Books I bought today

[Brosa Luxemburg]

So, I bought these books today.

Historical Materialism by Nikolai Bukharin
The Development of the Monist View of History by G.V. Plekhanov
Dance of the Dialectic by Bertell Ollman
Anti-Duhring by Fredrick Engels

I have a general knowledge of dialectical materialism, but I have decided to read more on it and get a better understanding.

Any other suggestions?

[bad ideas actualised by alcohol]

Stalins work helped me understand dialectical materialism, but I bet some trot or ultra-left will disagree with me.
So do what you want with it:
http://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/stalin/works/1938/09.htm

[Brosa Luxemburg]

Bump

[Comrade Trollface]

Yo, you need to throw some science fiction novels in there.

[Halleluhwah]

I've heard good things about Novack's Introduction to the Logic of Marxism, but I can't find it anywhere, including on the Marxists Internet Archive:


Lawyers representing Pathfinder Press have instructed us not to publish this work, which we understood to be in the public domain. Pathfinder Press is the publishing arm of the S.W.P., the Party of which Novack was a member. The U.S. legal system is such that the M.I.A. has no choice but to accede to this directive and deny you access to Novack's text. :(

However, I'm sure you can find other works of his dealing with dialectics (http://www.marxists.org/archive/novack/index.htm).

I'm guessing you're already familiar with Engels's Socialism: Utopian and Scientific.

[Brosa Luxemburg]

bump

[Yuppie Grinder]

I assume you've already read Hegel?
Stay away from Mao and Stalin. Their writings on dialectics are intellectually bankrupt jibber-jabber.

[Prometeo liberado]

Stalins work helped me understand dialectical materialism, but I bet some trot or ultra-left will disagree with me.
So do what you want with it:
http://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/stalin/works/1938/09.htm

That translation helped me soooo much when I went back and tried to get a better handle on DM. That and Ollman's book.

[electrostal]

Nice.
How much?

[Book O'Dead]

So, I bought these books today.

Historical Materialism by Nikolai Bukharin
The Development of the Monist View of History by G.V. Plekhanov
Dance of the Dialectic by Bertell Ollman
Anti-Duhring by Fredrick Engels

I have a general knowledge of dialectical materialism, but I have decided to read more on it and get a better understanding.

Any other suggestions?

You have a full plate and are still asking for more? Egad!

[Teacher]

Stalin is great, he was a very clear writer and is actually a great introduction for beginners IMO.

[Ismail]

Stay away from Mao and Stalin. Their writings on dialectics are intellectually bankrupt jibber-jabber.Mao's yes, Stalin no. Mao's was mostly designed with a view to being "non-dogmatic" and attacking the supposed "dogmatism" of Stalin and the Soviets.

[Mr. Natural]

Stalin's diamat omitted negation of the negation and served his ends, not materialist dialectics. Stalin purged dialectics, too.

Ollman! Yes! And for a survey of various dialectics, see his and Tony Smith ed. Dialectics For the New Century (2008). This contains John Bellamy Foster's (he's ed. of Monthly Review) essay, "The Dialectics of Nature and Marxist Ecology," which I consider to be the best expression of dialectics as organic, systemic process, which is the manner in which Marx gleaned dialectics from the Hegelian philosophy of internal relations as revealed by Ollman.

I also find John Rees' Algebra of Revolution (1998) to be valuable in its basics. He lacks Ollman's deep insights, though, into the roots of Marx's dialectic

One of the most valuable books I've found on the origins of Marxism, the materialist dialectic, and Marx's and Engels' personal and professional relationship is Helena Sheehan's Marxism and the Philosophy of Science (1983), which is a clear read despite its imposing title.

Above all, keep in mind that Marx's and Engels' dialectic views life and society as organic, systemic process, and the living "things" of the life process are, indeed, organic, systemic processes. The materialist dialectic is "the science of the general laws of nature, human society, and thought." (Anti-Duhring) Few current Marxists view the dialectic in this manner, and these Marxists are theoretically and philosophically stuck. This is not coincidence.

Anti-dialecticians and formal logicians are reductionist. They view life as a collection of separate things. In contrast, Marx's and Engels' materialist dialectic embraced both the "things" of life and their relations. Their dialectic is alive; reductionism is dead.

My red-green best.

[electrostal]

Stalin's diamat omitted negation of the negation and served his ends, not materialist dialectics. Stalin purged dialectics, too.
Source please.

[Lenina Rosenweg]

Cyril Smith has some interesting insights into dialectics, Here he is, riffing on Raya Dunskayeva

http://thehobgoblin.co.uk/journal/H4smithondiamat.html

Here he is discussing "diamat" how dialectics was used to support the needs of the Soviet bureaucracy.


Stalin’s pseudo-philosophical document was extracted from the infamous History of the CPSU (Bolsheviks): Short Course, prepared by a Commission of the Central Committee. For eighteen years, this volume of lies and slanders formed the basis of all educational work in the USSR, and of all ‘theory’ in the world communist movement. In 1956, at the CPSU (Communist Party of the Soviet Union) Twentieth Congress, it was announced that ‘historical inaccuracies’ had been discovered in it, and it was simply decided to withdraw it from circulation.

This was not so easy, however. These pages embodied the basic notions on which the leaders of Communist Parties and several then-powerful states tried to find justification for their actions. That is why many devout ‘Marxist-Leninists’ were incapable of carrying out the decision, denying the authority of Moscow for the first time in their lives.

In 1939, the insertion of this ‘philosophical’ section was essential to Stalin’s purpose in issuing the Short Course. (He made some other ‘suggestions’ for additional material, but they were mainly to increase the lying abuse of his enemies and to glorify the image of himself still further.) By that time, the last of the Old Bolsheviks, those who had led the 1917 Revolution, had been humiliated in the Moscow Show Trials, and had been forced to ‘confess’ to the most fantastic crimes. They were shot or sent to perish in the Gulags. The last vestiges of independent thought had been eliminated.

http://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/smith-cyril/works/millenni/smith2.htm

It may make MLs feel about better that yrril was critical us Trots as well..

[The Young Pioneer]

I'm not a huge Stalin fan, but I do like his critiques of Lenin. He's worth reading in my opinion, and so is Mao. Just take it for what it is.

Didn't buy a book today, but I found a copy of a book I already have. I can put them side-by-side now to read them in the original language and the English translation. Very excited.

[A Revolutionary Tool]

Where do you find a copy of anti-duhring?

[A Marxist Historian]

So, I bought these books today.

Historical Materialism by Nikolai Bukharin
The Development of the Monist View of History by G.V. Plekhanov
Dance of the Dialectic by Bertell Ollman
Anti-Duhring by Fredrick Engels

I have a general knowledge of dialectical materialism, but I have decided to read more on it and get a better understanding.

Any other suggestions?

An excellent short piece on dialectical materialism is Peter Fryer's fairly famous article from the late 1950s, "Lenin as Philosopher." A good preface to Lenin's opaque but very useful Philosophical Notebooks.

http://www.icl-fi.org/english/esp/62/fryer.html

Also Trotsky's "In Defense of Marxism" is worth reading.

-M.H.-

[Brosa Luxemburg]

Where do you find a copy of anti-duhring?

Bought it used at a local store.

[Mr. Natural]

Electrosal, I appreciate your interest and "challenge." Lenina Rosenweg has already supplied your answer from one source. Here's another, from p. 230 of Helena Sheehan's Marxism and the Philosophy of Science (1983). Comrades should read this work, for it unties many of the political and philosophical knots attending dialectics and the relationship between Marx and Engels. It also has much on the fate of many prominent Marxists philosphers and scientists in the Soviet Union under Stalin.

"In non-Soviet sources, Stalin's philosophical legacy is almost universally rated negatively, if not contemptuously. In Soviet sources, it is today sharply criticized as having hindered the creative development of Soviet philosophy,* omitted the law of the negation in expounding the laws of dialectics, emphasized the struggle of opposites without showing the unity, and having been excessively negative in evaluating the heritage of classical German philosophy. Most Soviet philosophers today reject Stalin's characterization of Hegel's philosophy"
* One Soviet philosopher, prominent during the period, remarked that [the diamat] functioned as a 'collection of military rules'. The debate revolving around the conflicting claims of formal logic and 'dialectical logic' was to become a crucially important discussion in the postwar period. It is a question still very much on the agenda among contemporary Marxists."

The materialist dialectic works with the relations of "nature, human society, and thought" (Anti-Duhring) as organic, systemic processes (from Hegel's philosophy of internal relations--see Ollman). Stalin's diamat was a self-serving means of social manipulation and control.

My red-green, dialectical best.

[Davide]

So i bought Encyclopedia today. It would definiately increase my knowledge about this world.