Marxist Philosphy

[T_SP]

I posted this for the 'Ezine' but welcome others to critque it here. If the spelling is bad it's Microsofts fault!! There is alot of holes in it, not in the theory, as I'm quite bad at explainging things but I hope you enjoy it and we can have a good debate.
T_SP


A discussion at our meeting last night finally encouraged me to write an article for the 'Zine'. It was on, mainly, the dialectic but there was talk on areas such as Marxist Economics and Historical Materialism as well. I won't go too deep into it but I will try to disperse some of the myths behind the Dialectic and perhaps some may realise what an important Marxist tool it can be.

My first point is that of the importance of Dialectical thought, we as Marxists need our own thought process and ways of evaluating and interpreting
i, Society
ii, Class struggles, and
iii,Change.
If we conform to any other form of thought process i.e. Capitalist or 'Vulgar' thought then we are in danger of thinking like the Capitalist and as the Dialectic view, is, as an example; comparable to a movie or moving picture 'Vulgar thought is comparable to that of a still photograph. So Capitalist thought processes will inevitable bring about Capitalist thoughts, ideas and actions.
Marxian thought however is essential to Socialist development and we must hone ourselves in order to be fully aware of important changes in Society at all times.

What we first must understand is the world around us is in a constant state of 'change' and that these changes differ in speed from one thing to the next, for instance in terms of time the Dinosaurs lived for only a short while and very little changed in that time. However man has been evolving since he first climbed out of the sludge and continues to do so. Changes in class struggles over the years have moved both quickly and slowly and we must be able to spot a change in the class struggle in order to act on it as soon as we can. So we move onto quantity->quality, a quantitative change in the attitude of the working class leads to a qualitative change in society.
The Labour Party, as many know was set-up as a 'Workers Party' many Marxists realised a qualitative change in the Labour Party during the mid-late eighties and moved away but others did not. Trade union leaders and other small sects still believe that the Labour Party still holds the same values it did when it was first set-up!!
We also see these changes in Society itself how man has moved from the days of Hunter-Gatherer-> Modern Society as we know it which in a way overlaps the next point which is the Negation of the Negation, because one society negated the next or superseded the next, this doesn't necessarily mean that the previous society was any worse than the one that followed it but the progression of one society to the next is inevitable as one set of thoughts and ideas and morals negated the ones that preceded it. Negation of the Negation also tells us that changes in society are not actually cyclical but spiracle, the boom bust 'cycle', as Cappies refer to it, for instance is a good example of this.
We do need to understand how this Boom/Bust 'Cycle' comes about. It is caused by over-production i.e. man produces goods that he then cannot afford to buy; this by definition is the very nature of Capitalism.

In closing the Dialectic helps us to understand the changes in Society and class struggles and enables us to act on it by predicting how the mood of the working class will change, the uproar about the poll tax in Britain for instance was predicted well before anything actually happened and allowed Marxists to prepare and then intervene in the struggle and brought about the eventual overthrow of Thatcherism.

You can never stand in the same river twice.
Thank you Trotskyist_SP


Go on RS2000 Rip it apart!! I know your gonna :P

[redstar2000]

My first point is that of the importance of Dialectical thought, we as Marxists need our own thought process...

Indeed? I would imagine that "Marxists", being human, think just like other humans do.

Perhaps what you mean to say here is "our own form of logic" that would presumably be "superior" to the logic used in "ordinary" ("bourgeois"?) science.

A truly superior logic would be of immense benefit, of course, if there were such a thing.

Imagine a form of logic that would reveal totally unexpected chains of causes and effects, for example.

Imagine gathering evidence that was just a jumble of unrelated facts to our class enemies and using them to construct a model of social reality that actually made valid predictions.

Wouldn't that be "great"?

From the ancient Babylonian astrologers to the present day, humans have sought ways to "predict the future"...to remove uncertainty, fear of the unexpected, etc.

There've been so many attempts and methods...and none of them have ever worked.

"Dialectics" is (or rather was) just such an attempt...a pseudo-scientific effort to find mathematical order and predictability in human history.

It doesn't work, of course. If you try to "use" it to make predictions, less than half of them will turn out to be correct. That's worse than chance...you would do better by simply flipping a coin and writing down the results.

In fact, all those who presently "use" "dialectics" would actually be better off "using" the "I Ching"...tossing the sticks and reading the "interpretations" (they are all a variety of "yes", "no", and "maybe" answers).

Or they could consult the "Tarot"...also more useful than "dialectics".

The sad truth of the matter is that while there is "order" in history, it is on such a large scale that no useful details are available to us.

The only "prediction tool" that we have that shows any promise is simple extrapolation of presently occurring events: what's happening today will also happen tomorrow and the day after that...what will be the possible effects of that process over the long-term?

The rest is speculation.

It's instructive that when Marx and Engels -- presumably the "true masters of the dialectic" -- tried to make predictions, they didn't do any better than the rest of us. They got a few right...and missed on most.

It's no reflection on them; it's just a failure to understand that predicting the future in useful detail is simply impossible at the present level of human understanding...and may always be so.


If we conform to any other form of thought process, i.e., Capitalist or 'Vulgar' thought, then we are in danger of thinking like the Capitalist; and as the Dialectic view, is, as an example, comparable to a movie or moving picture, 'Vulgar' thought is comparable to that of a still photograph. So Capitalist thought processes will inevitably bring about Capitalist thoughts, ideas and actions.

Bah!

You think capitalists don't understand change? You think they can't plan for the future?

They do it all the time! Unlike us, they actually have a substantial number of people who investigate change and future scenarios for a living. They have whole "think-tanks" devoted to "managing change" so it will benefit them.

Of course, many of their basic assumptions are different from ours. Their paradigm rules out axiomatically the possibility that they might be someday rendered historically obsolete.

But that certainly doesn't mean that they sit back passively and just wait for things to happen; they are always looking for ways to make things happen in the direction they want to go.

(Feudalism, by the way, was rather passive. To the western medieval mind, all there was and would be was an interval of uncertain length stretching between Christ's ascension into Heaven and His dramatic return to end the world and judge the living and the dead...nothing much had happened or would happen in between.)

The analogy between motion pictures ("dialectics") and still photographs ("ordinary scientific logic") is utterly moronic. Science deals with processes all the time...and discovers explanations that really work.


... for instance in terms of time the Dinosaurs lived for only a short while and very little changed in that time.

*shakes head in disbelief*

Totally wrong. If you are going to use stuff like this as an "argument", please take the trouble to look it up first.


However man has been evolving since he first climbed out of the sludge and continues to do so.

"Climbed out of the sludge"???

:lol: :lol: :lol:


Changes in class struggles over the years have moved both quickly and slowly and we must be able to spot a change in the class struggle in order to act on it as soon as we can.

Whew! Back to reality...sort of. Yes, we should be prepared to see changes in class struggle and we want to be able to respond to them as quickly as we can.

"Dialectics" won't help.

There isn't anything that will help except for paying attention to what's going on around us.


In closing, the Dialectic helps us to understand the changes in Society and class struggles and enables us to act on it by predicting how the mood of the working class has changed; the uproar about the poll tax in Britain, for instance, was predicted well before anything actually happened and allowed Marxists to prepare and then intervene in the struggle and brought about the eventual overthrow of Thatcherism.

I like that phrase "predicting how the mood of the working class has changed."

Predicting the past? Hell, anyone can do that.

Just as any bourgeois ideologue with any sense could have (and some almost certainly did) predict that Thatcher's poll tax would "raise a row".

But "Thatcherism" was not "overthrown", just the Baroness herself. Blatcherism is alive and well and firmly in power in the U.K. to this very day.


You can never stand in the same river twice.

"Dialecticians" love that fragment from the old Greek philosopher Heraclitus.

He did say a few other things that have survived the ages. One that I always think appropriate when responding to "dialecticians" is...

We ought not to live as though we were asleep.

If I haven't awakened any "dialecticians" yet, it's not for lack of trying.

Disputing Dialectics (http://redstar2000papers.fightcapitalism.net/theory.php?subaction=showfull&id=1087002057&archive=&cnshow=headlines&start_from=&ucat=&)

On "Dialectics" -- The Heresy Posts (http://redstar2000papers.fightcapitalism.net/theory.php?subaction=showfull&id=1082735164&archive=&cnshow=headlines&start_from=&ucat=&)

:redstar2000:

The Redstar2000 Papers (http://www.redstar2000papers.fightcapitalism.net)
A site about communist ideas

[T_SP]

In closing the Dialectic helps us to understand the changes in Society and class struggles and enables us to act on it by predicting how the mood of the working class will change,

A simple typo on my, part, like I say I'm crap at explaining stuff. Thought I'd have a go though.

[redstar2000]

All of us are "crap" at explaining things that we don't understand..

But let's face it. If you want to "master dialectics", you will have to plow through some very dense texts.

And having done so, what will you have?

You'll know how to convert ordinary scientific terminology into "dialectical terminology" so as to make it seem that everything that happens is "really dialectical".

With that "knowledge" and $5.00, you can get a cup of coffee at Starbuck's.

Study real stuff!

:redstar2000:

The Redstar2000 Papers (http://www.redstar2000papers.fightcapitalism.net)
A site about communist ideas

[Daymare17]

Redstar2000,

You could sit on the edge of a volcano your entire life, without noticing any change at all in the "practical" "facts" you record. Actually, you could sit there for a million years recording no activity. If you persisted in your narrow empiricism then you would have to conclude from the "facts" that the volcano would never erupt. If you lived in the prosperous times preceding WWI, then the "facts" might lead you to conclude that revolution and the class struggle was off the agenda, since "The only "prediction tool" that we have that shows any promise is simple extrapolation of presently occurring events: what's happening today will also happen tomorrow and the day after that...what will be the possible effects of that process over the long-term?".

All change proceeds through transformations of quantity into quality, and through the negation of the negation. At a critical point, everything turns into its opposite, "Reason becomes Unreason". If you don't realise that then you are bound to be caught off guard every time the situation changes. Like the Social Democrats.

These examples should be enough to destroy empiricism forever. But for the sake of argument, let's include even simpler one to underline the absurdity of your standpoint.

Time is not a "fact". It's not something concrete that we can see or touch. If you were consistent in your blunders, you would have to say that time is a pure invention of the mind, "metaphysics", "garbled nonsense", "a pseudo-scientific effort to find mathematical order and predictability in human history". Many philosophers have carried your ideas to the end and ended up in absurd contradictions like that. Time is not a material thing, it is an abstraction; however, it does indeed reflect objective processes that take place in the world and bring our understanding closer to objective reality.

Logically you would also have to deny movement, since time is just the expression of movement. But movement is the mode of existence of matter.

And matter moves not according to the laws of Anglo-Saxon empiricism ("today better than yesterday, tomorrow better than today") but according to the laws of dialectics, from volcanos, earthquakes and natural selection to revolutions, wars and the succession of one socio-economic system by another.

You say that dialectics has never allowed its adherents to predict anymore than "normal" philosophy. What a remarkably ignorant claim! Go and read some of the basic texts of Marxism before strutting around like a red-feathered peacock. In the Communist Manifesto Marx predicted that capitalism would develop as a world system, and that it would create its gravedigger, the world proletariat. At the time there was as yet no real world market, and the working class was a majority of the population only in Britain. Today, the buzzword "globalisation" is shoved down our throats and the proletariat is the largest class in the world and the decisive majority in all the advanced countries. Lenin's and Bukharin's analysis of the contradictions inherent in monopoly capitalism led them to predict imperialist wars and fascism even before WWI. In the Revolution Betrayed (which you should read if you haven't already, unless you pride yourself on your ignorance like a good Christian) Trotsky predicted that either the working class would overthrow the Soviet bureaucracy, or the bureaucracy would return to capitalism. In the post-war years the only thing most people could see in Soviet Russia was an indestructible monolith. What non-dialectician would venture to predict the fate of Russia 20 years before 1991? Yet the Marxist Ted Grant accurately plotted the curve of the decline of Stalinism.

Apart from your philosophic errors, let's look at some of the other things that show how you are not a Marxist. You reject parliamentary and reformist struggles. That is non-Marxist: we must use every foothold to get closer to the revolution, and we must be the most energetic fighters for partial improvements in the workers' living standards. We must use parliament not as the means of carrying out the revolution but as a revolutionary tribunal, as in Pakistan for instance, where the first thing the Marxist MP did when he entered Parliament was to denounce it as a bourgeois masquerade. When Marx heard that his French supporters rejected "bourgeois parliamentarism", he uttered the famous phrase: "If these be Marxists, then I am not a Marxist".

You are basically a confused old anarchist who has deluded himself that he is a Marxist.

[redstar2000]

Hey kids, it's rant time!

I've just been "thoroughly demolished" by an outraged curator from the Trotsky Museum.

Well, sort of...


Originally posted by Daymare17
You could sit on the edge of a volcano your entire life, without noticing any change at all in the "practical" "facts" you record. Actually, you could sit there for a million years recording no activity. If you persisted in your narrow empiricism then you would have to conclude from the "facts" that the volcano would never erupt.

There are, in fact, many "extinct" volcanoes in the world today...they probably outnumber the active ones.

Predicting eruptions is now approaching the level of real science. Why? Because of all those empirical observations that you disdain.

Of course, there's still a long way to go...but progress is being made in understanding not only abstract truths about volcanoes in general but what's going on with this particular volcano at this particular point in history.


If you lived in the prosperous times preceding [World War I], then the "facts" might lead you to conclude that revolution and the class struggle was off the agenda, since "The only "prediction tool" that we have that shows any promise is simple extrapolation of presently occurring events..."

Setting aside the curious designation "prosperous" (those were terrible times for the European and American working classes) and the even more curious inference that there wasn't any class struggle (strikes were common and often quite militant)...actually that doesn't leave much of your assumption left.

Perhaps what you're trying to say here is that I would have "given up" on a revolutionary perspective like all of pre-war Social Democracy (except Lenin's Bolsheviks).

Or perhaps that I would have placed my faith in the institutions of bourgeois "democracy" like even Engels did towards the end of his life...remember that "back then" it looked like a "winning strategy".

Neither of us knows what we "would have done" back then; we know only what we do and want to do in the present.

At this point in history, I think class struggle will increase in militancy over the coming decades and that the working classes in the advanced capitalist countries will develop a revolutionary and communist perspective.

And I reject all forms of participation in bourgeois "electoral" charades.


All change proceeds through transformations of quantity into quality, and through the negation of the negation...If you don't realise that then you are bound to be caught off guard every time the situation changes.

In other words, you do claim that you can "predict the future" with "dialectics".

Charlatan!


Time is not a "fact". It's not something concrete that we can see or touch.

What is this babble? The "arrow of time" has been demonstrated in tens of thousands of experiments in particle physics.

Entropy (another way to illustrate the "arrow of time") has probably been demonstrated in millions of experiments.

It is as "factual" as a "fact" can be.


Logically you would also have to deny movement, since time is just the expression of movement. But movement is the mode of existence of matter.

You might, just for the hell of it, experiment with replying to what people actually put forward...it's just a little too easy to manufacture absurdities and attribute them to your opponents.


And matter moves not according to the laws of Anglo-Saxon empiricism ("today better than yesterday, tomorrow better than today") but according to the laws of dialectics, from volcanos, earthquakes and natural selection to revolutions, wars and the succession of one socio-economic system by another.

What a "profound" characterization of "the laws of Anglo-Saxon empiricism".

And what lofty claims for "dialectics"...truly it must be the elusive "theory of everything". :lol:

Over the last couple of centuries, the human species has accumulated a genuinely enormous amount of coherent knowledge about how the real world actually works...knowledge that is actually useful.

It not only interprets the world, it changes it.

And how was this accomplished, except by the most pain-staking and diligent empirical research?

Of course, there have been some grand theories developed as well...based on that empirical data.

Here's the real "law" of "Anglo-Saxon empiricism": observation always trumps theory!

This you dismiss with contempt, preferring "dialectical" mysticism.


In the Communist Manifesto, Marx predicted that capitalism would develop as a world system, and that it would create its gravedigger, the world proletariat.

1. Marx could easily have extrapolated what he and Engels observed in England to the entire world..."dialectics" was unnecessary.

2. No graves have yet been dug; it remains a hypothesis.

I think it's a good one and definitely worth testing.

But until we actually see a successful proletarian revolution in one or several (better several) advanced capitalist countries and the establishment of viable communist societies, it remains a hypothesis.

It's not "divine revelation".


Lenin's and Bukharin's analysis of the contradictions inherent in monopoly capitalism led them to predict imperialist wars and fascism even before [World War I].

I'm not aware that Lenin "predicted fascism". But even Engels "predicted" World War I as did many bourgeois observers in the late 19th century. It was an "obvious" extrapolation of imperial rivalry. (Engels thought it would lead to many revolutions...but then he would say that, wouldn't he?)


...Trotsky predicted that either the working class would overthrow the Soviet bureaucracy, or the bureaucracy would return to capitalism.

If I am not mistaken, there were "ultra-leftists" in Europe who observed that the "Soviet bureaucracy" returned to capitalism with the introduction of Lenin's "New Economic Policy".


What non-dialectician would venture to predict the fate of Russia 20 years before 1991? Yet the Marxist Ted Grant accurately plotted the curve of the decline of Stalinism.

Most of the "dialecticians" of 1971 had no more idea that the USSR was on the verge of collapse than anyone else. But the "Maoist Consensus" of that period was that capitalism had been effectively restored in the USSR in 1956.

But cheers for Ted if he got one right. What has he done for us lately?


Apart from your philosophic errors...

:lol:


...let's look at some of the other things that show how you are not a Marxist. You reject parliamentary and reformist struggles. That is non-Marxist: we must use every foothold to get closer to the revolution, and we must be the most energetic fighters for partial improvements in the workers' living standards. We must use parliament not as the means of carrying out the revolution but as a revolutionary tribunal, as in Pakistan for instance, where the first thing the Marxist MP did when he entered Parliament was to denounce it as a bourgeois masquerade.

I'll bet he was still first in line to cash his paycheck though.

Actually, in emerging capitalist countries like Pakistan -- where illusions about capitalist "democracy" are still very wide-spread -- you probably could make a decent case for reformism and parliamentary cretinism. Look at Venezuela!

But in the advanced capitalist countries, your case utterly collapses. Half the working class ignores parliament and most of the rest view it with thinly-disguised contempt. There are no more possible reforms of any substance possible.

So all you achieve is, at best, making yourselves look like just another bunch of bastards intent on advancing your careers in the existing system.

If you think for a minute that your activities will cause the working class to "look to you for guidance" in a revolutionary situation, you're simply out of your mind.

They'd no more "trust you" than they'd trust Tony Blair.


When Marx heard that his French supporters rejected "bourgeois parliamentarism", he uttered the famous phrase: "If these be Marxists, then I am not a Marxist".

Yeah, and he was wrong about some other things too.


You are basically a confused old anarchist who has deluded himself that he is a Marxist.

And you, young sir, are basically just confused. You have deluded yourself into believing that you are a revolutionary.

You're not.

:redstar2000:

The Redstar2000 Papers (http://www.redstar2000papers.fightcapitalism.net)
A site about communist ideas

[wet blanket]

I'm really pleased to read your rants on Dialectics RS. I've read far too much communist praise for this stuff, yet I don't get the opportunity to see much criticism.

It's always struck me as some esoteric pseudo-science philosophy. Hegelianism was somewhat of an intellectual 'fad' among Germans in Marx's day. Hell, Hegel himself was a bit of a crackpot with a thing for his sister. :lol: I don't know nearly enough about the dialectics to dismiss them, but ANY philosophy that attempts to explain everything is something to be extremely skeptical about.

[Gringo-a-Go-Go]

What's this then?? Thou dost not believe in the Holy Dialectic???
Gird thyself to do battle, varlet!!!


Originally posted by [email protected] 22 2004, 06:13 PM

My first point is that of the importance of Dialectical thought, we as Marxists need our own thought process...
Indeed? I would imagine that "Marxists", being human, think just like other humans do.
C'mon. Why take this tack?
Trotskyist SP may be expressing this too clumsily; but are you only interested in scoring cheap debating points -- or in actually addressing what he's getting at here?


From the ancient Babylonian astrologers to the present day, humans have sought ways to "predict the future"...to remove uncertainty, fear of the unexpected, etc.

There've been so many attempts and methods...and none of them have ever worked.

"Dialectics" is (or rather was) just such an attempt...a pseudo-scientific effort to find mathematical order and predictability in human history.
I'm sorry. Can you run this past me again??

I happen to think that I am very good at thinking dialectically (in my own self-educated, limited way); and not only is this not what dialectix is about -- it's pretty clear that dialectix really is the way the entire physical universe worx.

I am going to have to take you out behind the woodshed, boy, and teach you some respect.




If we conform to any other form of thought process, i.e., Capitalist or 'Vulgar' thought, then we are in danger of thinking like the Capitalist; and as the Dialectic view, is, as an example, comparable to a movie or moving picture, 'Vulgar' thought is comparable to that of a still photograph. So Capitalist thought processes will inevitably bring about Capitalist thoughts, ideas and actions.Bah!

You think capitalists don't understand change? You think they can't plan for the future?

They do it all the time! Unlike us, they actually have a substantial number of people who investigate change and future scenarios for a living. They have whole "think-tanks" devoted to "managing change" so it will benefit them.

Of course, many of their basic assumptions are different from ours. Their paradigm rules out axiomatically the possibility that they might be someday rendered historically obsolete.
I've had a lot of experience with how the bourgeois mind worx, and while the above is true -- it is also a fact that they do not understand dialectical change. In actual fact, these types have spied on people like myself for many years in order to understand what "secrets" of dialectix we had for the taking; and all I can say, from my own first-hand experience, is that these people only understand things in terms of theft and possession. They are truly vulgar, for all their money and "sophistication". Their ideology really does exist of fixed, undialectical categories -- and this goes for most all of their third-rate scientist hacks too.
Ever thought about why most "practical" quantum science these days (i.e. physical chemistry, atom-bomb design, electronix, etc.) is really only about it's "magical" results? And why most of these "scientists" not only have no real clue about why the math actually worx -- but actually demonstrate they have little interest in finding out?!



The analogy between motion pictures ("dialectics") and still photographs ("ordinary scientific logic") is utterly moronic. Science deals with processes all the time...and discovers explanations that really work.
It's not "utterly moronic" at all. It's just crude. And if I'm not wrong -- it's an analogy actually used by Trotsky himself. And guess what? IT'S VALID. As far as it goes.

And what the fuck do you mean by "ordinary scientific logic"?? I believe he's talking about bourgeois "comon sense" logic. You are setting up some strawman here. The subject of how bourgeois science uses dialectical logic without naming it as such is actually the real issue at hand here.



"Dialectics" won't help.

There isn't anything that will help except for paying attention to what's going on around us.
I am still trying to understand how you can think of yourself as a communist, and yet spout this "sludge". You've posted a lot of utter crap here. I don't know where to begin.

I also note that you've greatly encouraged the enemy by attacking your own ideology here.
Great thanx.

[Gringo-a-Go-Go]

Originally posted by [email protected] 23 2004, 07:17 AM
In closing the Dialectic helps us to understand the changes in Society and class struggles and enables us to act on it by predicting how the mood of the working class will change,

A simple typo on my, part, like I say I'm crap at explaining stuff. Thought I'd have a go though.
You really do have to go hit the boox!
-- and discuss all this with us here
(and don't we all have to..! ;)

But the most important thing of all was to try.
(why do I feel like Yoda all of a sudden??)

Do. Or not do.
There is no try.

[Gringo-a-Go-Go]

Originally posted by [email protected] 23 2004, 01:31 PM
All of us are "crap" at explaining things that we don't understand..

But let's face it. If you want to "master dialectics", you will have to plow through some very dense texts.

And having done so, what will you have?

You'll know how to convert ordinary scientific terminology into "dialectical terminology" so as to make it seem that everything that happens is "really dialectical".

With that "knowledge" and $5.00, you can get a cup of coffee at Starbuck's.
What breathtaking chutzpah.

Clearly you didn't understand a damned thing you read. Frankly, I'd say offhand that you were most likely already pre-disposed to pooh-pooh it all. Why? You tell me.



Study real stuff!
Such as what?

[Gringo-a-Go-Go]

I'm glad you wrote the piece that I didn't, tonite (I've had a long day, and just didn't want to debate this guff in any more detail... ;)


Originally posted by [email protected] 24 2004, 09:00 AM
Logically you would also have to deny movement, since time is just the expression of movement. But movement is the mode of existence of matter.
It's amazing how so many bourgeois science types have fixated on time as the "fourth dimension" of Relativity theory, that they simply cannot understand that time is merely the expression of matter-in-motion.

No movement? Then how could there be any 'moment-to-moment' to be measured?

[Gringo-a-Go-Go]

Originally posted by [email protected] 24 2004, 04:03 PM
Hey kids, it's rant time!

I've just been "thoroughly demolished" by an outraged curator from the Trotsky Museum.
Even better kids! It's ad hominem misdirection time!!



Setting aside the curious designation "prosperous" (those were terrible times for the European and American working classes) and the even more curious inference that there wasn't any class struggle (strikes were common and often quite militant)...actually that doesn't leave much of your assumption left.
You're making quite the set of assumptions, now aren't you..?

Periods of deep depression and recession aside, there were indeed certain periods of "prosperity" before WWI at times -- as well as more than a dollop of class collaboration (varying by country, of course). Otherwise how to explain the abject betrayal by the social-democrats in every european country when war came?

Your objections just aren't as airtight as you claim. History is more complicated than that.



Perhaps what you're trying to say here is that I would have "given up" on a revolutionary perspective like all of pre-war Social Democracy (except Lenin's Bolsheviks).

Or perhaps that I would have placed my faith in the institutions of bourgeois "democracy" like even Engels did towards the end of his life...remember that "back then" it looked like a "winning strategy".

Neither of us knows what we "would have done" back then; we know only what we do and want to do in the present.
I guess a cop-out can also be true...

As for The General:
There has always been at least the possibility of even peaceful transition to socialism thru the parliamentary system; but that hope died a VERY long time ago on the planet Earth. And one of the more disgusting aberrations of marxism has been those sects who have continued to cling to this "closed-off" avenue.
Fact is: our enemy intend to slaughter us like cattle. There is no peaceful road to socialism whatever anymore -- and yet it was a possibility. Once.
Marxism is not about some fixed, teleological plan. It's about real people, and real lives lived.



At this point in history, I think class struggle will increase in militancy over the coming decades and that the working classes in the advanced capitalist countries will develop a revolutionary and communist perspective.

And I reject all forms of participation in bourgeois "electoral" charades.

In other words, you do claim that you can "predict the future" with "dialectics".
Charlatan!
One: you are an ultra-leftist -- and thus impractical about daily struggle.
Two: we'll be in revolution a LOT sooner than some vague "coming decades".

Three: You are quite confused about practical matters of struggle, apparently.



What is this babble? The "arrow of time" has been demonstrated in tens of thousands of experiments in particle physics.

Entropy (another way to illustrate the "arrow of time") has probably been demonstrated in millions of experiments.

It is as "factual" as a "fact" can be.
What the FUCK are you babbling about??
How is dialectix disproved by the arrow of time, or particle physix experiments, or 'S'?

I think we are getting to the nub of your profound ignorance, about now...



You might, just for the hell of it, experiment with replying to what people actually put forward...it's just a little too easy to manufacture absurdities and attribute them to your opponents.
I think you should tend to your own glass house.



What a "profound" characterization of "the laws of Anglo-Saxon empiricism".

And what lofty claims for "dialectics"...truly it must be the elusive "theory of everything". :lol:
Well, actually -- it is.
However, only in a sense which apparently hasn't occurred to you yet.



Over the last couple of centuries, the human species has accumulated a genuinely enormous amount of coherent knowledge about how the real world actually works...knowledge that is actually useful.

It not only interprets the world, it changes it.

And how was this accomplished, except by the most pain-staking and diligent empirical research?
You're really out of your league -- yet you doggedly refuse to admit it.
So sad. FYI: Dialectix includes all that you have stated above. There is no 'contradiction' with dialectix here.

Fuck -- I had thought maybe you were a marxist. No more.



Of course, there have been some grand theories developed as well...based on that empirical data.

Here's the real "law" of "Anglo-Saxon empiricism": observation always trumps theory!

This you dismiss with contempt, preferring "dialectical" mysticism.
You know, some day you'll eat these base, profoundly ignorant words.
"observation always trumps theory" indeed...



And you, young sir, are basically just confused. You have deluded yourself into believing that you are a revolutionary.

You're not.
Speak for yourself, eh?
I'm no fan of the Ted Grant party line either; and maybe I'll see you on the barricades instead of this guy; but I'll be damned if I'll let you get away with pushing petit-bourgeois ideology as superior to marxism.

So 'communism' isn't marxism, is it??
Such a bullshitter.

[redstar2000]

Originally posted by Gringo-a-Go-Go
Otherwise how to explain the abject betrayal by the social-democrats in every European country when war came?

You appear to suggest that European workers were so "prosperous" in 1914 that they couldn't wait to give up their swollen paychecks and luxurious dwellings to fight for the system that brought them such a cornucopia of benefits.

Nope.

I'm actually rather inclined to rely on the much maligned revisionist Edward Bernstein for the most pertinent explanation. If you've read some of the stuff he wrote around 1900, then you know that all he really did was point out a political reality...that German Social Democracy was "revolutionary" in words and reformist in practice.

He was openly reformist and simply wanted their words to match their deeds.

Social Democracy was already "in the toilet" long before 1914.

In my opinion, one important reason for that was precisely their choice of bourgeois electoral politics as the "road to power".

When you act like a reformist then, eventually, your words change to match.

As to the response of the working class to the beginning of World War I, what would you expect? They had been told in words that they should refuse to fight workers in other countries...but the daily reality of Social Democratic practice was "more for us, right now!"

People pay considerably more attention to what you do than to what you say.

We rhetorically use the word "betrayal" to describe the acts of Social Democracy in supporting "their own" bourgeoisie...but, with a few individual exceptions, nearly everyone in Social Democracy did exactly what you would expect reformists to do.


There is no peaceful road to socialism whatever anymore -- and yet it was a possibility. Once.

Well, Engels obviously thought so...or thought it impolitic to make his objections public.


One: you are an ultra-leftist -- and thus impractical about daily struggle.

Two: we'll be in revolution a LOT sooner than some vague "coming decades".

Three: You are quite confused about practical matters of struggle, apparently.

One: yes, I am an "ultra-leftist" and proud of it. What is your evidence of my "impracticality"?

Two: "a LOT sooner"? Is that what your dialectical mysticism tells you? Did you also sacrifice a white bull and read its liver?

Three: what is your evidence for my "confusion about practical matters of struggle"?

------------------------------

The rest of your post is too incoherent for me to give you a response. If you want to try and develop what you said into something that is at least internally consistent, then I will reply.

:redstar2000:

The Redstar2000 Papers (http://www.redstar2000papers.fightcapitalism.net)
A site about communist ideas

[antieverything]

Are you people kidding me or what? Do you really believe that Marx couldn't have arrived at exactly the same conclusions without the dialectics bullshit?


You'll know how to convert ordinary scientific terminology into "dialectical terminology" so as to make it seem that everything that happens is "really dialectical".
My sentiments exactly.

Anyone familiar with "dialectical physics"? Yeah, apparently when Soviet Scientists started developing atomic weapons some of the party brass got a bit worried...not at the prospect of nuclear holocaust, however. Rather, their objection was with the science used by the scientists. You see, some parts of it went against the "dialectical" understanding of the physical world that was in Soviet textbooks.

Stalin shared these concerns but allowed the scientists to continue since, in his words, "we can always kill them later."

Turns out the party was wrong and science was right...it was recognized after this that the science should be left to the scientists. Chalk one up for modern science and formal logic!!!