Marx's Reaction to Engels' 'Natural Dialectics'

[RevolverNo9]

There is an unfortunate persistance - both from Marxism's detractors and champions - to attribute much of the general-systematic theories of logic, science and history to the great founding documents of what we may call Historical Materialism, when in actual fact these were the product of Engels, Plekhanov and later Lenin.

I read a while ago an excellent introductory survey of Engels, written by Terrel Carver, and I thought some of his acconts of Marx and Engels' critical reletionship were worth relaying.

Engels wrote to Marx:

'In bed this morning the following dialectical ideas on the natural sciences came into my head: ...[dialectical musings] The investigation of these different forms of motion is therefore the chief subject of natural science... Seated as you are there at the centre of the natural sciences you will be in the best position to judge if there is anything in it.'

Marx replied in good humour but notedly was totally non-commital, stating he would be loathe 'to hazard an opinion before I've had time to think the matter over and to consult the "authorities"'.

All authorities were thoroughly underwhelmed, though Marx tried to break this news gently. And indeed that was the end of any correspondense on the matter of dialectics less than cosy invasion of science. Nine years later Engels sent a letter to Marx concerning another 'discovery' of his, this time to do with electricity. Marx pointedly made specific points of praise, while very carefully not endorsing or agreeing with any general point made.

It is, of course, interesting that Marx never made any comment about either Anti-Durhing or The Dialectics of Nature. The former Engels implies Marx's endorsement for by emphasising - as he did often - that the two thinkers represented a single, unified organ of thought, a patent lie, and also by claiming that he read the whole manuscript out aloud to Marx! The poor chap. With The Dialectics of Nature, by far the more explicit in its explicaiton of dialectical iron laws of nature, Engels never even dared mention Marx in connection with it.

What this reveals is clear - Marx and Engels were close associates, not merely on a personal level but also as practicing socialists in an international movement. The last thing either of them would have wanted would be public disagreement. Hence Marx, and we can be in very little doubt that he did read these works, supressed what seem to be implicit dissent while Engels was savy enough never to provoke open disagreement.

The distinctions between Marx and Engels must always be borne in mind. Engels' conception of the dialectic in history, for example, approximates the Hegelian message: the dialectic represents necessity, and the movements of history constantly subordinate human agency. (And it should be noted that Engels' claimed parallel between histroical and natural laws was never more than assertion.) Marx never postulated necessity. Marx never created laws for the dictation of human agency. He merely proposed limits for human behaviour as set by their material being. Historical materialism is not the History of Laws that Engels imagined.

[Rosa Lichtenstein]

Thanks for that Revolver.

I had in fact already referenced this in Essay Nine (link below); however, much of Carver conclusions are controversial, and have been controverted (most effectively by T Rigby).

However, Norman Levine is publishing a lengthy survey of this whole field, which should help settle the matter (and in a way that agrees largely with Carver).

http://homepage.ntlworld.com/rosa.l/page%2009_01.htm (http://homepage.ntlworld.com/rosa.l/page%2009_01.htm#Note_6)

Go to Note 6

[RevolverNo9]

Ah! So you have. This worth redisplaying:


It is interesting that the major texts by Marx that are cited in conjunction with Engels' claims are often footnotes and tangential remarks. The 1859 preface, for example, contains a 'guiding thread,' which Engels re-voiced as a lapidary doctrine, beginning with his book review of the same year. Marx himself consigned these few sentences of text to a footnote to Capital, volume 1, surely not the place for one of the scientific discoveries of the age. Originally it came from a hastily drafted preface and was intended merely to guide the reader; as a footnote to another text it seems exactly that, a footnote…. There may be a highly ironic authorial strategy in Marx that reverses footnotes to texts in terms of speaking to the reader, but as a way of reading Marx, in my view, this focus on footnotes and odd sentences tends toward the cabalistic.

"References to Hegel are similarly cast by Marx himself in a prefatory and comparative vein, typically in the second preface to Capital, volume 1, in which he comments at length on someone else's (a Russian reviewer's) comparison of his (Marx's) method to the one employed by 'that mighty thinker' (Hegel). There are few references indeed to 'dialectic' in Marx, and none to its centrality to explaining anything and everything (Carver 1981, ch.5). Marx merely comments that he 'coquetted' with Hegelian terminology in the opening chapters of Capital, volume 1, and makes a limited number of qualified comparisons elsewhere in the text. My point here with respect to commentators is that these remarks and passages are not so much 'taken out of context' as put into a context supplied by the Engelsian tradition…. [Carver (1999), pp.25-26.]

Though it is an obvious point - and what those on the main thread are clearly missing - these such marginal pieces are practically meaningless unless Hegelian thinking can be concretely show to be a part of the method and analysis in Marx's work!!!

This is so basic it shouldn't have to be said, yet people seem to prefer to construct what they can out of something easily graspable than actually go through thought and argument critically.


[Also, Rosa: what do you make of Roy Bhaskar? A friend pushed a book of his into my hands, insisting that he is the theorist who has most correctly incorporated histroical materialism into criticism and analysis. I have found little opinion on him from other sources however.]

[Hit The North]

Rev9:


Though it is an obvious point - and what those on the main thread are clearly missing - these such marginal pieces are practically meaningless unless Hegelian thinking can be concretely show to be a part of the method and analysis in Marx's work!!!

This is so basic it shouldn't have to be said

Yes, so obvious if would seem to be miraculous that Lenin, Trotsky, Lukas and generations of Marxist intellectuals missed it.

Maybe you have an insight into the basics they didn't. You never know!

On the other hand maybe you're missing the point. It isn't the Hegelian dialectic which Marxists lay claim to - its the materialist dialectic of Marx. Time and time again in Capital Marx refers to the contradictions out there in the phenomenal world. Pretending he didn't gets no one anywhere.

Whether Marx endorsed Engels shaky dialectic of nature is a different issue to whether he employed dialectical thinking to his own work.

[Rosa Lichtenstein]

Z:


Yes, so obvious if would seem to be miraculous that Lenin, Trotsky, Lukas and generations of Marxist intellectuals missed it.

Well, it is when you recall that Lenin asserted many times that Marx used DM, when he must have known he knew nothing of it, the idea/word having been invented after he died. And similar things can be found in the work of the other two. So, they both made stuff up, in order to wed Marx to this 'theory' after he died, to glue his towering authority to their mystical ideas.

Petty bourgeois revolutionaries, brought up to respect tradition, certainly found it hard to be consistent radicals, and think for themselves -- happy to copy the same ideas of one another. Hence the overwhelming, and neurotic fear of 'revisionism', something that still afflicts 'radicals' today.

Mercifully, this has now been exposed for what it is: traditionalsim, plain and simple.


On the other hand maybe you're missing the point. It isn't the Hegelian dialectic which Marxists lay claim to - its the materialist dialectic of Marx.

Well, according to what you have said in other threads, you have never even looked at Hegel's 'Logic', so I suspect you are in no position to judge.


Whether Marx endorsed Engels shaky dialectic of nature is a different issue to whether he employed dialectical thinking to his own work.

Especially when he said that his use of this bogus 'method' amounted to no more than the 'coquetted' use of a few bits of jargon, and only in chapter one of Das Kapital.

[Faceless]

It is, of course, interesting that Marx never made any comment about either Anti-Durhing or The Dialectics of Nature. The former Engels implies Marx's endorsement for by emphasising - as he did often - that the two thinkers represented a single, unified organ of thought, a patent lie, and also by claiming that he read the whole manuscript out aloud to Marx! The poor chap. With The Dialectics of Nature, by far the more explicit in its explicaiton of dialectical iron laws of nature, Engels never even dared mention Marx in connection with it.

What this reveals is clear - Marx and Engels were close associates, not merely on a personal level but also as practicing socialists in an international movement. The last thing either of them would have wanted would be public disagreement.
Yes, it is curious isn't it! I mean, you could be right! It could be that Marx did not speak out against the terrible Dialectics of Nature because the two men wanted an outward impression of unity and did not want any "public disagreement". Of course, it could be that Marx died in 1883 and that Engels had not even drawn up the contents to compile his notes and writings on the laws of dialectics discovered in nature into one book until 1886 and that Dialectics of Nature was not published until 1925. I ask you, how could Marx have had a public disagreement when the "controversial" book was not even published until so many years after his death? And all this "interesting" silence is interpreted by you as "implicit dissent"! :D

[Rosa Lichtenstein]

That's one theory. And it's not very good.

It may be that Marx did not want to fall out with his benefactor. It may be that he did not want to embarrass him for the god-awful philosophy it contains.

We now know these two stopped seeing eye-to-eye on all things from the late 1860's onwards, but said nothing in public about it. For example, Marx began to think that the development of Russian society could help him provide a more balanced view of Historical Materialism, and Engels vehemently disagreed, to such an extent he left this material out of Volumes 2 and 3 of Kapital.

[You can read the sordid details in James' White's book 'Karl Marx and the Intellectual Origins of Dialectical Materialism' (Macmillan 1996), chapters 4 to 6.]

And this is quite apart from the fact that this 'theory' of Engels's is not a theory (it has no mathematical content, its evidential base is a joke (and what little evidence dialecticians have scraped together in support is highly selective, insubstantial, and does not in fact support it -- as my essays show -- and it cannot actually explain anything).

So, Marx had every reason not to say anything to Engels; to do so would have exposed the latter's tenuous grasp of philosophy and science.

And it was only published in the 1925 to help the Deborinites (in the former USSR) defeat the mechanists, since the dominant view among revolutionaries in the early 1920's (in the USSR) was to reject Hegel, dialectics and mysticism.

When the revolution began to founder in Europe and China, and seemed to many to go into reverse in the USSR, the temptation to turn to mysticism (as Lenin had warned happens even to revolutionaries) became overwhelming.

Hence this execrable book was published -- something even Engels had abandoned.

[Faceless]

Rosa, it isn't fair to suggest that Engels had "abandoned" Dialectics of Nature. Once Marx had died, Engels had a great deal of work to do sorting Marx's works including the second and third volumes of Capital.

I have to ask you though, why do you think this work is so "execrable"? The Part Played by Labour in the Transition from Ape to Man is a remarkable essay. Some of the essays are difficult to read as the terminology has changed a lot. The fact is though that Engels only had science in the condition it was in in the late 19th century. It is not surprising then that it has become dated.

[Rosa Lichtenstein]

Faceless:


Rosa, it isn't fair to suggest that Engels had "abandoned" Dialectics of Nature.

Well, he showed no more interest in it for the last ten or so years of his life, and it remained unpublished.


I have to ask you though, why do you think this work is so "execrable"?

Apart from the section you mention (some of which is still useful), the work is a monument to Engels's philosophical ignorance, and his penchant for a priori thesis-mongering.

Next to 'Materialism and Empirio-Criticism', it is probably the worst thing ever to be pened by a Marxist (although Trotsky's 'In Defence of Marxism' and Lenin's Philosophical Notebooks' -- and, of course, his own 'Anti-Duhring' -- are close runners up).

It's defects cannot be put down to the 'backwardness' of science either; Engels was a rank amateur with respect to science; no wonder this book was out-of-date even before it was written.

[jaycee]

http://libcom.org/forums/thought/distincti...marx-and-engels (http://libcom.org/forums/thought/distinction-between-marx-and-engels)

I think this discussion is good at countering the idea of a major break between Marx and Engels

[Rosa Lichtenstein]

Thanks for that jaycee, but that discussion does not add much to the material covered in the literature I referenced in Essay Nine Part One at my site.

Nor does it address my argument that Marx was decreasingly influenced by Hegel all his life, culminating in his put-down in Kapital that he merely 'coquetted' with the latter's jargon, and only in one chapter of that classic book.

But, even if it could be shown that these two saw eye-to-eye on everything (a rather peculiar idea in itself -- it would have been a first in human history had that been the case), that would just reflect badly on Marx's reputation, since it would implicate him in accepting one of the weakest theories propounded in modern times -- that is, until Davie Icke out-did it (by a small margin):

http://www.davidicke.com/index.php/

[jaycee]

I think the point isn't that Marx and Engels agreed on everything which indeed would be strange but that they agreed on the fundamental issues. With regards to the dialectics of nature, I have just recently started reading a book called the 'tao of physics' which says that the major scientific discoverys of the 20th century all point towards a view of the universe which is in many ways similar to the 'mystic' view (because i see that buddhism and taoism were profound in there understanding of the dialectic although in an idealist way) will be useful for me to argue my case in a scientific way.

[Hit The North]

Rosa,


Nor does it address my argument that Marx was decreasingly influenced by Hegel all his life, culminating in his put-down in Kapital that he merely 'coquetted' with the latter's jargon, and only in one chapter of that classic book.


I think it's obvious that Marx was decreasingly influenced by Hegel. He made a decisive break from Hegel quite early on. Nevertheless, it was Hegel's idealism which Marx junked, not necessarily the dialectical method of making sense of reality.

So here's a serious question. If it's not the method of analysis which Marx employs in Kapital that sets it apart from other economic treatments of society and makes it so unique, then what is it? If it is the method, then what is the method and isn't it indebted, at least in part, to a dialectical perception?

By the way, do you think you're the first person in history to see that passage from Kapital which you quote so lovingly as a "put-down"? To me, it reads like Marx is defending someone he considers a genius from people he considers to be charlatans.

[Hit The North]

Originally posted by [email protected] 16, 2007 05:18 pm
I think the point isn't that Marx and Engels agreed on everything which indeed would be strange but that they agreed on the fundamental issues. With regards to the dialectics of nature, I have just recently started reading a book called the 'tao of physics' which says that the major scientific discoverys of the 20th century all point towards a view of the universe which is in many ways similar to the 'mystic' view (because i see that buddhism and taoism were profound in there understanding of the dialectic although in an idealist way) will be useful for me to argue my case in a scientific way.
Jaycee, that kind of talk just gets Rosa mad.

Scientific discoveries tend to inform us that the universe is more complex and strange than we can at first observe. This doesn't mean there is any intention (i.e. mysticism) behind it or above it or within it.

[jaycee]

I disn't say that modern science suggests a form of intention in it (although i have heard of a similar scientific theorie) I mean more in terms of einsteins theory of relativity (a major part of eastern mysticism relates to a felling of timelessness) also in terms of the universe being made of undefinable 'energy' which permeates all things, this relates closely to the idea that 'everything is one'

[Severian]

Originally posted by [email protected] 20, 2007 09:23 am
What this reveals is clear - Marx and Engels were close associates, not merely on a personal level but also as practicing socialists in an international movement. The last thing either of them would have wanted would be public disagreement. Hence Marx, and we can be in very little doubt that he did read these works, supressed what seem to be implicit dissent while Engels was savy enough never to provoke open disagreement.
Hello? Why were they "close associates" "as practicing socialists in an international movement" if not because they basically agreed on their approach?

Marx and Engels quarreled and split with all kinds of people over all kinds of issues - but never with each other. There's no evidence that either of them ever thought there was an important divergence between them - not only from their public statements, but even their private letters.

All kinds of later "Marxologists" have claimed to find fundamental disagreements between them. Different people seem to have different, sometimes conflicting ideas of what these disagreements were. For example, some social-democrats have invented a Marx-Engels divergence as part of creating a reformist Marx.

But my point here is that neither Marx nor Engels seems to have noticed this.....nobody can point to anywhere they actually stated there was a major disagreement, just places here and there that they didn't state they agreed.

This myth probably has a lot to do with the academic Marxological approach....it analyzes their texts without looking at their political practice. But Marx and Engels were activists as well as theoreticians...."philosophers have interpreted the world in various ways, the point is to change it."

You can get all kinds of ideas from reading texts outside any social context, but Marx and Engels' lifelong political collaboration leaves no doubt about their fundamental common approach.

Oh, and "The Part Played by Labor in the Transition from Ape to Man" isn't outdated even today. From an essay by biologist Steven Jay Gould:

Indeed, the nineteenth century produced a brilliant expose from a source that will no doubt surprise most readers--Friedrich Engels. (A bit of reflection should diminish surprise. Engels had a keen interest in the natural sciences and sought to base his general philosophy of the dialectic of materialism upon a "positive" foundation. He did not live to complete his Dialectic of Nature, but he included long commentaries on science in such treatises as the Anti-Duhring.) In 1876, Engels wrote an essay entitled, "The Part Played by Labor in the Transition from Ape to Man." It was published posthumously in 1896 and, unfortunately, had no visible impact upon Western science.

Engels considers three essential features of human evolution: speech, a large brain, and upright posture. He argues that the first step must have been descent from the trees, with subsequent evolution to upright posture by our ground-dwelling ancestors. "These apes when moving on level ground began to drop the habit of using their hands and to adopt a more and more erect gait. This was a decisive step in the transition from ape to man." Upright posture freed the hand for using tools (labor, in Engel's terminology); increased intelligence and speech came later.

Thus the hand is not only the organ of labor, it is also the product of labor. Only by labor, by adaptation to ever new operations ... by the ever-renewed employment of these inherited improvements in new, more and more complicated operations, has the human hand attained the high degree of perfection that has enabled it to conjure into being the pictures of Raphael, the statues of Thorwaldsen, the music of Paganini.

Engels presents his conclusions as though they followed deductively from the premise of his materialist philosophy, but I am confident that he cribbed them from Haeckel. The two formulations are almost identical, and Engels cites the relevant pages of Haeckel's work for other purposes in an earlier essay written in 1874. But no matter. The importance of Engel's essay lies not in its substantive conclusions, but in its trenchant political analysis of why Western science was so hung up on the a priori assertion of cerebral primacy.

As humans learned to master their material surroundings, Engels argues, other skills were added to primitive hunting--agriculture, spinning, pottery, navigation, arts and sciences, law and politics, and finally, "the fantastic reflection of human things in the human mind: religion." As wealth accumulated, small groups of men seized power and forced others to work for them. Labor, the source of all wealth and the primary impetus for human evolution, assumed the same low status of those who labored for the rulers. Since rulers governed by their will (that is, by feats of mind), actions of the brain appeared to have a motive power of their own. The profession of philosophy followed no unsullied ideal of truth. Philosophers relied on state religious patronage. Even if Plato did not consciously conspire to bolster the privileges of rulers with a supposed abstract philosophy, his own class encouraged an emphasis on thought as primary, dominating, and all together more important than the labor it supervised. This idealistic tradition dominated philosophy right down through Darwin's day. Its influence was so subtle and pervasive that even scientific but apolitical materialists like Darwin fell under its sway. A bias must be recognized before it is challenged. Cerebral primacy seemed so obvious and natural that it was accepted as given, rather than recognized as a deep-seated social prejudice related to the class position of the professional thinkers and their patrons. Engels writes:

All merit for the swift advance of civilization was ascribed to the mind, the development and activity of the brain. Men became accustomed to explain their actions from their thoughts, instead of from their need.... And so there arose in the course of time that idealistic outlook on the world which, especially since the downfall of the ancient world, has dominated men's minds. It still rules them to such a degree that even the most materialistic natural scientists of the Darwinian school are still unable to form any dear idea of the origin of man, because under that ideological influence they do not recognize the part that is played therein by labor.
Advertisement

The importance of Engel's essay does not lie in the happy result that Australopithecus confirmed a specific theory posed by him--via Haeckel--but rather in his perceptive analysis of the political role of science and of the social biases that must affect all thought.

Indeed, Engel's theme of separation of the head and hand has done much to set and limit the course of science throughout history. Academic science, in particular, has been constrained by an idea of "pure" research, which in former days barred a scientist from extensive experimentation and empirical testing. Ancient Greek science labored under the restriction that patrician thinkers could not perform the manual work of plebeian artists. Medieval barber-surgeons who had to deal with battlefield casualties did more to advance the practice of medicine than academic physicians who rarely examined patients and who based their treatment on a knowledge of Galen and other learned texts. Even today, "pure" researchers tend to disparage the practical, and terms such as "aggie school" and "cow college" are heard with distressing frequency in academic circles. If we took Engel's message to heart and recognized our belief in the inherent superiority of pure research for what it is--namely a social prejudice--then we might forge among scientists the union between theory and practice that a world teetering dangerously near the brink so desperately needs.
the rest of the essay (http://www.findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m1132/is_n6_v47/ai_17628712/pg_2)

[Rosa Lichtenstein]

JC:


I think the point isn't that Marx and Engels agreed on everything which indeed would be strange but that they agreed on the fundamental issues. With regards to the dialectics of nature, I have just recently started reading a book called the 'tao of physics' which says that the major scientific discoverys of the 20th century all point towards a view of the universe which is in many ways similar to the 'mystic' view (because i see that buddhism and taoism were profound in there understanding of the dialectic although in an idealist way) will be useful for me to argue my case in a scientific way.

(1) That begs the question whether the dialectics of nature is a fundamental issue.

(2) It ignores the fact that you will find scant references to it in anything Marx wrote (other than a few enigamatic footnotes and side comments, here and there).

(3) It ignores Marx's steady drift away from Hegel all his life - evidence on this has already posted by me.

And I'd not pay too much attention to that charlatan Capra, if I were you.

As a purgative, you should now make yourself read: V Stenger (1995), 'The Unconscious Quantum. Metaphysics In Modern Physics And Cosmology' (Prometheus Books).

Written by someone who knows what he is talking about (Professor of Physics), this book debunks all such mystical versions of Quantum Mechanics.

Here is the Amazon blurb:


Concerned that mysticism seems to be invading physics, physicist Stenger embarks in this book on a voyage to debunk quackery in the quantum world. Heading his New Age opponents off at the pass, Stenger devotes a hefty chunk of his text to the experiments in which the behavior of electrons is interpreted as a wave/particle duality. According to his presentation, some mystics seize on that indeterminacy of the quantum world as evidence that hidden, supernatural forces seethe beneath the quantum world. Since electrons apparently move around regardless of time and space, surely the consciousness can, too? Stenger may have to tolerate such assertions when nonphysicists like Deepak Chopra write best-selling proclamations that the human mind is immortal. However, when esteemed collegial physicist-authors (e.g., Roger Penrose and Paul Davies) also see proofs of God in quantum theory or a purposefully designed universe, poor Stenger's patience runs out. His goal is to warn off readers of those authors. He also hopes to keep current physics students from making the same error, and libraries may consider acquisition with them in mind.

Midwest Book Review

The term "quantum" taken out of its original scientific context has become the mantra of a new metaphysics which purports to find a convergence between the picture of reality presented by physics and the world view of traditional Eastern mysticism. The Unconscious Quantum: Metaphysics In Modern Physics And Cosmology is a fascinating and accessible book wherein physicist Victor Stenger guides the lay reader through the key developments of quantum mechanics and the debate over its apparent paradoxes. In the process, he critically appraises recent metaphysical fads popularized by such authors as Deepak Chopra and Fritjof Capra. Dr. Stenger's knack for elucidating scientific ideas and controversies in language that the nonspecialist can comprehend opens up to the widest possible audience a wealth of information on the most important finds of contemporary physics. Stenger makes it clear that current scientific hypotheses about the material nature of reality are all we need to explain the available evidence and that mystical notions say more about the human need to believe than about the fundamental makeup of the universe. The Unconscious Quantum is a refreshing antidote to a great deal of New Age misinformation & misunderstandings.

http://www.amazon.com/Unconscious-Quantum-...y/dp/1573920223 (http://www.amazon.com/Unconscious-Quantum-Metaphysics-Physics-Cosmology/dp/1573920223)

And this is doubly ironic, since Hegel got his ideas from the same mystical source that Capra did (Hegel, and Leibniz, before him, were keen students of Daoism, and of Hermetic Philosophy, which is in many respects similar).

So, you DM-fans have thus swallowed a load of ruling class mysticism.

I merely object to you all sullying the good name of Marx with it.

[Rosa Lichtenstein]

Z:


I think it's obvious that Marx was decreasingly influenced by Hegel.

I agree; I just go further than you.


So here's a serious question. If it's not the method of analysis which Marx employs in Kapital that sets it apart from other economic treatments of society and makes it so unique, then what is it? If it is the method, then what is the method and isn't it indebted, at least in part, to a dialectical perception?

It's a mixture of various things: as I am sure you know, it's an amalgamation of Aristotle, Smith, Ricardo, Ferguson, Millar, Hume, Rousseau, Newton (and many others), -- with a few Hegelian phrases thrown in (as Marx said, with which he merely 'coquetted'), and only in one chapter.


By the way, do you think you're the first person in history to see that passage from Kapital which you quote so lovingly as a "put-down"? To me, it reads like Marx is defending someone he considers a genius from people he considers to be charlatans.

What makes you think I think I am?

But, its like passages in the New Testament where Jesus tells his followers to 'love their enemies'. Christians read those, and think, 'we must kill our enemies'. In a similar way, because of tradition, you dialecticians read this passage and think, 'this means Hegel's concepts run right through Kapital'. You see the opposite of what is in front of you. You do not like what you see, so you thrash about for some way of ignoring it, or of neutralising it.

I think psychologists call this problem of yours 'cognitive dissonance':

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cognitive_dissonance

And Marx put his defence of Hegel in the past tense, and then immediately issued that put down.

I know it isn't easy for you to read those words, but they are Marx's not mine.

Deal with it.

[Rosa Lichtenstein]

Severian:


But my point here is that neither Marx nor Engels seems to have noticed this.....nobody can point to anywhere they actually stated there was a major disagreement, just places here and there that they didn't state they agreed.

I' like to see where Marx says he agreed with Engels' piss poor philosophy, and crass interpretaion of science.

In the absence of that, I suggest you refrain from linking Marx's genius with this mystical theory.

And thanks for that Gould Essay, but I am not sure why you posted it (unless it was to show me how to de-rail a thread professionally -- you know, to demonstrate how amateurish yours truly is at it).

[Rosa Lichtenstein]

JC:


I disn't say that modern science suggests a form of intention in it (although i have heard of a similar scientific theorie) I mean more in terms of einsteins theory of relativity (a major part of eastern mysticism relates to a felling of timelessness) also in terms of the universe being made of undefinable 'energy' which permeates all things, this relates closely to the idea that 'everything is one'

This is indeed an idea that has permeated every society (class society, that is), and is one of the ruling ideas I am sure Marx had in mind (since it is thoroughly Idealist):


"The ancient Egyptians believed that a totality must consist of the union of opposites. A similar premise, that the interaction between yin (the female principle) and yang (the male principle) underlies the workings of the universe, is at the heart of much Chinese thinking. The idea has been central to Taoist philosophy from the fourth century B.C. to the present day and is still embraced by many Chinese who are not Taoists. Nor is the idea confined to the Egyptians and the Chinese. Peoples all over the world, in Eurasia, Africa and the Americas, have come to the conclusion that the cosmos is a combining of opposites and that one of the most important aspects of this dualism is the opposition between male and female."

[Maybury-Lewis, D. (1992), 'Millennium: Tribal Wisdom and the Modern World' (Viking Penguin), p.125.]


"Another parallel between Hermeticism and Hegel is the doctrine of internal relations. For the Hermeticists, the cosmos is not a loosely connected, or to use Hegelian language, externally related set of particulars. Rather, everything in the cosmos is internally related, bound up with everything else.... This principle is most clearly expressed in the so-called Emerald Tablet of Hermes Trismegistus, which begins with the famous lines "As above, so below." This maxim became the central tenet of Western occultism, for it laid the basis for a doctrine of the unity of the cosmos through sympathies and correspondences between its various levels. The most important implication of this doctrine is the idea that man is the microcosm, in which the whole of the macrocosm is reflected.

"...The universe is an internally related whole pervaded by cosmic energies."

[Magee, G. (2001), 'Hegel And The Hermetic Tradition' (Cornell University Press), p.13.

You can read more on this here:

http://homepage.ntlworld.com/rosa.l/glenn_magee.htm

http://homepage.ntlworld.com/rosa.l/Why%20...Oppose%20DM.htm (http://homepage.ntlworld.com/rosa.l/Why%20I%20Oppose%20DM.htm)

[jaycee]

i will reply to you in detail but for now i'll just say that the idea of the oneess of everything also existed in pre-class societies

[Rosa Lichtenstein]

JC:


I will reply to you in detail but for now i'll just say that the idea of the oneness of everything also existed in pre-class societies

And how do you know that?

Written records do not go back that far.

But, let us suppose you are right; why should a modern science (like Marxism) rely on mystical ideas, wheresoever they originated?

Or upon ideas that cannot be confirmed in any way at all?

Doctrines that have thus been derived from ideas about reality, and are thus idealist for all that.

[BurnTheOliveTree]

Rosa:

We don't know it, but there's pretty good evidence for the "All are one" idea being prevalent in the old tribal societies. I can provide it if you want, but I'm a little tired to be honest, and I'd rather not. Trust me? :o

-Alex

P.S. Forgot to say, yes, the idea is idealism. Wishful thinking. Probably harmless, but not a trace of logic in it.

[jaycee]

well, maybe 'everything is one' is a bit vague and imposible to prove. But mans essential unity with nature, i.e not feeling seperate to nature and your sorroundings has a lot of evidence for it. Not only millenia of human experince, although expressed in mystical terms, but also from people such as Freud.

Freud talked about the 'oceanic feeling' which we all experience in early childhood a being part of this. I think its clear that animals and very young children do not feel this degree of seperation from themselves and nature etc.

Marx spoke about mans return to man and nature. I think this discusson was quite good http://www.revleft.com/index.php?showtopic=61230&hl=

[Rosa Lichtenstein]

Burn:


We don't know it, but there's pretty good evidence for the "All are one" idea being prevalent in the old tribal societies. I can provide it if you want, but I'm a little tired to be honest, and I'd rather not. Trust me?

As with all mystical ideas, the identification of one system with another presents insoluble problems.

So, if you do not belive in 'God' (or even if you do) how could you tell whether the Christain 'God' is the same as, or is different from, that of an Amazonian Head Hunter?

So, how you would be able to say that such beliefs are the same as those of, say, Heraclitus (a class theorist of the worst possible kind) beats me. But perhaps you have access to criteria I have missed?

In short, the scope of the 'all' will be problematic, as will be the 'one'. (One what?)

And, if you can come up with anthropological data (that has not been contaminated by cross-cultural influences from class society), I'd be interested to see it.

But, I will need proof that there has been no such cross-cultural influences.

If those conditions are met, then I will just switch to my alternative response, given above.

[Rosa Lichtenstein]

JC:


well, maybe 'everything is one' is a bit vague and imposible to prove. But mans essential unity with nature, i.e not feeling seperate to nature and your sorroundings has a lot of evidence for it. Not only millenia of human experince, although expressed in mystical terms, but also from people such as Freud.

Well, I do not doubt humanity's unity with nature, but I rather think that dragging in that charlatan, Freud, will help your cause.

Argument and evidence that 'all is one' is still missing, though --, and the idea is still quintessentially mystical.

[BurnTheOliveTree]

Well, it'll doubtless fall short of your standards, but hey ho. Off the top of my head:

Many of the pre-historic societies are still in existence today, and as far as we know, there traditions and beliefs are unchanging, since they are basiclaly just inherited from each generation to the next. Tribes in the amazon, the plains indians, etc etc.


You have noticed that everything as Indian does is in a circle, and that is because the Power of the World always works in circles, and everything tries to be round..... The Sky is round, and I have heard that the earth is round like a ball, and so are all the stars. The wind, in its greatest power, whirls. Birds make their nest in circles, for theirs is the same religion as ours....
Even the seasons form a great circle in their changing, and always come back again to where they were. The life of a man is a circle from childhood to childhood, and so it is in everything where power moves.

Quote from Black Elk Oglala, a holy man from the Sioux. This idea of circles is the same idea as all are one. We're all part of nature's circle, to paraphrase.


The Great Spirit is in all things, he is in the air we breathe. The Great Spirit is our Father, but the Earth is our Mother. She nourishes us, that which we put into the ground she returns to us....

All very anthropomorphic, mystical, "Everything is a part of a whole" stuff. That's from a guy called "Big Thunder". :)


There are many things to be shared with the Four Colors of humanity in our common destiny as one with our Mother the Earth.

All are one in nature. That's from an annual meeting of The Elders Circle.



So the Plains Indians buy into it whole heartedly. They don't change, as far as we can tell. Tradition is their way. It's the same generally with tribal or pre-class society. Perhaps there's a common link between them all that inclines them to think this way...

I nervously await your reply, anywho.

-Alex

[jaycee]

Rosa if you accept man's unity with nature do you think that FEELING this unity is possible?

because this is what i see as the tuth behind mystical experiences, i.e breaking through barriers of alienation and mental repression.

[Rosa Lichtenstein]

JC:


Rosa if you accept man's unity with nature do you think that FEELING this unity is possible?

This is far too vague and confused to answer properly.

I will give it a try, though!

I know the Nile is longer than the Thames, but I do not feel this to be so.

Hence, I can recognise all sorts of truths but confess to no associated 'feeling'.

So, I suspect you really mean: hold the said belief (but expressed rather badly)

But, even if you were right, and you could explain what 'feeling a unity' might possibly mean, we do not need that charlatan Freud's help.


because this is what i see as the tuth behind mystical experiences, i.e breaking through barriers of alienation and mental repression.

This is even worse.

I can make no sense of this; it contains too many meaningless terms, or terms used in rather odd ways.

You are entitled to your beliefs, even those for which there is no evidence, and those in the expression of which you have to bend language out of shape, but you will need to descend into using materialist language if I am to understand you.

Indeed, even if you are to understand yourself!

And it strikes me that you have not 'broken through' alienation, just given it a new name, and capitulated to it.

[Rosa Lichtenstein]

Burn:


Many of the pre-historic societies are still in existence today, and as far as we know, there traditions and beliefs are unchanging, since they are basiclaly just inherited from each generation to the next. Tribes in the amazon, the plains indians, etc etc.

Yes, I thought you'd take this line.

So, you have no actual evidence that these 'beliefs' haven't been influenced by cross-cultural 'contamination'.

And I am rather intrigued by your claim that these ideas have not changed in 1000's of years.

How you can know this beats me (that is quite apart from the fact that it is implausible).

Short of a time-machine, you cannot know this.

Now I am no fan of dialectics (as I am sure I have let slip from time to time :o ), but even I believe in change, and lots of it.

I am therefore surprised to find a Marxist who believes that such things do not change.

And thanks for the quotations from those Indians, but you must know that they were relatively recent arrivals from Asia (if I am not mistaken), and must have been influenced by somewhat similar ideas held in the old class societies in China (etc).

I am speculating here, but it is plausible enough to dent your confidence, I suspect.

http://www.sonofthesouth.net/american-indians/

[This source says their ideas vary considerably, so they must have changed since they arrived in America -- or before, who knows.]

But even supposing I am 100% wrong, the systematic/theoretical use of these ideas is a quintessentially ruling-class ploy.

And that is all I need.