Dialectical Materialism from Learning

[promethean]

I am new to Marxism and I came across "dialectical materialism". Can someone summarise this and provide some good links about this subject?

[Rosa Lichtenstein]

I have written a very basic introduction to this theory (for absolute beginners) here (along with why I think it's a defective theory):

http://anti-dialectics.co.uk/Anti-D_For_Dummies%2001.htm

[CHAIRMAN GONZALO]

I am new to Marxism and I came across "dialectical materialism". Can someone summarise this and provide some good links about this subject?

Dude, I recommend you read Stalin's "Dialectical and Historical Materialism". It serves as a easy to read introduction to marxist philosophy. After reading that you might want to read Mao's 4 philosophical writings. Then you should read Lenin's "Materialism and Empirio-criticism". There are also other writings but these are the ones I would suggest to you.

[AK]

Absolute classic. A self-styled Marxist noob asks what dialectical materialism is and their first reply is from Rosa.

[S.Artesian]

I say read Marx.. the Grundrisse, the Economic Manuscripts 1857-1861, 1861-1864, that contain, among other things, the drafts of Capital, the proposed chapter 6 of Capital, the intended second volume of A Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy, and forget about reading Stalin on DM, Mao on philosophy, Lenin on materialism, Hegel etc.

What counts in Marx's dialectic is his analysis of the labor process, of accumulation, of expanded reproduction, of valorisation, of value, of the alienation of labor through its organization as wage-labor-- that's where the organization of opposites is, that's where determination and negation are grounded.

[Rosa Lichtenstein]

Marxistnoob, that summary from Das Kapital is excellent since it leaves out any trace of Hegel (upside down or the 'right way up') -- hence, there is no mention of 'contradictions', the 'negation of the negation', 'unity of opposites', 'quantity passing over into quality', 'universal change', 'totality'...

And yet Marx calls this 'the dialectic method'. In which case, 'the dialectic method' that Marx used in Das Kapital has had every trace of Hegel removed. And, what few occurences of Hegel's jargon there are in that book -- well, Marx tells us he was merely 'coquetting' with it -- using it non-seriously. Today, we'd use 'scare quotes'.


I am just looking for a quick summary and useful links about this subject.

Well, check out the link I added earlier. It's just what you are looking for.

Or read this thread here at RevLeft:

http://www.revleft.com/vb/nti-dialectics-made-t132104/index.html

[Rosa Lichtenstein]

Chairman Gonzalo:


Dude, I recommend you read Stalin's "Dialectical and Historical Materialism". It serves as a easy to read introduction to marxist philosophy. After reading that you might want to read Mao's 4 philosophical writings. Then you should read Lenin's "Materialism and Empirio-criticism". There are also other writings but these are the ones I would suggest to you.

Unfortunatley, Stalin makes all the usual mistakes in his rather crude summary of parts of Engels and Plekhanov -- and he leaves the 'negation of the negation' out.

Lenin's book is one of the worst ever published by a Marxist. Fortunately, I have taken it apart here:

http://anti-dialectics.co.uk/page_13%2001.htm

And Mao's 'theory' of change has been comprehensively demolished here:

http://www.revleft.com/vb/showpost.php?p=1594418&postcount=90

http://www.revleft.com/vb/mao-zedong-t121784/index.html

[Rosa Lichtenstein]

S Artesian:


I say read Marx.. the Grundrisse, the Economic Manuscripts 1857-1861, 1861-1864, that contain, among other things, the drafts of Capital, the proposed chapter 6 of Capital, the intended second volume of A Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy, and forget about reading Stalin on DM, Mao on philosophy, Lenin on materialism, Hegel etc.

What counts in Marx's dialectic is his analysis of the labor process, of accumulation, of expanded reproduction, of valorisation, of value, of the alienation of labor through its organization as wage-labor-- that's where the organization of opposites is, that's where determination and negation are grounded.

But this won't tell him anything about Dialectical Materialism (a theory you reject anyway).

Moreover, Marx did not publish the Grundrisse, and by the time he came to write Das Kapital he had waved all this mystical stuff 'goodbye', as the quotation Marxistnoob posted shows.

[Muzk]

Rosa is back!

[Rosa Lichtenstein]

^^^ Too right -- and mystics beware... http://www.mysmiley.net/imgs/smile/fighting/fighting0085.gif

[Thirsty Crow]

S Artesian:



But this won't tell him anything about Dialectical Materialism (a theory you reject anyway).

Moreover, Marx did not publish the Grundrisse, and by the time he came to write Das Kapital he had waved all this mystical stuff 'goodbye', as the quotation Marxistnoob posted shows.

So would you argue that Grundrisse is irrelevant? How about all the works prior to Capital?

[Rosa Lichtenstein]

Not at all. What I have argued is that Das Kapital presents his mature and most considered published views. Anything before that (or which was not published by Marx) that does not contradict Das Kapital has certainly to be taken into account.

[el_chavista]

well, Marx tells us he was merely 'coquetting' with it -- using it non-seriously.
Can we use this approach to all philosophy?

[Rosa Lichtenstein]

El_Chavista:


Can we use this approach to all philosophy?

Sure, but I'd go even further, and throw the lot out as self-important hot air.

[4 Leaf Clover]

Thank you but I know the basics of dialectics from Marx: marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1867-c1/p3.htm

I am just looking for a quick summary and useful links about this subject.

first of all , don't read rosa's anti-dialectics propaganda :)

[Rosa Lichtenstein]

4 Leaf Turnip:


first of all , don't read rosa's anti-dialectics propaganda

Incapable of countering my demolition of their mystical theory, the mystics, like the Catholic Church, put me on the Index.:lol:

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

[Rosa Lichtenstein]

Come to think of it: the mystics here set up there own Group: The Dialectical Mausoleum (http://www.revleft.com/vb/group.php?groupid=62) (a group I'm not allowed to join -- their tender eyes cannot even bear to see my heretic thoughts), where you'd think they'd get together and write their own summary for beginners, wouldn't you?

The reason they haven't done so is that they couldn't agree what to put in such a summary. The sectarian and divisive nature of Dialectical Marxism would have them at each other's throats in no time, with cries of "Revisionism!" ringing out just as an attempt was made.

That's part of the reason I had to write their bibliography (http://www.revleft.com/vb/group.php?do=discuss&group=&discussionid=1172) for them!

[4 Leaf Clover]

4 Leaf Turnip:



Incapable of countering my demolition of their mystical theory, the mystics, like the Catholic Church, put me on the Index.:lol:

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

just try to keep back from being so agressive on new-comers. Many want to hear the objective stance first , like encyclopedia style , before being bombed by different opinions :thumbup1:

[Rosa Lichtenstein]

4 Leaf Turnip:


just try to keep back from being so agressive on new-comers

I'm never aggressive with newcomers, unless they are aggressive with me first.


Many want to hear the objective stance first , like encyclopedia style , before being bombed by different opinions

You'd never argue that if someone were to ask about the 'crimes of Stalin' or the 'Gulags'. So why here?

This is an open forum. If newcomemers want pro-dialectical propaganda, unsullied by my heresies, they can nip over to the Dialectical Dungeon (http://www.revleft.com/vb/group.php?groupid=62) (where their requests for help are, in general, ignored).

[anticap]

Rosa, I'm wondering how you'd respond to the highlighted section of this excerpt from A Dictionary of Marxist Thought:

http://img831.imageshack.us/img831/1337/dialecticalcapital.th.png (http://img831.imageshack.us/img831/1337/dialecticalcapital.png)

[Rosa Lichtenstein]

^^^Well, I have covered this several times.

Marx chose not to publish the Grundrisse, but he did publish the summary Marxistnoob posted on the previous page. In that summary not a single Hegelian concept is to be found -- no "contradictions", no change of "quantity into quality", no "negation of the negation", no "unity and identity of opposites", no "interconnected Totality" --, and yet Marx calls this the "dialectic method", and says of it that it is "my method". So, Marx's "method" has had Hegel completely excised --, except for the odd phrase or two here and there with which he merely "coquetted".

You can find more details in these threads:

http://www.revleft.com/vb/scrapping-dialectics-would-t79634/index4.html

http://www.revleft.com/vb/showpost.php?p=1158574&postcount=73

http://www.revleft.com/vb/showpost.php?p=1158816&postcount=75

http://www.revleft.com/vb/showpost.php?p=1161443&postcount=114

http://www.revleft.com/vb/showpost.php?p=1163222&postcount=124

http://www.revleft.com/vb/dialectics-and-political-t118934/index.html

[anticap]

But you haven't addressed the highlighted passage itself. What would you say to the claim that Capital is written on the principle of the method outlined in the Grundrisse?

[Zanthorus]

I think it's useful to distuinguish between 'dialectics' as such and 'Dialectical materialism'. The latter was a term never used by Marx, and was in fact first used and elaborated on by the Russian Marxist Georgi Plekhanov. Plekhanov takes Marx's 'materialism' to be the 'contemplative materialism' of figures like Holbach and Helvetius. He then slaps a few laws taken from Hegel's Science of Logic on the top and declares the result 'Dialectical materialism'. For the most part, the DM tradition has largely stayed on the same course as Plekhanov. But both Marx and Engels said that their 'materialism' was closer to the old Idealism than to 18th century materialism. And neither of them took the 'laws' from Hegel's logic to be the fundamentals of Hegel's dialectic (Although both of them did point out from time to time when a phenomena appeared to jive with the laws).

[S.Artesian]

Not at all. What I have argued is that Das Kapital presents his mature and most considered published views. Anything before that (or which was not published by Marx) that does not contradict Das Kapital has certainly to be taken into account.

Oh, Rosa... you're so yesterday....We've moved on a bit while you were away, actually discussing things like accumulation, expanded reproduction, real and formal domination of capital -- those things that measure and define Marx's real materialism, which you pay lip service, and only lip service to. And it's in just those things where you can see Marx's dialectic at work-- the transformation of the "thing" into its opposite, because it isn't a thing at all, but a relation built on the specific organizations of property and labor; the determinants as limits and restraints to the relations of the totality etc...

That's the dialectic and the materialism I don't reject.

[Rosa Lichtenstein]

S Artesian:


Oh, Rosa... you're so yesterday....

While you are so the day before that... So what?


We've moved on a bit while you were away, actually discussing things like accumulation, expanded reproduction, real and formal domination of capital

But, only by ignoring what Marx actually published.:(


And it's in just those things where you can see Marx's dialectic at work-- the transformation of the "thing" into its opposite, because it isn't a thing at all, but a relation built on the specific organizations of property and labor; the determinants as limits and restraints to the relations of the totality etc...


1. You plainly did not read my argument too carefully -- but then, you prefer invention -- for I specifically said Hegel and the Marxist dialectical classicists referred to things and processes (and that includes relations, too).

2. Anyway, where have I dragged this point into the debate on whether or not Marx waved 'goodbye' to Hegel in Das Kapital?

Nowehere, that's where.

But, as I have already noted (scores of times, in fact, since you blundered in at RevLeft) you prefer to make stuff up rather than engage with what I actually say.

No wonder: you ignore what Marx actually says too... :lol:

[Rosa Lichtenstein]

Anticap:


But you haven't addressed the highlighted passage itself. What would you say to the claim that Capital is written on the principle of the method outlined in the Grundrisse?

Plainly, there are clear links between the two books, since the same man wrote both. But, I have yet to see the proof that they share the same method.

And I would question such 'proof' anyway, in view of the fact that Marx clearly indicated that his 'dialectic method' has had all that Hegelian guff excised.

[Rosa Lichtenstein]

Z:


I think it's useful to distuinguish between 'dialectics' as such and 'Dialectical materialism'. The latter was a term never used by Marx, and was in fact first used and elaborated on by the Russian Marxist Georgi Plekhanov. Plekhanov takes Marx's 'materialism' to be the 'contemplative materialism' of figures like Holbach and Helvetius. He then slaps a few laws taken from Hegel's Science of Logic on the top and declares the result 'Dialectical materialism'. For the most part, the DM tradition has largely stayed on the same course as Plekhanov. But both Marx and Engels said that their 'materialism' was closer to the old Idealism than to 18th century materialism. And neither of them took the 'laws' from Hegel's logic to be the fundamentals of Hegel's dialectic (Although both of them did point out from time to time when a phenomena appeared to jive with the laws).

OK, but you forgot to add that by the time he came to write Das Kapital, Marx had completely broken with Hegel, and that the 'dialectic method' he endosred contained not one atom of that mystical bumbler (upside down, or the 'right way up').

[Zanthorus]

Rosa, we've been through this around a dozen times. Your idea that Marx 'rejected' Hegel simply does not square with the fact that in the very same introduction he praises Hegel.

[Rosa Lichtenstein]

Z:


Rosa, we've been through this around a dozen times. Your idea that Marx 'rejected' Hegel simply does not square with the fact that in the very same introduction he praises Hegel.

As you have also had pointed out to you several times -- Marx pointedly put this in the past tense.


...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. Bold emphasis added.

In no published work subsequent to, or contemporaneous with Das Kapital did he express any such praise in the present tense.

But even if he had:

1. One can call a theorist a "mighty thinker", and claim to have learn much from the latter, even while disagreeing with everything he or she says. For example, I think Plato is a "mighty thinker", and I have learnt much from him, but I disagree with him almost completely.

2. The extent of his respect for that mystical idiot can be seen from the fact that the very best Marx found he could do with Hegel's obscure jargon is use it non-seriously. Hardly a ringing endorsement!

No wonder then that he called that summary (in which there is no trace of Hegel at all), 'the dialectic method'.

[graymouser]

Plainly, there are clear links between the two books, since the same man wrote both. But, I have yet to see the proof that they share the same method.

And I would question such 'proof' anyway, in view of the fact that Marx clearly indicated that his 'dialectic method' has had all that Hegelian guff excised.
Perhaps the most amazing claim about Rosa's comments is that it is drawn primarily from the following facts:


In the postface to the second German edition of Capital, Marx highlights the fact that a reviewer being kind to his method is in fact describing a dialectical method, yet the summary contains no Hegelian terms.
In the same postface, Marx says that he "coquetted" with the form of expression used by Hegel, who was a notoriously dense author.

This of course ignores the fact that the same postface refers to Hegel as "that mighty thinker" of whom Marx considered himself a student, and that Marx excoriates the "epigonoi" (offspring, often used in the sense of a lesser follower) who consider Hegel a "dead dog" (and those scare quotes are in the original). Nonetheless Rosa believes that she has taken from this a radical shift in method and a total rejection of Hegel.

Following from this, we see that Rosa's view relies upon a major shift in Marx's worldview and methodology from 1858, when the Grundrisse was written, to the period of 1861-1866, when volume 1 of Capital was finally completed for publication. Unfortunately for her case, no credible Marx scholar (by which I mean people who actually study Marx, not Marxists overall) has located the fundamental shift from early Marx to late Marx in this period. The rather more dramatic shift is not from Grundrisse to Capital, but from The German Ideology and the Communist Manifesto to the Grundrisse and Capital, where his view of bourgeois society changed significantly. Yet the only evidence of such a break is in an extreme reading (or willful misreading) of the postface to the second German edition of Capital.

Further troublesome for Rosa's case is the fact that the reviewer is not describing Marx's method of 1861-1866 at all. Marx is quite clear that the reviewer has just quoted from an earlier work of Marx's, his Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy, published in 1859 - so its writing would have been contemporaneous with the Grundrisse. Marx's statement of method was that of 1859 and not of 1867, and yet - according to Rosa - he had broken completely with the method of the Grundrisse. Yet he does not disavow this method, instead seeing it as totally in continuity between the Contribution and Capital. Had this shift occurred, Marx could hardly have allowed the tremendous mistake of allowing this reviewer to equate the method he outlines for the Contribution, and his radically different, totally non-Hegelian method developed for Capital. We must conclude that there is no fundamental change in method between the Grundrisse and Capital that Rosa's thesis would require.

It's a shame how much time has been spent on this, but it turns out the method was the same all along.

[Tablo]

Thanks Rosa. I've read some of the works linked to in this thread recently and you completely demolished them. xP

[S.Artesian]

It's a shame how much time has been spent on this, but it turns out the method was the same all along.

Word.

It is a shame. When there's so much in Marx, in his "unpublished" Economic Manuscripts from 1857 through 1864, that displays his grasp of the essence beneath the appearance, of the transformation of labor, as a process of enrichment, for the laborer who is a social being, into its opposite, a process of isolation, loss, alienation, immiseration in order to valorise capital; when those same manuscripts, containing drafts of Capital, and explorations of surplus value show Marx explicating the dialectic between the labor process and the valorisation process, we have the one trick pony, the afterwordist trying her anti-dialectical best to trump all such discussion with her hand of jokers.

Really.

You want to know what's material and dialectic to Marx? Read volumes 28, 30, 33, and 34 of the collected works, that's where you'll find it. Not in Lenin's Materialism and Empiro-Criticism, or Plekhanov, and certainly notin Rosa's idiosyncratic torrents of criticism of those works.

[Rosa Lichtenstein]

GreyMouser


This of course ignores the fact that the same postface refers to Hegel as "that mighty thinker" of whom Marx considered himself a student, and that Marx excoriates the "epigonoi" (offspring, often used in the sense of a lesser follower) who consider Hegel a "dead dog" (and those scare quotes are in the original). Nonetheless Rosa believes that she has taken from this a radical shift in method and a total rejection of Hegel.

Already covered above; here it is again:


As you have also had pointed out to you several times -- Marx pointedly put this in the past tense.


...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. Bold emphasis added.

In no published work subsequent to or contemporaneous with Das Kapital did he express any such praise in the present tense.

But even if he had:

1. One can call a theorist a "mighty thinker", and claim to have learn much from the latter, even while disagreeing with everything he or she says. For example, I think Plato is a "mighty thinker", and I have learnt much from him, but I disagree with him almost completely.

2. The extent of his respect for that mystical idiot can be seen from the fact that the very best Marx found he could do with Hegel's obscure jargon is use it non-seriously. Hardly a ringing endorsement!

No wonder then that he called that summary (in which there is no trace of Hegel at all), 'the dialectic method'.

You:


Following from this, we see that Rosa's view relies upon a major shift in Marx's worldview and methodology from 1858, when the Grundrisse was written, to the period of 1861-1866, when volume 1 of Capital was finally completed for publication. Unfortunately for her case, no credible Marx scholar (by which I mean people who actually study Marx, not Marxists overall) has located the fundamental shift from early Marx to late Marx in this period. The rather more dramatic shift is not from Grundrisse to Capital, but from The German Ideology and the Communist Manifesto to the Grundrisse and Capital, where his view of bourgeois society changed significantly. Yet the only evidence of such a break is in an extreme reading (or willful misreading) of the postface to the second German edition of Capital.

Indeed, and Marx announced this change when he added a summary of 'the dialectic method' -- the only summary of it that Marx published in his entire life -- from which every trace of Hegel had been removed.

And as if to rub it in, he did not publish the Grundrisse.

Of course, if you have any other evidence, published by Marx contemporaneous with or subsequent to Das Kapital, that supports your attempt to re-mystify that book, let's see it.

Oh wait -- you haven't.:cool:


Further troublesome for Rosa's case is the fact that the reviewer is not describing Marx's method of 1861-1866 at all. Marx is quite clear that the reviewer has just quoted from an earlier work of Marx's, his Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy, published in 1859 - so its writing would have been contemporaneous with the Grundrisse. Marx's statement of method was that of 1859 and not of 1867, and yet - according to Rosa - he had broken completely with the method of the Grundrisse. Yet he does not disavow this method, instead seeing it as totally in continuity between the Contribution and Capital. Had this shift occurred, Marx could hardly have allowed the tremendous mistake of allowing this reviewer to equate the method he outlines for the Contribution, and his radically different, totally non-Hegelian method developed for Capital. We must conclude that there is no fundamental change in method between the Grundrisse and Capital that Rosa's thesis would require.

And yet Marx called this 'the dialectic method', and it contained not one atom of Hegel. So, it does not matter what the reviewer thought he was summarising, Marx still called it 'the dialectic method'.

And it must be Marx's method, too -- unless, of course, you think that 'the dialectic method' isn't Marx's method after all.

So, if you have another summary of 'the dialectic method', published by Marx contemporaneous with or subsequent to Das Kapital, that supports your attempt to re-mystify his work, let's see it.

Oh wait -- you haven't.:lol:

[Rosa Lichtenstein]

S Artesian:

Word.


It is a shame. When there's so much in Marx, in his "unpublished" Economic Manuscripts from 1857 through 1864, that displays his grasp of the essence beneath the appearance, of the transformation of labor, as a process of enrichment, for the laborer who is a social being, into its opposite, a process of isolation, loss, alienation, immiseration in order to valorise capital; when those same manuscripts, containing drafts of Capital, and explorations of surplus value show Marx explicating the dialectic between the labor process and the valorisation process, we have the one trick pony, the afterwordist trying her anti-dialectical best to trump all such discussion with her hand of jokers.

Too bad for you that Marx rejected this Hegelian guff when he came to write Das Kapital, isn't it?:)


Really.

You want to know what's material and dialectic to Marx? Read volumes 28, 30, 33, and 34 of the collected works, that's where you'll find it. Not in Lenin's Materialism and Empiro-Criticism, or Plekhanov, and certainly notin Rosa's idiosyncratic torrents of criticism of those works.

Care to show where I go wrong then?:cool:

[graymouser]

Indeed, and Marx announced this change when he added a summary of 'the dialectic method' -- the only summary of it that Marx published in his entire life -- from which every trace of Hegel had been removed.
You do not seem to comprehend that Marx is not referring to the rather banal statement of his reviewer, but to the Preface to A Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy. If you read that Preface it is quite clear we are dealing with the "inverted Hegelian" dialectics which a plain reading of the Postface to Capital shows that Marx claims as his own method - contradictions and all. The reviewer's summary is not Marx's method, but the Preface to the Contribution. There is more than an atom of Hegel in this work.


And as if to rub it in, he did not publish the Grundrisse.
Irrelevant. As I said, your hypothesis rests on a radical change between the Grundrisse which clearly elaborates the inverted-Hegelian dialectic, and Capital which you claim does not. The Contribution, written at such a time when the Grundrisse could scarcely have been out of memory, contained the actual summary you want. The radical break with the inverted-Hegelian dialectic is therefore impossible.

[Rosa Lichtenstein]

GrayMouser:


You do not seem to comprehend that Marx is not referring to the rather banal statement of his reviewer, but to the Preface to A Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy. If you read that Preface it is quite clear we are dealing with the "inverted Hegelian" dialectics which a plain reading of the Postface to Capital shows that Marx claims as his own method - contradictions and all. The reviewer's summary is not Marx's method, but the Preface to the Contribution. There is more than an atom of Hegel in this work.

Ok, here it is again:


"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.]

Marx uses the word "pictures", here. In other words Marx is talking about the writer's picture of something. And what is that something? Why, 'the dialectic method'. So, this author's picture of 'the dialectic method' (this summary of it) is being spoken about by Marx -- and, alas for you, that picture contains not one atom of Hegel.


Irrelevant.

Not at all, otherwise he would have published it.


As I said, your hypothesis rests on a radical change between the Grundrisse which clearly elaborates the inverted-Hegelian dialectic, and Capital which you claim does not. The Contribution, written at such a time when the Grundrisse could scarcely have been out of memory, contained the actual summary you want. The radical break with the inverted-Hegelian dialectic is therefore impossible.

So? What's so surprising about radical changes of mind? There are scores of examples of this in the history of thought -- from Kan't change after reading Hume to Marx's after reading Feuerbach, and beyond.


The radical break with the inverted-Hegelian dialectic is therefore impossible

Well we needn't speculate, for Marx saved us the trouble by helpfully adding a summary of 'his method', 'the dialectic method', which contained not one atom of Hegel (upside down or 'the right way up') -- no 'contradictions', no 'unity of opposites', no 'quantity passing over into quality', no 'negation of the negation', no 'universal interconnection'...

[graymouser]

Marx uses the word "pictures". In other words Marx is talking about the writer's picture of something. And what is that something? Why, 'the dialectic method'. So, this author's picture of 'the dialectic method' (this summary of it) is being spoken about here by Marx -- and, alas for you, that picture contains not one atom of Hegel.
No, Marx is referring to "what the writer pictures," which is precisely the method outlined in the Preface to A Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy, which contains more than an atom of Hegel (including contradiction, no less). The method is the Preface, not the reviewer's summation.


So? What's so surprising about radical changes of mind? There are scores of examples of this in the history of thought -- from Kan't change after reading Hume to Marx's after reading Feuerbach, and beyond.
The problem is that Marx, after having written Capital, refers to the Preface to the Contribution - which was not written long after the Grundrisse - as "his method." There is neither time, nor documentary evidence, for your supposed break to have happened.


Well we needn't speculate, for Marx saved us the trouble by helpfully adding a summary of 'his method', 'the dialectic method', which contained not one atom of Hegel (upside down or 'the right way up') -- no 'contradictions', no 'unity of opposites', no 'quantity passing over into quality', no 'negation of the negation', no 'universal interconnection'...
Still wrong. The Preface to the Contribution contains contradictions.

[S.Artesian]

S Artesian:

Word.



Too bad for you that Marx rejected this Hegelian guff when he came to write Das Kapital, isn't it?:)



Care to show where I go wrong then?:cool:

Sure. You go wrong in making this a "philosophical" exercise in the history of philosophy and in your version of logic. You go wrong because you can't come to grips with a single thing Marx wrote about value, about the labor process vs. valorisation process; about the fundamental opposition, and unity in opposition of the conditions of labor and labor itself.

You go wrong in when you claim that a published work, not even a work, but a preface to a work takes precedence over all unpublished work, thus ignoring the very methodology and content of the investigations that made the published work even possible.

You go wrong when you claim Marx wasted time, or was delayed, because of his relationship to Hegel, when in fact Marx's own engagement with the critique of political economy is only possible because of, and after, his critique of Hegel.

You go wrong when you posit your false "rupture," or extirpation of Hegel's dialectic by Marx sometime between the Grundrisse in 1857 and Capital when there is no shred of evidence of any such rupture in any of Marx's notebooks; when in fact the manuscripts he prepared after the Grundrisse and coincident with the work on Capital all demonstrate a rigorous loyalty to dialectic and dialectical analysis.

You go wrong when you fail to understand that Marx's analysis is a social-ism, about how human being reproduce themselves in the material reproduction of their conditions of social existence; how in fact the alienation, expropriation of labor converts labor into its opposite-- into the oppression of social development.

You go wrong with just about every word you write about Marx, because you have no idea what Marx was really investigating.

[Rosa Lichtenstein]

GrayMouser:


No, Marx is referring to "what the writer pictures," which is precisely the method outlined in the Preface to A Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy, which contains more than an atom of Hegel (including contradiction, no less). The method is the Preface, not the reviewer's summation.

And yet, Marx tells us that this picture, which contains not one ounce of Hegel, is 'the dialectic method'.

But, you have a reply:


The method is the Preface, not the reviewer's summation

In which case, Marx would have pointed out that the review was inaccurate since it left Hegel's concepts out. But he didn't. So, Marx cannot have been referring to what you say he did.


The problem is that Marx, after having written Capital, refers to the Preface to the Contribution - which was not written long after the Grundrisse - as "his method." There is neither time, nor documentary evidence, for your supposed break to have happened.

He in fact says


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:

Bold added.

and:


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.]

So, he is in fact talking about the materialist, not the idealist, basis of his method.

And since that reviewer had excised every Hegelian concept, that left only the materialist basis of Marx's method, as I alleged.


The Preface to the Contribution contains contradictions

Which the reviewer left out, leaving the materialist basis of Marx's method behind.

Which is why the very best Marx could do in Das Kapital was 'coquette' with this obscure word..

[Crux]

Marxistnoob, that summary from Das Kapital is excellent since it leaves out any trace of Hegel (upside down or the 'right way up') -- hence, there is no mention of 'contradictions', the 'negation of the negation', 'unity of opposites', 'quantity passing over into quality', 'universal change', 'totality'...

And yet Marx calls this 'the dialectic method'. In which case, 'the dialectic method' that Marx used in Das Kapital has had every trace of Hegel removed. And, what few occurences of Hegel's jargon there are in that book -- well, Marx tells us he was merely 'coquetting' with it -- using it non-seriously. Today, we'd use 'scare quotes'.
Debatable.

[Crux]

So, he is in fact talking about the materialist, not the idealist, basis of his method.

And since that reviewer had excised every Hegelian concept, that left only the materialist basis of Marx's method, as I alleged.

Your usual circular-logic. I could point out 1) dialectical materialism is, according to it's proponents, materialist. So it's useless for you to claim that leaving dialectical materialism out leaves idealism out. Also the divide between idealism and materialism is hardly black-and-white in philosophical terms. But debating dialectics with you is about as useful as discussing the existence (or non-existence as it were) of god with a religious fanatic. It might be amusing for a while, but I'll get tired of your version of the ontological argument.

[graymouser]

And yet, Marx tells us that this picture, which cantains not one ounce of Hegel, is 'the dialectic method'.
No. Marx tells us that what the reviewer is picturing is the dialectic method - i.e. that the Preface, which the reviewer was thinking of in his summation, and which contains "contradictions," is his dialectic method. You cannot remove the Preface from this reference, because it is the basis of the whole quote from the reviewer.


In which case, Marx would have pointed out that the review was inaccurate since it left Hegel's concepts out. But he didn't. So, Marx cannot have been referring to what you say he did.
Ah, but he does. He says that the method detailed in the Preface (which the reviewer thought was not dialectical) is in fact Marx's dialectic method. He later goes on to clarify that his method is Hegel's, but de-mystified and inverted. You have simply fixated yourself upon a nonsensical reading of this Postface that ignores what it actually says in favor of your own fantasy.


And since that reviewer had excised every Hegelian concept, that left only the materialist basis of Marx's method, as I alleged.
Yet Marx goes on to clarify that his method is Hegel's, but with the "rational kernel" extracted from the "mystical shell." The reviewer's summary is not Marx's method. Marx's method is the thoroughly inverted-Hegelian method described in the Preface to the Contribution, not what the reviewer wrote up.


Which is why the very best Marx could do in Das Kapital was 'coquette' with this obscure word..
Again, this is incorrect. Marx coquettes with Hegel's peculiar mode of expression. This is not some deep mystery of the ages. Marx was writing a book for popular consumption, and Hegel was a notoriously difficult writer. He's being coy not about association with "that mighty thinker" but about writing in a mode like Hegel's. And you know what? He was correct; that is the most notoriously difficult chapter of Capital.

[Rosa Lichtenstein]

S Artesian:


Sure. You go wrong in making this a "philosophical" exercise in the history of philosophy and in your version of logic. You go wrong because you can't come to grips with a single thing Marx wrote about value, about the labor process vs. valorisation process; about the fundamental opposition, and unity in opposition of the conditions of labor and labor itself.

In fact, this is precisely what I do not do.


You go wrong because you can't come to grips with a single thing Marx wrote about value, about the labor process vs. valorisation process; about the fundamental opposition, and unity in opposition of the conditions of labor and labor itself

1. May I remind you that I had to remind you what Marx wrote about 'contradictions' in Das Kapital? So it is you who does not seem to know what Marx was on about on that book.

2. Where have I expressed an opinion about 'value' or 'labour'? So, how do you know I go wrong here.

3. What I in fact do is show that the traditional, mystical use of 'contradiction' and 'unity of opposites', etc., is based on some radically defective logic Hegel inflicted on those who take him too seriously. Hence there is now no rationale for continuing to use these obscure concepts - a bit like how scientists no longer use ancient concepts such as 'substantial form' or 'entelechy'.

Of course, if you insist on using them, unlike Marx (who could only 'coquette' with them), you will only succeed in mystifying his work.

Since you know no logic, you have, naturally, been unable to show where I go wrong.


You go wrong in when you claim that a published work, not even a work, but a preface to a work takes precedence over all unpublished work, thus ignoring the very methodology and content of the investigations that made the published work even possible.

This is a standard interpretative device, hence it is no error.

And you only allege this since you can't find a single published source that supports your attempt to re-mystify Marx, and are desperately thrashing about, looking for something, anything, to throw at me.

But, let us suppose you are right; in that case, you must, presumably agree with Marx over his unpublished views about Trémaux:


Ad vocem Trémaux: your verdict ‘that there is nothing to his whole theory because he knows nothing of geology, and is incapable of even the most common-or-garden literary-historical critique recurs almost word for word in Cuvier’s ‘Discours sur les Révolutions du Globe’ in his attack on the doctrine of the variabilité des especes, in which he makes fun of German nature-worshippers, among others, who formulated Darwin’s basic idea in its entirety, however far they were from being able to prove it. However, that did not prevent Cuvier, who was a great geologist and for a naturalist also an exceptional literary-historical critic, from being wrong, and the people who formulated the new idea, from being right. Trémaux’s basic idea about the influence of the soil (although he does not, of course, attach any value to historical modifications of this influence, and I myself would include amongst these historical modifications the chemical alteration in the surface soil brought about by agriculture, etc., as well as the varying influence which, with varying modes of production, such things as coalfields, etc., have) is, in my opinion, an idea which needs only to be formulated to acquire permanent scientific status, and that quite independently of the way Trémaux presents it.

http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1866/letters/66_10_03.htm

And perhaps you also endorse some of the iffy things Marx said about blacks and Jews in unpublished letters?

If not, then even you use the above principle.


You go wrong when you claim Marx wasted time, or was delayed, because of his relationship to Hegel, when in fact Marx's own engagement with the critique of political economy is only possible because of, and after, his critique of Hegel.

In that case, perhaps you also think Newton didn't waste his time pratting about with Biblical Numerology, Alchemy and Hermetic mysticism?

And this does not surprise me, either, since you want to re-mystify Marx, too!


You go wrong when you posit your false "rupture," or extirpation of Hegel's dialectic by Marx sometime between the Grundrisse in 1857 and Capital when there is no shred of evidence of any such rupture in any of Marx's notebooks; when in fact the manuscripts he prepared after the Grundrisse and coincident with the work on Capital all demonstrate a rigorous loyalty to dialectic and dialectical analysis.

I don't use the word "rupture".

Still can't get things right can you?


You go wrong when you fail to understand that Marx's analysis is a social-ism, about how human being reproduce themselves in the material reproduction of their conditions of social existence; how in fact the alienation, expropriation of labor converts labor into its opposite-- into the oppression of social development.

And on what posts/essays of mine do you base these febrile inventions?


You go wrong with just about every word you write about Marx, because you have no idea what Marx was really investigating.

In that case, Marx goes wrong too. I'm happy to be lumped in with him.:)

[Rosa Lichtenstein]

Majakovskij (now no longer ignoring me!:( ):


Your usual circular-logic.

Even if it were, it would still be superior to the sub-Aristotelian logic you lot swallow down without a murmur.


I could point out 1) dialectical materialism is, according to it's proponents, materialist.

Except you mystics use idealist tems lifted from Hegel, even though Marx left these behind, in Das Kapital.


So it's useless for you to claim that leaving dialectical materialism out leaves idealism out.

No, it's very useful -- not least because it annoys you mystics.:cool:


Also the divide between idealism and materialism is hardly black-and-white in philosophical terms.

In fact, philosophical materialsim is no different from idealism. I'd explain this to you but I fear you are a lost cause.:)


But debating dialectics with you is about as useful as discussing the existence (or non-existence as it were) of god with a religious fanatic. It might be amusing for a while, but I'll get tired of your version of the ontological argument.

I accept your capitulation.

You can now resume your illustrious sectarian career posting rumours about the IMT, or other fellow Trotskyists.

[Crux]

Majakovskij (now no longer ignoring me!:( ): For the lulz.



Even if it were, it would still be superior to the sub-Aristotelian logic you lot swallow down without a murmur.
So even if you're just making a fallacy you're still "superior"? Fascinating.




Except you mystics use idealist tems lifted from Hegel, even though Marx left these behind, in Das Kapital.
Except central to your claim here is that Marx left dialectical materialism behind, which is the exact point we would be debating. So, to use you're own language, you are wrong. Why? Because I am right.




No, it's very useful -- not least because it annoys you mystics.:cool:
I am not annoyed, I am amused.




In fact, philosophical materialsim is no different from idealism. I'd explain this to you but I fear you are a lost cause.:)
I accept your capitulation.



I accept your capitulation.
Well, trollism is a philsophical school I do have a trouble debating with. It's so eclectic and changing the goalposts and whatever other logical fallacies you can think of. After a while it becomes redundant to keep a check.



You can now resume your illustrious sectarian career posting rumours about the IMT, or other fellow Trotskyists.
Oh how I wish that was my career. But I see you're knowledge of my writing is about as accurate as your understanding of Dialectical Materialism. It's obviously like some kind of mental bloc, because this is hardly the first time your apparently oblivious this is the billionth time. Speculating about your psychological health would of course also be useless, but sometimes I wonder...

[Rosa Lichtenstein]

GreyMouser:


No. Marx tells us that what the reviewer is picturing is the dialectic method - i.e. that the Preface, which the reviewer was thinking of in his summation, and which contains "contradictions," is his dialectic method. You cannot remove the Preface from this reference, because it is the basis of the whole quote from the reviewer.

Yes I did read this, but I responded, thus:


In which case, Marx would have pointed out that the review was inaccurate since it left Hegel's concepts out. But he didn't. So, Marx cannot have been referring to what you say he did.

But, you have a reply:


Ah, but he does. He says that the method detailed in the Preface (which the reviewer thought was not dialectical) is in fact Marx's dialectic method. He later goes on to clarify that his method is Hegel's, but de-mystified and inverted. You have simply fixated yourself upon a nonsensical reading of this Postface that ignores what it actually says in favor of your own fantasy.

Ah, I see you have to embellish what Marx said in order to fly this kite.

What Marx says is in fact this:


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), p.102.]

So, he does not correct this reviewer. And we now know why -- since he endorsed his non-Hegelian summary of 'the dialectic method'.

So, this applies to you, not me:


You have simply fixated yourself upon a nonsensical reading of this Postface that ignores what it actually says in favor of your own fantasy

You:


Yet Marx goes on to clarify that his method is Hegel's, but with the "rational kernel" extracted from the "mystical shell." The reviewer's summary is not Marx's method. Marx's method is the thoroughly inverted-Hegelian method described in the Preface to the Contribution, not what the reviewer wrote up.

And that 'rational kernel' contains no Hegel at all (upside down, or the 'right way up') -- and thus it more closely resembles the rational method of Aristotle, The Scottish Historical School (Ferguson, Millar, Robertson, Smith, Hume and Stewart), and Kant -- who did not try to mystify history, unlike you lot.


Again, this is incorrect. Marx coquettes with Hegel's peculiar mode of expression. This is not some deep mystery of the ages. Marx was writing a book for popular consumption, and Hegel was a notoriously difficult writer. He's being coy not about association with "that mighty thinker" but about writing in a mode like Hegel's. And you know what? He was correct; that is the most notoriously difficult chapter of Capital.

And yet, the reviewer Marx quoted managed to summarise 'the dialectic method' in popular, almost everyday terms, without the use of Hegelian gobbledygook (modes of expression) -- which is why Marx endorsed it.

And, of course, this comment of your confirms that there is no Hegel in Das Kapital -- since, as you note, he wanted his readers to understand what he wrote.

I can live with that...:)

[Crux]

So your disagreement is about "modes of expression"? I lolled.

[Rosa Lichtenstein]

M:


So even if you're just making a fallacy you're still "superior"? Fascinating.

This shows how little logic you know. Circular arguments are valid.

The sub-Aristotelian 'logic' you lot have swallowed isn't.


I am not annoyed, I am amused.

Must try harder...


I accept your capitulation.

Copying me, eh?


Well, trollism is a philsophical school I do have a trouble debating with.

Steer clear of your fellow mystics then!


It's so eclectic and changing the goalposts and whatever other logical fallacies you can think of. After a while it becomes redundant to keep a check.

Good description of Dialectical Materialism, this! Can I use it?:)


Oh how I wish that was my career.

Keep trying, you are a natural.


But I see you're knowledge of my writing is about as accurate as your understanding of Dialectical Materialism.

In that case, you should find it easy to point out my errors. Go on -- put your evidence where your bragging mouth is.


It's obviously like some kind of mental bloc, because this is hardly the first time your apparently oblivious this is the billionth time.

Exaggeration is clearly your game.


Speculating about your psychological health would of course also be useless, but sometimes I wonder...

No need to, we already have enough to know you are scared stiff. http://www.politicalcrossfire.com/forum/images/smiles/2.gif

[Rosa Lichtenstein]

M:


So your disagreement is about "modes of expression"? I lolled.

Indeed, it's quite clear you are out of your depth.


Debatable.

But not by you...

[graymouser]

Ah, I see you have to embellish what Marx said in order to fly this kite.
No. I am pointing out that Marx clarified his method, and not in ways that help your theory. You simply refuse to actually engage in a plain reading of this Postface. (As a parenthetical note, Marx put this in a Postface and not in the main body of Capital - if it were really critical to understanding the radical change you've dreamed up in his methodology, it should be in the actual work.)


So, he does not correct this reviewer. And we now know why -- since he endorsed his non-Hegelian summary of 'the dialectic method'.
He does not "endorse" the summary. He confirms that what the reviewer pictures upon reading the Preface to the Contribution is in fact a dialectical method. This is not saying "the reviewer above summarizes my method accurately" but "the method the reviewer is calling materialist, is in fact my dialectical method." Your fixation upon the reviewer's lack of Hegelian terms is irrelevant to the fact that the reviewer is discussing Marx's methodology laid out in the Preface to the Contribution which lays out Marx's own dialectic. You are grasping at straws because you cannot deal with the actual text that the reviewer is referring to.


And that 'rational kernel' contains no Hegel at all (upside down, or the 'right way up') -- and thus it more closely resembles the rational method of Aristotle, The Scottish Historical School (Ferguson, Millar, Robertson, Smith, Hume and Stewart), and Kant -- who did not try to mystify history, unlike you lot.
This is simply a fantasy of yours with no textual basis. The "rational kernel" was the laws of motion that Hegel had laid out, but based in material conditions rather than in the Idea. No credible Marx scholar is going to say anything other.

[Rosa Lichtenstein]

GM:


No. I am pointing out that Marx clarified his method, and not in ways that help your theory. You simply refuse to actually engage in a plain reading of this Postface. (As a parenthetical note, Marx put this in a Postface and not in the main body of Capital - if it were really critical to understanding the radical change you've dreamed up in his methodology, it should be in the actual work.)

And to do that you found you had to add to his words.


You simply refuse to actually engage in a plain reading of this Postface.

But it's you who wants to add to what Marx said so that it agrees with the traditional view you are trying to sell us.


if it were really critical to understanding the radical change you've dreamed up in his methodology, it should be in the actual work

Not necessarily. As you yourself pointed out, he wanted his book to be easy to follow. A detour into methodology in the body of that work would defeat that purpose.


He does not "endorse" the summary. He confirms that what the reviewer pictures upon reading the Preface to the Contribution is in fact a dialectical method. This is not saying "the reviewer above summarizes my method accurately" but "the method the reviewer is calling materialist, is in fact my dialectical method." Your fixation upon the reviewer's lack of Hegelian terms is irrelevant to the fact that the reviewer is discussing Marx's methodology laid out in the Preface to the Contribution which lays out Marx's own dialectic. You are grasping at straws because you cannot deal with the actual text that the reviewer is referring to.

Well, he calls it 'the dialectic method', and that's good enough for me.


Your fixation upon the reviewer's lack of Hegelian terms is irrelevant to the fact that the reviewer is discussing Marx's methodology laid out in the Preface to the Contribution which lays out Marx's own dialectic. You are grasping at straws because you cannot deal with the actual text that the reviewer is referring to

Not so, otherwise Marx would have criticised him for this too. The fact he did not tells us all us genuine materialists need to know.

So, this comment applies to you:


You are grasping at straws because you cannot deal with the actual text that the reviewer is referring to

You:


This is simply a fantasy of yours with no textual basis. The "rational kernel" was the laws of motion that Hegel had laid out, but based in material conditions rather than in the Idea. No credible Marx scholar is going to say anything other.

Not so; check these out:

http://www.revleft.com/vb/showpost.php?p=1356284&postcount=68

http://www.revleft.com/vb/showpost.php?p=1693775&postcount=260

http://www.revleft.com/vb/showpost.php?p=1693776&postcount=261


No credible Marx scholar is going to say anything other.

'Credible' meaning 'agrees with GrayMouser', of course.

[graymouser]

Rosa:

You've said nothing to deal with the Preface to the Contribution, so I'm going to have to assume you are not interested in actual debate on what Marx wrote instead of peddling fantastic theories about the Postface to the second German edition of Capital. I am not going to respond to further messages from you which rely upon your mis-reading of this Postface, as you must first deal with Marx's actual presentation of his method from the Contribution.

[Rosa Lichtenstein]

GM:


You've said nothing to deal with the Preface to the Contribution, so I'm going to have to assume you are not interested in actual debate on what Marx wrote instead of peddling fantastic theories about the Postface to the second German edition of Capital. I am not going to respond to further messages from you which rely upon your mis-reading of this Postface, as you must first deal with Marx's actual presentation of his method from the Contribution.

In fact, I rejected this as an irrelevance. The only question now is: why are you trying to deflect discussion in this way?

The answer is pretty obvious: you can't find a single passage, published by Marx, contemporaneous with or subsequent to Das Kapital, that supports your attempt to re-mystify his work.

[graymouser]

In fact, I rejected this as an irrelevance. The only question now is: why are you trying to deflect discussion in this way?

The answer is pretty obvious: you can't find a single passage, published by Marx, contemporaneous with or subsequent to Das Kapital, that supports your attempt to re-mystify his work.
I've made it extremely clear why I am interested in the Preface to the Contribution: it is the subject of the review that Marx quotes, and it directly contradicts your fantasy version of Marx's method while writing Capital. It is documentary proof that your assertions about the Postface to the latter work are baseless, and your writings on it are just really terrible eisegesis.

[Rosa Lichtenstein]

GM, before:


I am not going to respond to further messages from you which rely upon your mis-reading of this Postface, as you must first deal with Marx's actual presentation of his method from the Contribution.

GM, now:


I've made it extremely clear why I am interested in the Preface to the Contribution: it is the subject of the review that Marx quotes, and it directly contradicts your fantasy version of Marx's method while writing Capital. It is documentary proof that your assertions about the Postface to the latter work are baseless, and your writings on it are just really terrible eisegesis.

Seems you not only can't get Marx right, you can't even get your own ideas right, either!:lol:


and it directly contradicts your fantasy version of Marx's method while writing Capital. It is documentary proof that your assertions about the Postface to the latter work are baseless, and your writings on it are just really terrible eisegesis

Well, you certainly asserted this, and then found you had to alter Marx's words to make this con work.

Nice try -- only it wasn't.

[Crux]

Circular arguments are valid.
Not the ones you are making.

And the "modes of expression" comment must went right over your head, didn't it? I was referring to your blatant trolling. So I restate, having a discussion with you is about as useful as discussing god with a religious fanatic. You'll keep referring to imaginary evidence ("Karl Marx clearly drops dialectical materialism because he clearly drops dialectical materialism/God Sayeth That Jesus Was His Only Son And Our Saviour!"). It'll be amusing for a while, but your "modes of expression" makes it tiresome rather quickly.

[Rosa Lichtenstein]

M:


Not the ones you are making.

Which ones, for example?


And the "modes of expression" comment must went right over your head, didn't it?

Gobbledygook generally does.:)


I was referring to your blatant trolling.

Well, we already know that you count as 'trolling' anything that fails to agree with your views.:lol:


So I restate, having a discussion with you is about as useful as discussing god with a religious fanatic.

But, you have never had a discussion with me; you just post personal attacks and baseless allegations.


You'll keep referring to imaginary evidence ("Karl Marx clearly drops dialectical materialism because he clearly drops dialectical materialism/God Sayeth That Jesus Was His Only Son And Our Saviour!"). It'll be amusing for a while, but your "modes of expression" makes it tiresome rather quickly.

But, the evidence, which you keeping ignoring, clearly shows he did.

Care to prove otherwise...?

[Crux]

M:Which ones, for example?
If you could read you would already know. Think. Think hard. How did we start talking about circular arguments? Almost there...Oh no you lost it again. Oh well.


But, the evidence, which you keeping ignoring, clearly shows he did.
He was probably just coquetting with "anti-dialectics" then, right Rosa? :laugh:

[Rosa Lichtenstein]

M:


If you could read you would already know.

Why post this if you think I can't read?

In which case, this is just another example of you refusing to support a single thing you allege about me.


Think. Think hard. How did we start talking about circular arguments? Almost there...Oh no you lost it again. Oh well.

I'm sorry, but are you beginning to lose it?


He was probably just coquetting with "anti-dialectics" then, right Rosa?

I'd agree if you could find where Marx said this.

[Crux]

M:



Why post this if you think I can't read?

In which case, this is just another example of you refusing to support a single thing you allege about me.



I'm sorry, but are you beginning to lose it?



I'd agree if you could find where Marx said this.
I mean it's obvious you just don't get it. Let's see, what have you posted thus far in this thread:
"Marxistnoob, that summary from Das Kapital is excellent since it leaves out any trace of Hegel (upside down or the 'right way up') -- hence, there is no mention of 'contradictions', the 'negation of the negation', 'unity of opposites', 'quantity passing over into quality', 'universal change', 'totality'...

And yet Marx calls this 'the dialectic method'. In which case, 'the dialectic method' that Marx used in Das Kapital has had every trace of Hegel removed. And, what few occurences of Hegel's jargon there are in that book -- well, Marx tells us he was merely 'coquetting' with it -- using it non-seriously. Today, we'd use 'scare quotes'."
In just that sentence you are forced to back from your first assertion or at least make it far less interesting. It leaves out any trace of Hegel because you believe it to be so. Then you have to admit he's "coquetting" with hegelianism, but giving your own interpretation of that you can disregard that as well, rather casually.


But this won't tell him anything about Dialectical Materialism (a theory you reject anyway).

Moreover, Marx did not publish the Grundrisse, and by the time he came to write Das Kapital he had waved all this mystical stuff 'goodbye', as the quotation Marxistnoob posted shows.

And again with the "I say so therefore it is" rhetoric. Your assertion for why Grundrisse was not published balance on your previous assertion abot Das Capital being non-dialectical materialism. And thus the house of cards piles higher.


Not at all. What I have argued is that Das Kapital presents his mature and most considered published views. Anything before that (or which was not published by Marx) that does not contradict Das Kapital has certainly to be taken into account.
And again, this means anything that Marx wrote that contradicts your interpretation is invalid, and suddenly you've made all Marx's writing as a source to contradict your claim invalid.


El_Chavista:
Can we use this approach to all Philosophy?

Sure, but I'd go even further, and throw the lot out as self-important hot air. This is where begin, or really it had begun even earlier to, on the basis of you earlier claims fall into the use of derogatory words.


Come to think of it: the mystics here set up there own Group: The Dialectical Mausoleum (a group I'm not allowed to join -- their tender eyes cannot even bear to see my heretic thoughts), where you'd think they'd get together and write their own summary for beginners, wouldn't you?

The reason they haven't done so is that they couldn't agree what to put in such a summary. The sectarian and divisive nature of Dialectical Marxism would have them at each other's throats in no time, with cries of "Revisionism!" ringing out just as an attempt was made.

That's part of the reason I had to write their bibliography for them!

Dialectical Materialists are now "mystics", debates on philosophy are "sectarian and divisive". The irony of you making that statement is of course lost on you and I expect a snarky response.


I'm never aggressive with newcomers, unless they are aggressive with me first.
Which is a passive-aggressive statement in itself.


This is an open forum. If newcomemers want pro-dialectical propaganda, unsullied by my heresies, they can nip over to the Dialectical Dungeon (where their requests for help are, in general, ignored).
Again you deride a differing viewpoint as propaganda and "religion", of course making you a brave "heretic", enter the martyr-role.


Well, I have covered this several times.

Marx chose not to publish the Grundrisse, but he did publish the summary Marxistnoob posted on the previous page. In that summary not a single Hegelian concept is to be found -- no "contradictions", no change of "quantity into quality", no "negation of the negation", no "unity and identity of opposites", no "interconnected Totality" --, and yet Marx calls this the "dialectic method", and says of it that it is "my method". So, Marx's "method" has had Hegel completely excised --, except for the odd phrase or two here and there with which he merely "coquetted".
A mere repetition of your first statement, now attempted to be given addition weight by the fact that you've "covered it several times", i e, you've been repeating yourself.


While you are so the day before that... So what?
Aaaand there you go from passive aggressive to actively aggressive, no doubt you're already feeling a bit cornered.


1. You plainly did not read my argument too carefully -- but then, you prefer invention -- for I specifically said Hegel and the Marxist dialectical classicists referred to things and processes (and that includes relations, too).
A non-point where you say something was included in previous argumentation (again harking back to repetition) while not countering the main point.


2. Anyway, where have I dragged this point into the debate on whether or not Marx waved 'goodbye' to Hegel in Das Kapital?
And now you slide away from that discussion entirely.


Nowehere, that's where.

But, as I have already noted (scores of times, in fact, since you blundered in at RevLeft) you prefer to make stuff up rather than engage with what I actually say.

No wonder: you ignore what Marx actually says too....
Up the aggressiveness, again a version of the repetition argument ("you don't respond to what I say you make up what i say"). A useful for you to avoid even being held accountable for what you yourself say, given that any counter-argument you disagree with obviously bases itself on something the other part made up. This can only work up to a certain point though.


Plainly, there are clear links between the two books, since the same man wrote both. But, I have yet to see the proof that they share the same method.

And I would question such 'proof' anyway, in view of the fact that Marx clearly indicated that his 'dialectic method' has had all that Hegelian guff excised.
And again, half-admition to keep your back free, then all proof that suggests Marx did in fact not excised his dialectical method are countered by the admittance that he had excised the dialectical method. While still calling it dialectical materialism.


OK, but you forgot to add that by the time he came to write Das Kapital, Marx had completely broken with Hegel, and that the 'dialectic method' he endosred contained not one atom of that mystical bumbler (upside down, or the 'right way up').
Again, you merely repeat your claims. As if you're making a new point, or stating a fact. Of course I expect you to now say "it is a fact" as that would be in line with your "reasoning" so far. Please do attack me for putting reasoning in quotes as well. you're nothing if not predictable.


As you have also had pointed out to you several times -- Marx pointedly put this in the past tense.
An obsession with formulations as soon as your main "proof" starts to look shaky. Suddenly the discussion is linguistic, because all your "reasoning" derives from your interpretation of that text.


In no published work subsequent to, or contemporaneous with Das Kapital did he express any such praise in the present tense.

But even if he had:

1. One can call a theorist a "mighty thinker", and claim to have learn much from the latter, even while disagreeing with everything he or she says. For example, I think Plato is a "mighty thinker", and I have learnt much from him, but I disagree with him almost completely.

2. The extent of his respect for that mystical idiot can be seen from the fact that the very best Marx found he could do with Hegel's obscure jargon is use it non-seriously. Hardly a ringing endorsement!

No wonder then that he called that summary (in which there is no trace of Hegel at all), 'the dialectic method'.[quote]
You start by making a claim, then follow it up, in case someone would call you on it with first an interpretation that makes what Marx said subject to how you read it only. Since you disagree with dialectical materialism (which is really just Hegel, thus all disagreements with Hegel are disagreements with dialectical materialism) so does Marx.

Again, in point two it is your own interpretation, Marx is non-seriously using hegelian expressions because you, Rosa Lichtenstein, think Hegel is an idiot. Thus Marx do not endorse Hegel, even though he called him a great thinker (which in your interpretation means he disagreed with everything Hegel said).

And then you're back to repetition repetition repetition ad infinitum.

And look, now we're back where we started:
[QUOTE]So, he is in fact talking about the materialist, not the idealist, basis of his method.

And since that reviewer had excised every Hegelian concept, that left only the materialist basis of Marx's method, as I alleged.


Your usual circular-logic. I could point out 1) dialectical materialism is, according to it's proponents, materialist. So it's useless for you to claim that leaving dialectical materialism out leaves idealism out. Also the divide between idealism and materialism is hardly black-and-white in philosophical terms. But debating dialectics with you is about as useful as discussing the existence (or non-existence as it were) of god with a religious fanatic. It might be amusing for a while, but I'll get tired of your version of the ontological argument.

[KC]

I think by now we are all well aware that Rosa's views boil down to one word that Marx used in one sentence. It's essentially conspiracist trash, which is why nobody takes her seriously here.

As for the OP, if you haven't been scared away already, I would highly recommend reading Plekhanov's The Development of the Monist View of History (http://www.marxists.org/archive/plekhanov/1895/monist/index.htm). It's somewhat contemporary but it is the best exposition of the dialectical method that I have found thus far.

[Kayser_Soso]

Some people just aren't content to recognize that someone else came up with a good, solid theory. They MUST have their own theory and show how they are superior.

[S.Artesian]

S Artesian:




Sure. You go wrong in making this a "philosophical" exercise in the history of philosophy and in your version of logic. You go wrong because you can't come to grips with a single thing Marx wrote about value, about the labor process vs. valorisation process; about the fundamental opposition, and unity in opposition of the conditions of labor and labor itself.

In fact, this is precisely what I do not do.

Exactly. We agree. You do not grasp the content, the subject, and the object, of Marx's investigation. Thank you for the admission.



You go wrong because you can't come to grips with a single thing Marx wrote about value, about the labor process vs. valorisation process; about the fundamental opposition, and unity in opposition of the conditions of labor and labor itself

1. May I remind you that I had to remind you what Marx wrote about 'contradictions' in Das Kapital? So it is you who does not seem to know what Marx was on about on that book.

Remind away. So what? You have just admitted that nowhere do you come to grips with the core of Marx's analysis of capital.


2. Where have I expressed an opinion about 'value' or 'labour'? So, how do you know I go wrong here.

Your further admissions of inability to deal with the materialism of Marx's work are always in order, and always welcome. Please continue.


3. What I in fact do is show that the traditional, mystical use of 'contradiction' and 'unity of opposites', etc., is based on some radically defective logic Hegel inflicted on those who take him too seriously. Hence there is now no rationale for continuing to use these obscure concepts - a bit like how scientists no longer use ancient concepts such as 'substantial form' or 'entelechy'.

What you do is obscure the engagement of Marx, his critique through opposition, with Hegel, and Hegel's mystification of dialectic.




You go wrong in when you claim that a published work, not even a work, but a preface to a work takes precedence over all unpublished work, thus ignoring the very methodology and content of the investigations that made the published work even possible.

This is a standard interpretative device, hence it is no error.It is not standard historical analysis of a person's body of work, and it is a historical claim that you are making-- that Marx, weighed down by Hegel, finally extirpates all traces of Hegel and Hegel's dialectic in Capital which amounts to Marx renouncing his previous engagement with Hegel. That historical claim is demonstrably false.


And you only allege this since you can't find a single published source that supports your attempt to re-mystify Marx, and are desperately thrashing about, looking for something, anything, to throw at me.

But nobody is attempting to "re-mystify Marx," since Marx's work from his critique of Hegel on isn't mystified to begin with. Those of us who have actually read Marx's critique of Hegel, his critique of political economy and economists, and his economic manuscripts are the ones engaged in applying and expanding Marx's insight into the conflict, the opposition, the contradiction between the labor process and the valorisation process, something which by your own admission you do not-- and I would say cannot-- do.


But, let us suppose you are right; in that case, you must, presumably agree with Marx over his unpublished views about Trémaux:


And perhaps you also endorse some of the iffy things Marx said about blacks and Jews in unpublished letters?

Irrelevant and infantile. Where I agree, I agree. Where I disagree I disagree. We are not talking about Marx's personal opinions on individuals or ethnic groups. We are talking about the historical development and the material substance of his investigations.

Your "argument" requires you to argue that Marx did not hold such opinions on individuals or ethnic groups if he didn't publish them.





You go wrong when you claim Marx wasted time, or was delayed, because of his relationship to Hegel, when in fact Marx's own engagement with the critique of political economy is only possible because of, and after, his critique of Hegel.

In that case, perhaps you also think Newton didn't waste his time pratting about with Biblical Numerology, Alchemy and Hermetic mysticism?

Again irrelevant and infantile. Newton was Newton and a product of his era. Marx was Marx. For your "argument" to have validity, you have to show errors, mistakes, concepts that Marx held when he was under the "sway" of Hegel in his pre-Capital writings that he explicitly changes, corrects, alters in his "post-Hegel" writings. To do that you have to come to grips with the labor process and the valorisation process, which of course, according to your own admission, you do not do.



You go wrong when you posit your false "rupture," or extirpation of Hegel's dialectic by Marx sometime between the Grundrisse in 1857 and Capital when there is no shred of evidence of any such rupture in any of Marx's notebooks; when in fact the manuscripts he prepared after the Grundrisse and coincident with the work on Capital all demonstrate a rigorous loyalty to dialectic and dialectical analysis.

I don't use the word "rupture".

Weak. That's very weak, even for you, Rosa. Call it extirpation, call it "break," call it anything. The content is the same. It's exactly that content that you cannot come to grips with.





You go wrong when you fail to understand that Marx's analysis is a social-ism, about how human being reproduce themselves in the material reproduction of their conditions of social existence; how in fact the alienation, expropriation of labor converts labor into its opposite-- into the oppression of social development.

And on what posts/essays of mine do you base these febrile inventions?

Based on the fact that you never engage with the substance of Marx's analysis itself.


The conclusion remains: You go wrong with just about every word you write about Marx, because you have no idea what Marx was really investigating.

[Rosa Lichtenstein]

M:


I mean it's obvious you just don't get it.

Not with you trying to explain.

2 + 2 = 4 would become obscure in your hands.:lol:


Then you have to admit he's "coquetting" with hegelianism, but giving your own interpretation of that you can disregard that as well, rather casually.

Except, Marx tells us he is coquetting with Hegelian terminology, not Hegelianism.

Perhaps you need new glasses?


And again with the "I say so therefore it is" rhetoric. Your assertion for why Grundrisse was not published balance on your previous assertion about Das Capital being non-dialectical materialism. And thus the house of cards piles higher.

Are you denying he didn't publish the Grundrisse?

My point is that whatever that book said, it cannot take precedence over a work that was published subsequently -- Das Kapital.

So, this 'house of cards' is your construction, not mine.


And again, this means anything that Marx wrote that contradicts your interpretation is invalid, and suddenly you've made all Marx's writing as a source to contradict your claim invalid.

Not at all. Read again what I said (only take that fetching bag off your head first):


Not at all. What I have argued is that Das Kapital presents his mature and most considered published views. Anything before that (or which was not published by Marx) that does not contradict Das Kapital has certainly to be taken into account.

Nothing there about it contradicting me.

You:


This is where begin, or really it had begun even earlier to, on the basis of you earlier claims fall into the use of derogatory words.

Eh? This is incoherent.:lol:


Dialectical Materialists are now "mystics", debates on philosophy are "sectarian and divisive". The irony of you making that statement is of course lost on you and I expect a snarky response.

So, only you can be abusive, is that it? I must be all sweetness and light, eh? In fact, you have been nothing but abusive to me since you arrived here. This is the first time you have even attempted to debate with me, and still you are abusive. But, I must take it all lying down, I suppose?

No wonder then that I posted this on the opening page of my site:


R1

You will no doubt notice that the vast majority [of dialectical mystics] say the same sorts of things, and most of them pepper their remarks with scatological and abusive language. They all like to make things up, too, about me and my beliefs.

25 years (!!) of this stuff from Dialectical Mystics has meant I now take an aggressive stance with them every time -- I soon learnt back in the 1980s that being pleasant with them (my initial tactic) did not alter their abusive tone, their propensity to fabricate, nor reduce the amount of scatological language they used.

So, these days, I generally go for the jugular from the get-go.

Apparently, they expect me to take their abuse lying down, and regularly complain about my "bullying" tactics.

So, these mystics can dish it out, but they cannot take it.

You:


Which is a passive-aggressive statement in itself.

May I refer the honourable mystic to R1 above?


Again you deride a differing viewpoint as propaganda and "religion", of course making you a brave "heretic", enter the martyr-role.

Where have I called a differing opinion a 'religion'?

Anyway, as I noted above, I always give as good as I get, often worse.

However, I don't see you saying this to the dialectical mystics who abuse me. Apparently, for you, only 'anti-dialectical abuse' is something to moan about.:lol:


A mere repetition of your first statement, now attempted to be given addition weight by the fact that you've "covered it several times", i e, you've been repeating yourself.

Indeed, since you mystics have difficulty reading things, as we have seen is the case also with you.


Aaaand there you go from passive aggressive to actively aggressive, no doubt you're already feeling a bit cornered.

Can I refer the honourable, partially blind mystic to R1 above?


A non-point where you say something was included in previous argumentation (again harking back to repetition) while not countering the main point.

Again, since you find it difficult to read, if you can ask another non-partially blind mystic to check for you, you will find I did cover this earlier.

Oh dear, yet another repetition...


And now you slide away from that discussion entirely.

But that was a valid question, since I did not do this. Or perhaps you can show otherwise?


Up the aggressiveness, again a version of the repetition argument ("you don't respond to what I say you make up what i say").

May I refer the honourable, partially-blind and selectively censorious mystic to R1, again?


A useful for you to avoid even being held accountable for what you yourself say, given that any counter-argument you disagree with obviously bases itself on something the other part made up. This can only work up to a certain point though.

Not so. I always defend anything I allege.

Unless, of course, you can show otherwise.:)


And again, half-admission to keep your back free, then all proof that suggests Marx did in fact not excised his dialectical method are countered by the admittance that he had excised the dialectical method. While still calling it dialectical materialism.

Not at all, I was responding to a particular point, and to someone who already agrees with me.


Again, you merely repeat your claims. As if you're making a new point, or stating a fact. Of course I expect you to now say "it is a fact" as that would be in line with your "reasoning" so far. Please do attack me for putting reasoning in quotes as well. you're nothing if not predictable.

It is a fact until you can show otherwise.

And, this reply was to a different poster, hence I had to repeat myself.

If, instead of repeating an argument, I post a link to another thread, other mystics complain about that too!


An obsession with formulations as soon as your main "proof" starts to look shaky. Suddenly the discussion is linguistic, because all your "reasoning" derives from your interpretation of that text.

1. Are you denying then that Marx put this in the past tense?

2. I can just imagine a wally like you, back in the 1870s, arguing as follows:


The distinction you draw, Herr Marx, between the relative and the equivalent form of value is just another example of your "obsession with formulations"...

You:


You start by making a claim, then follow it up, in case someone would call you on it with first an interpretation that makes what Marx said subject to how you read it only. Since you disagree with dialectical materialism (which is really just Hegel, thus all disagreements with Hegel are disagreements with dialectical materialism) so does Marx.

Ok, if I'm wrong, show me where I go wrong.

I note, you shy away from doing this all the time.

And no wonder, you can't.

Hence all this bluster.


Again, in point two it is your own interpretation,

Of course it is! What do you expect? That I should rehearse someone else's interpretation?

But, can you show it is in error?

Silence yet again...:lol:


Marx is non-seriously using hegelian expressions because you, Rosa Lichtenstein, think Hegel is an idiot. Thus Marx do not endorse Hegel, even though he called him a great thinker (which in your interpretation means he disagreed with everything Hegel said).

And I can show he's an idiot. If you ask really nicely, I might condescend to show you...:)


Thus Marx do not endorse Hegel, even though he called him a great thinker

Oh dear, your new glasses seem not to be strong enough, for Marx called him a 'mighty thinker' -- and he even put that in the past tense...


And then you're back to repetition repetition repetition ad infinitum

I do wish you'd stop repeating yourself!:mad:


Your usual circular-logic.

Ah, but even if it were, it would still be superior to the sub-Aristotelian 'logic' you mystics dote upon.

Have a nice fume...:)

[Rosa Lichtenstein]

KC:


I think by now we are all well aware that Rosa's views boil down to one word that Marx used in one sentence.

Ah, yet another lying mystic.


It's essentially conspiracist trash, which is why nobody takes her seriously here.

And what, pray, is the 'conspiracy' you imagine I am trying to sell here?


which is why nobody takes her seriously here

Not so, or you mystics would not spend so much time, energy and vitriol trying to bad mouth me so much, and so often.

[Rosa Lichtenstein]

Smarty Pants:


Exactly. We agree.

I think not.


You do not grasp the content, the subject, and the object, of Marx's investigation.

So you say, but we already know you prefer to make stuff up rather than prove it.


Thank you for the admission.

For one, in the rear stalls, I think.

Don't mention it.:)


Remind away. So what? You have just admitted that nowhere do you come to grips with the core of Marx's analysis of capital.

Only in your dreams...


Your further admissions of inability to deal with the materialism of Marx's work are always in order, and always welcome.

Still dreaming, I see. http://www.smileyshut.com/smileys/new/Sleepy/sleep-051.gif


What you do is obscure the engagement of Marx, his critique through opposition, with Hegel, and Hegel's mystification of dialectic.

Alas for you, Hegel's work is ruined, among other things, by several crass, sub-Aristotelian logical blunders.

But, I can understand why you are so miffed at my pointing this out: you know no logic and have just swallowed all this guff uncritically.

However, someone had to wake you from your mystical slumber. [Except, I note you are still fast asleep!]


It is not standard historical analysis of a person's body of work, and it is a historical claim that you are making-- that Marx, weighed down by Hegel, finally extirpates all traces of Hegel and Hegel's dialectic in Capital which amounts to Marx renouncing his previous engagement with Hegel. That historical claim is demonstrably false.

Well, it's Marx's claim, not mine. Pick a fight with him, not me!


But nobody is attempting to "re-mystify Marx,"

In that case, you will no doubt agree with me that Marx waved this mystical idiot 'goodbye' when he came to write Das Kapital.

Ah, but you have a 'reply':


since Marx's work from his critique of Hegel on isn't mystified to begin with.

Not so. Much of his early work was mystified as a result of Hegel's influence.


Those of us who have actually read Marx's critique of Hegel, his critique of political economy and economists, and his economic manuscripts are the ones engaged in applying and expanding Marx's insight into the conflict, the opposition, the contradiction between the labor process and the valorisation process, something which by your own admission you do not-- and I would say cannot-- do.

But, there is no 'contradiction' here.

You keep helping yourself to this Hegelian term when the very best Marx could do was to "coquette" with it. And no wonder, Hegel's use of this term was based on the sort of sub-logic I mentioned earlier.


Irrelevant and infantile.

Not at all. It ruins your argument. Want me to explain this with visual aids?


Where I agree, I agree. Where I disagree I disagree.

Can we all join in?

Where you repeat, you repeat.

Right, your turn...


We are not talking about Marx's personal opinions on individuals or ethnic groups. We are talking about the historical development and the material substance of his investigations.

And, unpublished sources would only be used by an idiot to countermand anything Marx published about such things.

See, that wasn't too difficult was it?

Or was it...?


Your "argument" requires you to argue that Marx did not hold such opinions on individuals or ethnic groups if he didn't publish them.

I do not see why.


Again irrelevant and infantile.

Oh dear, yet more repetition. Majakovskij will no doubt be on your case over this. [Hah! Some hope...]


Newton was Newton and a product of his era. Marx was Marx.

And had Hegel done the decent thing and died of Cholera when a child, Marx would not have pratted about with all this mystical guff, either. Same with Newton and the works of the Hermetic idiots he doted upon.


For your "argument" to have validity, you have to show errors, mistakes, concepts that Marx held when he was under the "sway" of Hegel in his pre-Capital writings that he explicitly changes, corrects, alters in his "post-Hegel" writings. To do that you have to come to grips with the labor process and the valorisation process, which of course, according to your own admission, you do not do.

It is not possible for Gobbledygook to be in error, just as it's not possible for this to be in error:


'Twas brillig, and the slithy toves
Did gyre and gimble in the wabe:
All mimsy were the borogoves,
And the mome raths outgrabe.

"Beware the Jabberwock, my son!
The jaws that bite, the claws that catch!
Beware the Jubjub bird, and shun
The frumious Bandersnatch!"

He took his vorpal sword in hand:
Long time the manxome foe he sought --
So rested he by the Tumtum tree,
And stood awhile in thought.

And, as in uffish thought he stood,
The Jabberwock, with eyes of flame,
Came whiffling through the tulgey wood,
And burbled as it came!

One, two! One, two! And through and through
The vorpal blade went snicker-snack!
He left it dead, and with its head
He went galumphing back.

"And, has thou slain the Jabberwock?
Come to my arms, my beamish boy!
O frabjous day! Callooh! Callay!'
He chortled in his joy.

'Twas brillig, and the slithy toves
Did gyre and gimble in the wabe;
All mimsy were the borogoves,
And the mome raths outgrabe.

With guff like this, you either laugh at or with it, or ignore it.

Marx should have done the same with Hegel.


Weak. That's very weak, even for you, Rosa.

Not so. I always point out when you invent stuff to put in my mouth. No less so here.


Call it extirpation, call it "break," call it anything. The content is the same. It's exactly that content that you cannot come to grips with.

No it's not. 'Rupture', as you well know, would link me in with Althusser -- a ploy you have tried before -- and no doubt will try again, since you prefer invention over fact.


Based on the fact that you never engage with the substance of Marx's analysis itself.

And that is because this is a thread on Dialectical Materialism, not your mystical ideas about Marx.


The conclusion remains: You go wrong with just about every word you write about Marx, because you have no idea what Marx was really investigating.

So you say -- but we have yet to see the proof.

Now, if you can find a source, published by Marx -- contemporaneous with, or subsequent to Das Kapital -- that supports your attempt to re-mystify his work, let's see it.

Oh wait -- you can't. :lol:

[Kayser_Soso]

Nothing gets the working class up in arms than endless debates on philosophy!!

[Rosa Lichtenstein]

^^^Which is why I have argued that it amounts to little other that ruling-class hot air.

[S.Artesian]

Not so. Much of his early work was mystified as a result of Hegel's influence.

Please provide examples of such mystification in Marx's Critique of Hegel's Philosophy of Right, Economic and Philosophical Manuscripts, The Poverty of Philosophy, Class Struggles in France 1848-1850, The Eighteenth Brumaire..., A Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy, Theories of Surplus Value, The Grundrisse, the intended chapter 6 of volume 1 of Capital, the economic manuscripts of 1857-1864, vols 2 and 3 of Capital.

Also identify any such mystification in his addresses to, and on behalf of the IWMA, his writings on India, the US Civil War.

[Broletariat]

Please provide examples of such mystification in Marx's Critique of Hegel's Philosophy of Right, Economic and Philosophical Manuscripts, The Poverty of Philosophy, Class Struggles in France 1848-1850, The Eighteenth Brumaire..., A Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy, Theories of Surplus Value, The Grundrisse, the intended chapter 6 of volume 1 of Capital, the economic manuscripts of 1857-1864, vols 2 and 3 of Capital.

Also identify any such mystification in his addresses to, and on behalf of the IWMA, his writings on India, the US Civil War.


And to expand upon this request, could you offer an alternative explanation for the subjects discussed in each respective text? I'm most curious to see how you view these things.

[graymouser]

Please provide examples of such mystification in Marx's Critique of Hegel's Philosophy of Right, Economic and Philosophical Manuscripts, The Poverty of Philosophy, Class Struggles in France 1848-1850, The Eighteenth Brumaire..., A Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy, Theories of Surplus Value, The Grundrisse, the intended chapter 6 of volume 1 of Capital, the economic manuscripts of 1857-1864, vols 2 and 3 of Capital.
The most astonishing thing, if you were to take Rosa's claims seriously, is that the biggest visible changes in Marx's mature thought occurred in the period after 1852 or so, when the revolutions of 1848 were more clearly a lost cause and Marx settled in to write the theoretical work of his life. Attempting to wrest the Grundrisse and the Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy from the solidly materialist Marx is to rip out huge chunks, some of it published, of the broader materialist analysis of society that he was never able to finish. Rosa, having conjured up a fantasy of disconnect between these works and Capital, loses broad swaths of his genius. Not to mention, of course, The Eighteenth Brumaire - a well deserved classic and the template for much of subsequent Marxist historiography, such as CLR James's The Black Jacobins and Trotsky's History of the Russian Revolution.

[Rosa Lichtenstein]

Smarty Pants:


Please provide examples of such mystification in Marx's Critique of Hegel's Philosophy of Right, Economic and Philosophical Manuscripts, The Poverty of Philosophy, Class Struggles in France 1848-1850, The Eighteenth Brumaire..., A Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy, Theories of Surplus Value, The Grundrisse, the intended chapter 6 of volume 1 of Capital, the economic manuscripts of 1857-1864, vols 2 and 3 of Capital.

Also identify any such mystification in his addresses to, and on behalf of the IWMA, his writings on India, the US Civil War.

I will be happy to do so just as soon as you provide the evidence supporting your wild claims about me, which I have been asking you to produce since you blundered in here last year.:)

[Rosa Lichtenstein]

GM:


The most astonishing thing, if you were to take Rosa's claims seriously,

Well, you have yet to show where I go wrong -- so no wonder you are reduced to making snide remarks. It's all you have left.


Attempting to wrest the Grundrisse and the Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy from the solidly materialist Marx

Just like Smarty Pants, I see you too are fond of making stuff up. Where precisley do I try to do this?


Rosa, having conjured up a fantasy of disconnect between these works and Capital

Again, where have I done this?

Are you mystics totally incapable of reading anything correctly? Or are you so worked up and emotional that someone has had the temerity to attack your mystical 'theory', your source of opiates, that like the genuinely religious, you just cannot think straight any more?


loses broad swaths of his genius. Not to mention, of course, The Eighteenth Brumaire - a well deserved classic and the template for much of subsequent Marxist historiography, such as CLR James's The Black Jacobins and Trotsky's History of the Russian Revolution.

Yet more wasted effort.:lol:

[S.Artesian]

Smarty Pants:



I will be happy to do so just as soon as you provide the evidence supporting your wild claims about me, which I have been asking you to produce since you blundered in here last year.:)

My claim, all my claims boil down to exactly that-- that you cannot find support for your claims about Marx in Marx's work itself, and that when challenged to do so, to actually examine something other than your particular, idiosyncratic distortion of Marx's afterword to the 2nd edition of vol 1, you revert to what you have reverted to-- infantile and irrelevant and ignorant evasion.

As you have consistently done before, you have just validated my claim about you.

[Rosa Lichtenstein]

Smarty Pants:


My claim, all my claims boil down to exactly that-- that you cannot find support for your claims about Marx in Marx's work itself, and that when challenged to do so, to actually examine something other than your particular, idiosyncratic distortion of Marx's afterword to the 2nd edition of vol 1, you revert to what you have reverted to-- infantile and irrelevant and ignorant evasion.

Not so; you regularly try to 'summarise' my ideas in your own words, and attempt to attribute to me beliefs I do not hold. Upon being asked to substantiate your wild allegations, you invariably ignore those requests.


idiosyncratic distortion of Marx's afterword to the 2nd edition of vol 1,

Well, if you can find a source, published by Marx -- contemporaneous with, or subsequent to Das Kapital -- that supports your attempt to re-mystify his work, let's see it.

Oh wait -- you can't!:lol:

[S.Artesian]

Smarty Pants:



Not so; you regularly try to 'summarise' my ideas in your own words, and attempt to attribute to me beliefs I do not hold. Upon being asked to substantiate your wild allegations, you invariably ignore those requests.





Put up or shut up [fat chance], Rosa. You claim "Much of his early work was mystified as a result of Hegel's influence."

My claim is you cannot, and will not, back that up. You cannot an will not provide any material evidence from the works I have cited, or the years of those works, focusing on the origin, make-up and functioning of capital, published or unpublished.

And that's why you have nothing to say about the actual content of Marx's analysis-- at any point in its development and elaboration.

In short, as I have consistently maintained, you have proven yourself a fraud and a poseur.

[Rosa Lichtenstein]

Smarty Pants:


Put up or shut up [fat chance], Rosa. You claim "Much of his early work was mystified as a result of Hegel's influence."

I will just as soon as you substantiate the many false allegations you have made about me.


My claim is you cannot, and will not, back that up.

Oddly enough, you took the words right out of my mouth.


You cannot an will not provide any material evidence from the works I have cited, or the years of those works, focusing on the origin, make-up and functioning of capital, published or unpublished.

Think what you like -- we already know you are more at home in fantasy than in fact.

Exhibit A for the prosecution:


And that's why you have nothing to say about the actual content of Marx's analysis-- at any point in its development and elaboration.


In short, as I have consistently maintained, you have proven yourself a fraud and a poseur.

Yet another claim you have made before, but which, oddly enough once more, you have failed to substantiate.

You should write WMD dossiers for Bush and Bliar.:)

[Broletariat]

Smarty Pants:



I will be happy to do so just as soon as you provide the evidence supporting your wild claims about me, which I have been asking you to produce since you blundered in here last year.:)
Can you do it for me since I haven't called names or anything? :3 Just PM it to me if you don't want him to see or something.

[Rosa Lichtenstein]

Done.

[Crux]

Rosa: R1 does explain alot, but you "going for the jugular" as you term it make any sensible debate very difficult. This is in fact my primary, if not only, objection to the way you post here. When you attack first you can't well expect me to complain if people, including me, attack you back.

[KC]

When was the last time I even addressed you on here, Rosa?

I don't even remember the last time I read one of your posts, much less responded.

[Rosa Lichtenstein]

M:


Rosa: R1 does explain alot, but you "going for the jugular" as you term it make any sensible debate very difficult. This is in fact my primary, if not only, objection to the way you post here.

In fact, few of you mystics are prepared to engage me here (or on other forums) without abuse, fabrication and lying. As I noted, my original tactic was to treat such comrades with respect (long before the internet was devised), in face to face debate. That did not stop them personally attacking and abusing me. When this goes on for 25 or more years, and comrades with whom I have never debated began by bad-mouthing me from a postition of almost total ignorance (as you do -- in fact, the latest example of this sterotypical response is provided by 'Freedom-Hating Communist' over in Philosophy; before that 'Graymouser' steamed in with abuse before we had exchanged anything in debate, but there are plenty more examples of this over the years -- see the link at the end where I have collected them together) you soon realise that this is a character trait of those in the grip of an irrational belief system. I have briefly explained why they/you react this way (in answer to the question, 'Why is DM a world-view?'), here:


There are two interconnected reasons, I think.

1) The founders of this quasi-religion [Dialectical Marxism] 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", administrators and theorists, 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 (http://anti-dialectics.co.uk/page%2002.htm).

So, these non-worker founders of our movement, who had been educated before they became revolutionaries to believe there was just such a hidden world that governed everything, when they became revolutionaries would naturally look 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 must be 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 Dialectical Materialism 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 the equivalent of a dialectical 'third eye' can see that 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 opposites.

Hence:

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

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

I stand no chance...

Moreover, the divisiveness and sectarianism found throughout Dialectical Marxism originates also in the class position of its leading figures (in the past and today); the acceptance of this 'theory' just makes things worse. This is because it gives them an incomprehensible set of dogmas (like those found in any religion, holy book, or set of holy books), which they alone really 'understand', and which they can then use to castigate and condemn any who threaten their position, accusing them of not 'understanding' dialectics (an easy claim to make since no one understands it!), and thus fit only to be expelled, imprisoned or shot.

More details here:

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

M:


When you attack first you can't well expect me to complain if people, including me, attack you back.

But you too began by attacking me (often leaving me absusive or semi-abusive visitor messages), last year, before we had even begun to debate anything. So, I have been giving you some of the same since in response. If you desist, so will I.

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

[Rosa Lichtenstein]

KC:


When was the last time I even addressed you on here, Rosa?

Perhaps last year or in 2008.


I don't even remember the last time I read one of your posts, much less responded.

No, but that did not prevent you from posting abusive comments about me and my ideas -- mostly in the CC.

[anticap]

I only wish people would be less disrespectful in their disagreements with Rosa. I doubt that many of her opponents would disagree that she is extremely intelligent and worthy of respect; but because they take umbrage at her position, they let that due respect fall by the wayside.

That said, she would do well to quit taunting people with those disrespectful nicknames.

[Crux]

Well, Rosa, not to make a fine point, but as I said before that's because you "go for the jugualr", not meaning you strike at the core of the issue but that you're basically trolling. I'd be hard pressed to find more than a handfull of posts where you do not engage in this behaviour. If I take your statement at face value about you trying to be civil (over 20 years ago) well sure, but again your way of discussion is inconstructive, in fact I suggest you are not interested in discussing at all, or possibly you are incapable of it. Of course I hope I am wrong. That you recieved some flak 20 years ago does not mean trolling is an acceptable way of debating on or outside the internet.

[KC]

No, but that did not prevent you from posting abusive comments about me and my ideas -- mostly in the CC.

LOL the CC has been gone for quite some time now.

[S.Artesian]

I only wish people would be less disrespectful in their disagreements with Rosa. I doubt that many of her opponents would disagree that she is extremely intelligent and worthy of respect; but because they take umbrage at her position, they let that due respect fall by the wayside.

That said, she would do well to quit taunting people with those disrespectful nicknames.

The issue isn't her intelligence, but her knowledge of Marx's work-- of which she is greatly lacking, hence her inability to say anything about the core of Marx's analysis, the conflict between the labor process and the valorisation process. Disagreeing with Hegel, finding him to be obtuse or a "logical incompetent" is one thing. Trying to distort Marx's work to show a) at one time Marx was "infatuated" with Hegelianism and that infatuation hampers the development of his analysis b) Capital vol 1 marks a sea change, an extirpation of all influences of Hegel's and of the dialectic that Marx actually took over from Hegel and regrounded in the labor process is another thing. And that other thing is not worthy of respect.

[Rosa Lichtenstein]

AntiCap:


That said, she would do well to quit taunting people with those disrespectful nicknames.

No chance. I was invited here five years ago to make life a pain for the mystics at RevLeft, and I'll do whatever it takes (within the rules) to do just that -- of course, unless they stop their abuse.

[Rosa Lichtenstein]

M:


Well, Rosa, not to make a fine point, but as I said before that's because you "go for the jugualr", not meaning you strike at the core of the issue but that you're basically trolling. I'd be hard pressed to find more than a handfull of posts where you do not engage in this behaviour. If I take your statement at face value about you trying to be civil (over 20 years ago) well sure, but again your way of discussion is inconstructive, in fact I suggest you are not interested in discussing at all, or possibly you are incapable of it. Of course I hope I am wrong. That you recieved some flak 20 years ago does not mean trolling is an acceptable way of debating on or outside the internet.

Well, I do both. I argue and I return the abuse I get.

However, I note you do not take Artesian here to task for all his repetiton,-- or the other mystics for their abuse of me. You do not accuse them of 'trolling'. Fair?


That you recieved some flak 20 years ago does not mean trolling is an acceptable way of debating on or outside the internet

In fact, I have received little other than abuse, every week, month and year since the early 1980s, especially on the internet more recently. I started posting on the internet in 2004 (but not at Revleft until 2005), and straight from the kick-off, you mystics went for my throat, ignoring my arguments, just abusing and lying about me.

So, I do not prat about now, and give as good as I get -- but (except in very rare cases) only after I am attacked first.

Like it or lump it, that's how I will proceed from now on -- whoever is put off me by that tactic.

[Rosa Lichtenstein]

KC:


LOL the CC has been gone for quite some time now.

Gee, all of six months.

A long time...?

But I did say:


Perhaps last year or in 2008.

[Rosa Lichtenstein]

Smarty Pants:


The issue isn't her intelligence, but her knowledge of Marx's work-- of which she is greatly lacking, hence her inability to say anything about the core of Marx's analysis, the conflict between the labor process and the valorisation process. Disagreeing with Hegel, finding him to be obtuse or a "logical incompetent" is one thing. Trying to distort Marx's work to show a) at one time Marx was "infatuated" with Hegelianism and that infatuation hampers the development of his analysis b) Capital vol 1 marks a sea change, an extirpation of all influences of Hegel's and of the dialectic that Marx actually took over from Hegel and regrounded in the labor process is another thing. And that other thing is not worthy of respect

In fact the issue is this:

Find a source, published by Marx -- contemporaneous with, or subsequent to Das Kapital -- that supports your attempt to re-mystify his work.

Oh wait -- you can't!

And that's why you have to distract attention with abuse, fabrication and lies.

Just like the vast majority of the hundreds of dialectical mystics with whom I have debate this over the last six years on the internet.

You sad characters just can't face up to the facts, and become emotional, irrational and abusive as a result.

[S.Artesian]

Smarty Pants:



In fact the issue is this:

Find a source, published by Marx -- contemporaneous with, or subsequent to Das Kapital -- that supports your attempt to re-mystify his work.

Oh wait -- you can't!


And that's why you have to distract attention with abuse, fabrication and lies.

Just like the vast majority of the hundreds of dialectical mystics with whom I have debate this over the last six years on the internet.

You sad characters just can't face up to the facts, and become emotional, irrational and abusive as a result.

The only lies, fabrication, and abuse around here comes from you. You lie about Marx's critique of Hegel. You lie about the meaning of Marx's afterword to the 2nd edition. You fabricate a supposed "shift" regarding Marx's use of dialectic sometime between the production of the manuscripts prepared as drafts, notes to, and essays coincident with the writing of volume 1 and volume 1 itself, and you abuse, horribly, Marx's critical engagement and opposition to the "Scottish materialists."

Then when challenged to produce a substantive shred of evidence for your distortions of Marx in the actual analysis Marx produces of capital, you demur-- you revert to the "you first" pre-school of argument. You call people "mystics."

Nobody is attempting to "re-mystify" or "mystify" Marx... except you, with your double-talk newspeak mystification of the real intent and meaning of the afterword to volume 1, which plainly and clearly provides for all to see what you say "we," those who actually study Marx's material analysis, cannot provide: Marx's explanation of his overtaking, transformation, and grasp of Hegel's dialectic.

So you keep on Rosa, doing what you do so well, producing thousands of words that never, ever come to grips with the core, and the development of Marx's investigation of the accumulation of capital, his explication of capital's immanent critique, the contradiction at the heart of capitalist organization-- labor as simultaneously use value and exchange value.

For you there is no contradiction between use value and exchange value.

For Marx, this contradiction is a product of the historical organization of capital, defines capital, is the limit to capital, becomes an obstacle to capital and to itself, and ultimately results in the necessity for the overthrow of capital.

And that is why what you write is irrelevant to the understanding and opposition to capital, and what Marx writes is of vital necessity.

[Rosa Lichtenstein]

Smarty Pants:


The only lies, fabrication, and abuse around here comes from you.

You lie continually about my beliefs, as the threads in Philosophy attest.


You lie about Marx's critique of Hegel.

Then so does Marx, for he and Rosa see eye to eye.

Unless, of course, you can find a source, published by Marx -- contemporaneous with, or subsequent to Das Kapital -- that supports your attempt to re-mystify his work.

Oh wait -- you can't!

[S.Artesian]

Smarty Pants:



You lie continually about my beliefs, as the threads in Philosophy attest.



Then so does Marx, for he and Rosa see eye to eye.

Unless, of course, you can find a source, published by Marx -- contemporaneous with, or subsequent to Das Kapital -- that supports your attempt to re-mystify his work.

Oh wait -- you can't!


I haven't lied about a thing-- or a relation. You should take Marx's advice and speak plainly, in everyday language:

Does Marx argue consistently throughout the body of his economic manuscripts, including Capital that there is a contradiction between use value and exchange value of commodities produced under capitalism?

Does Marx argue consistently throughout the same body of work that the origin of that contradiction is in the organization of labor itself as both use value and exchange value, as value producing?

Is Marx accurate in his arguments?

Plain language, plain questions. Provide plain answers... but perhaps... oh wait, you can't.

[Hit The North]

Originally Posted by marxistn00b http://www.revleft.com/vb/revleft/buttons/viewpost.gif (http://www.revleft.com/vb/showthread.php?p=1859910#post1859910)
Very interesting discussion so far, but what is Rosa's alternative to dialectics? From what I have gathered so far, dialectics has been the Marxists' tool of analysis of capitalism since the time of Marx and Engels. What do you propose as an alternative to dialectical analysis of capitalism? Anyone?:confused:

Sorry marxistn00b, you seem to have been ignored in this discussion. The answer is that she doesn't have one. She will tell you that she has no theory, so there is no way to pin her down to any positive position. Or she may just say that she supports the historical materialism of Marx but have nothing to say about what the method at the heart of historical materialism actually is. This is one aspect of her intellectual bankruptcy.

[Rosa Lichtenstein]

BTB:


The answer is that she doesn't have one. She will tell you that she has no theory, so there is no way to pin her down to any positive position. Or she may just say that she supports the historical materialism of Marx but have nothing to say about what the method at the heart of historical materialism actually is. This is one aspect of her intellectual bankruptcy.

I do have a theory; it's called histoprical materialism -- as you have been told many times before, but, just like the other mystics here, you prefer to lie about my ideas.


nothing to say about what the method at the heart of historical materialism actually is

On the contrary, I have been through this with you beofre -- but once more, you prefer lies to fact.

Nor did you tell MarxistNoob that you reject Dialectical Materialism, and netiher can you explan a single one of the obscure concepts you have lifted from Hegel (even though you admit never to having read his work) -- despite being asked to do so many times.

So, the accusatory fingers are all pointed at you.

[Rosa Lichtenstein]

Smarty Pants:


I haven't lied about a thing-- or a relation.

Later today, I will post a list of a few of your many lies.


You should take Marx's advice and speak plainly, in everyday language:

Well, if you were to do that, like Marx, you'd merely 'coquette', at best, with the obscure jargon you lifted from Hegel.


Does Marx argue consistently throughout the body of his economic manuscripts, including Capital that there is a contradiction between use value and exchange value of commodities produced under capitalism?

Does Marx argue consistently throughout the body of his economic manuscripts, including Capital that there is a contradiction between use value and exchange value of commodities produced under capitalism?

Does Marx argue consistently throughout the same body of work that the origin of that contradiction is in the organization of labor itself as both use value and exchange value, as value producing?

Is Marx accurate in his arguments?


And I will answer your questions just as soon as you answer the many I have asked that you simply ignore.

Like the following:

Is there a source, published by Marx -- contemporaneous with, or subsequent to Das Kapital -- that supports your attempt to re-mystify his work?

Oh wait -- there isn't.

[Damn it, I answered it for you...:mad:]

[S.Artesian]

Smarty Pants:



Later today, I will post a list of a few of your many lies.



Well, if you were to do that, like Marx, you'd merely 'coquette', at best, with the obscure jargon you lifted from Hegel.



And I will answer your questions just as soon as you answer the many I have asked that you simply ignore.

Like the following:

Is there a source, published by Marx -- contemporaneous with, or subsequent to Das Kapital -- that supports your attempt to re-mystify his work?

Oh wait -- there isn't.

[Damn it, I answered it for you...:mad:]


As I said, there is no attempt to re-mystify Marx's work, since it was not mystified to begin with. You have failed to show any mystification by Marx of the labor process, the valorisation process, value, capital, accumulation, expanded reproduction, overproduction etc. etc. based on Marx's original "infatuation" with Hegel that is subsequently corrected in volume 1 of Capital.

I'm sure the "lies" you are going to post are akin to where I identify your supposed "change" in Marx's critique of Hegel with Althusser's claim of an epistemological rupture in Marx's work, because, after all, you don't use the word's "epistemological rupture" and don't argue for an epistemological rupture.

Doesn't matter what you call it, it's the same old, same old baloney... the same old garbage about the "young Marx" vs. the "mature Marx" dressed up in different language and still with no place to go.

You can't or won't answer even the question most basic to Marx's exploration of value: does Marx hold to a contradiction between the use value and the exchange value of commodities under capitalism?

Which is why you are totally irrelevant to the development of Marxist analysis of capitalism.

[Rosa Lichtenstein]

Smarty Pants:


As I said, there is no attempt to re-mystify Marx's work, since it was not mystified to begin with. You have failed to show any mystification by Marx of the labor process, the valorisation process, value, capital, accumulation, expanded reproduction, overproduction etc. etc. based on Marx's original "infatuation" with Hegel that is subsequently corrected in volume 1 of Capital.

Not so, since before he changed his mind in Das Kapital -- where the very best he could do with the mystical jargon Hegel inflicted on humanity was 'coquette' with it -- he had used this mystical jarrgon seriously -- i.e., in a non-coquettish way.

Hence, all those works in which this jargon occurs prior to Das Kapital had been infected with mysticism.

So, in your endeavour to ignore Marx's lead, and use this guff seriously, you are indeed trying to re-mystify Marx.

Now, if you could find a source, published by Marx -- contemporaneous with, or subsequent to Das Kapital -- that supports your attempt to re-mystify his work, I will apologise profusely, and repent at length for my crass presumption.

Oh wait, you can't!

[Crux]

Smarty Pants:



In fact the issue is this:

Find a source, published by Marx -- contemporaneous with, or subsequent to Das Kapital -- that supports your attempt to re-mystify his work.

Oh wait -- you can't!

That's because we're not trying to re-mystify Marx, but nice strawmanning.

And yes, you are truly miserable and dishonest. You recieve abuse because you are abusive. This of course does not take anything away from the fact that you are wrong as well, but it makes debating with you tedious and in the end probably meaningless.

[S.Artesian]

Smarty Pants:



Not so, since before he changed his mind in Das Kapital -- where the very best he could do with the mystical jargon Hegel inflicted on humanity was 'coquette' with it -- he had used this mystical jarrgon seriously -- i.e., in a non-coquettish way.

Hence, all those works in which this jargon occurs prior to Das Kapital had been infected with mysticism.

You assert this but fail to provide any demonstration of a substantive difference in the content of Marx's analysis of the social relations of capitalism among his various economic manuscripts, Capital, A Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy, The Grundrisse, the unpublished Economic Manuscripts 1857-1861, 1861-1864, etc.

Your supposed insight into Marx amounts to not liking his use of language, his choice of words because it includes the words "contradiction," "dialectic," "negation," "opposition" while at the same time you cannot make any substantive distinction between Marx's use of those words "flirtatiously," and/or "seriously;" between Marx using those specific words to provide a historical analysis of the origin and development of the conflicts and antagonisms of capital's social relations and your supposed "clean" "improved" Marx of the volume 1, where he supposedly has extirpated Hegel [despite his positive reference to Hegel in the footnotes and the main body of that work].

Consequently your "work," such that is, is literally meaningless to the analysis and development of Marxism and its, Marxism's subject, the labor process, and object, the labor process under capitalism.

A materialist evaluation of your claims necessarily concludes that your claims are worthless, irrelevant to Marxism.

[Hit The North]

Not so, since before he changed his mind in Das Kapital -- where the very best he could do with the mystical jargon Hegel inflicted on humanity was 'coquette' with it -- he had used this mystical jarrgon seriously -- i.e., in a non-coquettish way.

Hence, all those works in which this jargon occurs prior to Das Kapital had been infected with mysticism.



This is a truly amazing argument. It indicates that for Rosa the difference between pre-Capital Marx and post-Capital Marx is not in the analysis, not in the substantive claims, but in Marx's serious or non-serious use of certain terminology. In the former Marx is earnest in his use of concepts such as contradiction and therefore is infected with mysticism. In the latter he is merely coquetting, using terms like contradiction in a non-serious (and one could argue misleading) manner and therefore free of mysticism.

This reduces the charge of mysticism to a mere froth, easily corrected with a change in humour towards the terminology. Moreover, it means that as long as the reader doesn't take the pre-Capital terminology seriously, the mysticism which allegedly infects it, can be dispelled.

What Rosa needs to do, as S.Artesian argues, is to show how Capital contradicts the earlier work in terms of substantive content.

But, oh, wait, she can't.

[Rosa Lichtenstein]

M:


That's because we're not trying to re-mystify Marx, but nice strawmanning.

I have already covered this -- so deal with my arguments, or admit you are out of your depth and have only abusive comments to offer.

Exhibit A:


And yes, you are truly miserable and dishonest.[QUOTE]

Mayhbe so, maybe not, but, unlike you, I can defend my ideas.

[QUOTE]You recieve abuse because you are abusive. This of course does not take anything away from the fact that you are wrong as well, but it makes debating with you tedious and in the end probably meaningless.

But, you can't show where I go wrong, you just keep saying I am, as if repetition constitutes proof. :lol:

[Rosa Lichtenstein]

BTB:


This is a truly amazing argument.

Thanks!:)


It indicates that for Rosa

Are you addressing me or your tiny band of mystical acolytes?


the difference between pre-Capital Marx and post-Capital Marx is not in the analysis, not in the substantive claims, but in Marx's serious or non-serious use of certain terminology. In the former Marx is earnest in his use of concepts such as contradiction and therefore is infected with mysticism. In the latter he is merely coquetting, using terms like contradiction in a non-serious (and one could argue misleading) manner and therefore free of mysticism.

Are you denying Marx had to use language to explain himself?

Perhaps you think he used semaphore, an Aldis lamp, or sign language...? :lol:

If not, and he did use language, then this is about the language he used.

After all, he finally took his own advice (fully) when he came to write Das Kapital:


"One of the most difficult tasks confronting philosophers is to descend from the world of thought to the actual world. Language is the immediate actuality of thought. Just as philosophers have given thought an independent existence, so they were bound to make language into an independent realm. This is the secret of philosophical language, in which thoughts in the form of words have their own content. The problem of descending from the world of thoughts to the actual world is turned into the problem of descending from language to life.

"We have shown that thoughts and ideas acquire an independent existence in consequence of the personal circumstances and relations of individuals acquiring independent existence. We have shown that exclusive, systematic occupation with these thoughts on the part of ideologists and philosophers, and hence the systematisation of these thoughts, is a consequence of division of labour, and that, in particular, German philosophy is a consequence of German petty-bourgeois conditions. 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.]

BTB:


This reduces the charge of mysticism to a mere froth, easily corrected with a change in humour towards the terminology. Moreover, it means that as long as the reader doesn't take the pre-Capital terminology seriously, the mysticism which allegedly infects it, can be dispelled.

As we can now see, it is you who is frothing.


What Rosa needs to do, as S.Artesian argues, is to show how Capital contradicts the earlier work in terms of substantive content.

But, oh, wait, she can't.

I do not have to since I have never claimed he did.

I see that you, just like your puppet master Smarty Pants, can't resist lying about my ideas.

The only difference is that you have been doing this now for over four years, whereas he is still warming up.:lol:

[Rosa Lichtenstein]

Smarty Pants:


You assert this but fail to provide any demonstration of a substantive difference in the content of Marx's analysis of the social relations of capitalism among his various economic manuscripts, Capital, A Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy, The Grundrisse, the unpublished Economic Manuscripts 1857-1861, 1861-1864, etc.

Your supposed insight into Marx amounts to not liking his use of language, his choice of words because it includes the words "contradiction," "dialectic," "negation," "opposition" while at the same time you cannot make any substantive distinction between Marx's use of those words "flirtatiously," and/or "seriously;" between Marx using those specific words to provide a historical analysis of the origin and development of the conflicts and antagonisms of capital's social relations and your supposed "clean" "improved" Marx of the volume 1, where he supposedly has extirpated Hegel [despite his positive reference to Hegel in the footnotes and the main body of that work].

Consequently your "work," such that is, is literally meaningless to the analysis and development of Marxism and its, Marxism's subject, the labor process, and object, the labor process under capitalism.

A materialist evaluation of your claims necessarily concludes that your claims are worthless, irrelevant to Marxism.

I thought we agreed that you'd be far better occupied no longer flogging this long dead horse, and searched, once again, through material Marx published that was contemporaneous with or subsequent to Das Kapital, that supports your vain attempt to re-mystify his work?

Oh wait, you can't!

[Rosa Lichtenstein]

Smarty Pants: I have just spent two and a half hours replying to FHC over in Philosophy, time I had hoped to devote to parading your many and varied lies about me for the good people here to see for themselves. So, I will have to postpone this amusing task until tomorrow -- unless the same happens again!

[Crux]

But, you can't show where I go wrong, you just keep saying I am, as if repetition constitutes proof. :lol:

Showing something to the blind would be meaningless. I do commend S. Artesian for what he is doing though.
And further more your inability to read even the most basic texts are showing. I was referring to the fact that your abusive trollish nature does not actually have a bearing on whetever your argument is correct or not.

[S.Artesian]

I thought we agreed that you'd be far better occupied no longer flogging this long dead horse, and searched, once again, through material Marx published that was contemporaneous with or subsequent to Das Kapital, that supports your vain attempt to re-mystify his work?



The only thing we agreed upon was that you do not ever come to grips with the specific content of Marx's analysis.

We've never agreed that your "qualification" of Marx's work-- material published my Marx himself coincident with or subsequent to Capital is the only "valid" material for determining Marx's methodology.

Growing delusional, are you Rosa?

Can't wait to read your version of the Artesian School of Falsification, about that poor little innocent banking center of Lichtenstein.

[MarxSchmarx]

This has been moved and moved to philosophy, since the OP's question has been essentially answered by the interested parties and this has become yet another thread about the merits of dialectical materialism.

[anticap]

MIA now has an English translation of chapter 1 of the 1st German edition of Capital (http://marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1867-c1/commodity.htm), which contains the following passage:


The commodity is immediate unity of use-value and exchange-value, thus of two opposed entities. Thus it is an immediate contradiction. This contradiction must enter upon a development just as soon as it is no longer considered as hitherto in an analytic manner (at one time from the viewpoint of use-value and at another from the viewpoint of exchange-value) but is really related to other commodities as a totality. The real relating of commodities to one another, however, is their process of exchange.

I don't see how anyone can take issue with the first German edition. I doubt that Marx meant to say in the "coquetting" remark that he was playing a joke on us when he first published Capital, and that his real analysis would have to wait until subsequent editions. It seems clear enough to me that he sees a contradiction there, and that he means what he's saying.

[Zanthorus]

Interestingly, Marx only says that he was 'coquetting' with Hegel's terminology in the chapter on the theory of value, yet later on in the book he also uses Hegelian terminology (Even saying that the transformation of quantity into quality is confirmed by chemistry).

[Rosa Lichtenstein]

M:


Showing something to the blind would be meaningless. I do commend S. Artesian for what he is doing though.

Mystics sticking together -- how touching.


And further more your inability to read even the most basic texts are showing

And which part of Das Kapital have I misread?


I was referring to the fact that your abusive trollish nature does not actually have a bearing on whetever your argument is correct or not.

Well, you are the one trolling here, since you have concentrated almost exclusively on personal attecks on me, and ignored the topic of this thread.:lol:

[Rosa Lichtenstein]

Smarty Pants:


The only thing we agreed upon was that you do not ever come to grips with the specific content of Marx's analysis.

We've never agreed that your "qualification" of Marx's work-- material published my Marx himself coincident with or subsequent to Capital is the only "valid" material for determining Marx's methodology.

Growing delusional, are you Rosa?

Can't wait to read your version of the Artesian School of Falsification, about that poor little innocent banking center of Lichtenstein.

So, how's the search going for one, just one, passage that Marx published, contemporaneous with or subsequent to Das Kapital, that supports your attempt to re-mystify his work?

Oh dear -- not too well.:lol:

[Rosa Lichtenstein]

Anticap:


I don't see how anyone can take issue with the first German edition. I doubt that Marx meant to say in the "coquetting" remark that he was playing a joke on us when he first published Capital, and that his real analysis would have to wait until subsequent editions. It seems clear enough to me that he sees a contradiction there, and that he means what he's saying.

Well this would be a contradiction:

"Commodity A is a use value and it isn't."

So would this:

"Commodity A is an exchange value and it isn't."

This wouldn't be, though:

"Commodity A is both a use value and an exchamge value"

unless this were also true:

"Commodity A cannot be a use value and an exchange value at the same time."

But he has already admitted it can be.

So, that's why I said it does not even look like a contradiction.

This suggests that Marx did not mean to use this word seriously -- indeed as he himself told us -- either that, or Marx was an idiot who did not know what a contradiction is! If so, and he did not know what a contradiction is, could we believe anything he said?

So, the only way to rescue Marx from such an accusation would be to do what he told us -- take his use of Hegelian jargon non-seriously.

Today, we'd use 'scare' quotes.

[Rosa Lichtenstein]

Z:


Interestingly, Marx only says that he was 'coquetting' with Hegel's terminology in the chapter on the theory of value, yet later on in the book he also uses Hegelian terminology (Even saying that the transformation of quantity into quality is confirmed by chemistry).

Not so. Here's the passage from the Collected Works:


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

http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1867-c1/p3.htm

The comma between "there" and "in" tells us he was using this as an example of where he did this, not that this was the only place where he did it.

The alternative view that you promote would suggest that Marx was using this word non-seriously in the most important chaper of the book, but seriously elsewhere, which makes no sense.

[anticap]

The comma between "there" and "in" tells us he was using this as an example of where he did this, not that this was the only place where he did it.

I disagree with you there. That's not how it reads to me.

Of course, nothing there suggests that he meant to imply that chapter 1 was the only place where he "coquetted"; but in the sentence you've quoted it is clear to me that he is speaking specifically to that chapter.

[Rosa Lichtenstein]

Anticap:


I disagree with you there. That's not how it reads to me.

Then you must hold the alternative view that Marx was using this word non-seriously in the most important chaper of the book, but seriously elsewhere, which makes no sense.

Had he meant it your way, he'd have written:


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

[anticap]

Here's the quoted passage in the original German:


Ich bekannte mich daher offen als Schüler jenes großen Denkers und kokettierte sogar hier und da im Kapitel über die Werttheorie mit der ihm eigentümlichen Ausdrucksweise.

http://www.mlwerke.de/me/me23/me23_018.htm

No commas there. I don't read German, but Yahoo! Babel Fish, which I'm sure is accurate enough to deduce what follows, translates it thus:


I admitted myself from there openly as a pupil of that large philosopher and kokettierte even here and there in the chapter over the value theory with him the peculiar mode of expression.

To me, "[coquette] even here and there in the chapter [on] value theory" reads as though he could just as easily have written it the other way around, like so: 'I even coquette here and there in the chapter on value theory.'

[Rosa Lichtenstein]

Ah, but have you got access to the original hand-writtten MSS?

Only that will decide the issue here.

The Collected Works in English are based on the German edition and those MSS, which suggests their punctuation is in the original.

[S.Artesian]

Anticap:



Well this would be a contradiction:

"Commodity A is a use value and it isn't."

So would this:

"Commodity A is an exchange value and it isn't."

This wouldn't be, though:

"Commodity A is both a use value and an exchamge value"

unless this were also true:

"Commodity A cannot be a use value and an exchange value at the same time."

But he has already admitted it can be.

So, that's why I said it does not even look like a contradiction.

This suggests that Marx did not mean to use this word seriously -- indeed as he himself told us -- either that, or Marx was an idiot who did not know what a contradiction is! If so, and he did not know what a contradiction is, could we believe anything he said?

So, the only way to rescue Marx from such an accusation would be to do what he told us -- take his use of Hegelian jargon non-seriously.

Today, we'd use 'scare' quotes.


Marx meant to use the word exactly as he did use it, seriously, in the way Hegel describes contradiction, as an immanent tendency, potentiality that exists within the identity, the organization, of the subject.

So when Marx describes the commodity as a contradiction, he is describing its "internal organization," which is its social organization as both a use value and an exchange value, where the facets of the identity each exist only in that of the other, and at a critical point, will manifest a negation of the other.

This is precisely what you Rosa never understand and thus makes it impossible for you to discuss any of the critical content of Marx's analysis of the conflicts, the antagonisms, the contradictions of value production, of the labor process and the valorisation process, of expanded reproduction.

For Marx

Commodity A is a use value and it is not an use value.

It is a use value to some portion of society, but it is NOT a use value to the producer of the commodity.

Commodity A is an exchange value and it is not an exchange value.

It is an exchange value to its producer, it is not an exchange value to its purchaser [excepting of course merchant capital].

Alienation as a material, social process, not a psychological tendency, is what fuses, organizes, this contradictory identity of the commodity. Alienation requires expropriation, requires the dispossession of the laborer from the products of labor such that his or her own labor is useless, has no use value to the laborer, save its value in exchange with the owner of the conditions of production for the means of subsistence, or the equivalent medium for the purchase of such means.

So labor capacity, taking on its social organization as wage labor, exists as an exchange value and not a use value for the wage laborer, while at the same time the purchaser of the exchange value of wage labor is purchasing its use value-- its ability to produce a surplus, its disposable surplus labor time while producing a specific article of production.

The contradiction expresses itself throughout capitalist accumulation, most acutely of course in "crises" when a devaluation of exchange value causes use values to disappear, to not be available, to "not exist" or to be destroyed-- for example when foodstuffs disappear from markets, or milk is dumped in the streets to protest low profits.

Such destruction of the commodity's own existence as a use value, by its own existence as an exchange value, is pre-figured by the diminishing of exchange value due to the growth of the fixed commodity-capital portion of production, which participates fully in the labor process, but only partially, by transferring a small part of its value, to the valorisation process-- so that the use value of the means of production, and the output of the means of production outgrows the realization of exchange value.l


That is how Marx utilizes contradiction, and that "utilization" is directly taken over from Hegel's analysis of contradiction, determination, grounding, and negation.

According to you there is no contradiction in the commodity, there is no contradiction in capitalist accumulation, no self-organized immanent barrier to its reproduction based on the origins of that reproduction, and no internally generated necessity for its abolition, which again, is why you chase your own tail, never getting beyond a paragraph or two in the afterword of volume 1, and you have nothing to say about real issues of capitalist accumulation and Marx's analysis thereof.

[anticap]

Ah, but have you got access to the original hand-writtten MSS?

Only that will decide the issue here.

How difficult would it be to gain access to it? If this all hinges on providing something that nobody can provide, then that's a little unfair.


The Collected Works in English are based on the German edition and those MSS, which suggests their punctuation is in the original.

It might suggest that, or it might not. It might also suggest that someone introduced the commas. That's at least as likely as someone removing the commas from the German I quoted.

In any case, I still disagree that the comma suggests what you say it does. Maybe it's a cultural thing; I'm from the US, and that comma absolutely does not suggest to me that Marx was not speaking directly to that chapter.

[Rosa Lichtenstein]

AntiCap:


How difficult would it be to gain access to it? If this all hinges on providing something that nobody can provide, then that's a little unfair.

I think they are all held in the USSR, but I do not know for sure.


It might suggest that, or it might not. It might also suggest that someone introduced the commas. That's at least as likely as someone removing the commas from the German I quoted.

In any case, I still disagree that the comma suggests what you say it does. Maybe it's a cultural thing; I'm from the US, and that comma absolutely does not suggest to me that Marx was not speaking directly to that chapter.

Maybe so, maybe not --, but, fortunately, my case against the mystical view does not just depend on a comma. My interpretation of this passage makes it consistent with the summary of 'the dialectic method' Marx endorsed.

[Rosa Lichtenstein]

Smarty Pants:


Marx meant to use the word exactly as he did use it, seriously, in the way Hegel describes contradiction, as an immanent tendency, potentiality that exists within the identity, the organization, of the subject.

So when Marx describes the commodity as a contradiction, he is describing its "internal organization," which is its social organization as both a use value and an exchange value, where the facets of the identity each exist only in that of the other, and at a critical point, will manifest a negation of the other.

This is precisely what you Rosa never understand and thus makes it impossible for you to discuss any of the critical content of Marx's analysis of the conflicts, the antagonisms, the contradictions of value production, of the labor process and the valorisation process, of expanded reproduction.

For Marx

Commodity A is a use value and it is not an use value.

It is a use value to some portion of society, but it is NOT a use value to the producer of the commodity.

Commodity A is an exchange value and it is not an exchange value.

It is an exchange value to its producer, it is not an exchange value to its purchaser [excepting of course merchant capital].

Alienation as a material, social process, not a psychological tendency, is what fuses, organizes, this contradictory identity of the commodity. Alienation requires expropriation, requires the dispossession of the laborer from the products of labor such that his or her own labor is useless, has no use value to the laborer, save its value in exchange with the owner of the conditions of production for the means of subsistence, or the equivalent medium for the purchase of such means.

So labor capacity, taking on its social organization as wage labor, exists as an exchange value and not a use value for the wage laborer, while at the same time the purchaser of the exchange value of wage labor is purchasing its use value-- its ability to produce a surplus, its disposable surplus labor time while producing a specific article of production.

The contradiction expresses itself throughout capitalist accumulation, most acutely of course in "crises" when a devaluation of exchange value causes use values to disappear, to not be available, to "not exist" or to be destroyed-- for example when foodstuffs disappear from markets, or milk is dumped in the streets to protest low profits.

Such destruction of the commodity's own existence as a use value, by its own existence as an exchange value, is pre-figured by the diminishing of exchange value due to the growth of the fixed commodity-capital portion of production, which participates fully in the labor process, but only partially, by transferring a small part of its value, to the valorisation process-- so that the use value of the means of production, and the output of the means of production outgrows the realization of exchange value.l


That is how Marx utilizes contradiction, and that "utilization" is directly taken over from Hegel's analysis of contradiction, determination, grounding, and negation.

According to you there is no contradiction in the commodity, there is no contradiction in capitalist accumulation, no self-organized immanent barrier to its reproduction based on the origins of that reproduction, and no internally generated necessity for its abolition, which again, is why you chase your own tail, never getting beyond a paragraph or two in the afterword of volume 1, and you have nothing to say about real issues of capitalist accumulation and Marx's analysis thereof.

Thanks for that -- repetition (where's Majakovskij when we need him!) -- but this just means that your interpretation of Marx has him using this word in a new and unjustified way.

But, as I have pointed out to you before, this alleged employment by Marx is based on Hegel's use of this word, and he certainly thought he was extending the Aristotelian use of it. But Hegel's modification of the use of this word is without merit -- since it is based on demonstrably defective logic (and even defective Aristotelian logic) -- which you'd know if you bothered to learn any.

I have explained this in detail here:

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

Summarised here:

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

This means that there is now no good reason to use this word in this way. Since its use bears no relation to its use in Aristotelian or modern logic, or even in ordinary language, you might just as well use 'banana' for all the relevance it has.

In addition, it absolves Marx of similar crass errors - especially in view of the fact that he himself said he had merely been 'coquetting' with this word.

'Opposition' is Ok, though, since this word has no such logical consequences.

[Rjevan]

This is a truly amazing argument.
And it becomes more amazing by the minute. So now the use of commas plays a role in the question of Marx's pre- and post-Capital stance on mysticism...


Here's the quoted passage in the original German:

This passage is correct, nobody removed any commas since there are no commas to remove in the original. You will neither find a single version of this sentence with commas if you google it nor are there any commas in this sentence in my German copy of "Das Kapital". And I promise everybody that there won't be commas in this sentence if you could get hold of the manuscript for the simple reason that it is completely impossible in German to put even a single comma in this sentence. No matter if you go for old or new German grammar/spelling, no matter if you refer to old German comma rules which, for example, allowed a comma before "und" (and) under certain circumstances - simply no commas possible in this sentence.

I would translate it like this: "Therefore I openly avowed myself the pupil of this great thinker and even coquetted here and there in the chapter on the theory of value with his particular terminology."
=
Marx "even coquetted" with the "particular terminology of this great thinker" in "the chapter on the theory of value."

It's as anticap said: although he doesn't imply that this is the only place in the book, Marx doesn't give a random example here but is speaking specifically about this chapter.

[Rosa Lichtenstein]

Rjevan:


And it becomes more amazing by the minute. So now the use of commas plays a role in the question of Marx's pre- and post-Capital stance on mysticism...

And where is this in my argument, or have you too joined the ranks of the fabulists?


This passage is correct, nobody removed any commas since there are no commas to remove in the original. You will neither find a single version of this sentence with commas if you google it nor are there any commas in this sentence in my German copy of "Das Kapital". And I promise everybody that there won't be commas in this sentence if you could get hold of the manuscript for the simple reason that it is completely impossible in German to put even a single comma in this sentence. No matter if you go for old or new German grammar/spelling, no matter if you refer to old German comma rules which, for example, allowed a comma before "und" (and) under certain circumstances - simply no commas possible in this sentence.

As I noted, unless you have access to Marx's original hand-written manuscript [MSS], this is pure guesswork on your part. The Collected Works in English was produced from the German MEGA version and the hand-written MSS -- and the editors and translators of the latter, who are all, like you, traditionalists, and certainly know nothing of my existence, or arguments, produced the official English version, with the commas that offend you so much where they now are -- which has the imprimature of the Marxist Internet Archive behind it.

So, pick a fight with them not me.


I would translate it like this: "Therefore I openly avowed myself the pupil of this great thinker and even coquetted here and there in the chapter on the theory of value with his particular terminology."

As I pointed out earlier, this implies that Marx used Hegelian jargon in a non-serious way in the most important chapter of the book, but seriously elsewhere.

That makes no sense.

Or, what sense can you make of it?


It's as anticap said: although he doesn't imply that this is the only place in the book, Marx doesn't give a random example here but is speaking specifically about this chapter.

That is one interpretation, but it's not the only one.

[S.Artesian]

The issue isn't if Marx use the word contradiction in a "new and unjustified" manner. The issue is if he used the word in a manner derived from Hegel to describe a self-generating, and self-generate, opposition.

And that is exactly how Marx used the word-- not flirtatiously, but seriously to describe the antagonisms, conflicts, contradictions of capitalist commodity production.

Your misapprehension of this fundamental part of Marxism is matched only on your inability to grasp what Rjevan said: There are no commas because the rules of grammar of the language in which Marx wrote did not allow for commas. Therefore your interpretation isn't one of a possible many, based as it is on the placement of commas-- your interpretation isn't based on Marx's own sentences, but on what a translator thought was right.

There is, apparently, almost nothing about Marx's work that you do understand.

[Rjevan]

As I noted, unless you have access to Marx's original hand-written manuscript [MSS], this is pure guesswork on your part.
No, it isn't. Of course I could be lying or ignorant about German grammar and I see no way to convince you about the opposite and have no intention to start braging about my grades in German, etc., but I assure you: for the German text there can't be any guesswork, not now and not when Marx wrote this.

Why the commas were added in English - no idea. This is indeed pure guesswork.


As I pointed out earlier, this implies that Marx used Hegelian jargon in a non-serious way in the most important chapter of the book, but seriously elsewhere.
I'm not sure what meanings "to coquette" has in English and in which context it is mainly used but in German "kokettieren" is (or rather was) used to express that you flirt/play with somebody/something: http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/kokettieren
Saying that I flirt/play with somebody's terminology wouldn't necessarily mean that I do so in a non-serious way. Marx says that he avowed himself the pupil of Hegel and even played with his terminology in this specific chapter. He does nowhere imply that this is supposed to be a joke.

Taken in context he says that he has already criticised Hegel's mysticism long ago but that "the epigones treated Hegel like a 'dead dog'" at the time when Marx was working at "Das Kapital". Therefore Marx openly called himself Hegel's pupil and played with some of his terminology in order to oppose himself to the "peevish, arrogant, mediocre epigones" and to show that Hegel is not a "dead dog" but was and remains a "great thinker". Marx finishes by stressing: "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."

Marx directly says that he's using Hegel's terminology to honour and defend him/his positive achievements rather than to ridicule him or his readers by using it in a non-serious way.


That is one interpretation, but it's not the only one.
Same dilemma as above: I have no interest whatsoever to falsify the meaning of this or any other text and as a German reading the German text I have to say that there is little room to misinterpret anything. Of course I can hardly prove to somebody who doesn't speak German that this is no interpretation but the pretty unambiguous meaning. But I assure you that it is and hopefully quoting the context helped to prove my point.

[Rosa Lichtenstein]

This is to honour a promise I made yeaterday.

Ok, here are just a handful of the many lies S Artesian has posted here -- taken from a few of the threads in which he has chosen to exercise his fubulism:

Lie One:


S Artesian:


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.

http://www.revleft.com/vb/showpost.php?p=1750603&postcount=60

My reply:


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


http://www.revleft.com/vb/showpost.php?p=1750746&postcount=61

Lie Two:

S Artesian:


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.

http://www.revleft.com/vb/showpost.php?p=1760210&postcount=196

My reply:


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.

http://www.revleft.com/vb/showpost.php?p=1760343&postcount=198

Lie Three:

S Artesian:


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 until 6-7 years following the original publication of volume 1.

http://www.revleft.com/vb/showpost.php?p=1761413&postcount=243

You even repeated this lie particular in this thread.

My reply:


I did not use the word 'rupture'. You are back to invention now, I see.

http://www.revleft.com/vb/showpost.php?p=1761425&postcount=244

Lie Four:

S Artesian:


Or not. Not remarkable at all, since for Rosa, Marxism exists only as a thought, an afterthought to philosophy, to a philosophy of language, to the limits of her understanding of formal logic.

http://www.revleft.com/vb/showpost.php?p=1692971&postcount=253

My reply:


Where have I said this, or even implied it?

Nowhere, that's where.

I defy you to show otherwise.

Which you just ignored.

http://www.revleft.com/vb/showpost.php?p=1692982&postcount=254

Lie Five:

S Artesian:


In discussing what Marx said in the cited paragraph, Rosa appears to be of two minds-- 1) Marx is wrong in his concrete analysis of the transformation of a wannabe into an actual capitalist 2) Marx is just trying to scare his reader by pretending to endorse Hegel's law of transformation.

http://www.revleft.com/vb/showpost.php?p=1681421&postcount=215

My reply:


2) But, nowhere have I said Marx was wrong

http://www.revleft.com/vb/showpost.php?p=1681504&postcount=221

Lie Six:

S Artesian:


Oh Rosa, you are pathetic. Marx doesn't say that the Scottish materialists have replaced Hegel, or provided a dialectic to counter the dialectic as Marx demonstrates it-- he says they've provided the first cracks at writing an actual material history of society, which is exactly parallel the Marx's "positive" comments on the physiocrats; Marx's positive comments on Ricardo for grasping, in part, surplus value; etc. etc.

http://www.revleft.com/vb/showpost.php?p=1692410&postcount=247

My reply:


Where did I say that Marx claimed this: "the Scottish materialists have replaced Hegel, or provided a dialectic to counter the dialectic as Marx demonstrates it"?

What I have done is show that Marx rejected Hegel, and I then inferred that he had reverted to the rational version of Historical Materialism which he, not me, attributes to the Scottish School, and to Aristotle.

Once more, you can find my reasoning in the threads I linked to above.

Now you need to address this, not invent stuff to put in my mouth.

http://www.revleft.com/vb/showpost.php?p=1692648&postcount=248

Lie Seven:

S Artesian:


You actually state that the very mechanism by which capital expands, accumulates cannot cause its contraction, its "dis-accumulation." And you claim Marx as the source for such ignorance. You're stupider than you imagine, but not stupider than I suspected.

http://www.revleft.com/vb/showpost.php?p=1692707&postcount=249

My reply:


Where do I say this?

Yet another lie.

I just refuse to call it a 'contradiction', and you have yet to show it is one.

On the contrary, I'm quite happy with causal talk.

http://www.revleft.com/vb/showpost.php?p=1692854&postcount=250

Lie Eight:

S Artesian:


Grasping at one more straw in your search for the needle in the proverbial haystack, you actually do claim Marx was still confused in vol 1; that he did lack the tools to make a complete break with Hegel [right, he just didn't have the vocabulary to say that Hegel's dialectic is a complete waste, and worse than a waste, those who think I have anything to do with Hegel's dialectic are enemies of the working class. After all, he wasn't able to bring himself to cast such harsh, definitive judgments on Proudhon or Lasalle, was he?].

http://www.revleft.com/vb/showpost.php?p=1694449&postcount=267

My reply:


And where did I say Marx was 'confused'? He was no more confused than Newton was when he expressed the new Newtonian world-view in rather antiquated language -- and it is no slur on Newton to point this out. Same with Marx.

http://www.revleft.com/vb/showpost.php?p=1694508&postcount=269

Lie Nine:

S Artesian:


5. She claims she accepts "historical materialism" but has no idea what historical materialism is since historical materialism begins precisely with the examination of the organization of labor, the condition of labor, the exchange between labor and property which she labels, when it comes to capitalism, "gobbledygook."

http://www.revleft.com/vb/showpost.php?p=1695033&postcount=275

My reply:


Where did I label this in that way?

http://www.revleft.com/vb/showpost.php?p=1695083&postcount=276

Lie Ten:

S Artesian:


Your ignorance is on display for all too see when you talk about the capitalist producing exchange values.

http://www.revleft.com/vb/showpost.php?p=1698731&postcount=331

My Reply:


Where do I say anything like this: "the capitalist producing exchange values."?

Seems that invention and lying are your only options now that you are in a corner.

http://www.revleft.com/vb/showpost.php?p=1698962&postcount=333

Lie Eleven:

Here you admit the previous untruth was a lie, but then go onto to assert yet another:


Right, you never said that. You said the capitalist and proletarian were not in contradiction to each other; you said the capitalist could be a proletarian at the same time; you said that the capitalist could engage in commodity production, produce a use-value that could, upon exchange, realize a profit and expand the reproduction of capital. But you never said the capitalist was producing an exchange value. Right. Exactly.

http://www.revleft.com/vb/showpost.php?p=1700897&postcount=353

My reply:


Ok, so this is a long-winded way of telling the good folk here that you lied.

And where did I say that a capitalist can be a proletarian at the same time?

http://www.revleft.com/vb/showpost.php?p=1700915&postcount=354

Lie Twelve:

S Artesian:


The other information you provide is relevant to the issue, and I'll look at that, later, but why do you say your site is specifically to criticize "materialist dialectics" when according to you, you accept the materialist dialectics of Aristotle [and other Greek philosophers] and you even ascribe, it appears, a materialist dialectic to Smith, Kant, and Ferguson.

http://www.revleft.com/vb/showpost.php?p=1703728&postcount=413

My reply:


Where do I say I accept the 'materialist dialectics' of Aristotle? Or that I accept his 'dialectic method'? Or that I agree with anything Aristotle has ever said?

http://www.revleft.com/vb/showpost.php?p=1703738&postcount=415

A lie you repeated further down the same page.

To which I replied again:


Indeed, but where do I say I accept it?

You see, you are so used to lying, you just can't tell when you are and when you aren't...

Fortunately for the good people here, I can.

http://www.revleft.com/vb/showpost.php?p=1703792&postcount=418

You then repeated the same lie on the next page, to which I replied:


In short: you can't find anywhere where I have said I accept Aristotle's dialectic.

So, you did lie.

And to save me having to repost the same reply (an thus spamming this thread), I have responded to your questions here:

http://anti-dialectics.co.uk/Not-So-Smartesian.htm

http://www.revleft.com/vb/showpost.php?p=1704213&postcount=452

Lie Thirteen:

S Artesian:


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.

http://www.revleft.com/vb/showpost.php?p=1758318&postcount=134

My reply:


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"?

http://www.revleft.com/vb/showpost.php?p=1758336&postcount=139

Lie Fourteen:

Last but by no means least, S Artesian:


Side-splitting. No detectable historical or social content-- but that's no problem for "Marxists." Isn't this where, to save bandwidth, you're supposed to type: ROTFLMAO?

http://www.revleft.com/vb/showpost.php?p=1777241&postcount=30

Here is my reply:


Still incapable or reading ordinary language, I see. Here is what I actually said (I have highlighted the words which your selective blindness made you miss):


[1] Although Wittgenstein's later work was anthropologically-motivated, it has in fact no detectable historical or social content, which makes the direct appropriation of his ideas by Marxists problematic.

However, this is not an insurmountable obstacle.

So, nothing there even remotely like this:


but that's no problem for "Marxists."

In fact, I specifically say this is "problematic" for Marxists!

You are now getting so hot under the collar and desperate in the defence of your mystical beliefs that you find you have to attribute to me the exact opposite of what I in fact say!

I'm not sure who you think you are impressing by blatantly lying like this (and it's not as if such lies are well hidden, they are right there in the open, for all to see) -- except other mystics (like GrayMouser, or BAM, if he/she ever returns) desperate to defend their source of opiates.

http://www.revleft.com/vb/showpost.php?p=1777596&postcount=32

There are plenty more like this, but the above should suffice.

In the vast majority of cases you ignored my request 'where I said this or that', something you still continue to do.

[S.Artesian]

None of those are lies Rosa, as is the case with my use of the term "rupture," you regard anything that is not verbatim as a lie.

Readers can go back and check through the posts, and they will find Rosa saying just what I said she said, but in different words. BFD.

[Rosa Lichtenstein]

Rjevan:


No, it isn't. Of course I could be lying or ignorant about German grammar and I see no way to convince you about the opposite and have no intention to start bragging about my grades in German, etc., but I assure you: for the German text there can't be any guesswork, not now and not when Marx wrote this.

Where did I even suggest I doubted your German? What I did say is that you do not have access to the original hand-written manuscripts.


Why the commas were added in English - no idea. This is indeed pure guesswork.

The bottom line is that they were. So, pick a fight with the Marxists who translated and edited it, and with the Marxist Internet Archive, not me.


I'm not sure what meanings "to coquette" has in English and in which context it is mainly used but in German "kokettieren" is (or rather was) used to express that you flirt/play with somebody/something: http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/kokettieren
Saying that I flirt/play with somebody's terminology wouldn't necessarily mean that I do so in a non-serious way. Marx says that he avowed himself the pupil of Hegel and even played with his terminology in this specific chapter. He does nowhere imply that this is supposed to be a joke.

Where did I use the work 'joke'?

But, you have this reply:


Saying that I flirt/play with somebody's terminology wouldn't necessarily mean that I do so in a non-serious way.

Well, you assert this, and if you were a minor deity, that would settle the issue, but alas, you aren't.

If you play with another's words, that cannot be a serious use of them. If he was using them seriously, he'd not play with them, he'd just use them.

But you add this:


Marx says that he avowed himself the pupil of Hegel

You might have missed this in your haste to re-mystify Das Kapital, but Marx pointedly put this in the past tense. He does not say he is still a pupil of Hegel.


Taken in context he says that he has already criticised Hegel's mysticism long ago but that "the epigones treated Hegel like a 'dead dog'" at the time when Marx was working at "Das Kapital". Therefore Marx openly called himself Hegel's pupil and played with some of his terminology in order to oppose himself to the "peevish, arrogant, mediocre epigones" and to show that Hegel is not a "dead dog" but was and remains a "great thinker". Marx finishes by stressing: "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."

Oh dear we have been over this so many times!


Marx finishes by stressing: "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."

Indeed, that does not prevent Hegel from being the first, since he wasn't the first to begin with, as Marx well knew.

What prevents Hegel from being the first to present 'the dialectic' in a rational form was that (1) others had beaten him to it, and (2) Hegel's dialectic is far too confused to be called 'rational'.

On that, see here:

http://www.revleft.com/vb/showpost.php?p=1356284&postcount=68

http://www.revleft.com/vb/showpost.php?p=1693775&postcount=260

http://www.revleft.com/vb/showpost.php?p=1693776&postcount=261

Which is, of course, why (a few paragraphs earlier) Marx added a summary of the 'dialectic method':


"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.]

In this passage not a single Hegelian concept is to be found -- no "contradictions", no change of "quantity into quality", no "negation of the negation", no "unity and identity of opposites", no "interconnected Totality" --, and yet Marx calls this the "dialectic method". So, Marx's "method" has had Hegel completely excised --, except for the odd phrase or two here and there with which he merely "coquetted". In that case Marx's "dialectic method" more closely resembles that of Aristotle, Ferguson, Millar, Robertson, Smith, Hume, Stewart, and Kant.


Marx directly says that he's using Hegel's terminology to honour and defend him/his positive achievements rather than to ridicule him or his readers by using it in a non-serious way.

No he doesn't, he just 'coquettes' with it. Some praise!

[anticap]

The bottom line is that they were. So, pick a fight with the Marxists who translated and edited it, and with the Marxist Internet Archive, not me.

With respect, you're not getting the point: because the commas were introduced by someone other than Marx, anything you hang on them is going to fall.

It's not about picking a fight with you; it's about convincing you to drop the comma business altogether, because they're not Marx's commas.

[Rosa Lichtenstein]

Anticap:


With respect, you're not getting the point: because the commas were introduced by someone other than Marx, anything you hang on them is going to fall.

I take it then that you have seen the original hand-written MSS?


It's not about picking a fight with you; it's about convincing you to drop the comma business altogether, because they're not Marx's commas.

But, you do not know that.

[anticap]

I take it then that you have seen the original hand-written MSS?

No, but I have the word of a German-speaker whose grasp of its grammar you've accepted.


But, you do not know that.

Not for certain; but if they are Marx's commas, then, as you'll no doubt agree, given that you accept Rjevan's authority on the matter, Marx's grammar must have been shit. :)

[Rosa Lichtenstein]

Anticap:


No, but I have the word of a German-speaker whose grasp of its grammar you've accepted.

Who, like you, has not seen the original hand-written MSS.


Not for certain; but if they are Marx's commas, then, as you'll no doubt agree, given that you accept Rjevan's authority on the matter, Marx's grammar must have been shit.

I did not say I accepted his authority -- I did say this:


Where did I even suggest I doubted your German?

Not at all the same .

Anyway, I'm checking the grammar with a relative who is an expert in German. I'll let you know the results.

[S.Artesian]

This is pathetic. Read the body of Marx's work. Read the chapter on value. Read Marx's drafts and versions of Capital, A Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy. Read his correspondence. There is no need to speculate about commas. Marx's use of the dialectic, of which he says Hegel's is the base for all dialectic, is explicit.

If Marx's earlier works are "infected" with mysticism due to some relation to Hegel, then let's have Rosa show us where; show us the concepts, categories, analysis so infected, and show us where and how Marx corrects these in Capital.

Everything, and anything, else is simply evasion.

[Rosa Lichtenstein]

Smarty Pants:


This is pathetic.

Never mind, we won't hold it against you.:)


Read the body of Marx's work. Read the chapter on value. Read Marx's drafts and versions of Capital, A Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy. Read his correspondence. There is no need to speculate about commas. Marx's use of the dialectic, of which he says Hegel's is the base for all dialectic, is explicit.

If Marx's earlier works are "infected" with mysticism due to some relation to Hegel, then let's have Rosa show us where; show us the concepts, categories, analysis so infected, and show us where and how Marx corrects these in Capital.

Everything, and anything, else is simply evasion.

More repetiton.

Here's some more, but you keep ignoring it:

How's the search going for at least one passage that Marx published, contemporaneous with or subsequent to Das Kapital, which supports your attempt to re-mystify his work?

Oh dear -- that badly?:(

Check out my (shortened) list of your many and varied lies, above:

http://www.revleft.com/vb/showpost.php?p=1862581&postcount=131

[S.Artesian]

Can't do it, can you Rosa? Can't find a single concept, category, portion of Marx's analysis "infected" with Hegelianism that Marx corrects in Capital, can you?

Value? Alienated labor? Use value and exchange value? Turnover? Absolute surplus value? Relative surplus value? Cost price? Average price? Market price?

Show us one Rosa.... but oh, we know, you can't.

Which is why you and your supposed anti-dialectics are completely irrelevant to the substance, the content of Marx's work.

[anticap]

I did not say I accepted his authority

*sigh* You really do hang on every word, don't you?

Forget I said "authority," then. You've accepted his grasp of German. That, to me, is a roundabout way of saying that you accept his say on the matter at hand (commas in the original). Maybe you see it differently, but in any case we have a German-speaker whose grasp of the language we both accept, and he assures us that it would be "impossible" to put a comma in that sentence.


Anyway, I'm checking the grammar with a relative who is an expert in German. I'll let you know the results.

Rjevan is expert enough for me, but if your expert contradicts him, then I'm equally free to not to accept her/his authority.

What I find troubling is that this comma business is so important to you. It suggests that a great deal of your thesis hangs on it (I know you've claimed otherwise). What's especially troubling to me is that, to my eyes anyway, the sentence doesn't even read the way you think it does, with or without the comma.

[Crux]

Maybe so, maybe not --, but, fortunately, my case against the mystical view does not just depend on a comma. My interpretation of this passage makes it consistent with the summary of 'the dialectic method' Marx endorsed.

And isn't that the way with everything you read? Might I suggest you stop "couqetting" with reading and actually learn it. It's been showing, one the elast, in the way you read posts here. I mean you're not a dialectical materialist, fine, there are many who are not. But don't pretend your view has any support whatsoever in marxism.

Just to stress your problem:
"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."
You take this sentence to mean Marx does not think Hegel was the first to present the dialiec in a comprehensive and coscious manner. In other words, you must be reading it backwards.

[Rosa Lichtenstein]

M (at last half-attempting to argue, rather than just post abuse and personal remarks):


And isn't that the way with everything you read? Might I suggest you stop "couqetting" with reading and actually learn it. It's been showing, one the elast, in the way you read posts here. I mean you're not a dialectical materialist, fine, there are many who are not. But don't pretend your view has any support whatsoever in marxism.

And how does this show that Marx did not reject Hegel root and branch in Das Kapital?


But don't pretend your view has any support whatsoever in marxism

So what? There was a time when very few people accepted Trotsky's ideas. Or Marx's. Or Lenin's.


Just to stress your problem:

"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."

You take this sentence to mean Marx does not think Hegel was the first to present the dialiec in a comprehensive and coscious manner. In other words, you must be reading it backwards.

Well, since Hegel wasn't the first to do so (since he did not do it at all, and Marx knew he wasn't the first), your version would have Marx making a crass error.

Mine absolves him of this.

[Rosa Lichtenstein]

Smarty Pants:


Can't do it, can you Rosa? Can't find a single concept, category, portion of Marx's analysis "infected" with Hegelianism that Marx corrects in Capital, can you?

Value? Alienated labor? Use value and exchange value? Turnover? Absolute surplus value? Relative surplus value? Cost price? Average price? Market price?

Show us one Rosa.... but oh, we know, you can't.

Which is why you and your supposed anti-dialectics are completely irrelevant to the substance, the content of Marx's work.

But how does any of this help you in your desperate search for at least one passage Marx published, contemporaneous with or subsequent to Das Kapital, which supports your attempt to re-mystify his work?

Oh wait -- it doesn't?

I note, also, that you have ignored my post where I expose just a few of your many lies.

[Rosa Lichtenstein]

Anti-Cap:


You really do hang on every word, don't you?

It's called 'attention to detail' -- something your learn to do very soon when you study logic and complete a mathematics degree.

Something Marx did too, when he carefully distinguished, say, the relative from the equivalent form of value.


Forget I said "authority," then. You've accepted his grasp of German. That, to me, is a roundabout way of saying that you accept his say on the matter at hand (commas in the original). Maybe you see it differently, but in any case we have a German-speaker whose grasp of the language we both accept, and he assures us that it would be "impossible" to put a comma in that sentence.

I have 'accepted' nothing -- except perhaps his implicit admission that he hasn't seen the original hand-written MSS.

And it can't be impossible, since the expert German speakers who translated Das Kapital put these commas in!


Rjevan is expert enough for me, but if your expert contradicts him, then I'm equally free to not to accept her/his authority.

Fine, then as I said before, pick a fight with the experts who translated Das Kapital, and who had access to the original hand-written MSS.


What I find troubling is that this comma business is so important to you. It suggests that a great deal of your thesis hangs on it (I know you've claimed otherwise). What's especially troubling to me is that, to my eyes anyway, the sentence doesn't even read the way you think it does, with or without the comma.

It's not important to me. You are the one who keeps banging on about it.

And, as I have also pointed out to you, my argument depends on several things, in descending order of importance (I have left several other less important reasons out):

1) Marx added a summary of 'the dialectic method' (to the Afterword to the second edition of Das Kapital) in which there is no trace of Hegel -- no "contradictions", no change of "quantity into quality", no "negation of the negation", no "unity and identity of opposites", no "interconnected Totality" --, and yet Marx calls this the "dialectic method". This is the only summary of that method Marx endorsed in a published work in his entire life.

2) This 'method' makes no sense at all, so I am at pains to distance Marx from something that would tarnish his towering authority.

3) The very best he could do with Hegel's impenetrable obscure jargon was to 'coquette' with it.

You can find my other reasons here:

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

Use the 'Quick Links' at the top to jump to section 8.

[S.Artesian]

Smarty Pants:



But how does any of this help you in your desperate search for at least one passage Marx published, contemporaneous with or subsequent to Das Kapital, which supports your attempt to re-mystify his work?

Oh wait -- it doesn't?

I note, also, that you have ignored my post where I expose just a few of your many lies.

No I didn't ignore it, I answered it.

And I have no need to restrict my study of Marx to your standard of ignorance. You yourself don't produce what Marx originally wrote for publication, but what the translators think best fits the practices of English grammar. So your argument is now... find something published by translators written by Marx. That's easy, see below.

So provide us with some proof of the original Hegelian mystification in Marx's work, say the Grundrisse, or any of the economic manuscripts of 1857-1864 written at the same time as Capital, which he subsequently corrects, demystifies.

Here let me help you:

Your tasks, should you choose to accept them-
1) identify and explain the mystification of the relations of capital Marx expresses in the following passages and
2) identify where and how he demystifies this analysis in a subsequent work:




The barrier to capital is the fact that this entire development proceeds in a contradictory way, and that the elaboration of the productive forces, of general wealth, etc., knowledge, etc., takes place in such a way that the working individual alienates himself; that he relates to the conditions brought out of him by his labour, not as to the conditions of his own, but alien wealth and of his own poverty. But this contradictory form is itself vanishing and produces the real conditions for its own transcendence.




Capitalist property is only a contradictory expression of their [the workers] social property--i.e their negated individual property--in the conditions of production. (Hence in the product. For the product is constantly changing into the conditions of production.) .... The alien property of the capitalist in this labour can only be abolished by converting his property into the property of the non-individual in its independent singularity, hence of the associated, social individual. This naturally brings to an end the fetishistic situation when the product is the proprietor of the producer, and all the social forms of labour developed within capitalist production are released from the contradiction which falsifies them all and presents them as mutually opposed....

Should be easy for someone as knowledgeable of the complete body of Marx's work, and of volume 1 of Capital as you claim to be.

[anticap]

Rosa:


I have 'accepted' nothing -- except perhaps his implicit admission that he hasn't seen the original hand-written MSS.

I'm glad that you accept the possibility of implicit admissions. Let's review one of yours, to Rjevan:


Where did I even suggest I doubted your German?

In other words, 'I've never even suggested that I doubt your German.'

This is either: (1) an implicit admission that you indeed have accepted his [grasp of] German; (2) your rather disingenuous way of saying, in other words, 'I doubt your German, but I haven't voiced that doubt.'; (3) ???

I think it's clear that you've accepted his grasp of German. I don't think you'd stoop to the level of (2), and I can't think of any other possibilities; but do please fill in (3) if I've missed one.


And it can't be impossible, since the expert German speakers who translated Das Kapital put these commas in!

Rjevan clearly meant that it would be impossible in the German, according to its grammar rules.

They were put in the English because the translators decided that it was proper to put them in (a decision that has no bearing on Marx). It's either that or, as you suggest, they're in the MSS, which, if Rjevan is right, means that Marx's grammar was shit. We can speculate as to whether he would have approved of the commas in the English, but that would be pointless. Any liberties taken by the translators that might possibly alter the meaning of the text should be rejected, and a direct translation should be preferred. (At any rate, the comma in question doesn't carry the connotations that you think it does.)


Fine, then as I said before, pick a fight with the experts who translated Das Kapital, and who had access to the original hand-written MSS.

And as I've said before, this isn't about picking a fight with you; it's about convincing you to drop the comma business altogether, they're not Marx's commas.

Since we can't access the MSS, it seems reasonable to me to accept the available German as authoritative, and to assume that Marx's grammar was up-to-snuff. It then becomes a matter of debating whether the commas introduced by the translators carry the connotations you think they do -- a debate that you've already lost, as far as I'm concerned (and we now know that I'm not alone, for Rjevan has weighed in to agree with me).


It's not important to me.

This can't be true, according to my experience. I've seen you mention that one comma several times before the birth of this thread (and no, I don't bookmark and tag every page I visit just in case a moment like this comes up, so I can't prove it, but others will have seen this comma business before as well).


[i]You are the one who keeps banging on about it.

This is the first of the "Rosa threads" (as I'll dub these endless dialectics debates of yours) that I've chimed in on, so any banging I've done has been on this one, and it pales in comparison to your own.

And just for the record, I'm not one of your "mystics." I couldn't care less about Hegel, or dialectical materialism per se, or its "Diamat" codification (which I find ridiculous), or any such stuff. I'm only concerned by your rejection of the contradiction within the commodity, since it is so central to Marx's critique. I jumped into the fray only because your rejection of that contradiction seems to hang at least partly on what is in my opinion a poor reading of a single sentence, which evidently hangs on a single comma.

[Rosa Lichtenstein]

Smarty Pants:


No I didn't ignore it, I answered it.

Apologies, it was such a small post, I missed it:


None of those are lies Rosa, as is the case with my use of the term "rupture," you regard anything that is not verbatim as a lie.

Readers can go back and check through the posts, and they will find Rosa saying just what I said she said, but in different words. BFD

They are all lies. You deliberately misrepresented my views, in spite of being told many times you have got them wrong -- compounded by the fact that you repeatedly refused to answer the question "Where did I say that?"

In which case, you won't mind if I do this to you, will you?


And I have no need to restrict my study of Marx to your standard of ignorance. You yourself don't produce what Marx originally wrote for publication, but what the translators think best fits the practices of English grammar. So your argument is now... find something published by translators written by Marx. That's easy, see below.

1. Translated, this reads: "Oh dear, I can't find a single passage that Marx published, contemporaneous with or subsequent to Das Kapital, which supports my attempt to re-mystify his work!"

2. As far as my alleged 'ignorance' is concerned, may I remind you (for the umpteenth time) that I had to tell you that Marx included the 'mutual exclusion of opposites' in his alleged use of 'contradiction' -- so you are the ignorant one here.


So provide us with some proof of the original Hegelian mystification in Marx's work, say the Grundrisse, or any of the economic manuscripts of 1857-1864 written at the same time as Capital, which he subsequently corrects, demystifies.

Here let me help you:

Your tasks, should you choose to accept them-
1) identify and explain the mystification of the relations of capital Marx expresses in the following passages and
2) identify where and how he demystifies this analysis in a subsequent work:

I'll be happy to do so just as you find a single passage that Marx published, contemporaneous with or subsequent to Das Kapital, which supports your attempt to re-mystify his work.

So, as I mentioned earlier, you'd be far better occupied ransacking the above (published) work to see if there is a shred of evidence that supports your odd ideas, rather than accusing me of whatever comes into your over-heated brain from moment to moment.


Should be easy for someone as knowledgeable of the complete body of Marx's work, and of volume 1 of Capital as you claim to be.

As indeed, should your more pressing homework.

Now, toddle off, and make your self useful -- for a change.:)

[Rosa Lichtenstein]

Anti-Cap:


In other words, 'I've never even suggested that I doubt your German.'

This is either: (1) an implicit admission that you indeed have accepted his [grasp of] German; (2) your rather disingenuous way of saying, in other words, 'I doubt your German, but I haven't voiced that doubt.'; (3) ???

I think it's clear that you've accepted his grasp of German. I don't think you'd stoop to the level of (2), and I can't think of any other possibilities; but do please fill in (3) if I've missed one.

Not so, I chose my words carefully. There is in fact a third option: that I am totally indifferent about his alleged grasp of German.


Rjevan clearly meant that it would be impossible in the German, according to its grammar rules.

They were put in the English because the translators decided that it was proper to put them in (a decision that has no bearing on Marx). It's either that or, as you suggest, they're in the MSS, which, if Rjevan is right, means that Marx's grammar was shit. We can speculate as to whether he would have approved of the commas in the English, but that would be pointless. Any liberties taken by the translators that might possibly alter the meaning of the text should be rejected, and a direct translation should be preferred. (At any rate, the comma in question doesn't carry the connotations that you think it does.)

That is one theory, but not the only one. You haven't seen the original MSS, whereas the translators have. The punctuation might be in those MSS. It might have been acceptable 150 years ago to punctuate this way. Can you definitively rule that out? I think not. Is our resident 'expert', Rjevan, an expert on 19th century German punctuation? I suspect not. Are the translators? Probably, or they'd not have been appointed.


And as I've said before, this isn't about picking a fight with you; it's about convincing you to drop the comma business altogether, [if] they're not Marx's commas.

So you say, but your actions suggest otherwise.


Since we can't access the MSS, it seems reasonable to me to accept the available German as authoritative, and to assume that Marx's grammar was up-to-snuff. It then becomes a matter of debating whether the commas introduced by the translators carry the connotations you think they do -- a debate that you've already lost, as far as I'm concerned (and we now know that I'm not alone, for Rjevan has weighed in to agree with me).

Except, the English translators did have access to the original MSS and they inserted these commas.

Pick a fight with them, not me.


It then becomes a matter of debating whether the commas introduced by the translators carry the connotations you think they do -- a debate that you've already lost, as far as I'm concerned (and we now know that I'm not alone, for Rjevan has weighed in to agree with me).

I'm sorry, did I miss a meeting? Where has this been 'lost'?


This can't be true, according to my experience. I've seen you mention that one comma several times before the birth of this thread (and no, I don't bookmark and tag every page I visit just in case a moment like this comes up, so I can't prove it, but others will have seen this comma business before as well).

In fact, I only mentioned this when others quote this passage without the comma in. In such circumstances, I'd be an idiot not to mention this minor point.


This is the first of the "Rosa threads" (as I'll dub these endless dialectics debates of yours) that I've chimed in on, so any banging I've done has been on this one, and it pales in comparison to your own.

Indeed, and you have been banging on about it in this thread, not me.

I am just replying to you. A soon as you (and others, if they join in) drop this, I will.


And just for the record, I'm not one of your "mystics." I couldn't care less about Hegel, or dialectical materialism per se, or its "Diamat" codification (which I find ridiculous), or any such stuff. I'm only concerned by your rejection of the contradiction within the commodity, since it is so central to Marx's critique. I jumped into the fray only because your rejection of that contradiction seems to hang at least partly on what is in my opinion a poor reading of a single sentence, which evidently hangs on a single comma.

Where did I say you were?


I jumped into the fray only because your rejection of that contradiction seems to hang at least partly on what is in my opinion a poor reading of a single sentence, which evidently hangs on a single comma

Not so, I have given you my main reasons, and the 'comma issue' is relatively minor.

[S.Artesian]

The published work that refutes Rosa's claims is volume 1 of Capital itself, and in particular the chapter on value.

I am more than willing to engage Rosa in a discussion on the specifics of this chapter, on the facets of value. I will take the "dialectic" side if she agrees to explain the relations of value, use and exchange, relative and equivalent forms, and labor, abstract and concrete, free of all dialectic, stripped of all opposition and antagonism and identity and inseparability.

[Rosa Lichtenstein]

Smarty Pants:


The published work that refutes Rosa's claims is volume 1 of Capital itself, and in particular the chapter on value.

Nice try, but we already know from the summary of 'the dialectic method' Marx endorsed in the Afterword to the Second Edition that he had waved 'goodbye' to the sort of mystical gobbledygook that you dote upon. This is the only summary that Marx endorsed and published in his entire life -- and yet it conyains not one atom of Hegel (upside down or 'the right way up').

Of course, if you have access to a summary of 'the dialectic method' that Marx published that is contemporaneous with or subsequent to Das Kapital, which contains the usual Hegelian gobbledygook, please share it with us.

Unlike you, I have a published source (and, annoyingly for you, it's in Das Kapital) that supports the materialist interpretation of that book.


I am more than willing to engage Rosa in a discussion on the specifics of this chapter, on the facets of value. I will take the "dialectic" side if she agrees to explain the relations of value, use and exchange, relative and equivalent forms, and labor, abstract and concrete, free of all dialectic, stripped of all opposition and antagonism and identity and inseparability.

And what makes you think I want to 'engage' with a lying mystic like you?

So, the search goes on for a single passage that Marx published, contemporaneous with or subsequent to Das Kapital, which supports your attempt to re-mystify his work.

Oh wait -- there isn't one!

[S.Artesian]

Weak, Rosa. You don't have anything except your particular distortion of what Marx wrote. You have absolutely nothing of substance. Nothing, because you cannot use it to explain any aspect of Marx's work, published or unpublished.

Here's the point. Marx said he coquetted with forms of expression peculiar to Hegel, not the content of the dialectic contained in the commodity itself. You are incapable of making such distinctions, lumping one with the other. So what you need to do Rosa, besides telling other people what they should be doing, is explain value, explain the connections of use-value and exchange-value, of the relative and equivalent forms, of particular concrete labor and general abstract labor, and the conflicts to those connections "free" of all "dialectical mystification."

You would need to redo the chapter on value in your anti-dialectical image.

But we know you won't do that, you can't do that. And if you cannot do that, it means that the dialectic as exposed by Marx in his analysis of value, which forms the basis for all his further investigations of capital, stands as Marx intended it to stand.

I am confident I can show how the dialectic that Marx finds and exposes in the commodity is the only way to make sense of Marx's analysis in this chapter on value.

In your refusal to engage in this effort, you have shown that your claim to understanding the afterword to the 2nd edition of volume 1 is as empty as everything else you pretend to know about Marx's work.

Like I've said before, you are totally irrelevant. You have again confirmed that.

[Rosa Lichtenstein]

Smarty Pants:


Weak, Rosa. You don't have anything except your particular distortion of what Marx wrote. You have absolutely nothing of substance. Nothing, because you cannot use it to explain any aspect of Marx's work, published or unpublished.

It can't be a 'distortion' if it in fact contains no Hegel at all, exactly as I allege. Indeed, you are only saying this since you haven't got a summary, written/published by Marx, of 'the dialectic method' that contains the mystical guff we have all come to know and loathe.


Here's the point. Marx said he coquetted with forms of expression peculiar to Hegel, not the content of the dialectic contained in the commodity itself. You are incapable of making such distinctions, lumping one with the other. So what you need to do Rosa, besides telling other people what they should be doing, is explain value, explain the connections of use-value and exchange-value, of the relative and equivalent forms, of particular concrete labor and general abstract labor, and the conflicts to those connections "free" of all "dialectical mystification."

And why would I want to make such 'dictinctions'? And where do I 'lump ' things together? I see we can add this to the ever-lengthening list of your lies.


You would need to redo the chapter on value in your anti-dialectical image.

But we know you won't do that, you can't do that. And if you cannot do that, it means that the dialectic as exposed by Marx in his analysis of value, which forms the basis for all his further investigations of capital, stands as Marx intended it to stand.

No need to, Marx has already done it for us (except his notion of 'the dialectic' is different from yours -- as we know from that summary).


I am confident I can show how the dialectic that Marx finds and exposes in the commodity is the only way to make sense of Marx's analysis in this chapter on value.

In your refusal to engage in this effort, you have shown that your claim to understanding the afterword to the 2nd edition of volume 1 is as empty as everything else you pretend to know about Marx's work.

Like I've said before, you are totally irrelevant. You have again confirmed that.

If I were 'irrelevant', you'd leave me alone. The fact that you are stalking me suggests not even you believe that.

Anyway, how's that search coming along?

That bad eh?

Tough, but you will waste your time floogging a herd of dead horses here instead of trying to find a single passage that Marx published, contemporaneous with or subsequent to Das Kapital, which supports your attempt to re-mystify his work.

Oh, I forgot -- there isn't one...

[S.Artesian]

Stalking you? You are a very sick person, Rosa. Very ill. Take advantage of the NHS while it's still there and get some help.

[anticap]

So you say, but your actions suggest otherwise.

Rosa, if you really think that I'm trying to pick a fight with you, then I'll bow out right now, since nothing could be further from the truth. In each of my posts, I've consciously done my best not to give that impression. I respect you a great deal, I just disagree with you on this matter of the comma(s).

Ultimately, though, the disagreement is irrelevant, because you simply cannot be correct, no matter what your analysis of the text appears to you to reveal. If you were correct about there being no contradiction within the commodity, then Marx's entire critique would fall; but we know that it holds, and so its kernel must hold: there is a contradiction within the commodity, because there must be one (and calling it an "incongruity" gets you nowhere, as we've discusssed).

I'll leave it there, and express my disappointment in myself for my failure to come across as non-combative.

[Rosa Lichtenstein]

Smarty Pamts:


Stalking you?

No thanks, I've already got one. But thanks for the thought.


You are a very sick person, Rosa. Very ill.

So, why did you offer to stalk me?


Take advantage of the NHS while it's still there and get some help.

Ok, but they will need your address so they can deliver it to you.

[Rosa Lichtenstein]

AntiCap:


Rosa, if you really think that I'm trying to pick a fight with you, then I'll bow out right now, since nothing could be further from the truth. In each of my posts, I've consciously done my best not to give that impression. I respect you a great deal, I just disagree with you on this matter of the comma(s).

Don't take it seriously; it's a joke for goodness sake!


Ultimately, though, the disagreement is irrelevant, because you simply cannot be correct, no matter what your analysis of the text appears to you to reveal. If you were correct about there being no contradiction within the commodity, then Marx's entire critique would fall; but we know that it holds, and so its kernel must hold: there is a contradiction within the commodity, because there must be one (and calling it an "incongruity" gets you nowhere, as we've discusssed).

I'll leave it there, and express my disappointment in myself for my failure to come across as non-combative.

There can't be a contradiction within a commodity since it's not a proposition.

Unless, of course, you are using this word in a new, and as-yet-unexplained sense.


and calling it an "incongruity" gets you nowhere, as we've discusssed

Well, I must have missed that since, in that discussion, you kept trying to tell me that a contradiction is a logical incongruity, when there is no such thing.