What is Dialectical Materialism? [Archive]

CyM

22nd September 2013, 18:35

No it wasn't.

Perhaps you're thinking of historical materialism.
If you are to make an assertion like this, you will need to do it in more than two sentences, as it flies in the face of 160 years of written Marxism.

Hungrydeer: Dialectical materialism is the philosophy developed by Marx and Engels. Historical Materialism is the application of that philosophy to history.

It is not a simple thing to explain, but I will try to give you a basic idea. I'm sure you've heard the idea that "nothing ever changes". This is, in fact, the ruling philosophy, and has been for a long period.

The philosophy most people hold, even if they are not conscious of it, is of a neat and orderly universe without contradiction, that things are static, and when things do change it is very slowly and gradually. Radical change is held to be impossible.

Only this is not true. Nature shows us that, in fact, everything is filled with contradiction. The tectonic plates move against each other, slowly building up pressure, until at one point the equilibrium is broken, and one slips over the other in an earthquake. Magma builds up under the crust, more and more pressure builds, and then one day in a suden outburst, the crust is blown open and a volcano erupts.

This is kind of the simplified idea of what dialectical materialism is, this is present at every level.

For most things, it is not necessary to think of things in this way, contradictory forces, quantitative gradual buildup leading to a sudden revolutionary qualitative change, the formation of a new equilibrium which starts the buildup all over, etc... you don't need these details when examining a baking recipe for example.

But for complex systems, weather, geology, economics, etc... you cannot ignore it.

Especially the building contradictions between the classes and the coming social earthquake.

We cannot predict when, but if the pressure is building and there is no outlet, we know there will be a catastrophic explosion in the system.

This is the revolutionary philosophy Marx and Engels put forward, everything changes, and all that comes into being must pass away.

Anyway, I can give more detail when I get out of work, but I figured before the specific guiding lines of the philosophy, I would let you know that general idea. It is a guide to prevent lazy thought that is comfortable with the way things are, thinks they are permanent, and doesn't understand the explosive potential building below the surface.

Thirsty Crow

22nd September 2013, 18:42

This is the revolutionary philosophy Marx and Engels put forward, everything changes, and all that comes into being must pass away.

If that's the revolutionary philosophy, then Marx and Engels were a couple thousand years too late, since Heraclitus put forward this idea ages ago (how come a member of the ancient ruling class managed to come to revolutionary positions?).

Or it may just be that Marx, as opposed to Engels (later work, to be sure), never actually did produce something like a philosophical theory explaining, or claiming it does, everything in existence.

And this caveat

For most things, it is not necessary to think of things in this way, contradictory forces, quantitative gradual buildup leading to a sudden revolutionary qualitative change, the formation of a new equilibrium which starts the buildup all over, etc... you don't need these details when examining a baking recipe for example....actually does away with the notion of a unified philosophical theory. And of course, the more brazen variants of diamat actually claim to explain everything (one of the more embarrassing exponents was Engels).

Rafiq

22nd September 2013, 18:56

Links, do you not see the difference between ideology (which is class based) and the legitimate study of objective reality (which only carries the rhetoric of a class ideology)

Thirsty Crow

22nd September 2013, 19:17

Links, do you not see the difference between ideology (which is class based) and the legitimate study of objective reality (which only carries the rhetoric of a class ideology)
The relevance of the question being, what?

Though to answer it, yeah, I see the difference.

CyM

22nd September 2013, 19:17

If that's the revolutionary philosophy, then Marx and Engels were a couple thousand years too late, since Heraclitus put forward this idea ages ago (how come a member of the ancient ruling class managed to come to revolutionary positions?).
You're being purposely dense. Of course my rapid and basic explanation of dialectical materialism did not go into enough detail to show marx's unique contributions do the dialectic. Yes dialectical philosophy has been expounded by the great greek philosophers who are the basis for all of philosophy: dialectical and formal, materialist and idealist. This is not an argument for formal logic, and it is fairly dishonest of you to bring in the class position of the only people who had any time at all to develop thought during slave society as an argument against dialectics. Formal logic, the denial of dialectics, was developed by the slave owners too, so that brings us back to zero and no closer to understanding anything.

Or it may just be that Marx, as opposed to Engels (later work, to be sure), never actually did produce something like a philosophical theory explaining, or claiming it does, everything in existence.
Ah, this old myth developed in the stale atmosphere of the university. Marx and engels wrote everything together. There is no division between the two. Engels first went into detail on dialectics in Anti-Duhring, and Marx wrote an entire chapter in that book.

Either Marx was an idiot, and didn't realize something he disagreed with was in that book, or he noticed it and decided to be an opportunist and say nothing, or he was in agreement with it.

Considering Marx was a student of Hegel, who resurrected dialectics, I'd say option c is most likely. Or else he was an idiot, or politically dishonest.

Marx also intended to write a philosophical work as deep as Capital, but died before he could.

Finally, these claims of a disagreement between Marx and Engels have no factual evidence. You would think Marx would mention it in the enormous amount of letters between them, just once at least.

There is not one single letter supporting this claim. It is a lie, pure and simple, peddled by university professors who have stripped Marx of everything revolutionary.

And this caveat

...actually does away with the notion of a unified philosophical theory. And of course, the more brazen variants of diamat actually claim to explain everything (one of the more embarrassing exponents was Engels).
Dialectics is a philosophy for understanding the world. The basis of formal logic, A equals A, is technically incorrect. Even those two A's on your screen are different. A as in a specific measure of sugar is also not correct, because the same kilo measured twice has actually undergone exchange with the air, shifted, electrons have moved, etc... but the point is it is adequate for simple operations and everyday tasks.

It is completely useless for looking at complex processes. Because A changes, develops, intertwines with and interacts with B, changes places, etc... we have to take into account an enormous amount of variables and figure out what are the main conflicting tendencies, how is the equilibrium between them and where is it going, etc...

I can analyze how much sugar I put in my tea this way, but it is pointless. That being said, I do know there is a tipping point where more sugar becomes too much sugar, and my tea is qualitatively ruined. A dialectical transformation. But you are again, being intentionally difficult instead of presenting a real argument, so we'll leave it there.

Yuppie Grinder

22nd September 2013, 19:21

Links, do you not see the difference between ideology (which is class based) and the legitimate study of objective reality (which only carries the rhetoric of a class ideology)

Science is subject to ideology.

Yuppie Grinder

22nd September 2013, 19:22

As LinksRadical already pointed out, the popular summary of Hegel's dialectics is actually Fiche's dialectics. I haven't gotten around to reading Hegel yet, but there are lots of good lectures on him on youtube.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7Hh8OGEsmqA
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2MsNyR-epBM

Thirsty Crow

22nd September 2013, 19:34

You're being purposely dense.
That is not the case.

Yes dialectical philosophy has been expounded by the great greek philosophers who are the basis for all of philosophy: dialectical and formal, materialist and idealist. This is not an argument for formal logic, and it is fairly dishonest of you to bring in the class position of the only people who had any time at all to develop thought during slave society as an argument against dialectics. Is it dishonest to take seriously that famous proposition that ideas do not spring from nothing but are embedded in the social discourse which sees antagonistic positioning of classes? Is it dishonest to seriously consider that the ruling ideas are those reflecting upon the position and interests of the ruling class?

We might ditch that as well, right?

As for materialist philosophy, I'd advise you to read The German Ideology, especially the part dealing with Feuerbach. But to be as rapid and quick as you, nope, materialist philosophy doesn't get us even an inch closer to real human relations.

Formal logic, the denial of dialectics, was developed by the slave owners too, so that brings us back to zero and no closer to understanding anything.
Care to show us just what does formal logic deny?

But again, you merely repeat the tired old phrases. To briefly explain, if dialectical materialism explains everything, the essence of every single thing and process, then of course formal logic doesn't even compete with it, so it can't deny any damn thing, since it deals with propositions and inferences from it (the conditions of validity and truth function/value), in a nutshell.

And yes, your second step is to claim that formal logic operates with fixed concepts and categories, and therefore views the world as static, and not dynamic. See above for the explanation of the field of application of FL, and to add, no, this is not so (it might be if you condemn all of language, natural and artificial, as doing the exact same thing).

Either Marx was an idiot, and didn't realize something he disagreed with was in that book, or he noticed it and decided to be an opportunist and say nothing, or he was in agreement with it.
Yeah, perhaps, perhaps.

The point being that seminal works of Marx do not contain even an ounce of that mystification called dialectics (laws of dialectics and so on). You can read Das Kapital for instance, through this lens, but I could care less.

Dialectics is a philosophy for understanding the world. The basis of formal logic, A equals A, is technically incorrect. Even those two A's on your screen are different. Wow boy, that's precious.

How are these A's different? By merely claiming so?

And to clarify, this "A" in fl doesn't refer to anything other than a proposition, a statement. So, would you wish to claim that it is possible to claim that "a table in X's room is black and not black" at the same time?

EDIT: and just to explain, this dichotomy of formal logic and dialectical materialism is completely bogus. The crucial dichotomy is between historical materialism and dialectical materialism. The former being a theory of history, the real relations of human beings, the latter a philosophical theory of everything.

And another thing. It is irrelevant whether Marx agreed with this gibberish or not. Or should we simply engage in arguments from authority? What is relevant is the way society was studied, by employing neat shorthand philosophical formulae or not. I don't think this was the case. It shouldn't be, that's for sure, in contemporary Marxism.

Rafiq

22nd September 2013, 21:30

Science is subject to ideology.

Yes, it is in a way. But in many respects there are not multiple objective realities for different ideologies (things outside class relations, for one, nature

Art Vandelay

22nd September 2013, 21:44

Care to show us just what does formal logic deny?

I'm genuinely confused here, which is why I'm asking, but are you suggesting that there is no impassible difference between formal logic and Marxian dialectics (ie: incompatible methodologies)?

But again, you merely repeat the tired old phrases. To briefly explain, if dialectical materialism explains everything, the essence of every single thing and process, then of course formal logic doesn't even compete with it, so it can't deny any damn thing, since it deals with propositions and inferences from it (the conditions of validity and truth function/value), in a nutshell.

No Dialectical Materialist would ever claim such a thing. Dialectics isn't some hidden law that unveils the secrets of the universe. It explains nothing, teaches nothing, etc...its merely a paradigm which brings into focus the full range of the fluidity and interrelation, of any given subject of study.

Anyways I want to comment more actually, since dialectics is specifically something I've been studying lately, but don't really have the time at the moment since I could get called back to work any second, so I'll be back later. Also great posts CYM.

Thirsty Crow

22nd September 2013, 22:19

I'm genuinely confused here, which is why I'm asking, but are you suggesting that there is no impassible difference between formal logic and Marxian dialectics (ie: incompatible methodologies)?I'd first have to see what Marxian dialectics deals with. If it is meant as a social theory of a particular kind, then there cannot be an impassable difference since as I sad logic doesn't deal with anything other than inferences from propositions.

You could probably mold an argument of Marxist social theory in the language of modern formal logic and show the validity of conclusions.

But to reiterate my question, can anyone show textual evidence gathered from texts dealing with logic which support the allegation that formal logic can't cope with change?

No Dialectical Materialist would ever claim such a thing. Dialectics isn't some hidden law that unveils the secrets of the universe. It explains nothing, teaches nothing, etc...its merely a paradigm which brings into focus the full range of the fluidity and interrelation, of any given subject of study.
Engels, Dialectics of Nature. Just an example. The postulation of the universal laws of all motion. Valid every time, everywhere, for whatever, human thought, physical objects, social change.

If you reject this, jolly good. But what's dialectical then?

Interrelation? Good, there are interrelated phenomena and processes in a given field. The dialectical relationship as mutual interaction - A influences a change in B, and B thus acts in a different way upon A and so on insofar as they remain connected in their specific way? Great. When the given are in fact interrelated.

But this modesty and common sense is hardly all there is to the famed dialectics. It has taken an altogether different form and role. In most cases, I think it has been presented as a method of discovery of universal laws of motion.

For instance, see CyM's claims about plate tectonics and nature in general.

Nature shows us that, in fact, everything is filled with contradiction.
So, a deer in Siberia is filled with contradiction. Whatever that means (it's so vague it precludes the actual possibility of assessing its correctness), whatever the actual relevance.

So, your idea that dialectics doesn't explain, doesn't claim anything seems to be false.

But then again, there are as many dialectics as there are dialecticians. No wonder, with that super vague philosophy.

Maybe you'd like to argue that paradigms in general do not explain anything. It would be hard to see then why there's this thing as a paradigm shift (or maybe stick to an ultra-relativist notion of there actually being no significant knowledge based, explanatory differences). Ultimately, if quantum mechanics "replaced" Newtonian mechanics, it did so on which basis? Does quantum mechanics explain anything?

Hit The North

22nd September 2013, 23:03

If that's the revolutionary philosophy, then Marx and Engels were a couple thousand years too late, since Heraclitus put forward this idea ages ago (how come a member of the ancient ruling class managed to come to revolutionary positions?).

Is this a serious question? You do understand that Marx, Engels, Kautsky, Lenin, Luxemberg and Trotsky were not, strictly speaking, members of the social class they represented, don't you?

Meanwhile, your wider point is really moot. No one is claiming that Marx and Engels invented dialectics (rather in the same way no one is claiming that Heraclitus pioneered a revolutionary social theory).

Is it dishonest to take seriously that famous proposition that ideas do not spring from nothing but are embedded in the social discourse which sees antagonistic positioning of classes? Is it dishonest to seriously consider that the ruling ideas are those reflecting upon the position and interests of the ruling class?
Not dishonest but we can be too rigid or reductionist in how we apply it. A dose of dialectical subtlety might be in order!

But the notion that dialectics somehow represents ruling class ideology (if that is what you are suggesting, a la Rosa Lichtenstein) is a difficult claim to sustain. In Marx and Engels day, ruling class ideology was rooted in the prejudices of an abstract but fixed human nature: natural social orders and natural instincts to truck and barter, etc. The task of revolutionary theory would have been to attack these prejudices of an eternal capitalist world. To this end, Marx and Engels could legitimately call upon the supporting evidence of science that was increasingly showing that the world, nature, the universe, matter itself, was in motion; not fixed and immutable, but transformative and contingent. The current ideology of the bourgeoisie, neo-liberalism, appeals to similar prejudices: the market has a natural propensity to efficiency; the capital-labour distinction is unquestioned; we are told there is no alternative. As we know, bourgoeis ideology always argues from the point of view of an ahistorical human nature, seeking to naturalise its social order.

There was a period when the Hegelian dialectic was integrated into the self-legitimating discourses of the German ruling class, with the state viewed as the culmination of history - but this was the target of Marx's critique in the 1840s. In fact he revisited the question later in the Afterword to the second German edition of Das Kapital, when he wrote:

In its mystified form, dialectic became the fashion in Germany, because it seemed to transfigure and to glorify the existing state of things. In its rational form it is a scandal and abomination to bourgeoisdom and its doctrinaire professors, because it includes in its comprehension and affirmative recognition of the existing state of things, at the same time also, the recognition of the negation of that state, of its inevitable breaking up; because it regards every historically developed social form as in fluid movement, and therefore takes into account its transient nature not less than its momentary existence; because it lets nothing impose upon it, and is in its essence critical and revolutionary.

The contradictions inherent in the movement of capitalist society impress themselves upon the practical bourgeois most strikingly in the changes of the periodic cycle, through which modern industry runs, and whose crowning point is the universal crisis. That crisis is once again approaching, although as yet but in its preliminary stage; and by the universality of its theatre and the intensity of its action it will drum dialectics even into the heads of the mushroom-upstarts of the new, holy Prusso-German empire.

Source (http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1867-c1/p3.htm)

Thirsty Crow

22nd September 2013, 23:20

Not dishonest but we can be too rigid or reductionist in how we apply it. A dose of dialectical subtlety might be in order!

Which would mean something if I said something along the lines that a ruling class thought form is to be discredited simply and only for it being such. Or if I said that all intellectuals in whichever historical social formation necessarily employ ruling class thought forms.

Regarding the allegation of the ruling class origin of dialectics, I never claimed it was universally and continually the pillar of bourgeois hegemony in the realm of ideas about the world. It has a much older ruling class pedigree than that. But unfortunately, it has proven itself as a veritable ruling class hack job in the case of the fUSSR.

And sure, the point of the alleged natural, eternal and non-changeable bits in the current constellation of ruling ideology is well taken. But there's no need to react to this by clinging to ancient mystification about eternal change and such vague "things", do we?

And about the quoted afterword. Sure, it's immediately obvious that society changes. I maintain, with you, that class antagonism is the most important cause here. Fluid motion. Though, there's no need for a ton of heavily jargonized philosophy for that recognition, still less for a critical examination of said class relations.

If that's all there is to it, but unfortunately it wasn't so for many Marxists, then no problem here.

Zanthorus

22nd September 2013, 23:36

Apparently dialectical materialism is an excuse to keep rehashing the same arguments over and over again with no-one ever emerging any the wiser. These same threads have been popping up intermittently since I first joined this site, and now four years later it's the same thing with even a couple of the same people.

My advice to the OP is to forget about 'dialectical materialism' for now and focus on the less abstract elements of Marxism. If you're really that terribly interested, both sides of this debate have a long and illustrious history going back to Ancient Greece. But you probably won't find much in the way of enlightenment on these boards.

Remus Bleys

22nd September 2013, 23:46

I'm curious Links. Can you give an example of formal logic explaining marxism?

Thirsty Crow

23rd September 2013, 00:04

I'm curious Links. Can you give an example of formal logic explaining marxism?
Formal logic deals with propositions and conditions of the validity of inference.

You can quite literally translate ordinary statements into terms of FL. I'll borrow from the example put forward ages ago:

"At a certain stage of their development, the material productive forces of society come in conflict with the existing relations of production"

The first sentence would be:

(x)(y)Et[Mxt & Ryt -> Cxyt]

Where '(x)' and '(y)' are universal quantifiers; 'E' is the existential quantifier; 't' is a temporal variable (standing for 'a certain stage in development'); 'M( )' is a predicate variable standing for 'material productive forces'; 'R( )' is the same but standing for 'relations of production'; and 'C( )' the same too but standing for '...comes into conflcit with... at that time'; '->' is the implication arrow, i.e., 'if..then'.

But that doesn't help us, does it?

argeiphontes

23rd September 2013, 03:33

I admit I don't have the "capital" to follow parts of this conversation (least of all that ^ LOL), but I'd like to ask a question relating to the deer and the earthquake.

How is it possible to claim that nature is subject to dialectical movement? If Hegelian logic involves the notion (no pun intended) of contradiction, how does contradiction inhere in nature? When I look out the window, I see a complicated process operating according to physics. I see an interconnected and interdependent web of causality, and I don't see how the abstraction of 'contradiction' can be derived from material processes at all, without starting to sound Idealistic.

Thirsty Crow

23rd September 2013, 11:50

CyM

23rd September 2013, 16:25

Thirsty Crow

23rd September 2013, 16:40

This post is a straight up lie.What lie? Did I say anywhere that dialectics was the ideological underpinning of existing and historical reformism? Get yourself together.

I claimed, and have shown, how a specific tenet of dialectics can be used to justify reformism. Nowhere in your little diatribe have you demonstrated that I'm wrong.

Quantity to quality cannot be separated from contradiction. On the contrary, it is the anti-dialectician Bernstein who laid the groundwork for reformism in the "marxist" second international, and his first revision of marxism was to attack dialectics.Am I supposed to read minds or should I merely take a wild guess at how the first sentence relates to the second?

And yeah, I know who Bernstein was. And he was dead wrong, but not for reasons I assume you to be holding him wrong

The quantity to quality is the mounting pressures in the system, which will eventually go from "things are getting bad", to an outbreak of revolution.Why is my application of this universal law of motion wrong? Because you say so?

I cannot imagine a universe where you did not know that that is what Marx and Engels were driving at with their dialectics, I don't think you are stupid.
I don't care for Marx's intentions. The point being that dialectics has no in-built mechanisms to "defend itself" against any goddamn manipulation imaginable (but then again, to my knowledge, Marx never used this alleged universal law of motion to talk about workers' revolution). This is so because, as I argued, it operates with metaphysical statements and its terms and concepts are so vague to be meaningless (but then again, dialecticians claim to be able to explain everything by simply evoking these laws)

So your post is a bald faced slander with no basis. You are intentionally lying to confuse people.Calm yourself down. Take a deep breath. I know righteous rage is a compelling drive, but try to think for a moment.

There is nothing wrong with disagreeing with Dialectical Materialism, but an honest revolutionary never lies about what their opponent is saying. No one learns if you're just making shit up.You're a step away from proclaiming me counter-revolutionary, reformist, pick your own term.

Do it, if it pleases you.

And of course I'm making shit up. That's the beauty of dialectics, as it enables one to do so without any rational restraint. This is my point.

CyM

23rd September 2013, 17:21

That is not the case.

Is it dishonest to take seriously that famous proposition that ideas do not spring from nothing but are embedded in the social discourse which sees antagonistic positioning of classes? Is it dishonest to seriously consider that the ruling ideas are those reflecting upon the position and interests of the ruling class?
It is dishonest to pretend that your philosophy, Formal Logic, is not created by that same class. But after reading your later posts, I realize you have no problem with straight up lying.

Yeah, perhaps, perhaps.

The point being that seminal works of Marx do not contain even an ounce of that mystification called dialectics (laws of dialectics and so on). You can read Das Kapital for instance, through this lens, but I could care less.
All of his works are dialectical, through and through. And Das Kapital is the biggest example, which you realize and admit. But you don't care, because it flies in the face of your lie about Marx and Engels being in conflict on philosophy.

Wow boy, that's precious.

How are these A's different? By merely claiming so?
The photons are flying at you from different angles. A=A is an abstraction, all abstractions are, at base, false. They are adequate, but must be understood within their limits. A is never actually equal to A.

And to clarify, this "A" in fl doesn't refer to anything other than a proposition, a statement. So, would you wish to claim that it is possible to claim that "a table in X's room is black and not black" at the same time?
Black today, slightly closer to grey tomorrow, depending on the lighting. A is never equal to A.

EDIT: and just to explain, this dichotomy of formal logic and dialectical materialism is completely bogus. The crucial dichotomy is between historical materialism and dialectical materialism. The former being a theory of history, the real relations of human beings, the latter a philosophical theory of everything.
There is no dichotomy between Historical Materialism and Dialectical Materialism, this is just an extension of the bourgeois academic lie that Engels and Marx where in conflict over philosophy.

Historical Materialism is simply the Dialectical Materialist analysis of history. Contradiction between classes, the quantitative buildup of pressures, and the outburst of revolution.

And another thing. It is irrelevant whether Marx agreed with this gibberish or not. Or should we simply engage in arguments from authority? What is relevant is the way society was studied, by employing neat shorthand philosophical formulae or not. I don't think this was the case. It shouldn't be, that's for sure, in contemporary Marxism.
More lies. Appeal from authority does not apply to someone trying to deny your appeal from authority.

The academic lies about Engels and Marx being in disagreement on philosophy would not receive so much energy if you didn't want to have the "legitimacy" of being able to say "Marx was never for that, it was only Engels".

You are the one attempting to use Marx as an authority. I simply pointed out that it is a lie that Marx did not put forward dialectics. Once the lie is exposed, now you want to tell me I am appealing to authority? Only because it is inconvenient to you.

Thirsty Crow

23rd September 2013, 17:34

It is dishonest to pretend that your philosophy, Formal Logic, is not created by that same class. But after reading your later posts, I realize you have no problem with straight up lying.
Man you've got some issues.

I have no philosophy (and logic is a part of philosophy, modern formal logic, modal logic, deontic logic being some of its variants).

Concerning human society and history, I accept the materialist conception of history.

All of his works are dialectical, through and through. And Das Kapital is the biggest example, which you realize and admit. But you don't care, because it flies in the face of your lie about Marx and Engels being in conflict on philosophy.
There are mutually conflicting interpretations of what dialectics actually means and entails. In the afterword quoted, there's absolutely nothing that would point to that mysticism of the universal dialectical laws of motion.

The photons are flying at you from different angles. A=A is an abstraction, all abstractions are, at base, false. They are adequate, but must be understood within their limits. A is never actually equal to A.

What the flying photon this all means, no one can tell.

As I said, the law of non-contradiction in logic deals with propositions such as "John's dining room table is black and not black at the same time".

And what with the notion of capital? This is, I suppose, an abstraction according to your use of the word. How is it "at base" (what "base"?) false?

There is no dichotomy between Historical Materialism and Dialectical Materialism, this is just an extension of the bourgeois academic lie that Engels and Marx where in conflict over philosophy.
Something more than the word of the faithful is required here.

More lies. Appeal from authority does not apply to someone trying to deny your appeal from authority.It's argument from authority, not an appeal. This means accepting an argument on sole grounds of it being formulated by a specific person.

And no, I'm not using Marx in this sense. I'm merely highlighting the fact that there seems to be no trace of this bullshit in Das Kapital for instance (if you think there is, show me where a specific side of capital accumulation is explained by reference to general laws of motion)

ChrisK

23rd September 2013, 20:17

It is dishonest to pretend that your philosophy, Formal Logic, is not created by that same class. But after reading your later posts, I realize you have no problem with straight up lying.

Formal Logic is not philosophy, but a separate subject that philosophers have also used. Formal logic is used also in mathematics, electrical engineering and computer science. Dialectical materialism is used in what exactly?

All of his works are dialectical, through and through. And Das Kapital is the biggest example, which you realize and admit. But you don't care, because it flies in the face of your lie about Marx and Engels being in conflict on philosophy.

Here we have a semantic problem. What is meant by Das Kapital being dialectical is different from dialectical materialism. Here is Marx's only explanation for his method:

“The one thing which is of moment to Marx, is to find the law of the phenomena with whose investigation he is concerned; and not only is that law of moment to him, which governs these phenomena, in so far as they have a definite form and mutual connexion within a given historical period. Of still greater moment to him is the law of their variation, of their development, i.e., of their transition from one form into another, from one series of connexions into a different one. This law once discovered, he investigates in detail the effects in which it manifests itself in social life. Consequently, Marx only troubles himself about one thing: to show, by rigid scientific investigation, the necessity of successive determinate orders of social conditions, and to establish, as impartially as possible, the facts that serve him for fundamental starting-points. For this it is quite enough, if he proves, at the same time, both the necessity of the present order of things, and the necessity of another order into which the first must inevitably pass over; and this all the same, whether men believe or do not believe it, whether they are conscious or unconscious of it. Marx treats the social movement as a process of natural history, governed by laws not only independent of human will, consciousness and intelligence, but rather, on the contrary, determining that will, consciousness and intelligence. ... If in the history of civilisation the conscious element plays a part so subordinate, then it is self-evident that a critical inquiry whose subject-matter is civilisation, can, less than anything else, have for its basis any form of, or any result of, consciousness. That is to say, that not the idea, but the material phenomenon alone can serve as its starting-point. Such an inquiry will confine itself to the confrontation and the comparison of a fact, not with ideas, but with another fact. For this inquiry, the one thing of moment is, that both facts be investigated as accurately as possible, and that they actually form, each with respect to the other, different momenta of an evolution; but most important of all is the rigid analysis of the series of successions, of the sequences and concatenations in which the different stages of such an evolution present themselves. But it will be said, the general laws of economic life are one and the same, no matter whether they are applied to the present or the past. This Marx directly denies. According to him, such abstract laws do not exist. On the contrary, in his opinion every historical period has laws of its own. ... As soon as society has outlived a given period of development, and is passing over from one given stage to another, it begins to be subject also to other laws. In a word, economic life offers us a phenomenon analogous to the history of evolution in other branches of biology. The old economists misunderstood the nature of economic laws when they likened them to the laws of physics and chemistry. A more thorough analysis of phenomena shows that social organisms differ among themselves as fundamentally as plants or animals. Nay, one and the same phenomenon falls under quite different laws in consequence of the different structure of those organisms as a whole, of the variations of their individual organs, of the different conditions in which those organs function, &c. Marx, e.g., denies that the law of population is the same at all times and in all places. He asserts, on the contrary, that every stage of development has its own law of population. ... With the varying degree of development of productive power, social conditions and the laws governing them vary too. Whilst Marx sets himself the task of following and explaining from this point of view the economic system established by the sway of capital, he is only formulating, in a strictly scientific manner, the aim that every accurate investigation into economic life must have. The scientific value of such an inquiry lies in the disclosing of the special laws that regulate the origin, existence, development, death of a given social organism and its replacement by another and higher one. And it is this value that, in point of fact, Marx’s book has.”

Whilst the writer pictures what he takes to be actually my method, in this striking and [as far as concerns my own application of it] generous way, what else is he picturing but the dialectic method?
Cited from here (http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1867-c1/p3.htm).

This is not dialectical materialism. It is something more closely related to Aristotle's scientific method from his works on biology.

The photons are flying at you from different angles. A=A is an abstraction, all abstractions are, at base, false. They are adequate, but must be understood within their limits. A is never actually equal to A.

A=A is not an abstraction. A=A is a tautology.

How funny you attack abstractions. Dialectical materialism is entirely made up of abstractions! I mean seriously, Engels, Lenin, Trotsky, Stalin, Mao, etc all defend abstractions within dialectical materialism.

There is no dichotomy between Historical Materialism and Dialectical Materialism, this is just an extension of the bourgeois academic lie that Engels and Marx where in conflict over philosophy.

Historical Materialism is simply the Dialectical Materialist analysis of history. Contradiction between classes, the quantitative buildup of pressures, and the outburst of revolution.

Not according to Marx himself. You have to find counter evidence to support that Marx endorsed the bullshit that Engels advanced in his dialectical works.

More lies. Appeal from authority does not apply to someone trying to deny your appeal from authority.

The academic lies about Engels and Marx being in disagreement on philosophy would not receive so much energy if you didn't want to have the "legitimacy" of being able to say "Marx was never for that, it was only Engels".

You are the one attempting to use Marx as an authority. I simply pointed out that it is a lie that Marx did not put forward dialectics. Once the lie is exposed, now you want to tell me I am appealing to authority? Only because it is inconvenient to you.

You never answered his question. Should we use philosophical analysis or scientific analysis to understand society?

ChrisK

24th September 2013, 00:02

It is not a simple thing to explain, but I will try to give you a basic idea. I'm sure you've heard the idea that "nothing ever changes". This is, in fact, the ruling philosophy, and has been for a long period.

Nobody, except for the eleatics say this. I defy you to prove that philosophers have actually argued this.

The philosophy most people hold, even if they are not conscious of it, is of a neat and orderly universe without contradiction, that things are static, and when things do change it is very slowly and gradually. Radical change is held to be impossible.

Except for the contradiction part, not true.

Only this is not true. Nature shows us that, in fact, everything is filled with contradiction. The tectonic plates move against each other, slowly building up pressure, until at one point the equilibrium is broken, and one slips over the other in an earthquake. Magma builds up under the crust, more and more pressure builds, and then one day in a suden outburst, the crust is blown open and a volcano erupts.

These aren't contradictions. These are conflicts. What contradictions are actually there?

For most things, it is not necessary to think of things in this way, contradictory forces, quantitative gradual buildup leading to a sudden revolutionary qualitative change, the formation of a new equilibrium which starts the buildup all over, etc... you don't need these details when examining a baking recipe for example.

You are right. It is utterly unnecessary.

But for complex systems, weather, geology, economics, etc... you cannot ignore it.

Especially the building contradictions between the classes and the coming social earthquake.

What contradictions? Conflict yes, contradictions no.

Remus Bleys

24th September 2013, 01:08

This A never equals A. What about subatomic particles?

Doesn't one electron = another electron, as they have the same energy, charge, mass and volume?

RedMaterialist

24th September 2013, 05:48

How is it possible to claim that nature is subject to dialectical movement? If Hegelian logic involves the notion (no pun intended) of contradiction, how does contradiction inhere in nature? When I look out the window, I see a complicated process operating according to physics. I see an interconnected and interdependent web of causality, and I don't see how the abstraction of 'contradiction' can be derived from material processes at all, without starting to sound Idealistic.

Here's an example Engels used. You see a tree; an acorn falls from it. The acorn germinates and disappears, it is negated; and a tree begins to grow. Under normal conditions, over a long enough time, the tree dies, it is negated by the growth of the new trees from the acorns it produced. The acorns are then negated. A negation of the negation.

The dialectic, in this case, the negation of the negation, Engels says, is an extremely generalized law of nature, which is why it is so difficult to understand but also why it is so "far reaching."

He also uses simple algebra: a. negate a = -a. negation of the negation =
-a(-a) = a2 (a squared.) then -a2. -a2(-a2) = a4. and so on. The result is an extremely large quantity in a few steps. The important step is -a(-a). The negation of the negation is not simply the -(-a). That would only get you back to a. Engels say it is a sublation of the negation, not just a simple negative of a previous negative.

If you look outside your window, you see property divided up into small, more less, plots. Ten thousand years ago all that landed property was "owned" commonly by the people who lived on it. That social ownership was, after thousands of years, negated by individual ownership. We are in the process of seeing that individual ownership negated by a new type of social ownership, not the primitive kind, but a new kind based on the previous capitalist private ownership. Negation of the negation.

I don't claim to be an expert in dialectics, who could? But I think there is something to it.

RedMaterialist

24th September 2013, 05:54

This A never equals A. What about subatomic particles?

Doesn't one electron = another electron, as they have the same energy, charge, mass and volume?

for every electron there is an anti-electron, the positron. same mass, but different charge and "spin." a contradiction. when the two meet, they annihilate each other. negation of the negation, and produce, i think, a photon.

Art Vandelay

24th September 2013, 08:05

I think alot of people here are arguing about some fictitious conception of Dialectical Materialism and by extension Marxian Dialectics. Before we want to have any sort of constructive discussion, we need to have a proper conception of what these terms denote. I'm going to quote Bertell Ollman heavily here, since it is primarily his work (as well as that of Trotsky and Novack) who have influenced my understanding of Marxian dialectics and I can't seem to find my Trotsky or Novack at the moment, so its the only source I have. All the quotes come from Ollman's work 'dance of the dialectic' which is the culmination of his life's work on Marxian dialectics.

With all the misinformation conveyed about dialectics, it may be useful to start by saying what it is not. Dialectics is not a rock-ribbed triad of thesis-antithesis-synthesis that serves as an all-purpose explanation; nor does it provide a formula that enables us to prove or predict anything; nor is it the motor force of history. The dialectic, as such, explains nothing, proves nothing, predicts nothing and causes nothing to happen. Rather, dialectics is a way of thinking that brings into focus the full range of changes and interactions that occur in the world. As part of this, it includes how to organize a reality viewed in this manner for purposes of study and how to present the results of what one finds to others, most of whom do not think dialectically. - Bertell Ollman; Dance of the Dialectic.

Now I can only speak for myself and what I've learned through studying dialectics, but in my mind Bertell Ollman is the leading scholar on Marxian Dialectics. So all those who have made claims that dialectics is some unfalsifiable theory, have been arguing with strawmen as far as I'm concerned because I don't think anyone who genuinely upholds a dialectical materialist analysis, would ever uphold that conviction. Its also important to note, as CYM has, that the belief that there was a break in methodology between Marx and Engels is false. Given the fact that I have already stated I consider an Ollman a valid source on dialectics, I'm going to quote him once again since he addresses this matter directly:

A final word on the role of Frederick Engels. The extraordinary and even unique intellectual partnership that Marx enjoyed with Engels led practically everyone for a century and more to treat Engels as co-equal spokesman along with Marx for the doctrines of Marxism. In recent decades, however, there is a growing body of scholarship that argues for important differences in the thinking of these two men, particularly in the area of dialectics. I do not share this position for reasons that were already given in some detail in Alienation, but that does not mean that I devote as much attention to Engels writings on dialectics as I do to Marx's (Ollman, 1976, 52-3). For the elements of dialectics with which I have been most concerned, chiefly the philosophy of internal relations and the process of abstraction, it is Marx who has provided the bulk of my raw materials. Yet I have not hesitated to use Engels' comments in arriving at my own interpretation of Marxism, including Marxist dialectics, whenever they seemed particularly helpful, and I have no problem encouraging readers to do the same. - Bertell Ollman; Dance of the Dialectic.

Now I think this is poignant for a couple of reasons. (1) It puts forth the premise, that I am in agreement with, that Marx and Engels were both strict dialectical materialists; indeed dialectical materialism, for all intents and purposes, is synonymous with the 'Marxist method.' (2) Ollman revels dialectical materialism to not be some static, monolithic theory; on the contrary he stresses that it is merely a paradigm, one which he, as a Marxist, uses to reach his own conclusions in his various fields of study (which is entirely the task, of Marxists concerned with the development of Marxist thought, today).

I think that its also important to stress, that dialectics have manifested themselves in many different ways, throughout history and that Marxian dialectics is merely one of these manifestations. Dialectics have existed, for as long as human beings have, due to the nature of the material conditions which have confronted us; we have always had both a dialectical relationship to others and also with the environment. Now I think its obvious here that we should be specifically discussing Marxist dialectics, so once again I shall quote Ollman (last one I promise):

By allowing Marx to focus on the interconnections that constitute the key patterns in capitalism, the dialectic brings the capitalist system itself, as a pattern of patterns, into "sight," and makes it something real that requires its own explanation. In a world made up of mutually dependent processes, however, the interconnections between things includes their ties to their own preconditions and future possibilities as well as to whatever is effecting them (and whatever they are effecting) right now. Consequently, the patterns that emerge and require explanation includes material that will extend Marx's explanation, when it comes, into the hitherto separate realms of criticism, vision, and revolution. Consider once again the spread of relations unearthed in Marx's tale of two cities. The whole panoply of otherwise confusing dialectical categories, such as "contradiction," "abstraction," "totality," "metamorphosis," etc. serve to avoid static, partial, one-sided and one-dimensional (temporally speaking) understandings by making some part of these interconnections easier to think about and to deal with. All of Marx's theories have been shaped by his dialectical outlook and its accompanying categories, and it is only by grasping dialectics that these theories can be properly understood, evaluated, and put to use.

I will be as bold to say that one cannot be a Marxist, if one is not a Dialectical Materialist. In all honesty, I don't even see how that is really a point of contention. Marx & Engels methodology, the lens they gazed through which lead to their invaluable contributions to the proletarian cause, was dialectical materialism. It was their material understanding of the world, integrated with their dialectic (which was the rational core to Hegel's thought), that created their methodology (aka dialectical materialism); the perfect example being the theory of historical materialism, which was the birth child of dialectical materialism applied to historic analysis. It was the methodology used throughout their work and the paradigm needed to properly grasp their writing.

I'll probably try to post something in the next couple days on the irreconcilable contradictions between formal logic and Marxian dialectics, but I'm too tired right now and need to track down Novack's 'an introduction to the logic of marxism' from where ever its hiding in my apartment.

ChrisK

24th September 2013, 09:57

Here's an example Engels used. You see a tree; an acorn falls from it. The acorn germinates and disappears, it is negated; and a tree begins to grow. Under normal conditions, over a long enough time, the tree dies, it is negated by the growth of the new trees from the acorns it produced. The acorns are then negated. A negation of the negation.

The dialectic, in this case, the negation of the negation, Engels says, is an extremely generalized law of nature, which is why it is so difficult to understand but also why it is so "far reaching."

That example fails on the face of it. The acorn doesn't disappear, it changes. The acorn is no more negated than wages are fair.

He also uses simple algebra: a. negate a = -a. negation of the negation =
-a(-a) = a2 (a squared.) then -a2. -a2(-a2) = a4. and so on. The result is an extremely large quantity in a few steps. The important step is -a(-a). The negation of the negation is not simply the -(-a). That would only get you back to a. Engels say it is a sublation of the negation, not just a simple negative of a previous negative.

What does he say about aa = a2 and a2(a2) = a4? Here there is no negation of the negation.

If you look outside your window, you see property divided up into small, more less, plots. Ten thousand years ago all that landed property was "owned" commonly by the people who lived on it. That social ownership was, after thousands of years, negated by individual ownership. We are in the process of seeing that individual ownership negated by a new type of social ownership, not the primitive kind, but a new kind based on the previous capitalist private ownership. Negation of the negation.

What negation? Change and negation are two different things.

ChrisK

24th September 2013, 10:02

for every electron there is an anti-electron, the positron. same mass, but different charge and "spin." a contradiction. when the two meet, they annihilate each other. negation of the negation, and produce, i think, a photon.

That is wrong. There is no evidence to suggest that for every electron there is a positron.

Also, this example runs different from your other examples. In all the others, the negation of the negation happens after the other has already been negated. In this one, the negation of the negation happens when the two meet. Why the sudden change?

helot

24th September 2013, 10:14

That is wrong. There is no evidence to suggest that for every electron there is a positron.

Also, this example runs different from your other examples. In all the others, the negation of the negation happens after the other has already been negated. In this one, the negation of the negation happens when the two meet. Why the sudden change?

The evidence points the other way in that there is a matter/anti-matter asymmetry and thus there will be more electrons than positrons.

The sudden change is what you'd expect... it's just being pulled out of people's arses. They're trying to make things fit, trying to square circles. That seems to me what DM is. Its advocates never make sense, they never actually convey meaning. All i've come across is grand proclaimations, semantic games and faulty analogies. Whether DM is valid i can't say because any discussion on the subject is filled with pure gibberish.

ChrisK

24th September 2013, 10:14

Now I can only speak for myself and what I've learned through studying dialectics, but in my mind Bertell Ollman is the leading scholar on Marxian Dialectics. So all those who have made claims that dialectics is some unfalsifiable theory, have been arguing with strawmen as far as I'm concerned because I don't think anyone who genuinely upholds a dialectical materialist analysis, would ever uphold that conviction. Its also important to note, as CYM has, that the belief that there was a break in methodology between Marx and Engels is false. Given the fact that I have already stated I consider an Ollman a valid source on dialectics, I'm going to quote him once again since he addresses this matter directly:

Now I think this is poignant for a couple of reasons. (1) It puts forth the premise, that I am in agreement with, that Marx and Engels were both strict dialectical materialists; indeed dialectical materialism, for all intents and purposes, is synonymous with the 'Marxist method.' (2) Ollman revels dialectical materialism to not be some static, monolithic theory; on the contrary he stresses that it is merely a paradigm, one which he, as a Marxist, uses to reach his own conclusions in his various fields of study (which is entirely the task, of Marxists concerned with the development of Marxist thought, today).

What you have not presented is a reason for us to accept that Marx and Engels were in direct agreement about dialectical materialism. You have simply quoted a thinker who makes an assertion, without giving us the reason for the assertion.

Further, neither you nor Ollman, so far as I can tell, have dealt with the issue as to what Marx says his method it. I quoted Marx above, which is a primary source and is to be valued above secondary sources.

I think that its also important to stress, that dialectics have manifested themselves in many different ways, throughout history and that Marxian dialectics is merely one of these manifestations. Dialectics have existed, for as long as human beings have, due to the nature of the material conditions which have confronted us; we have always had both a dialectical relationship to others and also with the environment. Now I think its obvious here that we should be specifically discussing Marxist dialectics, so once again I shall quote Ollman (last one I promise):

Proof?

I will be as bold to say that one cannot be a Marxist, if one is not a Dialectical Materialist. In all honesty, I don't even see how that is really a point of contention. Marx & Engels methodology, the lens they gazed through which lead to their invaluable contributions to the proletarian cause, was dialectical materialism. It was their material understanding of the world, integrated with their dialectic (which was the rational core to Hegel's thought), that created their methodology (aka dialectical materialism); the perfect example being the theory of historical materialism, which was the birth child of dialectical materialism applied to historic analysis. It was the methodology used throughout their work and the paradigm needed to properly grasp their writing.

Marx's methodology was historical materialism, not dialectical materialism. Metaphysical ideas like dialectical materialism do not help the proletarian cause. If anything they hurt the cause:

The Second International rejecting revolution on dialectical grounds.
Stalin's popular front upheld by dialectical materialism.
The Black Panthers inane intercommunalism.

Honestly, it feels like a useless idea that the sooner we get rid of it the better.

I'll probably try to post something in the next couple days on the irreconcilable contradictions between formal logic and Marxian dialectics, but I'm too tired right now and need to track down Novack's 'an introduction to the logic of marxism' from where ever its hiding in my apartment.

Please do. It should make for an interesting debate.

Art Vandelay

24th September 2013, 10:26

No it wasn't.

Perhaps you're thinking of historical materialism.

This is going to sound nitpicky, but technically M&E didn't 'invent' historical materialism; at least no more than Darwin 'invented' natural selection. It's just somewhat shows a misunderstanding of what historical materialism exactly is. The idea that historical materialism could be invented stems from the same misunderstanding of those who wish to 'establish communism.' Historical materialism was merely the result of a dialectal materialist analysis of history, which revealed a certain internal logic of sociological development.

ChrisK

24th September 2013, 10:32

This is going to sound nitpicky, but technically M&E didn't 'invent' historical materialism; at least no more than Darwin 'invented' natural selection. It's just somewhat shows a misunderstanding of what historical materialism exactly is. The idea that historical materialism could be invented stems from the same misunderstanding of those who wish to 'establish communism.' Historical materialism was merely the result of a dialectal materialist analysis of history, which revealed a certain internal logic of sociological development.

The first work highlighting historical materialism was The German Ideology, which was written in 1845. The first work highlighting dialectical materialism was Anti-Durhing written in 1877. I think you may have it backwards.

Art Vandelay

24th September 2013, 11:21

What you have not presented is a reason for us to accept that Marx and Engels were in direct agreement about dialectical materialism. You have simply quoted a thinker who makes an assertion, without giving us the reason for the assertion.
Well I did make note of the fact that Bertell Ollman's life work has just culminated in his book 'dance of the dialectic' and that he is generally considered a leading scholar on the subject. Now I realize that appeals to authority aren't sufficient arguments. But I haven't ever heard anyone call his work into question before and based on my reading of it, I see don't see reason for it. I'm merely tired and felt his quote would be more articulate then anything I could ramble out. His arguments can be read more in full in his book, which I would highly recommend.

Further, neither you nor Ollman, so far as I can tell, have dealt with the issue as to what Marx says his method it. I quoted Marx above, which is a primary source and is to be valued above secondary sources.
Well since you are fond of primary sources, perhaps you are familiar with Capital's afterward in the 2nd German edition.

The mystification which dialectic suffers in Hegel’s hands, by no means prevents him from being the first to present its general form of working in a comprehensive and conscious manner. With him it is standing on its head. It must be turned right side up again, if you would discover the rational kernel within the mystical shell.

Really pay attention to what he states here, the mystification that the dialectic suffers at Hegel's hands, 'by no means prevents him from being the first to present its general form of working in a comprehensive and conscious manner.' Afterwards he goes on to state that the rational kernel of Hegel's method (the dialectic) needs to be extracted from its idealist shell. And this is precisely what Marx and Engels did. The rational kernel of Hegel's method was integrated with strict materialism. The result was dialectical materialism.

Proof?

Forgive me for once again quoting Ollman, its all I can seem to find at the moment, but once again I'd stress his credibility in having a comprehensive grasp on the Marxist method.

Dialectics, in one form or another, has existed for as long as there have been human beings on this planet. This is because our lives have always involved important elements of change and interaction; our environment, taken as a whole, has always had a decisive limiting and determining effect on whatever went on inside it; and "today," whenever it occurred, always emerged out of what existed yesterday, including the possibilities contained therein, and always led (and will lead), in the very same ways that it has, to what can and will take place tomorrow. In order to maximize the positive effects of these developments on their lives (and to reduce their negative effects), people have always tried to construct concepts and ways of thinking that capture—to the extent that they can understand it (and to the extent that the ruling elites have allowed it)—what is actually going on in their world, especially as regards the pervasiveness of change and interaction, the effect of any system on its component parts (including each of us as both a system with parts and as a part of other systems), and the interlocking nature of past, present and future. The many ways our species has performed this task has given rise to a rich and varied tradition of dialectical thought, the full measure of which has yet to be taken.

Marx's methodology was historical materialism, not dialectical materialism.

This is simply backwards and quite frankly I don't see how you have a leg to stand on in this debate. The latter was the methodology and the former was the result of said methodology applied to history. How is it exactly, that you postulate that Marx arrived at his conviction in historical materialism, without his dialectical materialist method? If historical materialism is Marx's methodology, then how did he arrive at it and how does it adapt to develop tangible analyze of other subjects?

The Second International rejecting revolution on dialectical grounds.

Yawn. Correlation does not imply causation. On top of this, it also fails to take into account the revolutionary wings of the 2nd international (RSDLP(B) specifically).

Stalin's popular front upheld by dialectical materialism.

Once again correlation does not imply causation. Also Stalin's 'diamat' was a bastardization of dialectical materialism.

The Black Panthers inane intercommunalism

Correlation does not imply causation.

Honestly, it feels like a useless idea that the sooner we get rid of it the better.

Dialectics is not an easy subject to grasp, but to dismiss it, due to the rather lackluster reasoning above, is foolish.

The first work highlighting historical materialism was The German Ideology, which was written in 1845. The first work highlighting dialectical materialism was Anti-Durhing written in 1877. I think you may have it backwards.

Its actually really funny that I'm going to have to say this, but this criticism is just soo not dialectical. First off your argument only holds merit if we accept the premise that one must always articulate their methodology, when engaging in it; it also seems to ignore that Marx & Engels methodology was a forever ongoing and evolving praxis. Secondly the term 'dialectical materialism' was never even used by Marx himself, but this again is irrelevant. I mean the same line of thinking could be put forth, to argue that all 'revolutionary leftist' parties in existence today are indeed revolutionary. Obviously, I'm sure you wouldn agree with such a ludicrous statement, but implicit with that is agreement with the premise that simply because Marx didn't not use the term dialectical materialism in 1845, does not mean that his methodology wasn't consistent with it.

ChrisK

24th September 2013, 11:52

Well I did make note of the fact that Bertell Ollman's life work has just culminated in his book 'dance of the dialectic' and that he is generally considered a leading scholar on the subject. Now I realize that appeals to authority aren't sufficient arguments. But I haven't ever heard anyone call his work into question before and based on my reading of it, I see don't see reason for it. I'm merely tired and felt his quote would be more articulate then anything I could ramble out. His arguments can be read more in full in his book, which I would highly recommend.

Will do when I have more time.

Well since you are fond of primary sources, perhaps you are familiar with Capital's afterward in the 2nd German edition.

Actually I am. Are you?

“The one thing which is of moment to Marx, is to find the law of the phenomena with whose investigation he is concerned; and not only is that law of moment to him, which governs these phenomena, in so far as they have a definite form and mutual connexion within a given historical period. Of still greater moment to him is the law of their variation, of their development, i.e., of their transition from one form into another, from one series of connexions into a different one. This law once discovered, he investigates in detail the effects in which it manifests itself in social life. Consequently, Marx only troubles himself about one thing: to show, by rigid scientific investigation, the necessity of successive determinate orders of social conditions, and to establish, as impartially as possible, the facts that serve him for fundamental starting-points. For this it is quite enough, if he proves, at the same time, both the necessity of the present order of things, and the necessity of another order into which the first must inevitably pass over; and this all the same, whether men believe or do not believe it, whether they are conscious or unconscious of it. Marx treats the social movement as a process of natural history, governed by laws not only independent of human will, consciousness and intelligence, but rather, on the contrary, determining that will, consciousness and intelligence. ... If in the history of civilisation the conscious element plays a part so subordinate, then it is self-evident that a critical inquiry whose subject-matter is civilisation, can, less than anything else, have for its basis any form of, or any result of, consciousness. That is to say, that not the idea, but the material phenomenon alone can serve as its starting-point. Such an inquiry will confine itself to the confrontation and the comparison of a fact, not with ideas, but with another fact. For this inquiry, the one thing of moment is, that both facts be investigated as accurately as possible, and that they actually form, each with respect to the other, different momenta of an evolution; but most important of all is the rigid analysis of the series of successions, of the sequences and concatenations in which the different stages of such an evolution present themselves. But it will be said, the general laws of economic life are one and the same, no matter whether they are applied to the present or the past. This Marx directly denies. According to him, such abstract laws do not exist. On the contrary, in his opinion every historical period has laws of its own. ... As soon as society has outlived a given period of development, and is passing over from one given stage to another, it begins to be subject also to other laws. In a word, economic life offers us a phenomenon analogous to the history of evolution in other branches of biology. The old economists misunderstood the nature of economic laws when they likened them to the laws of physics and chemistry. A more thorough analysis of phenomena shows that social organisms differ among themselves as fundamentally as plants or animals. Nay, one and the same phenomenon falls under quite different laws in consequence of the different structure of those organisms as a whole, of the variations of their individual organs, of the different conditions in which those organs function, &c. Marx, e.g., denies that the law of population is the same at all times and in all places. He asserts, on the contrary, that every stage of development has its own law of population. ... With the varying degree of development of productive power, social conditions and the laws governing them vary too. Whilst Marx sets himself the task of following and explaining from this point of view the economic system established by the sway of capital, he is only formulating, in a strictly scientific manner, the aim that every accurate investigation into economic life must have. The scientific value of such an inquiry lies in the disclosing of the special laws that regulate the origin, existence, development, death of a given social organism and its replacement by another and higher one. And it is this value that, in point of fact, Marx’s book has.”

Whilst the writer pictures what he takes to be actually my method, in this striking and [as far as concerns my own application of it] generous way, what else is he picturing but the dialectic method?

Really pay attention to what he states here, "what else is he picturing by the dialectical method?". This is what the reviewer saw as Marx's method and Marx concurs. This method is similar to the one found in the works of both Aristotle and Ferguson. It has nothing in common with anything Hegel argued for.

Really pay attention to what he states here, the mystification that the dialectic suffers at Hegel's hands, 'by no means prevents him from being the first to present its general form of working in a comprehensive and conscious manner.' Afterwards he goes on to state that the rational kernel of Hegel's method (the dialectic) needs to be extracted from its idealist shell. And this is precisely what Marx and Engels did. The rational kernel of Hegel's method was integrated with strict materialism. The result was dialectical materialism.

Yes, Hegel fucked around with idealizing Aristotle's methods and Marx saved them. It still isn't dialectical materialism.

Forgive me for once again quoting Ollman, its all I can seem to find at the moment, but once again I'd stress his credibility in having a comprehensive grasp on the Marxist method.

And yet Ollman does not present sources, historical surveys or anything else in this regard. He simply asserts it to be so. That is sloppy scholarship.

This is simply backwards and quite frankly I don't see how you have a leg to stand on in this debate. The latter was the methodology and the former was the result of said methodology applied to history. How is it exactly, that you postulate that Marx arrived at his conviction in historical materialism, without his dialectical materialist method? If historical materialism is Marx's methodology, then how did he arrive at it and how does it adapt to develop tangible analyze of other subjects?

Historical materialism is indeed a methodology. It is a scientific paradigm for analyzing history based on class struggle. What Marx did was analyze history and found conflict between the classes to be a key feature in history and so on and so forth.

Yawn. Correlation does not imply causation. On top of this, it also fails to take into account the revolutionary wings of the 2nd international (RSDLP(B) specifically).

Statistics won't help you here. The Second International decided that the contradictions in capitalism will necessarily lead to its turning into its opposite. Thus, they didn't need to do anything but wait for it to happen.

I am talking the main line here, not the revolutionary wings.

Once again correlation does not imply causation. Also Stalin's 'diamat' was a bastardization of dialectical materialism.

Once again, statistics won't help you here. Stalin's popular front was justified with dialectical materialism. Also, his dialectical arguments seem agree with Engels'.

Correlation does not imply causation.

Statistics won't help you here.

Dialectics is not an easy subject to grasp, but to dismiss it, due to the rather lackluster reasoning above, is foolish.

I dismiss it for many, many reasons. That is simply one.

Its actually really funny that I'm going to have to say this, but this criticism is just soo not dialectical. First off your argument only holds merit if we accept the premise that one must always articulate their methodology, when engaging in it; it also seems to ignore that Marx & Engels methodology was a forever ongoing and evolving praxis.

They did articulate their methodology in The German Ideology. They developed historical materialism as a methodology.

Secondly the term 'dialectical materialism' was never even used by Marx himself, but this again is irrelevant. I mean the same line of thinking could be put forth, to argue that all 'revolutionary leftist' parties in existence today are indeed revolutionary. Obviously, I'm sure you wouldn agree with such a ludicrous statement, but implicit with that is agreement with the premise that simply because Marx didn't not use the term dialectical materialism in 1845, does not mean that his methodology wasn't consistent with it.

It has nothing to do with the terms. It has everything to do with the fact that Marx expressed his methodology and never once said anything to imply that he agreed with Engels' dialectical materialism.

Thirsty Crow

24th September 2013, 13:54

Dialectics is not an easy subject to grasp, but to dismiss it, due to the rather lackluster reasoning above, is foolish.

Let's focus this discussion on a concrete example.

You stated earlier that it is important to work with a proper conception of dialectics. I pointed out the so called three general laws of motion. This is part of dialectical materialism, from Engels, via Plekhanov, Lenin, Stalin, all the way up to contemporary political organization's thinkers (e.g. IMT, Woods).

I have shown, and no one bothered to demonstrate that I made a mistake, how one of these can be used to justify reformism. This would be a problem if I misrepresented dialectics. I claim I did not. Instead, insults were hurled. Somehow I slandered someone and I'm a liar.

Quantity leading to change in quality - this is not a special case, but is claimed to be the universal, underlying pattern of all change.

Change in quantity - addition or subtraction of matter and/or energy.

These are the component parts of dialectics that I implicitly took into consideration when making the argument that it can justify reformism.

Care to show me where I went wrong?

And by that I most certainly do not mean, "present your own interpretation of the so called law that would justify revolutionary conclusions".

EDIT: And regarding historical materialism and dialectics, if the latter were conceptualized as dealing with the relationship between purposeful behavior, ideas and plans, and the existing human relations and productive forces, claiming that consciousness is not a passive factor (merely reflecting all there is), but also a factor of social transformation and indeed production in general, and if it were to stop here, I'd accept this dialectics wholeheartedly. If it is meant in this sense, then sure historical materialism is inherently dialectical.

Dialectical relationship = mutual interaction, one element producing a change in other, and the latter thus affecting the former, and so on and so on until the relationship breaks.

Hit The North

24th September 2013, 16:19

Let's focus this discussion on a concrete example.

Except you don't focus on a concrete example of class struggles. Marx and Engels did. They focused on the historical examples of the transition from feudalism to capitalism and demonstrated that quantitative changes in the old society lead to instability of the old order and a corresponding increase in the power of the bourgeoisie and leading to revolutionary crises and attendant class struggles which resulted in a qualitatively new mode of production.

I have shown, and no one bothered to demonstrate that I made a mistake, how one of these can be used to justify reformism. This would be a problem if I misrepresented dialectics. I claim I did not. Instead, insults were hurled. Somehow I slandered someone and I'm a liar.We need to take seriously Engels assertion that the three laws are derived from empirical observation and not laws that can be imposed abstractly in order to provide equally abstract conclusions, such as quantitative reforms can lead, on their own, to qualitative change in the mode of production when there is no empirical evidence to prove it.

So I think the mistake you make is to remain at the level of abstraction and to use the general law to infer the concrete example - against Engels' advice.

EDIT: And regarding historical materialism and dialectics, if the latter were conceptualized as dealing with the relationship between purposeful behavior, ideas and plans, and the existing human relations and productive forces, claiming that consciousness is not a passive factor (merely reflecting all there is), but also a factor of social transformation and indeed production in general, and if it were to stop here, I'd accept this dialectics wholeheartedly. If it is meant in this sense, then sure historical materialism is inherently dialectical.
I agree completely and while I'm fairly unconvinced that this can be applied to the physical universe, I'm still open to the possibility that this might be the case. I certainly wouldn't dismiss it as bullshit as you have done.

Thirsty Crow

24th September 2013, 17:10

Except you don't focus on a concrete example of class struggles. Marx and Engels did. They focused on the historical examples of the transition from feudalism to capitalism and demonstrated that quantitative changes in the old society lead to instability of the old order and a corresponding increase in the power of the bourgeoisie and leading to revolutionary crises and attendant class struggles which resulted in a qualitatively new mode of production. Where did the two authors argue that this illustrates the universal laws of motion of everything that exist? And I don't think that passing remarks can be taken as indicative of the use of that approach.

We need to take seriously Engels assertion that the three laws are derived from empirical observation and not laws that can be imposed abstractly in order to provide equally abstract conclusions, such as quantitative reforms can lead, on their own, to qualitative change in the mode of production when there is no empirical evidence to prove it.They are "laws" that are imposed on nature.

The point being that not all change happens in this nodal way. Melting butter for instance. Remember that this is supposed to be the universal law. Covering everything. It manifestly does not.
There are further problems with this. You might be tempted to argue that my counter-example is no such thing, but you'd be able to do so only because it is entirely unclear how long does this time frame of a sudden leap actually last. This means that you'd be able to conclude that the formation of the species homo sapiens sapiens and boiling water are both nodal.

Such lack of clarity on crucial issues is hardly something that enables close scrutiny to important detail, which is of course something that in both, say, natural science and class analysis is extremely important.

So I think the mistake you make is to remain at the level of abstraction and to use the general law to infer the concrete example - against Engels' advice.
Engels' never inferred the general law from data collected over many years. This is the crucial point, that this supposed law is a result of a specific reading of Hegel.

And of course you cannot infer a thing, something concrete. Inference is the act of reaching a conclusion from specific premises following rule guided reasoning. Honestly, I can't actually understand what you're driving at with this "infer the concrete example". If a general law is scientifically established, any occurrence should be clearly demonstrated as being explicable by this law. The case with the so called law of dialectics is that it is not.

The conclusion being that a supposed universal pattern of change, any change, is a philosophical abstraction.

This also bears upon the explanation of social change. I don't think this is useful at all since it can merely act as a formula with which nasty problems, those pesky details, are waved away.

The concepts and terms are way too vague (remember, for dialectics to be able to explain every change by that law, it is compelled to define its term of "quantity" as "addition or subtraction of matter and/or energy"; this can only be applied to social change by veritable intellectual acrobatics, redefining "matter" and "energy" in some way, but then this simply doesn't work for the part of the world studied by physics; you end up in a stale mate so to speak).

I'd prefer a rigorous and strict class analysis that operates with clear concepts and procedures which are scientific. The materialist conception of history is suitable. There's no need, apart from claiming a place in an established tradition of thought, for all of this.

To take up your example of tributary modes of production and capitalism, it is apparent that the European history cannot be a model for every possible social transformation. What I'm getting at is this: other tributary modes didn't undergo such a transformation (e.g. China), but surely quantitative changes had been happening there, right?

So the issue is what the hell are these quantitative changes supposed to entail exactly. This example illustrates well what can happen when we deal with such vague notions. You could try and force the analysis to follow this route by claiming that colonization and contact between incipient, developing European bourgeoisie and the ruling class in China is itself a quantitative change. But then it's fairly unclear what should qualitative mean. I'd pretty much say that this contact opened up a whole new historical period from the point of view of both the ruling class and the exploited class outside Europe.

History is way too messy for such neat formulae.

I agree completely and while I'm fairly unconvinced that this can be applied to the physical universe, I'm still open to the possibility that this might be the case. I certainly wouldn't dismiss it as bullshit as you have done.The whole exercise depends on word play and refusal to clarify crucial points. You can "explain" anything and everything by such reference, which alone should tell you how misguided it really is.

And finally to go back to my argument about reformism, I'm sorry but you haven't shown how is this actually mistaken. You argued how Marx and Engels analysed European history.

Demonstrate how I

1) am mistaken in what "quantity" is

2) the same for quality

in relation to social life, all the time bearing in mind that this law is supposed to explain everything.

bluemangroup

24th September 2013, 17:29

I would recommended these two articles, one by Mao and the other by the blogger Maoist Rebel News.

Mao's "On Contradiction": http://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/mao/selected-works/volume-1/mswv1_17.htm

Maoist Rebel News, 'Understanding Mao's "On Contradiction"': http://maoistrebelnews.wordpress.com/2013/06/23/understanding-maos-on-contradiction/

IMHO one should read Mao's difficult article first, even if you don't totally understand it. Then read the article by the Maoist Rebel News blogger, and afterwards go back to Mao's essay and read through it once more.

Hope that helps, comrade. :)

Hit The North

24th September 2013, 18:10

And of course you cannot infer a thing, something concrete. Inference is the act of reaching a conclusion from specific premises following rule guided reasoning. Honestly, I can't actually understand what you're driving at with this "infer the concrete example". If a general law is scientifically established, any occurrence should be clearly demonstrated as being explicable by this law. The case with the so called law of dialectics is that it is not.

You'll have to forgive my poor powers of self-expression. My point is that you can't show an occurrence whereby quantitative changes, in the shape of reforms, produce a qualitative change in society because no such event exists. You have no referent. Therefore, your assertion that this 'law' can be used to justify reformism is not credible. Its conclusions remains purely hypothetical with no supporting evidence. On the other hand the law can be seen to operate in favour of revolutionary conclusions because we have empirical evidence to this effect: quantitative changes in the feudal mode of production resulted in its revolutionary (qualitative) supercession by a higher mode of production.

So the issue is what the hell are these quantitative changes supposed to entail exactly.

This will depend on the actual case. You don't think that revolutionary situations happen out of thin air in the context of an unchanging social order or that revolutionary, that is, qualitative changes in the social order don't take place, do you? I don't understand why you object to the idea that incremental changes in a mode of production can reach a tipping-point whereby revolutionary transformations become possible. Otherwise we might as well either relegate revolutions to the status of inexplicable acts of nature or to deny that revolutions ever take place at all.

Thirsty Crow

24th September 2013, 19:26

My point is that you can't show an occurrence whereby quantitative changes, in the shape of reforms, produce a qualitative change in society because no such event exists. You have no referent.

The point is that there is an universal law of all change.

This in turn can easily motivate reformism, if it would wish to legitimize itself by such a procedure.
The lack of a referent as you say is moot since reformism the first place is the program of creating that same referent, and in my argument, it could very well be rationalized (this gradual build up of reforms) as an instance of universal change. If the projected reforms and quantitative additions (living standards and so on) were to come to nothing, and they most certainly would, the route of another round of rationalizations and post hoc justifications could legitimately occur with, again, the ideological basis in that tenet of dialectics.

Its conclusions remains purely hypothetical with no supporting evidence.
This would have merit if I were arguing that there exists a reformist movement which legitimizes itself in the way I described.
But I did not argue this. I'm merely showing the potential use, which would be perfectly legitimate for the reasons I outlined above, of this tenet of dialectics.

On the other hand the law can be seen to operate in favour of revolutionary conclusions because we have empirical evidence to this effect: quantitative changes in the feudal mode of production resulted in its revolutionary (qualitative) supercession by a higher mode of production.
Yes, I'm well aware that this so called law can be used to support this conclusion. This is precisely my point. It can be used to support all kinds of conclusions, revolutionary and reformist, among others.

Now, I claim reformism is a pipe dream not because of anything as vague as the alleged universal laws of all motion and change.

This will depend on the actual case.Of course.
But as I said, I don't think grand schemes such as this one are useful in doing justice to actual cases.

You don't think that revolutionary situations happen out of thin air in the context of an unchanging social orderNo, I don't. But I don't think that these social changes need to be thought of in the context of the dichotomy between quantitative and qualitative

or that revolutionary, that is, qualitative changes in the social order don't take place, do you? I sure think that revolutionary transformations of a social order did happen, and I hope that a specific one will happen.

I don't understand why you object to the idea that incremental changes in a mode of production can reach a tipping-point whereby revolutionary transformations become possible. I do not reject this. And I'd say that this what you say here is different from our "law". As I said above, I reject the dichotomy of the quantitative and the qualitative, and of course the faux universalism of that pattern of change.

Otherwise we might as well either relegate revolutions to the status of inexplicable acts of nature or to deny that revolutions ever take place at all.I do no such thing, and I'm not saying you're attributing this to me, just that thinking about a radical social transformation is not aided by these formulas.

Thirsty Crow

24th September 2013, 19:37

EDIT sorry, double post

argeiphontes

24th September 2013, 21:49

Here's an example Engels used. You see a tree; an acorn falls from it. The acorn germinates and disappears, it is negated; and a tree begins to grow. Under normal conditions, over a long enough time, the tree dies, it is negated by the growth of the new trees from the acorns it produced. The acorns are then negated. A negation of the negation.

I could just as easily say that a tree is the fulfillment of an acorn's purpose. I could say that there is no contradiction between tree and acorn because the telos of the tree is to reproduce itself, which it does by creating an acorn. (But also, something disappearing is not a negation as I understand it.)

If you look outside your window, you see property divided up into small, more less, plots. Ten thousand years ago all that landed property was "owned" commonly by the people who lived on it. That social ownership was, after thousands of years, negated by individual ownership. We are in the process of seeing that individual ownership negated by a new type of social ownership, not the primitive kind, but a new kind based on the previous capitalist private ownership. Negation of the negation.

Your quotes around "ownership" suggest that maybe you'd agree with me that "property" is also not a real thing, it's an idea. Yeah, it's enforced at gunpoint and so forth, with material consequences, but "property" is not a property of any material thing, resulting from it's own qualities. It's an idea imposed on material objects.

From the fact that the universe as a whole is tending towards complete entropy, I can't extrapolate that we can never become organized enough to form a revolutionary trade union. I think that there have to be multiple levels of explanation to account for emergent processes, and there is no need for them to be valid on any other level. Something that explains conflict between people, who are subject to purposes, does not mean that there is any conflict in the material world, even if people's purposes are a result of material conditions. If you start your analysis from the properties and processes of material things, you would never need the idea of contradiction or conflict, except as metaphors, which shouldn't be mistaken for actual explanations.

edit: Have you seen the dialectical G.U.T. somebody posted on the site? He lost me at "human existence is the negation of prehuman existence".

argeiphontes

24th September 2013, 22:32

Hmm. Maybe dialectical materialism is the negation of dialectical idealism, the synthetic truth being a "weak" form of dialectical idealism with Spirit (as subject) replaced by consciousness (in the sense we use it)? ;)

Blake's Baby

25th September 2013, 00:17

This is going to sound nitpicky, but technically M&E didn't 'invent' historical materialism; at least no more than Darwin 'invented' natural selection...

Didn't say that they did, just that the OP might be thinking that they did, and confusing that with DiaMat, which as we all know is Stalinist mysticism dresed up as 'revolutionary philosophy' or something.

On 'A=A' - I think the problem here is identifying the signifier with the signified. Now, while I'm not going to get in an argument about Platonic Ideals or anything, there is an argument that this A is not the same as that A. You can tell, because there are 2 of them and they don't occupy the same space. They don't have a 1:1 correspondence. But only if you believe that 'this A' and 'that A' are in themselves seperate things instead of both being signs that refer to a quantity of 'A-ness'. Not 'anus'.

To move from the abstract to the concrete, then 'Barack Obama' is not equal to 'Barack Obama', because there are two 'Barack Obama's, and they have some words in between them. Therefore, they don't have a 1:1 correspondence. All 'Barack Obama's are different to all other 'Barak Obama's, obviously, as the multiplication of 'Barak Obama's depends entirely on confusing the signifier 'Barak Obama' with some external thing called 'Barak Obama' - that probably doesn't exist (being a manifestation of some Platonic Idealism as already mentioned).

Signs can be infinitely duplicated and each sign is different. But this doesn not mean that the things signified by these signs are different.

Rafiq

3rd March 2014, 01:55

To go back to Remus question, in a nutshell, no system of logic can explain Marxism. On the other hand, historical materialism, as a core theory of Marxism, can indeed be used to explain Marxism itself.

Now, I'd like to highlight what I say about the vague, philosophical nature of the so called dialectical materialism as evident in the general laws of motion. One of them is the transformation of quantity into quality.

The story has it that this is a universal pattern of change - quantitative addition results in a sudden qualitative leap.

This can be applied to class struggle (what good of it if it can't, as some would allege here), but with some unpleasant results.

Quantitative addition can be used to refer to everyday economic struggles and political struggles for reforms, and the picture we have is the classic account of reformism - gradual buildup of measures favorable to the working class in capitalism, with the workers' party at the helm and in government, leading to socialism. As with the famed example of boiling water, the analogy is clear, between rising temperature and rising working class conditions of existence and workers' party power.

So, I think it is clear that this definitely enables one to justify and rationalize reformism.

Why is that even possible? In the first place, because the terms used are ill defined and vague (remember that they need to be able to refer to any change in the entire universe). The notion of quality covers phenomena such as the kinds of social formations and aggregate states, likewise for quantity.

By this virtue one can hack away at any noticeable change and interpret it in this way. You can justify reformism and revolution.

First, let me say that I am not quite certain as to what you're trying to say, but I believe I can infer as to what you mean. And as such, I will address the argument I believe you are trying to make. If I am, truly, arguing with a straw man, feel free to call me out, as I do not mean to insult you.

The problem I find here is a simple one: That this logic can encompass not only political and economic struggles for reforms, but political struggles for anything. That is, false-ideological struggles, national liberation, religious struggles and so on. The point I am making is simply that while class struggle can at times manifest itself in the struggle for reforms, reformism is not a form of class struggle. We do not oppose reformism because it violates our radical values, we oppose it because it is incapable of bringing forth the dictatorship of the proletariat. If it could, gradually, and so forth - there would be no reason to oppose it. Even if we return to Hegel, historically, dialeticians of this variety recognize the necessity of violence as a prerequisite for historical change. Not necessarily bloodshead, but the magnitude from which the order of things is violated, the magnitude of physical conflict and so forth. As such, dialectics in this fashion is not applicable to reformism. Furthermore, adherents of Marxist dialectics do not reject the role of agency in class struggle and most especially political struggle, as the proletariat as a class is incapable of laying the social foundations for any future mode of production within capitalism, agency is thus necessary, and we can assume that the most successful revolutionaries (We cannot assume that the bolsheviks were the only forces of class struggle, amidst the industrial anarchists and so on, yet they were still more successful). The victorious organ of proletarian struggle will fulfill the dialectical process we speak of (This comes off as teleological, I should say, it reaffirms the process of dialectics). But for we Marxists, we must recognize the existence of false struggles, those which are not conducted within the confines of proletarian consciousness.

We all know very well Marx did not concern himself with metaphysics, when speaking of dialectics he does not attempt to create a grandiose cosmic law, rather, he utilized it as an attempt to understand the process of historical change - and in his distinctive case, class struggle. Do not concede to the vulgarists our historical legacy, the legacy of Marxism. Dialectics was bastardized, ruined, and so forth, by the state apparatus of many Stalinist countries as a means of ideologically affirming the order of things.

Rafiq

3rd March 2014, 01:59

You never answered his question. Should we use philosophical analysis or scientific analysis to understand society?

Philosophy is class struggle in theory. The works of philosophers in antiquity only have a context within modern social relations and thus exists their relevance.

An objective scientific analysis to understand society, as utilized by Marx, can exist, but we might question what that really means. Can science be free of ideology? I'm more sympathetic towards continental philosophy, here (as opposed to anglo-saxon empiricism).

Rafiq

3rd March 2014, 02:03

This in turn can easily motivate reformism, if it would wish to legitimize itself by such a procedure.

Here is the core of the point - is reformism capable of legitimizing itself by such a procedure? And if it is, why should it be opposed?

Red Shaker

3rd March 2014, 03:55

There seems to be some misunderstanding of the DM concept of quantity into quality. By engaging in class struggle some reforms can be made, but as the struggle intensifies, the opportunity arises to take a qualitative step forward. If you are not prepared for this development, the struggle will weaken and you fall into the trap of reformism. That is you are continually fighting for reforms and never building the revolutionary struggle. Once the struggle has undergone a qualitative change, new rules govern the process and its further development. Understanding this helps keep the struggle moving in a revolutionary direction.

Think about the simple example of a liquid changing into a gas. Pressure increased on a liquid has very little effect, but pressure applied to a gas has a dramatic effect. That is the relation of pressure and volume are governed by different laws for liquids and gases.

David Bohm's book Causality and Chance in Modern Physics has a good explanation of qualitative change in scientific processes.

RedMaterialist

6th March 2014, 05:11

Here is the core of the point - is reformism capable of legitimizing itself by such a procedure? And if it is, why should it be opposed?

Take a specific example of social reform: Civil Rights. Or, more specifically, same-sex marriage. Has there been a specific point of revolution or is it a reform of social legislation? There was never any revolution by the LGBT community, but rather a long struggle against bigotry.

Does it even really matter whether there was a revolution or a long reform? How would you even analyze this process? You could examine all the television shows produced in the U.S. from 1950 to the present and graph all the minutes in which homosexuality is mentioned or portrayed. You would probably see a long gradual increase to about 2003 or so, then a sudden increase.

Is this a revolution or reform? Would any Marxist even suggest that the reform should be "delegitmized" because it was reformist? What about the right of minorities to vote, or women's rights, or immigration "reform?"

Rafiq

12th March 2014, 04:45

Is this a revolution or reform? Would any Marxist even suggest that the reform should be "delegitmized" because it was reformist? What about the right of minorities to vote, or women's rights, or immigration "reform?"

It is a result of decades of real class struggle, and the power of labor over capital. This doesn't concern "reforms" but the hegelian notion of historical totality, in other words, the changing of history. The point being that history cannot be changed through reform.

Rafiq

12th March 2014, 04:47

The point of Marx's dialectics is that it is different from Hegels in that it does not attempt to solely explain the process of change in pure thought - but actual change within social relations. The point is that class struggle is the only means in which social relations are changed, reform movements, civil rights, and so forth are a component of the class struggle but not an ends in themselves.

RedMaterialist

13th March 2014, 04:01

It is a result of decades of real class struggle, and the power of labor over capital. This doesn't concern "reforms" but the hegelian notion of historical totality, in other words, the changing of history. The point being that history cannot be changed through reform.

I think it is a stretch to say that gay rights, for instance, is the result of class struggle. You have all kinds of classes who fought for gay rights. The same is true of women's and minority rights. One of the absolutely frustrating things about these kinds of struggles (to me, anyway, a former liberal) is that once the rights are achieved, those who are liberated immediately seem to abandon those who come after them. For instance, Republican women, blacks, gays, Hispanics, etc., are quite happy to declare the struggle for equal rights over as soon they themselves are no longer the subjects of bigotry. And, they move quite easily into the petit-bourgeois class.

Also, the working class are sometimes the most bigoted of all. (Unions, for instance. Not that unions now represent the working class.)

Rafiq

13th March 2014, 04:23

The class conscious proletarian is not "bigoted". Workers throughout history have sided with the most terrible of reactionaries, it is what we call false consciousness. Women's rights, and minority rights are inristically a result of proletarian struggle, against the bourgeois family, and for a united proletariat. The gay right's struggle is our cause insofar as it is tied to women's rights, it seeks to challenge bourgeois sexual relations and gender relations. No matter those who lead them, or those who defend them. It is still in nature, a form of class struggle.

Sinister Cultural Marxist

13th March 2014, 14:37

I don't think it's fair to argue against "dialectics" because it can be used to "justify" reformism. If one can make a convincing dialectical argument for reformism using dialectics, then that's an argument for reformism, not against dialectics. You're presupposing what you want (in this case, ~reformism)

I think the issue is that, dialectically speaking, it's hard to see how the number of "reforms" would lead to "revolution". It makes more sense to root revolutionary change in the power and size of a politically, economically and socially conscious economic class relative to the dominant classes than the number of "reforms" on the books. As much as anything else, without social institutionalization, those "reforms" would not actually have any practical existence in any real sense. To talk of "reforms" sneaks in a form of idealism already excluded in making dialectics "materialist".

It must be said though that reforms might play a role in helping to create the conditions for a revolution in certain cases (like legalizing unions or banning the death penalty as a way of punishing radicals) but only by having a tangible benefit for the working class as a whole. I hope it's not too "anti-revolutionary" for you all for me to support reforms like extending the right to live in Western countries to illegal immigrant labor, both for my moral desire to see these people protected from the law and for the need to build a social movement which includes all workers, their families and the toiling masses in general.

I think what's interesting about the way Marx and Hegel alike see "dialectics" is in how changing conditions within one normative framework lead to its destruction and in some way shape the normative framework which replaces it. For Hegel the focus is on things like the change from Rationalism and Empiricism to Kantian thought. Marx wants to focus more on the social forces than on different positions in philosophy as Hegel does. There's still the emergence of something new and original which cannot be explained in terms of what preceeded it, but must be explained on its own terms.

I think it is a stretch to say that gay rights, for instance, is the result of class struggle. You have all kinds of classes who fought for gay rights. The same is true of women's and minority rights. One of the absolutely frustrating things about these kinds of struggles (to me, anyway, a former liberal) is that once the rights are achieved, those who are liberated immediately seem to abandon those who come after them. For instance, Republican women, blacks, gays, Hispanics, etc., are quite happy to declare the struggle for equal rights over as soon they themselves are no longer the subjects of bigotry. And, they move quite easily into the petit-bourgeois class.

Also, the working class are sometimes the most bigoted of all. (Unions, for instance. Not that unions now represent the working class.)

Uhm the issue is that these folks continue to participate in models of exploitation. Bourgeois feminists do not actually solve the problem of sexism on a structural level.

All forms of discrimination today are built around certain norms, beliefs, etc that are built into systems of class oppression. I think a good example is how Marx and Engels describe patriarchy in the family.

RedMaterialist

13th March 2014, 16:23

No matter those who lead them, or those who defend them. It is still in nature, a form of class struggle.

The working class has yet to develop a "class consciousness," at least one that is united, world-wide and fully aware of itself as a class. The working class is still willing to be led into wars against each other by the ruling classes.

The bourgeoisie has co-opted the civil rights struggle for its own interests. Corporations can no longer afford to exclude talented women, gays and minorities from its higher management. Barak Obama and Hillary Clinton are good examples. Both are members in good standing of the bourgeois management class.

"The more a ruling class is able to assimilate the foremost minds of a ruled class, the more stable and dangerous becomes its rule."

(http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1894-c3/ch36.htm)

Dodo

14th March 2014, 03:52

It seems to me that this debate on dialectics is pretty crucial. As people who start learning Marxism, we take "dialectics" for granted and after we invest so much time in it, whether we grasp it or not, we embrace it. So in that sense, what radikallinks and chrisk is doing is important for me.
I do sometimes stop and think, "what do I even mean by dialectics", it is almost something I feel in how things work which is really difficult to put into words here. Is that not a dogma of a religious sort that I follow without clearly explaining?
In that sense, the debate whether dialectics is a "law of nature" is indeed very important. Or what did people mean by it, is it a a pragmatic explanation to mechanics of nature, life, society and thought? An answer to mysteries of life?

I would not say I am in complete grasp of the concept, though I read and tried to understand a lot from time to time. I am a bit weak on philosophical literature, especially the non-Marxian ones, so I am in full bias here.

what I think?

By now, I do not think dialectics is in a conflict with logic. We use logic, and abstractions that we can connect to empirical data in Marxism. We use tools that are based on materialist grasp of the world. In that sense, this bit could, technically be independent of dialectics. The historical materialism, classes and their struggles, modes/relations of production, substructure and how it relates to superstructure and driving force of the transformation in productive forces. Perhaps, aside from the last bit, "transformation of the productive forces", which is the heart of understanding history from Marxian perspective, all these concepts are produced through logic and empirical analysis. Use of logic and materialism in a sense. They have certain laws on how things works, clear correlational(or for some causality) relations through employment of a method which claims to be a social science. The science of the working class.

Dialectics is the protective barrier on this. Because ultimately, this "scientific" method is limited and that things we use to see the world are also changing(should change) all the time. Dialectics turns Marxism into a doctrine or a "research program" rather than a strict and rigid method. Rigid methods are limited by history and dialectics is there to overcome it. It is not a tool that explains phenomena but a tool that deals with the tools that explains phenomena, their nature, their basis-background, their limitations.

Looking at contemporary phenomena, we use logic and our materialist tools. With dialectics, we see it in a process rather than an independent state of nature in history. We see how things within the phenomena of today have evolved from the preconditions, and thus we know that today, which is also the past, will create the future, based on today. It is the emphasis on seeing this "totality" and unity.

The problem with simply sticking to historical materialism, independent of dialectics, is to act the same way hegemony ideas act. As if historical materialism IS the end of history, the end, the absolute, its tools are the ultimate ones to understand world. There is a law of a "statically defined" but dynamic class struggle, history goes through a deterministic set of stages, class interests are standard and working class will end up fighting for socialism. In a way, applying the identical procedure to understand each sickness, without changing it, developing it, adapting it.

For people whose understanding of the world comes from only Marxian interpretations, this is easy to stick to, interpretations are enough, no need to grasp the "method". Unfortunately, there turned out to be tons of problems with Marxian tools since the very first day. By the time it came to interpreting the whole world in 21st century, original tools went way too in-accurate. It is dialectics, that allows Marxism this room to maneuver and update its tools.
To counter Popperian un-falsifiability criticism at this point, I'd like to emphasize that the updates happen on the same epistomological basis(dialectical understanding of materialist reality=Marxism). We do not "shift" our position to fit theory into circumstances,but new data opens up new paths within Marxist doctrine.
Marxism is not the belief in class struggle, acceptance of profit rates to fall and that alienation is an un-deniable fact. It is through materialism and use of methodic tools we get to these. But ultimately these are limited. Marxism is about playing with these tools of materialist perception in a dynamic way.
It is the emphasis on process and change, and as Engels says:

"When we consider and reflect upon Nature at large, or the history of mankind, or our own intellectual activity, at first we see the picture of an endless entanglement of relations and reactions, permutations and combinations, in which nothing remains what, where and as it was, but everything moves, changes, comes into being and passes away. We see, therefore, at first the picture as a whole, with its individual parts still more or less kept in the background; we observe the movements, transitions, connections, rather than the things that move, combine, and are connected. This primitive, naive but intrinsically correct conception of the world is that of ancient Greek philosophy, and was first clearly formulated by Heraclitus: everything is and is not, for everything is fluid, is constantly changing, constantly coming into being and passing away"

Do you see my point? If we simply stick to historical materialism as Marxism, we take it as absolute. Dialectics means that we do not believe in absolutes, we have a method to see things in process along with their contemporary situation. But we do not want to limit ourselves by simply looking at today with today's tools. It is to say that we are aware of the dynamism.
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I might have made some shit up here and missed the point. Like I said, I am really having difficulty putting it into words and I do not think I exactly grasped dialectics. But when anti-dialectician comrades here ask regarding the vagueness of dialectics and what it even means in practical terms, this is what I think it does.
Even then of course, there are big troubles with the picture I drew here, for non-Marxists especially. It is such a humble and elastic philosophy that it can be used to dodge a lot of criticism depending on the interpretations(reformist or revolutionary). A way of thinking which says so much and nothing at the same time.

So I(mostly) high five to this.

This is going to sound nitpicky, but technically M&E didn't 'invent' historical materialism; at least no more than Darwin 'invented' natural selection. It's just somewhat shows a misunderstanding of what historical materialism exactly is. The idea that historical materialism could be invented stems from the same misunderstanding of those who wish to 'establish communism.' Historical materialism was merely the result of a dialectal materialist analysis of history, which revealed a certain internal logic of sociological development.