Mr. Natural
23rd February 2012, 14:18
I believe nature and society came to life in Marx's mind when, as a very young man, he engaged the Hegelian philosophy of internal relations and its dialectical categories and "laws." Marx developed his lifelong, deep, materialist, dialectical understanding of the world as organic, systemic process from this encounter with Hegelian philosophy, thus Western Marxism's abandonment of dialectics or its restriction of them to socio-historical matters tends to take the life out of Marxism.
The radically new work that stands above all others in illuminating Marx's encounter with Hegel and dialectics is Bertell Ollman's Dance of the Dialectic (2003). Dance is written for a lay readership, and its presentation of the workings of the philosophy of internal relations and its dialectical categories uncannily mirrors the picture of the organization of life and the universe revealed by the new systems-complexity science. Thus this OP is suggesting and pointing toward the development of a viable red-green revolutionary organizing theory based in traditional Marxism and informed by Ollman's research into the nature of the materialist dialectic and the new science of organizational relations.
I'm definitely a layperson in these matters and a relative newcomer to Ollman, though, as are two other comrades who have been reading Dance. They will join this discussion and I'm intensely interested in their evaluation of Ollman, but we have not coordinated other than to agree to comradely discourse. We invite others to join us in this spirit. Open but critical, radical minds are needed.
As for Bertell Ollman, he is a Marxist in his mid-70s who has made dialectics his lifework. He currently teaches undergraduate courses and a graduate seminar at NYU, and he was the victim in American academia's most notorious violation of academic freedom when he was denied the chairmanship of the political science department at the Univ of Maryland because of his political views. Ollman is also the creator of the board game, "Class Struggle."
The nature and practice of the materialist dialectic is surely Marxism's most contentious theoretical issue. Dance of the Dialectic blew my mind open to the depth of Marx's genius and two radical revelations: Marx's deep understanding of nature and society as living, organic, systemic processes; and the aforementioned correspondence of the philosophy of internal relations and its dialectical categories with the new science(s) of the organizational relations of life and the universe.
So what is this Hegelian philosophy of internal relations? It is a comprehension of the world as an internally related whole consisting of internally related sub-wholes. The philosophy of internal relations sees that the "things" of life and society are also systemic, processive relations. Things are relations and relations are things in this view. For example, predator/prey/environmental relations form a system with a process, and commodities as "things" contain use-value/exchange-value and worker/ruling class relations. Thus Hegelian philosophy, the materialist dialectic, and science agree that existence is a dynamically interdependent, internally related whole that is created by and composed of such wholes. Your body and its parts are such a "world."
The categories and laws of the materialist dialectic only partially represent the complete organizational package of nature and social systems, though. I find they must be further, effectively supplemented as needed by the new science(s) of organizational relations, which culminate in systems-complexity science. The genius of the materialist dialectic as presented in Dance is not that it models life and society in their full motion and development, but that it successfully presents the world and its components as dynamic, systemic process. The further development of the dialectic I'm suggesting would then enable it to "come alive" to the human mind and praxis.
But this is how I view and use Ollman. Other "Ollmanians" and dialecticians and anti-dialecticians will have different assessments, and as Ollman doesn't mention the new science, I'll keep it out of most of my remarks hereon. Nonetheless, this science does generally verify the materialist dialectic.
This is enough for the OP! There is much, much more to unpack and discuss, but I need to see what others are thinking. I also must apologize for my nonexistent computer skills: I can't edit, transfer quotes, etc. Well, I'm an old fart.
Marx and Engels, Anti-Duhring: "Dialectics ... is nothing more than the science of the general laws of motion and development of nature, human society, and thought."
My red-green, dialectical, revolutionary best.
The radically new work that stands above all others in illuminating Marx's encounter with Hegel and dialectics is Bertell Ollman's Dance of the Dialectic (2003). Dance is written for a lay readership, and its presentation of the workings of the philosophy of internal relations and its dialectical categories uncannily mirrors the picture of the organization of life and the universe revealed by the new systems-complexity science. Thus this OP is suggesting and pointing toward the development of a viable red-green revolutionary organizing theory based in traditional Marxism and informed by Ollman's research into the nature of the materialist dialectic and the new science of organizational relations.
I'm definitely a layperson in these matters and a relative newcomer to Ollman, though, as are two other comrades who have been reading Dance. They will join this discussion and I'm intensely interested in their evaluation of Ollman, but we have not coordinated other than to agree to comradely discourse. We invite others to join us in this spirit. Open but critical, radical minds are needed.
As for Bertell Ollman, he is a Marxist in his mid-70s who has made dialectics his lifework. He currently teaches undergraduate courses and a graduate seminar at NYU, and he was the victim in American academia's most notorious violation of academic freedom when he was denied the chairmanship of the political science department at the Univ of Maryland because of his political views. Ollman is also the creator of the board game, "Class Struggle."
The nature and practice of the materialist dialectic is surely Marxism's most contentious theoretical issue. Dance of the Dialectic blew my mind open to the depth of Marx's genius and two radical revelations: Marx's deep understanding of nature and society as living, organic, systemic processes; and the aforementioned correspondence of the philosophy of internal relations and its dialectical categories with the new science(s) of the organizational relations of life and the universe.
So what is this Hegelian philosophy of internal relations? It is a comprehension of the world as an internally related whole consisting of internally related sub-wholes. The philosophy of internal relations sees that the "things" of life and society are also systemic, processive relations. Things are relations and relations are things in this view. For example, predator/prey/environmental relations form a system with a process, and commodities as "things" contain use-value/exchange-value and worker/ruling class relations. Thus Hegelian philosophy, the materialist dialectic, and science agree that existence is a dynamically interdependent, internally related whole that is created by and composed of such wholes. Your body and its parts are such a "world."
The categories and laws of the materialist dialectic only partially represent the complete organizational package of nature and social systems, though. I find they must be further, effectively supplemented as needed by the new science(s) of organizational relations, which culminate in systems-complexity science. The genius of the materialist dialectic as presented in Dance is not that it models life and society in their full motion and development, but that it successfully presents the world and its components as dynamic, systemic process. The further development of the dialectic I'm suggesting would then enable it to "come alive" to the human mind and praxis.
But this is how I view and use Ollman. Other "Ollmanians" and dialecticians and anti-dialecticians will have different assessments, and as Ollman doesn't mention the new science, I'll keep it out of most of my remarks hereon. Nonetheless, this science does generally verify the materialist dialectic.
This is enough for the OP! There is much, much more to unpack and discuss, but I need to see what others are thinking. I also must apologize for my nonexistent computer skills: I can't edit, transfer quotes, etc. Well, I'm an old fart.
Marx and Engels, Anti-Duhring: "Dialectics ... is nothing more than the science of the general laws of motion and development of nature, human society, and thought."
My red-green, dialectical, revolutionary best.