Anti-Dialectics site....

[Marxaveli]

Comrades, I was debating on another forum earlier with some liberals and libertarians about capitalism, and one of them pointed me to this website in an attempt to discredit Dialectical Materialism (a site owned by a self-proclaimed Marxist). http://www.anti-dialectics.co.uk/Anti-D_For_Dummies%2001.htm#So,_What_Is_DM

What do you guys make of this? Personally, I think this dude vulgarizes DM into being some 'deterministic' philosophy (even though DM is anti-dogmatic by its very essence) in his attempt to discredit it. In my opinion, DM is the backbone of Marxism, and to take it out of Marxism is an abandonment of it, since Marx and Engels clearly used dialectics in almost all their work. What are your guys thoughts? Sorry if this site has been posted before but I'm really curious.

[Yet_Another_Boring_Marxist]

To be honest, there is a saying that I feel applies to the initial reaction that this site will probably garner here:


No investigation, no right to speak!

So all I will say is that without dialetics, there is no Marxism. That's a simple fact. This doesn't say anything about dialetics it's self, perhaps Marxism is wrong after all, I haven't engaged their material enough to say, but no Marxist can denounce dialectics and continue to be a Marxist. But again, perhaps Marxism is wrong. After all communism exists outside of the Marxist framework and I suppose one could still be a Communist without applying dialetics.

[Marxaveli]

Yea I agree. I mean, Marx didn't even coin the phrase or state explicitly (that I know of) that DM was central to his thought, but it is pretty self-evident that he used it extensively and thus we kind of accept it by default as being one of the central themes of Marxism as a system. Of course, maybe Marxism is wrong, but that is another matter altogether. For now, we accept it, and in doing so, it makes no sense to reject DM like this guy does. I mean, its like taking the concept of adaptation out of the process of evolution, which at that point it ceases to be evolution! This site absolutely blew my mind (not in a good way).

[Yet_Another_Boring_Marxist]

Yea I agree. I mean, Marx didn't even coin the phrase or state explicitly (that I know of) that DM was central to his thought, but it is pretty self-evident that he used it extensively and thus we kind of accept it by default as being one of the central themes of Marxism as a system. Of course, maybe Marxism is wrong, but that is another matter altogether. For now, we accept it, and in doing so, it makes no sense to reject DM like this guy does. I mean, its like taking the concept of adaptation out of the process of evolution, which at that point it ceases to be evolution!

The very basis of Marx's critique of capitalism in Das Kapital begins with Marx noting that each commodity is a contradiction between it's use value and it's extange value. It's late so I wont' do it right now, but in the afternoon tommorow I can cite various quotes to show where the dialectics forms the basis of Marxist political economy and the critique of capitalism.

So to be honest, I just don't see where that leaves Marx's critique of capitalism if you remove dialectics. I guess you could vulgarize the Tendency for the Rate of Profit to Decline into some sort of semi-Keynesian rubbish about technology decreasing demand until capitalism dies, but that takes away almost all of the punch and uniqueness in Marx's critique of capitalism.

[blake 3:17]

The creator of the Anti-Dialectics site and seemingly endless chunks of text was a very prolific poster on revleft. I find it very strange.

I appreciate the comments above. There's a strange question about what it is to be a 'Marxist'. Is it a particular view of history or social class or economics, an ethical commitment, or membership or activity in a party or movement? Or none or all of those?

@YABM, there is a possibility that Marxism is wrong. There's also the possibility that Orthodox Marxism or specific types of Marxist thought are useful and applicable to particular questions. In my opinion, the single best contribution to Marxist thought in the past 50 years has been Braverman's Labor and Monopoly Capital which in many ways was in many ways deliberately crude theoretically. Braverman acknowledges in his introduction to the book that he is NOT addressing questions of ideology, identity, consciousness, strategy and so on, though they do come up, but his focus was on work and workers and how workers worked and bosses bossed. Great.

[Zealot]

I think the owner of that site used to post a lot on Revleft before they were banned. To be honest, I could never be bothered reading any of his/her book-length posts and I'm not about to start either.

[blake 3:17]

When someone boasts:
I have added approximately 35,000 words of new material (thus making the Essay 25% longer)
I have added just over 21,000 words of new material (making the Essay about 12% longer)
I have added about 7,000 words of new material (making it approximately 12% longer) etc. and then says they've fixed most of the mistakes, it is difficult to maintain any interest.

When we were still on sort of friendly debating terms, I made a joke at Rosa L about the word count stuff and nothing funny was seen in it. You buy toothpaste that way - 25% more per tube! - but essays on the philosophy and science of Marxism?

But, as can be found on the first page of the site, way down on the right:


Anyone who objects to the length of these Essays should rather pick a fight with Marx, Engels, Plekhanov, Lenin and Trotsky -- and Hegel -- whose collected work easily dwarfs my own.

[Comrade #138672]

The owner of the site spent around 25 years of her life investigating this (so she claims).

Still, I think her critique of dialectics is wrong. Though, it is not bad per se to be critical about dialectics.

She still upholds Marxism and believes in the validity of historical materialism.

[Brutus]

there is a possibility that Marxism is wrong
Blasphemy! I'm still trying to get my head around diamat. I think that people who are having a hard time understanding it may go to the anti dialectics side, simply because it's simpler.

[Marxaveli]

I don't know man....its ok to be critical of DM, but abandoning it entirely is a vulgarization of Marxism in my opinion. Not to mention, most of her arguments, the few that are actually coherent, seem to have little merit. Without dialectics, would Marxism have even developed into a system/mode of analysis? Hard to imagine.

As I said before, it is like taking adaptation out of evolution, and still calling it such. DM is quite complex, and I'm barely grasping it but I understand the basics of it. I find it useful overall, as well as fascinating to read about. Though admittedly it was Historical Materialism that made me become a Marxist, rather than DM.

[Comrade #138672]

Blasphemy! I'm still trying to get my head around diamat. I think that people who are having a hard time understanding it may go to the anti dialectics side, simply because it's simpler.According to Rosa, dialectics is hard because it is nonsensical. She attempts to demonstrate this by taking dialectics to the absurd. Also, her core argument is about showing that with dialectics change is supposedly impossible (inverting the idea that dialectics accounts for change).

[Marxaveli]

I saw that argument about how dialectics makes change impossible. Such a statement is pure mindfuckery I tell ya :confused:, and I have no idea how she came to that conclusion. Her whole rationale, if she even has any, is just plain bizarre. It would be like saying 'natural selection' and 'adaptation' prevent the course of evolution, lol.

[Flying Purple People Eater]

Has anyone actually read it yet?

[Comrade #138672]

Has anyone actually read it yet?Yes. Not everything, though. But I printed some pages a while ago and started reading it.

[Anglo-Saxon Philistine]

I have read some of the material on the site, and I'm not exactly impressed. The author makes an interesting point from time to time (concerning isomeric molecules for example), but their examples seem to provide new examples of dialectical change rather than disproving it (since changes in the position of molecules are quantitative changes leading to qualitative changes).

But the author's understanding of dialectical materialism is not as sound as the author believes it is. They constantly confuse materialist dialectics with Hegelian dialectics, and deal with opposite ideas instead of opposite tendencies in material phenomena.

They object, for example, that male cats do not change into female cats. But this is absurd; "male" and "female" are often considered as opposite concepts (I would have hoped that someone that calls themselves a Marxist would know better, though), but "male" and "female" are not contradictory tendencies in individual cats. On the level of the population, the number of male and female cats are contradictory, and indeed we see a complex interplay of these numbers, driven partly by internal sexual dynamics and partly by external influences.

I gave up on the section concerning the negation of the negation, where the author again tries to force dialectical materialism into the straightjacket of Hegelian triads and ignores the materialist meaning of the law - the retention of features of previous stages in new stages.

At best, the author has a point against Hegel and against poor Engels when he uncritically assimilates Hegel's examples. At worst, this is a left-ish version of the Time Cube site.

[Flying Purple People Eater]

I don't know whether or not Rosa understands historical events. While she was making a fairly logical argument in the beginning, she's now blaming Dialectical materialism's logic for the collapse of the Soviet Union and she keeps referrencing Hegel, even though DM is supposed to be a total reverse of Hegel's idealism (hence why 'Marx turned Hegel on his head').

Still, an interesting viewpoint. I'll keep reading.

[Hyacinth]

Rosa responds to the 'arguments' in this thread here:

http://anti-dialectics.co.uk/Dialectical_confusion_2.htm

[Comrade #138672]

Wow. She actually responded to all this in a very professional way. She is so determined.

I think I am going to do more research on this and read more of what she wrote.

One thing I would like to ask Rosa is: she claims that "if we think like them, no wonder that we end up acting like them", but isn't this idealism?

[Sperm-Doll Setsuna]

Rosa is an odd-ball, although I agree with some criticisms of the DM; but I can't take Rosa seriously, he argued that vaccines are useless and blah blah, for all his rejection of DM he's some kind of strange mystic who argues endlessly but without substance in queer semantic games designed to confuse the reader/debatee.

Philosophy is bunk.

[$lim_$weezy]

There has been a great amount of dialectical thought that is not orthodox "DM" or "diamat" or whatever you want to call it. Most of Rosa's criticisms seem to be about that orthodox school which no modern Marxist philosophers hold, as far as I can tell. A good book to try for an overview of modern philosophical dialectics is Fredric Jameson's "Valences of the Dialectic".

Further, I think the allegations of vagueness and such are not as watertight as Rosa would like to think. These allegations, if formal, are nonsensical due to the tired old critiques of positivism/"natural types"/vulgar empiricism. The definition of what is clear or non-vague necessarily rests on intuition, which is not uniform between people. If informal, they are also nonsensical due to, once again, their hypocritical vagueness.

If someone brings up more specific points, I can try to address those more thoroughly, but as has been remarked, there is just so much.

[$lim_$weezy]

Hence, I ignore HCDs (by-and-large) since their work is (1) totally irrelevant to the class war, and (2) full of non-sensical and incoherent gobbledygook. [See Chomsky's characterisation of some of them here.]

In contrast, I concentrate on classical DM since the vast majority of Marxist revolutionaries (as opposed to Marxist academic drones) have bought into it, where it has done real damage.

But what of this?

[Quote of my previous post]

1) I'd like to see 'Slim' render just one DM-concept non-vague (upside down or 'the right way up'). [And I can only wish him good luck with that one, since, if he succeeds, he'll be the first one to do so in nigh on 200 years.]

2) The rest of that paragraph, is -- dare I say it(!) -- far too vague to do much with. If anyone can explain it, please e-mail me.

But, in conclusion, it is worth pointing out that my work is just as much anti-empiricist/anti-positivist as it is anti-dialectical, since I hold that all philosophical theories are incoherent non-sense.

Okay, I'll attempt to answer this.

As to #1, how about the concept of interrelation (coming from an "HCD" standpoint). This "concept" basically says that various collections of "things" can be cognized so that their movements/effects/associations are thought of as being internal to them. For example, we can think of capitalism as just the market, with non-market effects being external to the system (as the liberals do), or as including the production process and having workplace conditions and governments etc. as being part of the system of capitalism. This is a dialectical concept, at least as I use the terms. The variance of abstractions, our ability to view relations as being internal.

As to #2, I will try to explain better. The fact that intuition is vastly different between people, as it relates to "sense", creates difficulties in having "sense" or "clarity" or whatever you want to call it as being the criteria for the legitimacy of a theory or thought. Believe it or not, Wittgenstein's work is philosophical even as it is anti-philosophical (the way I use the terms), and arguing against dialectics from a philosophical-but-very-different-from-dialectics standpoint is not effective if you then say that standpoint is not "true"/philosophical/only elucidating (that secondary sense of "indicative").

This would be a lot easier if it were a discussion, or at least not text posts on separate websites haha.

[blake 3:17]

I certainly don't believe in Dialectical Materialism -- Rosa L could prove me wrong because I quoted Trotsky on dialectics years ago, but that's Spart crap --Right, Rosa? Does anyone believe in that BS anyways? Last one standing is Lewontin and he is a piece of nasty work. I don't think much x, y or z logic applies to reality, unless one is talking about certain scales. As I understand Wittgenstein, the PI was an attempt to cure a certain solipsism, which is probably better cured by Heidegger.

I think Jameson is truly awful and I say that as a reluctant student of English Lit & a revolutionary socialist. Only book of his I got anything out of was Marxism and Form and none of it was particularly Marxist. Somewhere in the middle there's some discussion of Tragedy I thought very good, but could've just as easily come from a Right or Centrist perspective.

[$lim_$weezy]

Well hey man I haven't read "Marxism and Form", but the first essay in "Valences of the Dialectic", entitled "Three Names of the Dialectic", does a great job at explaining the various "types" of dialectic as conceived by Jameson. It's about 100 pages maybe, but I thought it was pretty good. I recommend it before you completely put aside Jameson.

[$lim_$weezy]

Okay, Rosa's last reply to me is under "Replies III" at: http://anti-dialectics.co.uk/Dialectical_confusion_2.htm



Since apparently all words are too vague for Rosa, I will assume she has absolutely no ability to get the "sense" of anything at all, no intuition, and no ability to communicate. In conclusion, I can no longer argue with her, because she can't argue whatsoever when she refuses to even try to understand any word I use at all. Yes, I could attempt to keep defining word ad infinitum, but that wouldn't do any good. Sense, understanding, intuition--they have to come in somewhere. And I get the feeling that Rosa will refuse these things as long as I try to argue them. There is literally no amount of definition I could ever do to make Rosa satisfied, because of this denial of communication.

My example was a broad one, and yes, it could be applied to any of those things you said. It was simply cognition, and I didn't even bring in truth or falsity or possibility of the objectivity of what was being cognized. Again, you have to try to get the idea or at least attempt to see what I'm saying to get an inkling of it. You'll probably respond to this with that quote about "Hegelism" being a mental disease. Whatever, but I don't think anyone will be convinced that I'm trying to get you to believe, rather than simply asking for communicative honesty.

I have indeed studied a year of analytic philosophy, Rosa, and I think it's bunk.

Edit: Wittgenstein's self-understanding of his philosophy as not-philosophy doesn't exactly answer the criticism...

[helot]

Since apparently all words are too vague for Rosa, I will assume she has absolutely no ability to get the "sense" of anything at all, no intuition, and no ability to communicate. In conclusion, I can no longer argue with her, because she can't argue whatsoever when she refuses to even try to understand any word I use at all

You know the burden is on you right? You cant blame someone else for not understanding what you say when you use words no one outside of a tiny little circle knows and then not bother to define it. Ofc its not just you, this occurs throughout philosophy. I like to call it trickery.

[$lim_$weezy]

Words like "thing" or "collection" are, I think, intuitively understandable, at least on the level at which I was speaking. The burden is on both of us. Specifically, it is on Rosa to try to understand my communications.

[helot]

Words like "thing" or "collection" are, I think, intuitively understandable, at least on the level at which I was speaking. The burden is on both of us. Specifically, it is on Rosa to try to understand my communications.

Yet no one outside of a tiny circle has even come across the word "cognize".


You're wrong, it's not on the person you're trying to communicate with to understand what you're saying it's on you to communicate your meaning as accurately as possible so that the other person understands. You can't shift the burden over to the listener, it has to be on the speaker. You might as well not even bother to try to communicate something complex with others if you don't realise this.

[$lim_$weezy]

Are you kidding me? The burden is on both of us. If the other person doesn't want to understand, and doesn't try, then they won't be able to understand. Rosa specifically said words like "thing" or "collection" are vague, saying she doesn't know what I'm talking about. "Cognize" is not a tiny-circle word, and even then, it wouldn't matter, because clearly Rosa is able to understand the word (you see her vocabulary), but is not trying to understand it because we're in an argument.

If I'm in an argument with someone, and they don't even try to understand, just saying everything I say is too vague, even words like "thing" or "collection", then what am I supposed to do? Is it then my fault that I'm not being clear enough?

Do you know what a "collection" of things is? Of course you do. And so does Rosa. But she won't admit it due to the argument. At least, this is my interpretation.

[Leftsolidarity]

Hahaha I actually stumbled across this site maybe a year or 2 ago and just found it confusing but interesting since I hadn't heard such criticisms before. Now that I go back and read them I know why, because they are ridiculous pseudo-scientific criticisms most of which don't even deal with Dialetical Materialism. Not to mention pretty self-obsessed. Oh, what a martyr in the struggle against ruling class Dialetical Materialism Rosa is. :rolleyes:

I hope this earns me a spot on her replies so there is more ridiculous self-obsessed pseudo-scientific nonsense to read on the internet.

[Leftsolidarity]

I hope this earns me a spot on her replies so there is more ridiculous self-obsessed pseudo-scientific nonsense to read on the internet.

Well hot diggity dog it did :laugh:

I had to google "plonker", though. Not to up on my slang apparently. I'm curious as to what better names people have for me.

[helot]

Are you kidding me? The burden is on both of us. If the other person doesn't want to understand, and doesn't try, then they won't be able to understand. Rosa specifically said words like "thing" or "collection" are vague, saying she doesn't know what I'm talking about. "Cognize" is not a tiny-circle word, and even then, it wouldn't matter, because clearly Rosa is able to understand the word (you see her vocabulary), but is not trying to understand it because we're in an argument.

If I'm in an argument with someone, and they don't even try to understand, just saying everything I say is too vague, even words like "thing" or "collection", then what am I supposed to do? Is it then my fault that I'm not being clear enough?

Do you know what a "collection" of things is? Of course you do. And so does Rosa. But she won't admit it due to the argument. At least, this is my interpretation.


You understand their point right? For DM to be valid it has to be comprehensive and clear otherwise its meaningless.



I've not taken a position on dialectics, i've not looked into it much but this thread is hilarious and definitely doesn't pull me towards DM

[$lim_$weezy]

Yes helot I understand the point. You did not reply to me, simply restated what you'd said before.

Edit: Maybe I've been taking this too seriously. Oh well, no matter how I stop debating I'm sure it will be further proof of Rosa's correctness.

[mybloodisred]

Dialectical materialism is the philosophy of the modern world. It is the secular, science-based, reasoned view of the universe. It should be universal, across any kind of economic or political system. The other option is admitting that there is supernatural in the world.

The great thing about dialectical materialism is that it is the only logical way of viewing the world/universe, too. Using the supernatural or the spiritual to say that our mind plays a huge part or that it is all a construct of the mind is all cool when you're not actually trying to run a society. The only thing that matters in economics and politics is the matter.

Marx thought of this after the industrial revolution. He saw how easy machines can make people's lives and the only way to improve our lives is to improve technology. The best way to do this is to view the world as completely material. That is the only way you will have the ability to fully utilize resources and make progress. (in an environmentally friendly way, of course)

So I don't know what the fuck that guy is talking about.

[Admiral Swagmeister G-Funk]

Anyone who doubts this allegation can test it with the following experiment: the very next Orthodox Trotskyist [OT] you meet, try telling him/her that the Stalinists and Maoists also use the dialectic. Then, the very next Stalinist/Maoist you meet, try telling her/him that OTs use the dialectic, too. Try the same with the Maoists/Stalinists in relation to the Stalinists/Maoists. Extend this impromptu survey and permute the name of every tendency or group you can think of, telling each that all their opponents also accept and use the dialectic. Unless you are incredibly unlucky, you will be told the same thing over and over: "Those other guys misuse/distort/ignore the 'dialectical method'; they have all adopted wooden, formulaic abstractions, yada, yada...". - from the site.

I'd say that is the dialectic. We're talking about a unity of opposites and if you take the method far enough, you will find a lot of irony. It seems that this person's project is based on a strict analytical method which shares that particular arrogance of analytical philosophy, which assumes that it can prove anything with certain logical formulas or whatever. Another irony is that the dialectical view would deny the whole basis of this person's theory, due to this very same unity of opposites. The writer is justifying dialectics through their own 'negation' of it. Many wasted years or a wonderful work of art?

The dialectic itself justified the bastardizations of Marxism in the 20th century - 'you may not be interested in the dialectic, but the dialectic is interested in you'. These phenomena resulted from the contradictions of an emerging, global, industrialized world and the spread of capitalism across this world - the Soviets barely utilized the dialectic to justify themselves but, ironically, the dialectic justified their existence, due to the objective conditions that surrounded them. I always say that the Soviet Union essentially had its own version of an industrial revolution, later than other parts of Europe, and did so in a shorter amount of time and under the guise of 'socialism'. How is this historical occurrence inexplicable through a dialectical analysis? In fact, dialectics explain it perfectly, because it highlights the contradictions that led to this event and contradictions are what underpin the dialectical mode of analysis. The dialectical relations we are discussing exist, mostly, beyond human agency anyway so it is futile to discuss dialectical materialism in relation to how it has been utilized by various political systems. In fact, we can see a dialectical relationship between the productive forces within certain socio-historical contexts and the ideology that resulted from them - this, again, is the dialectic. The unity of opposites between Stalinist Russia and the 'Marxism' that developed is a dialectical relationship, which is not solely based on either the ideology of the ruling class or the socio-economic conditions of the period but is rather a result of the dialectical relationship between the two factors, as well as many others. Dialectics are relational - we use them to understand relations between phenomena and these relations exist independently of our analysis, we merely conceptualize them in order to understand society. This is where Marx is misunderstood: on the one hand he was a philosopher and on the other he was a polemicist. Marxism is both philosophical and political and these aspects of Marxism aren't necessarily coherent with one another (hence the fact that there are both Stalinists and Trotskyists, while both make claims to the dialectical method).

This is why Marxism isn't always 'right' and nor should it be, it is a toolkit that we use in order to understand societies. I reckon that this person either doesn't truly understand Marxism or is trying to rewrite it in a way that fits their analytical viewpoint. Can you see the dialectic here? The Marxist denouncing dialectical materialism - the unity of opposites.

I should point out that I'm not a Marxist as such but that I have been reading Marx for years and he acts as a foundation for a lot of my philosophy. I'd also hazard a guess that the person we're talking about hasn't read many of the developments in Marxist theory, such as Althusser's work (off-the-top-of-my-head example), which allow us to explore the concepts of Marxism more intricately and in relation to social conditions which exist beyond Marx and Engel's original conceptions of society.

'Dialectic thought is an attempt to break through the coercion of logic by its own means.' - Theodor Adorno. Moreover, the dialectic doesn't belong to anybody and neither do the languages of philosophy in themselves, hence it is futile to try and take such a hardline analytical method to the question of dialectical materialism in the attempt to refute it. Dialectical materialism isn't logic and logic isn't necessarily a good thing in itself - anything that attempts to simplify complex phenomena down to small statements is potentially dangerous. As Marx put it: 'every idea is pregnant with its contrary.'. In that sense, we should be weary of trying to summarize phenomena through formulaic language and the dialectical method doesn't do this. In fact, Marx (or Engels) said that 'things are in a constant state of flux and motion.'. That is the dialectic and that is Marxism - it isn't easily written into a logical formula because it is always subject to change. That is why Marxism is historical and that is why the Marxist mode of analysis is always constant and continual - that is the dialectical method and that is why so many 'Marxists' have got it wrong, because they don't understand change. The person we are discussing in this thread seems to be even worse, given that they are completely rigid and dogmatic in their assumptions. Another irony which makes my case here is that Marx would probably laugh in the face of many of the people who claim to adhere to his theories today, given that they don't understand the flux and motion, inherent in society and history, which generate changes - changes in objective reality as well as ideology.

Claiming that you have 'negated' dialectical materialism through discourse is as nonsensical as the dialectical relationship between Marxism and the Soviet Union, ironically enough. And if, as we're being told, dialectical materialism is futile, then so is the process of negating it. Again, many wasted years or a wonderful work of art.

Philosophy isn't dead but it does need to grow up and take its head out of its arse. The analytical side is arrogant and this arrogance is a barrier to the development of our understanding of the world as it assumes that it is right and that everyone else is wrong. Marxism's greatest legacy is the fact that it has the capacity to be fluid, in fact, it has the duty to be fluid in that the dialectical method recognizes change - 'negating' this view is 'negating' change, which contradicts the revolutionary aspect of Marxian thought.

[Hyacinth]

Rosa has kept up with this thread and has tried to respond to the new comments. You can find it here: http://anti-dialectics.co.uk/Dialectical_confusion_2.htm

[blake 3:17]

Well hot diggity dog it did :laugh:

I had to google "plonker", though. Not to up on my slang apparently. I'm curious as to what better names people have for me.


Pezzankee-cuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuulonka

[blake 3:17]

Rosa has kept up with this thread and has tried to respond to the new comments. You can find it here: http://anti-dialectics.co.uk/Dialectical_confusion_2.htm

Apparently we're all too sane to care.

[Thirsty Crow]

Comrades, I was debating on another forum earlier with some liberals and libertarians about capitalism, and one of them pointed me to this website in an attempt to discredit Dialectical Materialism (a site owned by a self-proclaimed Marxist). http://www.anti-dialectics.co.uk/Anti-D_For_Dummies%2001.htm#So,_What_Is_DM

What do you guys make of this? Personally, I think this dude vulgarizes DM into being some 'deterministic' philosophy (even though DM is anti-dogmatic by its very essence) in his attempt to discredit it. In my opinion, DM is the backbone of Marxism, and to take it out of Marxism is an abandonment of it, since Marx and Engels clearly used dialectics in almost all their work. What are your guys thoughts? Sorry if this site has been posted before but I'm really curious.
The person in question is a Marxist, a Trot to be more precise.

I don't think there is any vulgarization going on over there. On the contrary, I find the resources on the site extremely useful, and the analyses fairly rigorous and accurate. Maybe you ought to pay more attention to the actual content of the arguments.

[Hit The North]

You're wrong, it's not on the person you're trying to communicate with to understand what you're saying it's on you to communicate your meaning as accurately as possible so that the other person understands.

This is certainly an anti-dialectical way of looking at it ;)1

[Hit The North]

Edit: Maybe I've been taking this too seriously. Oh well, no matter how I stop debating I'm sure it will be further proof of Rosa's correctness.

Why don't you go here (********************************.php) where you can debate Rosa directly. She's even a mod on this site and has quite a following.

EDIT: forget the link, Revleft in her Jehovah style jealously won't allow any similar site to be linked to :rolleyes:. Rev/erend Forum or somethin'.

[Strannik]

I understand "dialectical materialism" as a method for constructing language. We humans are processing the world through concepts and words. In order to further our understanding, we need to get new ones from somewhere. But where? The outside material universe does not come with equipped labels. So, to further our understanding we have to create new theoretical, ideological, philosophical language-constructs. There is no guarantee that these constructs have any use - this is determined ultimately in the practice. Nevertheless, as we try to develop new approaches, it is sometimes useful to "throw the baby out with the bathwater" and replace it with a completely contradictory theory, hoping to get some new insight into the nature of reality. This, I think, is how Marx understood his theoretical method: he is generally deliberately trying to provoke theoretical debate while keeping in mind, that actual reality is the final judge of any language-based idealistic model.

Unfortunately, both "DM" supporters and opponents often confuse the langugage with actual reality. To think that laws of ideological evolution describe the actual underlying reality seems to me ridiculous. More so, when we research purely physical phenomenons with no social component.

Sadly, I don't know what Rosa L thinks about my approach.

[Anglo-Saxon Philistine]

I think this comrade has read the short version of my argument (to be found here, a link added to the OP). This is about as clever as criticising Das Kapital on the basis of having only read Wages, Price and Profit!

I think most of us work under the assumption that people can abbreviate their own arguments without distorting them. Furthermore, if it is obvious from the short version of an argument that the author does not understand the subject matter, this is a valid grounds for criticism.

Even so, I have read other sections of the site, though I haven't finished reading most of them. All of them contain glaring errors, and most hinge on a blatant Hegelisation of Marxism.

Rosa objects that I have not defined quality. I am surprised that someone who, as far as I can tell from the archived discussion, constantly references Wittgenstein would ask someone to define terms that everyone knows how to use. Even so, I think the definition Rosa cites is crude, but adequate.

Qualitative change, so to say, is a process whereby one object becomes another kind of object. Now, Rosa objects that, for example, a quantity of liquid water is the same kind of object as ice. Well, yes and no. It is the same kind of object with respect to its chemical properties. But in other aspects, the region of the material world that had been ice becomes another kind of object when the ice melts.

The criterion of identity is not the same when discussing the various aspects of matter. Chemically, water vapour is the same kind of thing as ice. But in terms of the distinction between gases and condensed matter, water vapour is the same kind of thing as iodine vapours.

There are, of course, alternative definitions, that reproduce the same correct common usage of the terms "quantitative" and "qualitative". Quantitative change, for example, is change whose endpoints can be nontrivially and nonarbitrarily associated with a certain quantity - for example, changes in position can be nontrivially associated with quadruples of numbers that describe the coordinates of the starting point and the endpoint in some set of coordinates. Qualitative changes can be associated with such quantities only trivially (i.e. someone could arbitrarily assign the number 1 to one allotropic state and 2 to another - but this is hardly informative).

Rosa furthermore objects that they distinguish Marxist and Hegelian dialectic. Nonetheless, they still interpret Marxist dialectic through an idealist, Hegelian lens. Let us return to the issue of cats and in particular the stubborn refusal of male cats to change into female cats. Rosa continues to insinuate that this is a counterexample to the law of the interpenetration of opposites. But, again, is this materialism? When Engels talks about opposites, he talks about actually existing tendencies, processes, things (things can also be reduced to tendencies in this context), not about opposite ideas. Are there perhaps male and female cats in every cat? Rosa claims to "refute" my objection in her Essay Seven, but here the confusion is even more evident. The essay talks about a person struggling with their own corpse. We who do not believe in ghosts must object that a person and their corpse can not exist simultaneously.

The confusion that was apparent in Rosa's comments about identity is also present in Essay Seven. The essay, railing against what it terms the "tendency objection", denies that tendencies can be causal agents because their effects can also be traced to other causes. But this assumes that the causal history of a process can be described only in one way. This is obviously mistaken. It is legitimate to say that water, for example, boils because the fluctuations of the kinetic energy of water molecules have increased. It is also perfectly legitimate to say that water boils because it has been heated (for example).

Subsequently in the essay, Rosa attempts to demonstrate that dialectics is incompatible with change. Superficially, the argument looks plausible, but like many superficially plausible arguments, it ends up proving too much. One could take any number of statements - e.g. "motion occurs because potential energy changes into kinetic energy" - and apply the same argument. Potential energy changes into kinetic energy? Why, that must mean that potential energy already exists etc. etc. - the key to the mystification is that all of the potential energy does not need to change into kinetic energy and disappear. Opposite tendencies can strengthen each other in complex interplay without disappearing. But this is materialism, and Rosa, with their O* and O**, is again struggling with opposite ideas and not opposite tendencies in the development of material phenomena.

Rosa again turns to cats, this time complaining that cats do not turn into non-cats. And they do so after citing Lenin on the unity of opposites. Again, Rosa ignores that dialectics is about contradictory development, and talks about the logical negation of cats. This is nonsense. Considering a cat as a unity of opposites means identifying contradictory tendencies in the development of a cat, understanding how they give rise to a temporarily stable configuration, and analysing how their struggle will destroy this temporarily stable state. Anabolic processes are not contradictory to anything that is not an anabolic process, but to catabolic processes.

Staying on the topic of cats, Rosa asks if the male and female populations of cats struggle with each other and change into one another. Well, yes. Sexual dynamics involves the complex interplay between these two forces, and disturbances in the trend tend to be evened out as an excess of male cats, for example, results in the male population declining and so on, and so on.

Rosa objects that they do not believe Hegelian logic can be reduced to the triad of thesis, antithesis and synthesis. Fair enough. But then they have no grounds to claim that a particular organism disproves dialectical materialism because it has four stages instead of three. In all of these stages, there is a retention of certain forms associated with previous stages.

As for my "brave words", well, perhaps Rosa's crankish tendencies, creative formatting and tendency to repeat themselves might be tolerable, but the sectarianism and the subpolitical insults are far too much. The entire site is a third-campist-liberal hate letter to orthodox Trotskyism and our refusal to dream up new classes and to take an anticommunist line. But, surprisingly, we orthodox Trotskyists are abbreviated fairly straightforwardly, as OT. Maoist dialecticians are, according to Rosa, MIST. Meanwhile, Stalinist dialecticians are STD. Meanwhile, and this is the absolute nadir of the infantile humour of the site, absolute idealism is - AIDS. Seriously? Someone that calls themselves a communist can not only imply that "male and female" are absolutely opposed, but also make AIDS jokes?

[Hit The North]

Unfortunately, both "DM" supporters and opponents often confuse the langugage with actual reality. To think that laws of ideological evolution describe the actual underlying reality seems to me ridiculous. More so, when we research purely physical phenomenons with no social component.


I'm not sure what you mean by "laws of ideological evolution" but what would be the point of developing a method of analysis that does not "describe the actual underlying reality"? You'd be better off writing sci-fi or magical realism. Are you suggesting that the "underlying reality" is unknowable? If so, that would spell the end for any scientific investigation of either society or nature.


Sadly, I don't know what Rosa L thinks about my approach.So why don't you go and ask her?

[blake 3:17]

For anybody trying to get their head around or through Hegelian thought I unexpectedly enjoyed Understanding Hegelianism by Robert Sinnerbrink. It's a series of short exegetical pieces on major European thinkers influenced by Hegel and has some very incisive criticisms of them.

[Comrade #138672]

Sadly, I don't know what Rosa L thinks about my approach.Just wait. She will post a reply on her site within a day or so. She is like a predator always waiting to devour another dialectician.

[Taboo Tongue]

I don't use Dialectics.
I have a general grasp of them. But 9/10 I find them to be a waste of time when trying to explain something. When they are useful, I use them.
But more often then not... they are intellectual drivel, that I don't have time for.
Empiricism has proven much more fruitful for me. Because I don't ever find myself trying to put a circle through a square shaped hole [like I do with Dialectics].

Thanks for posting the link, I was linking for it a couple months ago.
I remember liking it a few years ago, though it was a little long and dry for myself.

[Anglo-Saxon Philistine]

Rosa's responses are becoming increasingly insubstantial; their latest response to "Semendayaev", who I can only assume is me, consists mostly of Rosa restating their previous claims.

(Note that I use the pronoun "they" since I have absolutely no idea what gender Rosa identifies as, and I don't care to guess.)

I have stated that Rosa Hegelianises the materialist dialectics; to this they reply that Lenin does so as well. This is, in fact, a direct untruth. Throughout his life, Lenin struggled ("and turned into?" Rosa might add - but more on that later) against Hegelianisers of Marxism like Lukacs. As far as I can tell, Rosa's only source for this bizarre claim is one sentence in Lenin's conspectus of the Logic, to the effect that many Marxists (probably Plekhanov and Orthodox, and the school around them) have failed to understand the Marxist dialectic because they have failed to understand Hegel. But this does not mean that the Marxist dialectic is Hegelian; understanding the origin of a theory is important, but this does not mean that the theory is its origin. In any case, it's a strongly-worded sentence. But what else can one expect? It wasn't exactly meant for public consumption.

Rosa also pretends to not understand how words are commonly used. For example, they pretend that chemical identity is the only possible criterion for identity of two objects (in which case graphite and graphene are the same thing, and the world can save a fortune on new semiconductor technology). And when I point out that there are multiple criteria of identity, they accuse me of being hopelessly vague. But this is nonsense. Even small children realise that there are multiple criteria of identity, so that liquids are all the same as liquids (whether in the mass or count sense, it doesn't matter), and different insofar as their chemical composition or physical properties or whatnot are different.

The same confusion - or willful ignorance, as the case might be - is apparent in their reply to $lim_$weezy, when they act as if they do not understand that a hand is a thing, and that fingers, etc., are also things.

In the next paragraph, they object that I do not explain what a "kind of thing" means, even though the paragraph they quote does not mention the term, and in fact provides an alternate definition of quantitative (and, indirectly, qualitative) change that does not rely on kinds.

And then Rosa has the gall to accuse me of "Mickey Mouse Science". I wonder if Rosa thinks that scientists, before they start their calculations, sit down and try to define what a "thing" is. In fact, Rosa's view of science is hopelessly idealist, in both meanings of that term.

The rest of the response is, as I've said, simply a restatement of Rosa's previous claims, often with long citations from their essays. The chief problem of Rosa's account, as I see it is this: what they term the "dialectical classics" state that tendencies, processes, things etc. struggle with one another and change into the tendencies, processes, etc., they struggle with.

Alright. But this does not mean that every individual process or thing thereby becomes "their opposite". Rosa is not keeping track of the level at which dialectical processes occur; indeed, they are not keeping track of the level in which contradictions play out.

For example, is it the case that the struggle between the proletariat and the bourgeoisie is an individual one? No, that is absurd. The struggle occurs at the level of society. Likewise, the struggle between the male and the female population of cats takes place at the level of an entire population of that species. Therefore, individual cats do not change sexes (since "male" and "female" are not contradictory tendencies that exist within cats). And individual proletarians only rarely become bourgeois and vice versa (and this is due to forces that, again, operate on the level of society).

One tendency "changing into" another does not necessarily mean that the entire tendency disappears and turns into its opposite - rather, some quantitative measure associated with one tendency is diminished, and a corresponding measure associated with another is increased. Again, kinetic and potential energy are good examples.

When applying the dialectical method, it is always important to see what the real contradictory tendencies are, what level they operate on, and how their struggle results in transient unities.

And what of the objection that tendencies can't be causal entities? Well, Rosa has simply restated that objection, missing the point of my argument entirely. But we do talk about tendencies being causes, even in science, for example the tendency toward the extremisation of energy, inertia, etc. etc.

Finally, I am not complaining about Rosa's, well, colourful vocabulary; the only thing I complain about is the AIDS joke (of course it's not "about" AIDS, Rosa, but it still trivialises the rotten social attitudes toward that disease that we, as socialists, have a duty to fight). I am simply saying why I think Rosa's site is the leftish (or rather, liberal and Stalinophobic) version of the Time Cube site.

[Anti-White]

... one of them pointed me to this website in an attempt to discredit Dialectical Materialism (a site owned by a self-proclaimed Marxist ...

Can't argue that it is a contradiction.

[Manar]

These arguments don't sound very convincing.

[RedMaterialist]

What specific, practical use is dialectics?