The revolutionary dialectic

[Guest1]

The revolutionary dialectic and the liberation of humanity (http://www.marxist.com/revolutionary-dialectic-liberation-humanity261007.htm)
By Ann Robertson
Friday, 26 October 2007

In developing this philosophical outlook, Marx based himself on great thinkers that had preceded him, but went beyond them in developing further those ideas and providing new insights. He developed his dialectics from Hegel, the great German philosopher. Here Ann Robertson in the USA provides an interesting examination of the development of dialectics from Hegel through to Marx.

Complete article... (http://www.marxist.com/revolutionary-dialectic-liberation-humanity261007.htm)

[Rosa Lichtenstein]

Thanks for that Che, but I see it merely repeats all the tired old errors exposed in my Essays.

[kromando33]

Thanks for that Che, but I see it merely repeats all the tired old errors exposed in my Essays.
You mean it doesn't conform to your new 'revisions' and 'reforms' in Marxism...?

[black magick hustla]

You mean it doesn't conform to your new 'revisions' and 'reforms' in Marxism...?

why do you get all angry when someone tries to debunk dialectics?

even if you think hoxha is your sugardaddy i dont see why you need to get so angry about that. i too think all that shitty talk about contradictions is metaphysical and unmaterialist. do you see scientists making shitty declaratons about "negations of negations", or rather, they, at least ideallty, try to be as crystal clear as possible?

[peaccenicked]

The negation of the negation is not strictly a law but an observable pattern in the universe. It merely indicates that things change rather than stay the same, in general, and by definition discounting absolutes as absolutes but not the relative within any absolute

[Rosa Lichtenstein]

Kromando


"You mean it doesn't conform to your new 'revisions' and 'reforms' in Marxism...?"


I see you still have not been able to come up with any substantive response to my demolition of that mystical theory you dote on.

Just content to snipe from the sidelines.:rolleyes:

[Rosa Lichtenstein]

Peace:


The negation of the negation is not strictly a law but an observable pattern in the universe. It merely indicates that things change rather than stay the same, in general, and by definition discounting absolutes as absolutes but not the relative within any absolute


And Christian fundamentalists say more or less the same about the 'mysterious works of god', even if they like to use the word 'law' from time to time.

Nice to know you mystics all think alike.

[peaccenicked]

It is good to see that Christian fundamentalists are in some ways rooted in reality. (http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=5547481422995115331)

[Rosa Lichtenstein]

Peace:


It is good to see that Christian fundamentalists are in some ways rooted in reality. (http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=5547481422995115331)


Just as it is good to see they are at least one step ahead of you.

[gilhyle]

I thought Ann Robinson's article is a reasonable effort. In describing Hegel, I think she falls into the trap of not differentiating clearly between an empirical description of how understanding actually occurs and a 'logic' of understanding.

Hegel is very confusing for modern logicians because of the lack of any deductive necessity in the 'logical' relations he sets out. But the sense in which what he is describing is a logic is different. Peacenicked has rightly pointed out that it is about an 'observable pattern'. Of course Rosa is also correct to say that there is a similarlty with the method of thinking of Christian fundamentalists (although Rosa observing this pattern of similarity is a somewhat amusing self-referential failure since she suggests the similarlity of pattern is of some relevance to the assessment of dialectics)

Furthermore, I think it is wrong to say that the universal, particular,individual IS Hegel's dialectic. These are certainly central concepts, but Hegel's dialectic is two dialectics, the objective logic (being/essence/actuality) and the subjective logic (subjectivity/objectivity/Idea). However, as a way to describe Hegel's dialectic, universal/particular/individual sorta works.

What is attractive for her in this is that it allows her to apply a common framework to Hegel and Marx/Engels. But it has a lot of dangers in it. She seems to say that Marx sees society as production....this would of course be quite wrong. When she says that Marx did not believe that human society conformed to a single logic, it is difficult to reconcile ths claim with the existencne of the materialist conception of history as a Marxist concept of the unified logic of human history.

[Rosa Lichtenstein]

Except, as I noted, she commits all the old, cliched errors that even you, Gil, have failed to spot -- even after they have been pointed out to you.

Dialectical Myopia, I think it is called.



(although Rosa observing this pattern of similarity is a somewhat amusing self-referential failure since she suggests the similarlity of pattern is of some relevance to the assessment of dialectics)


Not so; Hegel's dialectic is based solely on a series of crass logical blunders; the fact that his 'theory' is little more than Christian mysticism writ obscurely is just one more reason to reject it, but it is not the most important one.

However, I note you are still having to make stuff up about my ideas in order to malign them, Gil.

Perhaps this is one of the few things in the universe that is not subject to the Heraclitean Flux?

A few of Hegel's blunders have been outlined here:

http://www.revleft.com/vb/showpost.php?p=1035997&postcount=2

And updated version can be found here (which does into slightly more detail):

http://homepage.ntlworld.com/rosa.l/Outline_of_Hegel's_errors_01.htm (http://homepage.ntlworld.com/rosa.l/Outline_of_Hegel's_errors_01.htm)

[Axel1917]

I see you still have not been able to come up with any substantive response to my demolition of that mystical theory you dote on.

Just content to snipe from the sidelines.

And all you do is continually promote the nonsense of your website in 98% of your posts. You should be restricted to a website promotion forum, for all you do is spam the site with promotions of your website.

I have not had time to read the article yet. I will have to get on it when I can.

[Rosa Lichtenstein]

Axel/Volkov:



And all you do is continually promote the nonsense of your website in 98% of your posts. You should be restricted to a website promotion forum, for all you do is spam the site with promotions of your website.



Ah, the 'shoot-from-the-hip-but-do-not-check-your-facts-first-guy' is back.

But, you would not know whether my essays are 'nonsense', since you have not read them.

I have been telling you this now for nearly two years.

Any chance this message might finally get through that brick-lined skull of yours?

Exhibit A for the prosecution:



I have not had time to read the article yet.


And, we both know what you'd say about someone who condemned, say, Trotsky's work without having bothered to read it first.

[Clue: it's a five letter word, beginning with "i", and ending with "t".]

And that is what we should say about you...

[By the way, is that a couple of links I see in your signature; don't tell me you are advertising a certain site, and are thus a hypocrit?!?]

[kromando33]

Rosa your lucky this forum isn't run on democratic centralist lines, otherwise your incorrect line would have silenced by the majority long ago.

[Rosa Lichtenstein]

K:



Rosa your lucky this forum isn't run on democratic centralist lines, otherwise your incorrect line would have silenced by the majority long ago.


I like your commitment to open debate, an essential part of democratic centralism (as Lenin argued). The way you picture things, one would be forgiven for confusing your brand of 'Marxism' with the sort of doctrine propounded by the medieval Roman Catholic Church, and its Inquisition. And you wonder why I call this 'theory' of yours a quasi-religious dogma. It's certainly not a science.

Just as I like your attempt to silence (even if only in theory) a point of view for which you just do not have any answers.

Out of your depth eh?

[Since I am part of the organised structure of this board, you are more likey to be silenced than me, for your trollish behavour.]

[Lynx]

I don't believe Rosa's essays are nonsense, but I do believe they are irrelevant to everyone who hasn't read them. (Or have read them, but are incapable of understanding them).

[Rosa Lichtenstein]

Well, that is why I wrote some specially simplified versions of them (at the request of a few comrades here).

Link below.

Also try these:

http://homepage.ntlworld.com/rosa.l/Anti-D_For_Dummies%2001.htm (http://homepage.ntlworld.com/rosa.l/Anti-D_For_Dummies%2001.htm)

http://homepage.ntlworld.com/rosa.l/disclaimer.htm (http://homepage.ntlworld.com/rosa.l/disclaimer.htm)

The latter was published in Weekly Worker a few months ago.

[Axel1917]

Axel/Volkov:
Ah, the 'shoot-from-the-hip-but-do-not-check-your-facts-first-guy' is back.

But, you would not know whether my essays are 'nonsense', since you have not read them.

And as I have been saying for two years: your logic breaks at such weak links in your posts that your essays do not warrant serious examination. You don't exactly have to read Mein Kampf to understand the nonsense spouted out by Fascists, for instance.


I have been telling you this now for nearly two years.And over these two years, you have yet to put up in practice. So that really shows something.


Any chance this message might finally get through that brick-lined skull of yours?How about that "Either put up or shut up" comment of mine from some time ago getting through your skull?


Exhibit A for the prosecution:

And, we both know what you'd say about someone who condemned, say, Trotsky's work without having bothered to read it first.

[Clue: it's a five letter word, beginning with "i", and ending with "t".] And that is what we should say about you...


[By the way, is that a couple of links I see in your signature; don't tell me you are advertising a certain site, and are thus a hypocrit?!?]First of all, I have read other works, and I have actually met and talked with the author of that article. Secondly, my posts are not hinged on website promotion.

[Rosa Lichtenstein]

Axel/Volkov:



And as I have been saying for two years: your logic breaks at such weak links in your posts that your essays do not warrant serious examination. You don't exactly have to read Mein Kampf to understand the nonsense spouted out by Fascists, for instance.


You might have been saying it, but when asked, you refuse to give examples, and go very quiet.

Sure, you do not have to read my essays, but then stop passing ill-informed comments on them.

And the analogy with Mein Kampf does not work, for someone had to read that book to know it was fascist filth.

But, not one single one of you mystics will allow your tender eyes to read my work -- so how do you know it is as you say it is?


And over these two years, you have yet to put up in practice. So that really shows something.


Well, whatever my practice has or has not been, yours has not been all that note worthy either. Or have I missed the US workers' revolution?

In fact, you dialectical mystics have presided over nearly 150 years of almost total failure -- so practice is the last thing you should be appealing to.


How about that "Either put up or shut up" comment of mine from some time ago getting through your skull?


You even have to copy your abuse off me, as well.

Not too impressive are you?



First of all, I have read other works, and I have actually met and talked with the author of that article. Secondly, my posts are not hinged on website promotion


Neither are the vast majority of mine.

[peaccenicked]

Peace:



Just as it is good to see they are at least one step ahead of you.


Mystical forms that have god as their 'matter', correspond to real forms when they deal with actual things. This is roughly Marx on Hegel, who you are one step behind.

[Rosa Lichtenstein]

Peacenicked:



Mystical forms that have god as their 'matter', correspond to real forms when they deal with actual things. This is roughly Marx on Hegel, who you are one step behind.


This was when Marx was leaving his Hegelian roots behind him.

He never asserted this again. And even if he had, there is no way Marx could have proved this.

But, hey, you believe everything you read, don't you?

[peaccenicked]

Peacenicked:



This was when Marx was leaving his Hegelian roots behind him.

He never asserted this again. And even if he had, there is no way Marx could have proved this.

But, hey, you believe everything you read, don't you?

We cannot do justice to the concrete, historical dialectic without considering in some detail the founder of this method, Hegel, and his relation to Marx. Marx’s warning not to treat Hegel as a ‘dead dog’ has gone unheeded even by many good Marxists. (The efforts of Engels and Plekhanov have also been all too ineffectual.) Yet Marx frequently drew attention to this danger. Thus he wrote of Dietzgen: “It is his bad luck that he managed not to study Hegel.” (Letter to Engels, 7.11.1868.) And in another letter (dated 11.1.1868) we read: “The gentlemen in Germany ... think that Hegel’s dialectic is a ‘dead dog’. In this respect Feuerbach has much on his conscience.” In a letter dated 14 January, 1858 he lays emphasis on the ‘great benefits’ he has derived for his method of procedure with the Critique of Political Economy from his re-reading of Hegel’s Logic. But we are not here concerned with the philological side of the relation between Marx and Hegel. Marx’s view of the importance of Hegel’s dialectic is of lesser moment here than the substantive significance of this method for Marxism. These statements which could be multiplied at will were quoted only because this significance had been underestimated even by Marxists. Too much reliance has been placed on the well-known passage in the preface to Capital which contains Marx’s last public statement on the matter. I am referring here not to his account of the real content of their relationship, with which I am in complete agreement and which I have tried to spell out systematically in these pages. I am thinking exclusively of the phrase which talks of ‘flirting’ with Hegel’s ‘mode of expression’. This has frequently misled people into believing that for Marx the dialectic was no more than a superficial stylistic ornament and that in the interests of ‘scientific precision’ all traces of it should be eradicated systematically from the method of historical materialism. Even otherwise conscientious scholars like Professor Vorländer, for example, believed that they could prove that Marx had ‘flirted’ with Hegelian concepts ‘in only two places’, and then again in a ‘third place’. Yet they failed to notice that a whole series of categories of central importance and in constant use stem directly from Hegel’s Logic. From http://www.marxists.org/archive/lukacs/works/history/preface-1922.htm


It seems Rosa you dont understand anything you read at least on dialectics,

try reading the Logic and Capital in tandem.
As to proof :How many examples do you need 1 to infinite?

[Rosa Lichtenstein]

PeaceN:



It seems Rosa you dont understand anything you read at least on dialectics,



As I have pointed out to you, and others, many times, this puts me in good company, since no one understands this mystical theory (any more than theologians understand the Trinity) -- not Hegel, not Engels, not Plekhanov, not Lenin, not Trotsky, not Lukacs...

Or, if they did, they kept that secret well hidden.


try reading the Logic and Capital in tandem.
As to proof :How many examples do you need 1 to infinite?

Done it many times, and made detailed notes. Still incomprehensible twaddle (the Hegel stuff), and Capital is not based on the 'logic', despite what Lenin, or even Lukacs, said.

This I have demonstrated many times, for example, here:

http://www.revleft.com/vb/showpost.php?p=976481&postcount=69

And still, you advise me to read Hegel's two hundred year old 'logic' (which puts logic back to before Aristotle), when you have yet to master any modern logic.

At least this explains why you have swallowed all this Hermetic guff.

[B]And, please, do not quote any more Lukacs at me; I want to hang on to my dinner a bit longer in future.

[Hit The North]

And, please, do not quote any more Lukacs at me; I want to hang on to my dinner a bit longer in future.

That's a bit mean given that you seem to have nicked one of your favourite arguments off him - the coquetting with modes of expression passage which he played down (in 1923) and you play up (in 2008).

[Rosa Lichtenstein]

Z:


That's a bit mean given that you seem to have nicked one of your favourite arguments off him - the coquetting with modes of expression passage which he played down (in 1923) and you play up (in 2008).

No, any part of Lukacs, even the part where he mangles that argument, makes me queasy.

He missed out the part where Marx explains his method, the part that I predicted you will need to have shoved under your nose at least another 18 times before it sinks in:



"After a quotation from the preface to my 'Criticism of Political Economy,' Berlin, 1859, pp. IV-VII, where I discuss the materialistic basis of my method, the writer goes on:

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

"Whilst the writer pictures what he takes to be actually my method, in this striking and [as far as concerns my own application of it] generous way, what else is he picturing but the dialectic method?" [Marx (1976), pp.101-02. Bold emphases added; quotation marks altered to conform to the conventions adopted here.]


You will notice that Marx's method contains no "Totality", no "Unity or Identity of Opposites", no "contradictions", no "negation of the negation" and no "quantiy into quality" b*llocks.

So, Marx agrees with me, and not with you, or Lukacs, or Lenin.

You will also note that Lukacs advcates the importance of Hegel.

Odd that you missed that bit, isn't it...?

[Hit The North]

Yes.


what else is he picturing but the dialectic method?" [Marx (1976), pp.101-02.underline emphasis added

The dialectic method which you continually call into question.

[Rosa Lichtenstein]

Z:



The dialectic method which you continually call into question.


Yes, and he helpfully summarised it for us:



"After a quotation from the preface to my 'Criticism of Political Economy,' Berlin, 1859, pp. IV-VII, where I discuss the materialistic basis of my method, the writer goes on:

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

"Whilst the writer pictures what he takes to be actually my method, in this striking and [as far as concerns my own application of it] generous way, what else is he picturing but the dialectic method?" [Marx (1976), pp.101-02. Bold emphases added; quotation marks altered to conform to the conventions adopted here.]


Even you will not be able to find anything in there that merits calling it 'dialectical', except in a 'coquettish' sort of way.

No "Totality", no "Unity or Identity of Opposites", no "contradictions", no "negation of the negation" and no "quantiy into quality" b*llocks.

As he himself admits; here and there he:



coquetted with the modes of expression peculiar to him.


Now there is not much I can do to help you if you keep ignoring Marx.

So, that's only 17 more reminders you are going to need...

[Hit The North]

R:
You will also note that Lukacs advcates the importance of Hegel.

Odd that you missed that bit, isn't it...?

No I didn't miss the Hegel stuff and I'm not claiming that I agree with Lukacs here (actually I wouldn't pretend I'm particularly familiar with his argument, despite the fact that his book has been gathering dust on my bookshelf for nearly twenty years!). I was just struck by the similarity between the arguments he derides and the ones you propound.

But this is the question that always bugs me: According to your reading, Marx is arguing that the description given by the reviewer is an accurate description of his method - his "dialectic method". What does he mean by "dialectic" in this context?

You're right of course, on one level. The reviewer does not mention "Totality", "Unity or Identity of Opposites", "contradictions", "negation of the negation" or "quantity into quality". But this doesn't seem to prevent Marx from describing his own method (and the one employed in Capital) as a dialectic method.

So Marx's reading of the review seems to differ from your reading.

[Rosa Lichtenstein]

Z:



What does he mean by "dialectic" in this context?



He is using the term 'coquettishly', as he admitted.


So Marx's reading of the review seems to differ from your reading.

No, for I see in there no "Totality", no "Unity or Identity of Opposites", no "contradictions", no "negation of the negation" and no "quantiy into quality" b*llocks.

And I take this seriously:



(I) coquetted with the modes of expression peculiar to him.



You do not.

[Hit The North]

Sure, but he ends this very same postface - which is only a few pages long - with this declaration:


In its mystified form, dialectic became the fashion in Germany, because it seemed to transfigure and to glorify the existing state of things. In its rational form it is a scandal and abomination to bourgeoisdom and its doctrinaire professors, because it includes in its comprehension and affirmative recognition of the existing state of things, at the same time also, the recognition of the negation of that state, of its inevitable breaking up; because it regards every historically developed social form as in fluid movement, and therefore takes into account its transient nature not less than its momentary existence; because it lets nothing impose upon it, and is in its essence critical and revolutionary.
The contradictions inherent in the movement of capitalist society impress themselves upon the practical bourgeois most strikingly in the changes of the periodic cycle, through which modern industry runs, and whose crowning point is the universal crisis. That crisis is once again approaching, although as yet but in its preliminary stage; and by the universality of its theatre and the intensity of its action it will drum dialectics even into the heads of the mushroom-upstarts of the new, holy Prusso-German empire.
Is he still coquetting like a mischief-maker here? If so, when he uses the "mode of expression" dialectic and contradictions, what is he really referring to?

[Rosa Lichtenstein]

We do not need to speculate, for he had already told us that his method was this:



"After a quotation from the preface to my 'Criticism of Political Economy,' Berlin, 1859, pp. IV-VII, where I discuss the materialistic basis of my method, the writer goes on:

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

"Whilst the writer pictures what he takes to be actually my method, in this striking and [as far as concerns my own application of it] generous way, what else is he picturing but the dialectic method?" [Marx (1976), pp.101-02. Bold emphases added; quotation marks altered to conform to the conventions adopted here.]


Where you will notice that all the things comrades like you associate with the 'dialectical method' are conspicuous by their absence.

Only 16 more reminders to go...

And, in the passage you quote, he says this:



because it lets nothing impose upon it


This personifies the 'dialectic' and shows Marx is still merely 'coquetting'.

And, as to the meaning of the terms you mention, they have no meaning as used by you mystics, and that is why Marx said:



(I) coquetted with the modes of expression peculiar to him.

[peaccenicked]

The ''Grundisse (http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1857/grundrisse/)" is even closer to Hegel than Capital. The latter was written for a more popular audience. The are pieces from Hegel(when he drifts into materialism) that could fit right into Marx's Text.
The "Logic" is simply the method Marx used on economy that Hegel used on god. Marx recognises this when he says he turned Hegel on "his feet."

You cannot get away with this enormous blind spot. You are talkin pure BS.

[Rosa Lichtenstein]

Marx saw fit not to publish Grundrisse, so whatever happened to his thinking between writing that 'book' and publishing Das Kapital, he clearly turned away from that logical incompetent, Hegel.

But you would know all this if you kept up. We have been over this more times than even you have screwed up.



You cannot get away with this enormous blind spot. You are talkin pure BS.


Translated, this simply means you cannot respond to my argument.

So, you throw your toys out of your pram again.

As you always do...

[Hit The North]

We do not need to speculate, for he had already told us that his method was this:

Yes, yes. But how do you interpret the final two paragraphs of the postface that I quoted above?

[Rosa Lichtenstein]

Z:



But how do you interpret the final two paragraphs of the postface that I quoted above?


I don't.

Marx was in 'coquetting' mood, and in that mood he is best left ignored.

[Especially when you recall that the ruling class in Stalin's USSR rather liked the 'dialectic', so it cannot have been an 'abomination' to them; personified or not.]

[peaccenicked]

My arqument is quite simple. Marx in all truth was an Hegelian till thje day he died. Lukacs points this out. You choose to ignore this. Your whole argument is screwed up because you fail miserably to recognize the truth when it hits you in the face.

If you go through commodity production while use value and exchange value are not opposites, Marx views them through the prism of opposites. He talks of it not being the quantity of labour time but the quality. He talks of constant and variable capital. It is everywhere.


I really do think you are just at winding people up.

[Rosa Lichtenstein]

Peacenicked reduced to simple declarations of faith:



Marx in all truth was an Hegelian till thje day he died. Lukacs points this out. You choose to ignore this. Your whole argument is screwed up because you fail miserably to recognize the truth when it hits you in the face.


Unfortunately, Marx disagrees with you.


If you go through commodity production while use value and exchange value are not opposites, Marx views them through the prism of opposites. He talks of it not being the quantity of labour time but the quality. He talks of constant and variable capital. It is everywhere.


You'll be saying 'god' is everywhere next.


I really do think you are just at winding people up.

Yes, it's convenenient for you to think this, isn't it?

[Hit The North]

R:

Marx was in 'coquetting' mood, and in that mood he is best left ignored.So we should take him seriously right up to the point where he uses the phrase "coquetting with modes peculiar to him" and then he's just winding up the reader?

Wow, what an amazing insight! Did he tell you this in a dream?


Marx was in 'coquetting' mood, and in that mood he is best left ignored.Meaning: Rosa ignores everything Marx wrote which contradicts her.

[Rosa Lichtenstein]

Z:



So we should take him seriously right up to the point where he uses the phrase "coquetting with modes peculiar to him" and then he's just winding up the reader?



You have no room to talk, for you accept the traditional view of these passgaes, where for example, Marx allegedly eulogises Hegel, but you are quite proud of the fact that you have never read Hegel, and do not look to his philosophy for guidance.

I just go one step further than you, and take Marx at his word that he was "coquetting" with Hegel at this point.

So, you are the inconsistent one here.



Meaning: Rosa ignores everything Marx wrote which contradicts her.


Just as you ignore this:



"After a quotation from the preface to my 'Criticism of Political Economy,' Berlin, 1859, pp. IV-VII, where I discuss the materialistic basis of my method, the writer goes on:

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

"Whilst the writer pictures what he takes to be actually my method, in this striking and [as far as concerns my own application of it] generous way, what else is he picturing but the dialectic method?" [Marx (1976), pp.101-02. Bold emphases added; quotation marks altered to conform to the conventions adopted here.]


In which, not a single 'dialectical' idea is to be found.

Only 15 to go.

[Hit The North]

You have no room to talk, for you accept the traditional view of these passgaes, where for example, Marx allegedly eulogises Hegel, but you are quite proud of the fact that you have never read Hegel, and do not look to his philosophy for guidance.

Yes, because the traditional reading makes more sense than your highly selective interpretation which dismisses the concluding remarks of the piece and asks the reader to accept that all reference to the "dialectic method" which Marx makes is some obscure joke.


I just go one step further than you, and take Marx at his word that he was "coquetting" with Hegel at this point.

No, you take several steps further and distort the meaning of Marx's word, so that "coquetting with the mode of expression peculiar to him" actually means a total rejection of Hegel. Next you'll be arguing that 2+2=5.

Then there are those words Marx uses when he writes, for instance:
The mystification which dialectic suffers in Hegel’s hands, by no means prevents him from being the first to present its general form of working in a comprehensive and conscious manner. With him it is standing on its head. It must be turned right side up again, if you would discover the rational kernel within the mystical shell. and you tell us to ignore them.

Then there are the words which are absent. The words where Marx tells us that somewhere between writing the notes of the Grundrisse and writing Das Kapital, he had an epiphany - a complete transformation and reversal in his method - and he completely abandoned the dialectic. Of course, the reason they're absent is because they don't exist. He never wrote them.

So we can see from the above in the way you distort, omit and assume, how much you respect the word of Marx.

[Rosa Lichtenstein]

Z:



Yes, because the traditional reading makes more sense than your highly selective interpretation which dismisses the concluding remarks of the piece and asks the reader to accept that all reference to the "dialectic method" which Marx makes is some obscure joke.



But, you do not accept the traditional reading; you are stuck in a half-way house.

And the traditional reading ignores this:



"After a quotation from the preface to my 'Criticism of Political Economy,' Berlin, 1859, pp. IV-VII, where I discuss the materialistic basis of my method, the writer goes on:

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

"Whilst the writer pictures what he takes to be actually my method, in this striking and [as far as concerns my own application of it] generous way, what else is he picturing but the dialectic method?" [Marx (1976), pp.101-02. Bold emphases added; quotation marks altered to conform to the conventions adopted here.]


In which there is not only no Hegel, there's no 'materialist dialectics', either.

So, no wonder Marx also said:


(I) coquetted with the modes of expression peculiar to him.



No, you take several steps further and distort the meaning of Marx's word, so that "coquetting with the mode of expression peculiar to him" actually means a total rejection of Hegel. Next you'll be arguing that 2+2=5.


1) But you reject Hegel.

2) I take Marx at his word; you substitute a traditional reading distorted by Engels, Plekhanov and Lenin (and even then, you only half accept it).



and you tell us to ignore them.



Because Marx not ony did, he told us to do so.


The words where Marx tells us that somewhere between writing the notes of the Grundrisse and writing Das Kapital, he had an epiphany - a complete transformation and reversal in his method - and he completely abandoned the dialectic. Of course, the reason they're absent is because they don't exist. He never wrote them.

Not so, here they are:



"After a quotation from the preface to my 'Criticism of Political Economy,' Berlin, 1859, pp. IV-VII, where I discuss the materialistic basis of my method, the writer goes on:

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

"Whilst the writer pictures what he takes to be actually my method, in this striking and [as far as concerns my own application of it] generous way, what else is he picturing but the dialectic method?" [Marx (1976), pp.101-02. Bold emphases added; quotation marks altered to conform to the conventions adopted here.]


Notice, if you haven't done so already: no dialectics at all in this passage, and yet it is his method.


So we can see from the above in the way you distort, omit and assume, how much you respect the word of Marx.

Psychologists call this 'projection'; you attribute to others your own failings.

And now we are down to only 14 more reminders you are going to need, before the penny drops.

[Hit The North]

I take Marx at his word;

But you don't take him at his word. You infer (I think, unfairly and erroneously) from this:
I therefore openly avowed myself the pupil of that mighty thinker, and even here and there, in the chapter on the theory of value, coquetted with the modes of expression peculiar to him. that Marx had finally turned his back on Hegel. But he writes nothing of the sort. Are we to believe that Marx's prose style is so muddle-headed that he cannot baldly state, "I used to think Hegel had something, but now I think it's all mystical nonsense"?


you substitute a traditional reading distorted by Engels, Plekhanov and Lenin (and even then, you only half accept it).

No, I accept that Marx felt that he was indebted to Hegel and he believed that he was working with a materialist version of the dialectic. What I mainly don't accept from the traditional canon of DM is that this material dialectic can be used to understand the inner workings of nature.

[Rosa Lichtenstein]

Z:



But you don't take him at his word. You infer (I think, unfairly and erroneously) from this:


Yes I do, for he said this:



"After a quotation from the preface to my 'Criticism of Political Economy,' Berlin, 1859, pp. IV-VII, where I discuss the materialistic basis of my method, the writer goes on:

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

"Whilst the writer pictures what he takes to be actually my method, in this striking and [as far as concerns my own application of it] generous way, what else is he picturing but the dialectic method?" [Marx (1976), pp.101-02. Bold emphases added; quotation marks altered to conform to the conventions adopted here.]


And, once more, 'materialist dialectics' is conspicuous by its absence from 'his method'.



I therefore openly avowed myself the pupil of that mighty thinker, and even here and there, in the chapter on the theory of value, coquetted with the modes of expression peculiar to him.


Expressed in the past tense, as you will no doubt notice, and then Marx went on to show what he really thought of this logical incompetent:



(I) coquetted with the modes of expression peculiar to him.


Which is hardly a ringing endorsement.

But, once more, you agree with Marx's dismissal of Hegel, for you do this too.

Why you are moaning, therefore, is something perhaps only your psychiatrist can tell us about.



No, I accept that Marx felt that he was indebted to Hegel and he believed that he was working with a materialist version of the dialectic. What I mainly don't accept from the traditional canon of DM is that this material dialectic can be used to understand the inner workings of nature.


And the extent of that 'indebtedness we need not speculate about, for Marx very helpfully told us:



"After a quotation from the preface to my 'Criticism of Political Economy,' Berlin, 1859, pp. IV-VII, where I discuss the materialistic basis of my method, the writer goes on:

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

"Whilst the writer pictures what he takes to be actually my method, in this striking and [as far as concerns my own application of it] generous way, what else is he picturing but the dialectic method?" [Marx (1976), pp.101-02. Bold emphases added; quotation marks altered to conform to the conventions adopted here.]


So, Marx's method contains not one milligram of Hegel, and not one microgram of 'materialist dialectics'.

So, that's only 12 more reminders until you finally see the light...

[Hit The North]

So, Marx's method contains not one milligram of Hegel, and not one microgram of 'materialist dialectics'.I agree, there is not a speck of Hegelian jargon in the words of the reviewer. But, again, these are not the words of Marx himself. But this:
The scientific value of such an inquiry lies in the disclosing of the special laws that regulate the origin, existence, development, death of a given social organism and its replacement by another and higher one. Marx admits this approximates his position, and that his position is "the dialectic method".

Now a lot of the description of Marx's method in the reviewer's account has allusions to Darwin:
Marx treats the social movement as a process of natural history, governed by laws not only independent of human will, consciousness and intelligence, but rather, on the contrary, determining that will, consciousness and intelligence. and
As soon as society has outlived a given period of development, and is passing over from one given stage to another, it begins to be subject also to other laws. In a word, economic life offers us a phenomenon analogous to the history of evolution in other branches of biology. As we know, Marx was an admirer of Darwin's Origin of Species despite it being, in Marx's words, "developed in the crude English style". We know that Marx saw his work on capitalist society as being analogous to Darwin's work on evolution. That is, both men had uncovered, in their respective fields, the evidence that everything, nature and society, has a history - is in a state of development - not only of being but of becoming. However, we shouldn't infer from this that nature and human history are governed by the same laws of development (as the 2nd International and Stalinist thinkers argued), because, as the reviewer argues, Marx explicitly rejects the notion of universal overarching laws of development. Nevertheless, both natural selection and historical materialism have a number of factors in common: (i) both argue that there are specific, intelligible laws governing change in their respective fields; (ii) both argue that there is a necessary relation between the past, the present and the future; (iii) both propose that change is driven by conflict.

For Marx, this is the essence of his dialectic: it refers to a process of change which is rooted in the material reality of opposing forces.

Now, in Marx's time, this idea - that the cherished assumptions and holy writ of bourgeois society has no eternal verity but is mere ephemera of history, doomed to be superseded - this is what Marx refers to when he writes
In its rational form it is a scandal and abomination to bourgeoisdom and its doctrinaire professors, because it includes in its comprehension and affirmative recognition of the existing state of things, at the same time also, the recognition of the negation of that state, of its inevitable breaking up; because it regards every historically developed social form as in fluid movement, and therefore takes into account its transient nature not less than its momentary existence; because it lets nothing impose upon it, and is in its essence critical and revolutionary.

[Rosa Lichtenstein]

Z:


I agree, there is not a speck of Hegelian jargon in the words of the reviewer. But, again, these are not the words of Marx himself.

And Marx endorses it as 'his method'; and it contains not even one picogram of 'materialist dialectics'.

The rest of your post sees you scratching around to find something, anything(!), vaguely dialectical in the ruins.


As we know, Marx was an admirer of Darwin's Origin of Species despite it being, in Marx's words, "developed in the crude English style". We know that Marx saw his work on capitalist society as being analogous to Darwin's work on evolution. That is, both men had uncovered, in their respective fields, the evidence that everything, nature and society, has a history - is in a state of development - not only of being but of becoming. However, we shouldn't infer from this that nature and human history are governed by the same laws of development (as the 2nd International and Stalinist thinkers argued), because, as the reviewer argues, Marx explicitly rejects the notion of universal overarching laws of development. Nevertheless, both natural selection and historical materialism have a number of factors in common: (i) both argue that there are specific, intelligible laws governing change in their respective fields; (ii) both argue that there is a necessary relation between the past, the present and the future; (iii) both propose that change is driven by conflict.


Darwin is not even remotely dialectical, and one would have to be blind not to see social development as conflict-ridden. Hegel certainly did not discover that.

But what is even vaguely dialectical about any of this?

In fact, Marx got his materialist ideas from the Scottish school of historical materialists (and so did Hegel -- he mystified them, Marx de-mystified them).

So, we do not need a single one of the mystical ideas you dote on ('contradiction', 'unity and identity of opposites', blah, blah).



For Marx, this is the essence of his dialectic: it refers to a process of change which is rooted in the material reality of opposing forces.


Ah, now you have to put words in his mouth to make this fairy tale work. Invention is thus your only defence.

And opposing forces cannot be 'contradictory', since they cannot argue.



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


The anthropomorphic words (highlighted above) make it clear, once more, that Marx is 'coquetting' again.

But, I already pointed this out to you.

What then do you think this means?



because it lets nothing impose upon it


Or do you, like others, just ignore it?

[Luís Henrique]

Instead of discussing what Marx's method is not, it is possibly more interesting to discuss what Marx's method is.

So here is an excerpt of Marx - not the young, naïve Marx that hadn't yet read Rosa Liechtenstein, but the mature Marx writing his magnum opus:


But this also clearly means that these conditions change. What makes a region of the earth into a hunting ground, is being hunted over by tribes; what turns the soil into a prolongation of the body of the individual is agriculture. Once the city of Rome had been built and its surrounding land cultivated by its citizens, the conditions of the community were different from what they had been before. The object of all these communities is preservation — i.e., the production of the individuals which constitute them as proprietors, i.e., in the same objective mode of existence, which also forms the relationship of the members to each other, and therefore forms the community itself. But this reproduction is at the same time necessarily new production and the destruction of the old form.

This reproduction is at the same time necessarily new production and the destruction of the old form.

Here Marx clearly is not coquetting with Hegel's terminology. He is in fact stating the basic contradiction of a primitive classless society: each effort put forth in order to maintain the old, communal form of production and society, fosters the destruction of what it strives to maintain.

If he was making a point of "coquetting" with Hegel's modes of expression, he would here introduce the notion of "unity of contraries" (destruction is production and production is destruction, into the same river we go and we go not). But this is not his point: he is analysing a concrete social form, and understanding the material constraints operating over it, forcing it to change.

But he follows:


For instance, where each individual is supposed to possess so many acres of land, the mere increase in population constitutes an obstacle. If this is to be overcome, colonization will develop and this necessitates wars of conquest. This leads to slavery, etc., also, e.g., the enlargement of the ager publicus, and hence to the rise of the Patricians, who represent the community, etc. Thus the [p]reservation of the ancient community implies the destruction of the conditions upon which it rests, and turns into its opposite.

Turns into its opposite.

Oh, well. Of course he is here "coquetting" with Hegel terminology. But this isn't a text for public presentation; it is a notebook of his private investigation. So this Hegelian thing must have some function in his reasoning.

Now of course, he doesn't tell us here what he means when he speaks of "opposite", but it follows from his reasoning that he is saying that a classless society is turning into a society divided into classes. Evidently, this brings the question: why is the opposite of a human primitive classless society a human primitive class-based society (and not a feline primitive classless society, or an advanced human classless society, or a bunch of a-social primitive human beings, or a society of dead men - since he obviously was speaking of a society of living men -?)

But the fact remains: he talks of something transforming into its opposite. But, unlike Hegel, to whom things transform themselves into their contrary because this is what things do, Marx says that a primitive classless society morphs into a class-based society because "the [p]reservation of the ancient community implies the destruction of the conditions upon which it rests". It is in this sence, I think, that he speaks of his method as the "exact opposite" of Hegel's: Hegel starts with the generality (things transform themselves into their opposites) and then tries to apply this to particular cases (in which case he will have trouble in determining what exactly is the opposite of the thing in case). Marx starts with the [material] particularity: the efforts of the members of a primitive classless society unwittingly undermine the classless nature of that society (and that is the reason why the "opposite" of a primitive classess society is a primitive class society, and none of the fantasies I referred above: it is the classless nature of the society that is undermined by its [I]praxis, not its human quality, or its technological backwardness, etc).

Evidently, I am quoting here a particular small passage in his text; you could argue that this is an exceptional thing. I don't think so; there are many places in which Marx refers to situations like that, in which the efforts aiming the preservation of a situation actually necessarily result in the destruction of such situation. I would say that these are what Marx understand for "contradictions" (or rather, these are manifestations of what Marx understand for "contradictions"). Marx's contradictions are material contradictions, not ideal ones; as such, they cannot be derived from linguistic turnarounds (like jacobin1949 tried to do in another thread): they can only be identified by material research.

Evidently, we would all appreciate if you could address those points, preferably without just linking to one of your essays. What is Marx doing in the paragraphs quoted above, and why does he resort to such blatantly Hegelian terminology? Is the fact that the terminology is Hegelian enough for us to dismiss his reasoning on primitive communism, or is he speaking of reality here? Do you agree with my analysis of what means "contradiction" in Marx terms, or not? If you agree, then do you maintain that this is a Hegelian residue, or do you think the concept refers to material reality?

Also please refrain from snide comments and namecalling.

Luís Henrique

All emphasys in the quoted paragraphs are Marx's own.

[Rosa Lichtenstein]

LH:



Here Marx clearly is not coquetting with Hegel's terminology. He is in fact stating the basic contradiction of a primitive classless society: each effort put forth in order to maintain the old, communal form of production and society, fosters the destruction of what it strives to maintain.


But, this only works because dialectics has been quietly dropped.


Turns into its opposite.

Yes, but as I have shown, this cannot happen dialectically (see below). And even if it could, Marx does not use Hegelian terms to account for it.


it is a notebook of his private investigation.

Which he chose not to publish, and in his most mature publication, he admitted to merely 'coquetting' with Hegelian jargon.

This seems to be something you do not want to accept, and so you'd rather force your arguments through any number of contortions to avoid it.


Marx starts with the [material] particularity: the efforts of the members of a primitive classless society unwittingly undermine the classless nature of that society (and that is the reason why the "opposite" of a primitive classess society is a primitive class society, and none of the fantasies I referred above: it is the classless nature of the society that is undermined by its praxis, not its human quality, or its technological backwardness, etc).

But why is this the 'opposite' as opposed to something else.

Hegel claimed he could derive a unique 'other' dialectically, through the logic of concepts and their alleged 'identity'/'non-identity'. Marx cannot do that, in which case, this might not be its opposite.

No wonder he thought not to publish it.


I would say that these are what Marx understand for "contradictions" (or rather, these are manifestations of what Marx understand for "contradictions"). Marx's contradictions are material contradictions, not ideal ones; as such, they cannot be derived from linguistic turnarounds (like jacobin1949 tried to do in another thread): they can only be identified by material research.

Same point; in Kapital he is merely 'coquetting'with this word. In his notebooks, which he chose not to publish, it is merely a facon de parler.

And, no wonder, this word was derived from Hegel's crass misunderstanding of 'identity' and his confusion of its alleged 'negation' with the 'law' of non-contradiction.

So, no wonder this entire 'explanation' of change will not work.

Hence, if society A changes because of a contradiction between it and its 'opposite', then that opposite must already exist.

But, if it does, then A cannot change into that 'opposite' it, for it is already there. [And then it becomes somethinhg of a mystery how that opposite got there.]

On the other hand, if that 'opposite' does not exist, it cannot 'contradict' A, which cannot therefore change.

The whole 'theory' is a monumental dud. I am surprised anyone gave it the slightest credence.

I have worked this out in more detail here:

http://homepage.ntlworld.com/rosa.l/page%2007.htm#Dialectics-Cannot-Explain-Change (http://homepage.ntlworld.com/rosa.l/page%2007.htm#Dialectics-Cannot-Explain-Change)

And if you do not like references to my Essays, I have summarised the argument here:

http://www.revleft.com/vb/showpost.php?p=986357&postcount=2

And provided dozens of quotations from the dialectical classics to support my allegations, here:

http://www.revleft.com/vb/showpost.php?p=1041886&postcount=27


What is Marx doing in the paragraphs quoted above, and why does he resort to such blatantly Hegelian terminology? Is the fact that the terminology is Hegelian enough for us to dismiss his reasoning on primitive communism, or is he speaking of reality here? Do you agree with my analysis of what means "contradiction" in Marx terms, or not? If you agree, then do you maintain that this is a Hegelian residue, or do you think the concept refers to material reality?

Answered above.

And a 'concept' cannot refer, otherwise it would be a name or a singular term.


Also please refrain from snide comments and namecalling.

When do I do this with you?

[Volderbeek]

This again?! We know this topic (Marx's view of dialectics) is changing in circles and not spirals.

[Luís Henrique]

Which he chose not to publish

Of course; they were preliminary notes to his work. But there is the thinking process that led to Das Kapital. You seem to be trying to imply that Marx didn't publish them because he disagreed with its content; I seriously doubt that would be the case.


Hegel claimed he could derive a unique 'other' dialectically, through the logic of concepts and their alleged 'identity'/'non-identity'. Marx cannot do that, in which case, this might not be its opposite.

Yes; this is why Marx's method is different from Hegel's method. It is impossible to determine what the "dialectic" opposite of something is by abstract reasoning, as Hegel proposed. To use a loose metaphor, things are "hinged" to many "opposites"; you cannot know which of such "hinges" is the meaningful one without testing them in a practical way.


if society A changes because of a contradiction between it and its 'opposite', then that opposite must already exist.


But, if it does, then A cannot change into that 'opposite' it, for it is already there. [And then it becomes somethinhg of a mystery how that opposite got there.]

On the other hand, if that 'opposite' does not exist, it cannot 'contradict' A, which cannot therefore change.

This doesn't seem to be what Marx is talking about. The contradiction isn't between society A and its "opposite", society B. The contradiction is within society A; as a result of its development, society changes into society B.

Dialectic of not, Marx's method is non-teleological, or perhaps better, is anti-teleological: he never presupposes what he is trying to explain.


When do I do this with you?

More often than you believe or than I am willing to forgive, including a very nasty display of hostility because I made a wrong choice of words when talking about triangles. But even if you never did it to me - which isn't the case -, you do it unto others with alarming frequency.

Luís Henrique

[Rosa Lichtenstein]

V:


We know this topic (Marx's view of dialectics) is changing in circles and not spirals.

So, the treatment isn't working, I see...

[Rosa Lichtenstein]

LH:



Of course; they were preliminary notes to his work. But there is the thinking process that led to Das Kapital. You seem to be trying to imply that Marx didn't publish them because he disagreed with its content; I seriously doubt that would be the case.


But, then why did he leave them out?

And had he published them in Kapital, they'd have been covered by the 'coquetting' descriptor.


This doesn't seem to be what Marx is talking about. The contradiction isn't between society A and its "opposite", society B. The contradiction is within society A; as a result of its development, society changes into society B.

So, change to A is not the result of a contradiction between opposites?

OK, then, let's look 'inside' A.

Let us say that change is the result of a contradiction internal to A between two opposites B and B* (at least).

According to Hegel, and to the dialectical worthies I quoted, B must change into its opposite, B*, and that change will be the result of a dialectical tension between them.

But B* already exists so B cannot change into it.

If, on the other hand, B* does not exist, it cannot cause B to change.

Now, you might say that Marx did not believe that B will change into B*, but that B and B* cause A to change into its opposite, say, A* (which does not yet exist).

But, this makes a mockery of the 'negation of the negation' (NON), which, if you ignore the 'coquetting' descriptor, Marx allegedly believed in.

Now, the NON only works because of the Hegelian argument that each object/process is dialectically untied with its opposite, its 'other', and gains its identity through that 'other' and is the 'other' of that 'other'. So, the working class, for example, is internally connected to the capitalist class (by dialectical logic -- which Marx allegedly accepted, on the traditional view). They are each other's 'other'.

So, A is only A because it is united with its 'other', non-A, but it is also not non-A, and this tension causes it to 'pass' over into that 'other', where A is preserved (not destroyed) by 'dialectical negation' in non-A (i.e., A*), as the negation of non-A (sublation).



So, either Marx accepted a defective version of the NON, and thus genuinely rejected Hegelian logic (upside down or not), or he accepted it in all its glory, and believed that things do indeed change into their opposites, as a result of a struggle with that opposite, i.e., that A and A* exist together, and cause each other to change.

But that just means that my earlier objection still stands.

For, A cannot change into A* for it already exists.

But, this reading of the NON was accepted by Engels, Lenin, Plekhanov, Stalin, Mao, and a host of secondary dialecticians (you will find the quotations supporting that allegation in that link I added earlier), who all believed that A can only change into A* in this way.

Now, if you reject the NON, then that means that you also believe that Marx 'coquetted' with this term when it appeared in Kapital; but since the NON is part of dialectical 'logic', then it can only mean that he 'coquetted' with the other Hegelian terms he used in Kapital.

QED.

On the other hand, if you think he was serious when he referred to the NON in Kapital, then you accept the implication that Marx believed that A can only change into A* because of a tension between them, and that they must exist side by side for that to happen, so A cannot change into A*, since it already exists.

QED.

Either way, QED.

However, I prefer the 'coquetting' get-out card, since it absolves Marx from accepting this loopy 'theory', and it is based on his own say-so.

QED squared.

Finally, if you reject the above, then that will leave you with no dialectical theory of change.

Oddly enough, I can live with that...



you do it unto others with alarming frequency


I always give as good as I get, often worse. But I never start things.

If that is unacceptable to you --, guess what?

I can live with that too.

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

Reference:

Lawler, J. (1982), 'Hegel On Logical And Dialectical Contradictions, And Misinterpretations From Bertrand Russell To Lucio Colletti', in Marquit, Moran, and Truitt (1982), pp.11-44.

Marquit, E., Moran, P., and Truitt, W. (1982), [I]Dialectical Contradictions And Contemporary Marxist Discussions, Studies in Marxism, Volume 10 (Marxist Educational Press).

This article is (largely) reproduced and systematically demolished here:

http://homepage.ntlworld.com/rosa.l/page%2008_02.htm#What-Are-Dialectical-Contradictions (http://homepage.ntlworld.com/rosa.l/page%2008_02.htm#What-Are-Dialectical-Contradictions)

[Warning: the above is a 30,000+ word addition to Essay Eight Part Two.]

[Luís Henrique]

According to Hegel, and to the dialectical worthies I quoted, B must change into its opposite, B*, and that change will be the result of a dialectical tension between them.

Well, that's Hegel, not Marx.


Now, the NON only works because of the Hegelian argument that each object/process is dialectically untied with its opposite, its 'other', and gains its identity through that 'other' and is the 'other' of that 'other'. So, the working class, for example, is internally connected to the capitalist class (by dialectical logic -- which Marx allegedly accepted, on the traditional view). They are each other's 'other'.

Evidently, that's not how Marx reasoning goes. I have never ever heard or read any suggestion that the proletariat changes into its "opposite", the bourgeoisie, or that the bourgeosie changes into the proletariat. So I would say that, for Marx, bourgeoisie and proletariat aren't "opposites", and/or things do not change into their opposites.


So, either Marx accepted a defective version of the NON, and thus genuinely rejected Hegelian logic

Seems clear to me. Whatever Marx was, he was not a Hegelian philosopher.


But, this reading of the NON was accepted by Engels, Lenin, Plekhanov, Stalin, Mao, and a host of secondary dialecticians (you will find the quotations supporting that allegation in that link I added earlier), who all believed that A can only change into A* in this way.

Which means they are, in certain aspects at least, more Hegelian than Marxist.

As I said before, discussing what Marx's method is is more interesting than discussing what it is not. Here we diverge; you are not interested in Marx's method, other than in saying that it is not the same as Hegel's.


I always give as good as I get, often worse. But I never start things.

Evidently that's not true, for I always try to be respectful to you, but I often get petty insults in exchange for that.

Luís Henrique

[Rosa Lichtenstein]

LH:



Well, that's Hegel, not Marx.



No, it's the entire dialectical tradition (except you).


Evidently, that's not how Marx reasoning goes. I have never ever heard or read any suggestion that the proletariat changes into its "opposite", the bourgeoisie, or that the bourgeoisie changes into the proletariat. So I would say that, for Marx, bourgeoisie and proletariat aren't "opposites", and/or things do not change into their opposites.

We have been through this before (when you said the same thing), and I established then that this is what the dialectical classics tell us, that objects/processes change into their opposites.

If you do not believe me, check out the quotations I have published here (a small selection of the many I could have listed):

http://www.revleft.com/vb/showpost.php?p=1041886&postcount=27 (http://www.revleft.com/vb/showpost.php?p=1041886&postcount=27)

And sure, you have never read that before, because I am the first person to have thought this loopy logic through.

This 'theory' is defective because it has such ridiculous implications.

Small wonder then that it has presided over 150 years of failure.



Whatever Marx was, he was not a Hegelian philosopher.

Which means that he 'coquetted' with Hegelian jargon, as I argued.

None of the terms used has a 'dialectical' import for Marx, otherwise the ridiculous implications I outlined would apply.

Small wonder, too, then that he endorsed the summary he added to the introduction to Kapital, quoted repeatedly above.




Which means they are, in certain aspects at least, more Hegelian than Marxist.

I agree, but then that leaves you with no 'dialectical' theory of change.

All you can now rely on to explain social change are the terms drawn from Historical Materialism and ordinary language, which makes your views close to mine.

But a million miles away from the entire 'Marxist' tradition.


Evidently that's not true, for I always try to be respectful to you, but I often get petty insults in exchange for that.

Once is not 'often'; and I apologised for that.

If I did not, I do so now.

[FireFry]

What the hell is dialectics, is that like a vocabulary or something?

[Rosa Lichtenstein]

Ok, Firefly, it's the core theory of traditional Marxism, and was derived from a German Philosopher called Hegel (except Marxists say they have re-interpreted his work materialistsically).

I am one of the few Marxists who rejects it in its entirety.

There are several threads in the Learning section that go over this 'theory', or you can read this short introduction:


http://homepage.ntlworld.com/rosa.l/Anti-D_For_Dummies%2001.htm (http://homepage.ntlworld.com/rosa.l/Anti-D_For_Dummies%2001.htm)

[Luís Henrique]

I apologised for that.

No, you didn't.


If I did not, I do so now.

I will accept your apologies with just one condition: that you go here

http://www.revleft.com/vb/define-triangle-t59266/index.html

and leave your comments.

Luís Henrique

[Rosa Lichtenstein]

No deal.

[Cryotank Screams]

What the hell is dialectics,

It's useless. ;)

[Luís Henrique]

No deal.

As I imagined... :rolleyes:

Luís Henrique

[Rosa Lichtenstein]

LH:


As I imagined...


Yes, I detected the insincerity in the 'offer'.:p

[Luís Henrique]

LH:

Yes, I detected the insincerity in the 'offer'.:p

As I did in your apologies.:(

Luís Henrique

[kromando33]

What the hell is dialectics, is that like a vocabulary or something?
This is something I would expect from the self-proclaimed anti-Marxist liberal who thinks that the USA was 'socialist' from 1930 to 1980.:rolleyes:

[Rosa Lichtenstein]

Look, K, I have already warned you not to troll this board.

Any more posts like this will be deleted.

In fact, you are holding on to your place at this site by your fingertips. So, don't push your luck.

[gilhyle]

It is impossible to determine what the "dialectic" opposite of something is by abstract reasoning, as Hegel proposed.

Hegel didnt believe this, though sometimes he coquetted with expressions that suggested he did.

[Rosa Lichtenstein]

Gil, nice try, but it is impossible to determine with any confidence wtf Hegel was trying to say, if anything.

My bet is on the latter.