Materialist Dialectics Machine

[A.R.Amistad]

Hey, for those of us still struggling to understand dialectics in our everyday lives, lets use this thread as a sort of "machine" to understand thing dialectically. Heres how it works: put in a thesis, and comrades can help develop an antithesis and synthesis. Or, if you have an object you wish to analyze, insert it and lets try to deduce its thesis and antithesis. Can apply to everything from dishwashers to feudalism. Go!

[red cat]

Hey, for those of us still struggling to understand dialectics in our everyday lives, lets use this thread as a sort of "machine" to understand thing dialectically. Heres how it works: put in a thesis, and comrades can help develop an antithesis and synthesis. Or, if you have an object you wish to analyze, insert it and lets try to deduce its thesis and antithesis. Can apply to everything from dishwashers to feudalism. Go!

You don't know what you just walked into. I think I will just sit back and enjoy the thread. :lol:

[ZeroNowhere]

I did not know that materialist dialectics was created by Fichte.

[A.R.Amistad]

You don't know what you just walked into. I think I will just sit back and enjoy the thread. http://www.revleft.com/vb/../revleft/smilies2/laugh.gif

Oh I do. I do.

[ZeroNowhere]

I think that being attacked by Rosa was inevitable, but it seems that you also wish to be attacked by the people influenced by Hegel? Really, I hope that you do know.

"The knack of this kind of wisdom is as quickly learned as it is to practise; once familiar, the repetition of it becomes as insufferable as the repetition of a conjuring trick already seen through. The instrument of this monotonous formalism is no more difficult to handle than a painter’s palette having only two colours, say red and green, the one for colouring the surface when a historical scene is wanted, the other for landscapes."

[Rosa Lichtenstein]

AR Amistad:


Hey, for those of us still struggling to understand dialectics in our everyday lives, lets use this thread as a sort of "machine" to understand thing dialectically. Heres how it works: put in a thesis, and comrades can help develop an antithesis and synthesis. Or, if you have an object you wish to analyze, insert it and lets try to deduce its thesis and antithesis. Can apply to everything from dishwashers to feudalism. Go!

As ZeroNowhere suggests, this is not 'materialist dialectics', but part of Kant and Fichte's method. On that see here:

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

And, the dialectical mystics here have been regularly challenged to provide just one practical application of this useless 'theory' since even before I joined in 2005. In every case, they have ducked the challenge.

Here is one of the last (failed) attempts:

http://www.revleft.com/vb/dialectic-once-again-t120385/index.html

This thread was started by Louise Michel, who was genuinely undecided, like you, and who was asking for help understanding what if any practical implications this 'theory' had.

As you will see, she got no effective reply.

[Rosa Lichtenstein]

Red Face:


You don't know what you just walked into. I think I will just sit back and enjoy the thread.

Well, we can't look to you to defend your 'theory', can we?

Had you been around in the 1870s, you'd have just sat back and laughed at Duhring...

[red cat]

Red Face:



Well, we can't look to you to defend your 'theory', can we?

Had you been around in the 1870s, you'd have just sat back and laughed at Duhring...

Cool story troll. :lol:

[Rosa Lichtenstein]

Red Cat:


Cool story troll

Yes, we can all imagine that this is all Engels should have said to Duhring...

[A.R.Amistad]

never mind......

[Rosa Lichtenstein]

The dialectical mystics certainly won't!

[Proletarian Ultra]

I did not know that materialist dialectics was created by Fichte.

To expand on that, here is comrade Wikipedia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dialectic#Hegelian_dialectic):


Although this [thesis-antithesis-synthesis] model is often named after Hegel, he himself never used that specific formulation. Hegel ascribed that terminology to Kant.[18] Carrying on Kant's work, Fichte greatly elaborated on the synthesis model, and popularized it.

On the other hand, Hegel did use a three-valued logical model that is very similar to the antithesis model, but Hegel's most usual terms were: Abstract-Negative-Concrete. Sometimes Hegel would use the terms, Immediate-Mediated-Concrete. Hegel used these terms hundreds of times throughout his works.[19]

The formula, Thesis-Antithesis-Synthesis, does not explain why the Thesis requires an Antithesis. However, the formula, Abstract-Negative-Concrete, suggests a flaw in any initial thesis—it is too abstract and lacks the negative of trial, error and experience. The same applies to the formula, Immediate-Mediated-Concrete. For Hegel, the Concrete, the Synthesis, the Absolute, must always pass through the phase of the Negative, that is, Mediation. This is the actual essence of what is popularly called Hegelian Dialectics.

To describe the activity of overcoming the negative, Hegel also often used the term Aufhebung, variously translated into English as "sublation" or "overcoming," to conceive of the working of the dialectic. Roughly, the term indicates preserving the useful portion of an idea, thing, society, etc., while moving beyond its limitations. (Jacques Derrida's preferred French translation of the term was relever).[20]

[Rosa Lichtenstein]

^^^Thanks for that, but I'm not sure how such gobbledygook helps.