Dialectics.

[atlas]

I've looked at a number of places to find a good definition of them, but I still have no idea what they are. Could someone give me a clear explanation of what dialetics are, where they originated and why they are important to communism?

[rouchambeau]

In the Hegelian sense of the word?

[atlas]

Well, like I said I don't know anything about them. So maybe the sense that Marxists use? Or somehow related to Marxism?

[More Fire for the People]

The dialectic is the ‘science of logic’. It is the analysis of the world. Essentialy dialectics states that a substance can transform into another substance throw a process. This process, called the laws of dialectics, are:
The law of the unity and conflict of opposites;
For there to be an identity of something, something that is same there must be something that is other than the identity of something. For instance, for there to be red things there must be non-red things. Another example would be for there to be capital there must be wage-labor.

The law of the passage of quantitative changes into qualitative changes;
Build ups in a quantity within something affect the quality of something. Therefore, when a quantitative change happens a qualitative change happens, and when a qualitative change happens a quantitative change happens. For instance, say water is increased from 0C to 100C by 1C every minute. In between 0C and 100C there would be no changes but the build up of quantitative changes creates the qualitative change.

The law of the negation of the negation;
Essentially, this states that beings moves forward and than p <> ~~p rather ~~p is something newer.

[atlas]

ahh so basically nothing is free. one thing costs another.


thanks :)

[Janus]

Look around in this forum for previous debates concerning it.

There&#39;s Dialectics for Kids if you want to look at a simplified def.; the link is in RevLeft Dictionary somewhere.

[Rosa Lichtenstein]

Hop, thanks for that &#39;definition&#39;, but as you have yet to find out yourself, these &#39;laws&#39; are all systematically trashed at my site.

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

Atlas, give this Idealist theory a miss; us materialists do not need it.

Or if you can&#39;t, then visist my site to see how easy they are to pull apart.

Link below.

[rouchambeau]

Dialectics, in addition to what others have posted, is about the synthesis from thesis and antithesis. Think of it like two forces pulling and object (not literally) away from eachother while at the same time pulling it forward.

EDIT: THIS IS NOT CORRECT.

[atlas]

Well it does seem a little &#39;mystical&#39;. But it is still an interesting theory.

BTW @ Janus, dialetics for kids was a very helpful link, thanks&#33;

[gilhyle]

As practised by Marxism, dialectics is an attribute of that presumption of materialism upon which the Marxist criticism of dominant ideologies is based.

Marxims achieves this critique by counterposing summaries of what a materialist perspective would look like to the models put forward by dominant ideologies.

The attribute added to the self-conscious presumption of materialism by also adopting the attribute of dialectics is the following: those summaries are then based on recognising that conceptual terms do not remain stable throughout useful perspectives on complex realities. Given conceptual terms change their point of reference or their meaning and conceptual terms are constantly replaced those summaries point out how the conceptual terms are transformed by the process of elaborating more forceful explanations.

One benefit of this is that the anomalies in all elaborated conceptual frameworks which can easily be highlighted by analysis (and which sow a confusion which facilitates reversion to the dominant ideology) are managed.

A second benefit is that a conceptual model material reality can also be developed which openly refers to the processes of change intrinsic to reality which undermine conceptual stability. (This relatively minor aspect of dialectics, is what is being referred to in the laws of dialectics referred to above.)

[Rosa Lichtenstein]

Rouchambeau:


Dialectics, in addition to what others have posted, is about the synthesis from thesis and antithesis.

This is in fact a serious error; check this out:

http://www.revolutionaryleft.com/index.php?showtopic=51512

Fifth post down

[Rosa Lichtenstein]

Gilhyle, it is in fact part of the dominant ideology that has been around since Greek times that philosophy can tell us anything about the world.

Indeed, this is one reason why I have systematically trashed this theory at RevLeft, and at my site.

[gilhyle]

It would be quite extraordinary if a single dominant ideology had continued from Greek times to the present day.

The dominant philosophical ideology which underpins capitalism (and which, of course, is subject to wide variation and is rendered weak by the limited requirement for any integrative philosophical domnant ideology in a society systematically based on the market) is Kantianism (broadly defined).

This dominant ideology has its own conception of dialectics as the contradictions of theoretical reason which achieve their resolution in practical reasoning.

It is also true that concepts of dialectics date back to Heraclitus and - at the most abstarct level - eternal philosophical issues can be devised to which heraclitean dialectics are one response and parmenidean metaphysics are the alternative response. But the perspective which sees such an apparent pattern of continuity across modes of production as capturing the key point in philosophical debate really misses the point of philosophy.

Whether that is your view, I dont know. But one thing I am fully convinced of: in the marxist tradition the attack on dialectics (properly conceived) has gone hand in hand with a pattern of politics which has led repeatedly (although contingently ) to regression in politics. This is not a necessary pattern - someone like Maurice Cornforth attempted to defend dialectics while standing for a quite reprehensible political position. But the pattern is real nevertheless.

Marx&#39;s political economy cannot be understood without, in the same process, learning the dialectics of political economy.

[Severian]

Encyclopedia of Marxism: Dialectics (http://www.marxists.org/glossary/terms/d/i.htm#dialectics)

See also: Encyclopedia of Marxism: Dialectical Materialism. (http://www.marxists.org/glossary/terms/d/i.htm#dialectical-materialism)

[Rosa Lichtenstein]

Gilhyle:


It would be quite extraordinary if a single dominant ideology had continued from Greek times to the present day.

Which is, of course, not what I claim.

But, just as we have had class society since greek times, expressed in different modes of production, so we have a dominant form of thought expressed in different ways: there is an underlying oder to reality, ordained of god, or which is natural, so you cannot fight it, hidden from sight (but philosophers will tell you it is there, just like the gods of old), so get back to work, and be glad you have a job....

Do you ask of monotheists (who have been around for at least 3000 years), the same sort of thing?

Same with philosophy, which is a monomania: there is an underlying essence to reality, accessible only to thought, which has been used to rationalise and excuse power for only 2500 years.


Whether that is your view, I dont know. But one thing I am fully convinced of: in the marxist tradition the attack on dialectics (properly conceived) has gone hand in hand with a pattern of politics which has led repeatedly (although contingently ) to regression in politics. This is not a necessary pattern - someone like Maurice Cornforth attempted to defend dialectics while standing for a quite reprehensible political position.

Not so in my case: I did not believe this theory before I became a revolutionary over 20 years ago, and I do not believe it now, and yet I am more convinced of the truth of historical materialism now that I was 20 years ago.

And, there are plenty of anti-revolutionary dialecticians (other than Cornforth). In fact there are thousands.

So this is a scare story you can stop retailing: no one believes it any more.

One thing I know: if truth is tested in practice then history has refuted dialectics.

This is not surprising: it is a theory that does not arise out of the collective experience of working people, but out of the divisive experience of the ruling class.

[Martin Blank]

Atlas, Rosa&#39;s "trashing" of dialectical theory is a bait-and-switch. Instead of taking on Marx, she beats on her idiotic cult leaders (in the Socialist Workers Party of Britain) and their attempts at "dialectical materialism", and a few well-placed (and well-worn) strawmen.

I recommend reading Marx on the question first and foremost. If you want to have a discussion about this free from vultures of bourgeois ideology like Rosa, then you&#39;re welcome to come and post over at our discussion board (http://www.communistleague.org/forum/).

Miles

[LSD]

Really long thread on dialectics (http://www.revolutionaryleft.com/index.php?showtopic=48119&hl=dialectic*).

[Rosa Lichtenstein]

Miles:


Atlas, Rosa&#39;s "trashing" of dialectical theory is a bait-and-switch. Instead of taking on Marx, she beats on her idiotic cult leaders (in the Socialist Workers Party of Britain) and their attempts at "dialectical materialism", and a few well-placed (and well-worn) strawmen.

Well, this shows, once again, how little you know. I quote all the Marxists classicists (extensively), and SWP theorists on the odd occasion (almost to a man and woman, they reject my ideas over-hastily like you -- so you have that in common with them&#33;), and every writer who has ever written on the subject. So unless you know of a few Martians who have managed to make this Hermetic theory clear, I have missed no one out (as is very easy to confirm).

Now, in your case, you have proved totally incapable of responding to a single thing I have said both here and at my site (indeed, you spent a few minutes 6 months ago skim-reading one Essay, when approximately 20,000 words had been posted; now there are in excess of 600,000).

But like other dialectical mystics, you are happy to pontificate about my ideas in total ignorance.

That&#39;s OK, since it leaves the field open for me to continue to trash this incompehensible and useless &#39;theory&#39;.

[You can&#39;t even use it to defend your regressive ideas over Lebanon on other threads on this board&#33;]

[gilhyle]

Rosa

Attacking &#39;dialectics&#39; in the works of the leaders of the British SWP (granting that that is not all you do) is a complete waste of time since that tradition is notoriously incapable understanding dialectics - the writings of Callinicos illuminate the point very well : he is completely anti-dialectical in his view.

John Rees Algebra of Revolution, trying to be orthodox, achieves little more than parroting Lukacs&#39; Schellingian anti-dialectical position.

How you can even think you understand historical materialsim without the benefit of dialectics I dont know. But then, Bukharin thought he was a Marxist, thought he understood historical materialism and was no more than a sociologist in outlook. His recently published, pretentiously titled Philosophical Arabesques shows him engaged in useless parroting of Hegel.

(Just so as not to be completely negative : A book I quite liked many years ago, although not perfect by any means, was the wonderfully named Violence of Abstraction by Derek Sayers.)

I see you quote Max Eastman in your profile - his Marx lenin and the Science of Revolution is a typical anti-dialectical argument; but if those are the kind of arguments you use, its just not worth having the debate because a writer like that just doesnt understand what dialectics might be - might as well argue with Karl Popper.

http://www.marxists.org/reference/subject/...s/en/sayer1.htm (http://www.marxists.org/reference/subject/philosophy/works/en/sayer1.htm)

[Rosa Lichtenstein]

Gilhyle:


Attacking &#39;dialectics&#39; in the works of the leaders of the British SWP (granting that that is not all you do) is a complete waste of time since that tradition is notoriously incapable understanding dialectics - the writings of Callinicos illuminate the point very well : he is completely anti-dialectical in his view.

Not only is it &#39;not all I do&#39;, it is only about 5% of what I do -- as you would know if you determined to stop passing comment on my work in almost total ignorance.

What is it with you DM-fans? I check everything carefully, over and over again, in the writings of countless DM-theorists, before I allege anything. That does not stop me from making mistakes, but at least I have read the material I criticise.

You lot just pontificate.

And, it might seem easy for you to say that SWP-theorists do not &#39;understand dialectics&#39;, but I claim that (just like the Chritians do not understand their Trinity) none of you understand this Hermetic theory (and for the same reason).

Or, if you do you have kept that secret to yourselves pretty effectively for 130 years or more.

I have been reading this stuff for over 25 years, and have suffered my way through countless hundreds of books and articles on DM (most of which read virtually the same -- and were just paraphrases of Lenin or Engels), and not a one could explain a single dialectical concept.

So, the SWP-&#39;leaders&#39; are in good company.


How you can even think you understand historical materialsim without the benefit of dialectics I dont know.

Easy: historical materialism is a science and makes sense. Dialectical materialism is an idealist execrescence that does not.


Violence of Abstraction by Derek Sayers

Good in parts, but its major failing is that it relies on ruling-class idealist forms-of thought.

Plus it is full of incomprehensible jargon.


I see you quote Max Eastman in your profile -- his Marx lenin and the Science of Revolution is a typical anti-dialectical argument; but if those are the kind of arguments you use, its just not worth having the debate because a writer like that just doesnt understand what dialectics might be

I suspect that this is all you have read of my work, so you won&#39;t know that I use that quote provocatively, and that is all. It is not an argument, so why you think it is, I do not know.

Now, you do not have to read my work, no one does; but may I suggest that you refrain from making such ill-informed remarks about what I do or do not argue/believe if you do not intend to check my work out?

What would you think of someone who dismissed Marx but who had read nothing he had written?

Or, if I had read no dialectics, but just said it was crap?

We both know what you&#39;d say. It&#39;s what I said above.

[Martin Blank]

Originally posted by Rosa Lichtenstein+Aug 27 2006, 05:09 AM--> (Rosa Lichtenstein &#064; Aug 27 2006, 05:09 AM)Well, this shows, once again, how little you know. I quote all the Marxists classicists (extensively), and SWP theorists on the odd occasion (almost to a man and woman, they reject my ideas over-hastily like you -- so you have that in common with them&#33;), and every writer who has ever written on the subject. So unless you know of a few Martians who have managed to make this Hermetic theory clear, I have missed no one out (as is very easy to confirm).[/b]

This is a falsification -- a lie. Well, to be fair, a partial lie. Yes, you do quote "Marxists classicists" like Lenin, Trotsky and even Engels "extensively", but you quote John Rees even more extensively. But how about Marx? How many times is Marx, the philosopher who developed the very theory you claim to be opposing, quoted in your essays. Nine times -- mostly from the same two books (The Holy Family and Poverty of Philosophy). And those quotations are, generally speaking, supplementary to some bourgeois "Marxist" academic or John Rees (or Ted Grant and Alan Woods). To put it another way, if the Marx quotes were removed from the essays, they wouldn&#39;t be missed.

So, far from showing "how little" I know, it shows how little you actually know ... your own material. As I said, "Instead of taking on Marx, she beats on her idiotic cult leaders (in the Socialist Workers Party of Britain) and their attempts at &#39;dialectical materialism&#39;, and a few well-placed (and well-worn) strawmen."


Originally posted by Rosa [email protected] 27 2006, 05:09 AM
Now, in your case, you have proved totally incapable of responding to a single thing I have said both here and at my site (indeed, you spent a few minutes 6 months ago skim-reading one Essay, when approximately 20,000 words had been posted; now there are in excess of 600,000).

Well, if words were nickels, you might be a millionaire. But that doesn&#39;t really mean that they were worth it. And, in fact, I have read the essays as they have been posted, as have other League members. Over 600,000 words and we&#39;re still not impressed. The RedTsar groupies you inherited recently may stroke your ego until you&#39;re satisfied, but, in the end, it&#39;s still just ... stroking for personal gratification.


Originally posted by Rosa [email protected] 27 2006, 05:09 AM
... you are happy to pontificate about my ideas of total ignorance.

Corrected.


Originally posted by Rosa [email protected] 27 2006, 05:09 AM
That&#39;s OK, since it leaves the field open for me to continue to trash this incompehensible and useless &#39;theory&#39;.

Your perceived "incompehensible [sic] and useless &#39;theory&#39;," a tin man, cowardly lion and a pair of red slippers are all you need for a production of "The Wizard of Oz".


Rosa [email protected] 27 2006, 05:09 AM
[You can&#39;t even use it to defend your regressive ideas over Lebanon on other threads on this board&#33;]

That&#39;s funny. As I recall, you were the one who kept changing the subject because you couldn&#39;t convince people why being a progressive anti-imperialist requires tailing reactionary anti-imperialists.

Miles

[Rosa Lichtenstein]

Miles:


Yes, you do quote "Marxists classicists" like Lenin, Trotsky and even Engels "extensively", but you quote John Rees even more extensively.

Oh, dear, you have not done your homework very carefully have you?

Here is one tiny section of just one of my essays:


Beginning with Joseph Dietzgen:

"Scientific socialists apply the inductive method. They stick to facts. They live in the real world and not in the spiritualist regions of scholasticism....

"Indeed, where we have to deal with concrete phenomena, or, as it were, with palpable things, the method of materialism has long since reigned supremely (sic). Yet, it needed more than practical success: it needed the theoretical working-out in all its details in order to completely rout its enemy, the scholastic speculation or deduction....

"Scientific &#39;laws&#39; are deductions drawn by human thinking from empiric material...." [Dietzgen (1906), pp.81-84.]

So much for the usual disarming modesty. Now the mailed metaphysical fist, hidden inside the self-effacing glove, emerges to pound the dialectical table:

"Nothing more is meant by these deductions than this: the world is a unity, that is, there is only one world….

"...[R]eason makes of all existence one order. To enroll (sic) under this order all the phenomena of the world as different species, is to follow nature. Because the intellect can do this, because it divides everything into orders and species, into subjects and predicates so that finally only one order remains, only one subject, Being or the Given Premises of which mind and body, reason, fancy, matter, force, etc., are predicates or species -- because of that there cannot possibly remain in the world any impassable gulf. Everything must reduce itself to a theoretical harmony, to one system....

"I should like to make the reader understand what the professors, so far as I know them, have not yet understood, viz., that our intellect is a dialectical instrument, and instrument which reconciles all opposites. The intellect creates unity by means of the variety and comprehends the difference in the equality. Hegel made it clear long ago that there is no either-or, but as well as...." [Ibid., pp.246-48.]

Exactly how Dietzgen deduced all this from "empiric material" he forgot to say, but the reader should note that even while he was helpfully upgrading our undialectical minds with words of wisdom empirically copied from Hegel&#39;s Logic (i.e., to the effect that there is no "either-or") he neglected to apply the rules he found there to his own non-empiric musings. Plainly, if there is no "either-or", then the world must be both a unity and not a unity (but not the one or the other), just as it must also be true that "the intellect" as a "dialectical instrument" both reconciles and does not reconcile all opposites (but not the one or the other).

Dietzgen clearly failed to note that material reality resists the imposition of Idealist nostrums like these; any attempt to do so rapidly backfires, and in this case it becomes clear that neither he nor any other dialectician is free to reject the LEM while hoping to assert anything determinate about anything whatsoever -- even about that &#39;law&#39; itself. [Why this is so will be detailed in Essay Four.]

[LEM = Law of Excluded Middle.]

But, there is more:

"Before Philosophy could enter the innermost of the mind-function, it had to be shown by the practical achievements of natural science how the mental instrument of man possesses the hitherto doubted faculty of illuminating the innermost of Nature. The physicists do not close their eyes to the fact that there are many unknown worlds. Still some of them have yet to learn that the Unknown, too, is not so totally unknown and mysterious. Even the most unknown world and the most mysterious things are together with the known places and objects of one and the same category, namely, of the universal union of Nature. Owing to the conception of the Universe virtually existing, as a kind of innate idea, in the human mind, the latter knows a priori that all things, the heavenly bodies included, exist in the Universe, and are of universal and common nature...." [Ibid., pp.267-68.]

It should perhaps have occurred to Dietzgen&#39;s &#39;empiric&#39; mind that if there are indeed "unknown worlds" then humanity cannot have any knowledge of them. How, therefore, such bold conclusions about them could be drawn in advance of such knowledge only those similarly lost in the dialectical mist will be able to say -- but even they might falter when it comes to explaining to those who are not quite so logically-challenged just how such &#39;knowns&#39; can be derived with confidence from all those &#39;unknowns&#39;.

The incoherent ramblings of current US Secretary of Defence, Donald Rumsfeld, about "known unknowns", come to mind here:

"As you know, there are known knowns. There are things that we know we know. We also know that there are known unknowns. That is to say, we know that there are some things that we do not know. But there are also unknown unknowns, the ones we don&#39;t know we don&#39;t know." [Quoting from Dilip Hero, Secrets and Lies. The True History of the Iraq War, p.163, who was citing the UK Guardian, 03/05/03.]

When card-carrying members of the ruling-class come up with prize thoughts like these, we generally know how to respond. However, when dialecticians utter the same sort of rubbish, some of us nod approvingly at their &#39;profundity&#39;.

But where do such epistemological gems originate? Dietzgen is keen to tell us (while still doing his faux Rumsfeld impersonation):

"How then do we know that behind the phenomena of Nature, behind the relative truths, there is a universal, absolute Nature which does not reveal itself completely to man?....

"It is innate; it is given to us with consciousness. The consciousness of man is the knowledge of his personality as part of the human species, of mankind, and of the Universe. To know is to form pictures in the consciousness that they are pictures of things which all, both the pictures and the things, possess a general mother from which they have issued and to which they will return. The mother is the absolute truth; she is perfectly true and yet mystical in a natural way, that is, she is the inexhaustible source of knowledge and consequently never entirely to be comprehended.

"All that is known in and of the world is, however, true and exact, only a known truth, therefore a modified truth, a modus or part of truth. When I say that the consciousness of the endless, absolute truth is innate in us, is one and the only knowledge a priori, I am confirmed in my statement also by the experience of this innate consciousness...." [Dietzgen (1906), pp.283-84. Italic emphases in the original; bold emphases added.]

So, the laws of Dietzgen&#39;s brand of &#39;Rumsfeldian superscience&#39; still follow from experience, except now it is from the inner experience of "innate consciousness". On that basis, presumably, we could conclude, if we were so minded, that Saddam Hussein did indeed possess Weapons of Mass Destruction, despite the absence of &#39;outer evidence&#39;. And we could too, if we based this piece of convenient &#39;knowledge&#39; on an inner intuition to that effect, and supported the imperialist invasion to boot. Who could object? Only those who doubt the existence of "unknown unknowns", perhaps?

[Readers familiar the history of Mother-Nature worship and Hermetic Philosophy will no doubt recognize the provenance of much of Dietzgen&#39;s ruminations, especially those highlighted in bold. (It might be worth finding out if Rumsfeld ever read Dietzgen, or even the Hermetic Kybalion. Since the latter was (possibly?) written by three Masons, this is highly likely.)]

There are many more passages like this in Dietzgen&#39;s rambling, almost aimless writings.

[Exactly why Marx thought so highly of him is a complete mystery&#33;]

In a similar dogmatic vein, David Hayden-Guest had this to say:

"Here it is the great service of Hegel to have conceived history as exhibiting a process of development….

"Dialectical materialism appears at first sight to be a return to the original Greek view of the world from which philosophy started. And, indeed, like this Greek materialism, it sees the world as a single interconnected whole in endless motion…..

"The &#39;dialectical laws of motion&#39;…are the most general laws possible….

"The second dialectical law, that of the &#39;unity, interpenetration or identity of opposites&#39;…asserts the essentially contradictory character of reality -– at the same time asserts that these &#39;opposites&#39; which are everywhere to be found do not remain in stark, metaphysical opposition, but also exist in unity. This law was known to the early Greeks. It was classically expressed by Hegel over a hundred years ago….

"[F]rom the standpoint of the developing universe as a whole, what is vital is…motion and change which follows from the conflict of the opposite.

"The Law of the Negation of the Negation…. This law states one of the most characteristic features of evolutionary process in all fields -– that development takes place in a kind of spiral, one change negating a given state of affairs and a succeeding change, which negated the first, re-establishing (in a more developed form, or &#39;on a higher plane&#39;…) some essential feature of the original state of affairs….

"This law of dialectical process is like the others in that it cannot be arbitrarily &#39;foisted&#39; on Nature or history. It cannot be used as a substitute for empirical facts, or used to &#39;predict&#39; things without a concrete study of the facts in question….

"Everything is not only part of the great world process but is itself essentially in process….

"Development is always the result of internal conflict as well as of external relations, themselves including conflict. It can only be explained and rationally grasped to the extent that the internal contradictions of the thing have been investigated….

"Every &#39;thing&#39; is itself vastly complicated, made up of innumerable sides and aspects, related in various ways to every other thing." [Guest (1963), pp.31, 32, 38, 40, 42, 45. Bold emphases added.]

Careful readers will note that while Guest makes the standard claim that DM has not been imposed on reality, he then proceeds to do just that. Exactly how he knew that reality was "essentially" contradictory, for instance, he neglected to inform the bemused reader.

The quasi-Stalinist, Edward Conze, put things similarly:

"Scientific method is not a body of ready-made statements which can be learnt by heart. It gives no mystical formulae from which we can easily deduce reality without the trouble of examining the facts…[it is not] a reverential pondering over quotations….

"Scientific method demands that we should study things in their inter-relation with one another….

"…Each thing stands in some relation to everything else in the world. It is thus fully understood only if its relations are known. Therefore it has been said to know one thing completely is to know everything….

"The philosopher sums up -– Everything is inter-related with everything else….

"That everything should be studied in its development and changing forms is the demand of the second rule of scientific method….

"Everything in this world is subject to perpetual change…. Everything in the world once had a beginning; and there is no part of the universe that will not perish….

"The scientific method demands that the world should be studied as a complex of processes and events and not as a complex of ready-made things....

"The third law or rule of scientific method is that opposites are always united, that they are in unity…." [Conze (1944), pp.11, 14-15, 25-26, 35. Bold emphases added; italic emphases in the original.]

Once more, the puzzled reader will wonder where all the evidence supporting these brave theses has gone.

However, in a rare moment of honesty, Conze admitted:

"I know of no general reason why opposites always must be united. The study of scientific method has not yet advanced to give us a proof of this kind…. The reader must be warned against using the law as a mystical formula…." [Ibid., p.36. Emphasis in the original.]

Nevertheless, this has not stopped dialecticians ever since using this "mystical formula" as just such a talisman.

Sad to say, but in Conze&#39;s case, the above caveat represented a false dawn, for on the same page we find the following:

"The negative electrical pole…cannot exist without the simultaneous presence of the positive electrical pole…. This &#39;unity of opposites&#39; is therefore found in the core of all material things and events." [Ibid., pp.35-36. Emphasis in the original.]

How this comrade knew that negative poles could not exist apart from positive poles, he failed to say.

[Despite this, Physicists are still looking for a magnetic monopole, foolishly not having imposed dialectics on nature themselves. Of course, if the poles of a magnet were logically linked, as dialecticians appear to believe (but only in terms of their own brand of confused logic), then Physicists would not be looking for them -- any more than they might look for a longitude of 360 degrees North (no misprint here&#33;).]

He also neglected to note that if a negatively charged particle had existed on its own, scientists might well have concluded that it wasn&#39;t charged at all. Who can say?

Nevertheless, Conze&#39;s obvious good sense intervened once more, leading him to make the following confession:

"I have had some &#39;dialecticians&#39; assure me that they did not know what the structure of the atom would turn out to be, but they had not the shadow of doubt that it would be found to be &#39;dialectical&#39;. This is not the language of science, but of religion…. We should beware of putting the dialectical method on the same level with the revelations of God. There is nothing ultimate about scientific theories…. Too frequently do we petrify the science of yesterday into the dogma of to-morrow. Science demands an elastic and critical spirit." [Ibid., p.36.]

This passage should be made required reading for all dialectical dogmatists (but check out comrade Thalheimer below, whom Conze might well have had in mind). Not that it will do much good, for on the same page we find Conze himself arguing once again:

"Both attraction and repulsion are necessary properties of matter. Each attraction in one place is necessarily compensated for by a corresponding repulsion in another place…." [Ibid., p.36. Bold emphases added; italic emphases in the original.]

Conze&#39;s non-standard dialectical meander through mystical space (as his own theses are immediately contradicted, and turn into more cautious antitheses, and are then contradicted right back again to become dogmatic theses once more) is instructive enough. Hence, true to form, he back-sasses all the way with this passage:

"A material contradiction means that one concrete process contains two mutually incompatible and exclusive, but nevertheless equally essential and indispensable parts or aspects….

"In some cases we can observe that a thing moves and destroys itself. This is the case with radium and uranium…. Since [their] disintegration is not due to external causes, but to the constitution of radium itself, we would assume the presence of a contradiction in radium. At the moment, however, we are incapable of pointing out what that contradiction is….

"We find clearer examples in…[Biology]. Engels pointed out that a living being is at any given moment the same and yet another… Its life consists in that it simultaneously performs two contradictory processes, breaks down and builds itself up again…." [Ibid., p.52. Bold emphases added; italic emphasis in the original.]

Conze is clearly an odd mixture of dialectical-bravado and non-dialectical-caution, with the former obviously dominating the latter, which is itself a product of the aprioristic tradition that has shaped Philosophy since Greek times. So, as part of that tradition, just how Conze knew that contradictions cause change, and that Engels was right about all living cells, he naturally felt he did not need to say. Just quoting Engels was clearly sufficient.

Here are the thoughts of comrade Thalheimer, recorded (it has to be said) in one of the best and most intelligent of introductions to DM there is -- but clearly speaking from atop that holy mountain that sits on the edge of the universe, known only to dialecticians:

"The most general and the most inclusive fundamental law of dialectics from which all others are deduced is the law of permeation of opposites. This law has a two-fold meaning: first, that all things, all processes, all concepts merge in the last analysis into an absolute unity, or, in other words, that there are no opposites, no differences which cannot ultimately be comprehended into a unity. Second, and just as unconditionally valid, that all things are at the same time absolutely different and absolutely or unqualifiedly opposed. The law may also be referred to as the law of the polar unity of opposites. This law applies to every single thing, every phenomenon, and to the world as a whole. Viewing thought and its method alone, it can be put this way: The human mind is capable of infinite condensation of things into unities, even the sharpest contradictions and opposites, and, on the other hand, it is capable of infinite differentiation and analysis of things into opposites. The human mind can establish this unlimited unity and unlimited differentiation because this unlimited unity and differentiation is present in reality." [Thalheimer (1936), p.161. Bold emphasis added.]

There then follows a few pages of anecdotal &#39;evidence&#39; in support of these universal pronouncements, most of which will be reviewed in Essay Seven, followed by this:

"Or take the smallest components of matter: two electrons which form part of the atomic system can never be absolutely identical. We can say this with certainty even though we are not yet in a position to know anything about the individual peculiarity of electrons.... This is based on the proposition of the permeation of opposites, the proposition which says that the identity of things is just as unlimited as their difference. The capacity of the mind infinitely to equate things as well as to differentiate and oppose, corresponds to the infinite identity and difference of things in nature.... We have previously shown that being and non-being exist simultaneously in becoming, that they constitute identical elements of becoming...." [Ibid., pp.167-68. Bold emphasis added.]

Now the evidence comrade Thalheimer quotes in support would be considered a joke if this were hard science, but dialectics is perhaps the softest science there is (even Creationists offer more and better evidence&#33;) -- a marshmallow sort of science where a few pages of superficial evidence allows the adept to predict what must be true, for instance, of every electron in the entire universe, and for all of time.

However, Thalheimer had a sure-fire method of proof (one he copied from Hegel), which meant that mere evidence was an irrelevance:

"This law of the permeation of opposites will probably be new to you, something to which you have probably not given thought. Upon closer examination you will discover that you cannot utter a single meaningful sentence which does not comprehend this proposition.... Let us take a rather common sentence: &#39;The lion is a beast of prey.&#39; A thing, A, the lion is equated with a thing B. At the same time a distinction is made between A and B. So far as the lion is a beast of prey, it is equated with all beasts of that kind. At the same time, in the same sentence, it is distinguished from the kind. It is impossible to utter a sentence which will not contain the formula, A equals B. All meaningful sentences have a form which is conditioned by the permeation of opposites. This contradiction [is] contained in every meaningful sentence, the equation and at the same time differentiation between subject and predicate...." [Ibid., pp.168-69.]

We will meet this rather odd &#39;argument&#39; again later (in Essay Three, Part One) where it will be fingered as the real well-spring of Hegelian dialectics, and thus of DM. We shall see there how a neat grammatical dodge (and one that is never justified) allowed dialecticians to turn the simple "is" of predication into an "is" of identity, creating the spurious &#39;contradiction&#39; from which all of dialectics has since flowed. In that case, DM arises not from a scientific view of nature, or even from experience -- nor yet from revolutionary practice -- but from a simple error over the verb "to be"&#33;

This impressive, &#39;scientific method&#39; was invented, so far as we know, by Parmenides, who it seems also had problems with other participles of the same verb. From this verbal mistake evolved the neurotic fascination with "Being", which has gripped most of Western Philosophy since: Parmenides&#39;s misunderstanding of the present participle of the verb "to be"&#33; Can you imagine a genuine science based on a misconstrued present participle? Two thousand five hundred years of wasted effort based on a misinterpreted verb&#33;

[How and why this &#39;confusion&#39; arose, and was then adopted by DM-theorists, will be detailed in Essays Three, Nine, Twelve and Fourteen. Summaries are posted here, but more specifically, here.]

Suffice it to say here that even though comrade Thalheimer was clearly a highly intelligent man, it is nevertheless inexplicable how he forgot about ordinary sentences like "Thalheimer writes well", which under no stretch of the imagination is of the form "A = B" -- and neither is "Thalheimer failed to make his case", or "Thalheimer ignored this example", nor even "Thalheimer, following Hegel, misconstrued the &#39;is&#39; of predication with the &#39;is&#39; of identity".

This is not to say that several of the above sentences cannot be forced into this dialectical boot -- as in, say, "Thalheimer is someone who failed to make his case", but then there would be problems interpreting this as "Thalheimer is identical with someone who has failed to make his case." In that case, just who is that person that Thalheimer is identical with? And try doing the same dialectical switch on this: "Someone told Thalheimer his watch was broken." What does this mean? "Someone is identical with..."..., well, what?

The subject/predicate form that Thalheimer (and Hegel) relied on is an Indo-European invention, and even then it captures only a fraction of the meaningful indicative sentences we can form in that language group. The fact that Thalheimer could read such universal verities from language alone (and fail to spot the significance of the fact the he thought he could do this, and from such simplistic and unrepresentative examples) underscores the claim made at this site that DM is just another form of LIE (and not a very impressive form, either).

[On the intimate connection between Indo-European Grammar and the subject-predicate form in language, see Kahn (2003), pp.1-2; although Kahn takes a different view of its implications. This is of course something Nietzsche noticed (Nietzsche (1997), pp.20-21), and it is part of the so-called Sapir-Whorf thesis, but the acceptance or rejection of the latter does not affect the point I am making here.]

[LIE = Linguistic Idealism.]

Thalheimer must have used countless sentences every day that gave the lie to his theory; exactly why he and all other dialecticians ignore the material language of everyday life will be exposed later.

Thalheimer continues in the same vein for another fifteen pages or so. I might add a few more of his a priori musings at a later date, if I can summon up the will.

We turn now to consider the musings of a comrade who was an intellectual and political enemy of Stalinism: George Novack. Oddly enough, instead of opposing the dogmatism he found there, he aped it, laying down the law like any other born-again dogmatist:

"Everything in motion is continually bringing forth this contradiction of being in two different places at the same time, and also overcoming this contradiction by proceeding from one place to the next….

"A moving thing is both here and there simultaneously. Otherwise it is not in motion but at rest….

"Nothing is permanent. Reality is never resting, ever changeable, always in flux. This unquestionable universal process forms the foundation of the theory [of dialectical materialism]….

"According to the theory of Marxism, everything comes into being as a result of material causes, develops through successive phases, and finally perishes….

"Dialectics is the logic of movement, of evolution, of change. Reality is too full of contradictions, too elusive, too manifold, too mutable to be snared in any single form or formula. Each particular phase of reality has its own laws…. These laws…have to be discovered by direct investigation of the concrete whole, they cannot be excogitated by the mind alone before material reality is analysed. Moreover, all reality is constantly changing, disclosing ever new aspects….

"If reality is ever changing, concrete, full of novelty, fluent as a river, torn by oppositional forces, then dialectics…must share the same characteristics….

"Nature cannot be unreasonable or reason contrary to nature. Everything that exists must have a necessary and sufficient reason for existence….

"The material base of this law lies in the actual interdependence of all things in their reciprocal interactions…. If everything that exists has a necessary and sufficient reason for existence, that means it had to come into being. It was pushed into existence and forced its way into existence by natural necessity…. Reality, rationality and necessity are intimately associated at all times….

"If everything actual is necessarily rational, this means that every item of the real world has a sufficient reason for existing and must find a rational explanation….

"But this is not the whole and final truth about things…. The real truth about things is that they not only exist, persist, but they also develop and pass away. This passing away of things…is expressed in logical terminology by the term &#39;negation&#39;. The whole truth about things can be expressed only if we take into account this opposite and negative aspect….

"All things are limited and changing…. In logical terms, they not only affirm themselves. They likewise negate themselves and are negated by other things…. Such a movement of things and of thought is called dialectical movement….

"From this dialectical essence of reality Hegel drew the conclusion that constitutes an indispensable part of his famous aphorism: All that is rational is real….

"[M]ovement…from unreality into reality and then back again into unreality, constitutes the essence, the inner movement behind all appearance….

"Everything generates within itself that force which leads to its negation, its passing away into some other and higher form of being….

"This dialectical activity is universal. There is no escaping from its unremitting and relentless embrace. &#39;Dialectics gives expression to a law which is felt in all grades of consciousness and in general experience. Everything that surrounds us may be viewed as an instance of dialectic. We are aware that everything finite, instead of being inflexible and ultimate, is rather changeable and transient; and this is exactly what we mean by the dialectic of the finite, by which the finite, as implicitly other than it is, is forced to surrender its own immediate or natural being, and to turn suddenly into its opposite.&#39; (Encyclopedia, p.120)." [Novack (1971), pp.41, 43, 51, 70-71, 78-80, 84-87, 94-95; quoting Hegel (1975), p.118, although in a different translation from the one used here. Bold emphases added.]

Novack&#39;s book is chock full of dogmatic statements like these, practically all of which he backs up -- not with data or evidence --, but with quotations from Hegel&#33; As far as this aspect of Novack&#39;s work is concerned, DM might just as well stand for "Dogmatic Materialism".

[OT = Orthodox Trotskyists.]

Two other OT&#39;s not to be outdone in this respect are Woods and Grant (in Reason In Revolt [RIRE]); first they soften the reader up with the usual disarming banter:

"Hegel was forced to impose a schema upon nature and society, in flat contradiction to the dialectical method itself, which demands that we derive the laws of a given phenomenon from a scrupulously objective study of the subject matter…[and which should not be]…arbitrarily foisted on history…." [Woods and Grant (1995), pp.43-44. Bold emphasis added.]

Then, over the next few pages (and throughout the rest of their book) they quickly reveal their true colours:

"Dialectics…sets out from the axiom that everything is in a constant state of change and flux….

"The fundamental proposition of dialectics is that everything is in a constant process of change, motion and development. Even when it appears to us that nothing is happening, in reality, matter is always changing….

"Everything is in a constant state of motion, from neutrinos to super-clusters….

"Contradiction is an essential feature of all being. It lies at the heart of matter itself. It is the source of all motion, change, life and development. The dialectical law which expresses this idea is the law of the unity and interpenetration of opposites….

"The law of the transformation of quantity into quality has an extremely wide range of applications, from the smallest particles of matter at the subatomic level to the largest phenomena known to man.

"Positive is meaningless without negative. They are necessarily inseparable. Hegel long ago explained that ‘pure being’ (devoid of all contradiction) is the same as pure nothing…. Everything in the real world contains positive and negative, being and not being, because everything is in a constant state of movement and change….

"Moreover, everything is in permanent relation with other things. Even over vast distances, we are affected by light, radiation, gravity. Undetected by our senses, there is a process of interaction, which causes a continual series of changes….

"This universal phenomenon of the unity of opposites is, in reality the motor-force of all motion and development in nature…. Movement which itself involves a contradiction, is only possible as a result of the conflicting tendencies and inner tensions which lie at the heart of all forms of matter." [Ibid., pp.43-47, 65-68. Bold emphases added.]

The above quotations represent a mere fraction of the many to be found in RIRE; indeed, if every dogmatic a priori passage had been quoted from that work alone, this Essay would have been several thousand words longer&#33;

As is now becoming boringly familiar, these two comrades failed to reveal how they obtained the "axiom" that everything is in a constant state of change, how they knew that motion arises only from contradictions, or which "scrupulous" examination of the limited evidence on offer supports the view that contradictions are an "essential feature of all being". [They also forgot to tell us, if everything is made of opposites -- positive and negative --, what the negative and positive internal aspects of an electron are. These cannot be protons nor yet positrons, since these are external to electrons.]

Of course, it&#39;s entirely possible they temporarily forgot what the word "foisted" meant when they declared the following:

"Hegel was forced to impose a schema upon nature and society, in flat contradiction to the dialectical method itself, which demands that we derive the laws of a given phenomenon from a scrupulously objective study of the subject matter…[and which should not be]…arbitrarily foisted on history…." [Ibid., p.43.]

To be fair to Woods and Grant, they do spend a significant proportion of their book trying desperately to show that dialectical principles apply to nature and society, using examples drawn both from everyday life and from the sciences, quoting prominent scientists and thinkers in support. Nevertheless, and to be brutally honest, their zeal and methodology only succeeds in making their work resemble the attempts made by fundamentalist Christians to &#39;prove&#39; the Bible is not only correct, but scientific through and through; page after page of selective quotation, the careful choice of examples, woefully inappropriate and repetitive sarcasm (aimed mostly at FL), and layers of distortion are all they have to offer. Moreover, the &#39;evidence&#39; Woods and Grant try to supply the reader is presented in a popular format -- they quote no original research papers, and present no new data. Their book is impressionistic, and well-situated in the soft, melted caramel world of dialectical &#39;science&#39;, mentioned above.

[FL = Formal Logic.]

Many of their examples are highly fanciful (these are in general the ones they lifted from Engels and Hegel), others less so. Several of the latter will be discussed in Essays Four and Seven, where their highly repetitive, ill-informed and largely fabricated comments on FL will also be examined. [No exaggeration, but this is easily the worst example of fabrication I have ever seen in a DM-text, something I have taken up with one of the authors.]

Reason in Revolt? More like Reason in Reverse&#33;

Even so, a thousand-volume Encyclopaedia would not contain enough evidence to justify the cosmically over-ambitious "foistings" and declarations on behalf of all "being" promulgated by these two comrades.

[Recall that the truth or falsity of DM-theses is not what is at issue here (even if it will be later on); the main point of this Essay is to expose the predilection DM-theorists like Woods and Grant have for imposing their theory on nature, contrary to what they say they do.]

The late Gerry Healy was certainly no exception to this tradition; in fact, if anything, he was the Dialectical Daddy:

"Dialectical Materialists get to know the world initially through a process of Cognition. It affects the sensory organs, producing sensation in the form of indeterminate mental images.

"As forms of the motion and change of the external world, these images are processed as concepts of phenomena. Upon negation their dissolution from the positive sensation into their abstract negative, they are negated again as the nature of semblance into positive semblance which is the theory of knowledge of a human being. During this interpenetration process, the images as thought forms are analysed through the science of thought and reason which is Dialectical Logic….

"…Thus, the everlasting material properties of thought in Dialectical Logic in self-relation between subject and object, coincide materially with the theory of knowledge….

"The category of &#39;Appearance&#39; exists initially in the theory of knowledge as negative self-mediation. It is the movement of antithesis apprehended in its unity before Negative semblance interpenetrates Positive semblance, thus activating the theory of knowledge and Appearance as a category. Law as a category is reflection of Appearance into identity with itself….

"…The &#39;whole&#39; must be seen as an inner force which will strive to manifest itself in external reality as essence which must appear. Real &#39;wholes&#39; must have elements bound together by the interaction of &#39;parts&#39; and &#39;whole&#39;. Since the &#39;parts&#39; and &#39;whole&#39; are constantly changing, the &#39;whole&#39; as such can never be a sum total of its &#39;parts&#39;. It is instead the sum total and unity of opposites in constant change, which are simultaneously not only single &#39;wholes&#39; but many &#39;wholes&#39;. Thus &#39;wholes&#39; change into &#39;parts&#39; and &#39;parts&#39; into &#39;wholes&#39;." [Healy (1982), pp.1-3, 57-58. Bold emphases in the original; italic emphases added. Recall that these articles originally appeared in Newsline, the daily paper of the WRP&#33;]

"In his book &#39;In Defence of Marxism&#39; Trotsky emphasised that Hegel in &#39;Logic&#39; &#39;established a series of laws&#39;, amongst them &#39;development through contradiction&#39;....

"We reproduce for the benefit of the anti-Hegel, Marx, Engels, Lenin and Trotsky brigade the following quotations on contradiction....

[There then follows a series of quotations from Lenin, but no data; RL. That should put this &#39;brigade&#39; in their place.]

"Contradiction, therefore, cannot be regarded as an &#39;empty word form&#39; or a &#39;subjective&#39; external impression, because it is contained within the very essence of all material objects and processes. It is the dialectical unity of external and internal contradiction. Thus the infinite self-movement of matter is contradictory.

"...The development of Contradiction in the essence of objects manifests itself as IDENTITY of the infinite source of sensation in the external world." [Healy (1990), pp.7-8. Emphasis and capitalisation in the original.]

Readers will note how Healy derives several universal conclusions, not from nature, but from Lenin&#39;s reference to Hegel. The fact that he proceeds as if this were the most natural thing in the world indicates how deep traditional thought-forms had seeped into Healy&#39;s mega-sectarian mind. This is not accidental; the connection between Healy&#39;s sectarianism, the personality cult set up around him, and the bullying tactics he used, will be linked (in Essay Nine; summary here) to the ruling-class ideas that dominate dialectical brains, but made far worse here by the lethal strain Healy had cultivated.

Exhibit A for the prosecution:

"The IDENTITY of the objective source of our sensation in the &#39;external world&#39; is a quantitative infinite, law-governed process of dialectical nature, human society (the class struggle) and thought.

"Its self-related negation into qualitative finite DIFFERENCE in Subjective thought as a &#39;particular&#39; or &#39;part&#39; is the interpenetration of opposites (Object into subject). The &#39;antithesis&#39; is the unity of negative infinity (IDENTITY) into finite (DIFFERENCE) and is a negative with a positive image, which as a result of the first negation contains contradiction. The &#39;antithesis&#39; whose unity of negative and positive is the essence of &#39;something&#39; whose source is in the external world.

"...OTHER to OTHER is infinity to infinity or IDENTITY to IDENTITY, with self-related Qualitative finite Difference omitted, or incorporated into an eclectic &#39;unity.&#39;

"&#39;Speculative thought&#39; is prepared to consider the &#39;infinite&#39; as a &#39;Unity&#39; with the finite but ignores their inseparable self-related connection.

"....As a new unity of opposites consisting of a variety of &#39;parts&#39; builds up, &#39;the regressive, rearward confirmation of the beginning&#39; &#39;and its progressive further determination coincide and are the same&#39;. A new &#39;whole&#39; consisting of the new parts as a unity of opposites is ready to appear in the form of &#39;Essence-in-Existence&#39;. [Ibid., pp.18-20. Emphasis and capitalisation in the original.]

Again, this represents only a tiny extract from Healy&#39;s work; if every similar passage had been quoted, this Essay would have been half as long again.

It can only be hoped there is a &#39;next life&#39;, and that it affords the indominatible Healy sufficient time to try to scrape together enough evidence at least to prove that "negative infinity" is indeed "IDENTITY" -- with or without the capital letters.

Although I have been unable to find a clear commitment in Healy&#39;s writings to indicate that he felt there was any need to gather evidence in support of all this impressive Superscience, because he was a mega-OT it is reasonably certain that he must have paid lip-service to this minimal scientific ideal at some point -- in view of Trotsky&#39;s own gesture in that direction. Be that as it may, Healy&#39;s commitment to scientific research (aimed at confirming the radically innovative psychology outlined above) stretched only as far as opening Hegel&#39;s Logic, Engels&#39;s AD and DN, and Lenin&#39;s PN and MEC.

No doubt he did this extremely "carefully".

[PN = Philosophical Notebooks; MEC = Materialism and Empirio-Criticism; STD = Stalinist Dialectician; OT = Orthodox Trotskyist.]

Inconsistent ruminations like these are not confined to OT-groupies. Generations of STD&#39;s were quite capable of matching anything that revolutionaries have ever tried to "foist" on nature, as anyone brave enough to trawl through their writings will be able to attest. Here are some of the thoughts of comrade Cornforth:

"Our party philosophy, then, has a right to lay claim to truth. For it is the only philosophy which is based on a standpoint which demands that we should always seek to understand things just as they are…without disguises and without fantasy….

"Marxism, therefore, seeks to base our ideas of things on nothing but the actual investigation of them, arising from and tested by experience and practice. It does not invent a &#39;system&#39; as previous philosophers have done, and then try to make everything fit into it….

"Nothing exists or can exist in splendid isolation, separate from its conditions of existence, independent from its relationships with other things…. When things enter into such relationships that they become parts of a whole, the whole cannot be regarded as nothing more than the sum total of the parts…. [W]hile it may be said that the whole is determined by the parts it may equally be said that the parts are determined by the whole….

"Dialectical materialism understands the world, not as a complex of ready-made things, but as a complex of processes, in which all things go through an uninterrupted change of coming into being and passing away.

"Dialectical materialism considers that matter is always in motion, that motion is the mode of existence of matter, so that there can no more be matter without motion than motion without matter….

"Dialectical materialism understands the motion of matter as comprehending all changes and processes in the universe….

"Dialectical materialism considers that…things come into being, change and pass out of being, not as separate individual units, but in essential relation and interconnection, so that they cannot be understood each separately and by itself but only in their relation and interconnection….

"Dialectical materialism considers the universe, not as static, not as unchanging, but as in a continual process of development. It considers this development, not as a smooth, continuous and unbroken process, but as a process…interrupted by breaks in continuity, by the sudden leap from one state to another. And it seeks for the explanation, the driving force, of this universal movement…within material processes themselves -– in the inner contradictions, the opposite conflicting tendencies, which are in operating in every process in nature and society….

"When we think of the properties of things, their relationships, their modes of action and interaction, the processes into which they enter, then we find that, generally speaking, all these properties, relationships, interactions and processes divide into fundamental opposites….

"As Hegel put it: &#39;In opposition, the different is not confronted by any other, but by its other&#39; (Encyclopaedia of Philosophical Sciences: Logic, section 119)….

"The dialectical method demands first, that we should consider things, not each by itself, but always in their interconnections with other things….

"The employment of the Marxist dialectical method does not mean that we apply a pre-conceived scheme and try to make everything fit into it. No, it means that we study things as they really are, in their interconnection and movement….

"All change has a quantitative aspect…. But quantitative change cannot go on indefinitely. At a certain point it always leads to qualitative change; and at that critical point (or &#39;nodal point&#39;, as Hegel called it) the qualitative change takes place relatively suddenly, by a leap, as it were….

"Thus we see that quantitative changes are transformed at a certain point into qualitative changes…. This is a universal feature of development….

"The general conclusion [is] that whenever a process of development takes place, with the transformation in it of quantitative changes into qualitative changes, there is always present in it the struggle of opposites –- of opposite tendencies, opposite forces within the things and processes concerned….

"This struggle is not external and accidental…. The struggle is internal and necessary, for it arises and follows from the nature of the process as a whole. The opposite tendencies are not independent the one of the other, but are inseparably connected as parts or aspects of a single whole. And they operate and come into conflict on the basis of the contradiction inherent in the process as a whole….

"Movement and change result from causes inherent in things and processes, from internal contradictions….

"Contradiction is a universal feature of all processes….

"The importance of the [developmental] conception of the negation of the negation does not lie in its supposedly expressing the necessary pattern of all development. All development takes place through the working out of contradictions -– that is a necessary universal law…." [Cornforth (1976), pp.14-15, 46-48, 53, 65-66, 72, 77, 82, 86, 90, 95, 117; quoting Hegel (1975), pp.172 and 160, respectively. Bold emphases added.]

But, how is it possible for someone not to have imposed a theory on reality (as a "pre-conceived scheme" -- with everything made to "fit into it") --, if they have in fact just done that?

Despite the usual preliminary gestures at theoretical modesty, Cornforth, in true form, is soon telling us that change is "not external and accidental…[it] is internal and necessary," that "contradiction is a universal feature of all processes," and that "all development takes place through the working out of contradictions," which is "a necessary universal law….", without once informing the reader from where he obtained this information (other than copying it from Hegel, of course). But, could there be a body of contingent evidence large enough to show that anything in nature is necessary? Or, that is capable of demonstrating that "all development" is the result of contradictions? Or, that all change is internally-driven?

But, what sort of super-duper evidence could this be?

That dictated to comrade Cornforth, perhaps, by the Archangel Gabriel, inscribed in mystic runes on sapphire tablets by elfin hands?

In the SWP-UK, this is how Paul McGarr summed things up:

"Nature is historical at every level. No aspect of nature simply exists: it has a history, it comes into being, changes and develops, is transformed, and, finally, ceases to exist. Aspects of nature may appear to be fixed, stable, in a state of equilibrium for a shorter or longer time, but none is permanently so….

"…Engels was right to see the interconnectedness of different aspects of nature…. Parts only have a full meaning in relation to the whole….

"Engels&#39; arguments about quantitative change giving rise at certain points to qualitative transformations are generally correct. In every field of science, every aspect of nature, one cannot but be struck by precisely this process….

"Throughout nature it seems that things which appear to have any persistence, any stability, for a greater or shorter time, are the result of a temporary dynamic balance between opposing or contradictory tendencies. This is as true of simple physical objects like atoms as of living organisms…." [McGarr (1994), pp.173-75. Bold emphases added.]

Admittedly, McGarr&#39;s comments are far more tentative and measured than is usually found in DM-literature (his approach is in fact reminiscent of Conze&#39;s, noted earlier); like other DM-theorists he stresses the need to check such claims against reality. However, he is just as eager as other dialecticians are to impose dialectics on reality. Hence, no qualification at all was attached to the following words:

"Nature is historical at every level. No aspect of nature simply exists: it has a history, it comes into being, changes and develops, is transformed, and, finally, ceases to exist. Aspects of nature may appear to be fixed, stable, in a state of equilibrium for a shorter or longer time, but none is permanently so…." [Ibid., p.173. Bold emphases added.]

One SWP author, loads of others.

And this is typical of the vast bulk of my essays.

http://homepage.ntlworld.com/rosa.l/page%2002.htm

[Rosa Lichtenstein]

And here is more:


The projection of DM-theses onto nature is not just an aberration of modern-day dialecticians; every DM-classicist has indulged extensively in this sport. For example, it can be found right throughout Engels&#39;s writings; indeed, in his classic text Socialism: Utopian and Scientific, he had this to say:

"Nature works dialectically and not metaphysically." [Engels (1892), pp.407, repeated in Engels (1976), p.28.]

To this may be added the following comment:

"Dialectics…prevails throughout nature…. [T]he motion through opposites which asserts itself everywhere in nature, and which by the continual conflict of the opposites…determines the life of nature." [Engels (1954), p.211. Bold emphases added.]

But, how could Engels possibly have known all of this? How could he have known that nature does not operate "metaphysically", say, in distant regions of space and time, way beyond the edges of the known Universe of his day? Indeed, how could he have been so sure that, for example, there were no changeless objects anywhere in the entire universe?4 How could he have been so sure that the “life of nature” is indeed result of a "conflict of opposites" -- or that some processes (somewhere in the whole of reality, for the whole of time) were not governed by non-dialectical factors? Where is his "carefully" collected evidence about every object and event in nature, past, present and future?5

Notice that Engels did not say that "all the evidence collected" up until his day supported these contentions, or that "those parts of the world of which scientists" of his day were aware behaved in the way he indicated; he just referred to nature tout court, without qualification (i.e., "throughout nature" and "everywhere in nature"). In line with other DM-theorists, Engels signally failed to inform his readers of the whereabouts of the large finite set of "careful observations" upon which these wild generalisations had been based.

And Engels did not stop there, he made equally bold statements about other fundamental aspects of nature:

"Motion is the mode of existence of matter. Never anywhere has there been matter without motion, nor can there be…. Matter without motion is just as inconceivable as motion without matter. Motion is therefore as uncreatable and indestructible as matter itself; as the older philosophy (Descartes) expressed it, the quantity of motion existing in the world is always the same. Motion therefore cannot be created; it can only be transmitted….

"A motionless state of matter therefore proves to be one of the most empty and nonsensical of ideas…." [Engels (1976), p.74. Bold emphases added.]

"The great basic thought that the world is not to be comprehended as a complex of ready-made things, but a complex of processes, in which things apparently stable…, go through an uninterrupted change of coming into being and passing away…." [Engels (1892), p.609. Bold emphases added.]

"Dialectics is the science of universal interconnections….

"The law of the transformation of quantity into quality and vice versa…[operates] in nature, in a manner fixed for each individual case, qualitative changes can only occur by the quantitative addition or quantitative subtraction of matter or motion….

"Hence, it is impossible to alter the quality of a body without addition or subtraction of matter or motion…. In this form, therefore, Hegel&#39;s mysterious principle appears not only quite rational but even rather obvious.

"Motion in the most general sense, conceived as the mode of existence, the inherent attribute of matter, comprehends all changes and processes occurring in the universe….

"Dialectics, so called objective dialectics, prevails throughout nature…. [M]otion through opposites which asserts itself everywhere in nature, and which by the continual conflict of the opposites…determines the life of nature….

"The whole theory of gravity rests on saying that attraction is the essence of matter. This is necessarily false. Where there is attraction, it must be complemented by repulsion. Hence already Hegel was quite right in saying that the essence of matter is attraction and repulsion….

"The visible system of stars, the solar system, terrestrial masses, molecules and atoms, and finally ether particles, form each of them [a definite group]. It does not alter the case that intermediate links can be found between the separate groups…. These intermediate links prove only that there are no leaps in nature, precisely because nature is composed entirely of leaps." [Engels (1954), pp.17, 63, 69, 211, 244, 271. Bold emphases added.]

Once more, Engels forgot to say how he knew all these things were true. For example, how could he possibly have known that:

"Never anywhere has there been matter without motion, nor can there be…. Matter without motion is just as inconceivable as motion without matter. Motion is therefore as uncreatable and indestructible as matter itself…." [Engels (1976), p.74. Bold emphases added.]

Neither matter without motion nor motion without matter is inconceivable, contrary to what Engels says. [This allegation is substantiated in Essays Five and Twelve (summary here).] In fact, that particular idea was itself imposed on nature by Aristotle; Engels&#39;s obverse imposition is no less unimpressive, and no less Ideal.

Consider another passage, this time taken from a letter written by Engels:

"The identity of thinking and being, to use Hegelian language, everywhere coincides with your example of the circle and the polygon. Or the two of them, the concept of a thing and its reality, run side by side like two asymptotes, always approaching each other but never meeting. This difference between the two is the very difference which prevents the concept from being directly and immediately reality and reality from being immediately its own concept. Because a concept has the essential nature of the concept and does not therefore prima facie directly coincide with reality, from which it had to be abstracted in the first place, it is nevertheless more than a fiction, unless you declare that all the results of thought are fictions because reality corresponds to them only very circuitously, and even then approaching it only asymptotically…. In other words, the unity of concept and phenomenon manifests itself as an essentially infinite process, and that is what it is, in this case as in all others." [Engels to Schmidt (12/3/1895), in Marx and Engels (1975), pp.457-58.]

There are several puzzling things about this passage (which will have to be left until later), but how could Engels possibly have known that concepts and things interrelate in the way he alleges? In fact, if he were right, then in order for him to conclude what he does about "things" (with which he admits that current knowledge of his (or perhaps any) day never coincides) he must have extrapolated way beyond the state of knowledge in the late nineteenth century -- and, as the next quotation below indicates, way beyond any conceivable state of knowledge.

Worse still: if things never "coincide" with their own concepts, then on that basis Engels could not have known that even this much was correct. Plainly, if he did know this, then at least one concept -- namely the one Engels was using -- would have coincided with its object.

Plainly, such semi-divine confidence could only have arisen from: (1) Engels&#39;s imposition of a priori theses on nature, and/or (2) from the a priori Idealist principles Engels admits he lifted from Hegel -- but not from perusing the book of nature, or from collecting evidence, either "patiently" or impatiently.

As should seem obvious, if reality is permanently beyond anyone&#39;s grasp then anything anyone says about &#39;it&#39; must of necessity be imposed on &#39;it&#39; (that is, if we insist on depicting things in such obscure ways).6

The next passage from Engels simply underlines this point:

"&#39;Fundamentally, we can know only the infinite.&#39; In fact all real exhaustive knowledge consists solely in raising the individual thing in thought from individuality into particularity and from this into universality, in seeking and establishing the infinite in the finite, the eternal in the transitory…. All true knowledge of nature is knowledge of the eternal, the infinite, and essentially absolute…. The cognition of the infinite…can only take place in an infinite asymptotic progress." [Engels (1954), pp.233-35.]

But, if no concept matches reality fully (ever), then how could Engels have known all this? How could he possibly know that "All true knowledge of nature is knowledge of the eternal, the infinite, and essentially absolute..."? Either he was in possession of such absolute knowledge when he wrote this (which would mean once again that at least one concept matched reality, namely this one), or he was himself infinitely wrong. Of course, we know the answer to this question already: Engels was foisting all this on reality because that is exactly what Hegel did, and he simply copied it.

However, no doubt the infinite (or even large finite) amount of evidence that Engels meant to include in Dialectics of Nature, which would have been necessary to justify these quasi-theological claims, has been mislaid in the meantime.

There is a passage similar to this in Lenin&#39;s Notebooks:

"Cognition is the eternal, endless approximation of thought to the object." [Lenin (1961), p.195.]

But, how on earth could Lenin possibly have known this for a fact? Clearly, he can&#39;t have known that this process is endless (since the claim to know that alleged fact could only be based on the successful completion of an endless process itself, if what Lenin said were correct). Whatever we may think of Lenin, he was not, I take it, an eternal being. Certainly, no amount of evidence could show that this ambitious claim is true.

Not only is the non-existent end it postulates &#39;somewhere in the future&#39; (and hence beyond the reach of any and all current evidence), if the length of time between now and then is itself endless, then the search for the (missing) evidence that supports even the claim that it is endless must be endless, too.

Here are several more &#39;cautious&#39; claims Lenin advanced incautiously:

"Dialectics requires an all-round consideration of relationships in their concrete development…. Dialectical logic demands that we go further…. [It] requires that an object should be taken in development, in &#39;self-movement&#39; (as Hegel sometimes puts it)….

"[D]ialectical logic holds that &#39;truth&#39; is always concrete, never abstract, as the late Plekhanov liked to say after Hegel." [Lenin (1921), pp.90, 93. Bold emphases added.]

"Flexibility, applied objectively, i.e., reflecting the all-sidedness of the material process and its unity, is dialectics, is the correct reflection of the eternal development of the world." [Lenin (1961), p.110. Bold emphasis added.]

"Thought proceeding from the concrete to the abstract -– provided it is correct (NB)… -- does not get away from the truth but comes closer to it. The abstraction of matter, the law of nature, the abstraction of value, etc., in short all scientific (correct, serious, not absurd) abstractions reflect nature more deeply, truly and completely." [Ibid., p.171. Emphases in the original.]

"The totality of all sides of the phenomenon of reality and their (reciprocal) relations -– that is what truth is composed of. The relations (= transitions = contradictions) of notions = the main content of logic, by which these concepts (and their relations, transitions, contradictions) are shown as reflections of the objective world. The dialectic of things produces the dialectic of ideas, and not vice versa." [Ibid., p.196. All emphases in the original.]

"Logical concepts are subjective so long as they remain &#39;abstract,&#39; in their abstract form, but at the same time they express the Thing-in-themselves. Nature is both concrete and abstract, both phenomenon and essence, both moment and relation. Human concepts are subjective in their abstractness, separateness, but objective as a whole, in the process, in the sum-total, in the tendency, in the source." [Ibid., p.208. Emphases in the original.]

Here too is another revealing passage:

"Nowadays, the ideas of development…as formulated by Marx and Engels on the basis of Hegel…[encompass a process] that seemingly repeats the stages already passed, but repeats them otherwise, on a higher basis (&#39;negation of negation&#39;), a development, so to speak, in spirals, not in a straight line; -- a development by leaps, catastrophes, revolutions; -- &#39;breaks in continuity&#39;; the transformation of quantity into quality; -- the inner impulses to development, imparted by the contradiction and conflict of the various forces and tendencies acting on a given body, or within a given phenomenon, or within a given society; -- the interdependence and the closest, indissoluble connection of all sides of every phenomenon…, a connection that provides a uniform, law-governed, universal process of motion -– such are some of the features of dialectics as a richer (than the ordinary) doctrine of development." [Lenin (1914), pp.12-13. Bold emphases added.]

But, once again, how could Lenin possibly have known all of these things? How, for instance, could he have been so sure that "[T]he dialectic of things produces the dialectic of ideas", and not the other way round, or perhaps a bit of both (rejecting here, of course, the "either or of understanding" on &#39;sound&#39; Hegelian lines)? He may choose to assume the validity of this and other things he says, but there could be no body of evidence large enough to justify the sorts of things Lenin claims in the above passages.

And why "require" or "demand" anything if science is supposed to be based on evidence? Scientists do not normally require things of nature. When was the last time they "required" copper to conduct electricity, "demanded" that dogs bark, or "insisted" that humanity evolved from an ape-like ancestor? And worse: How could Lenin possibly know that dialectics reflected the "eternal development of the world"?

From whom did he receive the stone tablets upon which these semi-divine verities had been inscribed?

Even though Lenin inconsistently claimed both that "truth is always concrete never abstract", and that scientific abstractions are also somehow more true, but, just like Engels, he omitted the carefully collected evidence that confirmed either of these universal theses -- which evidence would have been unhelpful anyway since it would have been concrete, and hence less scientifically true, if Lenin were correct in what he said.

Moreover, the principles Lenin used to arrive at these conclusions are somewhat dubious, too. In light of the above claim that "truth is always concrete never abstract", since this is itself a non-concrete abstraction, these principles could not therefore be true themselves. So, the claim that all truth is concrete, in that it is an abstraction, cannot be true -- just as the claim that all scientific abstractions reflect nature more deeply and "truly", cannot be true either, because it is not concrete.

At this point, we may console ourselves with the thought that at least here Engels was right: there is no way that the thesis that "truth is always concrete never abstract" will ever coincide with reality, and hence be deemed true itself. If this dialectical ditty ever did turn out to be true, it would be false on that basis, since then we would have at least one truth (namely this dialectical ditty) that wasn&#39;t concrete but was eminently abstract.

And, could there be a body of "patiently" gathered data large enough to confirm that all objects are self-developing? [Perhaps this is all to the good, given the next point.]

But, if all things do in fact influence all others, and everything in reality is interconnected, nothing in the DM-universe could be self-developing.

In fact, Lenin&#39;s incautious atomism here -- which sees everything as developmentally autonomous, and each object as an isolated, self-propelled unit -- contradicts (rather fittingly one feels) his other belief that all things are interconnected. If all objects are indeed interrelated then surely they could only develop if they were influenced by (and influenced in return, other) objects and processes external to themselves? On that basis, it could not be true that all objects undergo self-development.

On the other hand, if objects are self-developing, they cannot be interconnected. [Perhaps then it is all to the good that there is no evidence that all objects are self-developing. To be sure, DM-theorists need to pray to the &#39;god of dialectics&#39; that it never turns up either -- or they can kiss goodbye to their interconnected "Totality".]

[These observations, and their problematic ramifications (for DM), form the main topic of Essay Eight Part One.]

Be this as it may, is it really all that inconceivable that in the entire universe, over aeons of time, there might be (or might have been, or might one day be) a single object that doesn&#39;t (or didn&#39;t, or won&#39;t) undergo self-development? How could Lenin rule this possibility out? Again, as seems plain, he could only do so if that thesis has been imposed on nature, perhaps by "requiring" -- nay, "demanding" -- that all objects undergo self-development. [Oops, he already did that&#33;]

Once more: Where is the "careful" empirical work that justifies all this "demanding" --, not to mention the shed loads of data that would be needed to justify the many other universal a priori claims Lenin made about reality (listed above and below) -- something we were told had to be undertaken by materialists to avoid them being branded as Idealists?

And why do we find no dialecticians "requiring" -- nay, "demanding" -- of Lenin (or his epigones) that he (they) produce this evidence, or withdraw such claims?

The litany continues:

"[Among the elements of dialectics are the following:] [I]nternally contradictory tendencies…in [a thing]…as the sum and unity of opposites…. [E]ach thing (phenomenon, process, etc.)…is connected with every other…. [This involves] not only the unity of opposites, but the transitions of every determination, quality, feature, side, property into every other….

"In brief, dialectics can be defined as the doctrine of the unity of opposites. This embodies the essence of dialectics….

"The splitting of the whole and the cognition of its contradictory parts…is the essence (one of the &#39;essentials&#39;, one of the principal, if not the principal, characteristic features) of dialectics….

"The identity of opposites…is the recognition…of the contradictory, mutually exclusive, opposite tendencies in all phenomena and processes of nature…. The condition for the knowledge of all processes of the world in their &#39;self-movement&#39;, in their spontaneous development, in their real life, is the knowledge of them as a unity of opposites. Development is the &#39;struggle&#39; of opposites…. [This] alone furnishes the key to the self-movement of everything existing….

"The unity…of opposites is conditional, temporary, transitory, relative. The struggle of mutually exclusive opposites is absolute, just as development and motion are absolute….

"To begin with what is the simplest, most ordinary, common, etc., [sic] with any proposition...: [like] John is a man…. Here we already have dialectics (as Hegel&#39;s genius recognized): the individual is the universal…. Consequently, the opposites (the individual is opposed to the universal) are identical: the individual exists only in the connection that leads to the universal. The universal exists only in the individual and through the individual. Every individual is (in one way or another) a universal. Every universal is (a fragment, or an aspect, or the essence of) an individual. Every universal only approximately embraces all the individual objects. Every individual enters incompletely into the universal, etc., etc. Every individual is connected by thousands of transitions with other kinds of individuals (things, phenomena, processes), etc. Here already we have the elements, the germs of the concept of necessity, of objective connection in nature, etc. Here already we have the contingent and the necessary, the phenomenon and the essence; for when we say John is a man…we disregard a number of attributes as contingent; we separate the essence from the appearance, and counterpose the one to the other….

"Thus in any proposition we can (and must) disclose as a &#39;nucleus&#39; (&#39;cell&#39;) the germs of all the elements of dialectics, and thereby show that dialectics is a property of all human knowledge in general." [Lenin (1961), pp.221-22, 357-58, 359-60. Bold and italic emphases in the original; underlined emphases added.]

Lest we are tempted to search back through the archives to find the countless container-loads of missing evidence Lenin had "carefully" marshalled in support of these dramatic claims, a consideration of the next passage will at least relieve us of that onerous task. Here at last Lenin is disarmingly honest about where he obtained these sweeping generalisations:

"Hegel brilliantly divined the dialectics of things (phenomena, the world, nature) in the dialectics of concepts…. This aphorism should be expressed more popularly, without the word dialectics: approximately as follows: In the alternation, reciprocal dependence of all notions, in the identity of their opposites, in the transitions of one notion into another, in the eternal change, movement of notions, Hegel brilliantly divined precisely this relation of things to nature…. [W]hat constitutes dialectics?…. [M]utual dependence of notions all without exception…. Every notion occurs in a certain relation, in a certain connection with all the others." [Lenin (1961), pp.196-97. Emphases in the original.]

Lenin is quite open about his sources in these private notebooks; dialectics derives not from a "patient empirical examination of the facts", but from studying Hegel&#33; As far as evidence goes, that is it; that&#39;s all there is&#33; The search for evidence begins and ends with dialecticians leafing through Hegel&#39;s Logic. That is the extent of the evidence Lenin offered in support of his assertions about "all notions" without exception, and about "all phenomena and processes in nature", and nature&#39;s "eternal development", etc., etc. And as the rest of this Essay and the other Essays posted here show, this approach to the &#39;science of dialectics&#39; is shared by every other DM-theorist.

To be sure, Lenin did add the following comment:

"The correctness of this aspect of the content of dialectics must be tested by the history of science." [Lenin (1961), p.357.]

Many dialecticians make similar claims. However, as we have noted several times already, the other things DM-theorists say flatly contradict this seemingly modest admission. The theses Lenin and others advance go way beyond the available evidence (and beyond any conceivable evidence); they transcend the listing of mere examples.

Indeed, since Lenin also claimed that human knowledge will only ever be partial and incomplete, neither he nor even the most pedantically "patient" of dialectical sleuths will ever be in a position to justify the sweeping a priori claims we find him (and others) regularly making -- like those about the "eternal development of the world", for instance.

How could anything from the entire history of science confirm something like that?

Moreover, Lenin himself admitted as much in the very next few sentences:

"This aspect of dialectics…usually receives inadequate attention: the identity of opposites is taken as the sum total of examples…and not as a law of cognition (and as a law of the objective world)." [Lenin (1961), p.357.]

Hence, the need to provide mere evidence is in fact a distraction, one that the dedicated dialectician should rightly eschew. In this particular case, the thesis that UO&#39;s [Unities of Opposites] exist everywhere in nature, and which govern every change right throughout reality, expresses a "law of cognition" and a "law of the objective world", and it is these laws that legitimate the imposition of dialectical verities onto nature. This is something Lenin also described in the following terms in the next few passages of the same Notebooks:

"The identity of opposites…is the recognition…of the contradictory, mutually exclusive, opposite tendencies in all phenomena and processes of nature…. The condition for the knowledge of all processes of the world in their &#39;self-movement&#39;, in their spontaneous development, in their real life, is the knowledge of them as a unity of opposites. Development is the &#39;struggle&#39; of opposites…. [This] alone furnishes the key to the self-movement of everything existing…." [Lenin (1961), pp.357-58. Bold emphasis added.]

Now, the uncommitted reader might be forgiven for thinking that the claim (recorded earlier) that DM does not provide the "master-key" to everything -- to which denial all aspiring dialecticians at least pay lip-service -- has here been rescinded by Lenin. In this passage, Lenin describes the struggle of opposites as "the key to the self-movement of everything existing". This must surely have included the countless things that were way beyond the science of his day (and indeed of ours and those of future generations), but which transcend any conceivable human experience. If they concern "everything existing", they would surely encompass, say, the behaviour of elementary particles in the outermost regions of space and time, far beyond anything humanity will ever experience, and much else besides.

Compare this with what John Rees had earlier claimed:

"The dialectic is not a [&#39;magic master key for all questions&#39;] [or a] calculator into which it is possible to punch the problem and allow it to compute the solution. This would be an idealist method. A materialist dialectic must grow from a patient, empirical examination of the facts and not be imposed on them…." [Rees (1998), p.271, slightly edited; quoting Trotsky (1973), p.233.]

But now we have Lenin informing us that a belief in the universal existence of UO&#39;s is indeed just such a "key" to understanding everything in existence, flatly contradicting what Rees (and Trotsky) had said.

Now, if Lenin is right, it is perfectly clear why the need to provide evidence is in fact a distraction; the a priori approach to knowledge that DM-theorists have copied from traditional philosophers means that evidence is not only unnecessary, it is to be avoided wherever possible.6a

Clearly, in the minds of many a dialectician, the acceptance of an evidence-based science is a sop to &#39;crude materialism&#39; (or even worse, it is to compromise with &#39;empiricism&#39;). DM-laws are based on "objective" laws, on "laws of cognition" (and not on material evidence), on &#39;dialectical logic&#39;, on "axioms" (as Trotsky depicts things, recorded below), and on assorted "insistences", "demands" and "requirements".

In this way, therefore, we see that Hegel&#39;s system, even when inverted, take control: DM is "objective" since the world is Ideal, and dialecticians have the ideal master key to help them unlock it.6b

It now seems perfectly plain that we have at last located the Dialectical Master-key, one that unlocks reality, and which explains why so few dialecticians ever bother to provide evidence in support of their universal theses.



Bukharin Sings From The Same Song Sheet

In this respect, Lenin&#39;s approach resembles that of other prominent dialecticians. Hence, we find Bukharin asserting the following:

"There are two possible ways of regarding everything in nature and in society; in the eyes of some everything is constantly at rest, immutable…. To others, however, it appears that there is nothing unchanging in nature or in society…. This second point of view is called the dynamic point of view…; the former point of view is called static. Which is the correct position?... Even a hasty glance at nature will at once convince us that there is nothing immutable about it….

"Evidently…there is nothing immutable and rigid in the universe…. Matter in motion: such is the stuff of this world…. This dynamic point of view is also called the dialectic point of view….

"The world being in constant motion, we must consider phenomena in their mutual relations, and not as isolated cases. All portions of the universe are actually related to each other and exert an influence on each other…. All things in the universe are connected with an indissoluble bond; nothing exists as an isolated object, independent of its surroundings….

"In the first place, therefore, the dialectic method of interpretation demands that all phenomena be considered in their indissoluble relations; in the second place, that they be considered in their state of motion….

"Since everything in the world is in a state of change, and indissolubly connected with everything else, we must draw the necessary conclusions for the social sciences….

"The basis of all things is therefore the law of change, the law of constant motion. Two philosophers particularly (the ancient Heraclitus and the modern Hegel…) formulated this law of change, but they did not stop there. They also set up the question of the manner in which the process operates. The answer they discovered was that changes are produced by constant internal contradictions, internal struggle. Thus, Heraclitus declared: &#39;Conflict is the mother of all happenings,&#39; while Hegel said: &#39;Contradiction is the power that moves things.&#39;

"There is no doubt of the correctness of this law. A moment&#39;s thought will convince the reader. For, if there were no conflict, no clash of forces, the world would be in a condition of unchanging stable equilibrium, i.e., complete and absolute permanence, a state of rest precluding all motion…. As we already know that all things change, all things are &#39;in flux&#39;, it is certain that such an absolute state of rest cannot possibly exist. We must therefore reject a condition in which there is no &#39;contradiction between opposing and colliding forces&#39; no disturbance of equilibrium, but only an absolute immutability….

"In other words, the world consists of forces, acting many ways, opposing each other. These forces are balanced for a moment in exceptional cases only. We then have a state of &#39;rest&#39;, i.e., their actual &#39;conflict&#39; is concealed. But if we change only one of these forces, immediately the &#39;internal contradictions&#39; will be revealed, equilibrium will be disturbed, and if a new equilibrium is again established, it will be on a new basis, i.e., with a new combination of forces, etc. It follows that the &#39;conflict,&#39; the &#39;contradiction,&#39; i.e., the antagonism of forces acting in various directions, determines the motion of the system….

"Hegel speaks of a transition of quantity into quality….

"The transformation of quantity into quality is one of the fundamental laws in the motion of matter; it may be traced at every step both in nature and society…." [Bukharin (1925), pp.63-67, 72-74, 80. Bold emphases added.]

Here we have yet another DM-theorist happily &#39;deriving&#39; theses from a few hasty &#39;thought experiments&#39; and from the a priori doctrines of earlier Idealists.

So, in this regard, it is worth noting that Bukharin attributes the invention of the so-called "law of change" to Heraclitus, a theorist who happened on this law himself without the benefit of too much supporting evidence (since he lived at a time when little was known about the entire universe, let alone that tiny fraction of it that he inhabited). Indeed, Heraclitus&#39;s all-embracing claim was partly based on what he thought was true about the possibilities of stepping into the "same river"&#33; Naturally, this did not stop him from pontificating about all of reality, for all of time, when for example he declared that "everything flows" -- just like his latter-day dialectical descendants.

Admittedly, Bukharin did make some attempt to provide his readers with a few pages of &#39;evidence&#39; to back up his claim that the laws (which he "demands" should operate on all phenomena) are true everywhere, for all of time (ibid., pp.67-71). But most of his &#39;data&#39; was copied from other DM-sources (and, of course, from Hegel). Now, if this wasn&#39;t quite so serious, Bukharin&#39;s superficial gesture at providing adequate proof to back up his assertions would be a joke. For example, how could Bukharin possibly have known that "all portions of the universe" are interrelated? In fact, his evidence looks thinner than an anorexic flatworm.

All that Bukharin offered his bemused readers by way of substantiation was the following extremely brief thought experiment:

"I am now writing on paper with a pen. I thus impart pressures to the table; the table presses on the earth, calling forth a number of further changes. I move my hand, vibrate as I breathe, and these motions pass on in slight impulses ending Lord knows where. The fact that these may be but small changes does not change the essential nature of the matter. All things in the universe are connected with an indissoluble bond…." [Ibid., p.66. Emphasis added.]

Those who are tempted to conclude that this &#39;argument&#39; is sufficient to establish the above truths about everything in the entire universe, for all time (underpinned, no doubt, by means of a similar prayer to the "Lord"), should now remind themselves (by consulting a dictionary) what the words "evidence" and "sufficient" mean, and then perhaps think again.

Or, they ought to come out of the closet and proudly admit their Idealist, shall we say, &#39;tendencies&#39;.

Bukharin also argued that with respect to change there are just two choices before us: (1) The view that nothing changes at all, and (2) The thesis that all things change all the time. But, he failed to consider a third option (thus excluding it): (3) That some things change while others do not. An acceptance of this third alternative would at least have the merit of undermining Bukharin&#39;s own un-dialectical use of the "either-or of understanding" to rule out that particular excluded middle. [Irony intended.]

Even so, on what basis could Bukharin have been so sure that there is nothing changeless in the whole of nature? Surely, the rational thing to do here would be to wait for the development of scientific knowledge, not lay down hard and fast immutable laws about a mutable universe. Of course, Bukharin was not to know that scientists would conclude one day that there are indeed such (perhaps eternally) changeless objects in reality, and that there are countless trillions of them in every microgram of matter.

As is pointed out in Note 4, the proton, for example, is estimated to have a life span of 1032 years (it may turn out to be entirely changeless since that estimate was only advanced by scientists to make this &#39;particle&#39; accord with the Standard Model and the BBT). Apparently, electrons and photons are, if anything, even more un-dialectical.

[BBT = Big Bang Theory.]

Clearly, the scientific thing to do here is not to issue dialectical "demands", "insistences" and caveats that nature must conform to this or that a priori law -- imposing a structure on a recalcitrant world --, but to study nature and draw conclusions from it.

Now, where have we heard that before?



Trotsky&#39;s Traditionalism

Turning to another DM-classicist, Trotsky; his comments on the universal applicability of DM (beyond all available, or even conceivable, evidence) are equally unambiguous; consider the following:

"[A]ll bodies change uninterruptedly in size, weight, colour etc. They are never equal to themselves…. [T]he axiom &#39;A&#39; is equal to &#39;A&#39; signifies that a thing is equal to itself if it does not change, that is, if it does not exist…. For concepts there also exists &#39;tolerance&#39; which is established not by formal logic…, but by the dialectical logic issuing from the axiom that everything is always changing…. Hegel in his Logic established a series of laws: change of quantity into quality, development through contradiction, conflict and form, interruption of continuity, change of possibility into inevitability, etc…." [Trotsky (1971), pp.64-66. Bold emphases added.]

"Every individual is a dialectician to some extent or other, in most cases, unconsciously. A housewife knows that a certain amount of salt flavours soup agreeably, but that added salt makes the soup unpalatable. Consequently, an illiterate peasant woman guides herself in cooking soup by the Hegelian law of the transformation of quantity into quality…. Even animals arrive at their practical conclusions…on the basis of the Hegelian dialectic. Thus a fox is aware that quadrupeds and birds are nutritious and tasty…. When the same fox, however, encounters the first animal which exceeds it in size, for example, a wolf, it quickly concludes that quantity passes into quality, and turns to flee. Clearly, the legs of a fox are equipped with Hegelian tendencies, even if not fully conscious ones. All this demonstrates, in passing, that our methods of thought, both formal logic and the dialectic, are not arbitrary constructions of our reason but rather expressions of the actual inter-relationships in nature itself. In this sense the universe is permeated with &#39;unconscious&#39; dialectics." [Ibid., pp.106-07. Bold emphases added.]

"It must be recognized that the fundamental law of dialectics is the conversion of quantity into quality, for it gives [us] the general formula of all evolutionary processes -– of nature as well as of society.

"…The principle of the transformation of quantity into quality has universal significance, insofar as we view the entire universe -- without any exception -- as a product of formation and transformation….

"In these abstract formulas we have the most general laws (forms) of motion, change, the transformation of the stars of the heaven, of the earth, nature and human society.

"…Dialectics is the logic of development. It examines the world -- completely without exception -– not as a result of creation, of a sudden beginning, the realisation of a plan, but as a result of motion, of transformation. Everything that is became the way it is as a result of lawlike development." [Trotsky (1986), pp.88, 90, 96. Bold emphases added.]

Once again, how could Trotsky possibly have known all this? Can he read the minds of peasant women and foxes? As was the case with Lenin&#39;s own unlimited access to the otherwise restricted areas of the &#39;Divine&#39; knowledge of "Being", these questions need not detain us for long; Trotsky answered them for us. His conclusions were based -- not on evidence --, but on the "axiom" that "everything is always changing".

Now, if something is an axiom, supporting evidence ("patiently" collected or otherwise) is irrelevant. Only a hopelessly confused mathematician, for example, would seek empirical evidence to justify the axiom that "a + b = b + a".

Again, like Lenin, Trotsky was quite open about where he obtained these "laws"; they were not derived from careful work done in a laboratory, nor were they based on tests carried out in the field, nor yet on surveys of workers&#39; attitudes and the views of peasant women -- or even on the &#39;beliefs&#39; of foxes --, they were copied from Hegel&#39;s Logic. As far as we know, Hegel did no experiments (on peasants, soup or foxes). In fact, we now know that he lifted many of his own ideas from several Hermetic mystics and religious fanatics popular in the Germany of his day, and in earlier centuries. [This sordid history will be the subject of Essay Fourteen (summary here).]



Nothing New In Plekhanov

Not to be outdone, other DM-classicists have joined the chorus-line; here is Plekhanov:

"According to Hegel, dialectics is the principle of all life…. [M]an has two qualities: first being alive, and secondly of also being mortal. But on closer examination it turns out that life itself bears in itself the germ of death, and that in general any phenomenon is contradictory, in the sense that it develops out of itself the elements which, sooner or later, will put an end to its existence and will transform it into its opposite. Everything flows, everything changes; and there is no force capable of holding back this constant flux, or arresting its eternal movement. There is no force capable of resisting the dialectics of phenomena….

"At a particular moment a moving body is at a particular spot, but at the same time it is outside it as well because, if it were only in that spot, it would, at least for that moment, become motionless. Every motion is a dialectical process, a living contradiction, and as there is not a single phenomenon of nature in explaining which we do not have in the long run to appeal to motion, we have to agree with Hegel, who said that dialectics is the soul of any scientific cognition. And this applies not only to cognition of nature….

"And so every phenomenon, by the action of those same forces which condition its existence, sooner or later, but inevitably, is transformed into its own opposite….

"When you apply the dialectical method to the study of phenomena, you need to remember that forms change eternally in consequence of the &#39;higher development of their content….&#39;

"In the words of Engels, Hegel&#39;s merit consists in the fact that he was the first to regard all phenomena from the point of view of their development, from the point of view of their origin and destruction….

"[M]odern science confirms at every step the idea expressed with such genius by Hegel, that quantity passes into quality….

"[I]t will be understood without difficulty by anyone who is in the least capable of dialectical thinking...[that] quantitative changes, accumulating gradually, lead in the end to changes of quality, and that these changes of quality represent leaps, interruptions in gradualness…. That is how all Nature acts…." [Plekhanov (1956), pp.74-77, 88, 163. Bold emphases alone added.]

"Hegel goes on to show by a number of examples how often leaps take place in Nature and in history….

"This dialectical view of Hegel&#39;s as to the inevitability of leaps in the process of development was adopted in full by Marx and Engels….

"Thus [Engels] indicated that the transition from one form of energy to another cannot take place otherwise than by means of a leap…. Generally, speaking, he found that the rights of dialectical thinking are confirmed by the dialectical properties of being….

"Herzen was right in saying that Hegel&#39;s philosophy…was a genuine algebra of revolution….

"[W]e may say that this dialectic was the first to supply a method necessary and competent to solve the problem of the rational causes of all that exists….

"The motion of matter lies at the root of all natural phenomena. But motion is a contradiction. It should be judged in a dialectical manner…. Only the motion of matter is eternal, and matter itself is indestructible substance….

"&#39;All is flux, nothing is stationary,&#39; said the ancient thinker from Ephesus. The combinations we call objects are in a state of constant and more or less rapid change…. In as much as they change and cease to exist as such, we must address ourselves to the logic of contradiction….

"…[M]otion does not only make objects…, it is constantly changing them. It is for this reason that the logic of motion (the &#39;logic of contradiction&#39;) never relinquishes its rights over the objects created by motion….

"With Hegel, thinking progresses in consequence of the uncovering and resolution of the contradictions inclosed (sic) in concepts. According to our doctrine…the contradictions embodied in concepts are merely reflections, translations into the language of thought, of those contradictions that are embodied in phenomena owing to the contradictory nature of their common basis, i.e., motion….

"…[T]he overwhelming majority of phenomena that come within the compass of the natural and the social sciences are among ‘objects’ of this kind…[:ones in which there is a coincidence of opposites]. Diametrically opposite phenomena are united in the simplest globule of protoplasm, and the life of the most undeveloped society…." [Plekhanov (1908), pp.35-38, 92-96. Bold emphases alone added.]

True to form, Plekhanov disarms the reader with the usual claims that his theses have only been derived from nature, not read into it. He then proceeds to do the exact opposite, extrapolating DM way beyond the limited confines of the scanty evidence even he offered in support, imposing this doctrine on reality with the best of them.

Over and above admitting that he lifted many of his ideas from Hegel and Heraclitus, how Plekhanov knew that motion was eternal, that no force could hold back change, or that "all that exists" has a "rational cause", he kept annoyingly to himself, taking it to his grave. After all, what else could a "dialectic [that is] the first to supply a method necessary and competent to solve the problem of the rational causes of all that exists" be but a master key that unlocks the secret to everything in reality?



Stalin Murders A Theory For A Change

Stalin is not known for his theoretical sophistication -- a serious defect he more than made up for in other ways, such as imposing his will on the former USSR, and here, imposing dialectics on nature:

"Dialectical materialism is the world outlook of the Marxist-Leninist party....

"The dialectical method therefore holds that no phenomenon in nature can be understood if taken by itself....; and that, vice versa, any phenomenon can be understood and explained if considered in its inseparable connection with surrounding phenomena, as one conditioned by surrounding phenomena.

"Contrary to metaphysics, dialectics holds that nature is not in a state of rest and immobility, stagnation and immutability, but a state of continuous movement and change, of continuous renewal and development....

"The dialectical method therefore requires that phenomena should be considered not only from the standpoint of their interconnection and interdependence, but also from the standpoint of their movement and change....

"Contrary to metaphysics. dialectics holds that internal contradictions are inherent in all things and phenomena of nature, for they all have their negative and positive sides...; and that the struggle between these opposites, the struggle between the old and the new, between that which is dying away and that which is being born..., constitutes the internal content of the process of development, the internal content of the transformation of quantitative changes into qualitative changes....

"If there are no isolated phenomena in the world, if all phenomena are interconnected and interdependent, then it is clear that every social system and every social movement in history must be evaluated not from the standpoint of &#39;eternal justice&#39;....

"Contrary to idealism..., Marxist philosophical materialism holds that the world and its laws are fully knowable, that our knowledge of the laws of nature, tested by experiment and practice, is authentic knowledge having the validity of objective truth, and that there are no things in the world which are unknowable, but only things which are as yet not known, but which will be disclosed and made known by the efforts of science and practice." [Stalin (1976b), pp.835-46. Bold emphases added.]

I can find nowhere in Stalin&#39;s writings where he says that DM must not be imposed on nature, but it&#39;s quite clear from the above he does this anyway. How, for instance, could he possibly know that there are no things in the world which are unknowable? [This is reminiscent of some rather odd things that Dietzgen says; Stalin perhaps have copied them from him.]

It seems that &#39;Uncle Joe&#39; was as traditional in his views as was, say, St Bonaventure, but far more dangerous.



Mao&#39;s Great Leap Backwards

Another of the dialectical &#39;giants&#39;, Mao Tse-Tung, was no less traditional:

"The law of contradiction in things, that is, the law of the unity of opposites, is the basic law of materialist dialectics....

"As opposed to the metaphysical world outlook, the world outlook of materialist dialectics holds that in order to understand the development of a thing we should study it internally and in its relations with other things; in other words, the development of things should be seen as their internal and necessary self-movement, while each thing in its movement is interrelated with and interacts on the things around it. The fundamental cause of the development of a thing is not external but internal; it lies in the contradictoriness within the thing. There is internal contradiction in every single thing, hence its motion and development....

"The universality or absoluteness of contradiction has a twofold meaning. One is that contradiction exists in the process of development of all things, and the other is that in the process of development of each thing a movement of opposites exists from beginning to end....

"...There is nothing that does not contain contradictions; without contradiction nothing would exist....

"Thus it is already clear that contradiction exists universally and is in all processes, whether in the simple or in the complex forms of motion, whether in objective phenomena or ideological phenomena....

"...Contradiction is universal and absolute, it is present in the process of the development of all things and permeates every process from beginning to end...." [Mao (1964b), pp.311-18. Bold emphases added.]

I have cut this passage short since I fear that if I continue, my sanity might suffer, to say nothing of the mental health of those who have made it this far. But similar repetitive and baseless statements can be found right throughout the above work. [Mao&#39;s bogus distinction between &#39;primary&#39; and secondary&#39; contradictions will be examined in a later Essay.]

And, as can be seen from this and other quotations given here, dialecticians more than make up for the lack of evidence supporting their brave assertions by the number of times they repeat them.

Moreover, as was the case with Stalin, I can find no evidence in Mao&#39;s writings where he says DM must not be imposed on nature, but if he believed in scientific practice (which he elsewhere says he did; e.g., p.296 of Mao (1964a)), then no doubt the convoys of trucks containing the mountains of "carefully collected evidence" (that would be needed to justify the above semi-divine pronouncements) were mislaid somewhere on the Long March at some point.

Given the unprecedented adulation paid to the last two dialecticians, the depth of their analyses poses its own quirky sort of &#39;internal contradiction&#39;: how can such out-right dross be regarded by so many as genuine philosophical gold?

As we will see in Essay Nine (summary here), this conundrum is answered by something Marx once said about Alchemy, and about why human beings turn to religion.

[Rosa Lichtenstein]

And there is much more of this sort of material. SWP authors take up about 5% of the total space, as you would know if you did more that just skim read.

And I quote Marx, here is just one example:


In addition, it is worth emphasising that the import of (3) (posted below) in the text does not find echo in this long quotation from The Holy Family:

"The mystery of critical presentation…is the mystery of speculative, of Hegelian construction….

"If from real apples, pears, strawberries and almonds I form the general idea &#39;Fruit&#39;, if I go further and imagine that my abstract idea &#39;Fruit&#39;, derived from real fruit, is an entity existing outside me, is indeed the true essence of the pear, the apple, etc., then -- in the language of speculative philosophy -- I am declaring that &#39;Fruit&#39; is the &#39;Substance&#39; of the pear, the apple, the almond, etc. I am saying, therefore, that to be an apple is not essential to the apple; that what is essential to these things is not their real existence, perceptible to the senses, but the essence that I have abstracted from them and then foisted on them, the essence of my idea -- &#39;Fruit&#39;…. Particular real fruits are no more than semblances whose true essence is &#39;the substance&#39; -- &#39;Fruit&#39;….

"Having reduced the different real fruits to the one &#39;fruit&#39; of abstraction -- &#39;the Fruit&#39;, speculation must, in order to attain some semblance of real content, try somehow to find its way back from &#39;the Fruit&#39;, from the Substance to the diverse, ordinary real fruits, the pear, the apple, the almond etc. It is as hard to produce real fruits from the abstract idea &#39;the Fruit&#39; as it is easy to produce this abstract idea from real fruits. Indeed, it is impossible to arrive at the opposite of an abstraction without relinquishing the abstraction….

"The main interest for the speculative philosopher is therefore to produce the existence of the real ordinary fruits and to say in some mysterious way that there are apples, pears, almonds and raisins. But the apples, pears, almonds and raisins that we rediscover in the speculative world are nothing but semblances of apples, semblances of pears, semblances of almonds and semblances of raisins, for they are moments in the life of &#39;the Fruit&#39;, this abstract creation of the mind, and therefore themselves abstract creations of the mind…. When you return from the abstraction, the supernatural creation of the mind, &#39;the Fruit&#39;, to real natural fruits, you give on the contrary the natural fruits a supernatural significance and transform them into sheer abstractions. Your main interest is then to point out the unity of &#39;the Fruit&#39; in all the manifestations of its life…that is, to show the mystical interconnection between these fruits, how in each of them &#39;the Fruit&#39; realizes itself by degrees and necessarily progresses, for instance, from its existence as a raisin to its existence as an almond. Hence the value of the ordinary fruits no longer consists in their natural qualities, but in their speculative quality, which gives each of them a definite place in the life-process of &#39;the Absolute Fruit&#39;.

"The ordinary man does not think he is saying anything extraordinary when he states that there are apples and pears. But when the philosopher expresses their existence in the speculative way he says something extraordinary. He performs a miracle by producing the real natural objects, the apple, the pear, etc., out of the unreal creation of the mind &#39;the Fruit&#39;….

"It goes without saying that the speculative philosopher accomplishes this continuous creation only by presenting universally known qualities of the apple, the pear, etc., which exist in reality, as determining features invented by him, by giving the names of the real things to what abstract reason alone can create, to abstract formulas of reason, finally, by declaring his own activity, by which he passes from the idea of an apple to the idea of a pear, to be the self-activity of the Absolute Subject, &#39;the Fruit&#39;.

"In the speculative way of speaking, this operation is called comprehending Substance as Subject, as an inner process, as an Absolute Person, and this comprehension constitutes the essential character of Hegel&#39;s method." [Marx and Engels (1975a), pp.72-75. Emphases in the original.]

I make no apologies for quoting this passage at length since it almost single-handedly demolishes the DM-theory of abstraction. It is a pity that in later life both Marx and Engels later seem to have lost the philosophical clarity they revealed in this passage. In many respects it anticipates much of Frege and Wittgenstein&#39;s approach to abstract ideas, even if phrased in a completely different philosophical idiom.

So, instead of Marx and Engels aping the methods of traditional thinkers here, we find them repeatedly using ordinary terms to ridicule the bizarre conclusions of speculative Philosophers. Indeed, they counter-pose everyday language to the obscure terminology the latter employ.

http://homepage.ntlworld.com/rosa.l/page%2003_01.htm

[Rosa Lichtenstein]

Miles:


To put it another way, if the Marx quotes were removed from the essays, they wouldn&#39;t be missed.

I suspect in your eagerness to shore up your earlier hasty and erroneous claims, you failed to note that it is central to my argument that Marx was a stranger to this Hermetic theory, and as I am not dealing with historical materialism yet (which I fully accept), there is no place to quote Marx (except where he makes his views of Hegel quite clear).

And Miles now sinks himself deeper in the mire:


So, far from showing "how little" I know, it shows how little you actually know ... your own material. As I said, "Instead of taking on Marx, she beats on her idiotic cult leaders (in the Socialist Workers Party of Britain) and their attempts at &#39;dialectical materialism&#39;, and a few well-placed (and well-worn) strawmen."

As the above shows, this is about as accurate as a Blair Iraq dossier.


Well, if words were nickels, you might be a millionaire.

And I suppose you&#39;d say the same of Marx, whose works dwarf my own. But as a response to this earlier post of mine:


Now, in your case, you have proved totally incapable of responding to a single thing I have said both here and at my site (indeed, you spent a few minutes 6 months ago skim-reading one Essay, when approximately 20,000 words had been posted; now there are in excess of 600,000).

your comments are sub-pathetic.

You based your earlier &#39;criticisms&#39; of me on a cursory reading (6 months ago) of 1/30 of my current work, and then make a cheap remark about nickles.

Fine, if that is the best you can do, it does not surprise me, and it probably explains why you have swallowed all that Stone Age Logic from Hegel.


And, in fact, I have read the essays as they have been posted, as have other League members. Over 600,000 words and we&#39;re still not impressed.

But unless you say why, then that is just hot air.

[I have to say, that your earlier comments about the number of times I quote SWP figures suggests that you are either lying, or your memory has failed you.]


Corrected.

The above suggests not.

And now some advanced logic from Miles:


Your perceived "incompehensible [sic] and useless &#39;theory&#39;," a tin man, cowardly lion and a pair of red slippers are all you need for a production of "The Wizard of Oz".

Again, is that your best shot; more name-calling?

Why does that not surprise me?

[Well, for one I doubt you undertood the neo-Fregean logic in Essays Three and Four.]

As I said, I think your memory is going:


That&#39;s funny. As I recall, you were the one who kept changing the subject because you couldn&#39;t convince people why being a progressive anti-imperialist requires tailing reactionary anti-imperialists.

In fact, I stuck to the point that you were adhering to an either-or here (among other things).

You just wise-cracked your way through, as usual, ignoring the inconsistencies I pointed out to you.

You have a first rate knowledge of many things Miles, but you are definitely miles out of your depth here.

[Martin Blank]

Thank you for proving my points, Rosa -- those I made here, and those I have made in previous posts.

You don&#39;t read what others write.

You cannot make your arguments.

You&#39;re incapable of dealing with Marx&#39;s view on dialectics.

You can send as many cases of spam my way if you want. It still doesn&#39;t improve the quality of the product.

Miles

[Rosa Lichtenstein]

Miles:


You don&#39;t read what others write.

You cannot make your arguments.

I rather think that what I posted earlier says this of you not me.

You have no arguments when it comes to Philosophy -- or none you have so far deigned to reveal to an eagerly waiting humanity.


You&#39;re incapable of dealing with Marx&#39;s view on dialectics.

Which ones were these?

He said in Capital he had merely &#39;coquetted&#39; with a few terms from Hegel, that was the extent of that mystic&#39;s influence on Marx&#39;s most mature work.

The &#39;rational kernel&#39; was just a bit of Hermetic jargon according to Marx.


You can send as many cases of spam my way if you want. It still doesn&#39;t improve the quality of the product.

You like this word when it applies to anything you do not like.

Can we all do this?

Can I call your stuff &#39;spam&#39;?

On second thoughts, that would be a slur on spam.

[gilhyle]

Originally posted by Rosa [email protected] 29 2006, 02:33 AM
Miles:


He said in Capital he had merely &#39;coquetted&#39; with a few terms from Hegel, that was the extent of that mystic&#39;s influence on Marx&#39;s most mature work.

I really dont know how you can say that - the whole framework of concepts in Capital is dialectical, with the very definition of capitalism being transformed in the process of its elaboration from what it starts of as (based on the most abstract defintion of the commodity) to a range of definitions of capital in circulation and capital in its relationship to land, in the form of banking capital etc. in which that initial conception is contradicted. How, for example, can you relate Marx&#39;s concepts of value and profit except with a dialectical use of concepts.

It is, furthermore, very clear from Marx&#39;s correspondence that his reading of (Bakunin&#39;s copy) of Hegel&#39;s Science of Logic was critical to his development of Capital in its final form.

Equally, surely the fate of analytical Marxism in the 1980s (Cohen and Roemer etc.) shows quite conclusively that it is not possible to articulate a merely analytical materialist conception of history - it must be dialectical to avoid the simplistic dilemmas which forced the analytical Marxists away from Marxism.

[Rosa Lichtenstein]

Gilhyle:


I really dont know how you can say that - the whole framework of concepts in Capital is dialectical,

This is the standard line, but I do not buy it.

Marx does not either, he himself rejects your 'theory': he says he merely 'coquetted' with Hegelian terminology.

That is the extent of the alleged 'rational kernel', according to Marx himself: a few obscure words.

So, pick a fight with him, not me.


It is, furthermore, very clear from Marx's correspondence that his reading of (Bakunin's copy) of Hegel's Science of Logic was critical to his development of Capital in its final form.

We have been through all this on another thread:

http://www.revolutionaryleft.com/index.php?showtopic=53615

Whatever Marx said in letters, the extent of the usefulnes of Hegel's 'logic' is not open to doubt, for Marx himself (not me), tells us:


and even, here and there in the chapter on the theory of value, coquetted with the mode of expression peculiar to him. [Marx (1976), p.103. Bold emphasis added.]

So Marx found Hegel useful for a bit of jargon, and only in a few palces, that is all.

You may wish he had not said this, but he did. Get over it.


Equally, surely the fate of analytical Marxism in the 1980s (Cohen and Roemer etc.) shows quite conclusively that it is not possible to articulate a merely analytical materialist conception of history - it must be dialectical to avoid the simplistic dilemmas which forced the analytical Marxists away from Marxism.

The problem with Analytic Marxists was that although they said they learnt from Analytic Philosophy, it is clear they did not learn enough -- or even very much. Much of their material would shame an undergraduate.

I aim to put that right.

First, I have to clear this weed away: Hermetic Hegelianism.

After all, Marx only used Hegel's jargon, "here and there".

You lot have much to catch up on -- Marx was already ahead of you 130 years ago.

[gilhyle]

Is that it ? - you found the word &#39;coquette&#39; and you are sticking to it and you choose to ignore anything that disagrees with the one word that suits you?

Well - If that is it, I dont think I need to &#39;catch up&#39; with debates that have been repeated endlessly for over a hundred years.

Instead of just criticising, when you have actually done your positive, non-dialectical presentation of the materialist conception of history without loosing either the concept of the forces or the relations of production......come back to me, I&#39;ll believe it when I see that, cos I&#39;ve seen generations of supposed Marxists promise it and none of them can deliver.

Its just the same as the Ricardian political economists who thought you didn&#39;t need dialectics to articulate Marx&#39;s political economy ..... nice boast until they tried to articulate their alternative and ended up with an entirely non-Marxist theory : same fate as the analytical Marxists from whose experience you refuse to learn, flushed as you seem to be with some sense of superiority to such weaklings.

So by the same token, I await your coherent, consistent but non-dialiectical version of the Law of the Declining Rate of Profit

I notice that in your eagerness to criticise you never did answer Atlas&#39; question: what is dialectics.

Try it: try to define - in a neutral way - the dialectical hypothesis which you oppose.

I give you this : there has been an awful load of rubbish written about dialectics, much of it painfully imitative and unreflective. Even good writers like Engels and Trotsky dont go far into it. But that is mainly for this reason: dialectics is very simple, there is very little to say about dialectics per se. There is a lot to say about the materialist conception of history, much more to say about political economy and an awareness of dialectics enables the critical reception of those ideas. Secondly, dialectics is of limited pedagogical value since one has to be quite well versed in philosophy to understand its critical force. Usualy better to learn more practical aspects of Marxism and pick up the points of tension with dominant ideological methods of concept formation through the more practical theories.

But none of that makes it a myth.

[By the way : &#39;how could he know this ?&#39; is not a very strong argument. If you are building your whole philosophical life around the endless repetition of this question, you are wasting your energy.

Similarly, pointing out that Marx and Engels worked within a subject-predicate paradigm is not very useful either. Its just a fact that that was the dominant form of logic in their time. It doesnt alter the fact that Frege and Wittgenstein are concerned with the logic of relations and Marx insists there is a logic of totalities, where totality means more than just multiplicity. The thesis of dialectics neither falls nor stands proven by these historical facts about changing conceptions of logic.]

I was trying to think of something that would motivate me to read any of your stuff: yeah there is one thing - if you ever wrote anything on the 1857 Introduction to the Grudnrisse, I&#39;d skim thru that. Post a link if you did.

[Rosa Lichtenstein]

Gihyle:


Is that it ? - you found the word &#39;coquette&#39; and you are sticking to it and you choose to ignore anything that disagrees with the one word that suits you?

No, even better: the good news is that Marx himself wrote it, and he tells us that he "coquetted" with Hegelian jargon in only one chapter of Das Kapital.

You clearly wish he had not said this, but, alas for you dailectical muddleheads, he did.


Well - If that is it, I dont think I need to &#39;catch up&#39; with debates that have been repeated endlessly for over a hundred years.

Yep, most were a total waste of time.


Instead of just criticising, when you have actually done your positive, non-dialectical presentation of the materialist conception of history without loosing either the concept of the forces or the relations of production......come back to me, I&#39;ll believe it when I see that, cos I&#39;ve seen generations of supposed Marxists promise it and none of them can deliver.

I think I&#39;ll give that a miss, since you will just moan again that I have left out all the Hegelian guff that Marx also left out.

And now you raise the same irrelevance (you tried something like this earlier -- try again, you never know, third time lucky?):


Its just the same as the Ricardian political economists who thought you didn&#39;t need dialectics to articulate Marx&#39;s political economy ..... nice boast until they tried to articulate their alternative and ended up with an entirely non-Marxist theory : same fate as the analytical Marxists from whose experience you refuse to learn, flushed as you seem to be with some sense of superiority to such weaklings.

And....?

What has this got to do with anything I have said or implied?

"Er, nothing, but wtf throw it at her anyway."

May I suggest you bring up something about the Great Permian Extinction, or the number of starlings in Tibet? All equally relevant to what I have to say.

You never know your luck: I might fold completely.

So, with that irrelevance out of your system, you scratch about for something else to throw at me:


I notice that in your eagerness to criticise you never did answer Atlas&#39; question: what is dialectics.

It&#39;s your theory, mate; after 25 years of reading 100&#39;s of books and articles on it, I am at a loss to help you. I might as well have read an ancient Venusian creation myth for all the sense it all made.

But why ask me?

I thought you were the expert?

I note you dodged the issue too.

A beggar isn&#39;t it?

Try the Jabberwocky; it makes more sense:


’Twas brillig, and the slithy toves
Did gyre and gimble in the wabe;
All mimsy were the borogoves,
And the mome raths outgrabe.

“Beware the Jabberwock, my son&#33;
The jaws that bite, the claws that catch&#33;
Beware the Jubjub bird, and shun
The frumious Bandersnatch&#33;”

He took his vorpal sword in hand:
Long time the manxome foe he sought—
So rested he by the Tumtum tree,
And stood awhile in thought.

And as in uffish thought he stood,
The Jabberwock, with eyes of flame,
Came whiffling through the tulgey wood,
And burbled as it came&#33;

One, two&#33; One, two&#33; And through and through
The vorpal blade went snicker-snack&#33;
He left it dead, and with its head
He went galumphing back.

“And hast thou slain the Jabberwock?
Come to my arms, my beamish boy&#33;
O frabjous day&#33; Callooh&#33; Callay&#33;”
He chortled in his joy.

’Twas brillig, and the slithy toves
Did gyre and gimble in the wabe;
All mimsy were the borogoves,
And the mome raths outgrabe.

See&#33; Crystal clear in comparison.


By the way : &#39;how could he know this ?&#39; is not a very strong argument. If you are building your whole philosophical life around the endless repetition of this question, you are wasting your energy.

It suits you to say this, but even so, I doubt you can tell me the answer.


Similarly, pointing out that Marx and Engels worked within a subject-predicate paradigm is not very useful either. Its just a fact that that was the dominant form of logic in their time. It doesnt alter the fact that Frege and Wittgenstein are concerned with the logic of relations and Marx insists there is a logic of totalities, where totality means more than just multiplicity. The thesis of dialectics neither falls nor stands proven by these historical facts about changing conceptions of logic.]

Well, Frege&#39;s logic is a whole lot more than that, and Wittgenstein had no logic (save a smattering in the Tractatus).

But, if that is the extent of your defence of &#39;diabolical logic&#39;, I think the battle is won.

I accept your surrender.


I was trying to think of something that would motivate me to read any of your stuff: yeah there is one thing - if you ever wrote anything on the 1857 Introduction to the Grudnrisse, I&#39;d skim thru that. Post a link if you did.

Oh dear, that has ruined my week, no mistake&#33; :(

I am gutted that a logically-challenged, ignoramus like you cannot be bothered to read my &#39;stuff&#39;.

However, you really have struggled to find something, anything(&#33;&#33;), to throw at me, now that I have shown that Marx and I largely saw eye-to-eye; except I&#39;d cut out all that &#39;coquetting&#39;. Marx; what a wimp.....

No Hegel at all is far too much.

Chew on that.

Or, we can discuss the Permian some more....

[Hit The North]

R:

I am gutted that a logically-challenged, ignoramus like you cannot be bothered to read my &#39;stuff&#39;.

Oh, you&#39;re calling people "ignoramuses" on the Learning Forum as well, are you?

As tactful as it is instructive.

[Rosa Lichtenstein]

Z:


Oh, you&#39;re calling people "ignoramuses" on the Learning Forum as well, are you?

Yep, you clowns get around.

[gilhyle]

You dont find it relevant that you cant define a theory you claim to be able to reject ? From that I can only conclude that you not only think the theory wrong but meaningless.....however I get the impression you are not very concerned by the difficulties that puts you in, so I wont bother with setting them out.

You dont find it challenging that there is a long tradition of people claiming to rescue Marxism from dialectics and failing repeatedly to articulate a non-dialectical Marxism.

I asked you to point to any writing by you on Marx&#39;s one extensive piece of writing often understood to be about dialectics (the 1857 Introduction) and your answer is to ramble.

If you had something to say about the original question, I&#39;d be happy to listen. But you dont seem to take yourself seriously enough to engage with the issue

BTW I did briefly define dialectics.....look back (you&#39;ll overcome the typos if you try - but you wont try) . :rolleyes:

[Rosa Lichtenstein]

Gihyle:


You dont find it relevant that you cant define a theory you claim to be able to reject ? From that I can only conclude that you not only think the theory wrong but meaningless.....however I get the impression you are not very concerned by the difficulties that puts you in, so I wont bother with setting them out.

That puts me in the same boat as you, except it is your theory.

I note you cannot even set out the alleged &#39;difficulties&#39;.


You dont find it challenging that there is a long tradition of people claiming to rescue Marxism from dialectics and failing repeatedly to articulate a non-dialectical Marxism.

It took at lot longer, and even more people, before humanity gave up the idea that the earth was at the centre of the universe.

What can I tell, you?

Your days are numbered. You mystics have been rumbled.


I asked you to point to any writing by you on Marx&#39;s one extensive piece of writing often understood to be about dialectics (the 1857 Introduction) and your answer is to ramble.

I covered this in an earlier thread, one you conveniently ignored.

The short version was, Marx did not see fit the publish this 1857 last daliance with Hegel; he did publish Capital, in which he only &#39;coquetted&#39; with Hegelian jargon, and only in one chapter, on his own admission.

As I said earlier: get over it.


If you had something to say about the original question, I&#39;d be happy to listen. But you dont seem to take yourself seriously enough to engage with the issue

Er, what issue?


BTW I did briefly define dialectics

Do you mean this sad piece of waffle?


I give you this : there has been an awful load of rubbish written about dialectics, much of it painfully imitative and unreflective. Even good writers like Engels and Trotsky dont go far into it. But that is mainly for this reason: dialectics is very simple, there is very little to say about dialectics per se. There is a lot to say about the materialist conception of history, much more to say about political economy and an awareness of dialectics enables the critical reception of those ideas. Secondly, dialectics is of limited pedagogical value since one has to be quite well versed in philosophy to understand its critical force. Usualy better to learn more practical aspects of Marxism and pick up the points of tension with dominant ideological methods of concept formation through the more practical theories.

If not, it must have been so short, I&#39;d need a microscope to find it.

[gilhyle]

Originally posted by Rosa [email protected] 1 2006, 11:46 PM
Gihyle:


You dont find it relevant that you cant define a theory you claim to be able to reject ? From that I can only conclude that you not only think the theory wrong but meaningless.....however I get the impression you are not very concerned by the difficulties that puts you in, so I wont bother with setting them out.

That puts me in the same boat as you, except it is your theory.

I note you cannot even set out the alleged &#39;difficulties&#39;.


You dont find it challenging that there is a long tradition of people claiming to rescue Marxism from dialectics and failing repeatedly to articulate a non-dialectical Marxism.

It took at lot longer, and even more people, before humanity gave up the idea that the earth was at the centre of the universe.

What can I tell, you?

Your days are numbered. You mystics have been rumbled.


I asked you to point to any writing by you on Marx&#39;s one extensive piece of writing often understood to be about dialectics (the 1857 Introduction) and your answer is to ramble.

I covered this in an earlier thread, one you conveniently ignored.

The short version was, Marx did not see fit the publish this 1857 last daliance with Hegel; he did publish Capital, in which he only &#39;coquetted&#39; with Hegelian jargon, and only in one chapter, on his own admission.

As I said earlier: get over it.


If you had something to say about the original question, I&#39;d be happy to listen. But you dont seem to take yourself seriously enough to engage with the issue

Er, what issue?


BTW I did briefly define dialectics

Do you mean this sad piece of waffle?


I give you this : there has been an awful load of rubbish written about dialectics, much of it painfully imitative and unreflective. Even good writers like Engels and Trotsky dont go far into it. But that is mainly for this reason: dialectics is very simple, there is very little to say about dialectics per se. There is a lot to say about the materialist conception of history, much more to say about political economy and an awareness of dialectics enables the critical reception of those ideas. Secondly, dialectics is of limited pedagogical value since one has to be quite well versed in philosophy to understand its critical force. Usualy better to learn more practical aspects of Marxism and pick up the points of tension with dominant ideological methods of concept formation through the more practical theories.

If not, it must have been so short, I&#39;d need a microscope to find it.
Among other things you say I gnored your response. No, I expressed my frustration that your response was off the point.

The exchange went as follows:

My proposal :

please provide a link to something you have written on the 1857 Intro

Your Response :

1. You charged me with ruining your weekend
2. you expressed yourself, sarcastically, ‘gutted’ that I would not read your material

Cant you see, Rosa, there is no point in posting unless you take your own views seriously enough to put them on the line with people and have them tested. What else is this site good for ? We all come up with ideas and arguments, some good, some not so good, that benefit from debate. We can all persuade ourselves - no matter how self-critical we are - that we are correct on this or that issue. But it is harder if we have to face the educated scepticism of others and we all can benefit from that.

Perhaps you have debated openly and constructively on this board before and are frustrated at this point. If so - stop posting, its doing you no good, nor any good to others. Perhaps your approach to answering Atlas&#39; question was a product of momentary anger and does not reflect your true approach. Fair enough, we all have off days.

BUt this Board is still only useful for people TRYING to discuss with each other.

I admit it is good for people who live with such self-doubt as to their own abilities that they benefit from the emotional boost of calling others ignorant. If that is the case, glad to have been of service.....but I only allow myself to be irrationally and emotionally abused up to a point. Come back to me when you want to bounce your actual ideas off some people to see how strong you can make them...I would be glad to be an honest sounding board - as I have no doubt many others here would also, in the face of honest and earnest endeavour.

[gilhyle]

Originally posted by Rosa [email protected] 1 2006, 11:46 PM


I covered this in an earlier thread, one you conveniently ignored.

The short version was, Marx did not see fit the publish this 1857 last daliance with Hegel; he did publish Capital, in which he only &#39;coquetted&#39; with Hegelian jargon, and only in one chapter, on his own admission.


Among other things you say I gnored your response. No, I expressed my frustration that your response was off the point.

The exchange went as follows:

My proposal :

please provide a link to something you have written on the 1857 Intro

Your Response :

1. You charged me with ruining your weekend
2. you expressed yourself, sarcastically, ‘gutted’ that I would not read your material

My further response:

you have rambled

This is not ignoring you. [As to the observation that the 1857 Intro was not published, I take that point, but it does not eliminate the fact that the 1857 Intro can be used, in part, to identify the methodological underpinnings of Capital. That it was not published leads us to adopt some caution in making use of it, but a general thesis that unpublished writings cannot be referred to or made use of would be untenable in the view of most analysts of any writer or thinker.]

Cant you see, Rosa, there is no point in posting unless you take your own views seriously enough to put them on the line with people and have them tested. What else is this site good for ? We all come up with ideas and arguments, some good, some not so good, that benefit from debate. We can all persuade ourselves lightly - no matter how self-critical we are - that we are correct on this or that issue. But it is harder if we have to face the educated scepticism of others and we all can benefit from that.

Perhaps you have debated openly and constructively on this board before and are frustrated at this point. If so - stop posting, its doing you no good, nor any good to others. Perhaps your approach to answering Atlas&#39; question was a product of momentary anger and does not reflect your true approach. Fair enough, we all have off days.

BUt this Board is still only useful for people TRYING to discuss with each other.

I admit a board such as this is also good for people who live with such self-doubt as to their own abilities that they benefit from the emotional boost of calling others ignorant. If that is the case, glad to have been of service.....but I only allow myself to be irrationally and emotionally abused up to a point. Come back to me when you want to bounce your actual ideas off some people to see how strong you can make them...I would be glad to be an honest sounding board - as I have no doubt many others here would also be, in the face of honest and earnest endeavour.

[Rosa Lichtenstein]

Gilhyle:


No, I expressed my frustration that your response was off the point.

Nice reply, except I was not referring to that thread.

Check this one out:

http://www.revolutionaryleft.com/index.php?showtopic=53615

With regard to your earlier reply:


As to the observation that the 1857 Intro was not published, I take that point, but it does not eliminate the fact that the 1857 Intro can be used, in part, to identify the methodological underpinnings of Capital. That it was not published leads us to adopt some caution in making use of it, but a general thesis that unpublished writings cannot be referred to or made use of would be untenable in the view of most analysts of any writer or thinker

Theorists change their minds; Marx clearly did since in his published work he said he merely &#39;coquetted&#39; with a few Hegelian terms, and only in one chapter of his book.

Now, you either have to take those published words as his most considered thoughts, or continue to delude yourself.


Cant you see, Rosa, there is no point in posting unless you take your own views seriously enough to put them on the line with people and have them tested. What else is this site good for ? We all come up with ideas and arguments, some good, some not so good, that benefit from debate. We can all persuade ourselves lightly - no matter how self-critical we are - that we are correct on this or that issue. But it is harder if we have to face the educated scepticism of others and we all can benefit from that.

I think I am the last person to be accused of this; if anything I post too much material here in response to the objections others publish.


Perhaps you have debated openly and constructively on this board before and are frustrated at this point. If so - stop posting, its doing you no good, nor any good to others. Perhaps your approach to answering Atlas&#39; question was a product of momentary anger and does not reflect your true approach. Fair enough, we all have off days.

Nice try; you are not going to shut me up that easily. :)


BUt this Board is still only useful for people TRYING to discuss with each other.

And grass is green, so what is your point? <_<


Come back to me when you want to bounce your actual ideas off some people to see how strong you can make them...I would be glad to be an honest sounding board - as I have no doubt many others here would also be, in the face of honest and earnest endeavour.

I refer the honourable mystic to my answers above.

That is it, is it?

That is the extent of your ability to defend this world-historic &#39;theory&#39;, or counter the fact that Marx largely agreed with me?

[gilhyle]

Rosa

You still miss the point - your&#39;e so addicted to abuse, you make yourself not work discussing with.

You are still doing it....even in your last post.

Tell me I missed the point - thats fine, I got no problem with being told that.

Tell me I&#39;m being intellectually lazy, fine .... if you support it.

Tell me you know facts I dont know, fine......if you then list them or at least refer them (long posts full of quotes dont work)

But the actual arguments you make are reduced to a minimum by the extent of your time you spend accusing others of being stupid and of conspiring to shut you up.

Leave it, Rosa, I&#39;ll meet you another day on another thread and we&#39;ll try again.

[Rosa Lichtenstein]

Gilhyle:


You still miss the point - your&#39;e so addicted to abuse, you make yourself not work discussing with.

I give as good as I get, sometimes better. The trouble is, you DM-fans can dish it out but you can&#39;t take it.


You are still doing it....even in your last post.

Oh dear.


Tell me I missed the point - thats fine, I got no problem with being told that.

Tell me I&#39;m being intellectually lazy, fine .... if you support it.

Tell me you know facts I dont know, fine......if you then list them or at least refer them (long posts full of quotes dont work)

You are quite happy to pass comment on my work without having read it.

Fine, don&#39;t read it, no one is forced to.

But then stop making ill-informed attacks on me based on this sort of deliberate ignorance.

Here is another example:


But the actual arguments you make are reduced to a minimum by the extent of your time you spend accusing others of being stupid and of conspiring to shut you up.

Not so; I defy you to substantiate this slur.


Leave it, Rosa, I&#39;ll meet you another day on another thread and we&#39;ll try again.

You mean: try to throw more slurs at me?