Lamanov
10th February 2005, 17:21
This is my claim:
"Every scientific discovery in the last 150 years confirms that their view of the world and phenomena through dialectical materialism is correct"
And i got an answer:
"No they haven't. Especially in the field of sociology.... [!?] I could give a huge list but really that's a lot of work and I only need one to disprove your statement. Studies in Ethnomethodology (1967) Harold Garfinkel. This research did not confirm dialectical materialism because its hypothesis was that society was a psychological construction and that no order exists in the world at all." [!!?]
Some serious shit pt.1 :
I've heard alot of things that are supposed to be 'explanations' and 'counter-arguments' of dialectical materialism, but i can say for sure that this one is out of line. It is probable that mr. author didn't even read any of the works of Marx himself, and he probably didn't even hear about Hegel, because he obviously doesn't understand what is dialectics and d.materialism. Don't try to say i'm wrong because burgoise 'inteligentsia' has that nasty habbit of missing the point. I'll give you a tour so you can see for yourself that you've been using false and biased data, or maybe, that you didn't understand it at all.
First of all, you've came here with a previous idea that you can criticize marxism but it is for sure that you never red a single text of the matter you are so much trying to disprove. I assure you that 99% of the works that try to "explain what Marx said" are worthless.
Fundamental laws of dialectical materialism :
1 - Transformation of quantity into quality and vice versa
2 - Unity and interpenetration of opposites
3 - Negation of negation
As you can see, predisposition of laws aquires that 'the world' is not "out of order", but that all phenomena and matter function on the same general laws that determine their dynamics. Hegel, thanks to hes genius, was corageous enough to challenge the Aristotel's Formal Logic and dominant philosophy of Mechanicism, and to embrace the Kant's "antinomies" as a necesity, sort of speak. He, as Alan Woods put it, was not dealing with things as separate, but as a unity, unisolated, with things in its motion, not its death.
Problem with Hegel's philosophy though, was that it was still unsatisfactory. The principal defect of it was Hegel's idealistic standpoint. Therefore, the great achievment of Marx and Engels was applying the dialectical method in the real, material world.
As you said "its hypothesis was that society was a psychological construction and that no order exists in the world at all" - but as we can see - order exists within the laws. It was Hegel who implied that "State is the embodyment of the moral idea, vision and reality of the mind" - and Engels criticized him on that.
As Engels said, Hegels dialectics was a biggest misscariage in the history of philosophy, because, as idealist, it gave answers that were standing on top of it's head. Engels and Marx however, used the dialectical method in opposite direction, in the real world from a materialist standpoint and came to unquestionably correct and real results.
Society has an order. It's structural basis is economical; however, it doesn't mean that Marx "reduces everything to economics". Everyone agrees that
[i]"Dialectical and historical materialism takes full account of phenomena such as religion, art, science, morality, law, politics, tradition, national characteristics and all the other manifold manifestations of human consciousness. But not only that. It shows their real content and how they relate to the actual development of society, which in the last analysis clearly depends upon its capacity to reproduce and expand the material conditions for its existence." [T.Grant, A.Woods, Reason in Revolt]
Social structure :
1 - enonomical basis - determined by productional relations which can be 'class' and 'classless', that is, exploatative or without exploatation.
2 - upper structure - which depends on the basis but also makes effect upon it; this includes : political structure, laws, religion, science....
"According to the materialist conception of history, the ultimately determining element in history is the production and reproduction of real life. More than this neither Marx nor I have ever asserted. Hence, if someone twists this into saying that the economic element is the only determining one, he transforms that position into a meaningless, abstract, senseless phrase. The economic situation is the basis, but the various elements of the superstructure—political forms of the class struggle and its results, to wit: constitutions established by victorious classes after a successful battle, etc., judicial forms, and the reflexes of all these actual struggles in the brains of the participants, political, juristic, philosophical theories, religious views and their further development into systems of dogmas also exercise their influence upon the course of the historical struggles, and in many cases predominate in determining their form." [F.Engels]
As for my claim that "Every scientific discovery in the last 150 years confirms that their view of the world and phenomena through dialectical materialism is correct", it can't be doubted, but since you do, i'll give you few examples [IN SHORT, so don't pull my tongue later] :
"Unity and interpenetration of opposites" - doesn't all nature exist upon the unity of opposites : matter and anti-matter, protons and electrons, + and -, wawes and particles, and so on. Isn't natural dynamic caused by it's interpenetration. Movement itself is based on this law. What about society : rich and poor, exploated and unexploated. Is't class war "interpenetration of opposites"? "Transformation of quantity into quality and vice versa" - Don't revolutions accure when productional relations can't withstand the rise in the productional forces? Doesn't ice turn qualitatively into fluid when there is a quantitative rise in the temperature? Don't elements change qualitatively after they unite quantitatively, or when they increase their atomic weight [that is to say - quantitatively], don't they change their >quality<? Negation of negation - can't electrons be in two places in the same time, or can they go in two separate directions? Doesn't seed negate itself when it germises, and turns into a plant?
Check out the quantnum mechanics, or relativity theory. What about psychology? That too. Isn't mind in constant process of change and dynamics?
Do some more reading kid, you're done here.
"Every scientific discovery in the last 150 years confirms that their view of the world and phenomena through dialectical materialism is correct"
And i got an answer:
"No they haven't. Especially in the field of sociology.... [!?] I could give a huge list but really that's a lot of work and I only need one to disprove your statement. Studies in Ethnomethodology (1967) Harold Garfinkel. This research did not confirm dialectical materialism because its hypothesis was that society was a psychological construction and that no order exists in the world at all." [!!?]
Some serious shit pt.1 :
I've heard alot of things that are supposed to be 'explanations' and 'counter-arguments' of dialectical materialism, but i can say for sure that this one is out of line. It is probable that mr. author didn't even read any of the works of Marx himself, and he probably didn't even hear about Hegel, because he obviously doesn't understand what is dialectics and d.materialism. Don't try to say i'm wrong because burgoise 'inteligentsia' has that nasty habbit of missing the point. I'll give you a tour so you can see for yourself that you've been using false and biased data, or maybe, that you didn't understand it at all.
First of all, you've came here with a previous idea that you can criticize marxism but it is for sure that you never red a single text of the matter you are so much trying to disprove. I assure you that 99% of the works that try to "explain what Marx said" are worthless.
Fundamental laws of dialectical materialism :
1 - Transformation of quantity into quality and vice versa
2 - Unity and interpenetration of opposites
3 - Negation of negation
As you can see, predisposition of laws aquires that 'the world' is not "out of order", but that all phenomena and matter function on the same general laws that determine their dynamics. Hegel, thanks to hes genius, was corageous enough to challenge the Aristotel's Formal Logic and dominant philosophy of Mechanicism, and to embrace the Kant's "antinomies" as a necesity, sort of speak. He, as Alan Woods put it, was not dealing with things as separate, but as a unity, unisolated, with things in its motion, not its death.
Problem with Hegel's philosophy though, was that it was still unsatisfactory. The principal defect of it was Hegel's idealistic standpoint. Therefore, the great achievment of Marx and Engels was applying the dialectical method in the real, material world.
As you said "its hypothesis was that society was a psychological construction and that no order exists in the world at all" - but as we can see - order exists within the laws. It was Hegel who implied that "State is the embodyment of the moral idea, vision and reality of the mind" - and Engels criticized him on that.
As Engels said, Hegels dialectics was a biggest misscariage in the history of philosophy, because, as idealist, it gave answers that were standing on top of it's head. Engels and Marx however, used the dialectical method in opposite direction, in the real world from a materialist standpoint and came to unquestionably correct and real results.
Society has an order. It's structural basis is economical; however, it doesn't mean that Marx "reduces everything to economics". Everyone agrees that
[i]"Dialectical and historical materialism takes full account of phenomena such as religion, art, science, morality, law, politics, tradition, national characteristics and all the other manifold manifestations of human consciousness. But not only that. It shows their real content and how they relate to the actual development of society, which in the last analysis clearly depends upon its capacity to reproduce and expand the material conditions for its existence." [T.Grant, A.Woods, Reason in Revolt]
Social structure :
1 - enonomical basis - determined by productional relations which can be 'class' and 'classless', that is, exploatative or without exploatation.
2 - upper structure - which depends on the basis but also makes effect upon it; this includes : political structure, laws, religion, science....
"According to the materialist conception of history, the ultimately determining element in history is the production and reproduction of real life. More than this neither Marx nor I have ever asserted. Hence, if someone twists this into saying that the economic element is the only determining one, he transforms that position into a meaningless, abstract, senseless phrase. The economic situation is the basis, but the various elements of the superstructure—political forms of the class struggle and its results, to wit: constitutions established by victorious classes after a successful battle, etc., judicial forms, and the reflexes of all these actual struggles in the brains of the participants, political, juristic, philosophical theories, religious views and their further development into systems of dogmas also exercise their influence upon the course of the historical struggles, and in many cases predominate in determining their form." [F.Engels]
As for my claim that "Every scientific discovery in the last 150 years confirms that their view of the world and phenomena through dialectical materialism is correct", it can't be doubted, but since you do, i'll give you few examples [IN SHORT, so don't pull my tongue later] :
"Unity and interpenetration of opposites" - doesn't all nature exist upon the unity of opposites : matter and anti-matter, protons and electrons, + and -, wawes and particles, and so on. Isn't natural dynamic caused by it's interpenetration. Movement itself is based on this law. What about society : rich and poor, exploated and unexploated. Is't class war "interpenetration of opposites"? "Transformation of quantity into quality and vice versa" - Don't revolutions accure when productional relations can't withstand the rise in the productional forces? Doesn't ice turn qualitatively into fluid when there is a quantitative rise in the temperature? Don't elements change qualitatively after they unite quantitatively, or when they increase their atomic weight [that is to say - quantitatively], don't they change their >quality<? Negation of negation - can't electrons be in two places in the same time, or can they go in two separate directions? Doesn't seed negate itself when it germises, and turns into a plant?
Check out the quantnum mechanics, or relativity theory. What about psychology? That too. Isn't mind in constant process of change and dynamics?
Do some more reading kid, you're done here.