Marx's "Dialectic" Analysis of Capitalism and the Scientific Method

[Thirsty Crow]

I repeat, the proof of Marx's use of dialectic, containing the elements of determination, opposition, contradiction, negation, identity is in the chapter on value.

I'll have to admit, I am no expert in Marx, I haven't studied "Capital" in depth, so my concern here is the following: user ZeroNowhere directed me to a work by Lucio Colleti, "Marxism and Hegel", in order that the relationship between Marx and Hegel may become clearer to me. However, I've stumbled on a most recent Preface to the Yugoslav edition in which the author basically concurs with comrade S.Artesian (the translation is mine):

Then I revisited the pages of "Capital" which deal with the analysis of the commodity form and money, as well as pages of "Theory of Surplus Value" dealing with crisis theory. I have realized that Marx has constructed the "real opposition"** between capital and labour as a dialectic "contradiction". In other words, I have understood...that Marx has remained, in essence, a Hegelian.

** the concept of real opposition is derive from Immanuel Kant, more precisely, from "An Attempt to Introduce the Concept of Negative Magnitudes into Philosophy".

My question is the following:

1) given that Colletti rejects Marx on this basis (I'm sceptical, still), what becomes of he VALIDITY of Marx's analysis? Is it true to the REAL MATERIAL POCESS?

2) considering the alleged lack of scientific method, does this method now, in 2010, function as the sole means of inquiry which holds? In other words, what is the relationship between the scientific method and the possibility of social transformation? Does the latter necessitate the former or not?

As you can imagine, my head is teeming with questions. This is just the tip of the iceberg.

P.S. Rosa, it seems to me that you're struggling to rescue Marx for the scientific method. And failing to do that.

[Hit The North]

What is this "scientific method" which you write about?

[ZeroNowhere]

Colletti eventually went over to Berlusconi, although his stated reasons for doing so are more or less incoherent when taken in the light of his previous views. I don't think that it has any impact on the validity of 'Marxism and Hegel', 'From Rousseau to Lenin', and the introduction to Marx's Early Works, during which he had not rejected Marx.

This post (http://libcom.org/forums/thought/was-marx-hegelian-19022008#comment-265390) from Libcom does give an interesting possible explanation for Colletti's shift: "I think Colletti's (in)famous NLR article is actually terrible. It caused me a good deal of stress for a while, and I guess was good for me to read in the sense that it made me actually take the time to understand formal logic, but it is clear that Colletti doesn't know the first thing about logic. (Unless he had already rejected Marx for other reasons and just decided to justify it with ridiculous rejections, which is possible given that he at least claimed to be familiar with Tarski in that essay. Perhaps he had just skim-read Tarski.)"

Regarding the scientific method, the law of value would be falsified if rising productivity caused prices to rise, so it's not unscientific on that count. Otherwise, "It meets the main requirements for a scientific theory: on the formal side, it proposes a set of principles for the explanation of observable realities and the prediction of definite trends; it is falsifiable, though it is in fact quite well confirmed." The essay whence that came goes into more detail on the matter, and may be found here (http://libcom.org/library/social-knowledge-essay-limits-social-science-paul-mattick-jr).

[Rosa Lichtenstein]

Menocchio:


P.S. Rosa, it seems to me that you're struggling to rescue Marx for the scientific method. And failing to do that.

Where do I try to do this?

And, I can only echo BTB's words, and underline them: since you nowhere tell us what this mythical 'scientific method' is.

[Thirsty Crow]

Menocchio:



Where do I try to do this?

And, I can only echo BTB's words, and underline them: since you nowhere tell us what this mythical 'scientific method' is.
I apologize. Reading the before mentioned Preface had quite an impression on me, but it was and is just that: a mixed, chaotic bundle of impressions.
I'll get back to the question of the scientific method the following week.

[S.Artesian]

Colletti eventually went over to Berlusconi, although his stated reasons for doing so are more or less incoherent when taken in the light of his previous views. I don't think that it has any impact on the validity of 'Marxism and Hegel', 'From Rousseau to Lenin', and the introduction to Marx's Early Works, during which he had not rejected Marx.

This post (http://libcom.org/forums/thought/was-marx-hegelian-19022008#comment-265390) from Libcom does give an interesting possible explanation for Colletti's shift: "I think Colletti's (in)famous NLR article is actually terrible. It caused me a good deal of stress for a while, and I guess was good for me to read in the sense that it made me actually take the time to understand formal logic, but it is clear that Colletti doesn't know the first thing about logic. (Unless he had already rejected Marx for other reasons and just decided to justify it with ridiculous rejections, which is possible given that he at least claimed to be familiar with Tarski in that essay. Perhaps he had just skim-read Tarski.)"

Regarding the scientific method, the law of value would be falsified if rising productivity caused prices to rise, so it's not unscientific on that count. Otherwise, "It meets the main requirements for a scientific theory: on the formal side, it proposes a set of principles for the explanation of observable realities and the prediction of definite trends; it is falsifiable, though it is in fact quite well confirmed." The essay whence that came goes into more detail on the matter, and may be found here (http://libcom.org/library/social-knowledge-essay-limits-social-science-paul-mattick-jr).


Couple of things-- Marx is not a Hegelian. What Marx grasps is that Hegel presents an estranged account of the driving force of human history, of "becoming," of human "making themselves at home in the world." He presents an estranged account, because that history is estranged, that motor force is alienated-- the motor force being, of course, the social organization of labor, and the alienation being the expropriation of the labor process by property, its conversion, organization, identification, determination of, in, into, by the valorisation process, value.

Secondly, the law of value will not be contradicted, or proven, unscientific if improved productivity caused prices to rise. Such things occur all the time. Improved productivity, and processing power in semiconductor fabrication produces boons in that sector that cause prices to rise, only to collapse as overproduction overtakes reproduction. Oil prices rose in 1999 after almost a decade of sustained improvements in productivity brought the price below $10/barrel in 1998.


Prices are only the monetary, phenomenal expression of value, and their movements at any particular point need not, and in most cases cannot correspond to individual values. Price is a distributive mechanism, for allocating the total socially available surplus value, profit, according to the socially necessary labor time.

Only if the law of value could not account for the totality of movements, the complete cycle and circuit of all prices, the "bottom line" so to speak regarding this distribution of surplus value and profit derived from these movements of price would we question its validity.

[Rosa Lichtenstein]

^^^Except, we now know that Marx was merely 'coquetting' with this Hegelian gobbledygook.:)

[S.Artesian]

^^^Except, we now know that Marx was merely 'coquetting' with this Hegelian gobbledygook.:)

No, we don't know that. You know that, like a psychotic knows he or she is Napoleon, like a Jim Joneser knows that Kool-Aid is a fun drink.

We know from detailed reading of all of Marx's works, his manuscripts, his economic studies, his correspondence, that he does recognize the relationship of labor to the conditions of labor as a composed contradiction; the reproduction of wage-labor and capital as the reproduction of opposition and identity where each exists only in the organization of the other. Marx states, and demonstrates this in numerous iterations throughout his manuscripts.

We know Marx is no Hegelian. He demonstrates that. We know he appropriates dialectic-- explanation, amplification, expansion as, through, by opposition and contradiction-- in his analysis of capitalism and the prospects for its overthrow. He demonstrates it.

And of course, good job avoiding any comment on the validity of the law of value-- once again you escape any engagement with the substance of Marx's analysis.


PS Why are you stalking me?

[Rosa Lichtenstein]

Smarty Pants (still proving I'm an 'irrelevance' by replying to me):


No, we don't know that.

Indeed we do.

Now, this might come as a surprise to you, but Marx added a summary of 'the dialectic method' to the Postface to the second edition of Das Kapital, which contained not one atom 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". So, Marx's "method" has had Hegel completely excised --, except for the odd phrase or two here and there with which he merely "coquetted".

I'm sorry if I've failed to point this out to you before.

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

Oh wait -- you can't...

[S.Artesian]

My apologies to the others on this thread for replying to Rosa, thus giving our idiot lady of the anti-dialectic the opportunity to derail another discussion of the substance of Marx's analysis of capitalism and the immanent prospects for its overthrow.

Since the idiot lady's comments have nothing to do with with Marx's dialectical analysis of capitalism, nor the scientific validity of the law of value, it shouldn't be too hard to ignore them.

[Rosa Lichtenstein]

Smarty Pants (still intent on proving I'm not an 'irrelevance'):


My apologies to the others on this thread for replying to Rosa, thus giving our idiot lady of the anti-dialectic the opportunity to derail another discussion of the substance of Marx's analysis of capitalism and the immanent prospects for its overthrow.

In fact, it is you who derailed this thread with your mystical version of 'the dialectic'.


Since the idiot lady's comments have nothing to do with with Marx's dialectical analysis of capitalism, nor the scientific validity of the law of value, it shouldn't be too hard to ignore them

I'm sure the good people here will notice that all you have to offer is yet more abuse, mingled in with the same old discredited mysticism.:lol:

[Lyev]

This seminar from Cyril Smith is quite interesting. Maybe the more experienced or well-read (anti-)dialecticians have come across it before, but, albeit rather briefly, explains the relationship between Marx and Hegel quite succinctly. Something that stuck out for me is that, whilst Rosa often talks about the "mystical" nature of Hegelian dialectics, yet, at least from this article, it would seem Marx actually focused a lot on Hegel's conception of the state as regards application of the dialectic - something very concrete and materialist - which lead Marx onto, and helped him with, his critique of political economy. Anyway, here it is (a link is in the title):
Marx's Critique of Hegel (http://ethicalpolitics.org/seminars/cyril.htm)
paper by Cyril Smith for Hegel seminar 18th June 1999

As Hegel was the first to know, ‘every philosophy ... belongs to its own time and is caught in that time’s restriction’. But that raises a question: how can a philosophical outlook stay alive after its ‘time’ has passed? The answer to this question takes us beyond philosophical argumentation to a deeper penetration of ‘its own time’ and ours. That is why the key to what is alive in Hegel’s thought lies in Marx’s critique of it.

First, let’s say what Marx meant by ‘critique’. It was closely bound up with Hegel’s idea of ‘sublation’ [aufheben]: to negate, and thereby to preserve the inner truth of something. It is similar to Marx’s attitude to religion: it was not a matter of rejecting religious sentiment because it was ‘untrue’, without foundation, and then devising a new religious form. Rather, we have to uncover those aspects of a way of life which gave rise to religion — and then revolutionise those aspects. Religion was ‘the heart of a heartless world’, so the issue was to establish a world with heart. Instead of an illusory solution, we must, in practice, find a real one.

Hegel’s philosophical work was an attempt to summarise the essence of the entire history of philosophy, and for him that meant an entire history. So Marx’s critique of Hegel was a critique of philosophical science as such. He concluded that philosophy cannot answer the questions that philosophy has brought to the surface. In the end, those questions are not philosophical but practical. When Marx claimed that his work was scientific [wissenschaftlich], this did not mean that he was elaborating a set of doctrines, of ‘theories’, but that, by tracing the contradictions of existing science to their roots in the inhuman way in which humans lived, he could bring to light the necessity to revolutionise that way of life, to move from contemplation to ‘practical-critical’, revolutionary solutions.

This has little to do with the old story about Hegel the idealist and Marx the materialist, about Marx’s transition from ‘idealism’ and ‘democracy’ to ‘materialism’ and communism, or about Marx dropping Hegel’s conservative system, to preserve his revolutionary method. If you accept the collection of prejudices that used to be called ‘Marxism’, you are prevented from even beginning to answer our initial question. (And that’s a small part of your troubles.)

Throughout his life, Marx continually returned to Hegel, each time deepening both his differences and his agreement. Marx began his critique of Hegel with the history of Greek philosophy, in his Doctoral Thesis. He went on to a critical examination of Hegel’s summary of the history of political philosophy, the Philosophy of Right. After showing that Hegel’s conception of the modern state was based upon bourgeois economic relations, Marx could identify Hegel’s standpoint with that of political economy. Now he could begin his critique of the achievements of bourgeois economic thought, as the highest expression of the inhumanity of bourgeois society. At each stage of this work, Marx used his study of Hegel to penetrate to the essential connection between the philosophical attitude to the world and the oppressive, exploitative, inhuman nature of alienated social forms.

Marx’s Doctoral Thesis, which he worked on between 1839 and 1841, was on ‘The Difference between the Democritean and Epicurean Philosophies of Nature’. His way of dealing with these two Greek atomists contradicted the opinions of Hegel — and almost everybody else — in that it emphasised the originality of Epicurus. Marx declares that his aim is to find the source of human self-consciousness and ideas in material reality. The other is his contention that philosophy must ‘turn outwards to the world’. Finding that existence does not measure up to essence, it must become practical, and ‘turn its will against the world of appearance’. (I: 85.) Moreover, ‘the world confronting a philosophy total in itself, is ... a world torn apart’. (I: 491) This gives the direction of Marx’s critique of religion. In opposition to Kant, Marx contends that religious belief is not just an illusion.

All gods, the pagan as well as the Christian ones, have possessed a real existence. Did not the ancient Moloch reign? Was not the Delphic Apollo a real power in the life of the Greeks? (I: 104)

In 1843, Marx began work on a line-by-line analysis of those sections of the Philosophy of Right dealing with the State. This is the summit of Hegel’s last work, in which he sought to show how the modern state power, rationally understood, reconciled the contradictions of ‘civil society’, that is, bourgeois society. Where civil society is ‘the battlefield of private interest’, philosophy showed how the state expressed the unity of a nation’s life. It was ‘the actuality of concrete freedom’. Marx’s critique of Hegel’s philosophy of the state allowed him to see that both civil society and the state were alien to a truly human life, which at that time he called ‘true democracy’.

Soon after he abandoned his work on the state, Marx made three moves forward, which changed his life: he saw the revolutionary importance of the proletariat; he discovered that what he meant by ‘true democracy’ was related to what others were calling ‘communism’; and he realised that he had to make a critical study of political economy. Hegel saw ‘spirit’ advancing like this: at each stage of its unfolding, spirit — the totality of human life and activity — finds itself in contradiction with what it has itself produced, which now confronts it as something alien. Philosophy reflects on this alienation, and overcomes it through this reflection, and this, argued Hegel, was how spirit created itself. The relation of the state to civil society was a prime example of this movement. In 1844, Marx’s critique of both philosophy and political economy reached the stage where he could find in Hegel’s categories an expression of something else: humanity certainly created itself — this was Hegel’s great discovery — but it was not the action of spirit which was fundamental, nor the work of philosophy, but material labour.

Thus Marx’s critique of Hegel had moved from the history of ancient philosophy, to the conception of the state. Then it emerged that ‘political forms originate in civil society and that the anatomy of civil society was to be found in political economy’. It was the critique of political economy which Marx concentrated upon for the rest of his life, but this can be misunderstood. Marx was not engaged in a ‘critique of capitalism’, as we often hear. That would be to fall into the utopian trap. His task was to study the highest theoretical expression of bourgeois relations, and show how these theories conceal the way that these relations deny what is essentially human. The relationships of the exchange of private property, presented by the Enlightenment as the basis for liberty, equality and fraternity, are actually ‘the opposite of the social relation’. Money and capital join people together, but only by separating them. Because society is fragmented, bourgeois social relations hold power over the individuals they relate. People treat each other — and themselves — as things, while capital becomes the real subject governing their lives.

Hegel had striven to express the way that freedom developed only at the level of the whole of society, what he called ‘Spirit’. Marx, who had gone beyond the traditional aims of philosophy, sought to uncover the possibility of the social individual, whose free development was the condition, without which ‘the free development of all’ could not come about.The third to last paragraph is particularly interesting, where Smith refers to Hegel's idea of the "Spirit". I suppose this links into Hegel's thoughts on humankind's self-estrangement from God; humankind has strayed from the righteous path, but Jesus provides a way back onto it, and so our struggle lies in reintegrating ourselves with God, or this "Spirit". I think that's basically it (I am not sure though, which I was I want to discuss this here, to clarify my ideas) and you can see quite clearly how Marx extracted the "rational kernel" from this, applying to his own sociological thoughts on labour and alienation. I think, loosely, if we substitute God, or the "Spirit" here, with the production process, where the wage-labourer is alienated from production - the ultimate embodiment of which being private property - and so the proletarian is engaged in a life-long struggle to be united back into the production process, back into democratic participation within the economic sphere, through seizing the means of production. Is this right?

[Rosa Lichtenstein]

^^^Why are we bothering with this sub-logical idiot, Hegel?

Here is a summary (taken from my site) of Hegel's basic logical errors -- many of which he derived from the logical screw ups of earlier mystics:


Dialectical 'Logic' derives from Hegel's (deliberate) misunderstanding of Aristotle, and from a linguistic dodge invented in the Middle Ages.

First of all, Hegel thought that certain sentences contained an in-built contradiction.

If we use Lenin's example:

J1: John is a man.

we can see where this idea came from, and thus where it goes astray. [Hegel in fact used the sentence, "The rose is red".]

First of all, Hegel accepted a theory invented by Medieval Roman Catholic theologians (which is now called the Identity Theory of Predication (http://www.philosophyprofessor.com/philosophies/identity-theory-of-predication.php)) that re-interprets propositions like J1 in the following way:

J2: John is identical with Manhood.

The former "is" of predication (http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/predication) was replaced by an "is" of identity.

[Predication involves saying something about someone or some thing. So, in J1, Lenin was saying something about John. "John" is the subject, and "is a man" is the predicate. When this "is" is turned into one of identity, this becomes the monstrosity, "John is identical with man." This why J2 is often used, even though it, too, is a monstrosity.]

The argument then went as follows: since John cannot be identical with a general term (or, rather, with what it represents, a universal (http://www.iep.utm.edu/universa/)), we must conclude the following:

J3: John is not identical with Manhood.

But then again, if John is a man, he must be identical with (or at least he must share in) what other men are, so we must now conclude:

J4: John is not not identical with Manhood.

Or, more simply:

J5: John is not a non-man.

It's hard to believe, but out of this was born the Negation of the Negation.

Hegel thought this showed that motion was built into our concepts, as thought passes from one pole to another, and that this indicated that it has dialectics built into it.

It also allowed him to cast doubt upon the validity of the 'Law of Identity' [LOI] -- a 'Law', incidentally, that cannot be found in Aristotle's work, but which was invented by Medieval Roman Catholic theologians, once more.

Hegel thought this showed that it was now possible to state this 'Law' negatively.

However, in order to proceed, Hegel not only employed a barrage of impenetrably obscure jargon, he relied on some hopelessly sloppy syntax (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Syntax). He plainly thought he could ignore the logical/grammatical distinctions that exist between the various terms he used, or, at least, between the roles they occupy in language -- i.e., between naming, saying, describing and predicating. This 'enabled' him to pull-off several neat verbal tricks --, and from the ensuing confusion, 'the dialectic' emerged.

For instance, Hegel thought that the LOI could be stated negatively, and that this implied the so-called Law of Non-contradiction [LOC].


When the principles of Essence are taken as essential principles of thought they become predicates of a presupposed subject, which, because they are essential, is "everything". The propositions thus arising have been stated as universal Laws of Thought. Thus the first of them, the maxim of Identity, reads: Everything is identical with itself, A = A: and negatively, A cannot at the same time be A and Not-A. This maxim, instead of being a true law of thought, is nothing but the law of abstract understanding. The propositional form itself contradicts it: for a proposition always promises a distinction between subject and predicate; while the present one does not fulfil what its form requires. But the Law is particularly set aside by the following so-called Laws of Thought, which make laws out of its opposite. It is asserted that the maxim of Identity, though it cannot be proved, regulates the procedure of every consciousness, and that experience shows it to be accepted as soon as its terms are apprehended. To this alleged experience of the logic books may be opposed the universal experience that no mind thinks or forms conceptions or speaks in accordance with this law, and that no existence of any kind whatever conforms to it. [Hegel, Shorter Logic, quoted from here (http://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/hegel/works/sl/slessenc.htm).]

So, from A =A he thought he could obtain "A cannot at the same time be A and not-A", which is supposed to be the LOC. But, the LOI concerns the conditions under which an object is identical with itself, or with something else; it's not about the alleged identity of propositions, nor of clauses with propositions.



In that case, the alleged negative version of the LOI cannot have anything to do with the connection between a proposition and its contradictory. The LOC, on the other hand, is about propositions (or clauses), not objects. Only by confusing objects (or the names of objects) with propositions (and clauses) -- that is, by confusing objects and their names with what we say about them, truly or falsely -- was Hegel able to concoct the 'dialectic'.

[The full details here are rather complex, so I have omitted them. However, readers can find out what these are here (http://anti-dialectics.co.uk/page%2003_01.htm) and here (http://anti-dialectics.co.uk/page%2008_03.htm).]

Furthermore, propositions are not objects; if they were they could not be used to say anything. Sure, we use signs to express propositions, but these signs become symbols (i.e., they signify things for us, and convey meaning). We achieve this by the way we employ such signs according to the grammatical complexity our ancestors built into language.

To see this, just look at any object or collection of objects and ask yourself what it/they say to you. You might be tempted to reply that it/they say this or that, but in order to report what it/they allegedly say, you will be forced to articulate whatever that is in a proposition. You could not do this by merely reproducing the original objects, or just by naming them. This is not surprising, since objects have no social history, intellect or language, whereas we do, and have.

Unfortunately, Engels and Lenin swallowed this spurious Hegelian line of reasoning hook, line and sinker; and that is because they both knew no logic, but had a wildly inflated view of Hegel and his expertise in this area. [This is not to disparage these two great revolutionaries; many others, who should know better, have similarly been duped.]

However, because of this misplaced respect for Hegel, Marxists have been saddled with his loopy logic ever since (upside down, or 'the right way up').

Here is Lenin, for example:


To begin with what is the simplest, most ordinary, common, etc., [sic] with any proposition...: [like] John is a man…. Here we already have dialectics (as Hegel's genius recognized): the individual is the universal…. Consequently, the opposites (the individual is opposed to the universal) are identical: the individual exists only in the connection that leads to the universal. The universal exists only in the individual and through the individual. Every individual is (in one way or another) a universal. Every universal is (a fragment, or an aspect, or the essence of) an individual. Every universal only approximately embraces all the individual objects. Every individual enters incompletely into the universal, etc., etc. Every individual is connected by thousands of transitions with other kinds of individuals (things, phenomena, processes), etc. Here already we have the elements, the germs of the concept of necessity, of objective connection in nature, etc. Here already we have the contingent and the necessary, the phenomenon and the essence; for when we say John is a man…we disregard a number of attributes as contingent; we separate the essence from the appearance, and counterpose the one to the other….

Thus in any proposition we can (and must) disclose as a "nucleus" ("cell") the germs of all the elements of dialectics, and thereby show that dialectics is a property of all human knowledge in general. [Lenin (1961) (http://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/cw/volume38.htm), i.e., [I]Philosophical Notebooks, pp.359-60.]

In this passage, Lenin felt he could 'derive' fundamental truths about reality, not from a scientific investigation of the world, but from examining a few words seen through Hegel's distorting lens!

[And yet, dialecticians still tell us with a straight face that their theory has not been imposed on nature! (http://anti-dialectics.co.uk/page%2002.htm)]

However, J1 is a descriptive sentence, so it cannot be treated in the way Hegel imagined. In fact, Aristotle would have approached it differently. In order to explain its structure, he would have said:

A1: Manhood applies to John.

[J1: John is a man.]

In other words, in J1 the predicate is used to describe John; it is not expressing an identity.

Indeed, it makes no sense to suppose with Hegel that John (or his name) could be identical with a general term (any more than it would make sense to suppose that you, for example, are identical with a conjunction, a preposition, or an adverb --, or even with what any of these allegedly 'represent').

In which case, this Hegelian use of Medieval, Roman Catholic 'logic' is not simply misguided, it's bizarre!

It surely takes a special sort of 'genius' (which we are assured by Lenin that Hegel possessed) to suppose that an object like John could be identical with a predicate, or with the abstraction which it designated!

Now, if we return to the original sentence, translated this time into Hegel-speak, we can see where the argument goes further astray:

J2: John is identical with Manhood.

It is now impossible to explain what the extra "is" here means (highlighted in bold), which has to be used to make the alleged identity between John and Manhood (or whatever) plain.

In fact, if all such uses of "is" expressed disguised identities (as we are assured they must), J2 would now have to become:

J2a: John is identical with identical with Manhood.

as the bold "is" is replaced with what it is supposed to mean, i.e., "is identical with", in italics.

If we now go further and replace the green "is" above with what it is supposed to mean -- "is identical with", now in blue --, J2a would in turn become:

J2b: John is identical with identical with identical with Manhood.

And so on:

J2b: John is identical with identical with identical with identical with Manhood.

[These untoward moves can only be halted by those who do not think "is" always expresses an identity; but dialecticians gave up the right to lodge that appeal the moment they accepted the Identity Theory of Predication!]

Fortunately, Aristotle's approach short-circuits all this; there is no "is" at all in A1:

A1: Manhood applies to John.

In contrast to this, Hegel's 'analysis' cannot avoid this verbal explosion; indeed, it invites it!.

Anyone who thinks this is nit-picking need only reflect on the fact that Hegel, or anyone who agrees with him, cannot explain his theory without using J2:

J2: John is identical with Manhood.

But, Hegel's theory stalls at this point, for this extra "is" cannot be one of identity (for the above reasons), and if it isn't, then the theory that tells us that "is" is always one of identity (in such contexts) must be false.

In fact, this Hegelian trick can only be carried out in Indo-European (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indo-European_languages) languages. By-and-large, other language groups do not have this particular grammatical feature. The above moves depend solely on the subject-predicate form (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Predicate_(grammar)) taking the copula (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Copula_(linguistics)) "is" (and its cognates), which is found almost exclusively in the aforementioned language group.

This shows that Hegel's logic is not just bizarre, it's highly parochial. Hence, no general conclusions (or any at all) can follow from it.

To illustrate these bogus moves, consider, for example, J1 again:

J1: John is a man.

Given traditional grammar, this is in effect:

G1: S is P.

[Where, "S" = "Subject", "P" = "Predicate".]

Now, we already have the facility in language to express identity (and legitimately so). For example, here is an uncontroversial identity statement:

G2: Cicero is Tully.

["Tully" was Cicero's other name. Cicero was a right-wing politician who lived in Ancient Rome, about the same time as Julius Caesar.]

So, G2 quite legitimately means:

G2a: Cicero is identical with Tully.

Or:

G3: A = B.

[Where "A" is "Cicero and "B" is "Tully"; using "=" as the identity sign, here.]

G3 expresses an unambiguous "is" of identity. No problem with that. But, it is important to note that the identity expressed here is between two names, or between two named individuals (depending on how it is read). This is typical of the use of the "is" of identity.

Now, just look at the similarity between the following two linguistic forms -- especially between G1 (a predication) and G2 (an identity):

J1: John is a man.

G1: S is P.

G2: Cicero is Tully.

G3: A = B.

Highly influential ancient and medieval logicians noticed this, too, and combined the two distinct forms into one, reading the "is" of predication as an "is" of identity.

But this now turns the predicate "P" into a name, for identities are expressed between names (or between other singular terms). Unfortunately, if "P" is a name, it cannot now be a predicate.

Hegel also adopted this approach to such propositions, confusing the "is" of identity with the "is" of predication. This then 'allowed' him to claim that propositions like J1 were in fact identity statements. Of course, that means this part of Hegel's 'logic' was based solely on what is in effect a grammatical stipulation (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stipulative_definition) (i.e., a dogmatic assertion that these two forms are one and the same, which then creates the sorts of problems we have seen above). Moreover, this is a stipulation that destroys the capacity language has for expressing generality, for that is what predicates do (they allow us to say general things about named individuals, etc.).

Given the 'Hegel treatment', J1 thus becomes J1a and/or J1b:

J1: John is a man.

J1a: John = man/Manhood.

J1b: John is identical with man/Manhood.

[Unfortunately, however, in his old age Aristotle was already moving in this direction -- i.e., he too was beginning to confuse predication with identity, or, rather, he was beginning to confuse predicates with names, and describing with naming.]

Hence, on this view, just as "Tully" names Cicero, "man" 'names' Manhood --, or perhaps, the class/set of all men. The rationale underlying these moves had already been established by earlier mystics and theorists, who were, among other things, concerned about the union or identity between the human soul and 'God'/'Being'. Hence, they played around with the Greek verb "to be" (and thus the "is" of predication) until it was made to say what they wanted it to say.

Of course, this grammatical sleight-of-hand helps account for the emphasis placed by subsequent Idealists on the 'identity' of 'Thought' and 'Being', which later became the main problematic of German Idealism --, a problematic Engels also accepted.

[On that, see his Ludwig Feuerbach and the End of Classical German Philosophy.]

There is in fact no other reason for adopting the Identity Theory of Predication, which also helps explain why it was theologians and mystics who invented it. Of course, none of this occurred in an ideological vacuum; a brief outline of the relevant details can be found here (http://anti-dialectics.co.uk/Rest_of_Summary_of_Twelve.htm).

Anyway, logicians after Aristotle, and especially those working in the Middle Ages, began to conflate these two distinct forms as a matter of course. This fed into, and was fed in return by, an increasingly elaborate and complex metaphysic supposedly about the ultimate structure of reality and the relation of 'Thought' to 'Being' --, all based solely on this ancient linguistic sleight-of-hand!

[Similar moves underpinned Anselm's (http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/anselm/) infamous Ontological Argument (http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/ontological-arguments/) for the existence of 'God'. In this case, too, Anselm thought he could 'derive' profound 'truths' about 'divine reality', valid for all of space and time -- and beyond -- solely from language/thought.]

So, in the end, J1/G1 and G2-type sentences were both modelled along the lines expressed in G4 and G5 -- i.e., as identity statements.

J1: John is a man.

G1: S is P.

G2: Cicero is Tully.

G4: A = B.

G5: John = Manhood.

But, once more, this turns predicates into Proper Names -- i.e., "...is a man" becomes the proper name of Manhood, which it plainly is not. Naming is not the same as describing. We name our children when they are born, we do not describe them. We do not call children "is a man", or "is tall". Not even pop stars do that to their off-spring! We describe the world around us, we do not name it.

The untoward result of this process is explained clearly by Professor E J Lowe:


What is the problem of predication? In a nutshell, it is this. Consider any simple subject-predicate sentence, such as..., "Theaetetus sits". How are we to understand the different roles of the subject and the predicate in this sentence, "Theaetetus" and "sits" respectively? The role of "Theaetetus" seems straightforward enough: it serves to name, and thereby to refer to or stand for, a certain particular human being. But what about "sits"? Many philosophers have been tempted to say that this also refers to or stands for something, namely, a property or universal that Theaetetus possesses or exemplifies: the property of sitting. This is said to be a universal, rather than a particular, because it can be possessed by many different individuals.

But now we have a problem, for this view of the matter seems to turn the sentence "Theaetetus sits" into a mere list of (two) names, each naming something different, one a particular and one a universal: "Theaetetus, sits." But a list of names is not a sentence because it is not the sort of thing that can be said to be true or false, in the way that "Theaetetus sits" clearly can. The temptation now is to say that reference to something else must be involved in addition to Theaetetus and the property of sitting, namely, the relation of possessing that Theaetetus has to that property. But it should be evident that this way of proceeding will simply generate the same problem, for now we have just turned the original sentence into a list of three names, "Theaetetus, possessing, sits."

Indeed, we are now setting out on a vicious infinite regress, which is commonly known as "Bradley's regress", in recognition of its modern discoverer, the British idealist philosopher F. H. Bradley. Bradley used the regress to argue in favour of absolute idealism.... [Lowe (2006). Quotation marks altered to conform to the conventions adopted at my site.]

So, a collection of names is a list, and lists say nothing --, just as objects say nothing. Hence, this theory is not just bizarre, it destroys the capacity of indicative sentences to saying anything at all -- by turning them into lists!

Of course, it could be objected that there are languages in which names describe. For example, Native Americans use names such as "Sitting Bull", "Crazy Horse", or "Rain In The Face", which describe what the individual concerned either did or was reminiscent of.

Even so, no Native American would argue as follows:

N1: Sitting Bull has just stood up.

N2; Therefore Sitting Bull is no longer Sitting Bull, he is Standing Bull.

But they would argue as follows:

N3: That animal over there is a sitting bull.

N4: It has just stood up, so it is now a standing bull.

These show that the logical use of names is distinct from that of descriptions. Any contingent psychological or idiosyncratic associations a name has are logically irrelevant, no matter how important they are to a given culture.

Hence the name "Sitting Bull" here is a logical unit, and cannot be split up like a description can. This is because, as Aristotle noted (De Interpretatione, Section 3), names are tenseless, but predicates are not. The above examples bring this out, since change (expressed by the use of tensed verbs -- like "stood up") applies to predicates (as in "standing bull"), not to names.

[These and other complications are discussed at length in Geach (1968), pp.22-80. See also here (http://aristotle.tamu.edu/~rasmith/Courses/Ancient/predication.html).]

So, for Hegel, "...is a man" became the Proper Name of Manhood, which was then dignified by being called an "abstraction", or even worse, an "essence" -- both of which entities were conjured into existence by this linguistic dodge, and nothing more.

In this way then, dialectics follows solely from such ancient and defective logic, compounded by a crass misconstrual of a sub-branch of Indo-European grammar!

Hard to believe? Well, Marx himself indicated that this was so:


"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: The German Ideology, p.118. Bold emphases added.]

Now, even if the above analysis of mine were incorrect in some way, neither Aristotle nor Hegel (nor anyone else for that matter since) has been able to explain how or why contingent features of Indo-European grammar could possibly have such profound implications built into them --, or how they could reveal to us such fundamental truths about the deep structure of reality, valid for all of space and time.

In fact, I call this approach to knowledge 'Linguistic Idealism'.

More on that here (http://anti-dialectics.co.uk/Rest_of_Summary_of_Twelve.htm).

References

Geach, P. (1968), Reference And Generality (Cornell University Press).

Lowe, E. (2006), 'Take A Seat And The Consider This Simple Sentence', Times Higher Education Supplement, 07/04/06.

[Thirsty Crow]

I'm sure the good people here will notice that all you have to offer is yet more abuse, mingled in with the same old discredited mysticism.:lol:
And I'm sure that confused people searching for a hint of a decisive answer will notice that it is you who reacts to an even slightest hint of Hegel providing a prolonged argument which in fact derails the thread. OK, to be fair, it was you who provoked S.Artesian and the whole thing could go into a new "anti-dialectics" thread.
Please don't do that, both of you.
:crying:

OK, as far as my previous comments are concerned...Rosa, I apologize, I was overtly influenced by that Preface and didn't think it through. Disregard my comment on your operation:salvage Marx.

As far as the scientific method is concerned....I cannot guess what Colletti understands as the scientific method, however, he does emphasize in that Preface that it is/should be common to both social and natural sciences. In this respect, it seems to me that he is upholding Popper, and Popper's rejection of inductive reasoning may be important here.
So, the possible situation is the following: we are left with the hypothetico-deductivist model...
I guess that I made a mistake somewhere in here, so help me out and correct me if needed.

[Rosa Lichtenstein]

Why are you attempting to ascertain what the 'scientific method' is from these characters?

Popper's approach is demonstrably unsound, and Colletti seems oddly confused.

[Thirsty Crow]

Why are you attempting to ascertain what the 'scientific method' is from these characters?

Popper's approach is demonstrably unsound, and Colletti seems oddly confused.

No no, I was merely attempting to ascertain what does Colletti mean by "scientific method".
From there on we could continue and discuss if this "version" or model of what is scientific and what is not could be applied to Marx, denouncing him of confirming his analysis. Then, we could also discuss if revolutionaries could ground their activity in such a model. In other words: we could discuss the notion of scientific enquiry (based on the previously discussed model) as the only valid means of attaining knowledge which could be used as a means of revolutionary action.
What I'm trying to get at is this in fact: is the claim that we cannot change the world we live in relying solely on science (referring to the previously mentioned model) valid?

EDIT: oh yeah, can you briefly explain why exactly is Popper's approach unsound and Colletti confused?