Die Neue Zeit
23rd December 2010, 06:01
"Philosophy stands in the same relation to the study of the actual world as masturbation to sexual love." (Karl Marx)
I avoid philosophy generally, for political reasons.
However, since it's been too long since my aborted attempt to popularize Dyna-Mat, here we go:
Maybe it's just my "habit" with words as usual, but I've always found both historical and dialectical materialism at least somewhat deficient.
With historical materialism, certain aspects of analyzing modern class struggle and modern capitalism cannot be derived from past examples unless there is a direct or indirect appeal to the concept of "totality" (by "indirect," I include even the unintended "totality" appeals of anti-dialectics HM-ists like Rosa). With dialectical materialism, there is the fetish for reductionist binary thinking using fancy words that don't connect with "ordinary workers" to make the thinking sound not so binary.
Is it time for both of these to be superseded by the "synthetic" dynamic materialism? Notwithstanding the benefit of having less syllables, dynamic-materialist (or dyna-mat, which sounds like "dynamite" :D ) analysis: surpasses the limits of the "historical" paradigm; explores dynamic relationships, processes, and phenomena (like synergy) beyond the limits of the binary "dialectical" paradigm; and uses words that connect with "ordinary workers."
[...]
Perhaps you can state what features of dialectical materialism you consider useful, and explain as well how these features would improve historical materialism.
1) Totality (again, within the dynamic constraints I stated above)
2) The relationship between quantity and quality (but beyond the Hegelian limits and mumbo-jumbo)
3) The notion of "synthesis" (although in dyna-mat this is a variant of the dyna-mat version of #2)
[...]
If historical materialism can be summed up by the axiom "It is not the consciousness of men that determines their existence, but their social existence that determines their consciousness," then dynamic materialism can be summed up by the axiom "Philosophers have interpreted the world in various ways; the point however is to change it."
Historical Parallels: Dynamic Totality
According to the Hegelian mumbo-jumbo (correct me if I'm wrong, Rosa), "totality" is the sum of all relationships between EVERYTHING, right down to the relationship between Napoleon's hair and Michaelangelo's Last Judgment painting in the Sistine Chapel.
The problem with the Hegelian concept is that the particular relationship I explained above isn't exactly dynamic, since it deals with mere objects (you'd have to REALLY stretch out your thinking to beyond rational limits, and venture into the world of idealism).
In dyna-mat, the "totality" is limited to more rational relationships, such as the relationship between a past class struggle and a particular class struggle in the present.
Case in point: the relationships between the relative lack of class struggle during the formation of the SPD in Germany (the excitement over German unification under Prussian control) and the relative lack of class struggle today.
One conclusion out of a few non-mutually exclusive conclusions: Alternative Culture
Revolutionary vs. Non-Revolutionary Periods: Dynamic Contradictions
A truly revolutionary period is defined by all these criteria, two of them refined from the original criteria in The Road to Power: Political Reflections on Growing into the Revolution (http://www.marxists.org/archive/kautsky/1909/power/ch06.htm):
1) Open regime hostility towards the masses
2) Worker-class, mass party-movement (since real parties are real movements and vice versa) in opposition to the regime
3) Said party-movement commands majority political support from the working class ("citizenship" and other forms of party membership, some reliable electoral support, some reliable spoilage support, etc.)
4) Breakdown in state confidence (like breakdown in the army, police, civil bureaucracy, etc.)
Without all the above, no "revolutionary gambit" like the downfall of the Provisional Government would be justifiable. Hence:
Go check out my History thread on May 1968 in France and my comments on the PCF: wrong orientation and program, correct actions.
http://www.revleft.com/vb/pcfs-role-may-t138705/index.html
Suppose that, instead of two of the four criteria being met, there were three. Specifically, add the existence of a mass political party-movement with a revolutionary program (up to and including not entering into government coalitions with bourgeois parties or reformist parties).
However, this mass political party-movement still doesn't have majority political support from the working class as a whole, maybe to some because of anti-coalition hostility.
Would this party-movement still be a group of sellouts for saying that the wildcat general strike isn't a revolutionary situation, for exposing any council fetish (up to and including the conn-the-masses-to-power canard of "all power to the workers councils") that may have erupted because of the strike, and for telling the workers to go back to their jobs?
Programs and Movements: Dynamic Equilibrium in Quantity and Quality
Without a revolutionary and/or worker-class program there can be no revolutionary and/or worker-class movement, respectively. This was the positive lesson of the Eisenach, Gotha, and Erfurt Programs of the SAPD and pre-war SPD. Negative lessons are more than aptly provided by the excessive "revolutionary theory" (sorry for Lenin's WITBD sound bite) of sects, as well as the going-nowhere spontaneisms of the likes of the World Social Forum.
"Revolutionary theory" has too much quantity and quality, and the adhering sects have too little quantity (citizenship and other forms of party membership) and too little quality (not much beyond "revolutionary theory"). Spontaneism has almost no quantity or quality at all, and despite claims to dynamism, the movement-isms tend to be short-lived.
A revolutionary program is the Goldilocks of class-strugglist left politics: enough quantity and quality to dynamically explode into enormous quantity and enormous quality in the form of a party-movement, with the balance between quantity and quality maintaining the dynamic equilibrium.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chemical_equilibrium
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mechanical_equilibrium
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radiative_equilibrium
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thermodynamic_equilibrium
I avoid philosophy generally, for political reasons.
However, since it's been too long since my aborted attempt to popularize Dyna-Mat, here we go:
Maybe it's just my "habit" with words as usual, but I've always found both historical and dialectical materialism at least somewhat deficient.
With historical materialism, certain aspects of analyzing modern class struggle and modern capitalism cannot be derived from past examples unless there is a direct or indirect appeal to the concept of "totality" (by "indirect," I include even the unintended "totality" appeals of anti-dialectics HM-ists like Rosa). With dialectical materialism, there is the fetish for reductionist binary thinking using fancy words that don't connect with "ordinary workers" to make the thinking sound not so binary.
Is it time for both of these to be superseded by the "synthetic" dynamic materialism? Notwithstanding the benefit of having less syllables, dynamic-materialist (or dyna-mat, which sounds like "dynamite" :D ) analysis: surpasses the limits of the "historical" paradigm; explores dynamic relationships, processes, and phenomena (like synergy) beyond the limits of the binary "dialectical" paradigm; and uses words that connect with "ordinary workers."
[...]
Perhaps you can state what features of dialectical materialism you consider useful, and explain as well how these features would improve historical materialism.
1) Totality (again, within the dynamic constraints I stated above)
2) The relationship between quantity and quality (but beyond the Hegelian limits and mumbo-jumbo)
3) The notion of "synthesis" (although in dyna-mat this is a variant of the dyna-mat version of #2)
[...]
If historical materialism can be summed up by the axiom "It is not the consciousness of men that determines their existence, but their social existence that determines their consciousness," then dynamic materialism can be summed up by the axiom "Philosophers have interpreted the world in various ways; the point however is to change it."
Historical Parallels: Dynamic Totality
According to the Hegelian mumbo-jumbo (correct me if I'm wrong, Rosa), "totality" is the sum of all relationships between EVERYTHING, right down to the relationship between Napoleon's hair and Michaelangelo's Last Judgment painting in the Sistine Chapel.
The problem with the Hegelian concept is that the particular relationship I explained above isn't exactly dynamic, since it deals with mere objects (you'd have to REALLY stretch out your thinking to beyond rational limits, and venture into the world of idealism).
In dyna-mat, the "totality" is limited to more rational relationships, such as the relationship between a past class struggle and a particular class struggle in the present.
Case in point: the relationships between the relative lack of class struggle during the formation of the SPD in Germany (the excitement over German unification under Prussian control) and the relative lack of class struggle today.
One conclusion out of a few non-mutually exclusive conclusions: Alternative Culture
Revolutionary vs. Non-Revolutionary Periods: Dynamic Contradictions
A truly revolutionary period is defined by all these criteria, two of them refined from the original criteria in The Road to Power: Political Reflections on Growing into the Revolution (http://www.marxists.org/archive/kautsky/1909/power/ch06.htm):
1) Open regime hostility towards the masses
2) Worker-class, mass party-movement (since real parties are real movements and vice versa) in opposition to the regime
3) Said party-movement commands majority political support from the working class ("citizenship" and other forms of party membership, some reliable electoral support, some reliable spoilage support, etc.)
4) Breakdown in state confidence (like breakdown in the army, police, civil bureaucracy, etc.)
Without all the above, no "revolutionary gambit" like the downfall of the Provisional Government would be justifiable. Hence:
Go check out my History thread on May 1968 in France and my comments on the PCF: wrong orientation and program, correct actions.
http://www.revleft.com/vb/pcfs-role-may-t138705/index.html
Suppose that, instead of two of the four criteria being met, there were three. Specifically, add the existence of a mass political party-movement with a revolutionary program (up to and including not entering into government coalitions with bourgeois parties or reformist parties).
However, this mass political party-movement still doesn't have majority political support from the working class as a whole, maybe to some because of anti-coalition hostility.
Would this party-movement still be a group of sellouts for saying that the wildcat general strike isn't a revolutionary situation, for exposing any council fetish (up to and including the conn-the-masses-to-power canard of "all power to the workers councils") that may have erupted because of the strike, and for telling the workers to go back to their jobs?
Programs and Movements: Dynamic Equilibrium in Quantity and Quality
Without a revolutionary and/or worker-class program there can be no revolutionary and/or worker-class movement, respectively. This was the positive lesson of the Eisenach, Gotha, and Erfurt Programs of the SAPD and pre-war SPD. Negative lessons are more than aptly provided by the excessive "revolutionary theory" (sorry for Lenin's WITBD sound bite) of sects, as well as the going-nowhere spontaneisms of the likes of the World Social Forum.
"Revolutionary theory" has too much quantity and quality, and the adhering sects have too little quantity (citizenship and other forms of party membership) and too little quality (not much beyond "revolutionary theory"). Spontaneism has almost no quantity or quality at all, and despite claims to dynamism, the movement-isms tend to be short-lived.
A revolutionary program is the Goldilocks of class-strugglist left politics: enough quantity and quality to dynamically explode into enormous quantity and enormous quality in the form of a party-movement, with the balance between quantity and quality maintaining the dynamic equilibrium.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chemical_equilibrium
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mechanical_equilibrium
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radiative_equilibrium
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thermodynamic_equilibrium