with itself, it would be an object, not a proposition -- and, plainly, nothing follows from an object.

Either way, we hit another brick wall.

Nevertheless, it could be argued that in logical stencils like, say:

L9: ∀(x) [Fx = Fx],

and:

L10: (∀x)(∀y)(∀F) [(Fx <-> Fy) -> (x = y)],

there is an unambiguous identity sign between propositions, or at least between their signs. So the earlier claims cannot be correct.

But, logicians who use either the equal or the equivalence sign between propositional tokens do not imagine that these physical objects on the page are identical. They variously interpret them as expressing a truth-functional relationship between the results of applying F(ξ), for example, to names or to objects (depending on the philosophy of logic to which they adhere), yielding an identity (or as expressing an equivalence relation) of some sort between abstract objects (i.e., sets, courses of values, graphs, ranges, classes, and the like), or between the truth values of the interpreted sentences that finally emerge as a result, and so on.

Which, as I think you'll agree, is a far more pressing question, since if I'm right we can throw out 'dialectical logic' as thoroughly confused from beginning to end, upside down, or the 'right way up'.




Priceless. Rosa asks, first, "can we move on," and then comes up with this. Exactly where do we move on to? Well, if it's Marxism we are discussing, the only place to move to is the concrete analysis/criticism of capital; of the direction capital is taking, and will necessarily take, and the prospects for the opposition to those directions; the critique "immanent" as Marx would, and did, put it to capital itself.

That critique, that movement to the concrete for Marx is determined, derived, and based upon the fact that capital has a specific, historical relationship to a social form of labor, and that very organization of labor both drives capital's expanded reproduction, and creates its contraction; both spawns and impairs accumulation.

But instead of answering that question, the answer to which might actually be a starting point for moving on, instead we get.... well we got whatever that is that Rosa would rather post.

And she calls those who think Marx utilized and identified a dialectic "mystics."

I'll let the reader decide-- who's the materialist-- the one who asks about the actual relation of capital to labor? and who's the idealist, mystic-- the one using "logical stencils."

Priceless. For everything else there's Mastercard. Thank you Rosa for being so..... you.

No further questions.

[Tribune]

(vulgar childish tirade snipped for brevity)

Now that you've demonstrated yet again that you can type off simpering tirades, you have still failed to address a single objection to your vague treatment of the dialectic.

I know that you prefer to call names and rage post, but in all honesty, I believe I've raised an actual objection or two.

So, in the interests of understanding, again:

1. What purpose does the dialectic serve, that other approaches do not?

2. How does a lack of the application of the dialectic diminish an understanding of history?

3. How does the use of the dialectic function on a practical level, in the training of self and others to oppose the particular, present, contemporary manifestation of capitalist power?

4. What cannot be done without the dialectic, that can be done with it?

5. How come the application of the dialectic, in the study of history, has so far failed to promote a treatment of events which undermine capitalist authority?

6. How does the dialectic help any oppressed person - for example, Palestinians - in her immediacy?

I fully expect you'll bugger off with either a tirade or an egotistical request for undeserved apology, yet again - but I ask in good faith, all the same.

[S.Artesian]

You wouldn't know "good faith" if it ran up and smacked you in the teeth.

Word.

[Tribune]

You wouldn't know "good faith" if it ran up and smacked you in the teeth.

Word.


That's unfortunate. You appear ready take any opportunity to avoid challenges to your belief system. My questions still stand, despite your infantile hostility. If you ever find the ability to answer them, I look forward to your responses.

And yes, in good faith.

I have no animosity towards you, even though you become vulgar when people don't accept your beliefs.

The way I understand the needs of our class, I can work with you regardless of your attachment to the Dialectic. We have a common adversary.

You, it seems, are unwilling to work with folks like me - folks who don't believe what and how you believe.

That's unfortunate, as our common enemy is daily increasing the order and magnitude of its power, and its reach.

[S.Artesian]

None of the questions posed by our poser Tribune are asked in good faith. The issue is historical accuracy.

Here are my answers to the bad faith questions posed by Tribune:

Does Marx utilize a dialectic in his analysis of capitalism?

Does Marx find in that dialectic more than a "method," but also the subject of history?

Does Marx plainly connect the development of his dialectic to the critique, not the extirpation, but the critique of Hegel's mystification of the both the method and that subject of history?

Those are the material questions at stake.

Pretend Palestinians and pretend loading docks have nothing do with the materialist analysis of the social organization of labor.

[S.Artesian]

That's unfortunate. You'll take any opportunity to avoid challenges to your belief system.


As I've said, you have offered no challenges. You have made things up-- pretend friends, pretend Palestinians, and a pretend cause of "justice" as the task of Marxism.

Anyone can look at all the posts on Rosa's threads, and judge for themselves what real challenges have been made, and what real challenges have been answered-- you only make accusations when it's pointed out how irrelevant your fantasies are.

[Tribune]

None of the questions posed by our poser Tribune are asked in good faith. The issue is historical accuracy.

Here are my answers to the bad faith questions posed by Tribune:

Does Marx utilize a dialectic in his analysis of capitalism?

Does Marx find in that dialectic more than a "method," but also the subject of history?

Does Marx plainly connect the development of his dialectic to the critique, not the extirpation, but the critique of Hegel's mystification of the both the method and that subject of history?

Those are the material questions at stake.

Pretend Palestinians and pretend loading docks have nothing do with the materialist analysis of the social organization of labor.

There is nothing material about the dialectic, in the first - your childish insults notwithstanding.

[Tribune]

As I've said, you have offered no challenges. You have made things up-- pretend friends, pretend Palestinians, and a pretend cause of "justice" as the task of Marxism.

Anyone can look at all the posts on Rosa's threads, and judge for themselves what real challenges have been made, and what real challenges have been answered-- you only make accusations when it's pointed out how irrelevant your fantasies are.

And now you are a psychic? You can see thousands of miles away, diagnosing the material conditions and histories of others whom you've never met?

All through the magical agency of the intertubewebs?

Your mystical powers grow with every post.

[S.Artesian]

That's unfortunate. You appear ready take any opportunity to avoid challenges to your belief system. My questions still stand, despite your infantile hostility. If you ever find the ability to answer them, I look forward to your responses.

And yes, in good faith.

I have no animosity towards you, even though you become vulgar when people don't accept your beliefs.

The way I understand the needs of our class, I can work with you regardless of your attachment to the Dialectic. We have a common adversary.

You, it seems, are unwilling to work with folks like me - folks who don't believe what and how you believe.

That's unfortunate, as our common enemy is daily increasing the order and magnitude of its power, and its reach.

Oh, I could work with you, if in fact you ever presented anything to work with. The fact that I think you make things up and don't understand much of what Marx wrote wouldn't stop me.

Our persistent disagreement hasn't stopped me from sharing with Rosa certain agreements about, and merciless criticisms of, those who admire the "realpolitik" as practiced by past, and present, supporters of what is known as Stalinism.

Although I do think your willingness to make up little sing-song phony dialogues is more akin to that historical practice of falsification, so I'd probably be quite wary if you ever had any real responsibility in the real world.

I'll ask you the same questions I asked Rosa, if you, like her, want to move on.

" Is there a specific, essential relationship of a form of labor to capital? Does this specific organization of labor both create capital accumulation, or expanded reproduction, and undermine, destroy such accumulation, leading to economic contraction?"


The point of Marx's dialectic is that capitalism in its manifold, and manifest, contradictions, self-oppositions, contains an "immanent" critique-- one thing that that dialectic, that social materialism of both method and subject would clarify is the essential role of labor, of class, of the working class as a class opposed to the bourgeoisie vis-a-vis the appearance and reappearance of various "isms,"-- nationalisms, populisms, radicalisms, new democracy-isms, popular front-isms.

But hey, you want some questions answered? I just answered some. Now answer the two questions I posed to Rosa.

PS. I don't become vulgar. I am vulgar. I'm vulgar as often as possible.

[S.Artesian]

And now you are a psychic? You can see thousands of miles away, diagnosing the material conditions and histories of others whom you've never met?
.

Nope, all that's your stock-in-trade-- like the dialogue you "overheard" between a "Palestinian" and a "dialectician." Like your "mates" at your "loading dock," who want real meat and us.potatoes Marxism, and not that foie gras stuff called dialectics when they go toe to toe with your pretend bourgeoisie.

My experience has been that those who play the old "shape-up" card, that old "down at the docks" card, are precisely those who haven't spent more than a day or two anywhere near the docks, except perhaps on a tour bus.

When I analyze material conditions-- and I think I've done a fair bit of it and that fair bit well above average, [but then again I'm as immodest as I am vulgar] I look at real conditions, real circumstances, real contradictions in economies, real oppositions between labor and the conditions of labor.

I can give you references if you like..... but I'm sure you'll read them, if you read them and say... "Why, there's not a bit of Hegelian jargon in here." Of course there isn't. Marx's dialectic is demonstrated in its critique of capitalism, not in its self-description as a belief unto itself.

[JazzRemington]

Nope, all that's your stock-in-trade-- like the dialogue you "overheard" between a "Palestinian" and a "dialectician." Like your "mates" at your "loading dock," who want real meat and us.potatoes Marxism, and not that foie gras stuff called dialectics when they go toe to toe with your pretend bourgeoisie.

My experience has been that those who play the old "shape-up" card, that old "down at the docks" card, are precisely those who haven't spent more than a day or two anywhere near the docks, except perhaps on a tour bus.

When I analyze material conditions-- and I think I've done a fair bit of it and that fair bit well above average, [but then again I'm as immodest as I am vulgar] I look at real conditions, real circumstances, real contradictions in economies, real oppositions between labor and the conditions of labor.

I can give you references if you like..... but I'm sure you'll read them, if you read them and say... "Why, there's not a bit of Hegelian jargon in here." Of course there isn't. Marx's dialectic is demonstrated in its critique of capitalism, not in its self-description as a belief unto itself.

I don't understand why you can never defend your theory without falling back on insults and immaturity. If dialectics was as widespread in social relationships as you claim, you'd be able to point it out, and explain why. But whenever someone challenges what you claim "contains the dialectic," you basically throw a fit and begin insulting the person. I don't understand why any of your "responses" aren't being counted as flames.

[S.Artesian]

I don't know why you don't read the hundreds of posts submitted detailing Marx's use of dialectic... or you do read them, but just dismiss it all as "coquetting." I don't know why Rosa or Tribune or yourself won't answer the two simple questions asked, the answers to which are exactly the core of Marx's analysis of capital.

Post after post has been submitted explaining how Marx determines what a contradiction of capitalism is, why those contradictions are the determinants of capitals, how those antagonisms mount an immanent critique of capitalism; how the point of Marx's analysis is tracing that origin of the conflict, the contradiction between means and relations of production, where each negates the continued development, or accumulation, of the other.... I don't understand why you ignore all that, dismiss it as gobbledygook, or religious mysticism... but you do. Such is life. No accounting for what some people don't want to know want to do.

Of course when all those defenses, and challenges to your gobbledygooks, your tortured distortion of Marx's remarks on Hegel; your disavowal of his own correspondence, are presented-- you don't use harsh language, coarse words, profanity, you simply engage in denial and disavowal.

Having had to deal with the bloody-mindedness of those whose stock-in-trade is denial, disavowal, and distortion, I'll stick with the vulgarity, the profanity, the crudeness. It's much less violent.

What I won't do is defend it on your terms. I'll defend it on Marx's terms; on how he demonstrated capital as based on the contradiction, the opposition of labor and the conditions of labor. I'm not the least bit sorry if you don't find that acceptable. Your argument is loaded; it's loaded with blanks, but it's loaded nonetheless and requires that Marxists actually regress from Marx's accomplishment of moving from, beyond, dialectic as description-- dialectic as idealism, to dialectic as demonstration, to the material of dialectic which is the social organization of labor, a social-ism.

And the fact that you are stuck in that regression is why you, Rosa, Tribune, or any "anti-dialectician" won't answer those two simple questions, so that we could all move on.

[Rosa Lichtenstein]

S Artesian:


Priceless. Rosa asks, first, "can we move on," and then comes up with this. Exactly where do we move on to? Well, if it's Marxism we are discussing, the only place to move to is the concrete analysis/criticism of capital; of the direction capital is taking, and will necessarily take, and the prospects for the opposition to those directions; the critique "immanent" as Marx would, and did, put it to capital itself.

My comment about 'moving on' was aimed at your incapacity to read Marx with due care, and I added my latest thoughts since they seem to me to raise far more important issues. This is because, if they are correct, then dialectical logic is a mass of confusion -- upside down or 'the right way up'.


That critique, that movement to the concrete for Marx is determined, derived, and based upon the fact that capital has a specific, historical relationship to a social form of labor, and that very organization of labor both drives capital's expanded reproduction, and creates its contraction; both spawns and impairs accumulation.

Indeed, except your use of the word 'contradiction' must either be illegitimate (in view of the defective 'logic' from which it was lifted), or you too are merely 'coquetting' with it.


But instead of answering that question, the answer to which might actually be a starting point for moving on, instead we get.... well we got whatever that is that Rosa would rather post.

And for the reasons I gave.


And she calls those who think Marx utilized and identified a dialectic "mystics."

[Are you debating with me, or with an audience of yours?]

Well, if you insist on using Hegel's mystical theory (which is such upside down or 'the right way up') then that epithet is well earned.


I'll let the reader decide-- who's the materialist-- the one who asks about the actual relation of capital to labor? and who's the idealist, mystic-- the one using "logical stencils."

But, if you are going to use terms lifted from Hegel's mystical 'theory', then the 'reader' has only one conclusion to draw.


Priceless. For everything else there's Mastercard. Thank you Rosa for being so..... you.

Beats Bargain Basement Mysticism every time.


No further questions.

I doubt it...

[Rosa Lichtenstein]

S Artesian:


Post after post has been submitted explaining how Marx determines what a contradiction of capitalism is, why those contradictions are the determinants of capitals, how those antagonisms mount an immanent critique of capitalism; how the point of Marx's analysis is tracing that origin of the conflict, the contradiction between means and relations of production, where each negates the continued development, or accumulation, of the other.... I don't understand why you ignore all that, dismiss it as gobbledygook, or religious mysticism... but you do. Such is life. No accounting for what some people don't want to know want to do.

But, you keep forgetting that Marx was merely 'coquetting' with these concepts. Since that message hasn't yet sunk in, no wonder we keep hammering away at it, and refuse to be distracted.


Of course when all those defenses, and challenges to your gobbledygooks, your tortured distortion of Marx's remarks on Hegel; your disavowal of his own correspondence, are presented-- you don't use harsh language, coarse words, profanity, you simply engage in denial and disavowal.

We have been over this dozens of times; here it is again (may I suggest that you respond to what I have to say, or drop the issue?):

1) Unpublished remarks cannot out-weigh or countermand published sources. We have a summary of the 'dialectic method', which Marx saw fit to publish, and endorse as 'his method', which contains not one shred of Hegel.

2) In stark contrast, you can't refer to or quote a single published source, contemporaneous with or subsequent to Das Kapital, that supports the traditional view you hold.


And the fact that you are stuck in that regression is why you, Rosa, Tribune, or any "anti-dialectician" won't answer those two simple questions, so that we could all move on.

As I said, we refuse to be distracted from this, or allow you to move us on into discussing a (traditional) theory that has 'coquetted' terms in it which you insist on treating in a 'non-coquettish' manner.

[S.Artesian]

dentity of propositions/judgements with that of names or named objects:

But, even if we were to concede that the LOI [Law of Identity] were the following, and applied to propositions:

L1a: p = p,

[Where "p" denotes a proposition, statement or spoken token indicative sentence, (etc.), depending on one's philosophy of logic.]

or perhaps:

L1b: ∀(x) [Fx = Fx],

[Where "∀(ξ)" is the universal quantifier, and "F(ξ)" a one-place, first-level predicate expression], neither of these would have any bearing on the relation they are supposed to have with their alleged negative/'opposite' -- as Lawler alleged --, which might be the case with the following:

L2: p cannot at the same time be p and not be p.

Nor would either have anything to do with so-called "assertibility conditions":

L3: One cannot assert that p is true and at the same time, and in the same respect, assert that p is false.

This is because there are no rules for deriving either L2 or L3 from L1a or L1b (or from the less formal versions of these two), or indeed from anything analogous. And it is not hard to see why. [More on this presently.]

[Of course, L3 could itself be correct (I will pass no opinion on it here), but L2 and L3 certainly do not follow from L1a or L1b, or from their alleged negative versions (or from the less formal versions of the two, as we will soon see).]

Now, if L2 had been:

L2a: p cannot at the same time be identical with p and not be identical with p,

the problems associated with Hegel's 'derivation' would have been a little easier to see. Quantifying across propositions (if that were possible, and if we could make sense of the use of an "=" sign between propositional variables/tokens), we might be able to obtain the following:

L4: ∀(p) [(p = p) -> ¬(p ≠ p)].

[This says: "If a proposition is identical with itself then it is not the case that it is not identical with itself."]

Or, perhaps just this:

L4a: [(p = p) -> ¬(p ≠ p)].

But, exactly how this implies the LOC [Law of Non-Contradition], as Hegel alleges, is still unclear.

Perhaps the following will work. From L4a, by well known rules, we can obtain:

L5: ¬(p = p) v ¬(p ≠ p),

and so on and on and on...

You know what I'm curious about? besides everything in life... I'm curious about how your friend Tribune is going to handle the response of his pretend mates at his pretend loading dock, or the response of his pretend Palestinians when he takes your "short course" down to the pretend loading dock where his pretend mates pretend to work. You think they might use some harsh, crude language when that gets run by them?

I mean really, what use is all of that gobbledygook to the hard-working salt-of-the-earth types, or the hungry Palestinians, who are so callously ignored by pretend Tribune's pretend dialecticians? And then to get this short course in symbols and logic... it seems like all there is is the choice of cancer or polio.

[S.Artesian]

You know what else I like? I like it when Rosa says Marx is clearly wrong in ascribing to Hegel the first full and comprehensive exposition of dialectics, because as Rosa puts it, Aristotle had done so well before Hegel.

But.... as Rosa has previously acknowledged, Aristotle's dialectic is not at all like Hegel's. Not a bit. So... is Marx wrong? Or... or are the very elements of dialectic which Rosa rejects, the very elements of Hegel's exposition that Rosa regards as gobbledygook, the components, the elements of that comprehensive exposition that Marx acknowledges?

Well, I think clearly the answer is precisely that-- that Marx regards the exposition Hegel made, its alienated attempt to link method and historical subject, just that critical element, that rational kernel that he, Marx, extracts, and from the mystical shell.

And what is that mystical shell? Is it negation, contradiction, antagonism, identity/opposition? If we read Marx's Critique of Hegel's Philosophy of Right -- the text Marx is referring to when he says he criticized the idealistic, mystical side of Hegel some "30 years ago"-- meaning 1843, we can see what Marx meant by the mystical shell-- and that is the shell of pure ahistorical "reason," that, in defining the real as rational, but not as historical, that is not as the product of humanity's social being, Hegel winds up as the object lesson of his own critique of liberalism where Hegel identified liberalism as a philosophy of the abstract that capitulates before the world of the concrete.

Hegel, in his ideal-ism, capitulates before the concrete reality of the bureaucratic, petty, and large, bourgeois state, as the embodiment of his abstract reason, because what is real is rational.

It is after this critique of Hegel that Marx begins the critique of political economy. So once again Rosa gets it wrong, and exactly wrong.

[Lenina Rosenweg]

I've been a socialist for years but I'm a relative newbie in terms of studying Marxist theory. It seems to me though that dialectical thinking, if not "dialectical materialism", is integral to Marxism. As S. Artesian pointed out,Marx's theory of value and its permutations-exchange value, use value, etc. is highly dialectical. Without dialectics, as Andrew Kliman and David Harvey pointed out, Marxism collapses as a science giving an ability to understand and change the world. Academic Marxists went though coniptions over this in the 70s.

What would be the substitute for dialectics? Marxism becomes empiricism.

Cyril Smith makes the case that "diamat" was made into a metaphysical fetish by the Soviets and there's a link on the Marx Myths website somewhere asserting that Marx was a naturalist. All this may be valid , I don't know,but it doesn't negate dialectical thinking.

[Tribune]

and so on and on and on...

You know what I'm curious about? besides everything in life... I'm curious about how your friend Tribune is going to handle the response of his pretend mates at his pretend loading dock, or the response of his pretend Palestinians when he takes your "short course" down to the pretend loading dock where his pretend mates pretend to work. You think they might use some harsh, crude language when that gets run by them?

I'm sure calling people liars works to get them to see things your way, why - all the time.

As for the constructed dialogue between a Dialectician and a series of imaginary Palestinians - it's really bizarre that you think this is a point of contention. I didn't actually interview people in order to make that illustration. I thought this was rather obvious.

About working class friends - working trucking routes, loading freight, waiting tables or painting houses - I assure you they are real.

They're just not university sops whining about latest version of the Logos.

Nor is Rosa's short course intended for them, as I read it - because they don't need it. They don't have denuded theology trussed up as historical theory colonizing their brain cases. Why would they need Rosa's treatment of politicized hermeticism?


I mean really, what use is all of that gobbledygook to the hard-working salt-of-the-earth types, or the hungry Palestinians, who are so callously ignored by pretend Tribune's pretend dialecticians? And then to get this short course in symbols and logic... it seems like all there is is the choice of cancer or polio.

Since Rosa and I are separated by an ocean, your attempt to associate us by more than our rejection of your sideshow grammatical gimmick smacks of desperation.

I agree with Rosa's deconstruction of the illogic of the dialectic. She shows that it's not necessary in developing a material view of history. Which mirrors my own experience.

That's all, chap. That's the whole of it.

[S.Artesian]

I wouldn't know about university sops, since I haven't been enrolled in one, or lived in that milieu, since I graduated and got drafted. Long time ago. Had to go to work when I came back.

No shit, you mean that "dialogue" with a Palestinian wasn't absolutely verbatim? What? You mean it might just be possible that those who hold that Marx developed a dialectic of method and subject in his exploration of capital wouldn't spout the pseudo-intellectual crap that you put in their mouths? You mean they might actually concentrate on the historical origins of the material conditions of exploitation?

Really? Why that's mighty liberal of you, Tribune. I take back half the "go fuck yourselfs" now that you've made that clear. Really.

Give me the vulgar, the profane, any day over the posers...

[S.Artesian]

Cyril Smith was absolutely correct.

[S.Artesian]

I
I agree with Rosa's deconstruction of the illogic of the dialectic. She shows that it's not necessary in developing a material view of history. Which mirrors my own experience.



Just reread your post and the above stuck with me because.... because Rosa shows no such thing. She doesn't explore a single thing about Marx's development of historical materialism; she doesn't examine a single work of Marx's beyond the afterword to the 2nd edition of volume 1. She makes no comment on the bulk of Marx's work, since clearly a large portion of that is of the "unpublished" variety; she makes no comment on the analysis of the value forms of the commodity, and the origins of those forms in the organization of labor.

Perhaps that does mirror your own experience, ascribing accomplishments where and when not even a preliminary action has been undertaken... but your philosophical agreement with Rosa doesn't amount to evidence that she has done what you say she has done.

Rosa repeatedly refuses to discuss the components of the historical materialism she proclaims to accept, support, and practice and often responds that there is simply no need to discuss those components, or that materialism, as "Marx already did that for us."

This is what I mean by the fact that you haven't really proposed any challenges to the "Marxism as dialectic" interpretation. You assume that your, IMO, near slanderous gasbag words you ascribe to a pretend Marxist amounts to a challenge; you assume that your pretend, "let's take this down to the pretend loading dock and see who salutes" pissing contest amounts to a challenge. Those aren't challenges, those are evasions.

Here's the challenge: Does Marx define capital on the basis of a historically specific organization of social labor? If so, does that organization of labor simultaneously propel expanding capitalist accumulation, and propel the limitation, the impairment, the contraction of capitalist accumulation.

Care to answer?

[JazzRemington]

I don't know why you don't read the hundreds of posts submitted detailing Marx's use of dialectic... or you do read them, but just dismiss it all as "coquetting." I don't know why Rosa or Tribune or yourself won't answer the two simple questions asked, the answers to which are exactly the core of Marx's analysis of capital.

Post after post has been submitted explaining how Marx determines what a contradiction of capitalism is, why those contradictions are the determinants of capitals, how those antagonisms mount an immanent critique of capitalism; how the point of Marx's analysis is tracing that origin of the conflict, the contradiction between means and relations of production, where each negates the continued development, or accumulation, of the other.... I don't understand why you ignore all that, dismiss it as gobbledygook, or religious mysticism... but you do. Such is life. No accounting for what some people don't want to know want to do.

Well, you can't explain why these things are contradictions, or opposites, or what have you. You keep saying they are, but you have yet to show why this is the case. Whenever anyone does ask you why, you either post more texts that allege to show why, post insults toward the person, or just ignore them.


Of course when all those defenses, and challenges to your gobbledygooks, your tortured distortion of Marx's remarks on Hegel; your disavowal of his own correspondence, are presented-- you don't use harsh language, coarse words, profanity, you simply engage in denial and disavowal.I don't understand, you'd rather people sink to your own childish level when disagreeing? Why wouldn't I deny something that you, or anyone else, can't explain? If someone is trying to show how a god or gods move the earth around, and they can't do it, why wouldn't I deny that a god or gods are responsible?


Having had to deal with the bloody-mindedness of those whose stock-in-trade is denial, disavowal, and distortion, I'll stick with the vulgarity, the profanity, the crudeness. It's much less violent.Well, if you want to continue to argue like an eight year old (much less an eight year old who writes long-winded sentences that border on sophistry), no one can stop you.


What I won't do is defend it on your terms. I'll defend it on Marx's terms; on how he demonstrated capital as based on the contradiction, the opposition of labor and the conditions of labor. I'm not the least bit sorry if you don't find that acceptable. Your argument is loaded; it's loaded with blanks, but it's loaded nonetheless and requires that Marxists actually regress from Marx's accomplishment of moving from, beyond, dialectic as description-- dialectic as idealism, to dialectic as demonstration, to the material of dialectic which is the social organization of labor, a social-ism.As I've said, you can't even explain what Marx means by these terms if he did use them seriously. So it seems that you don't understand them, much less anyone else. If you can't explain something, then that only means you don't understand. If anything, when I challenge dialectics I'm challenging Marxists to abandon mystical nonsense, which is what you are subscribing to when you claim that social organizations "contain" a dialectic. You cannot explain what you (or Marx, even) mean by this or why this is the case.


And the fact that you are stuck in that regression is why you, Rosa, Tribune, or any "anti-dialectician" won't answer those two simple questions, so that we could all move on.What questions are these? And need I remind you that I've never read anything Rosa has written.

[Tribune]

Just reread your post and the above stuck with me because.... because Rosa shows no such thing. She doesn't explore a single thing about Marx's development of historical materialism; she doesn't examine a single work of Marx's beyond the afterword to the 2nd edition of volume 1. She makes no comment on the bulk of Marx's work, since clearly a large portion of that is of the "unpublished" variety; she makes no comment on the analysis of the value forms of the commodity, and the origins of those forms in the organization of labor.

Perhaps that does mirror your own experience, ascribing accomplishments where and when not even a preliminary action has been undertaken... but your philosophical agreement with Rosa doesn't amount to evidence that she has done what you say she has done.

Rosa repeatedly refuses to discuss the components of the historical materialism she proclaims to accept, support, and practice and often responds that there is simply no need to discuss those components, or that materialism, as "Marx already did that for us."

This is what I mean by the fact that you haven't really proposed any challenges to the "Marxism as dialectic" interpretation. You assume that your, IMO, near slanderous gasbag words you ascribe to a pretend Marxist amounts to a challenge; you assume that your pretend, "let's take this down to the pretend loading dock and see who salutes" pissing contest amounts to a challenge. Those aren't challenges, those are evasions.

Here's the challenge: Does Marx define capital on the basis of a historically specific organization of social labor? If so, does that organization of labor simultaneously propel expanding capitalist accumulation, and propel the limitation, the impairment, the contraction of capitalist accumulation.

Care to answer?

Huh?

Rosa clearly demonstrates that dialectical philosophy is not necessary to a materialist view of the world.

[Rosa Lichtenstein]

S Artesian:


and so on and on and on...

Two bites at the same cherry?


You know what I'm curious about? besides everything in life... I'm curious about how your friend Tribune is going to handle the response of his pretend mates at his pretend loading dock, or the response of his pretend Palestinians when he takes your "short course" down to the pretend loading dock where his pretend mates pretend to work. You think they might use some harsh, crude language when that gets run by them?

Then why ask me?


I mean really, what use is all of that gobbledygook to the hard-working salt-of-the-earth types, or the hungry Palestinians, who are so callously ignored by pretend Tribune's pretend dialecticians? And then to get this short course in symbols and logic... it seems like all there is is the choice of cancer or polio.

And what has this got to do with what I posted?

[Rosa Lichtenstein]

Lenina Rosenweg:


I've been a socialist for years but I'm a relative newbie in terms of studying Marxist theory. It seems to me though that dialectical thinking, if not "dialectical materialism", is integral to Marxism. As S. Artesian pointed out,Marx's theory of value and its permutations-exchange value, use value, etc. is highly dialectical. Without dialectics, as Andrew Kliman and David Harvey pointed out, Marxism collapses as a science giving an ability to understand and change the world. Academic Marxists went though coniptions over this in the 70s.

Well, this is the traditional view, but as I and others have shown in this thread, it gains no support at all from what Marx actually published. In fact, quite the opposite.


What would be the substitute for dialectics? Marxism becomes empiricism.

As we have been at pains to point out, the alternative is to accept what Marx actually said, which amounts to accepting Historical Materialism (with the Hegelian gobbledygook excised). No empiricism anywhere in sight...


Cyril Smith makes the case that "diamat" was made into a metaphysical fetish by the Soviets and there's a link on the Marx Myths website somewhere asserting that Marx was a naturalist. All this may be valid , I don't know,but it doesn't negate dialectical thinking.

There is no such thing as 'dialectical thinking'. There is dialectical jargon, for sure, but that is all.

[S.Artesian]

Huh?

Rosa clearly demonstrates that dialectical philosophy is not necessary to a materialist view of the world.

See... you really don't get it. Rosa doesn't show that Marx's materialist analysis of history, of the actual origin of capital, of capitalist accumulation, of class struggle can exist separate and apart from Marx's dialectic-- which is not dialectical philosophy.

Perhaps you weren't paying attention back at the beginning of this thread when I stated that dialectical materialism was presented, not as a religion, but as an ideology, designed to enshrine a certain authority by expanding Marx's materialist dialectic of social history to such an extent that its critical impact was blunted if not completely destroyed.

Dialectical materialism is indeed just such an ideology, not a religion. Marxism has nothing to do with a so-called philosophy of dialectics, except that Marx certainly studied philosophy, and Hegel's "first, full" exposition of dialectic. Hegel's dialectic is the first comprehensive exposition in that it attempts to unite method and subject in a historical context. Hegel fails, or rather succeeds in providing an alienated representation of that method, subject and history, and that failure is The Philosophy of Right.

But Rosa has not shown anything about Marx's analysis of value, of the history of commodity production, about the transitions from manufacturing to industry; about expanded reproduction and the negation of expanded reproduction-- all topics of critical importance to Marx's critique of capital.

And this in turn is exactly why I think you and Rosa are idealists, classic idealists, in conflating "philosophy" with history, and confusing description with demonstration [with Rosa providing the max in confusion by repeatedly citing Marx citing the Russian reviewer's description as the description of Marx's dialectic-- which is to say it is a presentation, rather than demonstration of the dynamic of capitalist accumulation, and the impairment of accumulation.

It's this kind of stuff from the anti-dialecticians that makes me positive they've really never read Marx in whole, as a totality, a body of work.

[Rosa Lichtenstein]

S Artesian:


You know what else I like? I like it when Rosa says Marx is clearly wrong in ascribing to Hegel the first full and comprehensive exposition of dialectics, because as Rosa puts it, Aristotle had done so well before Hegel.

What Marx actually said was this:


The mystification which dialectic suffers in Hegel’s hands, by no means prevents him from being the first to present its general form of working in a comprehensive and conscious manner.

And Marx is right here, not wrong, since this does not prevent Hegel being the first, as I have told you before, but you just ignore what you do not like to see, and then you perseverate over the same tedious points. Here it is again:


Indeed, this does not prevent him from being the first, since Hegel did not do it all.

What prevents Hegel being the first to do this is, as I said, the fact that he did not do it at all. But, what he did do was mystify a process that Aristotle had first discovered, and which was put in a more scientific form by Smith, Ferguson, Millar, Robertson, Hume, Stewart and Kant, and, of course, Marx himself.

You need to address what I actually say, not what you would like me to have said.

Since you have been here at RevLeft you have often adopted the irritating tactic of summarising me (and getting that wrong) rather than quoting me. If I were to do that to you, you'd rightly be annoyed.

You:


But.... as Rosa has previously acknowledged, Aristotle's dialectic is not at all like Hegel's. Not a bit. So... is Marx wrong? Or... or are the very elements of dialectic which Rosa rejects, the very elements of Hegel's exposition that Rosa regards as gobbledygook, the components, the elements of that comprehensive exposition that Marx acknowledges?

And you have failed to show they aren't gobbledygook.


Well, I think clearly the answer is precisely that-- that Marx regards the exposition Hegel made, its alienated attempt to link method and historical subject, just that critical element, that rational kernel that he, Marx, extracts, and from the mystical shell.

Well, as I have pointed out to you now over twenty times, this flies in the face of what Marx actually said in his most important published book. And I added the following earlier this evening (which you have once again chosen to ignore):


We have been over this dozens of times; here it is again (may I suggest that you respond to what I have to say, or drop the issue?):

1) Unpublished remarks cannot out-weigh or countermand published sources. We have a summary of the 'dialectic method', which Marx saw fit to publish, and endorse as 'his method', which contains not one shred of Hegel.

2) In stark contrast, you can't refer to or quote a single published source, contemporaneous with or subsequent to Das Kapital, that supports the traditional view you hold.

You:


And what is that mystical shell? Is it negation, contradiction, antagonism, identity/opposition? If we read Marx's Critique of Hegel's Philosophy of Right -- the text Marx is referring to when he says he criticized the idealistic, mystical side of Hegel some "30 years ago"-- meaning 1843, we can see what Marx meant by the mystical shell-- and that is the shell of pure ahistorical "reason," that, in defining the real as rational, but not as historical, that is not as the product of humanity's social being, Hegel winds up as the object lesson of his own critique of liberalism where Hegel identified liberalism as a philosophy of the abstract that capitulates before the world of the concrete.

But what has this got to do with what Marx published in Das Kapital (where he began to 'coquette' with this obscure jargon)?

Once more, you prefer to speculate in the face of Marx's clear indication that he had waved all this gobbledygook behind?

How do we know this?

Well, he published a summary of 'his method' (not Rosa's method), 'the dialectic method', in which there is no trace of Hegel at all. So, the 'rational core' contains no 'contradictions', no 'unity of opposites', no 'quantity passing over into quality', no 'negation of the negation'.

Of course, as I have also said many times before, if you can show otherwise from a published source contemporaneous with or subsequent to Das Kapital, I will recant and repent in sackcloth and ashes.


Oh wait -- you can't.

Still, you prefer make-believe to hard/verifiable facts.


Hegel, in his ideal-ism, capitulates before the concrete reality of the bureaucratic, petty, and large, bourgeois state, as the embodiment of his abstract reason, because what is real is rational.

It is after this critique of Hegel that Marx begins the critique of political economy. So once again Rosa gets it wrong, and exactly wrong.

As seems clear, you failed to quote me in support of single thing you have alleged. And no wonder: this is a fantasy all of your own making.

But, we already know you prefer make-believe to fact. So this was only to be expected...

[Tribune]

(snip)

What questions are these? And need I remind you that I've never read anything Rosa has written.

FWIW, I was introduced to Rosa's work by RevLeft. I'd come here looking for locals with whom to cooperate, and happened across one of the dialectics threads. I'd already come to the conclusion that dialectical illogic was unnecessary, but it was useful to read her work, since it is very well researched, well written and humorous to boot.

I'm not surprised by the venomous reaction, either. People whose view of the world obligates them to use a very specific filter for all data tend to grow attached to that filter and become reactionary not only when others challenge it, but also just when they don't accept it.

I don't need to see the world as neatly divided as a conflict between a historical force which contains and generates its own opposition, and that opposition, to see how accumulation and concentration of wealth tends to develop those states and societies where coercion and the law protect a specific definition of property, one which arose during a clear historical epoch, and which has come to dominate the greater portion of the inhabitable surface of the planet.

I don't need to agree with Wood, for example, on dialectics - to find her treatment of the Origins of Capitalism in British enclosure very useful.

Unfortunately, there are some folks who cannot help but be nasty to people who don't agree with or use their own filters.

[S.Artesian]

Well, you can't explain why these things are contradictions, or opposites, or what have you. You keep saying they are, but you have yet to show why this is the case. Whenever anyone does ask you why, you either post more texts that allege to show why, post insults toward the person, or just ignore them.

I don't understand, you'd rather people sink to your own childish level when disagreeing? Why wouldn't I deny something that you, or anyone else, can't explain? If someone is trying to show how a god or gods move the earth around, and they can't do it, why wouldn't I deny that a god or gods are responsible?

Well, if you want to continue to argue like an eight year old (much less an eight year old who writes long-winded sentences that border on sophistry), no one can stop you.

As I've said, you can't even explain what Marx means by these terms if he did use them seriously. So it seems that you don't understand them, much less anyone else. If you can't explain something, then that only means you don't understand. If anything, when I challenge dialectics I'm challenging Marxists to abandon mystical nonsense, which is what you are subscribing to when you claim that social organizations "contain" a dialectic. You cannot explain what you (or Marx, even) mean by this or why this is the case.

What questions are these? And need I remind you that I've never read anything Rosa has written.

Yes, you've said that. And it's been refuted. What Marx said, what terms he used, and why he used them has been explained. Examples have been given. The reasons he used contradiction, conflict, inversion, determination, opposites has been explained numerous times. You don't like the answers? OK, you don't like the answers. I don't think you or Tribune have raised a single meaningful challenge to the conclusion that Marx thinks that he, Marx, is indeed extracting the rational kernel of the dialectic, that the parts of the dialectic of Hegel he thinks are rational are exactly the parts Rosa thinks are the mystical parts, and that in fact Marx locates in capital the method and subject of material dialectic, which is the analysis of the social organization of labor-- and it is that dialectic of labor and property that forms, informs, and determines the content of historical materialism.

Or perhaps you'd like to shift this discussion to historical materialism. I, for one, am more than willing to make that shift. Perhaps you would like to argue that Marx's Class Struggle in France 1848-1850 and/or The 18th Brumaire are flawed by Marx's obvious passion for dialectic in these historical studies.

Hey, you don't like my long sentences? That's good information. You can count on them getting longer and longer.......

The two questions were addressed to Rosa, and Tribune. Feel free to look back in the posts.

You've never read anything that Rosa has written. Now that's demonstrably false.

[Tribune]

See... you really don't get it. Rosa doesn't show that Marx's materialist analysis of history, of the actual origin of capital, of capitalist accumulation, of class struggle can exist separate and apart from Marx's dialectic-- which is not dialectical philosophy.

Perhaps you weren't paying attention back at the beginning of this thread when I stated that dialectical materialism was presented, not as a religion, but as an ideology, designed to enshrine a certain authority by expanding Marx's materialist dialectic of social history to such an extent that its critical impact was blunted if not completely destroyed.

Dialectical materialism is indeed just such an ideology, not a religion. Marxism has nothing to do with a so-called philosophy of dialectics, except that Marx certainly studied philosophy, and Hegel's "first, full" exposition of dialectic. Hegel's dialectic is the first comprehensive exposition in that it attempts to unite method and subject in a historical context. Hegel fails, or rather succeeds in providing an alienated representation of that method, subject and history, and that failure is The Philosophy of Right.

But Rosa has not shown anything about Marx's analysis of value, of the history of commodity production, about the transitions from manufacturing to industry; about expanded reproduction and the negation of expanded reproduction-- all topics of critical importance to Marx's critique of capital.

And this in turn is exactly why I think you and Rosa are idealists, classic idealists, in conflating "philosophy" with history, and confusing description with demonstration [with Rosa providing the max in confusion by repeatedly citing Marx citing the Russian reviewer's description as the description of Marx's dialectic-- which is to say it is a presentation, rather than demonstration of the dynamic of capitalist accumulation, and the impairment of accumulation.

It's this kind of stuff from the anti-dialecticians that makes me positive they've really never read Marx in whole, as a totality, a body of work.

I don't know why you continue to joust with arguments I have not made...Oh, wait - I do actually know. Because then you can avoid arguing with the points I've actually made.

What I wrote is that Rosa has shown, to my satisfaction, that the dialectic is not necessary to a materialist view of history.

That's it.

You keep responding as if I'm arguing about how Marx handles Hegel. Convenient for you, I guess.

[Rosa Lichtenstein]

S Artesian:


Rosa doesn't show that Marx's materialist analysis of history, of the actual origin of capital, of capitalist accumulation, of class struggle can exist separate and apart from Marx's dialectic-- which is not dialectical philosophy.

Once again, you have been told the following many times: I do not need to show this, since Marx himself saved me the job -- where? In Das Kapital, of course! There, as he indicated, 'his method', 'the dialectic method' contains not one microgram of Hegel. No 'contradictions', not 'unity of opposite', no 'negation of the negation', no 'quantity passing over into quality'...


But Rosa has not shown anything about Marx's analysis of value, of the history of commodity production, about the transitions from manufacturing to industry; about expanded reproduction and the negation of expanded reproduction-- all topics of critical importance to Marx's critique of capital.

I do not need to, since Marx and later Marxists have already done it for us.

Or didn't you know...?


And this in turn is exactly why I think you and Rosa are idealists, classic idealists, in conflating "philosophy" with history, and confusing description with demonstration [with Rosa providing the max in confusion by repeatedly citing Marx citing the Russian reviewer's description as the description of Marx's dialectic-- which is to say it is a presentation, rather than demonstration of the dynamic of capitalist accumulation, and the impairment of accumulation.

In fact, I go out of my way to emphasise that philosophy is a load of hot air, so how can I possibly conflate '"philosophy" with history'?

But, and once more, you prefer allegation to proof or evidence. Where do I 'conflate' these, and where do I confuse "description with demonstration"?

Ah, but you then refer us to the following as 'proof':


with Rosa providing the max in confusion by repeatedly citing Marx citing the Russian reviewer's description as the description of Marx's dialectic-- which is to say it is a presentation, rather than demonstration of the dynamic of capitalist accumulation, and the impairment of accumulation

But, Marx (not I) published it, and it is the only published summary of 'his method', 'the dialectic method', that Marx endorsed.

If you can find a better and more comprehensive presentation of it (or any at all!), in a published source contemporaneous with or subsequent to Das Kapital, as I have said several times, I will recant.

But you have repeated failed to do so -- since you can't.

But, even if I am wrong, how does this show I am an idealist? That is, as opposed to just being wrong.

[S.Artesian]

S Artesian:



Once again, you have been told the following many times: I do not need to show this, since Marx himself saved me the job -- where? In Das Kapital, of course! There, as he indicated, 'his method', 'the dialectic method' contains not one microgram of Hegel. No 'contradictions', not 'unity of opposite', no 'negation of the negation', no 'quantity passing over into quality'...



I do not need to, since Marx and later Marxists have already done it for us.

Or didn't you know...?



In fact, I go out of my way to emphasise that philosophy is a load of hot air, so how can i possibly conflate '"philosophy" with history'?

But, and once more, you prefer allegation to proof or evidence. Where do I 'conflate' these, and where do I confuse "description with demonstration"?

Ah, but you then refer us to the following as 'proof':



But, Marx (not I) published it, and it is the only published summary of 'his method', 'the dialectic method', that Marx endorsed.

If you can find a better and more comprehensive presentation of it (or any at all!), in a published source contemporaneous with or subsequent to Das Kapital, as I have said several times, I will recant.

But you have repeated failed to do so -- since you can't.

But, even if I am wrong, how does this show I am an idealist? That is, as opposed to just being wrong.

Rosa confirms the validity of the evaluation in her defense against the evaluation. "I don't need to do that... Marx already did that..." Hard to see how someone who has no need to make the slightest bit of inquiry into, examination of, or utilization of historical materialism can be considered as having proved that such historical materialism stands in opposition to dialectic.

Regarding Marx and his evaluation of Hegel.... jesus Rosa is that all you know of Marx, the afterword to the 2nd edition-- and even that only in parts as you certainly ignore the conclusion of that afterward?

I am referring to Marx's letter to Kugelmann when he calls Hegel's dialectic the basic form of all dialect "but only after it has been stripped of its mystical form, and it is precisely this which distinguishes my method."

I believe you stated Marx was wrong in that characterization of Hegel's dialectic as the basic form of all dialectic in that the dialectic had been utilized by Aristotle.

Oh... somebody tell Chris Koch that "2 or 3 printer's sheets" [Marx's reference to writing down the "rational kernel" of Hegel's dialectics] are more than "2 or 3 pages" in our current usage. I'm not certain but I think a printer's sheet in mid-late 19th century England was equivalent to 16 printed pages.

[S.Artesian]

As I've stated earlier, I'm hardly jousting with arguments you haven't made. I don't believe you've actually made any arguments.

Meanwhile, anyone care to answer those two questions. Should be a snap for all those who know so much about the materialist conception of history.

[S.Artesian]

FWIW, I was introduced to Rosa's work by RevLeft. I'd come here looking for locals with whom to cooperate, and happened across one of the dialectics threads. I'd already come to the conclusion that dialectical illogic was unnecessary, but it was useful to read her work, since it is very well researched, well written and humorous to boot.

I'm not surprised by the venomous reaction, either. People whose view of the world obligates them to use a very specific filter for all data tend to grow attached to that filter and become reactionary not only when others challenge it, but also just when they don't accept it.

I don't need to see the world as neatly divided as a conflict between a historical force which contains and generates its own opposition, and that opposition, to see how accumulation and concentration of wealth tends to develop those states and societies where coercion and the law protect a specific definition of property, one which arose during a clear historical epoch, and which has come to dominate the greater portion of the inhabitable surface of the planet.

I don't need to agree with Wood, for example, on dialectics - to find her treatment of the Origins of Capitalism in British enclosure very useful.

Unfortunately, there are some folks who cannot help but be nasty to people who don't agree with or use their own filters.


And there are some people who start off their discussions by near slanderous pretend dialogues that dishonestly characterize the political and social actions of some as downright inhumane, anti-human, and do so without knowing a thing about those other parties actual political and social actions.

In case you can't figure it out, I'm talking about you and your slanderous pretend dialogue with pretend Palestinians-- that's how you initiated the discussion after your ridiculous pretend mates at the pretend loading dock.

[Tribune]

And there are some people who start off their discussions by near slanderous pretend dialogues that dishonestly characterize the political and social actions of some as downright inhumane, anti-human, and do so without knowing a thing about those other parties actual political and social actions.

In case you can't figure it out, I'm talking about you and your slanderous pretend dialogue with pretend Palestinians-- that's how you initiated the discussion after your ridiculous pretend mates at the pretend loading dock.

It takes a real victim mentality to treat an illustrative dialogue (which was never presented as an exact replica of an actual conversation, despite your protestations) as "slanderous." Explains much. Explains why you cannot merely disagree, but have to turn would-be comrades into enemies upon whom you have to heap venomous invective.

I went for a run and thought about this for a while, trying to understand why you are so defensive.

I think it's because you treat with your dialectic as a necessary doctrine, a belief filter not dissimilar from those which Christians use to explain events as if God is moving history.

With that in mind, I liken your approach to disagreement to that of a person who needs everyone else to believe his Ideology of Walking, to agree with how it applies to all theoretical examples of foot locomotion, under all circumstances, and who refuses to take a step before he can have these conditions met, always neglecting to note that no Ideology of Walking is necessary, in learning how to walk, or once learning, going from any one place to any other.

[S.Artesian]

I think you should keep running. Your pop psychology is worse than your Marxism, and that's going some.

Any one or more of the anti-dialecticians care to answer the two questions so that we can move on?

[ChrisK]

I am referring to Marx's letter to Kugelmann when he calls Hegel's dialectic the basic form of all dialect "but only after it has been stripped of its mystical form, and it is precisely this which distinguishes my method."

I believe you stated Marx was wrong in that characterization of Hegel's dialectic as the basic form of all dialectic in that the dialectic had been utilized by Aristotle.

Oh... somebody tell Chris Koch that "2 or 3 printer's sheets" [Marx's reference to writing down the "rational kernel" of Hegel's dialectics] are more than "2 or 3 pages" in our current usage. I'm not certain but I think a printer's sheet in mid-late 19th century England was equivalent to 16 printed pages.

Why not tell me yourself? Or are you unable to answer anything else I said in that post? Such as the rational part of the dialectic having been around for centuries, do you have no answer?

Also, in that letter, Marx never says what the basic form of the dialectic is. All we have to go off of is Marx's only published endorsment of his dialectical method. So far as we are concerned, the basic form of the dialectic has no Hegel in it.

[JazzRemington]

Yes, you've said that. And it's been refuted. What Marx said, what terms he used, and why he used them has been explained. Examples have been given. The reasons he used contradiction, conflict, inversion, determination, opposites has been explained numerous times. You don't like the answers? OK, you don't like the answers. I don't think you or Tribune have raised a single meaningful challenge to the conclusion that Marx thinks that he, Marx, is indeed extracting the rational kernel of the dialectic, that the parts of the dialectic of Hegel he thinks are rational are exactly the parts Rosa thinks are the mystical parts, and that in fact Marx locates in capital the method and subject of material dialectic, which is the analysis of the social organization of labor-- and it is that dialectic of labor and property that forms, informs, and determines the content of historical materialism.

So, anyone else see what I mean by "long-winded posts that border on sophistry"? Like I said, you haven't been able to explain what these terms mean or why social conditions "contain contraditions." The only thing you've done is basically say something to the effect of "we're using the terms differently" but you haven't been able to explain what these terms mean without producing more nonsense, falling back on insults, or using logical fallacies.


Or perhaps you'd like to shift this discussion to historical materialism. I, for one, am more than willing to make that shift. Perhaps you would like to argue that Marx's Class Struggle in France 1848-1850 and/or The 18th Brumaire are flawed by Marx's obvious passion for dialectic in these historical studies.

Where did I say anything that Marx wrote was flawed? Why do dialecticians always equate rejecting dialectics with thinking Marx was flawed or the idea that class struggle doesn't exist? Even if one is using flawed reasoning, one is still likely to get something correct.


Hey, you don't like my long sentences? That's good information. You can count on them getting longer and longer.......

Writing overly long sentences is actually a bad thing. At least according to most scholars, anyway.


You've never read anything that Rosa has written. Now that's demonstrably false.

There's no possible way I can prove that I haven't read anything that Rosa's written, so I'm not going to waste time with gainsaying.

[S.Artesian]

You keep saying that, that the terms can't be explained, etc. etc. and the terms have been explained.

Contradiction, opposition, negation, etc. were explained. The terms were explained by Hegel, and in Marx's material criticism of Hegel, his 1843 Critique of Hegel's Philosophy of Right, Marx certainly doesn't reject those facets of Hegel's dialectic.

Nor does he in any of his subsequent works. What we is offered as "proof" of Marx's elimination of Hegel is in reality a deliberate distortion of Marx's estimation of the words of a Russian reviewer of Capital in which the reviewer finds Marx's "method of inquiry severely realistic, but my method of presentation, unfortunately, German-dialectical."

Marx quotes the the reviewer writing: "The one thing which is of moment to Marx is to find the law of the phenomena with whose investigation he is concerned.....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 connections into different one.... 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 inquiry, the one thing of the moment is..... that they actually form each with respect to the other, different momenta of an evolution....."

The reviewer goes on to present a rather serviceable treatment of the meta-theory of historical "evolution" of systems of production.

And Marx rightly says the reviewer thinks he [the reviewer] is actually describing my [Marx's] method, when in fact he is picturing the dialectic method-- that German dialectic method that the reviewer criticized Marx for exhibiting.

This isn't Marx extirpating Hegel, declaring his independence from Hegel. He had no need to do that. He had done that well before the publication of this volume. This is Marx stating that it is not "his" method that the reviewer is praising, but the already established methodology of "German-dialectics," a method Marx makes great efforts to say receives its basic, its first full, comprehensive exposition from Hegel.

Does anybody actually read here, or do you all just accept Rosa's word for it?


I don't assume anything about what you do or don't think about Marx's work. I asked if you wanted to move the discussion to historical materialism.

Get back to me when you've decided whether or not you can answer those questions.

[ChrisK]

Who are you addressing? Seriously start writing their user name or actually quote them and address what they say.


You keep saying that, that the terms can't be explained, etc. etc. and the terms have been explained.

Contradiction, opposition, negation, etc. were explained. The terms were explained by Hegel, and in Marx's material criticism of Hegel, his 1843 Critique of Hegel's Philosophy of Right, Marx certainly doesn't reject those facets of Hegel's dialectic.

Are you implying that Marx can't change his mind or beliefs over the course of 25 fucking years?


Nor does he in any of his subsequent works. What we is offered as "proof" of Marx's elimination of Hegel is in reality a deliberate distortion of Marx's estimation of the words of a Russian reviewer of Capital in which the reviewer finds Marx's "method of inquiry severely realistic, but my method of presentation, unfortunately, German-dialectical."

Marx quotes the the reviewer writing: "The one thing which is of moment to Marx is to find the law of the phenomena with whose investigation he is concerned.....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 connections into different one.... 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 inquiry, the one thing of the moment is..... that they actually form each with respect to the other, different momenta of an evolution....."

The reviewer goes on to present a rather serviceable treatment of the meta-theory of historical "evolution" of systems of production.

And Marx rightly says the reviewer thinks he [the reviewer] is actually describing my [Marx's] method, when in fact he is picturing the dialectic method-- that German dialectic method that the reviewer criticized Marx for exhibiting.

Marx does not call it the German-dialectical method, he calls it his dialectical method.


This isn't Marx extirpating Hegel, declaring his independence from Hegel. He had no need to do that. He had done that well before the publication of this volume. This is Marx stating that it is not "his" method that the reviewer is praising, but the already established methodology of "German-dialectics," a method Marx makes great efforts to say receives its basic, its first full, comprehensive exposition from Hegel.

Does anybody actually read here, or do you all just accept Rosa's word for it?

Perhaps then, you could show us in the passage where you actually find dialectical materialism? Where are the three laws? Also, why would I take Rosa's word on the issue? I've read the afterword for myself and its clear what Marx is saying.

[S.Artesian]

Who are you addressing? Seriously start writing their user name or actually quote them and address what they say.


Seriously, pay attention to the posts and you'll know who's being addressed. You certainly are a regular little Miss Manners on these burning issues.


Are you implying that Marx can't change his mind or beliefs over the course of 25 fucking years?

Of course he could. Did he? Where's the evidence. You, and Rosa, have repeatedly cited this passage as the great proof that Marx had completely separated himself from Hegel. What other evidence do you have that Marx changed his mind? Certainly the rest of the afterward confirms Marx's fidelity to the view that he extracted the rational kernel from Hegel's dialectic, and that stripping it of its mysticism meant, not jettisoning contradiction, conflict, opposition, determination, etc. but that human existence, of history, is a product and projection of, reason rather than the materialism of the social labor process.



Marx does not call it the German-dialectical method, he calls it his dialectical method.

No. That's NOT what he says. That's what you want everyone to believe he says, perhaps because that's what Rosa says he says.

"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."

Capital Vol 1, Author's Prefaces, Charles H. Kerr edition, 1906 p.24.

Should I repeat that for you-- break it down for you? "What the writer takes to be actually my method... is but the dialectic method." Meaning that the writer is mistaken in taking it to be solely, uniquely Marx's method. It, the method, is exactly that German-dialectical method of which the reviewer is critical, and for which he criticizes Marx.



Perhaps then, you could show us in the passage where you actually find dialectical materialism? Where are the three laws? Also, why would I take Rosa's word on the issue? I've read the afterword for myself and its clear what Marx is saying.

I guess you weren't paying attention at the beginning of this thread, or the others. I am not an adherent of "dialectical materialism," that being an ideology enshrined by the fSU to secure its dominant position in the market for Marxist ideologies. I regard dialectical materialism as the "philosophical equivalent" of socialism in one country.

Let me know if you want to take a stab at answering the questions.

[ChrisK]

Seriously, pay attention to the posts and you'll know who's being addressed. You certainly are a regular little Miss Manners on these burning issues.

Its much simpler to quote them. That also helps to keep you from making shit up about peoples views.


Of course he could. Did he? Where's the evidence. You, and Rosa, have repeatedly cited this passage as the great proof that Marx had completely separated himself from Hegel. What other evidence do you have that Marx changed his mind? Certainly the rest of the afterward confirms Marx's fidelity to the view that he extracted the rational kernel from Hegel's dialectic, and that stripping it of its mysticism meant, not jettisoning contradiction, conflict, opposition, determination, etc. but that project of human existence, of history, as a projection of, and project of reason, rather than the materialism of the social labor process.

Or perhaps we ought to see Marx's other endorsement in the afterword. In response to being reproached for his method being metaphyiscal:



In answer to the reproach in re metaphysics, Professor Sieber has it:
“In so far as it deals with actual theory, the method of Marx is the deductive method of the whole English school, a school whose failings and virtues are common to the best theoretic economists.”


Marx endorses the claim that his method is the same as the whole English school. Are we now to say that Adam Smith was using Hegelian "demystified" dialectics in the 18th century? This is further proof of a strong break.

As for those terms, Marx is teasing with them, as he has TOLD YOU. If you have a problem with that I expect you to go to his grave and take it up with him yourself.


No. That's NOT what he says. That's what you want everyone to believe he says, perhaps because that's what Rosa says he says.

"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."

Capital Vol 1, Author's Prefaces, Charles H. Kerr edition, 1906 p.24.

Should I repeat that for you-- break it down for you? "What the writer takes to be actually my method... is but the dialectic method." Meaning that the writer is mistaken in taking it to be solely, uniquely Marx's method. It, the method, is exactly that German-dialectical method of which the reviewer is critical, and for which he criticizes Marx.

There is more than one dialectical method. There is that of Aristotle, the Scottish Materialists, Kant, Hegel, Fichte, Indian mysitics, etc. Marx is obviously talking about the method he is using. Unless he is claiming that the reviewer is seeing someone else's method, but that would make no sense. Thus, he is writing about his own method.

[JazzRemington]

You keep saying that, that the terms can't be explained, etc. etc. and the terms have been explained.

Contradiction, opposition, negation, etc. were explained. The terms were explained by Hegel, and in Marx's material criticism of Hegel, his 1843 Critique of Hegel's Philosophy of Right, Marx certainly doesn't reject those facets of Hegel's dialectic.

You've explained them...with more nonsense, insults, and logical fallacies.


I asked if you wanted to move the discussion to historical materialism.

Get back to me when you've decided whether or not you can answer those questions.

Again, what questions are you referring to, aside from a seemingly rhetorical one about wanting to talk about historical materialism? From flipping through the other posts, all I see is more loaded questions about relationships between forms of labor and modes of production, and several questions that you've dodged from others.

[S.Artesian]

Its much simpler to quote them. That also helps to keep you from making shit up about peoples views.



Or perhaps we ought to see Marx's other endorsement in the afterword. In response to being reproached for his method being metaphyiscal:



Marx endorses the claim that his method is the same as the whole English school. Are we now to say that Adam Smith was using Hegelian "demystified" dialectics in the 18th century? This is further proof of a strong break.

As for those terms, Marx is teasing with them, as he has TOLD YOU. If you have a problem with that I expect you to go to his grave and take it up with him yourself.



There is more than one dialectical method. There is that of Aristotle, the Scottish Materialists, Kant, Hegel, Fichte, Indian mysitics, etc. Marx is obviously talking about the method he is using. Unless he is claiming that the reviewer is seeing someone else's method, but that would make no sense. Thus, he is writing about his own method.

See... this where it becomes a waste of time, and where your "disagreement" is in fact deliberate distortion, denial, and disavowal.

You claimed Marx said one thing.

In fact, as has been shown Marx said no such thing. And what he did say contradicts what you wished he said.

Do you acknowledge that? Of course not. Instead you retreat into "many dialectic," the English school... blahblahblahblah.

So let me repeat, you have distorted what Marx said in the afterword. You, and Rosa, have hung you hats on that hook in the afterword where you claim Marx cites approvingly the reviewer's words as describing his, Marx's, dialectic, and as that description being embraced as a counter to the mysticism of Hegel, or to, as the reviewer calls "German-dialectical presentation."

Marx said no such thing. Marx is quoting the reviewer's own words in reference to reviewer's earlier cited criticism of Marx's "German-dialectical" presentation, that's why he makes the distinction in the concluding sentence in the paragraph between what the reviewer takes to be "actually my method," which is in actuality "the dialectic method"-- that the reviewer is criticized what he is actually praising, which is Marx's connection with the "German-dialectical" method.

You're the one, or the two if we include Rosa, making shit up. And believe me, one Rosa is enough.

[ChrisK]

See... this where it becomes a waste of time, and where your "disagreement" is in fact deliberate distortion, denial, and disavowal.

You claimed Marx said one thing.

In fact, as has been shown Marx said no such thing. And what he did say contradicts what you wished he said.

Do you acknowledge that? Of course not. Instead you retreat into "many dialectic," the English school... blahblahblahblah.

Right, just as you seem to be able to accept that Marx was using certain terminology in a light manner. Oh wait, you don't believe that Marx meant what he said. Makes sense coming from a person who likes to use words in some unexplained sense.

And how am I distorting what he said? You take his quotes i a vaccum, while I look at the passage as a whole. In a vaccum he's talking Hegelian dialectics "right side up". Looked at as a whole, he is talking about a more intelligent form of dialect. One that casts aside Hegelian garbage.

You are welcome to show where in the afterward Marx talks about what his method looks like in a Hegelian sense. Good luck.


So let me repeat, you have distorted what Marx said in the afterword. You, and Rosa, have hung you hats on that hook in the afterword where you claim Marx cites approvingly the reviewer's words as describing his, Marx's, dialectic, and as that description being embraced as a counter to the mysticism of Hegel, or to, as the reviewer calls "German-dialectical presentation."

Marx said no such thing. Marx is quoting the reviewer's own words in reference to reviewer's earlier cited criticism of Marx's "German-dialectical" presentation, that's why he makes the distinction in the concluding sentence in the paragraph between what the reviewer takes to be "actually my method," which is in actuality "the dialectic method"-- that the reviewer is criticized what he is actually praising, which is Marx's connection with the "German-dialectical" method.

And where in that review do you see Hegel's dialectic? Marx is responding to the claim that he uses the German-dialectic. A response indicates that he is not using that method. So why does he switch from "the German-dialectic" to "the dialectic"? Clearly because he is speaking of he dialectical method.

[Tribune]

S.A,

Why do you treat a theory developed by Dietzgen (sic?), Engels, Lenin, Stalin and Plekhanov as if it's something which can be attributed to Marx?

Why do you continue to treat a term which has nothing to do with historical materialism (directly attributable to Marx) as if it serves the basis of historical materialism, as if the materialist conception of history cannot be understood without the imposition of grammatical legerdemain into and upon the forces of history?

Why also do you insist on a grand and unifying historical ideology which Marx himself rejected, on the grounds of his own materialism?

Why do you treat with a history as a unifying whole, when Marx himself does not make such overt claims - referring always instead to a materialist conception of history?

Thank you, with regard,

Tribune

[S.Artesian]

S.A,

Why do you treat a theory developed by Dietzgen (sic?), Engels, Lenin, Stalin and Plekhanov as if it's something which can be attributed to Marx?

You need to pay attention here, comrade. I specifically do NOT agree with the theories of dialectical materialism as proposed by Dietzgen, Lenin, Stalin, Plekhanov [Engels, I separate out, but I do not agree with Dialectic of Nature].

I do not buy dialectical materialism, as a meta-theory of the universe.

That was not Marx's application, use, extraction, and transposition of dialectic. Marx's was recognizing the rational kernel in Hegel's dialectic of being the development of human history. Marx probes to find the actual conditions for the development of human history. Those are social conditions. The conditions of human history, the determinants are in the social organization of labor.

Regarding capitalism, that determinant is the alienation, opposition, conflict of labor from/to the conditions of labor. That's the dialectic. There. That's what Marx is able to show drives every aspect of expanded capitalist reproduction and also contains the negation of capitalist reproduction.


Why do you continue to treat a term which has nothing to do with historical materialism (directly attributable to Marx) as if it serves the basis of historical materialism, as if the materialist conception of history cannot be understood without the imposition of grammatical legerdemain into and upon the forces of history?

You pose the question in the old "when did you stop beating your wife" fashion. First, see above answer. I never use the term dialectical materialism. I hardly use the term dialectic other than when arguing with those who want to make a false anti-dialectician out of Marx. As I have repeatedly said, Marx's dialectic is not "description"-- it is both method and subject-- the examination of the forms of the social organization of labor. It is demonstration.

I don't recall Marx using the term historical materialism either, but that's no big deal. I don't use the term either when doing materialist analysis-- it's there, for better or worse, in the content of the analysis, not in my use of terms.


Why also do you insist on a grand and unifying historical ideology which Marx himself rejected, on the grounds of his own materialism?

I do not insist on a grand and unifying ideology. I regard ideologies as an obstruction to materialist analysis; to the analysis of the social organization of labor; to the class struggle. My only adherence to dialectic is to Marx's dialectic as it has been shown to be, by Marx himself, the only mechanism, uniting method and subject, for understand what capitalism does, why it does it, and what capitalism, and its personification, as capitalists will do next. That is after all, why we study history.

Like for example, studying the MNR regime in Bolivia 1952-1964-- the contradictions of the regime-- might help us just a bit in not repeating some of those same mistakes with the MAS regime in Bolivia since 2005.


Why do you treat with a history as a unifying whole, when Marx himself does make such overt claims - referring always instead to a materialist conception of history?

Where have I said history is a unifying whole? I do think there is a real content, a real determinant to social history, real drivers of history and economics-- and those are based in the social organization of labor as mediated by the weight of the previously existing social organizations.

I think you meant to say "Marx himself does [NOT] make such overt claims." Marx is no slouch when it comes to making overt claims-- the old spectre is haunting Europe claim; the old all heretofore existing history is the history of class struggle claim."

In any case what counts are the specific concrete examinations of capitalism and its "immanent critique"-- the limitation capital's very expanded reproduction places upon expanded reproduction; the fact that capitalism's own augmentation of the productivity of labor to increase capital accumulation undermines, weakens, and negates [potentially] capitalist accumulation. That's the area of the dialectic in Marx.... and in the real world.

Your welcome. And with equal regard, for actually getting to some of the substance of the matter with your questions.

[S.Artesian]

And how am I distorting what he said? You take his quotes i a vaccum, while I look at the passage as a whole. In a vaccum he's talking Hegelian dialectics "right side up". Looked at as a whole, he is talking about a more intelligent form of dialect. One that casts aside Hegelian garbage.

You are welcome to show where in the afterward Marx talks about what his method looks like in a Hegelian sense. Good luck.



And where in that review do you see Hegel's dialectic? Marx is responding to the claim that he uses the German-dialectic. A response indicates that he is not using that method. So why does he switch from "the German-dialectic" to "the dialectic"? Clearly because he is speaking of he dialectical method.


You said Marx wrote one thing, and he did not write that one thing at all. That is generally the meaning of distortion. Or perhaps only dialecticians consider that distortion, and others are coquetting with the word distortion when they actually distort what was written.

You take what Marx was writing as a whole? That's lame, coming from somebody who advocates ignoring almost the whole of what Marx wrote other than an afterword to the 2nd edition of volume 1.

Marx specifically gives us the way he distinguishes his dialectic from Hegel's. He states it directly in the body of the afterword. He doesn't say, "I dispensed with the notions of determinations, grounding, inversion, becoming, contradiction, antagonism, opposition"-- all of that stuff seems to be quite all right with Karl as he constantly uses those terms, and more importantly demonstrates those mechanisms in his analysis of capital.

Marx states-- Hegel's dialectic is idealist; Marx's is materialist. Hegel's is based on a projection of the real world as a product of reason. Marx's is based on "reason" [which actually is transformed through merciless criticism from theoretical analysis to class struggle, a transformation Marx exhibits himself from the Critique of Hegel's Philosophy of Right through the EPM, to the German Ideology] as a projection of the social reproduction of the conditions of labor.

[ChrisK]

You said Marx wrote one thing, and he did not write that one thing at all. That is generally the meaning of distortion. Or perhaps only dialecticians consider that distortion, and others are coquetting with the word distortion when they actually distort what was written.

Well considering you lack of understanding about commas, I guess your reading comprehension might be substandard. If you look at the afterword as a whole, you will see that Marx is making clear references to using the dialectic of Smith and other English economists. He might view his as more advanced, but he all of his endorsments point away from Hegel. He talks about being accused of the German-dialectic and responds by endorsing a descripition that is clearly not the German-dialectic.


You take what Marx was writing as a whole? That's lame, coming from somebody who advocates ignoring almost the whole of what Marx wrote other than an afterword to the 2nd edition of volume 1.

Where do I advocate that? Reading comprehension issues coming out again?


Marx specifically gives us the way he distinguishes his dialectic from Hegel's. He states it directly in the body of the afterword. He doesn't say, "I dispensed with the notions of determinations, grounding, inversion, becoming, contradiction, antagonism, opposition"-- all of that stuff seems to be quite all right with Karl as he constantly uses those terms, and more importantly demonstrates those mechanisms in his analysis of capital.

Coquette. Look it up.

Also, show us how he actually demonstrates these things. Hell, give us a definition of these things.


Marx states-- Hegel's dialectic is idealist; Marx's is materialist. Hegel's is based on a projection of the real world as a product of reason. Marx's is based on "reason" [which actually is transformed through merciless criticism from theoretical analysis to class struggle, a transformation Marx exhibits himself from the Critique of Hegel's Philosophy of Right through the EPM, to the German Ideology] as a projection of the social reproduction of the conditions of labor.

None of which points discredits Marx's endorsment of a passage that is blatantly non-Hegelian in influence. You are describing difference that are present in that passage, but you seem to think that these differences imply that he supports Hegelian concepts.

[S.Artesian]

CK:

My lack of commas? My reading comprehension abilities. This is usually the point where I tell someone to take their snide shit-eating comments and go fuck themselves. But I won't do that this time. I'll save that for you next round of snide, ignorant, and deliberately dishonest statements.

Here's what Marx wrote in the afterword to the 2nd edition referring to Sieber:

"An excellent Russian translation of “Das Kapital” appeared in the spring of 1872. The edition of 3,000 copies is already nearly exhausted. As early as 1871, N. Sieber, Professor of Political Economy in the University of Kiev, in his work “David Ricardo’s Theory of Value and of Capital,” referred to my theory of value, of money and of capital, as in its fundamentals a necessary sequel to the teaching of Smith and Ricardo. That which astonishes the Western European in the reading of this excellent work, is the author’s consistent and firm grasp of the purely theoretical position.
That the method employed in “Das Kapital” has been little understood, is shown by the various conceptions, contradictory one to another, that have been formed of it.



Thus the Paris Revue Positiviste reproaches me in that, on the one hand, I treat economics metaphysically, and on the other hand — imagine! — confine myself to the mere critical analysis of actual facts, instead of writing receipts [4] (http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1867-c1/p3.htm#n4) (Comtist ones?) for the cook-shops of the future. In answer to the reproach in re metaphysics, Professor Sieber has it:


“In so far as it deals with actual theory, the method of Marx is the deductive method of the whole English school, a school whose failings and virtues are common to the best theoretic economists.”"


Now that's not the theory of dialectics that either Marx of Sieber is referring to; it his, Marx's, presentation of the source of surplus value-- of which Sieber already says Marx's is the successor to that of Ricardo and Smith. And as Marx also states, the presentation itself differs from the inquiry.


Marx is using Sieber against the French criticism of "meta-physics," and indeed there are no meta-physics in Marx's work. But what? Do you want to claim that Marx is a follower of Smith and Ricardo.. he is a member of that school [oh please say you do, please, please, please say that you think Marx is a follower of Smith and Ricardo].


Yeah read the whole thing, why don't you? Like the part where Marx is pointing to all these various comments and criticisms to point out how poorly understand is the method [and I would add the substance] of Capital. That's what Marx is pointing out in his response to all of the various commentaries.


And I might add, that you and Rosa continue in that wonderful tradition of not having a clue as to what Marx's method and content really are.


Keep on distorting things, and making things up. That way you won't actually have to come to grips with what Marx does and does not do in the volume itself.


There are two questions out there. I answered Tribune's last set of questions. So perhaps Tribune or yourself might want to answer those two of mine.


Is there a specific, historical organization of labor that determines capital? Does the organization of labor under capitalism both create expanded reproduction, accumulation, and impair and potentially negate capitalist accumulation?

[ChrisK]

CK:

My lack of commas? My reading comprehension abilities. This is usually the point where I tell someone to take their snide shit-eating comments and go fuck themselves. But I won't do that this time. I'll save that for you next round of snide, ignorant, and deliberately dishonest statements.

Congrats on saying that in effect.


Here's what Marx wrote in the afterword to the 2nd edition referring to Sieber:

"An excellent Russian translation of “Das Kapital” appeared in the spring of 1872. The edition of 3,000 copies is already nearly exhausted. As early as 1871, N. Sieber, Professor of Political Economy in the University of Kiev, in his work “David Ricardo’s Theory of Value and of Capital,” referred to my theory of value, of money and of capital, as in its fundamentals a necessary sequel to the teaching of Smith and Ricardo. That which astonishes the Western European in the reading of this excellent work, is the author’s consistent and firm grasp of the purely theoretical position.
That the method employed in “Das Kapital” has been little understood, is shown by the various conceptions, contradictory one to another, that have been formed of it.



Thus the Paris Revue Positiviste reproaches me in that, on the one hand, I treat economics metaphysically, and on the other hand — imagine! — confine myself to the mere critical analysis of actual facts, instead of writing receipts [4] (http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1867-c1/p3.htm#n4) (Comtist ones?) for the cook-shops of the future. In answer to the reproach in re metaphysics, Professor Sieber has it:


“In so far as it deals with actual theory, the method of Marx is the deductive method of the whole English school, a school whose failings and virtues are common to the best theoretic economists.”"


Now that's not the theory of dialectics that either Marx of Sieber is referring to; it his, Marx's, presentation of the source of surplus value-- of which Sieber already says Marx's is the successor to that of Ricardo and Smith.

Do you know what "the method of Marx" means? It happens to mean that this is the method that Marx was using. What is Marx's method? Clearly it is the dialectic as used by people like Adam Smith.


Marx is using Sieber against the French criticism of "meta-physics," and indeed there are no meta-physics in Marx's work. But what? Do you want to claim that Marx is a follower of Smith and Ricardo.. he is a member of that school [oh please say you do, please, please, please say that you think is a follower of Smith and Ricardo].

No, I'm going to endorse what Marx himself endorsed; that he used the method of Adam Smith.


Yeah read the whole thing, why don't you? Like the part where Marx is pointing to all these various comments and criticisms to point out how poorly understand is the method [and I would add the substance] of Capital. That's what Marx is pointing out in his response to all of the various commentaries.

Funny, you seem to have stopped reading at that point. You missed the part where Marx responded to these claims by endorsing a review of his thoughly non-Hegelian method and it being the same method of Adam Smith.


And I might add, that you and Rosa continue in that wonderful tradition of not having a clue as to what Marx's method and content really are.

Coming from a person who does not know what "Marx's method" means, I'm not to sure you have room to make this call.


Keep on distorting things, and making things up. That way you won't actually have to come to grips with what Marx does and does not do in the volume itself.

All I do is read what he says and endorse it. How is that distortion?

Also, you should stop trying to change the subject, we are talking about dialectics, not historical materialism.

[S.Artesian]

CK...

All you have done, and do, is to distort the plain meaning of what Marx wrote. In this you are a perfect representative of and for philosophers.

In any case, I'm not changing any subject. Others brought up historical materialism, counterposing it to the "mysticism" of those who think it, HM, too is based on Marx's extraction of a rational kernel from Hegel's dialectic.

Anyway, keep ignoring the critical questions, which are actually at the core of all of Marx's writings, published and unpublished, on the accumulation of capital. It's safer that way for you.

[BAM]

Do you know what "the method of Marx" means? It happens to mean that this is the method that Marx was using. What is Marx's method? Clearly it is the dialectic as used by people like Adam Smith.

No, I'm going to endorse what Marx himself endorsed; that he used the method of Adam Smith.

That's a pretty strange thing to say. First of all, if Marx and Smith used the same method, why did they reach such radically different conclusions? Also, remember that Hegel was himself influenced by Smith. Indeed, the "invisible hand" finds its counterpart in Hegel's Geist. Marx's critique of Hegel's dialectic starts from the position that "Hegel's standpoint is that of modern political economy ." So, if anybody is using Smith's method, it's Hegel and not Marx.

Though of course it remains true that all three are engaged in a similar enterprise of examining capitalist society ("burgerliche gesellschaft") from the perspective of its totality.


Funny, you seem to have stopped reading at that point. You missed the part where Marx responded to these claims by endorsing a review of his thoughly non-Hegelian method and it being the same method of Adam Smith.

Of course, Marx's method is non-Hegelian. You cannot separate Hegel's [I]method - his dialectic - from his system - the political philosophy. Marx knew that clearly as it is the basis of his critique of Hegel in the 1843 Critique and the 1844 Manuscripts. For Hegel all movement is contradictory and this is located within the logic of the object itself, whereas for Marx, the contradiction is at the level of the totality of capitalist society, in capital itself.

But that doesn't mean that it was not informed by a deep critical engagement with Hegel, in for instance, chapter II on the act of exchange, which parallels Hegel's section on Contract in the Philsophy of Right, or the third part of chapter one on the form of value, which parallels the Logic.

Note that Marx is not simply using Hegel as a foil, or just copying for the sake of it. If you think that you are missing Marx's sense of critique, which is not merely to show that x is wrong, but to reveal the inverted truth they contain. Thus with his critiques of British political economy and French socialism, so with Hegel's dialectic.

If Marx were simply "applying" Hegel's dialectic, he would come to the same conclusions as Hegel and indeed Adam Smith, for whom capitalist social relations were embedded in human nature (our natural propensity to "truck and barter"), but he was using his own ("critical and revolutionary") dialectical method that sees every epoch, and with this all the categories of capitalist society as historically contingent, and comes to radically opposite conclusions.

The Hegelian positive dialectic is one of synthesis and reconciliation, it is the most complete expression of capitalist social relations becuase it systematises all the categories, all the inhuman craziness into a whole. Marx's dialectical method is negative, it overturns all these categories by showing the human side underneath, by showing how Hegel and the political economists got it all totally wrong.

[S.Artesian]

More than strange, claiming Marx used the method of Adam Smith is ignorant. It betrays a real ignorance of Marx's own critique of Adam Smith, and Smith's "method" that Marx provides, [almost as a kind of running subtext] in Capital, in the manuscripts of the drafts of Capital, and in Theories of Surplus Value, the intended 4th volume of Capital.

Such ignorance is the currency of our "preface-ists," for whom all and everything that needs to be known is contained in a few paragraphs lifted and distorted from the preface/afterward to the 2nd edition.

[BAM]

At the end of Hegel's Logic, he invokes the Cunning of Reason as the force which united all the particular points of view under the Absolute. The source of the Cunning of Reason is nothing less than Smith's Invisible Hand. In fact, Marx employs a similar device: the law of value.

The similarities don't end there. The whole movement of Capital Vol I to Vol III is the movement from essence to appearance, which is why Marx closes Vol III with the discussion of the Trinity Formula and The Illusions Created by Competition - ie with surface appearance.

At the level of Volume I, where Marx is looking at capital-in-general, there's an easily discernible link to Hegel's universality of the Notion. Isn't it funny how Marx ends up at the end of Vol I by saying that, with the accumulation of capital, the presuppositions of capital presuppose capital itself - that is, capital is a logically self-mediating and self-determing systematic whole (the Notion). It is a totality of self-expanding objectified labour.

Marx is not simply copying Hegel's dialectic, however. The difference is that Hegel's Notion is self-sustaining. It has to be, as it is basically God. But for Marx, this totality is not self-sustaining. It's deranged, mad, crazy, "verruckt". The real barrier to this self-expanding totality ,capital, is the capital itself.

[S.Artesian]

At the end of Hegel's Logic, he invokes the Cunning of Reason as the force which united all the particular points of view under the Absolute. The source of the Cunning of Reason is nothing less than Smith's Invisible Hand. In fact, Marx employs a similar device: the law of value.

The similarities don't end there. The whole movement of Capital Vol I to Vol III is the movement from essence to appearance, which is why Marx closes Vol III with the discussion of the Trinity Formula and The Illusions Created by Competition - ie with surface appearance.

At the level of Volume I, where Marx is looking at capital-in-general, there's an easily discernible link to Hegel's universality of the Notion. Isn't it funny how Marx ends up at the end of Vol I by saying that, with the accumulation of capital, the presuppositions of capital presuppose capital itself - that is, capital is a logically self-mediating and self-determing systematic whole (the Notion). It is a totality of self-expanding objectified labour.

Marx is not simply copying Hegel's dialectic, however. The difference is that Hegel's Notion is self-sustaining. It has to be, as it is basically God. But for Marx, this totality is not self-sustaining. It's deranged, mad, crazy, "verruckt". The real barrier to this self-expanding totality ,capital, is the capital itself.


I agree. And in the material terms, the unity of method and subject, that movement from Vol1 to Vol 3, from appearance to essence, is the movement from simple reproduction to... expanded reproduction, the "real life" of capitalism.

It is there, in expanded reproduction, that Marx locates the immanent barrier to capitalist accumulation, which is, of course, the accumulation of capital-- the deterioration of profitability as capital accrues greater profit; the inexorable and inherent reduction in the discrepancy, the "distance" between cost price, and the prices of production.

Soon I'm going to do an article on the growth of fixed capital and impaired expanded reproduction. Think I'll call it "Elephant on a Skateboard," maybe have Jan and Dean singing "Sidewalk Surfin' " in the background followed by "Wipeout!" by the Surfaris.

[ChrisK]

CK...

All you have done, and do, is to distort the plain meaning of what Marx wrote. In this you are a perfect representative of and for philosophers.

In any case, I'm not changing any subject. Others brought up historical materialism, counterposing it to the "mysticism" of those who think it, HM, too is based on Marx's extraction of a rational kernel from Hegel's dialectic.

Anyway, keep ignoring the critical questions, which are actually at the core of all of Marx's writings, published and unpublished, on the accumulation of capital. It's safer that way for you.

Cool story bro. I like how you dodge everything I argue and hurl insults. But at this point its just par for the course.

[S.Artesian]

Cool story bro. I like how you dodge everything I argue and hurl insults. But at this point its just par for the course.

Insults? "Reading comprehension," "commas"... what are those, hickeys?

I simply called your snide shit-eating facile comments, snide shit-eating facile comments based on repeated and deliberate distortion of what Marx wrote.

Haven't dodged a thing. You're the guy claiming Marx is a neo-Smithian. That's wonderful. Clears up so much... like exactly what you don't know about Marx, which is a lot. Qualifies you as pretty much of an ignoramus. And I mean that in the nicest way possible.


In the meantime, since I answered Tribune when he asked honest and substantive questions, rather than engage in snide and facile posing, I was kind of hoping Tribune would answer the 2 questions.

Obviously, you can't. That's par for the course, too.

Feel the love, brother. Come closer and let me squeeze.

[ChrisK]

That's a pretty strange thing to say. First of all, if Marx and Smith used the same method, why did they reach such radically different conclusions? Also, remember that Hegel was himself influenced by Smith. Indeed, the "invisible hand" finds its counterpart in Hegel's Geist. Marx's critique of Hegel's dialectic starts from the position that "Hegel's standpoint is that of modern political economy ." So, if anybody is using Smith's method, it's Hegel and not Marx.

Though of course it remains true that all three are engaged in a similar enterprise of examining capitalist society ("burgerliche gesellschaft") from the perspective of its totality.

Where have you been? My argument is that Hegel distorted the dialectical method, which Smith had used. Then Marx, in taking the so-called rational kernel, made a return to Adam Smith's (and other Scottish Materialists) version of the dialectic.

The conclusion has nothing to do with method. It has to do with perspective. Trotsky and Stalin both used dialectical materialism and the former called the USSR a Degenerated Workers State and the latter called it socialist.

Finally, if you have a problem with this, take it up with Marx, it was he who first said this not I.


Of course, Marx's method is non-Hegelian. You cannot separate Hegel's [I]method - his dialectic - from his system - the political philosophy. Marx knew that clearly as it is the basis of his critique of Hegel in the 1843 Critique and the 1844 Manuscripts. For Hegel all movement is contradictory and this is located within the logic of the object itself, whereas for Marx, the contradiction is at the level of the totality of capitalist society, in capital itself.

But that doesn't mean that it was not informed by a deep critical engagement with Hegel, in for instance, chapter II on the act of exchange, which parallels Hegel's section on Contract in the Philsophy of Right, or the third part of chapter one on the form of value, which parallels the Logic.

Note that Marx is not simply using Hegel as a foil, or just copying for the sake of it. If you think that you are missing Marx's sense of critique, which is not merely to show that x is wrong, but to reveal the inverted truth they contain. Thus with his critiques of British political economy and French socialism, so with Hegel's dialectic.

If Marx were simply "applying" Hegel's dialectic, he would come to the same conclusions as Hegel and indeed Adam Smith, for whom capitalist social relations were embedded in human nature (our natural propensity to "truck and barter"), but he was using his own ("critical and revolutionary") dialectical method that sees every epoch, and with this all the categories of capitalist society as historically contingent, and comes to radically opposite conclusions.

The Hegelian positive dialectic is one of synthesis and reconciliation, it is the most complete expression of capitalist social relations becuase it systematises all the categories, all the inhuman craziness into a whole. Marx's dialectical method is negative, it overturns all these categories by showing the human side underneath, by showing how Hegel and the political economists got it all totally wrong.

I use the phrase Hegelian dialectic because S.Artesian seems to take offense at the phrase Dialectical Materialism and calling it Marx's Dialectic is counter to my purpose. Go back one page and you'll find my responses to what you write.

[ChrisK]

More than strange, claiming Marx used the method of Adam Smith is ignorant. It betrays a real ignorance of Marx's own critique of Adam Smith, and Smith's "method" that Marx provides, [almost as a kind of running subtext] in Capital, in the manuscripts of the drafts of Capital, and in Theories of Surplus Value, the intended 4th volume of Capital.

Such ignorance is the currency of our "preface-ists," for whom all and everything that needs to be known is contained in a few paragraphs lifted and distorted from the preface/afterward to the 2nd edition.

Take it up with Marx. You can find his grave online.

[S.Artesian]

Take it up with Marx. You can find his grave online.


I don't have to take it up with Marx. Unlike you, I've actually read Marx's critique of Adam Smith, whom Marx regards as quite an inferior figure in relation to other Scottish political economists.

Try actually reading something beyond the afterword...and other than Rosa's Cliff Notes for Those Too Lazy to Actually Read Marx.

Try actually understanding that in the afterward Marx is giving examples of how poorly understood by the reviewers are the method and the substance he demonstrates in Capital.

[ChrisK]

Insults? "Reading comprehension," "commas"... what are those, hickeys?

I simply called your snide shit-eating facile comments, snide shit-eating facile comments based on repeated and deliberate distortion of what Marx wrote.

Right, because there were so many of those in my last post. Funny from the guy who makes shit up about what I say.


Haven't dodged a thing. You're the guy claiming Marx is a neo-Smithian. That's wonderful. Clears up so much... like exactly what you don't know about Marx, which is a lot. Qualifies you as pretty much of an ignoramus. And I mean that in the nicest way possible.

1. I challenge you to show where I say this. Stop making shit up.
2. I see we continue to have problems using words in their proper sense. To dodge means "avoiding the issue" not "making claims". But we've already seen you like misusing words.


In the meantime, since I answered Tribune when he asked honest and substantive questions, rather than engage in snide and facile posing, I was kind of hoping Tribune would answer the 2 questions.

Obviously, you can't. That's par for the course, too.

Feel the love, brother. Come closer and let me squeeze.

I'm not answering those, because that is not what our debate is about.

[ChrisK]

I don't have to take it up with Marx. Unlike you, I've actually read Marx's critique of Adam Smith, whom Marx regards as quite an inferior figure in relation to other Scottish political economists.

Oh, so he considered other Scottish political economists to be better than smith? Funny Marx endorses the claim that he uses the method of the WHOLE ENGLISH SCHOOL.

So how is this different from you claiming he used a method similar to Hegels, while critcising Hegel?


Try actually reading something beyond the afterword...and other than Rosa's Cliff Notes for Those Too Lazy to Actually Read Marx.

Try actually understanding that in the afterward Marx is giving examples of how poorly understood by the reviewers are the method and the substance he demonstrates in Capital.


And he responds to some of them, by endorsing others. I take those endorsements has his method.

[S.Artesian]

Oh, so he considered other Scottish political economists to be better than smith? Funny Marx endorses the claim that he uses the method of the WHOLE ENGLISH SCHOOL.

So how is this different from you claiming he used a method similar to Hegels, while critcising Hegel?


And he responds to some of them, by endorsing others. I take those endorsements has his method.


Take whatever yo want. Marx never states that he uses the method of the English school. He cites a reviewer stating that he, Marx, follows the method of the English school, as a counter to the charges by a French reviewer of "meta-physics" in Marx's approach.

To take a distinction, an evaluation Marx makes as to the differing quality, and validity, of the work of certain preceding political economists as meaning that Marx is endorsing that "school" or considers himself to be "part" of, or in the tradition of that school, is, in a word, absurd, given the breadth and depth of Marx's examinations of the preceding political economists, many of whom produced work that contained fractions, portions, segments of vital and valid analysis of capitalism.

Marx's notebooks, and TSV are absolutely filled with such "positive" evaluations of portions of the work of some political economists. But as to the Smith, and the school?

Well here from TSV volume 2 is Marx's evaluation of Steuart:

"He [Steuart] gives a great deal of attention to this genesis of capital-- without as yet seeing it directly as the genesis of capital.... and he rightly considers that manufacturing industry proper only came into being through this process of separation in agriculture. In Adam Smith's writings this process of separation is assumed to be already completed."

Marx calls Steuarts's work, "the rational expression of the Monetary and Mercantile systems." That doesn't make Marx a monetarist or a mercantilist, does it?

Marx considers Smith to be an advance over the physiocrats, in that Smith did not restrict "productive labor" to that of agriculture, but to general social labor, to the creation of value not as a function of nature or land, but as of labor-time. Marx says:

"His [Smith's] merit is that he emphasizes-- and it obviously perplexes him-- that with the accumulation of capital and the appearance of property in land-- that is, when the conditions of labor assume an independent existence over against labour itself-- something new occurs, apparently [and actually, in the result] the law of value changes into its opposite. It is his theoretical strength that he feels and stresses this contradiction, just as it is his theoretical weakness that the contradiction shakes his confidence in the general law, even for simple commodity exchange; that he does not perceive how this contradiction arises, through labor-power itself becoming a commodity, and that in the case of this specific commodity its use-value-- which therefore has nothing to do with exchange-value-- is the precisely the energy which creates exchange value."

Now how about that, as Mel Allen used to say? How can Marx be endorsing the English School, the method of the English School and at the same time be criticizing it based on his, Marx's "German-dialectical" methodology; on Smith's ability to feel a contradiction, while at the same time he cannot perceive how such a contradiction arises?

Clearly, Marx's method is exactly not the method of the English School, and is a method of criticism based on the extraction of the rational kernel from the "German-dialectical" methodology that Marx has developed in his critiques of Hegel.

Marx concludes these notes on Smith by writing "Adam's twistings and turnings, his contradictions and wanderings from the point, prove that, once he made wages, profit, and rent the constituent parts of exchangeable value or of the total price of the product, he had got himself stuck in the mud and had to get stuck."

Now it might just be me, but these remarks by Marx on Smith really remind me of his critique of Hegel's Philosophy of Right-- where Hegel gets stuck in the mud, or actually in the concrete can no longer reconcile the real and rational, except by capitulation.

No one can deny that Marx studied Smith's work closely, but study for Marx means merciless criticism, and yes, it is just that sort of study by criticism that Marx performs on Hegel. Smith "combines" the conditions of the commodity [note: conditions-- the historical, social determinants of existence], use value and exchange value; and Hegel provides the "basic" and comprehensive formulation of dialectic-- but neither combination nor comprehensive formulation explains the actual condition of capitalist reproduction.

That explanation, that demonstration of method and substance is exactly what constitutes Marx's dialectic and separates him from Smith's English School and its method and Hegel's idealism and its mystified [i.e. ahistorical] dialectic.

[BAM]

Where have you been? My argument is that Hegel distorted the dialectical method, which Smith had used. Then Marx, in taking the so-called rational kernel, made a return to Adam Smith's (and other Scottish Materialists) version of the dialectic.

Of course, he's just saying that, like the (somewhat erroneously termed "English School") he was a materialist, in contrast to the more flighty French. But, if you want to say that Marx and Smith's methods are the same, then you are going to have to come up with textual evidence that Smith's "dialectic" was "critical and revolutionary", that, for Smith, capitalism is not based on human nature, etc., etc.

Also, how is it that Hegel "distorted" Smith? They had their differences of course, but both thinkers believed that the various competing and conflicting interests in civil society, through the very mechanism of competition, found an ultimate harmony - as given by the divine cunning of reason/invisible hand.

[Zanthorus]

Also, how is it that Hegel "distorted" Smith? They had their differences of course, but both thinkers believed that the various competing and conflicting interests in civil society, through the very mechanism of competition, found an ultimate harmony - as given by the divine cunning of reason/invisible hand.

That's a bit of an oversimplification. Both Hegel and Smith were also aware of the various pitfalls of capitalism and advocated various forms of governmental intervention. I think this is what essentially makes both thinkers the highest point of bourgeois science. In that they recognise the contradictions of capitalism but seek solace in the state or else try to get around it with confused and abstract reasoning. The only other way to go is to either try and deny the existence of contradictions and end up in the mire of subjectivism and the neo-classical and Austrian schools or else untangle the knots and become a communist revolutionary.

[BAM]

sure, the fact that the State mediates the relation is crucial for both of them - and a large part of Marx's critique of Hegel is based on Hegel's elevation of the State. I am simplifying becuase this is only a forum and not an academic journal and I am about to eat my dinner!

[ChrisK]

Of course, he's just saying that, like the (somewhat erroneously termed "English School") he was a materialist, in contrast to the more flighty French. But, if you want to say that Marx and Smith's methods are the same, then you are going to have to come up with textual evidence that Smith's "dialectic" was "critical and revolutionary", that, for Smith, capitalism is not based on human nature, etc., etc.

Marx's dialectic was not "critical and revolutionary". Method's are not critical and revolutionary. Method's are how you can come to critical and revolutionary conclusions.


Also, how is it that Hegel "distorted" Smith? They had their differences of course, but both thinkers believed that the various competing and conflicting interests in civil society, through the very mechanism of competition, found an ultimate harmony - as given by the divine cunning of reason/invisible hand.

Fine, mystified to use Marx's phrase. If you don't think that Hegel mystified the dialectic, take it up with Marx.

[Zanthorus]

Marx's dialectic was not "critical and revolutionary". Method's are not critical and revolutionary. Method's are how you can come to critical and revolutionary conclusions.

He was quoting Marx. It's a rather famous quote actually, I'm surprised you've never read it. The ironic part is that it's from the afterword to the second german edition. Apparently not only are you only getting your info from the afterword to Capital, you're only getting it from one of the afterwords.

[ChrisK]

Take whatever yo want. Marx never states that he uses the method of the English school. He cites a reviewer stating that he, Marx, follows the method of the English school, as a counter to the charges by a French reviewer of "meta-physics" in Marx's approach.

You know, when speaking English (or German for that matter), when you use a review to respond to another, you are endorsing that view. Thus, he is a follower of the English Schools method.


To take a distinction, an evaluation Marx makes as to the differing quality, and validity, of the work of certain preceding political economists as meaning that Marx is endorsing that "school" or considers himself to be "part" of, or in the tradition of that school, is, in a word, absurd, given the breadth and depth of Marx's examinations of the preceding political economists, many of whom produced work that contained fractions, portions, segments of vital and valid analysis of capitalism.

Where did I say he considered himself part of that school, or that he was part of that school? I said he used their method. As in their scientific method.


Marx's notebooks, and TSV are absolutely filled with such "positive" evaluations of portions of the work of some political economists. But as to the Smith, and the school?

Well here from TSV volume 2 is Marx's evaluation of Steuart:

"He [Steuart] gives a great deal of attention to this genesis of capital-- without as yet seeing it directly as the genesis of capital.... and he rightly considers that manufacturing industry proper only came into being through this process of separation in agriculture. In Adam Smith's writings this process of separation is assumed to be already completed."

Marx calls Steuarts's work, "the rational expression of the Monetary and Mercantile systems." That doesn't make Marx a monetarist or a mercantilist, does it?

Marx considers Smith to be an advance over the physiocrats, in that Smith did not restrict "productive labor" to that of agriculture, but to general social labor, to the creation of value not as a function of nature or land, but as of labor-time. Marx says:

"His [Smith's] merit is that he emphasizes-- and it obviously perplexes him-- that with the accumulation of capital and the appearance of property in land-- that is, when the conditions of labor assume an independent existence over against labour itself-- something new occurs, apparently [and actually, in the result] the law of value changes into its opposite. It is his theoretical strength that he feels and stresses this contradiction, just as it is his theoretical weakness that the contradiction shakes his confidence in the general law, even for simple commodity exchange; that he does not perceive how this contradiction arises, through labor-power itself becoming a commodity, and that in the case of this specific commodity its use-value-- which therefore has nothing to do with exchange-value-- is the precisely the energy which creates exchange value."

Now how about that, as Mel Allen used to say? How can Marx be endorsing the English School, the method of the English School and at the same time be criticizing it based on his, Marx's "German-dialectical" methodology; on Smith's ability to feel a contradiction, while at the same time he cannot perceive how such a contradiction arises?

He is criticising a percieved flaw in how Adam Smith dealt with a conclusion he reached, not his method. Tell me, where does Marx criticize the method of Smith in that passage? All I see him do is say that Smith came to the right conclusion, but that he was shaken by it and he shouldn't have been. If anything he just endorsed, implicitly, Smith's method for being able to reach the right conclusions. Thank you for giving me more evidence.


Clearly, Marx's method is exactly not the method of the English School, and is a method of criticism based on the extraction of the rational kernel from the "German-dialectical" methodology that Marx has developed in his critiques of Hegel.

Nope, you just gave us further evidence that Marx agreed with how Smith reached his conclusions.


Marx concludes these notes on Smith by writing "Adam's twistings and turnings, his contradictions and wanderings from the point, prove that, once he made wages, profit, and rent the constituent parts of exchangeable value or of the total price of the product, he had got himself stuck in the mud and had to get stuck."

Now it might just be me, but these remarks by Marx on Smith really remind me of his critique of Hegel's Philosophy of Right-- where Hegel gets stuck in the mud, or actually in the concrete can no longer reconcile the real and rational, except by capitulation.

Yes, he says that Smith's "twistigs and turnings" got him stuck. Ie, Smith failed.


No one can deny that Marx studied Smith's work closely, but study for Marx means merciless criticism, and yes, it is just that sort of study by criticism that Marx performs on Hegel. Smith "combines" the conditions of the commodity [note: conditions-- the historical, social determinants of existence], use value and exchange value; and Hegel provides the "basic" and comprehensive formulation of dialectic-- but neither combination nor comprehensive formulation explains the actual condition of capitalist reproduction.

That explanation, that demonstration of method and substance is exactly what constitutes Marx's dialectic and separates him from Smith's English School and its method and Hegel's idealism and its mystified [i.e. ahistorical] dialectic.

Of course it seperates him from the English school. He just used their method and was able to give a proper explanation of capitalism. He went beyond what had been done before.

[ChrisK]

He was quoting Marx. It's a rather famous quote actually, I'm surprised you've never read it. The ironic part is that it's from the afterword to the second german edition. Apparently not only are you only getting your info from the afterword to Capital, you're only getting it from one of the afterwords.

You mean this quote?



In its mystified form, dialectic became the fashion in Germany, because it seemed to transfigure and to glorify the existing state of things. In its rational form it is a scandal and abomination to bourgeoisdom and its doctrinaire professors, because it includes in its comprehension and affirmative recognition of the existing state of things, at the same time also, the recognition of the negation of that state, of its inevitable breaking up; because it regards every historically developed social form as in fluid movement, and therefore takes into account its transient nature not less than its momentary existence; because it lets nothing impose upon it, and is in its essence critical and revolutionary.

Hmm, you are right. I seem to have been not thinking when writing that last post. However, this actually changes nothing. This is a description of historical materialism (and yes I have read it, this is the afterword I frequently quote).

Historical materialism seems to be related to the method of the Scottish Materialists, but with revolutionary intent. His explanations of his method as being the same as the "english school" and a passage that contains no dialectical materialism as Engels wrote of it. This works well with both of those by adding a revolutionary flavor to his method.

[ChrisK]

S. Artesian, I would like a link to the passages you cite.

[Zanthorus]

Historical materialism seems to be related to the method of the Scottish Materialists, but with revolutionary intent. His explanations of his method as being the same as the "english school" and a passage that contains no dialectical materialism as Engels wrote of it. This works well with both of those by adding a revolutionary flavor to his method.

While it's true that Smith and Ricardo did provide a sort of jumping off point for Marx to begin his criticism of political economy and Adam Ferguson's Essay on the History of Civil Society contains the grounds for some of Marx's later work, I think it's simply false to say that Marx's works were the same as the "english school". The scottish "historical materialists" made the mistake of regarding bourgeois society as the natural eternal form of society, and when they analysed past historical development they superimposed the various economic forms specific to that society onto totally different forms.

The most obvious point to bring up would be on the theory of value. Both Smith and Ricardo believed that the labour theory of value held true even in the most primitive forms of society whereas Marx regards it as specific to commodity production under the capitalist mode of production.

But according to Marx categories like "capital", "wage-labour", "value" etc are all historically specific to capitalism and dissapear with it.

From what I recall of the German Ideology he says that the "english school" had developed the conclusions of the materialist conception of history but only in a one-sided sense. The tendency toward regarding capitalist social relations as "natural" is probably what they were referring to.

However I think it's a mistake to simply regard historical materialism as the method of the scottish economists but with "revolutionary intent" or with "revolutionary flavour" added. Whereas they start from the standpoint of political economy, Marx begins his enquiry from free human activity.

Historical Materialism as I understand it is Marx's attempt to understand why things never turn out in history the way the actors intended them to. The answer is because they enter into social relations such as private property or the state which get out of their hands and stand over them and restrain the capabilities of their free activity. In capitalist society private property, money and the state all stand as barriers to free human activity. When these institutions are negated and replaced with conscious planning humans become free and no longer enslaved to forces outside their own control.

Sure, the whole scottish thing comes into it, as at each stage of social development toward communism when human activity becomes really free their is conflict between classes and each class is limited in it's viewpoint by it's position in the social relations of production. Only those classes whose viewpoint expresses a general interest can become the new ruling class of each epoch. However Marx's analysis starts from a completely different point to this purely sociological analysis which is what leads Marx to entirely different conclusions.

[S.Artesian]

You mean this quote?



Hmm, you are right. I seem to have been not thinking when writing that last post. However, this actually changes nothing. This is a description of historical materialism (and yes I have read it, this is the afterword I frequently quote).

Historical materialism seems to be related to the method of the Scottish Materialists, but with revolutionary intent. His explanations of his method as being the same as the "english school" and a passage that contains no dialectical materialism as Engels wrote of it. This works well with both of those by adding a revolutionary flavor to his method.

Except nowhere does Marx mention historical materialism here, or in volume 1; nowhere does he say his method is that of the English school, just as nowhere does he say that reviewer in the Russian journal is describing "my" dialectic, but rather the dialectic.

Those who read the above section by Marx will note that Marx applies the critical and revolutionary characterization to dialectic, not to political economy of any school.

Now regarding Marx's comments on Smith-- he refers to Smith's theoretical strength and his theoretical weakness. Where exactly does a weakness in theory come from if not the methodology of the theorist? What is Smith's theoretical weakness if not the fact that his methodology cannot apprehend, grasp that historical condition of labor becoming organized itself as a commodity, as labor-power? Marx is well beyond, was well beyond by 1844, the specious distinction between theory and methodology when the subject was the historical conditions of labor.

No, Marx does not "use their method," no more and no less than he uses Smith's theory. He criticizes their method and their theory; the theory being in actuality a historical product with errors and limitations of a historical and class nature, not errors of human frailty. That's why Marx entitles so much of his work as critiques of political economy.

Marx makes it abundantly clear throughout his analysis of Smith, in volume 2, in TSV, in the Economic Manuscripts that Smith is limited by his method-- his method being the product of his allegiance to capitalism as existing somehow beyond its historical origins which are also its limitations.

Marx is no more an advocate of Smith's methodology than he is of Smith's theory, despite the validity of certain conclusion Smith reaches which are certainlyadvances over those of the physiocrats; and no more than Marx is an advocate of Ricardo's methodology, Ricardo's theory despite the fact that Marx obviously considers Ricardo an advance over Smith.

When Marx undertakes, and persists in his critique of political economy, he does so in its manifestations as both theory and as a methodology. And in its conclusions; in its strengths as well as its weaknesses. He criticizes it as a totality-- as the product of a specific class organization of production.

Where Marx takes pains to criticize Hegel's mystification of dialectic while simultaneously acknowledging, and extracting, a rational kernel to that dialectic, that methodology and theory, he takes no such pains with political economy, locating it as an inquiry into production that more than fails, but actually represents an enshrinement of the bourgeois order as the "natural" order, and is anti-historical.

What he proposes in Capital is, in essence, an abolition, an overthrow of political economy, and such an overthrow must be what political economy could not be-- historical, social, aware of the origins of value in the organization of labor itself as a commodity, in short an emancipation of labor from the limitations of capital.

Which gets us back to the so-called "English School." Nowhere does Marx describe the so-called English School as being the basic form of or for the analysis of capitalism, of all economic inquiry. Nowhere does he state that the so-called English school is the first to give economic analysis its full, comprehensive exposition. He could not, and it, the English School could not be such, given its class limitations.

[S.Artesian]

S. Artesian, I would like a link to the passages you cite.


On Smith from Theories of Surplus Value? I used my hard copy volume..

Progress Publishers Edition, 1969, Part 1

Remark on Steuart, p. 43
On Smith, p 87-88

Concluding remark on Smith, p 103.

[MilkmanofHumanKindness]

Considering the importance that Dialectical Materialism offers as a Metaphysical framework, what exactly is the alternative?

[BAM]

Marx's dialectic was not "critical and revolutionary". Method's are not critical and revolutionary. Method's are how you can come to critical and revolutionary conclusions.

Zanthorous took the words out of my mouth. But just to reiterate: Marx's approach - his method - is to critically investigate ("critique" in his sense of exposing the inverted, human truth behind the fetishistic appearance) the categories of capitalist society. His method regards all these categories as historically contingent.


Fine, mystified to use Marx's phrase. If you don't think that Hegel mystified the dialectic, take it up with Marx.

Of course, judging from my last couple of messages, I think Hegel is mystified, so I don't understand why you would ask that. But Smith is himself already mystified: only the infinite mind of God can grasp all the ultimate "connexions and dependencies of things". There is therefore an insurmountable chasm between the finite and the infinite, between the us here on Earth and the divine (God) up there. God runs the universe to maximise human happiness and we are predestined to act out his divine plan - only we cannot see it because we are guided by an invisible hand.

[BAM]

Historical materialism seems to be related to the method of the Scottish Materialists, but with revolutionary intent. His explanations of his method as being the same as the "english school" and a passage that contains no dialectical materialism as Engels wrote of it. This works well with both of those by adding a revolutionary flavor to his method.

Is that what you think, that Marx is "adding a revolutionary flavour" to Ricardo et al?

By the way, I find "historical materialism" itself to be a misleading phrase, and one that Marx never used. True, it probably stems from the "Materialist Conception of History" but it isn't useful because it suggests a supra-historical theory that seeks to explain everything as a result of blind causal mechanisms, "base-superstructure", etc. Even if that's not what you yourself believe, that is how it has traditionally been conceived by the post-Marx Marxists.

[Rosa Lichtenstein]

S Artesian:


Rosa confirms the validity of the evaluation in her defense against the evaluation. "I don't need to do that... Marx already did that..."

I see you have given up addressing me. Why is that? I hope you do not think playing to the gallery is a valid form of argument?


Hard to see how someone who has no need to make the slightest bit of inquiry into, examination of, or utilization of historical materialism can be considered as having proved that such historical materialism stands in opposition to dialectic

Well is it or is it not true that Marx did most of the work for us, and that subsequent Marxists have largely filled in the gaps?

Moreover, as I have told you several times already -- but, as is your won't, you just ignore it --, since Dialectical Marxism is now almost synonymous with long-term failure, it is far more important to stop the Hegelian poison from further seeping into Marxism.


Regarding Marx and his evaluation of Hegel.... jesus Rosa is that all you know of Marx, the afterword to the 2nd edition-- and even that only in parts as you certainly ignore the conclusion of that afterward?

No, but it is his only published comment about 'his method', and 'the dialectical method'.

Of course, and yet again: if you know of another published summary/analysis of 'his method', 'the dialectic method', contemporaneous with or subsequent to Das Kapital, that agrees with the traditional view you are trying to sell us, then don't be so shy -- share it with the rest of us.

Oh dear -- you can't, since there isn't.

Hence, my view agrees with what Marx actually published in Das Kapital -- yours doesn't.


I am referring to Marx's letter to Kugelmann when he calls Hegel's dialectic the basic form of all dialect "but only after it has been stripped of its mystical form, and it is precisely this which distinguishes my method."

I believe you stated Marx was wrong in that characterization of Hegel's dialectic as the basic form of all dialectic in that the dialectic had been utilized by Aristotle.

I have dealt with this several times; please (for once!) read what I have posted not what you would like me to have posted. Here it is again:


We have been over this dozens of times; here it is again (may I suggest that you respond to what I have to say, or drop the issue?):

1) Unpublished remarks cannot out-weigh or countermand published sources. We have a summary of the 'dialectic method', which Marx saw fit to publish, and endorse as 'his method', which contains not one shred of Hegel.

2) In stark contrast, you can't refer to or quote a single published source, contemporaneous with or subsequent to Das Kapital, that supports the traditional view you hold.

And:


What Marx actually said was this:


The mystification which dialectic suffers in Hegel’s hands, by no means prevents him from being the first to present its general form of working in a comprehensive and conscious manner.

And Marx is right here, not wrong, since this does not prevent Hegel being the first, as I have told you before, but you just ignore what you do not like to see, and then you perseverate over the same tedious points. Here it is again:


Indeed, this does not prevent him from being the first, since Hegel did not do it all.

What prevents Hegel being the first to do this is, as I said, the fact that he did not do it at all. But, what he did do was mystify a process that Aristotle had first discovered, and which was put in a more scientific form by Smith, Ferguson, Millar, Robertson, Hume, Stewart and Kant, and, of course, Marx himself.

You need to address what I actually say, not what you would like me to have said.

Since you have been here at RevLeft you have often adopted the irritating tactic of summarising me (and getting that wrong) rather than quoting me. If I were to do that to you, you'd rightly be annoyed.

So, it looks like you are determined to keep referring to what you think I have said, rather than quoting what I have actually said, and then dealing with that.

Perhaps I should do the same to you?


Oh... somebody tell Chris Koch that "2 or 3 printer's sheets" [Marx's reference to writing down the "rational kernel" of Hegel's dialectics] are more than "2 or 3 pages" in our current usage. I'm not certain but I think a printer's sheet in mid-late 19th century England was equivalent to 16 printed pages.

Even if that were so, Marx saw fit neither to write nor publish it, but he did spend a whole year on writing Herr Vogt! This suggests that in the end Marx did no think that there was all that much of Hegel's 'dialectic' which was worth summarising.

And yet he did see fit to publish a summary of 'his method', 'the dialectic method', that contained not one atom of Hegel.

You keep ignoring that salient fact -- and no wonder: it holes your view, the traditional view, well below the water line.

[Rosa Lichtenstein]

BAM:


That's a pretty strange thing to say. First of all, if Marx and Smith used the same method, why did they reach such radically different conclusions? Also, remember that Hegel was himself influenced by Smith. Indeed, the "invisible hand" finds its counterpart in Hegel's Geist. Marx's critique of Hegel's dialectic starts from the position that "Hegel's standpoint is that of modern political economy [ie., Adam Smith]." So, if anybody is using Smith's method, it's Hegel and not Marx.

Though of course it remains true that all three are engaged in a similar enterprise of examining capitalist society ("burgerliche gesellschaft") from the perspective of its totality.Of course, Marx's method is non-Hegelian. You cannot separate Hegel's method - his dialectic - from his system - the political philosophy. Marx knew that clearly as it is the basis of his critique of Hegel in the 1843 Critique and the 1844 Manuscripts. For Hegel all movement is contradictory and this is located within the logic of the object itself, whereas for Marx, the contradiction is at the level of the totality of capitalist society, in capital itself.

But that doesn't mean that it was not informed by a deep critical engagement with Hegel, in for instance, chapter II on the act of exchange, which parallels Hegel's section on Contract in the Philsophy of Right, or the third part of chapter one on the form of value, which parallels the Logic.

Note that Marx is not simply using Hegel as a foil, or just copying for the sake of it. If you think that you are missing Marx's sense of critique, which is not merely to show that x is wrong, but to reveal the inverted truth they contain. Thus with his critiques of British political economy and French socialism, so with Hegel's dialectic.

If Marx were simply "applying" Hegel's dialectic, he would come to the same conclusions as Hegel and indeed Adam Smith, for whom capitalist social relations were embedded in human nature (our natural propensity to "truck and barter"), but he was using his own ("critical and revolutionary") dialectical method that sees every epoch, and with this all the categories of capitalist society as historically contingent, and comes to radically opposite conclusions.

The Hegelian positive dialectic is one of synthesis and reconciliation, it is the most complete expression of capitalist social relations becuase it systematises all the categories, all the inhuman craziness into a whole. Marx's dialectical method is negative, it overturns all these categories by showing the human side underneath, by showing how Hegel and the political economists got it all totally wrong.


Except, as we now know (see my earlier posts in this thread), by the time he came to write Das Kapital, Marx had abandoned Hegel in his entirety.

[Rosa Lichtenstein]

Zanthorus:


While it's true that Smith and Ricardo did provide a sort of jumping off point for Marx to begin his criticism of political economy and Adam Ferguson's Essay on the History of Civil Society contains the grounds for some of Marx's later work, I think it's simply false to say that Marx's works were the same as the "english school". The scottish "historical materialists" made the mistake of regarding bourgeois society as the natural eternal form of society, and when they analysed past historical development they superimposed the various economic forms specific to that society onto totally different forms.

I'd like to see the evidence that the Scottish School did think the following:


The scottish "historical materialists" made the mistake of regarding bourgeois society as the natural eternal form of society,

You:


The most obvious point to bring up would be on the theory of value. Both Smith and Ricardo believed that the labour theory of value held true even in the most primitive forms of society whereas Marx regards it as specific to commodity production under the capitalist mode of production.

But according to Marx categories like "capital", "wage-labour", "value" etc are all historically specific to capitalism and dissapear with it.

From what I recall of the German Ideology he says that the "english school" had developed the conclusions of the materialist conception of history but only in a one-sided sense. The tendency toward regarding capitalist social relations as "natural" is probably what they were referring to.

Well, here is what I have posted at RevLeft before on this:


It is not I who called them this, but others, mainly Marx and Engels.


Ronald Meek, "The Scottish Contribution to Marxist Sociology" [1954; collected in his Economics and Ideology and Other Essays, 1967. Such luminaries as Adam Ferguson and Adam Smith. This influence was actually acknowledged. In The German Ideology, right after announcing their theme that "men be in a position to live in order to be able to `make history'", they say "The French and the English, even if they have conceived the relation of this fact with so-called history only in an extremely one-sided fashion, particularly as long as they remained in the toils of political ideology, have nevertheless made the first attempts to give the writing of history a materialistic basis by being the first to write histories of civil society, of commerce and industry."]

http://www.cscs.umich.edu/~crshalizi/notebooks/historical-materialism.html

I have to say that the above link is hostile to Marx and Engels, but there is little available on the internet on this.

Meek actually calls them the "Scottish Historical School" (p.35), but he attributes this to Roy Pascal (Communist Party member, friend of Wittgenstein and translator of the German Ideology), who used it in his article "Property and Society: The Scottish Historical School of the Eighteenth Century" Modern Quarterly March 1938.

The full passage is:


Since we are dealing with the Germans, who are devoid of premises, we must begin by stating the first premise of all human existence and, therefore, of all history, the premise, namely, that men must be in a position to live in order to be able to “make history.” But life involves before everything else eating and drinking, a habitation, clothing and many other things. The first historical act is thus the production of the means to satisfy these needs, the production of material life itself. And indeed this is an historical act, a fundamental condition of all history, which today, as thousands of years ago, must daily and hourly be fulfilled merely in order to sustain human life. Even when the sensuous world is reduced to a minimum, to a stick as with Saint Bruno , it presupposes the action of producing the stick. Therefore in any interpretation of history one has first of all to observe this fundamental fact in all its significance and all its implications and to accord it its due importance. It is well known that the Germans have never done this, and they have never, therefore, had an earthly basis for history and consequently never an historian. The French and the English, even if they have conceived the relation of this fact with so-called history only in an extremely one-sided fashion, particularly as long as they remained in the toils of political ideology, have nevertheless made the first attempts to give the writing of history a materialistic basis by being the first to write histories of civil society, of commerce and industry

http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1845/german-ideology/ch01a.htm

In the Poverty of Philosophy, Marx wrote:


Let us do him this justice: Lemontey wittily exposed the unpleasant consequences of the division of labor as it is constituted today, and M. Proudhon found nothing to add to it. But now that, through the fault of M. Proudhon, we have been drawn into this question of priority, let us say again, in passing, that long before M. Lemontey, and 17 years before Adam Smith, who was a pupil of A. Ferguson, the last-named gave a clear exposition of the subject in a chapter which deals specifically with the division of labor.

p.181 of MECW volume 6.

http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1847/poverty-philosophy/ch02b.htm

Marx refers to Ferguson repeatedly in his Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy (MECW volume 30, pp.264-306), as he does to others of the same 'school' (Adam Smith and Dugald Stewart) throughout this work:

http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1861/economic/ch32.htm

He does so too in Volume One of Das Kapital -- MECW volume 35, p.133, 359, 366, 367. [He also refers to others of that 'school', Robertson, p.529, Stewart and Smith (the references to these two are too numerous to list).]

http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/cw/volume35/index.htm

Throughout his works, the references to Smith and Stewart are in general too numerous to list.

But, call them what you like, Marx learnt from them.

Add to the above, the following:

Meek, R. (1967a), Economics And Ideology And Other Essays (Chapman Hall).

--------, (1967b), 'The Scottish Contribution To Marxist Sociology', in Meek (1967a), pp.34-50.

Kettler, D. (2005), Adam Ferguson: His Social and Political Thought (Transaction Books).

On Kant's much less mystical Historical Materialism:

Wood, A, (1998), 'Kant's Historical Materialism' in Kneller and Axinn, Chapter Five.

--------, (1999), Kant's Ethical Thought (Cambridge University Press).

Kneller, J., and Axinn, S, (1998), Autonomy And Community: Readings In Contemporary Kantian Social Philosophy (State University of New York Press).

And, Marx also derived many of his ideas from Aristotle (for example, the distinction between use and exchange value). Here's what I have posted on this:


Hegel had mystified Aristotle and Kant, Marx simply indicated that he rejected this. So he is not using Hegel's method, just signalling his return to Aristotle.


Aristotle did not have a labour theory of value though. The first fella who came up with it is Ibn Haldun.

Maybe so, but the seeds of the labour theory of value are in Aristotle:

http://www.economyprofessor.com/econ...y-of-value.php


That however in the form of commodity values all labours are expressed as equal human labour and therefore as of equal worth could not be read by Aristotle out of the form of value because Greek society was based on slave labour and therefore had as its natural basis the inequality of people and their labour powers. The secret of the expression of value, the equality and equal worth of all labours because and insofar as they are human labour in general, can only be deciphered once the concept of human equality has the firmness of a popular prejudice. This, however, is only possible in a society in which the commodity form is the general form of the product of labour and therefore also the relation of people to each other as commodity owners is the predominant social relation. [B]Aristotle's genius shines precisely in the fact that he discovers in the expression of value of commodities a relationship of equality. Only the historical limit of the society in which he lived prevented him from finding out in what this relation of equality consisted 'in truth'. (Das Kapital Vol. 1 MEW23:74)

Bold added.

Quoted from here:

http://192.220.96.165/untpltcl/exchvljs.html

From Rubin's history:


We consider the following passage in Capital to be crucial for an understanding of the ideas of Marx which have been presented: "There was, however, an important fact which prevented Aristotle from seeing that, to attribute value to commodities, is merely a mode of expressing all labor as equal human labor, and consequently as labor of equal quality. Greek society was founded upon slavery, and had, therefore, for its natural basis, the inequality of men and of their labor-powers. The secret of the expression of value, namely, that all kinds of labor are equal and equivalent, because, and so far as they are human labor in general, cannot be deciphered, until the notion of human equality has already acquired the fixity of a popular prejudice. This, however, is possible only in a society in which the great mass of the produce of labor takes the form of commodities, in which, consequently, the dominant relation between man and man, is that of owners of commodities" (C., I, pp. 59-60). [6] The equality of the autonomous and independent commodity producers is the foundation for the equality of the exchanged goods. This is the basic characteristic of the commodity economy, of its "cell structure," so to speak. The theory of value examines the process of formation of the productive unity called a social economy from separate, one might say independent, cells. It is not without reason that Marx wrote, in the preface to the first edition of the first volume of Capital, that the "commodity form of the product of labor or the form of value of the commodity is the form of the economic cell of bourgeois society." This cell structure of the commodity society represents, in itself, the totality of equal, formally independent, private economic units.

In the cited passage on Aristotle, Marx emphasizes that in slave society the concept of value could not be deduced from "the form of value itself," i.e., from the material expression of the equality of exchanged commodities. The mystery of value can only be grasped from the characteristics of the commodity economy. One should not be astonished that critics who missed the sociological character of Marx's theory of value should have interpreted the cited passage without discernment. According to Dietzel, Marx "was guided by the ethical axiom of equality." This "ethical foundation is displayed in the passage where Marx explains the shortcomings of Aristotle's theory of value by pointing out that the natural basis of Greek society was the inequality among people and among their labor-powers." [7]Dietzel does not understand that Marx is not dealing with an ethical postulate of equality, but with the equality of commodity producers as a basic social fact of the commodity economy. We repeat, not equality in the sense of equal distribution of material goods, but in the sense of independence and autonomy among economic agents who organize production.

If Dietzel transforms the society of equal commodity producers from an actual fact into an ethical postulate, Croce sees in the principle of equality a theoretically conceived type of society thought up by Marx on the basis of theoretical considerations and for the purpose of contrast and comparison with the capitalist society, which is based on inequality. The purpose of this comparison is to explain the specific characteristics of the capitalist society. The equality of commodity producers is not an ethical ideal but a theoretically conceived measure, a standard with which we measure capitalist society. Croce recalls the passage where Marx says that the nature of value can only be explained in a society where the belief in the equality of people has acquired the force of a popular prejudice. [8] Croce thinks that Marx, in order to understand value in a capitalist society, took as a type, as a theoretical standard, a different (concrete) value, namely that which would be possessed by goods which can be multiplied by labor in a society without the imperfections of capitalist society, and in which labor power would not be a commodity. From this, Croce derives the following conclusion on the logical properties of Marx's theory of value. "Marx's labor-value is not only a logical generalization, it is also a fact conceived and postulated as typical, i.e., something more than a mere logical concept."

More here:

http://www.marxists.org/archive/rubin/value/ch10.htm

See also:

http://cas.umkc.edu/ECON/Oeconomicus...0IX/Avsar1.pdf

Leo:


While I don't think Marx was too influenced by ancient philosophy to begin with, he certainly paid more attention to Epicurus than Aristotle, writing a major study about him. Of course it is not unnatural for him to be fond of Aristotle too, the guy was rather similar to Marx himself, a freaking writing machine.

And yet he quotes Aristotle across eight pages in Das Kapital, and Epicurus not once.

Here are a few of them:


The two latter peculiarities of the equivalent form will become more intelligible if we go back to the great thinker who was the first to analyse so many forms, whether of thought, society, or Nature, and amongst them also the form of value. I mean Aristotle.

In the first place, he clearly enunciates that the money form of commodities is only the further development of the simple form of value – i.e., of the expression of the value of one commodity in some other commodity taken at random; for he says:

5 beds = 1 house – (clinai pente anti oiciaς)

is not to be distinguished from

5 beds = so much money. – (clinai pente anti ... oson ai pente clinai)

He further sees that the value relation which gives rise to this expression makes it necessary that the house should qualitatively be made the equal of the bed, and that, without such an equalisation, these two clearly different things could not be compared with each other as commensurable quantities. “Exchange,” he says, “cannot take place without equality, and equality not without commensurability". (out isothς mh oushς snmmetriaς). Here, however, he comes to a stop, and gives up the further analysis of the form of value. “It is, however, in reality, impossible (th men oun alhqeia adunaton), that such unlike things can be commensurable” – i.e., qualitatively equal. Such an equalisation can only be something foreign to their real nature, consequently only “a makeshift for practical purposes.”

Aristotle therefore, himself, tells us what barred the way to his further analysis; it was the absence of any concept of value. What is that equal something, that common substance, which admits of the value of the beds being expressed by a house? Such a thing, in truth, cannot exist, says Aristotle. And why not? Compared with the beds, the house does represent something equal to them, in so far as it represents what is really equal, both in the beds and the house. And that is – human labour.

There was, however, an important fact which prevented Aristotle from seeing that, to attribute value to commodities, is merely a mode of expressing all labour as equal human labour, and consequently as labour of equal quality. Greek society was founded upon slavery, and had, therefore, for its natural basis, the inequality of men and of their labour powers. The secret of the expression of value, namely, that all kinds of labour are equal and equivalent, because, and so far as they are human labour in general, cannot be deciphered, until the notion of human equality has already acquired the fixity of a popular prejudice. This, however, is possible only in a society in which the great mass of the produce of labour takes the form of commodities, in which, consequently, the dominant relation between man and man, is that of owners of commodities. The brilliancy of Aristotle’s genius is shown by this alone, that he discovered, in the expression of the value of commodities, a relation of equality. The peculiar conditions of the society in which he lived, alone prevented him from discovering what, “in truth,” was at the bottom of this equality....

MECW, Volume 35, Capital Volume One, pp.69-70. Bold added.

Notice, no past tense when he calls Aristotle a 'great thinker', and that his work is that of 'genius'. I do not think he ever described Hegel that way. Lenin did, but not Marx. 'Mighty thinker' is the best we get.

And here:


If a giant thinker like Aristotle erred in his appreciation of slave labour, why should a dwarf economist like Bastiat be right in his appreciation of wage labour?

Ibid., p.92.


“For two-fold is the use of every object.... The one is peculiar to the object as such, the other is not, as a sandal which may be worn, and is also exchangeable. Both are uses of the sandal, for even he who exchanges the sandal for the money or food he is in want of, makes use of the sandal as a sandal. But not in its natural way. For it has not been made for the sake of being exchanged.” (Aristoteles, “De Rep.” l. i. c. 9.)

Ibid., p.96.

He quotes him again at length on pages 163, 175, 331 (where he notes that Aristotle called 'man' a political animal), and then on page 411 we find this:


“If,” dreamed Aristotle, the greatest thinker of antiquity, “if every tool, when summoned, or even of its own accord, could do the work that befits it, just as the creations of Daedalus moved of themselves, or the tripods of Hephaestos went of their own accord to their sacred work, if the weavers’ shuttles were to weave of themselves, then there would be no need either of apprentices for the master workers, or of slaves for the lords.”

On Marx and Aristotle, see:

McCarthy, G. (1992) (ed.), Marx And Aristotle (Rowman and Littlefield).

Meikle, S. (1985), Essentialism In The Thought of Karl Marx (Open Court).

--------, (1995), Aristotle's Economic Thought (Oxford University Press).

Pike, J. (1999), From Aristotle To Marx (Ashgate Publishing).

You:


However I think it's a mistake to simply regard historical materialism as the method of the scottish economists but with "revolutionary intent" or with "revolutionary flavour" added. Whereas they start from the standpoint of political economy, Marx begins his enquiry from free human activity.

No one is arguing that, certainly not I. What I have argued is that Hegel considerably slowed down Marx's scientific development. Had Hegel done us all a favour and died of Cholera forty years before he did, Marx would have had direct access to the historical materialists who influenced Hegel and Kant, with no mystification to delay his progress.

So, by the time he came to write Das Kapital, as I have shown, he had abandoned this mystical bumbler, and returned to those earlier theorists -- which he then put on a fully scientific basis.


Historical Materialism as I understand it is Marx's attempt to understand why things never turn out in history the way the actors intended them to. The answer is because they enter into social relations such as private property or the state which get out of their hands and stand over them and restrain the capabilities of their free activity. In capitalist society private property, money and the state all stand as barriers to free human activity. When these institutions are negated and replaced with conscious planning humans become free and no longer enslaved to forces outside their own control.

Indeed, and you will note how clear your explanation is without the use of Hegelian gobbledygook -- except you throw in 'negated' at the end for no good reason.


Sure, the whole scottish thing comes into it, as at each stage of social development toward communism when human activity becomes really free their is conflict between classes and each class is limited in it's viewpoint by it's position in the social relations of production. Only those classes whose viewpoint expresses a general interest can become the new ruling class of each epoch. However Marx's analysis starts from a completely different point to this purely sociological analysis which is what leads Marx to entirely different

Agreed, but then, why do we need Hegel, upside down or the 'right way up'?

[Rosa Lichtenstein]

MilkManofHumanKindness:


Considering the importance that Dialectical Materialism offers as a Metaphysical framework, what exactly is the alternative?

1) Why do we need a 'metaphysical framework'?

2) As we have arged all through this thread, the alternative is a scientific theory called 'Historical Materialism' (providing the Hegelian gobbledygook has been excised).

[Rosa Lichtenstein]

BAM:


By the way, I find "historical materialism" itself to be a misleading phrase, and one that Marx never used. True, it probably stems from the "Materialist Conception of History" but it isn't useful because it suggests a supra-historical theory that seeks to explain everything as a result of blind causal mechanisms, "base-superstructure", etc. Even if that's not what you yourself believe, that is how it has traditionally been conceived by the post-Marx Marxists.

Sure, but that doesn't stop us calling it this.

And there is no need for it to become "a supra-historical theory that seeks to explain everything as a result of blind causal mechanisms", since, in order to be both scientific and true, it will have to incorporate a class analysis and thus human action.

[S.Artesian]

Rosa :

"Well is it or is it not true that Marx did most of the work for us, and that subsequent Marxists have largely filled in the gaps?"

No, it's not true that Marx "did most of the work for us," since the work is about the immanent critique of capitalism that leads to its overthrow. No overthrow, therefore most of the "work" remains to be done. Historical materialism being, according, to your own admission, the revolutionary kernel of the whole deal.

No its' not true that subsequent Marxists filled in the gaps. What subsequent Marxists did you have in mind? Those Marxists who, announcing their adherence to the "religion" of dialectical materialism have participated, unwittingly or not, in "spreading the poison of Hegel's dialectic" into the working class?

No, most of the work has not been done, most of gaps have not been filled in. The "work" is practical, not linguistic. The work is the overthrow of the bourgeoisie, not the analysis of select paragraphs of the preface to the 2nd edition.

Anyway, about those two questions.....

[MilkmanofHumanKindness]

MilkManofHumanKindness:



1) Why do we need a 'metaphysical framework'?

2) As we have arged all through this thread, the alternative is a scientific theory called 'Historical Materialism' (providing the Hegelian gobbledygook has been excised).

1. Metaphysics shape our understanding and actions towards reality.

Alan Woods, "History of Philosophy: Why We Need It"

Those who stubbornly maintain that they have no philosophy are mistaken. Nature abhors a vacuum, it is said. Those who lack a coherently worked-out philosophical standpoint will inevitably reflect the ideas and prejudices of the society and the milieu in which they live. That means, in the given context, that their heads will be full of the ideas they imbibe from the newspapers, television, pulpit and schoolroom, which faithfully reflect the interests and morality of existing capitalist society.


2. Which is, undeniably, an excellent Sociological and Historical framework, but alas, fails to provide us with Philosophy and a Metaphysical framework.

[Rosa Lichtenstein]

S Artesian:


Rosa :

"Well is it or is it not true that Marx did most of the work for us, and that subsequent Marxists have largely filled in the gaps?"

No, it's not true that Marx "did most of the work for us," since the work is about the immanent critique of capitalism that leads to its overthrow. No overthrow, therefore most of the "work" remains to be done. Historical materialism being, according, to your own admission, the revolutionary kernel of the whole deal.

No its' not true that subsequent Marxists filled in the gaps. What subsequent Marxists did you have in mind? Those Marxists who, announcing their adherence to the "religion" of dialectical materialism have participated, unwittingly or not, in "spreading the poison of Hegel's dialectic" into the working class?

No, most of the work has not been done, most of gaps have not been filled in. The "work" is practical, not linguistic. The work is the overthrow of the bourgeoisie, not the analysis of select paragraphs of the preface to the 2nd edition.

Thanks for a straight answer for a change.


Anyway, about those two questions.....

As I said, it's far more important to halt the flow of Heglian poison into Marxism.

The class stuggle will proceed quite nicely even if we do not yet understand the inner working of capitalism.

Marxist parties will not however run smoothly if they remain in thrall to dialectics, which, of course, means that our intervention in the class war will continue to falter.

[Rosa Lichtenstein]

MilkmanofHumanKindness:


1. Metaphysics shape our understanding and actions towards reality.

Alan Woods, "History of Philosophy: Why We Need It"

Well, this is an awful piece of history. I corresponded with Alan about it six years ago and pointed out to him the many errors it contained, and enjoined him to correct them. As yet, he has failed to do so.


Those who stubbornly maintain that they have no philosophy are mistaken. Nature abhors a vacuum, it is said. Those who lack a coherently worked-out philosophical standpoint will inevitably reflect the ideas and prejudices of the society and the milieu in which they live. That means, in the given context, that their heads will be full of the ideas they imbibe from the newspapers, television, pulpit and schoolroom, which faithfully reflect the interests and morality of existing capitalist society.

This is a nice piece of dogmatism for which he offers no proof.

Here is what I have posted at RevLeft on metaphysics (and why we do not need any):


Consider a typical philosophical thesis:

M1: To be is to be perceived.

Contrast this with a typical empirical proposition:

M2: Tony Blair owns a copy of Das Kapital

The seemingly profound nature of theses like M1 is linked to rather more mundane features of the language in which they are expressed: that is, they are connected with the fact that the main verb they use is almost invariably in the indicative mood.

[Sometimes, the latter is beefed-up with subjunctive and/or modal qualifying terms (such as 'must', 'necessary', etc. -- which, incidentally, helps create even more of a false impression.]

Now, this apparently superficial grammatical facade hides a deeper logical form -- several in fact. This is something which only becomes plain when such sentences are examined more closely.

As noted above, expressions like these look as if they reveal deep truths about reality since they certainly resemble empirical propositions (i.e., propositions about matters of fact). In the event, they turn out to be nothing at all like them.

To see this, consider again an ordinary empirical proposition:

T1: Tony Blair owns a copy of Das Kapital.

Compare this with these similar-looking indicative sentences:

T2: Time is a relation between events.

T3: Motion is inseparable from matter.

In order to understand T1, it is not necessary to know whether it is true or not.

However, the comprehension of T2 and T3 goes hand-in-hand with knowing either or both are true (or, conversely, knowing either or both are false). The truth of T2 and T3 thus follows from the meaning of certain words (or from certain definitions -- i.e., from yet more words).



This now intimately links the truth status of T2 and T3 with [I]meaning, but not with material confirmation/facts, and hence not with a confrontation with reality. Their truth-status is independent of and anterior to the evidence (even if there were any!).

In contrast, understanding T1 is independent its confirmation or refutation -- indeed, it would be impossible to do either if T1 had not already been understood.

Empirical propositions are typically like this; they have to be understood first before they can be confronted with the evidence that would establish their truth-status. In contrast, metaphysical carry their truth/falsehood on their faces, as it were.

So here, we have two sorts of indicative sentences, each with a radically different 'relation' to 'reality'.

Understanding the first sort (i.e., those like T1) is independent of their truth-status, whereas their actual truth or falsehood depends on the state of the world.

With the second (i.e., those like T2 or T3), their truth or falsehood is not dependent on the state of the world, but follows solely from the meaning of the words they contain (or on those in the argument from which they were 'derived'). To understand them is ipso facto to know they are true.

Indeed, metaphysical theses (like T2 and T3) are deliberately constructed to transcend the limitations of the material world, which tactic is excused on the grounds that it allows the aspiring metaphysician to uncover "underlying essences", revealing nature's "hidden secrets". Theses like these are "necessarily true" (or "necessarily false"), and are thus held to express genuine knowledge of fundamental aspects of reality, unlike contingent propositions whose truth can alter with the wind. Traditionally, this meant that empirical propositions like T1 were considered incapable of revealing authentic knowledge. Indeed, "philosophical knowledge" (underlying absolute certainty) has always been held to be of the sort delivered by T2 or T3-type sentences: necessary, a priori, non-contingent, and generated by thought alone.

Metaphysical propositions thus masquerade as especially profound super-empirical truths which cannot fail to be true (or cannot fail to be false, as the case may be). They do this by aping the indicative mood --, but, in fact, they go way beyond this. Thus, what they say does not just happen to be this way or that, as with ordinary empirical truths -- these propositions cannot be otherwise. The world must conform to whatever they say. Indeed, this accounts for their use of modal terms (like "must", "necessary" and "inconceivable") if and when their status is questioned --, or, of course, whenever their content is being sold to us.

Conversely, if anyone were to question the truth of T1, the following response: "Tony Blair must own a copy of Das Kapital" would be highly inappropriate -- unless, perhaps, T1 itself were the conclusion of an inference, such as: "Tony Blair told me he owned a copy, so he must own one", or it was based on a direct observation statement. But even then, the truth or falsehood of T1 would depend on an interface with material reality at some point.

In the latter case, reality would be dictating to us whether what we said was true or false. We would not be dictating to nature what it must contain, or what it must be like, which is what metaphysicians have always done.

Hence, with respect to T2 and T3, things are radically different; the second option above applies, for their truth-values (true or false) can be determined independently, and in advance of the way the world happens to be. Here, the essential nature of reality can be ascertained from words alone. Such Super-Truths (or Super-Falsehoods) are derived solely from the alleged meaning of the words sentences like T2 and T3 contain (or from the 'concepts' they somehow 'express'). In that case, once understood, metaphysical propositions like T2 and T3 guarantee their own truth or their own falsehood. They are thus true a priori.

So, to understand a metaphysical thesis is to know it is true or to know it is false. That is why, to their inventors, metaphysical propositions appear to be so certain and self-evident. Questioning them seems to run against the grain of our understanding, not of our experience. Indeed, they appear to be self-evident precisely because they need no evidence to confirm their truth-status; they provide their own evidence, and testify on their own behalf. Their veracity follows from the alleged meaning of the words they contain. They, not the world, guarantee their own truth (or falsehood).

Unfortunately, this divorces such theses from material reality, since they are true or false independently of any apparent state of the world.

In that case, any thesis that can be judged true or false on conceptual grounds alone cannot feature in a materialist account of reality, only an Idealist one.

This might seem to be a somewhat dogmatic statement to make, but as we shall see, the opposite view is the one that is dogmatic, since it is based on a ruling-class view of reality (and on one whose validity is not sensitive to empirical test), which collapses into incoherence when examined closely.

The paradoxical nature metaphysical theses illustrates the ineluctable slide into non-sense that all theories undergo whenever their proponents try to undermine either the vernacular or the logical and pragmatic principles on which it is based -- those which, for example, ordinary speakers regularly use to state contingent truths or falsehoods about the world without such a fuss.

Intractable logical problems soon begin to emerge (with regard to such putatively empirical, but nonetheless metaphysical, sentences) if an attempt is made to restrict or eliminate one or other of the paired semantic possibilities associated with ordinary empirical propositions: i.e., truth and falsehood.

This occurs, for example, when an apparently empirical proposition is declared to be only true or only false (or, more pointedly, 'necessarily' the one or the other) -- as a "law of cognition", perhaps -- or, more likely, when a 'necessary' truth or falsehood is mis-identified as a particularly profound sort of empirical thesis.

As we will soon see, this tactic results in the automatic loss of both semantic options, and with that goes any sense that the original proposition might have had, rendering it incomprehensible.

This is because empirical propositions leave it open as to whether they are true or false; that is why their truth-values cannot simply be read-off from their content, why evidence is required in order to determine their semantic status, and why it is possible to understand them before their truth or falsehood is known. If that were not so, it would be impossible to ascertain their truth-status, as we have seen.

When this is not the case -- i.e., when either option (truth or falsehood) is closed-off, when propositions are said to be "necessarily true" or "necessarily false" -- evidence clearly becomes irrelevant. Thus, whereas the truth or falsehood of an empirical proposition cannot be ascertained on linguistic, conceptual or semantic grounds alone, if the truth or falsehood of a proposition is capable of being established solely on the basis of such structural factors, that proposition cannot be empirical. [More on this in the next section, below.]

If, however, such propositions are still regarded (by those who propose them) as truths (or Supertruths) about the world, about its "essence", then they are plainly metaphysical.

Otherwise the truth or falsehood of such propositions would be world-sensitive, not solely meaning-, or concept-dependent. And that explains why the comprehension of metaphysical propositions appear to go hand in hand with knowing their 'truth' (or their 'falsehood') -- they are based on features of thought/language, not on the material world. This means that they can't be related to the material world or anything in it, and hence they can't be used to help change reality.

Of course, it could always be claimed that such 'essentialist' thoughts 'reflect' the world.

But, if thought 'reflects' the world, it would be possible to understand a proposition that allegedly expressed such a reflected thesis in advance of knowing whether it was true or false, otherwise confirmation in practice, or by comparing it with the world, would become an empty gesture.

And yet, if its truth can be ascertained from that proposition/'thought' itself (i.e., if it were "self-evident"), then plainly the world drops out of the picture, which just means that that 'thought'/proposition cannot be a reflection of the world, whatever else it is.

Another odd feature of metaphysical theses is worth underlining: since the truth-values of defective sentences like these are plainly not determined by the world, they have to be given a truth-value by fiat. They have to be declared "necessarily true" or "necessarily false", and this is plainly because their truth cannot be derived from the world, with which they cannot now be compared.

Or, more grandiloquently, their opposites have to be pronounced "unthinkable" by a sage-like figure -- a Philosopher of some sort.

Metaphysical decrees like this are as common as dirt in traditional thought.

Isolated theses like these have necessary truth or falsehood granted them as a gift. In that case, instead of being compared with material reality to ascertain their truth-status, they are derived solely from or compared with other related theses (or to be more honest, they are merely compared with yet more jargon) as part of a terminological gesture at 'verification'. Their bona fides are thus thoroughly Ideal and 100% bogus.

The normal cannons that determine when something is true or false (i.e., a comparison with reality) have to be set aside, and a spurious 'evidential' ceremony substituted for it -- or, if it is carried out in advance, it is performed in the head as a sort of 'thought experiment', or perhaps as part of a very hasty and superficial consideration of the 'concepts' involved.

As far as traditional Philosophy (Metaphysics) is concerned, we know this is precisely what happened as the subject developed; philosophers simply invented more and more jargon, juggled with such words and thus derived 'truths' from thought alone.

But, none of their truths can be given a sense, no matter what is done with them; in that case, they are all non-sensical.

Why that is so will be explained in the next but one section below.

[These ideas are worked out in extensive detail, and defended in depth here:

http://homepage.ntlworld.com/rosa.l/page%2012_01.htm]

This, of course, illustrates why Marx said:


The philosophers have only to dissolve their language into the ordinary language, from which it is abstracted, in order to recognise it, as the distorted language of the actual world, and to realise that neither thoughts nor language in themselves form a realm of their own, that they are only manifestations of actual life." [Marx and Engels, (1970) The German Ideology, p.118. Bold added.]

Now, there is a reason why traditional theorists attempted to derive 'truths' from thought alone. I have already summarised this reason; here it is again:


This traditional way of seeing reality 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", theorists 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 can be ascertained by thought alone, and can therefore be imposed on reality dogmatically.

And this is why all of traditional philosophy is dogmatic, and thus non-sensical. [Why that is so is explained below.]

Now the reason why this traditional approach to 'philosophical truth' has dominated 'western' (and 'eastern') thought for 2500 years was outlined by Marx, too:


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. 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 individuals composing the ruling class possess among other things consciousness, and therefore think. Insofar, therefore, as they rule as a class and determine the extent and compass of an epoch, it is self-evident that they do this in its whole range, hence among other things rule also as thinkers, as producers of ideas, and regulate the production and distribution of the ideas of their age: thus their ideas are the ruling ideas of the epoch. For instance, in an age and in a country where royal power, aristocracy, and bourgeoisie are contending for mastery and where, therefore, mastery is shared, the doctrine of the separation of powers proves to be the dominant idea and is expressed as an 'eternal law.'" [Marx and Engels (1970) The German Ideology, pp.64-65.]

And we can see this form of thought still dominating the thinking of comrades here, all of whom think it perfectly ordinary/acceptable to try to derive profound theses about 'The self', or 'consciousness' from a few (jargonised/distorted) words, or from a few minutes thought.[/QUOTE]

This explains why metaphysical theses are non-sensical (apologies for some repetition):


This is an excerpt from Essay Twelve Part One at my site, and it uses a metaphysical claim of Lenin's -- about motion and matter -- to illustrate the point, but it is easily adaptable to cover what other philosophers have opined:

An empirical proposition derives its sense from the truth possibilities it appears to hold open (which options will later be decided upon one way or the other by a confrontation with the material world). That is why the actual truth-value of, say, T1 (or its contradictory, T2) does not need to be known before it is understood, but it is also why evidence is relevant to establishing that truth-value.

T1: Tony Blair owns a copy of Das Kapital.

T2: Tony Blair does not own a copy of Das Kapital.

All that is required here is some grasp of the possibilities that both of these hold open. T1 and T2 thus both have the same content, and are both made true or false by the same situation obtaining or not.

It is also why it is easy to imagine T1 as true even when it is false, or false when it is true. In general, comprehension of empirical propositions involves an understanding of the conditions under which they would/could be true or false; as is well-known, these are otherwise called their truth-conditions. That, of course, allows anyone so minded to confirm their actual truth status by comparison with the world, since they would in that case know what to look for/expect.

As we saw earlier, these non-negotiable facts about language underpin the Marxist emphasis on the social -- and hence the communal and communicational -- nature of discourse, but they fly in the face of metaphysical/representational theories, which emphasise the opposite: that to understand a proposition goes hand-in-hand with knowing it is true (or knowing it is false) -- by-passing the confirmation/disconfirmation stage (thus reducing the usual 'truth-conditions' to only one option).

However, there are other serious problems this approach to language faces over and above the fact it would make knowledge un-communicable.

Intractable logical problems soon begin to emerge (with regard to such putatively empirical, but nonetheless metaphysical, sentences) if an attempt is made to restrict or eliminate one or other of the paired semantic possibilities associated with ordinary empirical propositions: i.e., truth and falsehood.

This occurs, for example, when an apparently empirical proposition is declared to be only true or only false (or, more pointedly, 'necessarily' the one or the other) -- as a "law of cognition", perhaps -- or, more likely, when a 'necessary' truth or falsehood is mis-identified as a particularly profound sort of empirical thesis.

As we will soon see, this tactic results in the automatic loss of both semantic options, and with that goes any sense that the original proposition might have had, rendering it incomprehensible.

This is because empirical propositions leave it open as to whether they are true or false; that is why their truth-values cannot simply be read-off from their content, why evidence is required in order to determine their semantic status, and why it is possible to understand them before their truth or falsehood is known. If that were not so, it would be impossible to ascertain their truth-status, as we have seen.

When this is not the case -- i.e., when either option (truth or falsehood) is closed-off, when propositions are said to be "necessarily true" or "necessarily false" -- evidence clearly becomes irrelevant. Thus, whereas the truth or falsehood of an empirical proposition cannot be ascertained on linguistic, conceptual or syntactic grounds alone, if the truth or falsehood of a proposition is capable of being established solely on the basis of such structural factors, that proposition cannot be empirical.

If, however, such propositions are still regarded (by those who propose them) as truths (or Supertruths) about the world, about its "essence", then they are plainly metaphysical.

Otherwise the truth or falsehood of such propositions would be world-sensitive, not solely meaning- or concept-dependent. And that explains why the comprehension of a metaphysical proposition appears to go hand in hand with knowing its 'truth' (or its 'falsehood') -- it is based on features of thought/language alone, and not on the material world.

Of course, it could always be claimed that such 'essentialist' thoughts 'reflect' the world, which might seem (to some) to nullify the above comments.

But, if thought 'reflects' the world, it would be possible to understand a proposition that allegedly expressed such a reflected thesis in advance of knowing whether it was true or false, otherwise confirmation in practice, or by comparing it with the world, would become an empty gesture.

And yet, on the other hand if its truth could be ascertained from that proposition/'thought' itself (i.e., if it were "self-evident"), then plainly the world drops out of the picture, which just means that that 'thought'/proposition cannot be a reflection of the world, whatever else it is.

Furthermore, and worse, if a proposition is purported to be empirical, but which can only be false (as seems to be the case with, say, T3, below, according to Lenin) then, as we will see, paradox must ensue.

Consider the following sentences, the first of which Lenin would presumably have declared necessarily false (if not "unthinkable"):

T3: Motion sometimes occurs without matter.

T4: Motion without matter is unthinkable.

Unfortunately for Lenin, in order to declare T3 necessarily (and always) false, the possibility of its truth must first be entertained (as we saw). Thus, if the truth of T3 is to be permanently excluded by holding it as necessarily false, then whatever would make it true has to be ruled out conclusively. But, anyone doing that would have to know what T3 rules in so that he/she could comprehend what it is that is being disqualified by its rejection as always and necessarily false. And yet, this is precisely what cannot be done if what T3 itself says is permanently ruled out on semantic/conceptual grounds.

Consequently, if a proposition like T3 is necessarily false this charade (i.e., the permanent exclusion of its truth) cannot take place -- since it would be impossible to say (or to think) what could count as making T3 true. Indeed, Lenin himself had to declare it "unthinkable" (in T4).

However, because the truth of the original proposition (T4) cannot even be conceived, Lenin was thus in no position to say what was excluded by its rejection.

Unfortunately, this prevents any account being given of what would make T3 false, let alone 'necessarily' false. Given this twist, paradoxically, T3 would now be necessarily false if and only if it was not capable of being thought of as necessarily false!

That is: T3 could be thought of as necessarily false if and only if what would make it true could at least be entertained just in order to rule it out as necessarily false. But, according to Lenin, the conditions that would make T3 true cannot even be conceived, so this train of thought cannot be joined at any point. And, if the truth of T3 -- or the conditions under which it would be true -- cannot be conceived, then neither can its falsehood, for we would then not know what was being ruled out.

In that case, the negation of T3 can neither be accepted nor rejected by anyone, for no one would know what its content committed them to so that it could be either countenanced or repudiated. Hence, T3 would lose any sense it had, since it could not under any circumstances be either true or false.

This is in fact just another consequence of saying that an empirical proposition and its negation have the same content. It is also connected with the non-sensicality of all metaphysical 'propositions', for their negations do not have the same content. Indeed, because their negations do not picture anything that could be the case in any possible world, they have no content at all. That, of course, evacuates the content of the original non-negated proposition.

As we can now see, the radical misuse of language governing the formation of what look like empirical propositions (such as T3, or T4):

T4: Motion without matter is unthinkable.

T3: Motion sometimes occurs without matter.

T5: Motion never occurs without matter.

involves an implicit reference to the sorts of conditions that that underlie their normal employment/reception. Hence, when such sentences are entertained, a pretence (often genuine) has to be maintained that they actually mean something, that they are capable of being understood. This is done even if certain restrictions are later placed on their further processing, as in T4. In that case, a pretence has to be that we understand what might make such propositions true, and their 'negations' false, so that those like T30 can be declared 'necessarily' false or "unthinkable".

But, this entire exercise is an empty charade, for no content can be given to propositions like T3 (and thus to T4, nor in fact to any metaphysical 'proposition').

With respect to motionless matter, even Lenin had to admit that!

Indeed, he it was who told us this 'idea' was "unthinkable".

More details here:

http://anti-dialectics.co.uk/page%2012_01.htm


2. Which is, undeniably, an excellent Sociological and Historical framework, but alas, fails to provide us with Philosophy and a Metaphysical framework

And a good job too!

[S.Artesian]

S Artesian:

Thanks for a straight answer for a change.

This is hilarious, and pathetic. Straight answers have been given for everything.

You, however, have not answered the two questions, which themselves contain the fundamental answer to "moving on."




As I said, it's far more important to halt the flow of Heglian poison into Marxism.

The class stuggle will proceed quite nicely even if we do not yet understand the inner working of capitalism.

Marxist parties will not however run smoothly if they remain in thrall to dialectics, which, of course, means that our intervention in the class war will continue to falter.

And idealism at work.... and it's alienated labor. "Our intervention" in the class war is not determined by our positions on Hegel. To make that argument puts you in the position of Tribune's pretend dialectician preaching philosophy to his pretend Palestinians, but from, of course, the opposite/identical "philosophical" perspective. Which is why it's important to "move on." Rather than swearing loyalty to historical materialism because it is so easy to do that since "most of it's already been done" for you, the task is exactly that of making the transition that is inherent in the answers to the questions you refuse to answer.

You can posture all you want about "jargon," but if the jargon's a waste of time, with no material consequences, then so is your posturing.

If you think the problem with Marxist parties is that they are infused with, entranced by Hegelian jargon, then you don't know spit about historical materialism.

You think the class struggle will proceed quite nicely without understanding the inner workings of capitalism. First, I'll take that as an admission that you don't understand the inner workings of capitalism. Word. and no surprise. Thanks for giving a straight answer for a change.

And secondly.... really? Look around, exactly how are things proceeding so far, comrade? Doing well are you across the pond, are you? ... because we're doing like shit here in the US, and the one thing we can't accuse US Marxists of is being overcome with emotion and rapture over Hegel... of going around spouting pretend dialectics to pretend mates on pretend loading docks.

How is that class struggle going for you so far? How about all that third world mumbo-jumbo about super-profits, labor aristocracy, bribing of the working class, "left-wing" nationalism, dependency theory.... all that junk which "fills the gaps" in actual analysis of capitalism? Moving things along quite nicely for you over there, Rosa?

[S.Artesian]

RL posted:


Quote:
However I think it's a mistake to simply regard historical materialism as the method of the scottish economists but with "revolutionary intent" or with "revolutionary flavour" added. Whereas they start from the standpoint of political economy, Marx begins his enquiry from free human activity.


RL: No one is arguing that, certainly not I. What I have argued is that Hegel considerably slowed down Marx's scientific development. Had Hegel done us all a favour and died of Cholera forty years before he did, Marx would have had direct access to the historical materialists who influenced Hegel and Kant, with no mystification to delay his progress.
_________________


Yes, someone is arguing that. Chris argued that. He also stated that Marx endorsed the method of the "English School" as his, Marx's.

The key to the remarks on The German Ideology is not, or not just, that the Scottish or the English or the French have attempted to provide an actual material history of commerce and industry, but that they do so "one-sidedly," which while being a great advance on the Germans, is only an advance in the sense, and exactly to the degree, that English and French capitalism is an advance on the lagging development of capitalism in Germany.

Marx and Engels write:" even if they have conceived the relation of this fact with so-called history only in an extremely one-sided fashion, particularly as long as they remained in the toils of political ideology, have nevertheless made the first attempts to give the writing of history a materialistic basis by being the first to write histories of civil society, of commerce and industry"

Unlike the methodology of the English, and you Rosa, it is the totality of Marx's and Engels' evaluation of the English and the French-- first attempts, one-sided, circumscribed and impaired by political ideology-- that makes up the critical methodology of historical materialism.

You don't seem to grasp that totality, one more bit of evidence that you understand neither the inner workings of capital, nor the inner workings of Capital.

You can cherry-pick all you want from Marx's writings, but such cherry-picking serves only to prove you don't understand the whole of Marx's critique.

At the end of his chapter on Adam Smith in TSV, Marx writes: "Adam Smith's contradictions are of significance because they contain problems which it is true he does not solve, but which he reveals by contradicting himself. His correct instinct in this connection is best shown by the fact that his successors take opposing stands based on one aspect of his teaching or the other."

And what is the basis for those contradictions, those deep insights of Smith's that make his irresolute and uncertain? It is the same basis for the political ideology that so circumscribes the methodology and best efforts of the English and French materialists:

"he [Smith] does not perceive how this contradictions arises, through labor-power itself becoming a commodity, and that in the case of this specific commodity [labor-power] its use value......is precisely the energy which creates exchange value."

That perception and/or lack thereof is itself historical; is class determined. To make that breakthrough, that realization means acknowledging that capitalism is not a natural, inevitable, or eternal formation, but based on a specific organization of social labor which organization requires, and achieves, the opposition of labor to the conditions of labor. This sets the stage, and the direction, for the overthrow and abolition of capital. The so-called historical materialism of the English, the Scottish, the French is ultimately, in its one-sidedness, ahistorical. One-sided in its empiricism, ideological in its a-historicity.

[Rosa Lichtenstein]

S Artesian:


This is hilarious, and pathetic. Straight answers have been given for everything.

For some things, but not all. For example, you ignored this:


1) Unpublished remarks cannot out-weigh or countermand published sources. We have a summary of the 'dialectic method', which Marx saw fit to publish, and endorse as 'his method', which contains not one shred of Hegel.

2) In stark contrast, you can't refer to or quote a single published source, contemporaneous with or subsequent to Das Kapital, that supports the traditional view you hold.

and several times:


Well, as I have pointed out to you now over twenty times, this flies in the face of what Marx actually said in his most important published book. And I added the following earlier this evening (which you have once again chosen to ignore):


We have been over this dozens of times; here it is again (may I suggest that you respond to what I have to say, or drop the issue?):

1) Unpublished remarks cannot out-weigh or countermand published sources. We have a summary of the 'dialectic method', which Marx saw fit to publish, and endorse as 'his method', which contains not one shred of Hegel.

2) In stark contrast, you can't refer to or quote a single published source, contemporaneous with or subsequent to Das Kapital, that supports the traditional view you hold.

to give you just two of that places I had to remind you.

And this:


And Marx is right here, not wrong, as you assert that I have asserted, since this does not prevent Hegel being the first, as I have told you before, but you just ignore what you do not like to see, and then you perseverate over the same tedious points. Here it is again:


Indeed, this does not prevent him from being the first, since Hegel did not do it all.

What prevents Hegel being the first to do this is, as I said, the fact that he did not do it at all. But, what he did do was mystify a process that Aristotle had first discovered, and which was put in a more scientific form by Smith, Ferguson, Millar, Robertson, Hume, Stewart and Kant, and, of course, Marx himself.

You need to address what I actually say, not what you would like me to have said.

And this:




And this in turn is exactly why I think you and Rosa are idealists, classic idealists, in conflating "philosophy" with history, and confusing description with demonstration [with Rosa providing the max in confusion by repeatedly citing Marx citing the Russian reviewer's description as the description of Marx's dialectic-- which is to say it is a presentation, rather than demonstration of the dynamic of capitalist accumulation, and the impairment of accumulation.

In fact, I go out of my way to emphasise that philosophy is a load of hot air, so how can I possibly conflate '"philosophy" with history'?

But, and once more, you prefer allegation to proof or evidence. Where do I 'conflate' these, and where do I confuse "description with demonstration"?

Ah, but you then refer us to the following as 'proof':


with Rosa providing the max in confusion by repeatedly citing Marx citing the Russian reviewer's description as the description of Marx's dialectic-- which is to say it is a presentation, rather than demonstration of the dynamic of capitalist accumulation, and the impairment of accumulation

But, Marx (not I) published it, and it is the only published summary of 'his method', 'the dialectic method', that Marx endorsed.

If you can find a better and more comprehensive presentation of it (or any at all!), in a published source contemporaneous with or subsequent to Das Kapital, as I have said several times, I will recant.

But you have repeated failed to do so -- since you can't.

But, even if I am wrong, how does this show I am an idealist? That is, as opposed to just being wrong.

But there are many others.


You, however, have not answered the two questions, which themselves contain the fundamental answer to "moving on."

1) They are off-topic in this thread.

2) And I did answer them, but not in the way you expected, or wanted. Here's my answer:


As I said, it's far more important to halt the flow of Hegelian poison into Marxism.

The class struggle will proceed quite nicely even if we do not yet understand the inner working of capitalism.

Marxist parties will not however run smoothly if they remain in thrall to dialectics, which, of course, means that our intervention in the class war will continue to falter.

In stark contrast, you just flat out ignored the examples I listed above.


And idealism at work.... and it's alienated labor. "Our intervention" in the class war is not determined by our positions on Hegel. To make that argument puts you in the position of Tribune's pretend dialectician preaching philosophy to his pretend Palestinians, but from, of course, the opposite/identical "philosophical" perspective. Which is why it's important to "move on." Rather than swearing loyalty to historical materialism because it is so easy to do that since "most of it's already been done" for you, the task is exactly that of making the transition that is inherent in the answers to the questions you refuse to answer.

In fact, as I have shown, this Hegelian infection has made a bad situation worse. Do I have to repeat what I have posted several times already, just for you to ignore it yet again?


You can posture all you want about "jargon," but if the jargon's a waste of time, with no material consequences, then so is your posturing.

Jargon that neither you nor any other 'dialecticians' can explain -- which is, of course, why the traditional view you espouse will never be scientific, and thus cannot be used to change society in the direction of socialism.

Which in turn is part of the reason why Dialectical Marxism is almost synonymous with long-term failure.


If you think the problem with Marxist parties is that they are infused with, entranced by Hegelian jargon, then you don't know spit about historical materialism.

Where have I said this: "the problem with Marxist parties is that they are infused with, entranced by Hegelian jargon".

Once more, you prefer to paraphrase me, and erroneously, rather than quote me.

Which is, as I have pointed out to you since you arrived here, a fault you seem determined to repeat, over and over.

Once more: shall I do the same to you?


You think the class struggle will proceed quite nicely without understanding the inner workings of capitalism. First, I'll take that as an admission that you don't understand the inner workings of capitalism. Word. and no surprise. Thanks for giving a straight answer for a change.

Indeed it will.

It has done quite nicely so up to now, and we do not, according to you, yet understand even Marx's economics.

Or do you think the class war will halt until you lot come up with the answer to your 'questions'? Will workers the world over put off plans to strike, waiting for you to understand, say, the relative form of value just a little bit better? Will bosses stop sacking workers, holding off until you finally plug the gaps you allege have been left in Marx's theory?

If you do, then it's you my confused friend, who doesn't "know spit about historical materialism".

On the other hand, if you do not, then I was right.


And secondly.... really? Look around, exactly how are things proceeding so far, comrade? Doing well are you across the pond, are you? ... because we're doing like shit here in the US, and the one thing we can't accuse US Marxists of is being overcome with emotion and rapture over Hegel... of going around spouting pretend dialectics to pretend mates on pretend loading docks.

I fail to see the relevance of this. I didn't specifically pick out the USA in my comments. Dialectical Marxism is doing little the world over. Workers in Asia, Europe, America, Africa..., are not, I think you'll find, waiting with baited breath for you lot to finally sort your 'theory' out, and neither are the bosses there. in fact, they could care less about you lot, that is if they even know you Dialectical Mystics exist. To compound matters, Dialectical Mystics in such places are doing very little (certainly far less than in the years between say 1880 and 1940), and, seemingly less and less each year, content to 'theorise' and fragment even more as the class war grinds on without them.


How is that class struggle going for you so far? How about all that third world mumbo-jumbo about super-profits, labor aristocracy, bribing of the working class, "left-wing" nationalism, dependency theory.... all that junk which "fills the gaps" in actual analysis of capitalism? Moving things along quite nicely for you over there, Rosa?

No, not well at all. But, then this hasn't been helped by you serial screw-ups with that mystical 'theory' of yours to mess with your heads -- which is used to 'excuse' substitutionism, anti-Marxism tactics and strategies, to 'rationalise' the lack of democracy in the party, to argue for one thing one day, and its direct opposite the next, to prove that the former USSR is a socialist state, and to disprove it, to prove that those other guys do not 'understand' dialectics, while they do the same in return, all using the same 'theory', and so on....

And this is because this 'theory' of yours can be used to prove almost anything you like and its opposite, in the next breath.

No wonder then, given its mystical origin, it has presided over 130+ years of almost total failure.

Given your continued infatuation with it, one would be forgiven for thinking it was the exact opposite: a ringing success.

[BAM]

Except, as we now know (see my earlier posts in this thread), by the time he came to write Das Kapital, Marx had abandoned Hegel in his entirety.

He "abandoned" Hegel in 1843, with his vicious critique of the Philosophy of Right, when he wrote that Hegel was mystified. Hegel's dialectic is the dialectic of capital. Again in 1844 he subjects Hegel to a critique and then again in the 1847 Poverty of Philosophy.

But of course, Marx's sense of the word critique doesn't mean simply outright rejection, but showing the inverted truth that, say, philosophy or political economy contain. Do you think that that is wrong? Do you think that Marx's concept of critique is about something else?

As I wrote in my message:


Of course, Marx's method is non-Hegelian. [emph added] You cannot separate Hegel's method - his dialectic - from his system - the political philosophy. Marx knew that clearly as it is the basis of his critique of Hegel in the 1843 Critique and the 1844 Manuscripts. For Hegel all movement is contradictory and this is located within the logic of the object itself, whereas for Marx, the contradiction is at the level of the totality of capitalist society, in capital itself.

Note that Marx is not simply using Hegel as a foil, or just copying for the sake of it. If you think that you are missing Marx's sense of critique, which is not merely to show that x is wrong, but to reveal the inverted truth they contain. Thus with his critiques of British political economy and French socialism, so with Hegel's dialectic.

I am not saying that Marx is still being an Hegelian in Capital. He stopped being an Hegelian in 1843! I do however think that he had Hegel in mind for a significant part of Capital. While there is no direct critique of Hegel's Logic going on in Capital, there is an implicit critique.

See this from my earlier post:


The whole movement of Capital Vol I to Vol III is the movement from essence to appearance, which is why Marx closes Vol III with the discussion of the Trinity Formula and The Illusions Created by Competition - ie with surface appearance.

At the level of Volume I, where Marx is looking at capital-in-general, there's an easily discernible link to Hegel's universality of the Notion. Isn't it funny how Marx ends up at the end of Vol I by saying that, with the accumulation of capital, the presuppositions of capital presuppose capital itself - that is, capital is a logically self-mediating and self-determing systematic whole (the Notion). It is a totality of self-expanding objectified labour.

Marx is not simply copying Hegel's dialectic, however. The difference is that Hegel's Notion is self-sustaining. It has to be, as it is basically God. But for Marx, this totality is not self-sustaining. It's deranged, mad, crazy, "verruckt". The real barrier to this self-expanding totality ,capital, is the capital itself.

[Rosa Lichtenstein]

S Artesian (quotes repaired):


RL posted:



However I think it's a mistake to simply regard historical materialism as the method of the scottish economists but with "revolutionary intent" or with "revolutionary flavour" added. Whereas they start from the standpoint of political economy, Marx begins his enquiry from free human activity.

RL: No one is arguing that, certainly not I. What I have argued is that Hegel considerably slowed down Marx's scientific development. Had Hegel done us all a favour and died of Cholera forty years before he did, Marx would have had direct access to the historical materialists who influenced Hegel and Kant, with no mystification to delay his progress.
_________________

Yes, someone is arguing that. Chris argued that. He also stated that Marx endorsed the method of the "English School" as his, Marx's.

Bold added.

I suppose you think that to 'endorse' something is to allow it to dominate one's own theory, and thus for it to become one's own theory in it's entirety, eh?


The key to the remarks on The German Ideology is not, or not just, that the Scottish or the English or the French have attempted to provide an actual material history of commerce and industry, but that they do so "one-sidedly," which while being a great advance on the Germans, is only an advance in the sense, and exactly to the degree, that English and French capitalism is an advance on the lagging development of capitalism in Germany.

Indeed, but that is not all that Marx said about them, as my post above shows, For example:


Since we are dealing with the Germans, who are devoid of premises, we must begin by stating the first premise of all human existence and, therefore, of all history, the premise, namely, that men must be in a position to live in order to be able to “make history.” But life involves before everything else eating and drinking, a habitation, clothing and many other things. The first historical act is thus the production of the means to satisfy these needs, the production of material life itself. And indeed this is an historical act, a fundamental condition of all history, which today, as thousands of years ago, must daily and hourly be fulfilled merely in order to sustain human life. Even when the sensuous world is reduced to a minimum, to a stick as with Saint Bruno , it presupposes the action of producing the stick. Therefore in any interpretation of history one has first of all to observe this fundamental fact in all its significance and all its implications and to accord it its due importance. It is well known that the Germans have never done this, and they have never, therefore, had an earthly basis for history and consequently never an historian. The French and the English, even if they have conceived the relation of this fact with so-called history only in an extremely one-sided fashion, particularly as long as they remained in the toils of political ideology, have [B]nevertheless made the first attempts to give the writing of history a materialistic basis by being the first to write histories of civil society, of commerce and industry

Bold added.

In other words, they were the first genuine historical materialists. Now, I also added that Marx took their ideas (and those of Aristotle and Kant) and made them fully scientific.


Unlike the methodology of the English, and you Rosa, it is the totality of Marx's and Engels' evaluation of the English and the French-- first attempts, one-sided, circumscribed and impaired by political ideology-- that makes up the critical methodology of historical materialism.


Where have I denied this?


You don't seem to grasp that totality, one more bit of evidence that you understand neither the inner workings of capital, nor the inner workings of Capital.

But you are the one who studiously ignores the fact that Marx had excised Hegel from his thoughts when he came to write Das Kapital, not me.


You can cherry-pick all you want from Marx's writings, but such cherry-picking serves only to prove you don't understand the whole of Marx's critique.

And you can ignore Marx's unambiguous words all you like too -- for all the good it will do you.


At the end of his chapter on Adam Smith in TSV, Marx writes: "Adam Smith's contradictions are of significance because they contain problems which it is true he does not solve, but which he reveals by contradicting himself. His correct instinct in this connection is best shown by the fact that his successors take opposing stands based on one aspect of his teaching or the other."

And what is the basis for those contradictions, those deep insights of Smith's that make his irresolute and uncertain? It is the same basis for the political ideology that so circumscribes the methodology and best efforts of the English and French materialists:

"he [Smith] does not perceive how this contradictions arises, through labor-power itself becoming a commodity, and that in the case of this specific commodity [labor-power] its use value......is precisely the energy which creates exchange value."

That perception and/or lack thereof is itself historical; is class determined. To make that breakthrough, that realization means acknowledging that capitalism is not a natural, inevitable, or eternal formation, but based on a specific organization of social labor which organization requires, and achieves, the opposition of labor to the conditions of labor. This sets the stage, and the direction, for the overthrow and abolition of capital. The so-called historical materialism of the English, the Scottish, the French is ultimately, in its one-sidedness, ahistorical. One-sided in its empiricism, ideological in its a-historicity

In many ways, I agree with this (other than Marx's coquettish use of 'contradiction') --, that is why I added that Marx put their ideas on a fully scientific basis. You seem to have ignored that comment too.

[BAM]

Sure, but that doesn't stop us calling it this. And there is no need for it to become "a supra-historical theory that seeks to explain everything as a result of blind causal mechanisms", since, in order to be both scientific and true, it will have to incorporate a class analysis and thus human action.

Marx never used the phrase "historical materialism", and I don't see what it adds, except a whole lot of confusion, dead ends and plain old bad writing by "theorists" agonising over whether "historical materialism" needs to account for the "relative autonomy" of the state, whether the economy is determinant "in the last instance", etc., etc.

And by making concessions to whatever theory is in vogue that year (structuralism, post-modernism, etc.) what we are left with is usually very far from Marx's critique of political economy.

Of course you can reject all that too and still call it historical materialism, but why bother?

Marx is usually very good in his approach when it comes to categorising, so if we think we need to create a new word or phrase for something springing from his analysis that was previously lacking i would think carefully about it.

[Rosa Lichtenstein]

BAM:


He "abandoned" Hegel in 1843, with his vicious critique of the Philosophy of Right, when he wrote that Hegel was mystified. Hegel's dialectic is the dialectic of capital. Again in 1844 he subjects Hegel to a critique and then again in the 1847 Poverty of Philosophy.

But of course, Marx's sense of the word critique doesn't mean simply outright rejection, but showing the inverted truth that, say, philosophy or political economy contain. Do you think that that is wrong? Do you think that Marx's concept of critique is about something else?

But, as I said, we already know Marx had waved 'goodbye' to this mystical bumbler when he came to write Das Kapital.

Now, if you can find a flaw in my argument (repeated many times in this thread -- do you want me to repeat it again for your benefit?) please let me know.



Of course, Marx's method is non-Hegelian. [emph added] You cannot separate Hegel's method - his dialectic - from his system - the political philosophy. Marx knew that clearly as it is the basis of his critique of Hegel in the 1843 Critique and the 1844 Manuscripts. For Hegel all movement is contradictory and this is located within the logic of the object itself, whereas for Marx, the contradiction is at the level of the totality of capitalist society, in capital itself.

Note that Marx is not simply using Hegel as a foil, or just copying for the sake of it. If you think that you are missing Marx's sense of critique, which is not merely to show that x is wrong, but to reveal the inverted truth they contain. Thus with his critiques of British political economy and French socialism, so with Hegel's dialectic.

I am not saying that Marx is still being an Hegelian in Capital. He stopped being an Hegelian in 1843! I do however think that he had Hegel in mind for a significant part of Capital. While there is no direct critique of Hegel's Logic going on in Capital, there is an implicit critique.

Yes I saw that.

In fact, I go further, and argue that for Marx there is absolutley nothing in Hegel that is worth criticising, and that he totally ignores this logical incompetent in Das Kapital -- except he insultingly 'coquettes' wth Hegelian jargon here and there.

The smile on the Cheshire Cat is all that is left.

[Rosa Lichtenstein]

BAM:


Marx never used the phrase "historical materialism", and I don't see what it adds, except a whole lot of confusion, dead ends and plain old bad writing by "theorists" agonising over whether "historical materialism" needs to account for the "relative autonomy" of the state, whether the economy is determinant "in the last instance", etc., etc.

Fine, you can stop using it. I won't.


And by making concessions to whatever theory is in vogue that year (structuralism, post-modernism, etc.) what we are left with is usually very far from Marx's critique of political economy.

Of course you can reject all that too and still call it historical materialism, but why bother?

Because I think it's a form of materialism and it's historical.


Marx is usually very good in his approach when it comes to categorising, so if we think we need to create a new word or phrase for something springing from his analysis that was previously lacking i would think carefully about it.

It's what we do with the theory not what we call it that's important.

[BAM]

But, as I said, we already know Marx had waved 'goodbye' to this mystical bumbler when he came to write Das Kapital.

except of course, it is apparent he didn't:


The whole movement of Capital Vol I to Vol III is the movement from essence to appearance, which is why Marx closes Vol III with the discussion of the Trinity Formula and The Illusions Created by Competition - ie with surface appearance.

At the level of Volume I, where Marx is looking at capital-in-general, there's an easily discernible link to Hegel's universality of the Notion. Isn't it funny how Marx ends up at the end of Vol I by saying that, with the accumulation of capital, the presuppositions of capital presuppose capital itself - that is, capital is a logically self-mediating and self-determing systematic whole (the Notion). It is a totality of self-expanding objectified labour.


Now, if you can find a flaw in my argument (repeated many times in this thread -- do you want me to repeat it again for your benefit?) please let me know.

I agree with a lot of your argument, as far as it goes, but you are not accounting for Marx's critique of Hegel, how he uses Hegel to show the inverted truth his (Hegel's) philosophy, his dialectic contains. Do you agree or not agree that this is what Marx means by critique?


Yes I saw that.

In fact, I go further, and argue that for Marx there is absolutley nothing in Hegel that is worth criticising, and that he totally ignores this logical incompetent in Das Kapital -- except he insultingly 'coquettes' wth Hegelian jargon here and there.

The smile on the Cheshire Cat is all that is left.

Except, as above, I disagree. I think that there is an implicit critique of Hegel's logic running throughout the three books.

I also don't think that he is insulting towards Hegel. He criticised him very sharply, but Marx was even more contemptuous of those who simply derided Hegel.

[BAM]

BAM:

Fine, you can stop using it. I won't. Because I think it's a form of materialism and it's historical. It's what we do with the theory not what we call it that's important.

It's just a name so I am not going to get too hung up on it. I prefer critique of politcal economy.

[S.Artesian]

RL writes: "It's what we do with the theory not what we call it that's important."

That is exactly correct, and applies as much to those who call Marx's work "dialectical materialism," or argue that Marx has a dialectical theory, analysis, and critique of capitalism.

You repeatedly refer to those paragraphs in the preface/afterword to the 2nd edition [where Marx cites approvingly the words of the reviewer in the Russian publication] as proof that Marx, in his approval, has separated "his dialectic," from the dialectic of Hegel.

As I have shown, your claim is a distortion. Marx states that the reviewer is describing the dialectic. Marx even thanks the reviewer for being so generous as to refer to it as "his" [Marx's] dialectic, but Marx makes clear that the methodology is not his alone, his creation, his break with German-dialectical critique.

You ignore that explicit statement of Marx, as you ignore so much else that doesn't conform to your theory of "coquetting."

You state that [and I'm paraphrasing, but I know I have it right; just as I know my earlier paraphrases of your arguments are correct], that Marx was delayed, more or less, in elaborating his critique of capitalism by the Hegelian influence that marks his work-- up until the alleged rupture with Hegel that comes about somewhere between the Grundrisse and Capital... that Marx would have encountered the Scottish materialists, and made the proper critical assessments sooner.

Such speculation might be entertaining, but it is completely at variance with actual course of the development of Marx's critique, as in fact it is precisely through Hegel that Marx encounters the "English School," and it is due to his, Marx's, critique of Hegel's own encounter with the "English School."

Marx wrote the Critique of Hegel's Philosophy of Right when he was 25. That engagement with Hegel compels Marx to examine the actual constitution of material life; of the reproduction of the material terms of human existence; of the labor process. And without Marx's engagement of Hegel, without the critique of Hegel that he begins in 1843, continues as a sub-text in the EPM of 1844, he would not have been able to "extract the rational kernel" from...not Hegel, but Adam Smith-- that labor, abstract, general labor is the source of the value of the commodities in capitalism.

We could build monuments, Rosa, to what you don't know about the content of Marx's work, and the history of the development of that content. We could, but we don't have to do that. You have done that yourself.

[Rosa Lichtenstein]

BAM:


except of course, it is apparent he didn't:

Well, I'd like to believe you but evidence and argument tells us otherwise.

Of course, if you have read my evidence and argument, I'd like to see where you thin I go wrong.

But, you argue as follows:


The whole movement of Capital Vol I to Vol III is the movement from essence to appearance, which is why Marx closes Vol III with the discussion of the Trinity Formula and The Illusions Created by Competition - ie with surface appearance.

At the level of Volume I, where Marx is looking at capital-in-general, there's an easily discernible link to Hegel's universality of the Notion. Isn't it funny how Marx ends up at the end of Vol I by saying that, with the accumulation of capital, the presuppositions of capital presuppose capital itself - that is, capital is a logically self-mediating and self-determing systematic whole (the Notion). It is a totality of self-expanding objectified labour.

This is the traditional view of Das Kapital, which I have shown to be in serious error.

Unless, of course, you can show otherwise...

But then you add:


I agree with a lot of your argument, as far as it goes, but you are not accounting for Marx's critique of Hegel, how he uses Hegel to show the inverted truth his (Hegel's) philosophy, his dialectic contains. Do you agree or not agree that this is what Marx means by critique

I fail to see this 'critique' in Das Kapital.


He criticised him very sharply, but Marx was even more contemptuous of those who simply derided Hegel.

Which he pointedly put in the past tense.


I prefer critique of political economy.

I can live with that. :)

But I'll still call this theory 'Historical Materialism'.

[Rosa Lichtenstein]

S Artesian:


RL writes: "It's what we do with the theory not what we call it that's important."

Still not debating with me I see...


That is exactly correct, and applies as much to those who call Marx's work "dialectical materialism," or argue that Marx has a dialectical theory, analysis, and critique of capitalism.

You repeatedly refer to those paragraphs in the preface/afterword to the 2nd edition [where Marx cites approvingly the words of the reviewer in the Russian publication] as proof that Marx, in his approval, has separated "his dialectic," from the dialectic of Hegel.

Well, as I have said many times before (and this is, once again, something you keep ignoring, despite telling us that you answer everything!): if you can quote a single passage from a published source, contemporaneous with or subsequent to Das Kapital, I'll withdraw all I have alleged, and apologise profusely.

But we already know you can't -- or you would have done so by now.

So: my interpretation of Marx harmonises with what he published -- yours clashes with it.


As I have shown, your claim is a distortion. Marx states that the reviewer is describing the dialectic. Marx even thanks the reviewer for being so generous as to refer to it as "his" [Marx's] dialectic, but Marx makes clear that the methodology is not his alone, his creation, his break with German-dialectical critique.

Not from his published work, you haven't.


You ignore that explicit statement of Marx, as you ignore so much else that doesn't conform to your theory of "coquetting."

And this summary contains not one atom of Hegel, which Marx (not Rosa) tells us is 'his method', the 'dialectic method'.

So, no wonder that the very best Marx could do with this dogmatic bumbler was 'coquette' with his obscure jargon.


You state that [and I'm paraphrasing, but I know I have it right; just as I know my earlier paraphrases of your arguments are correct], that Marx was delayed, more or less, in elaborating his critique of capitalism by the Hegelian influence that marks his work-- up until the alleged rupture with Hegel that comes about somewhere between the Grundrisse and Capital... that Marx would have encountered the Scottish materialists, and made the proper critical assessments sooner.

Such speculation might be entertaining, but it is completely at variance with actual course of the development of Marx's critique, as in fact it is precisely through Hegel that Marx encounters the "English School," and it is due to his, Marx's, critique of Hegel's own encounter with the "English School."

It can't be speculation if it's based on the only summary of 'his method', 'the dialectical method', that Marx endorsed in a published work, and which has had Hegel excised.

Of course, and to repeat: if you can quote a single passage from a published source, contemporaneous with or subsequent to Das Kapital, I'll withdraw all I have alleged, and apologise profusely.

But we already know you can't -- or you would have done so by now.


Marx wrote the Critique of Hegel's Philosophy of Right when he was 25. That engagement with Hegel compels Marx to examine the actual constitution of material life; of the reproduction of the material terms of human existence; of the labor process. And without Marx's engagement of Hegel, without the critique of Hegel that he begins in 1843, continues as a sub-text in the EPM of 1844, he would not have been able to "extract the rational kernel" from...not Hegel, but Adam Smith-- that labor, abstract, general labor is the source of the value of the commodities in capitalism.

Yes, but what has this got to do with Marx's abandonment of this Hermetic idiot by the time he wrote Das Kapital?


We could build monuments, Rosa, to what you don't know about the content of Marx's work, and the history of the development of that content. We could, but we don't have to do that. You have done that yourself.

But you are the one who did not know that Marx said his 'contradictions' "mutually exclude" one another, and had to be reminded by yours truly a while back....

[BAM]

This is the traditional view of Das Kapital, which I have shown to be in serious error.

Unless, of course, you can show otherwise...

Can you show me what page on your website challenges the view that capital is a a self-mediating totality, where the presuppositions of capital do not presuppose capital itself and where capital is a not self-expanding totality of objectified labour?


I fail to see this 'critique' in Das Kapital.

It is implicit and brought out through textual analysis. For the explicit version of Marx's critique of Hegel, you have to go to the 1843/1844 critiques (or there's a nice summary part way through the Poverty of Philosophy). In any case, that's what critique means - to bring out the inverted truth - that's what Marx's "critical and revolutionary" dialectic is about.


Which he pointedly put in the past tense.

I don't take your point. He is talking about events in the past, so he uses the past tense. He does not go on to say, "and now I think it's okay to treat Hegel like a 'dead dog'."

[S.Artesian]

Of course I'm debating with you, that's why I put the "RL" at the beginning of the quote, so that others could identify the source of the statement.

And of course, you ignore the response to your absurd claim that Marx was "delayed" in engaging the English School, the Scottish materialists [the one-sided, and circumscribed by their political ideology "materialists" who become actual idealists in their descriptions of capitalism-- invisible hands and all that] by the influence of Hegel.

Such ignorance is the bed-rock on which you've built your temple of anti-dialectics.

So let's try this once again. As you put it, "Can we move on now?"

To "move on" means, as Marx demonstrates, to move beyond the criticism of Hegel and into the criticism of the material conditions and determinations of the social production of human existence.

Yes?

If yes, what is, in general, in the abstract,the determination for the social production, the material conditions of human existence?

Does capitalism have a specific manifestation of that general, abstract determination?

If yes, what is that specific manifestation?


Does that specific manifestation propel capitalist accumulation?

If so, how?

If yes, and how, does that same specific manifestation, formation, inhibit, impair, obstruct capitalist accumulation.

If yes, how?

If yes, how is it possible that the same specific manifestation can propel and impede capitalist accumulation?

I know it's just me, but I think the answers to those questions are a bit more important than spreading the gospel of anti-dialectics, because I don't think the work of Marx, of grasping the levers to actually overthrow capitalism, has been done for us.

[Rosa Lichtenstein]

BAM:


Can you show me what page on your website challenges the view that capital is a self-mediating totality, where the presuppositions of capital do not presuppose capital itself and where capital is a not self-expanding totality of objectified labour?

I heavily criticise this way of re-writing Historical Materialism here;

http://anti-dialectics.co.uk/page%2011_01.htm

http://anti-dialectics.co.uk/page%2011%2002.htm


It is implicit and brought out through textual analysis. For the explicit version of Marx's critique of Hegel, you have to go to the 1843/1844 critiques (or there's a nice summary part way through the Poverty of Philosophy). In any case, that's what critique means - to bring out the inverted truth - that's what Marx's "critical and revolutionary" dialectic is about.

And yet, Marx abandoned this way of arguing in Das Kapital.


I don't take your point. He is talking about events in the past, so he uses the past tense. He does not go on to say, "and now I think it's okay to treat Hegel like a 'dead dog'."

In fact, he said this:


"I criticised the mystificatory side of the Hegelian dialectic nearly thirty years ago, at a time when is was still the fashion. But just when I was working on the first volume of Capital, the ill-humoured, arrogant and mediocre epigones who now talk large in educated German circles began to take pleasure in treating Hegel in the same way as the good Moses Mendelssohn treated Spinoza in Lessing's time, namely as a 'dead dog'. I therefore openly avowed myself the pupil of that mighty thinker, and even, here and there, in the chapter on the theory of value, coquetted with the mode of expression peculiar to him." [Ibid., pp.102-03. Bold emphases added. Once more, I have used the punctuation found in MECW.]

He pointedly did not say, "and I'm still his pupil."

In fact, he added and endorsed a summary of 'my method', 'the dialectic method', which contained not one atom of Hegel -- no 'contradictions', no 'unity of opposites', no 'negation of the negation', no 'quantity passing over into quality'...

And the very best he could do with Hegel's obscure jargon is to 'coquette' with it.

This hardly suggests, nor does it sound like the words of a man who still held Hegel's ideas in high esteem.

[ZeroNowhere]

As I have shown, your claim is a distortion. Marx states that the reviewer is describing the dialectic. Marx even thanks the reviewer for being so generous as to refer to it as "his" [Marx's] dialectic, but Marx makes clear that the methodology is not his alone, his creation, his break with German-dialectical critique.I believe that he says:

"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?"

This does not seem to necessarily be a comment on the attribution to Marx rather than anybody else. Technically, he does not refer to it as 'my method', so I am not sure why Rosa is quoting him as saying that.

[Rosa Lichtenstein]

S Artesian:


Of course I'm debating with you, that's why I put the "RL" at the beginning of the quote, so that others could identify the source of the statement.

But, every so often, you pointedly refer to some audience you imagine you have, addressing me indirectly.


And of course, you ignore the response to your absurd claim that Marx was "delayed" in engaging the English School, the Scottish materialists [the one-sided, and circumscribed by their political ideology "materialists" who become actual idealists in their descriptions of capitalism-- invisible hands and all that] by the influence of Hegel.

I suppose you think that Marx wasting his time, pratting about with Hegel's obscure ideas, from the early 1840's to the early 1860's, only to abandon the whole sorry affair when he came to write Das Kapital (as he indicated), and thus returning to the science he found in Aristotle, Ferguson, Smith, Millar, Robertson, Hume, Stewart and Kant, did not slow him down, eh?


Such ignorance is the bed-rock on which you've built your temple of anti-dialectics.

But it is you who ignores Marx's published words, preferring fantasy to fact.


So let's try this once again. As you put it, "Can we move on now?"

Some hope - but this allows you to ignore once again the following:



1) Unpublished remarks cannot out-weigh or countermand published sources. We have a summary of the 'dialectic method', which Marx saw fit to publish, and endorse as 'his method', which contains not one shred of Hegel.

2) In stark contrast, you can't refer to or quote a single published source, contemporaneous with or subsequent to Das Kapital, that supports the traditional view you hold.

and several times:


Well, as I have pointed out to you now over twenty times, this flies in the face of what Marx actually said in his most important published book. And I added the following earlier this evening (which you have once again chosen to ignore):


We have been over this dozens of times; here it is again (may I suggest that you respond to what I have to say, or drop the issue?):

1) Unpublished remarks cannot out-weigh or countermand published sources. We have a summary of the 'dialectic method', which Marx saw fit to publish, and endorse as 'his method', which contains not one shred of Hegel.

2) In stark contrast, you can't refer to or quote a single published source, contemporaneous with or subsequent to Das Kapital, that supports the traditional view you hold.

to give you just two of that places I had to remind you.

And this:


And Marx is right here, not wrong, as you assert that I have asserted, since this does not prevent Hegel being the first, as I have told you before, but you just ignore what you do not like to see, and then you perseverate over the same tedious points. Here it is again:


Indeed, this does not prevent him from being the first, since Hegel did not do it all.

What prevents Hegel being the first to do this is, as I said, the fact that he did not do it at all. But, what he did do was mystify a process that Aristotle had first discovered, and which was put in a more scientific form by Smith, Ferguson, Millar, Robertson, Hume, Stewart and Kant, and, of course, Marx himself.

You need to address what I actually say, not what you would like me to have said.

And this:



And this in turn is exactly why I think you and Rosa are idealists, classic idealists, in conflating "philosophy" with history, and confusing description with demonstration [with Rosa providing the max in confusion by repeatedly citing Marx citing the Russian reviewer's description as the description of Marx's dialectic-- which is to say it is a presentation, rather than demonstration of the dynamic of capitalist accumulation, and the impairment of accumulation.

In fact, I go out of my way to emphasise that philosophy is a load of hot air, so how can I possibly conflate '"philosophy" with history'?

But, and once more, you prefer allegation to proof or evidence. Where do I 'conflate' these, and where do I confuse "description with demonstration"?

Ah, but you then refer us to the following as 'proof':


with Rosa providing the max in confusion by repeatedly citing Marx citing the Russian reviewer's description as the description of Marx's dialectic-- which is to say it is a presentation, rather than demonstration of the dynamic of capitalist accumulation, and the impairment of accumulation

But, Marx (not I) published it, and it is the only published summary of 'his method', 'the dialectic method', that Marx endorsed.

If you can find a better and more comprehensive presentation of it (or any at all!), in a published source contemporaneous with or subsequent to Das Kapital, as I have said several times, I will recant.

But you have repeated failed to do so -- since you can't.

But, even if I am wrong, how does this show I am an idealist? That is, as opposed to just being wrong.


To "move on" means, as Marx demonstrates, to move beyond the criticism of Hegel and into the criticism of the material conditions and determinations of the social production of human existence.

Yes?

If yes, what is, in general, in the abstract, the determination for the social production, the material conditions of human existence?

Does capitalism have a specific manifestation of that general, abstract determination?

If yes, what is that specific manifestation?


Does that specific manifestation propel capitalist accumulation?

If so, how?

If yes, and how, does that same specific manifestation, formation, inhibit, impair, obstruct capitalist accumulation.

If yes, how?

If yes, how is it possible that the same specific manifestation can propel and impede capitalist accumulation?

I know it's just me, but I think the answers to those questions are a bit more important than spreading the gospel of anti-dialectics, because I don't think the work of Marx, of grasping the levers to actually overthrow capitalism, has been done for us.

Ah, but that ignores this:


As I said, it's far more important to halt the flow of Hegelian poison into Marxism.

The class struggle will proceed quite nicely even if we do not yet understand the inner working of capitalism.

Marxist parties will not however run smoothly if they remain in thrall to dialectics, which, of course, means that our intervention in the class war will continue to falter.

[Rosa Lichtenstein]

ZeroNowhere:


I believe that he says:

"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?"

This does not seem to necessarily be a comment on the attribution to Marx rather than anybody else. Technically, he does not refer to it as 'my method', so I am not sure why Rosa is quoting him as saying that

Here's the entire passage in question:


"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.]

1) Marx first of all tells us that this reviewer is dealing with section where he (Marx) discusses "the materialistic basis of my method". So, the context is clear, this is a summary of the section dealing with Marx's method.

2) At the end he adds:


"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?"

He does not deny that this is a summary of his "method" (and given the context, we already know that this is the topic under discussion), which he most certainly would have done had it not been, but asks the rhetorical question: what else is it by "the dialectic method"?

3) Hence, I can see no other viable conclusion: Marx is here endorsing this passage as a summary of his 'method' and of that version of it which he accepts as 'the dialectic method' -- in which there is no Hegel.

So, I fail to see why you say this:


This does not seem to necessarily be a comment on the attribution to Marx rather than anybody else. Technically, he does not refer to it as 'my method', so I am not sure why Rosa is quoting him as saying that

[BAM]

BAM:I heavily criticise this way of re-writing Historical Materialism here;

http://anti-dialectics.co.uk/page%2011_01.htm

http://anti-dialectics.co.uk/page%2011%2002.htm

I thought you might point me in the direction of these essays but they aren't talking about what I am talking about. I specifically asked about the criticism of capital as self-expanding objectified labour whose only barrier to self-expansion is it (capital) itself, etc., etc., but your essay is a critique of dialectical materialism's treatment of nature as totality - something I already reject and which is beside my point - which is that Capital is also implicitly a critique of Hegel's Logic. In fact, you don't even mention the word "capital" once. The word "capitalism" crops up a few times, but again not in the context of the discussion I am having.

You only mention "labour" once, and that is to say "We do not need to labour the point". ...


And yet, Marx abandoned this way of arguing in Das Kapital.


And so Capital is not a "critique of political economy", which shows the inverted truth behind the fetishistic appearance of everyday economic activity? In that case you are going to have a very hard time explaining the whole of the three volumes of Capital where Marx does exactly that.

Indeed, if appearance and essence coincided there would be no need for science at all ...


He pointedly did not say, "and I'm still his pupil."

He doesn't need to. It's rather trivial, but I "openly avowed myself a pupil of that might thinker", Karl Marx several years ago. Does that imply that I am no longer a pupil of his? No, it means that my open avowal happened in the past, but is still ongoing. If Marx had said "I had openly avowed myself ..." that would indicate that he no longer is, but he didn't so it doesn't.


In fact, he added and endorsed a summary of 'my method', 'the dialectic method', which contained not one atom of Hegel -- no 'contradictions', no 'unity of opposites', no 'negation of the negation', no 'quantity passing over into quality'...

Of course, because Marx stopped being an Hegelian in 1843! So why would he use those terms? His dialectic is the direct opposite of Hegel's, it is "critical and revolutionary". You still need to show how Capital is not also an implicit critique of Hegel's logic.

[S.Artesian]

Rosa writes:

"I suppose you think that Marx wasting his time, pratting about with Hegel's obscure ideas, from the early 1840's to the early 1860's, only to abandon the whole sorry affair when he came to write Das Kapital (as he indicated), and thus returning to the science he found in Aristotle, Ferguson, Smith, Millar, Robertson, Hume, Stewart and Kant, did not slow him down, eh?"

Absolutely priceless. Priceless. Do you know anything about what Marx wrote OTHER than that afterword to the 2nd edition, which you so glibly distort?

What exactly did Marx write in that period-- what constitutes the prattle?

The Critique of Hegel's Philsophy of the Right, where Hegel comes up a bit short and as Marx recognizes, capitulates to the world of the concrete, of oppression?

The EPM of 1844, where Marx engages Smith, and begins his examinations of the social being, of the human labor process?

The articles in the Neue Rheinische Zeitung?

The German Ideology?

The Manifesto?

The Poverty of Philosophy?

Wage Labor and Capital?

The Class Struggles in France?

The 18th Brumaire....?

The articles on revolution in Spain?

A Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy

On British colonialism?

The Grundrisse?

His economic manuscripts?

His work in founding, developing, speaking for the IMWA?
On the US Civil War?


Like I said, you've built a monument to your ignorance of Marxism with every sentence you write, with every web page you produce.

And Marx found no more science in Ferguson, Steuart, Smith, than he did in Hegel.

And as for this:

"Ah, but that ignores this:

Quote:
" As I said, it's far more important to halt the flow of Hegelian poison into Marxism.

The class struggle will proceed quite nicely even if we do not yet understand the inner working of capitalism.

Marxist parties will not however run smoothly if they remain in thrall to dialectics, which, of course, means that our intervention in the class war will continue to falter."


I didn't ignore it. I refuted it. Your arguments are impoverished idealism.

[Zanthorus]

I'd like to see the evidence that the Scottish School did think the following

How about:


The division of labour, from which so many advantages are derived, is not originally the effect of any human wisdom, which foresees and intends that general opulence to which it gives occasion. It is the necessary, though very slow and gradual consequence of a certain propensity in human nature which has in view no such extensive utility; the propensity to truck, barter, and exchange one thing for another.

Or more revealingly:


Even in that early state to which Adam Smith refers, some capital, though possibly made and accumulated by the hunter himself, would be necessary to enable him to kill his game. Without some weapon, neither the beaver nor the deer could be destroyed, and therefore the value of these animals would be regulated, not solely by the time and labour necessary to their destruction, but also by the time and labour necessary for providing the hunter's capital, the weapon, by the aid of which their destruction was effected.

So Ricardo uses "capital" to refer to all types of means of production. He is also ascribing labour values to products in a tribal society without commodity production.

Thanks for the reccomendations on the links between Marx, Aristotle, Ferguson, Kant etc. But I don't see what this does to dispel the fact that the scottish historical materialists were blinded by capitalist ideology and ascribed the forms of capitalism to non-capitalist forms of society.


No one is arguing that, certainly not I. What I have argued is that Hegel considerably slowed down Marx's scientific development. Had Hegel done us all a favour and died of Cholera forty years before he did, Marx would have had direct access to the historical materialists who influenced Hegel and Kant, with no mystification to delay his progress.

So, by the time he came to write Das Kapital, as I have shown, he had abandoned this mystical bumbler, and returned to those earlier theorists -- which he then put on a fully scientific basis.

Indeed, and you will note how clear your explanation is without the use of Hegelian gobbledygook -- except you throw in 'negated' at the end for no good reason.

Agreed, but then, why do we need Hegel, upside down or the 'right way up'?

I'm not arguing that we need Hegel "upside down or the right way up", in fact I agree with you that dialectical materialism is based on ruling class ideology or as Marx himself tells us, takes it's standpoint from civil society.

I agree basically with what BAM has argued though that Hegel provided a foil for Marx's own work. Marx stands up pretty well on his own without Hegel of course. But if you want a really deep understanding of what Marx was trying to get across and where it fits within the history of ideas you need at least some knowledge of what Hegel was doing.

[S.Artesian]

Or how about this from Marx's critique of Adam Smith in TSV, part 1:

"But, Adam continues:

As soon as stock has accumulated in the hands of particular persons, some of them will naturally employ it in setting to work industrious people, whom they supply with materials and subsistence, in order to make a profit by the sale of their work, or by what their labour adds to the value of the materials"

Marx responds:

"Stop, before we follow the passage further. In the first place whence come the "industrious people" who possess neither means of subsistence nor materials of labour--people who are hanging in mid-air. If we strip Smith's statement of its naive phrasing, it means nothing more than: capitalist production begins from the moment when conditions of labour belong to one class, and another class has at its disposal only labour-power. This separation of labour from the conditions of labour is the precondition of capitalist production."

Bears repeating, don't you think? Particularly since it is the answer to the questions Rosa refuses to answer.

Marx here clearly identifies that the "science" of Adam Smith is impaired, circumscribed, non-scientific in that it presupposes what must be analyzed; in that it takes for granted, as "naturally" occurring, a precise, specific, historical relationship.

Marx is more than aware of this shortcoming of Smith and the English School/Scottish materialists, so much more aware that he can actually extract the rational kernel from Smith's confusion.

This presumption, this presupposing of the historical conditions that need to analyzed, this ignoring of the precise social conditions that create both the origin of capitalist accumulation and the limit to the accumulation is taken over and assumed by so many "neo-Smithian" Marxists in their analyses of imperialism where they assume capitalism would spontaneously develop and develop into advanced capitalism if it weren't for the influence of..... advanced capitalism.

Anyway, we could make monuments about what Rosa doesn't know about Marx, and we already have monuments to what many Marxists don't know about capitalism-- those monuments being tombstones.

[Rosa Lichtenstein]

BAM:


I thought you might point me in the direction of these essays but they aren't talking about what I am talking about. I specifically asked about the criticism of capital as self-expanding objectified labour whose only barrier to self-expansion is it (capital) itself, etc., etc., but your essay is a critique of dialectical materialism's treatment of nature as totality - something I already reject and which is beside my point - which is that Capital is also implicitly a critique of Hegel's Logic. In fact, you don't even mention the word "capital" once. The word "capitalism" crops up a few times, but again not in the context of the discussion I am having.

Well, since I reject the view that Das Kapital is as you say, of course I do not discuss it. Perhaps you can tell us where Marx says this in Das Kapital:


capital as self-expanding objectified labour whose only barrier to self-expansion is it (capital) itself,

or even this:


Capital is also implicitly a critique of Hegel's Logic.

Of course, you and other traditionalists are happy to assert this, but we have yet to see the proof (or any proof at all!).


And so Capital is not a "critique of political economy", which shows the inverted truth behind the fetishistic appearance of everyday economic activity? In that case you are going to have a very hard time explaining the whole of the three volumes of Capital where Marx does exactly that.

Where have I denied this?


Indeed, if appearance and essence coincided there would be no need for science at all ...

This is one of the few comments Marx makes which I reject. Indeed, he fails to justify it, and the same is true of other traditionalists who quote it unreflectingly.


He doesn't need to. It's rather trivial, but I "openly avowed myself a pupil of that might thinker", Karl Marx several years ago. Does that imply that I am no longer a pupil of his? No, it means that my open avowal happened in the past, but is still ongoing. If Marx had said "I had openly avowed myself ..." that would indicate that he no longer is, but he didn't so it doesn't.

1) As I have pointed out many times in this thread, one can think that X or Y is a 'mighty thinker' but still reject what he has to say. For example, I think Thomas Aquinas is a 'mighty thinker' but I reject his entire outlook.

2) It's still in the past tense, and, as I pointed out above:


In fact, he added and endorsed a summary of 'my method', 'the dialectic method', which contained not one atom of Hegel -- no 'contradictions', no 'unity of opposites', no 'negation of the negation', no 'quantity passing over into quality'...

And the very best he could do with Hegel's obscure jargon is to 'coquette' with it.

This hardly suggests, nor does it sound like the words of a man who still held Hegel's ideas in high esteem.

You:


Of course, because Marx stopped being an Hegelian in 1843! So why would he use those terms? His dialectic is the direct opposite of Hegel's, it is "critical and revolutionary". You still need to show how Capital is not also an implicit critique of Hegel's logic.

Well, you keep alleging this, but Marx nowhere says it. In fact, the summary he endorsed as 'the dialectic method' suggests, rather fittingly one feels, the exact opposite.

[Rosa Lichtenstein]

S Artesian:


Rosa writes:

"I suppose you think that Marx wasting his time, pratting about with Hegel's obscure ideas, from the early 1840's to the early 1860's, only to abandon the whole sorry affair when he came to write Das Kapital (as he indicated), and thus returning to the science he found in Aristotle, Ferguson, Smith, Millar, Robertson, Hume, Stewart and Kant, did not slow him down, eh?"

Absolutely priceless. Priceless. Do you know anything about what Marx wrote OTHER than that afterword to the 2nd edition, which you so glibly distort?

Well, I at least have a published source that supports my interpretation? What do you have, other than invention, invective and abuse?


What exactly did Marx write in that period-- what constitutes the prattle?

I did not use the word "prattle".


The Critique of Hegel's Philosophy of the Right, where Hegel comes up a bit short and as Marx recognizes, capitulates to the world of the concrete, of oppression?

The EPM of 1844, where Marx engages Smith, and begins his examinations of the social being, of the human labor process?

The articles in the Neue Rheinische Zeitung?

The German Ideology?

The Manifesto?

The Poverty of Philosophy?

Wage Labor and Capital?

The Class Struggles in France?

The 18th Brumaire....?

The articles on revolution in Spain?

A Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy

On British colonialism?

The Grundrisse?

His economic manuscripts?

His work in founding, developing, speaking for the IMWA?
On the US Civil War?

Like I said, you've built a monument to your ignorance of Marxism with every sentence you write, with every web page you produce.

In fact, this is yet another 'monument' to your incapacity to read what I have posted.


And Marx found no more science in Ferguson, Steuart, Smith, than he did in Hegel.

Ok, that settles it, then! But, from which mountain top did you retrieve this semi-divine oracle?


And as for this:

"Ah, but that ignores this:

Quote:
" As I said, it's far more important to halt the flow of Hegelian poison into Marxism.

The class struggle will proceed quite nicely even if we do not yet understand the inner working of capitalism.

Marxist parties will not however run smoothly if they remain in thrall to dialectics, which, of course, means that our intervention in the class war will continue to falter."

I didn't ignore it. I refuted it. Your arguments are impoverished idealism.

In fact, you simply rejected it, you didn't refute it. That we are still waiting for.

And in what way is it 'idealism'?

Ah, but I have asked you this before and you chose to ignore that, too.

Wonder why...?:rolleyes:

[Rosa Lichtenstein]

Zanthorus:


Originally Posted by Adam Smith, On the Principle which gives Occasion to the Division of Labour
The division of labour, from which so many advantages are derived, is not originally the effect of any human wisdom, which foresees and intends that general opulence to which it gives occasion. It is the necessary, though very slow and gradual consequence of a certain propensity in human nature which has in view no such extensive utility; the propensity to truck, barter, and exchange one thing for another.

Thanks for that, but this just says that the "propensity to truck, barter, and exchange one thing for another" is a "consequence of a certain propensity in human nature", it says nothing about bourgeois society. After all, bartering and exchange pre-dated capitalism, and stretches back into ancient class and pre-class societies.

And thanks for the Ricardo quote, but I left him out, so you can't include him as a counter-example to what I have said.


Thanks for the recommendations on the links between Marx, Aristotle, Ferguson, Kant etc. But I don't see what this does to dispel the fact that the scottish historical materialists were blinded by capitalist ideology and ascribed the forms of capitalism to non-capitalist forms of society.

Again, where did they do that?

But, even if they did, that does not prevent them being scientific about history, even if what they had to say was distorted in the way you say.

Nor does it mean that Marx did not rely on their ideas, or proceed to develop them extensively, as he himself tells us.


I'm not arguing that we need Hegel "upside down or the right way up", in fact I agree with you that dialectical materialism is based on ruling class ideology or as Marx himself tells us, takes it's standpoint from civil society.

I'm glad to hear it.


I agree basically with what BAM has argued though that Hegel provided a foil for Marx's own work. Marx stands up pretty well on his own without Hegel of course.

Well, we have yet to see the proof from Das Kapital...


But if you want a really deep understanding of what Marx was trying to get across and where it fits within the history of ideas you need at least some knowledge of what Hegel was doing

Except, by adding the only endorsed and published summary of 'his method', the 'dialectic' method', which contained absolutley no trace of Hegel, he clearly indicated that the view BAM, Artesian and you accept is not his own.

[Rosa Lichtenstein]

S Artesian, still dredging Marx's unpublished work for a few crumbs of comfort:


Or how about this from Marx's critique of Adam Smith in TSV, part 1:

"But, Adam continues:

As soon as stock has accumulated in the hands of particular persons, some of them will naturally employ it in setting to work industrious people, whom they supply with materials and subsistence, in order to make a profit by the sale of their work, or by what their labour adds to the value of the materials"

Marx responds:

"Stop, before we follow the passage further. In the first place whence come the "industrious people" who possess neither means of subsistence nor materials of labour--people who are hanging in mid-air. If we strip Smith's statement of its naive phrasing, it means nothing more than: capitalist production begins from the moment when conditions of labour belong to one class, and another class has at its disposal only labour-power. This separation of labour from the conditions of labour is the precondition of capitalist production."

Bears repeating, don't you think? Particularly since it is the answer to the questions Rosa refuses to answer.

Marx here clearly identifies that the "science" of Adam Smith is impaired, circumscribed, non-scientific in that it presupposes what must be analyzed; in that it takes for granted, as "naturally" occurring, a precise, specific, historical relationship.

Marx is more than aware of this shortcoming of Smith and the English School/Scottish materialists, so much more aware that he can actually extract the rational kernel from Smith's confusion.

This presumption, this presupposing of the historical conditions that need to analyzed, this ignoring of the precise social conditions that create both the origin of capitalist accumulation and the limit to the accumulation is taken over and assumed by so many "neo-Smithian" Marxists in their analyses of imperialism where they assume capitalism would spontaneously develop and develop into advanced capitalism if it weren't for the influence of..... advanced capitalism.

Anyway, we could make monuments about what Rosa doesn't know about Marx, and we already have monuments to what many Marxists don't know about capitalism-- those monuments being tombstones.

Where have I said otherwise?

And, we are still waiting for a published source contemporaneous with or subsequent to Das Kapital that supports your fanciful ideas.

----------------------------

Will no one come to the aid of this poor, beleaguered comrade...?:(

[S.Artesian]

And, we are still waiting for a published source contemporaneous with or subsequent to Das Kapital that supports your fanciful ideas.

----------------------------

Will no one come to the aid of this poor, beleaguered comrade...?:(

Oh yeah, I feel so beleaguered. Please, where I come from this doesn't even count as mild stress. Doesn't even rank as an irritant on the old itch-o-meter.

"Nothing is worse than having an itch you never can scratch," Leon, Blade Runner.

And scratching you has been a snap.

To find the refutation of your distortion of the few paragraphs of a single preface to a second edition of Marx's introductory volume of his unfinished study of capitalism, you have to read the entire introductory volume [which was crafted purposefully regarding language and presentation for the layman] and you have to place it in the context of all that comes before it, and all that comes after it, including the Grundrisse, the EPM, the correspondence, and volumes 2,3,4 of his unfinished study.

To do otherwise is to do what you have done, Rosa, cherry-picking in the service of distortion; an invalid method, but serviceable enough for bourgeois academics, social democrats, Keynesian pseudo-radicals, investment bankers, and propagandists.

Carry to answer the original questions, or elaborate on Marx's waste of time, and prattling on and on prior to the preface, not the body of the 2nd edition, not to mention his prattling on and on and on, after the publication of that preface.

Here's what I suggest, since in the afterword/preface to the 2nd edition, Marx is basically commenting upon the commentators, and since the commentators are not necessary, let's just focus on the body of the text itself. And we can confine ourselves, in this introductory phase to Volume 1.

How about that? We ignore the preface. We don't bring in the Grundrisse at this point. We just look at the construction and content of volume 1 itself sans prefaces/afterwords. How does that sound?

Can we start with the chapter on value?

[Rosa Lichtenstein]

S Artesian:


Oh yeah, I feel so beleaguered. Please, where I come from this doesn't even count as mild stress. Doesn't even rank as an irritant on the old itch-o-meter.

You may or may not feel beleaguered, but in view of the fact that you can't come up with a published source contemporaneous with or subsequent to Das Kapital that supports your fanciful ideas, that tells us you are.


"Nothing is worse than having an itch you never can scratch," Leon, Blade Runner.

And scratching you has been a snap.

And this confirms it; you are beginning to ramble.


To find the refutation of your distortion of the few paragraphs of a single preface to a second edition of Marx's introductory volume of his unfinished study of capitalism, you have to read the entire introductory volume [which was crafted purposefully regarding language and presentation for the layman] and you have to place it in the context of all that comes before it, and all that comes after it, including the Grundrisse, the EPM, the correspondence, and volumes 2,3,4 of his unfinished study.

Still no published source, I see.

Still beleaguered then...

But wait! Is one to be found in here?


To do otherwise is to do what you have done, Rosa, cherry-picking in the service of distortion; an invalid method, but serviceable enough for bourgeois academics, social democrats, Keynesian pseudo-radicals, investment bankers, and propagandists.

Alas not.

And I was so rooting for you...:(


Carry to answer the original questions, or elaborate on Marx's waste of time, and prattling on and on prior to the preface, not the body of the 2nd edition, not to mention his prattling on and on and on, after the publication of that preface.

Once more, I did not use the word 'prattling'.

Ah, but what's this? A published source that supports the mystical view of Das Kapital?

I hope so:


Here's what I suggest, since in the afterword/preface to the 2nd edition, Marx is basically commenting upon the commentators, and since the commentators are not necessary, let's just focus on the body of the text itself. And we can confine ourselves, in this introductory phase to Volume 1.

Oh dear, yet another vain hope dashed... :(:(


How about that? We ignore the preface. We don't bring in the Grundrisse at this point. We just look at the construction and content of volume 1 itself sans prefaces/afterwords. How does that sound?

That sounds about right; ignore what Marx published in favour of what he chose not to.:blink:


Can we start with the chapter on value?

After the flow of poison has been stopped...

[Zanthorus]

Except, by adding the only endorsed and published summary of 'his method', the 'dialectic' method', which contained absolutley no trace of Hegel, he clearly indicated that the view BAM, Artesian and you accept is not his own.

Of course not. Marx overthrew Hegel's "dialectic" in favour of Feuerbach's "dialectic" in the Paris Manuscripts.

I agree with you that Hegel's dialectic is not Marx's dialectic. I agree with you that the Engels-Plekhanov-Lenin-Stalin tradition of "dialectical materialism" is a total distortion of Marxism which is based on ruling class traditions.

What I don't agree with is that Hegel had no role to play in the development of Marx's thought. Hegel provided a useful foil for Marx to bring out his own ideas about the state, history, political economy etc and therefore anyone who wants to understand the development of Marx's thought and the context he wrote it in needs to have a vague understanding of what Hegel was writing.

And no that doesn't amount to any kind of endorsement of Hegel or any of the Hegelian method.

[S.Artesian]

S Artesian:



Once more, I did not use the word 'prattling'.

Ah, but what's this? A published source that supports the mystical view of Das Kapital?





Oh dear, yet another vain hope dashed... :(:(


That sounds about right; ignore what Marx published in favour of what he chose not to.:blink:.

Prattling? Yep, that's what I said because you said:

"I suppose you think that Marx wasting his time, pratting about with Hegel's obscure ideas, from the early 1840's to the early 1860's, only to abandon the whole sorry affair when he came to write Das Kapital (as he indicated), and thus returning to the science he found in Aristotle, Ferguson, Smith, Millar, Robertson, Hume, Stewart and Kant, did not slow him down, eh?"

And guess what, Rosa. There is no such word as "pratting" at least not in the OEC, where I looked it up after coming across it in your post. There is a word "prattle," which means chatter or talk at length in a nonsensical manner-- taken from a German root by the way. Right you didn't use the word prattle, because you don't know the proper words to use.

I would add, when it comes to "prattling," you are second to none.

PS, volume 1 is the published volume of Marx's unfinished work.

[BAM]

Well, since I reject the view that Das Kapital is as you say, of course I do not discuss it. Perhaps you can tell us where Marx says this in Das Kapital

The fact that you don't even talk about capital and labour in those essays you linked to leaves me at a loss as to what you think Marx's critique of political economy is. In fact, in most of the text on your website you aren't talking about political economy at all.

So you say you reject the view of Capital in which Marx regards capital as a self-expanding subject (an "automatisches subjekt"), ("reproducing as capital — i.e., as self-expanding value") that is limited by itself ("the only barrier to the expansion of capital is capital itself")? As Marx himself says:


value is here the subject of a process in which, while constantly assuming the form in turn of money and commodities, it changes its own magnitude, throws off surplus-value from itself considered as original value, and thus valorizes itself independently. For the movement in the course of which it adds surplus-value is its own movement, its valorization is therefore self-valorization [Selbstverwertung] (Marx Capital Vol I, 1976, 255).


Of course, you and other traditionalists are happy to assert this, but we have yet to see the proof (or any proof at all!).

I am not a traditionalist. Traditionalist interpretations of Marx and Hegel saw Hegel's Logic as somehow providing the skeleton the Capital. Now, as I have already said, this is not the case. Hegel's dialectic method, as Marx already said far back as 1843, is inseparable from his system. The traditionalists thought that Hegel's method was separate from the system, so your criticism here is unconvincing and beside the point. And your slur of me as a "traditionalist" is totally unwarranted. Particularly is it unwarranted becuase I actually agree with a lot of your critique of dialectical materialism ...

Of course, as I have been saying all along, Marx's critique of Hegel's logic in capital (note, I am not saying that Marx's Capital only makes sense becuase of Hgel's Logic or anything of that kind) is implicit.


Where have I denied this?

You're dodging the question, becuase if you agree with what I say, that Marx's critique of political economy means seeing the inverted truth behind the fetishised appearance of everyday economy, then you have a hard time denying that famous quote about science being superfluous if essence and appearance coincided.


This is one of the few comments Marx makes which I reject. Indeed, he fails to justify it, and the same is true of other traditionalists who quote it unreflectingly.

The three volumes of Capital to which that little phrase appears in the culmination would be the justification.


1) As I have pointed out many times in this thread, one can think that X or Y is a 'mighty thinker' but still reject what he has to say. For example, I think Thomas Aquinas is a 'mighty thinker' but I reject his entire outlook.

2) It's still in the past tense, and, as I pointed out above:

That is still unconvincing. You haven't answered my point. You wrote earlier that Marx "insulted Hegel", providing this quote as part of your evidence. If Marx wanted to insult someone he could be very cutting, but he never refers to Hegel in the same way as, say, "the dwarf" Bastiat, for whom he had real contempt. So, if we are to assume Marx insulted Hegel then we would look for terms in which he talks about Hegel that would be similar to the derisory and dismissive way he talks about say Bentham or Senior, but alas we cannot find any.


Well, you keep alleging this, but Marx nowhere says it. In fact, the summary he endorsed as 'the dialectic method' suggests, rather fittingly one feels, the exact opposite.

Au contraire mon ami, I think my interpretation fits rather well.

[Zanthorus]

I think Rosa's main problem is that like Lenin on centralisation in the party she bends the bow too far the other way.

[S.Artesian]

I think Rosa's main problem is that like Lenin on centralisation in the party she bends the bow too far the other way.


I don't think that's her problem. I don't think she knows anything at all about Marx's work. Just that simple.

[S.Artesian]

Of course not. Marx overthrew Hegel's "dialectic" in favour of Feuerbach's "dialectic" in the Paris Manuscripts.



Before we go too overboard in our enthusiasm for Feuerbach, we should recall that Marx certainly scaled down his earlier enthusiasm for the man's work.

In an 1865 letter assessing Proudhon, Marx wrote:

"In this book Proudhon stands in approximately the same relation to Saint-Simon and Fourier as Feuerbach stands to Hegel. Compared with Hegel, Feuerbach is certainly poor. Nevertheless he was epoch-making after Hegel because he laid stress on certain points which were disagreeable to the Christian consciousness but important for the progress of criticism, points which Hegel had left in mystic clair-obscur."

[Rosa Lichtenstein]

S Artesian:


Prattling? Yep, that's what I said because you said:

"I suppose you think that Marx wasting his time, pratting about with Hegel's obscure ideas, from the early 1840's to the early 1860's, only to abandon the whole sorry affair when he came to write Das Kapital (as he indicated), and thus returning to the science he found in Aristotle, Ferguson, Smith, Millar, Robertson, Hume, Stewart and Kant, did not slow him down, eh?"

Bold added for mystics with rather poor vision.:blink:

Read it again, Oh Beleaguered One...


And guess what, Rosa. There is no such word as "pratting" at least not in the OEC, where I looked it up after coming across it in your post. There is a word "prattle," which means chatter or talk at length in a nonsensical manner-- taken from a German root by the way. Right you didn't use the word prattle, because you don't know the proper words to use.

So what? It's a widely used colloquialism over this side of the pond:

http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=pratting+around

What's this? Is it the long lost quote from a published source contemporaneous with or subsequent to Das Kapital, which supports the mystical view of that book?


I would add, when it comes to "prattling," you are second to none.

Nope! Wrong again! Darn it!!:(


PS, volume 1 is the published volume of Marx's unfinished work.

But it was still published.

So, enjoy another 24 hours in Beleagueresville, my mystical friend...:cool:

[Rosa Lichtenstein]

Zanthorus:


Of course not. Marx overthrew Hegel's "dialectic" in favour of Feuerbach's "dialectic" in the Paris Manuscripts.

Agreed, but all that was twenty years earlier, before he added to Das Kapital the only endorsed and published summary of 'his method', the 'dialectic' method', which contained not one atom of Hegel.


I agree with you that Hegel's dialectic is not Marx's dialectic. I agree with you that the Engels-Plekhanov-Lenin-Stalin tradition of "dialectical materialism" is a total distortion of Marxism which is based on ruling class traditions.

What I don't agree with is that Hegel had no role to play in the development of Marx's thought. Hegel provided a useful foil for Marx to bring out his own ideas about the state, history, political economy etc and therefore anyone who wants to understand the development of Marx's thought and the context he wrote it in needs to have a vague understanding of what Hegel was writing.

Sure it played a role -- it slowed his development down by clogging his thought with mystical and ruling class garbage.

[Rosa Lichtenstein]

BAM:

In response to my request that you tell us where Marx says the sorts of things you say, you post this:


The fact that you don't even talk about capital and labour in those essays you linked to leaves me at a loss as to what you think Marx's critique of political economy is. In fact, in most of the text on your website you aren't talking about political economy at all.

In other words, you can't support your approach to Das Kapital with anything Marx published.

And you mistake the purpose of my site; it's not there to add to the ever growing attempts to build yet more epicycles into Marx's theory, and weigh his ideas down with truck loads of obscure jargon. You can read for yourself what it's aim is on the opening page -- in simple English.


So you say you reject the view of Capital in which Marx regards capital as a self-expanding subject (an "automatisches subjekt"), ("reproducing as capital — i.e., as self-expanding value") that is limited by itself ("the only barrier to the expansion of capital is capital itself")? As Marx himself says:

Where did I say I rejected it? I just asked you to tell me where in a published work Marx says the sorts of sub-Hegelian things you attribute to him -- like the following:


Can you show me what page on your website challenges the view that capital is a self-mediating totality, where the presuppositions of capital do not presuppose capital itself and where capital is a not self-expanding totality of objectified labour?

You:


I am not a traditionalist. Traditionalist interpretations of Marx and Hegel saw Hegel's Logic as somehow providing the skeleton the Capital. Now, as I have already said, this is not the case. Hegel's dialectic method, as Marx already said far back as 1843, is inseparable from his system. The traditionalists thought that Hegel's method was separate from the system, so your criticism here is unconvincing and beside the point. And your slur of me as a "traditionalist" is totally unwarranted. Particularly is it unwarranted because I actually agree with a lot of your critique of dialectical materialism ...

Of course, as I have been saying all along, Marx's critique of Hegel's logic in capital (note, I am not saying that Marx's Capital only makes sense because of Hegel's Logic or anything of that kind) is implicit.

Apologies are owed to you then for that slur.

However, from what you say above, you seem to be even more benighted than the 'traditionalists'!


You're dodging the question, because if you agree with what I say, that Marx's critique of political economy means seeing the inverted truth behind the fetishised appearance of everyday economy, then you have a hard time denying that famous quote about science being superfluous if essence and appearance coincided.

I do not have a 'hard time' denying it, it's actually quite easy to do, just as it's easy to support that denial with argument. If you want to open a debate on that side issue, start another thread.


The three volumes of Capital to which that little phrase appears in the culmination would be the justification.

That's about as convincing as a born again Christian saying: "The Bible is all the justification I need."


That is still unconvincing. You haven't answered my point. You wrote earlier that Marx "insulted Hegel", providing this quote as part of your evidence. If Marx wanted to insult someone he could be very cutting, but he never refers to Hegel in the same way as, say, "the dwarf" Bastiat, for whom he had real contempt. So, if we are to assume Marx insulted Hegel then we would look for terms in which he talks about Hegel that would be similar to the derisory and dismissive way he talks about say Bentham or Senior, but alas we cannot find any.

Sure, Marx's insult is more subtle -- why else would he 'coquette' with Hegel's obscure jargon?

But even if the word 'insult' is too strong, or perhaps misguided, where does Marx tell us he is still a pupil of Hegel?

So, these comments still stand:


1) As I have pointed out many times in this thread, one can think that X or Y is a 'mighty thinker' but still reject what he has to say. For example, I think Thomas Aquinas is a 'mighty thinker' but I reject his entire outlook.

2) It's still in the past tense, and, as I pointed out above:


In fact, he added and endorsed a summary of 'my method', 'the dialectic method', which contained not one atom of Hegel -- no 'contradictions', no 'unity of opposites', no 'negation of the negation', no 'quantity passing over into quality'...

And the very best he could do with Hegel's obscure jargon is to 'coquette' with it.

This hardly suggests, nor does it sound like the words of a man who still held Hegel's ideas in high esteem.

[Rosa Lichtenstein]

Zanthorus:


I think Rosa's main problem is that like Lenin on centralisation in the party she bends the bow too far the other way.

Well, in that case, I'm in good company, since Marx too bent it as far as I have -- when he added a summary (the only published summary, and the only endorsed summary) of 'his method', 'the dialectic method', in which there is not one atom of Hegel to be found.

[Rosa Lichtenstein]

S Artesian:


I don't think that's her problem. I don't think she knows anything at all about Marx's work. Just that simple.

You keep saying this with not one ounce of supporting evidence, and in the face of the fact that it was I who had to remind you that Marx had characterised his 'contradictions' as "mutually exclusive" -- which you admitted you had forgotten.

Seems I know Marx better then you....:)

But let us for one second suppose you are right. What is the point of you knowing Marx better than me if you ignore what he had to say in Das Kapital about 'his method'?

[S.Artesian]

S Artesian:


But let us for one second suppose you are right. What is the point of you knowing Marx better than me if you ignore what he had to say in Das Kapital about 'his method'?


The point is you've produced how many millions of words on Marx without a single investigation into the very core of Marx's analysis-- the relation between wage labor and capital.

The point is you accuse Marx of "pattling" [sic] on for about 25 years before producing an intelligible work.

[Rosa Lichtenstein]

Breaking News from Beleagueristan:


The point is you've produced how many millions of words on Marx without a single investigation into the very core of Marx's analysis-- the relation between wage labor and capital.

Ah schucks, just when I thought you'd found a quotation from a published source contemporaneous with or subsequent to Das Kapital that supports the mystical view of Marx's work, you dash all my hopes.

Cruel is the only word...:(

[S.Artesian]

Breaking News from Beleagueristan:



Ah schucks, just when I thought you'd found a quotation from a published source contemporaneous with or subsequent to Das Kapital that supports the mystical view of Marx's work, you dash all my hopes.

Cruel is the only word...:(


Keep prattling on, Rosa. My offer remains: let's drop the preface/afterword tango, and go directly to the text of volume 1.

Anytime you want to do this, just let me know.

[BAM]

In response to my request that you tell us where Marx says the sorts of things you say, you post this:

In other words, you can't support your approach to Das Kapital with anything Marx published.

Hardly. I linked to a passage I quickly found in Capital: Volume One, but you just ignored them.

Here is the quote you ignored:


value is here the subject of a process in which, while constantly assuming the form in turn of money and commodities, it changes its own magnitude, throws off surplus-value from itself considered as original value, and thus valorizes itself independently. For the movement in the course of which it adds surplus-value is its own movement, its valorization is therefore self-valorization [Selbstverwertung] (Marx Capital Vol I, 1976, 255).

And there are examples aplenty to be found where Marx describes capital as self-expanding:


Capital, therefore, it not only, as Adam Smith says, the command over labor. It is essentially the command over unpaid labor. All surplus-value, whatever particular form (profit, interest, or rent), it may subsequently crystallize into, is in substance the materialization of unpaid labor. The secret of the self-expansion of capital resolves itself into having the disposal of a definite quantity of other people’s unpaid labor. http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1867-c1/ch18.htm


The labourer produces, not for himself, but for capital. It no longer suffices, therefore, that he should simply produce. He must produce surplus-value. That labourer alone is productive, who produces surplus-value for the capitalist, and thus works for the self-expansion of capital. http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1867-c1/ch16.htm


If production be capitalistic in form, so, too, will be reproduction. Just as in the former the labour process figures but as a means towards the self-expansion of capital, so in the latter it figures but as a means of reproducing as capital — i.e., as self-expanding value — the value advanced. http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1867-c1/ch23.htm


The surplus-value generated in the process of production by C, the capital advanced, or in other words, the self-expansion of the value of the capital C, presents itself for our consideration, in the first place, as a surplus, as the amount by which the value of the product exceeds the value of its constituent elements. http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1867-c1/ch09.htm


From the point of view then of capitalist production, the whole process appears as the spontaneous variation of the originally constant value, which is transformed into labour-power. Both the process and its result, appear to be owing to this value. If, therefore, such expressions as “£90 variable capital,” or “so much self-expanding value,” appear contradictory, this is only because they bring to the surface a contradiction immanent in capitalist production. http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1867-c1/ch09.htm


This natural power of labour [to transmit old value, whilst it creates new] takes the appearance of an intrinsic property of capital, in which it is incorporated, just as the productive forces of social labour take the appearance of inherent properties of capital, and as the constant appropriation of surplus-labour by the capitalists, takes that of a constant self-expansion of capital. http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1867-c1/ch24.htm

What else? Capital as something whose presuppositions presuppose capital itself? That's fairly obvious. That's the reason why Marx brings in the discussion of primitive accumulation.


the accumulation of capital presupposes surplus-value; surplus-value presupposes capitalistic production; capitalistic production presupposes the pre-existence of considerable masses of capital and of labour power in the hands of producers of commodities. The whole movement, therefore, seems to turn in a vicious circle ... http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1867-c1/ch26.htm

Objectified labour?


In order to extract value out of the consumption of a commodity, our friend the money-owner must be lucky enough to find within the sphere of circulation, on the market, a commodity whose use-value possesses the peculiar property of being a source of value, whose actual consumption is therefore an objectification [Vergegenstandlichung] of labour, hence a creation of value. (Capital, 1976, p. 270)


Because all commodities, as values, are objectified human labor, and therefore in themselves commensurable, their values can be communally measured in one and the same specific commodity, and this commodity can be converted into the common measure of their values, that is into money. Money as a measure of value is the necessary form of appearance of the measure of value which is mmanent in commodities, namely labor-time. (Capital Volume One, 1976,188)


And you mistake the purpose of my site; it's not there to add to the ever growing attempts to build yet more epicycles into Marx's theory, and weigh his ideas down with truck loads of obscure jargon. You can read for yourself what it's aim is on the opening page -- in simple English.

It's a very good and thorough demolition of dialectical materialism. My complaint was that you sent me to some pages that didn't have anything to do with the technical discussion about capital we were having. You wrote that you had already dealt with what you took as my mis-conception about Capital, but there was nothing there to deal with what I was talking about. And now you say the site isn't about Marx's critique of political economy at all. That's fine - it's your site after all - but I am not a mind-reader, so don't blame me for not knowing what your views are on political economy, especially beacuse you seem to be affirming and denying the same thing in different breaths.


Apologies are owed to you then for that slur.

Accepted. Thanks.


However, from what you say above, you seem to be even more benighted than the 'traditionalists'!

Now don't be silly. There's a huge gulf between me and the Hegelian Marxists (which I think is a contradition in terms) and the Dialectical Materialists, etc., etc. As I have already said a few times:


Hegel's dialectic method, as Marx already said far back as 1843, is inseparable from his system. The traditionalists thought that Hegel's method was separate from the system


That's about as convincing as a born again Christian saying: "The Bible is all the justification I need."

Hardly. The context of the quote on science being superfluous is that the vulgar economist is only concerned with the world of appearances. The three volumes of Capital are full of essence and appearance and it is fundamental to Marx's theory. Exchange value is the form of appearance of value. Prices systematically divert from values, but the movements of prices are the only way in which value can be shown, that the law of value asserts itself.

In the opening of volume one we are taken from a discussion of value and the inner laws of surplus value, through to the world of appearances at the end of Volume III, with how the very process itself generates its own fetishistic illusion (in fact, the journey continually oscillates between the world of direct experiences and Marx's abstractions from these processes, eg, between the chapter on the working day and the chapter on the general law of capitalist accumulation in volume one itself).


Sure, Marx's insult is more subtle -- why else would he 'coquette' with Hegel's obscure jargon?

But even if the word 'insult' is too strong, or perhaps misguided, where does Marx tell us he is still a pupil of Hegel?

So, these comments still stand:

Only becuase you don't seem to grasp that I am not saying that Marx's method is Hegelian, rather there is an implicit critique of Hegel running through Capital. Marx's presentation of the concept of capital is implicitly modelled on Hegel's notion, but whereas Hegel sees it as self-sustaining, Marx shows it, capital, to be historically contingent.

[S.Artesian]

This by BAM:

" Marx's presentation of the concept of capital is implicitly modelled on Hegel's notion, but whereas Hegel sees it as self-sustaining, Marx shows it, capital, to be historically contingent"

is it in a nutshell [after all we have to have nutshells to extract rational kernels, no?].

It amounts to to Marx's transposition of the dialectic, his re-foundation of it in the actual material conditions of history; in the reproduction of the social relations that create human material existence. This accompanies and inaugurates, is both product and producer of Marx's ongoing engagement with the conflict between labor and the conditions of labor, between means and relations of production.

[Rosa Lichtenstein]

S Artesian:


Keep prattling on, Rosa. My offer remains: let's drop the preface/afterword tango, and go directly to the text of volume 1

Anytime you want to do this, just let me know.

And yet, if you really believed I know nothing, or very little, of what Marx said and wrote, you'd not be asking for my advice/help in this regard, would you?

Anytime you want to do this, just let me know.

[Rosa Lichtenstein]

BAM:


Hardly. I linked to a passage I quickly found in Capital: Volume One, but you just ignored them.

Ah, but it failed to confirm what you alleged of Marx before you began to dial down the sub-Hegelian jargon. I specifically asked for passages, from Marx, that said this (your own words from a page back):


Can you show me what page on your website challenges the view that capital is a self-mediating totality, where the presuppositions of capital do not presuppose capital itself and where capital is a not self-expanding totality of objectified labour?

Which you failed to give, as I alleged.

But, you now offer these up:



value is here the subject of a process in which, while constantly assuming the form in turn of money and commodities, it changes its own magnitude, throws off surplus-value from itself considered as original value, and thus valorizes itself independently. For the movement in the course of which it adds surplus-value is its own movement, its valorization is therefore self-valorization [Selbstverwertung] (Marx Capital Vol I, 1976, 255).

And there are examples aplenty to be found where Marx describes capital as self-expanding:


Capital, therefore, it not only, as Adam Smith says, the command over labor. It is essentially the command over unpaid labor. All surplus-value, whatever particular form (profit, interest, or rent), it may subsequently crystallize into, is in substance the materialization of unpaid labor. The secret of the self-expansion of capital resolves itself into having the disposal of a definite quantity of other people’s unpaid labor. http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx...67-c1/ch18.htm


The labourer produces, not for himself, but for capital. It no longer suffices, therefore, that he should simply produce. He must produce surplus-value. That labourer alone is productive, who produces surplus-value for the capitalist, and thus works for the self-expansion of capital. http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx...67-c1/ch16.htm


If production be capitalistic in form, so, too, will be reproduction. Just as in the former the labour process figures but as a means towards the self-expansion of capital, so in the latter it figures but as a means of reproducing as capital — i.e., as self-expanding value — the value advanced. http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx...67-c1/ch23.htm


The surplus-value generated in the process of production by C, the capital advanced, or in other words, the self-expansion of the value of the capital C, presents itself for our consideration, in the first place, as a surplus, as the amount by which the value of the product exceeds the value of its constituent elements. http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx...67-c1/ch09.htm


From the point of view then of capitalist production, the whole process appears as the spontaneous variation of the originally constant value, which is transformed into labour-power. Both the process and its result, appear to be owing to this value. If, therefore, such expressions as “£90 variable capital,” or “so much self-expanding value,” appear contradictory, this is only because they bring to the surface a contradiction immanent in capitalist production. http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx...67-c1/ch09.htm


This natural power of labour [to transmit old value, whilst it creates new] takes the appearance of an intrinsic property of capital, in which it is incorporated, just as the productive forces of social labour take the appearance of inherent properties of capital, and as the constant appropriation of surplus-labour by the capitalists, takes that of a constant self-expansion of capital. http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx...67-c1/ch24.htm

I have looked through these very carefully, and can see nothing that justifies this:


Can you show me what page on your website challenges the view that capital is a self-mediating totality, where the presuppositions of capital do not presuppose capital itself and where capital is a not self-expanding totality of objectified labour? Bold added.

You have plainly flowered-up Marx's analysis with words like "self-mediating" and "Totality", etc.

But there is more:



the accumulation of capital presupposes surplus-value; surplus-value presupposes capitalistic production; capitalistic production presupposes the pre-existence of considerable masses of capital and of labour power in the hands of producers of commodities. The whole movement, therefore, seems to turn in a vicious circle ... http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx...67-c1/ch26.htm


Objectified labour?


In order to extract value out of the consumption of a commodity, our friend the money-owner must be lucky enough to find within the sphere of circulation, on the market, a commodity whose use-value possesses the peculiar property of being a source of value, whose actual consumption is therefore an objectification [Vergegenstandlichung] of labour, hence a creation of value. (Capital, 1976, p. 270)


Because all commodities, as values, are objectified human labor, and therefore in themselves commensurable, their values can be communally measured in one and the same specific commodity, and this commodity can be converted into the common measure of their values, that is into money. Money as a measure of value is the necessary form of appearance of the measure of value which is immanent in commodities, namely labor-time. (Capital Volume One, 1976,188)

Nope, still can't see "self-mediating" and "Totality" in there.

Of course, if you were to find such Hegelian terms, we already know that Marx was merely 'coquetting' with them, meaning we can take them with a lorry load of salt.


It's a very good and thorough demolition of dialectical materialism. My complaint was that you sent me to some pages that didn't have anything to do with the technical discussion about capital we were having. You wrote that you had already dealt with what you took as my mis-conception about Capital, but there was nothing there to deal with what I was talking about. And now you say the site isn't about Marx's critique of political economy at all. That's fine - it's your site after all - but I am not a mind-reader, so don't blame me for not knowing what your views are on political economy, especially because you seem to be affirming and denying the same thing in different breaths.

Well, you misled me too, since you gave me to believe that Marx had referred to a "self-mediating Totality", when it is now plain he did no such thing.

Anyway, the first of those two essays I sent you to was aimed at the use of 'Totality' in Dialectical Materialism and in relation to Marx's work.


Now don't be silly. There's a huge gulf between me and the Hegelian Marxists (which I think is a contradiction in terms) and the Dialectical Materialists, etc., etc. As I have already said a few times:

As far as I can see, it's nowhere near big enough -- certainly not as big a gulf as that which Marx put between Hegel's work and his own in Das Kapital.


Hardly. The context of the quote on science being superfluous is that the vulgar economist is only concerned with the world of appearances. The three volumes of Capital are full of essence and appearance and it is fundamental to Marx's theory. Exchange value is the form of appearance of value. Prices systematically divert from values, but the movements of prices are the only way in which value can be shown, that the law of value asserts itself.

I reject this distinction, and Marx did nothing to justify it -- and don't tell me the three volumes did that, since they assume this distinction, they do not demonstrate it.

And that is why I referred you to this analogy:


That's about as convincing as a born again Christian saying: "The Bible is all the justification I need."

Since the same is true here; the believer assumes that the Bible was authored by 'god', and then uses it to prove it was authored by 'god' -- hopelessly circular.


In the opening of volume one we are taken from a discussion of value and the inner laws of surplus value, through to the world of appearances at the end of Volume III, with how the very process itself generates its own fetishistic illusion (in fact, the journey continually oscillates between the world of direct experiences and Marx's abstractions from these processes, eg, between the chapter on the working day and the chapter on the general law of capitalist accumulation in volume one itself).

I'm Ok with illusions, and even with what Marx says about commodity fetishism, but 'essences' are just as much an appearance as anything else is, so this is an empty distinction. Hence my rejection of what Marx said about science. But we can go into that in another thread.


Only because you don't seem to grasp that I am not saying that Marx's method is Hegelian, rather there is an implicit critique of Hegel running through Capital. Marx's presentation of the concept of capital is implicitly modelled on Hegel's notion, but whereas Hegel sees it as self-sustaining, Marx shows it, capital, to be historically contingent.

Maybe so, but you, like others, accept his use of 'contradiction', 'negation', 'unity of opposites', etc. My contention is that these words have no part to play in his work -- as he himself indicated when he endorsed the only published summary of 'his method', which not only contained no Hegel, it reproduced none of his obscure jargon, either.

[S.Artesian]

S Artesian:



And yet, if you really believed I know nothing, or very little, of what Marx said and wrote, you'd not be asking for my advice/help in this regard, would you?

Anytime you want to do this, just let me know.


Jesus, your narcissism is pathological. It really is a monument to what you don't know.

1. You have based your argument about Marx's "rupture," his extirpation of Hegel on the preface/afterword to the 2nd edition. That preface did not appear unitl 6-7 years following the original publication of volume 1.

2. Consequently for 6-7 years, Marx was perfectly content for people to read volume 1 with its forms of expression peculiar to Hegel, with its materialist dialectic without any statements by Marx that even YOU could interpret as Marx "extirpating" Hegel.

3. You claim that Marx made such a rupture sometime after the Grundrisse and before the publication of the first edition of volume 1-- unless of course you want to argue that Marx extensively revised volume 1 between the 2 editions. So sometime after 1859 [since A Contribution to the Critique.. precedes vol 1], we have this rupture.

4. There is absolutely no indication in Marx's published or unpublished works, in his correspondence, in his Economic Manuscripts, in his country studies, in his speeches to the IMWA, in his journalistic reports, of any such transformation.

5. You have yourself accused Marx of, essentially, wasting time, "pratting" [sic] on about Hegel for 25 years.

6. Clearly then, the content of Marx's analysis, his exposition [exposition meaning both method and content, method and demonstration] in volume 1 must either differ radically from that displayed in his earlier works, OR, no such rupture occurs in volume 1.

7. If the latter, then we can either conclude that Marx was, as you suggest in your remarks about him being delayed by "pratting" on, a Hegelian, OR that in fact Marx's break, his critique of Hegel took place much earlier than volume 1; that volume 1 is consistent with that earlier break; and that prior to, within, and after publication of volume 1, Marx's relation to dialectic is not as you present it.

8. To make such a determination we need to compare the substance of volume 1 itself with the substance of earlier works-- and we need to exclude the preface to the 2nd edition, since it is attached to volume 7 years after its publication from the discussion.

Let me know when you are willing to proceed with that investigation.

[Rosa Lichtenstein]

S Artesian, now returning to substituting abuse for argument:


Jesus, your narcissism is pathological. It really is a monument to what you don't know.

Yes, I admit it, and it's nearly as bad a case as yours.


1. You have based your argument about Marx's "rupture," his extirpation of Hegel on the preface/afterword to the 2nd edition. That preface did not appear unitl 6-7 years following the original publication of volume 1.

I did not use the word 'rupture'. You are back to invention now, I see.

And you have yet to produce a single quotation from a work Marx published that is contemporaneous with or subsequent to Das Kapital, which supports the mystical view you are trying rather desperately to sell us.

In stark contrast, I have referred you to the only published and endorsed summary of 'his method', 'the dialectic method' -- in which there isn't even the faintest whiff of Hegel -- , in support of my allegations.

So, the facts do not speak up for you, my hopelessly beleaguered friend.:(


2. Consequently for 6-7 years, Marx was perfectly content for people to read volume 1 with its forms of expression peculiar to Hegel, with its materialist dialectic without any statements by Marx that even YOU could interpret as Marx "extirpating" Hegel.

That's why, of course, he had to put them right -- but, plainly, he did not reckon on there being individuals like you who refuse to take him at his word.


3. You claim that Marx made such a rupture sometime after the Grundrisse and before the publication of the first edition of volume 1-- unless of course you want to argue that Marx extensively revised volume 1 between the 2 editions. So sometime after 1859 [since A Contribution to the Critique.. precedes vol 1], we have this rupture.

Again, I did not use the word 'rupture'. In your haste to malign me, you confuse me with Althusser.

And you claim I'm confused!:lol:


4. There is absolutely no indication in Marx's published or unpublished works, in his correspondence, in his Economic Manuscripts, in his country studies, in his speeches to the IMWA, in his journalistic reports, of any such transformation.

Alas for you there is in the Postface to the second edition of Das Kapital -- but you refuse to take note of it.


5. You have yourself accused Marx of, essentially, wasting time, "pratting" [sic] on about Hegel for 25 years.

Indeed he did. Had Hegel done us all a huge favour, and died of cholera forty years before he actually did, I reckon Marx would have discovered scientific socialism in the 1840s, not the 1860s.


6. Clearly then, the content of Marx's analysis, his exposition [exposition meaning both method and content, method and demonstration] in volume 1 must either differ radically from that displayed in his earlier works, OR, no such rupture occurs in volume 1.

I did not use the word 'rupture'. Do you need some (new) glasses?


7. If the latter, then we can either conclude that Marx was, as you suggest in your remarks about him being delayed by "pratting" on, a Hegelian, OR that in fact Marx's break, his critique of Hegel took place much earlier than volume 1; that volume 1 is consistent with that earlier break; and that prior to, within, and after publication of volume 1, Marx's relation to dialectic is not as you present it.

Well, we can speculate all we like, but the fact remains that by the time he came to write Das Kapital, as he himself indicates, he had waved this Hermetic Horror show 'goodbye'.


8. To make such a determination we need to compare the substance of volume 1 itself with the substance of earlier works-- and we need to exclude the preface to the 2nd edition, since it is attached to volume 7 years after its publication from the discussion.

Let me know when you are willing to proceed with that investigation.

I have been telling you for the last six months you can count me out.

When will, that message sink in?

Anyway, as I said above:


And yet, if you really believed I know nothing, or very little, of what Marx said and wrote, you'd not be asking for my advice/help in this regard, would you?

Seems you can't even make your mind up about your own ideas!:lol:

[Zanthorus]

Before we go too overboard in our enthusiasm for Feuerbach, we should recall that Marx certainly scaled down his earlier enthusiasm for the man's work.

In an 1865 letter assessing Proudhon, Marx wrote:

"In this book Proudhon stands in approximately the same relation to Saint-Simon and Fourier as Feuerbach stands to Hegel. Compared with Hegel, Feuerbach is certainly poor. Nevertheless he was epoch-making after Hegel because he laid stress on certain points which were disagreeable to the Christian consciousness but important for the progress of criticism, points which Hegel had left in mystic clair-obscur."

Ah, well I still haven't done any reading on the influence of Feuerbach on Marx later in life.

It does seem to me that Marx uses a lot of Feuerbachian devices early on, like in the Critique of Hegel's Philosophy of Right he says that "democracy is the truth of monarchy" in the same way that Feuerbach had in the Grundsätze der Philosophie der Zukunftt tried to show how protestantism was the truth of catholicism, pantheism was the truth of protestantism and materialism was the truth of pantheism.

Also if we don't posit any kind of Althusserian rupture, it seems that Feuerbach's influence should still have lingered on somewhat.

Although I do think that Marx goes beyond Feuerbach's purely abstract form of materialism.

I think it's important to realise that "dialectic" doesn't just mean Hegel though, there are numerous other types of "dialectic", and not all of them constitute any form of "logic".


Sure it played a role -- it slowed his development down by clogging his thought with mystical and ruling class garbage.

Hegel's hermeticism was an inverted picture of the idea that Marx was trying to get across - of humans creating themselves in the process of material production. The "active side developed by idealism" that had been missed by and constituted the "chief defect of all hitherto existing materialism".


Indeed he did. Had Hegel done us all a huge favour, and died of cholera forty years before he actually did, I reckon Marx would have discovered scientific socialism in the 1840s, not the 1860s.

wat

You seriously think Marx only discovered "scientific socialism" (sort of a misnomer really but we'll flow with it for now) only in the 1860's?

[S.Artesian]

And you have yet to produce a single quotation from a work Marx published that is contemporaneous with or subsequent to Das Kapital, which supports the mystical view you are trying rather desperately to sell us.

So let's go to the published text of volume 1 and see if the content of Marx's analysis differs radically from that of his earlier works. Let's deal with something other than your ONLY bit of specious evidence you have, which is a distortion of Marx's words in a single afterword to a published edition of his unfinished work. Let's deal with the actual content of volume 1 itself.





Again, I did not use the word 'rupture'. In your haste to malign me, you confuse me with Althusser..

No, Althusser argued for an epistemological rupture. I am not confusing you with Althusser, since I do not suggest you are arguing for an epistemological rupture, but you yourself have stated your agreement with an "earlier" Marx, and a "mature" post-prattling Marx.

You want to call it a "break," a "radical transition," a "wholesale shitcanning"? call it whatever you want. Same-same in the real world.





Had Hegel done us all a huge favour, and died of cholera forty years before he actually did, I reckon Marx would have discovered scientific socialism in the 1840s, not the 1860s.

So now you do think Marx wasted time prattling on about Hegel. As I stated you argued before, only to have you deny you said that, base on the fact that you were using a different word, one that doesn't even exist.





Well, we can speculate all we like, but the fact remains that by the time he came to write Das Kapital, as he himself indicates, he had waved this Hermetic Horror show 'goodbye'.

I'm not asking you to speculate. I am asking you to examine the actual content of Marx's published analysis in volume 1 to find evidence of this radical extirpation of Hegelian influence that so hampered, delayed, obstructed Marx in developing this analysis in his earlier writings.




I have been telling you for the last six months you can count me out.

When will, that message sink in? Oh Rosa, I got that message a long time ago. I know we can count you out of any and every actual investigation of Marx's work. I just wanted you to say it, in just those words, for everyone else to read-- that you absolutely, categorically refuse to actually explore Marx's own materialist analysis so you can continue to pretend you actually understand something about Marx's materialist analysis.


So the bottom line, is the same line at the top-- when it comes to what Marx actually does and does not do in his investigations of capital, you have nothing, literally, to say.

Believe me, you've been counted out.

[BAM]

Ah, but it failed to confirm what you alleged of Marx before you began to dial down the sub-Hegelian jargon. I specifically asked for passages, from Marx, that said this (your own words from a page back):

Which you failed to give, as I alleged.

Hardly. What I was offering as a summary of Marx's three volumes of capital in my own words. I think it's a fair summary and I still stick by it.

That quote from me was originally offered in reference to the general law of capitalist accumulation, where by that point in Capital Vol I it is clear that capital is self-mediating. Generalised commodity production, ie. capitalist society, and its production and realisation of surplus value, presupposes the separation of the working class from the means of production, but generalised commodity production also maintains the separation of the working class from the means of production through the reproduction of labour-power as a commodity, and generalised commodity production is sustained through the production of wealth as commodities.



Capital can only be considered as a totality. It mediates itself, it grows from itself, it is self-valorising value. Thus it is implicitly like Hegel's notion.

But, unlike Hegel's Notion, capital is also limited by itself. The very mechanism that it needs to grow, to accumulate - for expanded reproduction is the only mode of existence for capital - is its own barrier.


Well, you misled me too, since you gave me to believe that Marx had referred to a "self-mediating Totality", when it is now plain he did no such thing.

Anyway, the first of those two essays I sent you to was aimed at the use of 'Totality' in Dialectical Materialism [I]and in relation to Marx's work.

I am sorry, but in a discussion about capital you should at least link to an essay where you mention the word "capital" at least once.


As far as I can see, it's nowhere near big enough -- certainly not as big a gulf as that which Marx put between Hegel's work and his own in Das Kapital.

But of course, when we read between the lines we see that there is not such a big gulf between the two and that, as I have been saying, Capital contains an implicit critique of Hegel's logic.


I reject this distinction, and Marx did nothing to justify it -- and don't tell me the three volumes did that, since they assume this distinction, they do not demonstrate it.

Since the same is true here; the believer assumes that the Bible was authored by 'god', and then uses it to prove it was authored by 'god' -- hopelessly circular.

How is what I said circular? I would say that Capital does demonstrate this, and does it very well. Again, to pick one simple but fundamental example, exchange value is the form of appearance of value. Price systematically diverges from value, but it is only through the movement of prices that value reveals itself. I don't see what is so controversial about that.


I'm Ok with illusions, and even with what Marx says about commodity fetishism, but 'essences' are just as much an appearance as anything else is, so this is an empty distinction. Hence my rejection of what Marx said about science. But we can go into that in another thread.

Commodity fetishism and the illusions created by competition have everything to do with Marx's quote on science being superfluous, so if you accept Marx's analysis of commodity fetishism, etc., then I don't see the big deal.


Maybe so, but you, like others, accept his use of 'contradiction', 'negation', 'unity of opposites', etc. My contention is that these words have no part to play in his work -- as he himself indicated when he endorsed the only published summary of 'his method', which not only contained no Hegel, it reproduced none of his obscure jargon, either.

What you mean Marx's own summary of his dialectic?


In its rational form it is a scandal and abomination to bourgeoisdom and its doctrinaire professors, because it includes in its comprehension and affirmative recognition of the existing state of things, at the same time also, the recognition of the negation of that state, of its inevitable breaking up; because it regards every historically developed social form as in fluid movement, and therefore takes into account its transient nature not less than its momentary existence; because it lets nothing impose upon it, and is in its essence critical and revolutionary.

[S.Artesian]

Rosa:



I'm Ok with illusions, and even with what Marx says about commodity fetishism, but 'essences' are just as much an appearance as anything else is, so this is an empty distinction. Hence my rejection of what Marx said about science. But we can go into that in another thread.

No, essences are not an illusion. For Marx it is the historical origin of the social relations that gets expressed in the appearance of commodity exchange being an exchange of equals, [rather than equivalents]. The appearance is the "free exchange" of commodities, all "seeking their value" in a "free market," where choice and need act according to will and caprice.

The essence is the historical organization of labor as a commodity, where the labor is useless for the laborer save in its value in exchange for the means of subsistence, in which process the capitalist obtains labor-power without paying compensation.

Neither is the appearance of the commodity, its exchange with other commodities in the market in proportions, forms of apparent equivalence an illusion. It, this exchange, this apperance is the materialization itself of the class relations, of the class power that configures the mode of production.

The notion of capitalist commodity production is exactly this variance, this opposition between appearance and essence.

[Rosa Lichtenstein]

S Artesian (what, still no quotation from a published source contemporaneous with or subsequent to Das Kapital that supports your mystical view of Marx's work? What a huge surprise!):


No, essences are not an illusion. For Marx it is the historical origin of the social relations that gets expressed in the appearance of commodity exchange being an exchange of equals, [rather than equivalents]. The appearance is the "free exchange" of commodities, all "seeking their value" in a "free market," where choice and need act according to will and caprice.

The belief in 'essences' is an unsupported piece of dogmatic apriorism which neither you, Marx nor Hegel and the rest of the entire tradition of ruling-class thought going back beyond Plato has demonstrated exist.

And, good luck with trying to do what 2400 years of wasted effort has failed to do...


The essence is the historical organization of labor as a commodity, where the labor is useless for the laborer save in its value in exchange for the means of subsistence, in which process the capitalist obtains labor-power without paying compensation.

So you say, but you have yet to show there is such a thing as 'essence'


Neither is the appearance of the commodity, its exchange with other commodities in the market in proportions, forms of apparent equivalence an illusion. It, this exchange, this appearance is the materialization itself of the class relations, of the class power that configures the mode of production.

And how does this show that 'essences' exist?


The notion of capitalist commodity production is exactly this variance, this opposition between appearance and essence.

Which you have yet to show is a genuine distinction, in view of the fact that 'essence' is a material word (look, there is is on the screen), and is no less of an appearance that anything else is.

Of course, if 'essence' actually refers to something, what is it, and how do you know it exists if there is no physical evidence that it does?


That is, other than you uncritically swallowing yet another ruling-class myth?

[Rosa Lichtenstein]

Zanthorus:


Hegel's hermeticism was an inverted picture of the idea that Marx was trying to get across - of humans creating themselves in the process of material production. The "active side developed by idealism" that had been missed by and constituted the "chief defect of all hitherto existing materialism".

No, Hermeticism is a farago of non-sense from beginning to end, and inverted non-sense is no less non-sensical.

Moreover, we have Marx's own word that he had waved this gobbledygook behind.

That is, unless you can find a published source contemporaneous with or subsequent to Das Kapital that supports your view of Marx's work.


You seriously think Marx only discovered "scientific socialism" (sort of a misnomer really but we'll flow with it for now) only in the 1860's?

1) I do not think it's a misnomer.

2) And yes, I do. Before that he was slowly reaching toward it, slowed down by Hegel's Hermetic Horror show.