Did Mao reject the negation of the negation?

[jacobin1949]

There is debate among Mao scholars both within China and the west on whether or not Mao rejected Engles and Lenin's concept of the Negation og the negation. In speeches through the 1930s and 1960s, Mao refers to the Negation. But in 1964 during a conversation he explicitly rejected the negation because it did not fit his theory of the Unity of Opposites. Basically Mao reduced the 3 laws into 1.

However at other times Mao did refer to a similar concept, the negation of the affirmation. This preserved the essence of the Neg of neg, but fit better into his concept of opposites.

He also submerged quanta into quali change as a specific example of the unity of contradictions.

According to Mao, Unity of Contradictions was the basic law of all Dialectics, and the objective universe.

[Rosa Lichtenstein]

If he didn't he was unwise not to -- along with the other two 'laws'.

However, I have come across speeches where he did reject it -- if I can find the details I'll post them.

[jacobin1949]

The book MAo on DiaMat quotes a 1964 conversation where Mao explicitly rejects the Neg of Neg.

But it may have been tongue in cheek or senile. Mao was prone to a lot of hyperbole later in life. In the 1970s he kept talking about how he was going to soon be seeing God and Marx. So I don't know how seriously to take some of his more whimsical axioms.

[Rosa Lichtenstein]

Well, Stalin (and many Stalinists) rejected the negation of the negation.

He/they can't all have been senile.

[bezdomni]

I recall reading him say somewhere that he considered the negation of the negation to be a corollary of the interpenetration of opposites.

[Rosa Lichtenstein]

Well, Mao said lots of things about this mystical theory -- but he was confused about so many things, that should not really surprise us.

Mao's ideas (in this area) are taken apart here:

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

[jacobin1949]

I don't believe Stalin ever explicitly rejected the Negation of the negation. But its conspicuous absence from his works led Soviet scholarship on the topic to die out until the 1950s

[Rosa Lichtenstein]

Perhaps not, but he never mentioned it in any of his writings on the subject -- which implies he did not accept it.

[Die Neue Zeit]

Logically, I don't see how "negation of the negation" can mean OTHER than an exact reversion to what was initially negated. Although I applaud the non-dialectical portions of this CPGB-PCC analysis (http://www.cpgb.org.uk/worker/178/genesis_3.html) over Ted Grant's work on Russia, I'm completely lost over the "negation of the negation" crap. After all, Russia today is NOT the backward czarist Russia.

[Rosa Lichtenstein]

Well, Hegel fused together two uses of the German word "aufheben" -- "sublate" (which means both "to destroy" and "to preserve" -- or "negate" in these two senses):

http://libcom.org/aufheben (http://libcom.org/aufheben)

So, the negation of the negation is supposed to depict processes in nature and society that see the destruction of one object/process but which also preserves them in a 'higher' more developed form.

Engels used the example of the a plant negating a seed, which sees the seed destroyed and yet somehow preserved in the new plant, and so on.

But, neither Hegel nor Engels (nor anyone else for that matter who has fallen for this word trick) ever once asked themselves whether this German word was in fact two words, not one (a bit like "bank" has many meanings -- side of a river, institution of organised theft, how to turn an aeroplane --; even though they all contain typographically identical letters, these are easily identified as three words not one).

This is just one of the many suspect moves that underpin the bogus theory called 'dialectics'.

As I have argued in Essay Seven (NON = Negation of the Negation):




Moth-Eaten Dialectics

In addition, it is not easy to see how this NON-theory is applicable to other natural life-cycles. What for instance are we to make of the development of moths and butterflies (http://www.edhelper.com/AnimalReadingComprehension_71_1.html)? These insects go through the following developmental stages:

adult→egg→pupa→chrysalis→adult.

Which is the negation of which here? And which is the NON?

And what about organisms that reproduce by splitting, such as amoebae and bacteria? In any such spit, which half is the negation and which the NON?
Are such "splitters" enemies of dialectics -- or just natural sectarians?

Spare a thought, too, for Hermaphrodites, for example, the African Bat bug; for this is what the New Scientist had to say about this odd insect:

"If you thought human sexual relationships were tricky, be thankful you're not an African bat bug. They show what could be the most extreme case of transsexualism yet discovered. Male bat bugs sport female genitalia, and some females have genitalia that mimic the male's version of the female bits -- as well as their own redundant vagina.

"Bat bugs, and their relatives the bed bugs, are renowned among entomologists for their gruesome and bizarre method of reproduction. Males never use the vagina, instead piercing the female's abdomen and inseminating directly into the blood, where the sperm then swim to the ovaries. It is this 'traumatic insemination', as it is termed, which is at the root of the extreme levels of gender bending in the African bat bug, says Klaus Reinhardt of the University of Sheffield, UK.

"Female bat bugs have evolved a countermeasure to the stabbing of the male's penis -- structures on their abdomens known as paragenitals. These are a defence mechanism that limits the damage by guiding the male's sharp penis into a spongy structure full of immune cells.

"When Reinhardt's team studied bat bugs in a cave on Mount Elgon, Kenya -- already famous as a place that elephants visit to mine for salt -- they found that the males also had defence genitals. What's more, they had scarring on their abdomens similar to that of the females following copulation. In other words, males had been using their penises to stab other males.

"If that isn't strange enough, when the team looked at 43 preserved female bat bugs, they found that 84% had male versions of the defence genitals. Females with this male version of female genitals had less scarring due to penetration than the other females.

"'This is what we think might have happened,' says Reinhardt. 'Males started getting nobbled (sic) by other males, so they evolved the female defensive genitals. As this reduced the amount of penis damage they were getting, females evolved the male version of the female genitals.'

"While theoretical models have predicted that females should evolve different morphologies to escape male attention, this is the first time it has been seen in genitalia, Reinhardt says. 'It's a spectacular example of evolution through sexual conflict.'" [New Scientist (http://www.newscientist.com/channel/life/mg19526224.000-bat-bugs-turn-transsexual-to-avoid-stabbing-penises.html), 195, 2622, 22/09/07, p.11. Quotation marks altered to conform to the conventions adopted here.]

It is to be hoped that the NON visits these highly confused insects one day to give them more than just friendly counselling.

There appear to be countless processes in nature that are NON-defying: for example, how does the NON apply to such things as the periodic extinction (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Permian-Triassic_extinction_event) of life on earth (by meteorites (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cretaceous-Tertiary_extinction_event), or other ambient causes)? When a comet hits the earth (if it does), which is the negation and which the NON? And where is the development here? Do meteorites develop into anything new after they slam into the Earth? Is the resulting crater creative?

Furthermore, when a planet orbits a star, is there even a tiny sliver of space for the NON to gain a toe-hold? The said planet may continue to orbit for hundreds of thousands of years with little significant change (in mass, speed, inclination to the ecliptic (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ecliptic), etc.). Again, where is the development?

Consider, too, the thoroughly reactionary life form Myxomycota (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slime_mould) (The Slime Mould), which belongs neither to the plant nor animal kingdom, but to the Protoctista (http://www.smithsonianmag.com/issues/2001/march/phenom_mar01.php). Their life-cycle involves the following: a giant amoebal stage, followed by a slug-like existence, which morphs into a fungal-like fruiting body, which then releases spores.

Now it might be that this organism is so primitive that it does not "understand dialectics", and has thus not quite figured out which of these four stages is the 'negation', and which the NON, let alone what 'sublates' what -- especially since the first phase of its life-cycle involves a union, a 'dialectical tautology', if you will!

No doubt a commissar will be assigned to 're-educate' it after the revolution.

"The Dictyosteliomycota are also known as the social amoebae. Their life cycle is considered among the most bizarre among microorganisms. It begins with free-living amoeboid cells (not to be confused with the Amoebae); there is no true plasmodium. As long as there is enough food (usually bacteria) the amoebae thrive. However, when food runs out, the amoebae send out chemical signals to surrounding amoebae. Next, they stream toward a central point and form a sluglike multicellular pseudoplasmodium, which can then migrate like a single organism. When conditions are right, the pseudoplasmodium stops migrating and forms a multicellular fruiting body. Some of the cells become spores that disseminate, while the rest form stalk cells whose only function is to raise the spores up into the air to be more easily caught in air currents." [Quoted from here (http://www.biologyreference.com/Se-T/Slime-Molds.html).]

[To be honest, my money is on this organism having been concocted by the CIA. Who else would want to produce such an undialectical life-form?]

In fact, the NON (or at least the second 'Law' with its UOs) seems to be coming under sustained attack for all sides of the animal and plant kingdom. Consider the sea slug:

"Striking that happy balance between giving and receiving in a relationship can be fraught with difficulty. But not, it seems, for hermaphrodite sea slugs. These gentle soft-bodied animals, blessed with both male and female genitalia, solve the battle of the sexes by engaging in 'sperm trading'.

"They donate sperm only on the condition that they receive it, so thwarting the male desire to fertilise and run. During sex, each slug inserts its penis into the other and one transfers a small package of sperm. The transfer of further sperm will only proceed if the other partner reciprocates by transferring a package of its sperm.

"That hermaphrodite sex worked this way was suggested 20 years ago but this is the first time it has been demonstrated. Nico Michiels and colleagues at the University of Tübingen, Germany, sealed off the sperm ducts of Chelidonura hirundinina sea slugs so that they could insert the penis but not transfer sperm.

"In 57 staged sexual encounters, sea slugs paired with a 'cheating' partner, unable to transfer sperm, were more likely to abandon sex than animals paired with a 'fair trader' (Current Biology, 15, p.792).

"'I expect that sperm trading is widespread in hermaphrodites,' says Michiels. 'These sea slugs have found a way to optimise sperm transfer so that both partners benefit.'" [New Scientist (http://www.newscientist.com/article.ns?id=mg18825212.500), 2521, 15/10/05. Quotation marks altered to conform to the conventions adopted here.]

There seems to be a unity of non-opposites going on here. And don't even think about the fire ant:

"It is often said that males and females are different species. For the little fire ant, that seems to be literally true.

"The ant Wasmannia auropunctata, which is native to Central and South America but has spread into the US and beyond, has opted for a unique stand-off in the battle of the sexes. Both queens and males reproduce by making genetically identical copies of themselves -- so males and females seem to have entirely separate gene pools.

"The only time they reproduce conventionally is to produce workers, says Denis Fournier from the Free University of Brussels...in Belgium, a member of the team that discovered the phenomenon (Nature, 435, p.1230). But workers are sterile and never pass on their genes.

"This is the first reported case in the animal kingdom of males reproducing exclusively by cloning, although male honeybees do it occasionally.

"But it is too early to assume male and female gene pools are entirely separate, cautions Andrew Bourke from the Institute of Zoology in London. Males may occasionally reproduce by mating with a queen to top up the gene pool. Fournier's study analysed DNA from 199 queens, 41 males and 264 workers collected in New Caledonia in the south Pacific, and French Guiana. Only a much larger study could rule out gene pool mixing, he says." [New Scientist (http://www.newscientist.com/article.ns?id=mg18625065.600), 2506, 02/07/05.]

And, such benighted creatures are not confined to the non-vertebrate world, for evolution has thrown up the mangrove Killifish:

"Something fishy is happening in the mangrove forests of the western Atlantic. A fish is living in the trees.

"The mangrove killifish (Kryptolebias marmoratus) is a tiny fish that lives in ephemeral pools of water around the roots of mangroves. When these dry up the 100-milligram fish can survive for months in moist spots on land. Being stranded high and dry makes it hard to find a mate, but fortunately the killifish doesn't need a partner to reproduce. It is the only known hermaphrodite vertebrate that is self-fertilising.

"Now biologists wading through muddy mangrove swamps in Belize and Florida have discovered another exceptional adaptation. Near dried-up pools, they found hundreds of killifish lined up end to end, like peas in a pod, inside the tracks carved out by insects in rotting logs. "They really don't meet standard behavioural criteria for fish," says Scott Taylor of the Brevard County Environmentally Endangered Lands Program in Florida, who reports the findings in an upcoming issue of The American Naturalist (http://www.journals.uchicago.edu/AN/)....

"The rotting logs may help explain how killifish occupy such a large range, stretching from southern Brazil to central Florida. Self-fertilisation makes it easy for individuals to colonise new places, and dead logs are good rafts for getting around, says John Avise, an evolutionary biologist at the University of California at Irvine. 'They might be washed ashore in a rotting log and start a new population.'" [New Scientist (http://www.newscientist.com/channel/life/mg19626264.400-the-swamp-fish-that-loves-to-live-in-trees.html;jsessionid=DONLPOLCIEJE), 196, 2626, 20/10/07, p.20. Quotation marks altered to conform to the conventions adopted here.]

Even worse news, for it now seems that scientists can further 'negate' this 'Law' as it applies to an already NON-confused semi-hermaphrodite worm:

"The sexual preferences of microscopic worms have been manipulated in the laboratory so that they are attracted to the same sex, offering new evidence that sexuality may be hard-wired in the brain.

"By activating a single gene in the brains of hermaphrodite nematode worms, scientists have induced them to attempt to mate with other hermaphrodites, instead of being attracted exclusively to males....

"While nematode worms are extremely simple organisms, and details of their behaviour are difficult to apply to people with any accuracy, the researchers said that the existence of a biological pathway to same-sex attraction offered a possible insight into human sexuality.


"Erik Jorgensen, Professor of Biology at the University of Utah, who led the study, said: 'Our conclusions are narrow in that they are about worms and how attraction behaviours are derived from the same brain circuit.'...

"'We cannot say what this means for human sexual orientation, but it raises the possibility that sexual preference is wired in the brain. Humans are subject to evolutionary forces just like worms. It seems possible that if sexual orientation is genetically wired in worms, it would be in people too. Humans have free will, so the picture is more complicated in people.'

"Nematode worms, of the species Caenorhabditis elegans, are one millimetre long and live in soil, where they feed on bacteria. The overwhelming majority -- more than 99.9 per cent -- are hermaphrodites, which produce both sperm and eggs and generally fertilise themselves before laying eggs.

"About 0.05 per cent of nematodes are male, however, and these worms must seek out hermaphrodites to reproduce. Hermaphrodites will mate with an available male rather than fertilise themselves, and though they produce sperm they will not impregnate other hermaphrodites as they lack the required copulatory structure.

"There are no true females and hermaphrodites were treated as female for the purposes of the study. C. elegans shares many of its genes with human beings and other animals, and is a standard organism used for early laboratory studies of genetics.

"'A hermaphrodite makes both eggs and sperm,' Professor Jorgensen said. 'She doesn't need to mate [with a male] to have progeny. Most of the time, the hermaphrodites do not mate. But if they mate, instead of having 200 progeny, they can have 1,200 progeny.'
"As the worms have no eyes -- hermaphrodites have only 959 cells and males 1,031 cells -- they detect one another's sex using scent cues.

"In the study, published in the journal Current Biology, the scientists activated a gene called fem-3 in hermaphrodites. This gene makes the nematode body develop as male, with neurons that appear only in male brains and copulatory structures such as tails.

"In the experiment, fem-3 was activated only in the brain, so the worms developed male nerve cells but not other male body characteristics. Despite this, they behaved like males, attempting to seek out and fertilise other hermaphrodites.

"'They look like girls, but act and think like boys,' said Jamie White, who conducted the key experiments. 'The [same-sex attraction] behaviour is part of the nervous system.'

"Professor Jorgensen said: 'The conclusion is that sexual attraction is wired into brain circuits common to both sexes of worms, and is not caused solely by extra nerve cells added to the male or female brain. The reason males and females behave differently is that the same nerve cells have been rewired to alter sexual preference.'

"In a second phase of the study, the scientists manipulated different kinds of nerve cell in the male brain to determine which were responsible for switching on male attraction to hermaphrodites. They found that, although switching off one of the eight sensory neurons impaired attraction in adults, young males developed normally if just one such nerve cell was intact.

"This finding suggests that there is considerable redundancy built into the sexual development of males. Dr White said: 'It must be that the behaviour is very important.'" [The Times (http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/uk/science/article2741036.ece), 26/10/07. Quotation marks altered to conform to the conventions adopted here.]

How many more counter-examples do we need before this 'Law' turns into its own opposite: a NON-law?

More here:

http://homepage.ntlworld.com/rosa.l/page%2007.htm (http://homepage.ntlworld.com/rosa.l/page%2007.htm)

[Zurdito]

Logically, I don't see how "negation of the negation" can mean OTHER than an exact reversion to what was initially negated. Although I applaud the non-dialectical portions of this CPGB-PCC analysis (http://www.cpgb.org.uk/worker/178/genesis_3.html) over Ted Grant's work on Russia, I'm completely lost over the "negation of the negation" crap. After all, Russia today is NOT the backward czarist Russia.

This is not what negation of the negation means.

The bourgeoisie negated the feudal aristocracy: it was the negation of it. In the processes of negating it, it created its own negation, the proletariat. Therefore the negator (or negation) set in motion its own negation.

[Rosa Lichtenstein]

Z:


The bourgeoisie negated the feudal aristocracy: it was the negation of it. In the processes of negating it, it created its own negation, the proletariat. Therefore the negator (or negation) set in motion its own negation.

But, according to the dialectical prophets -- quotations here:

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

-- things can only change if they are in dialectical tension ('internal/external contradiction') with their opposites, which they then turn into.

In that case, the bourgeoisie turned into the feudal aristocracy, and vice versa.

Just one more dialectical screw-up...

[Zurdito]

Z:



But, according to the dialectical prophets -- quotations here:

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

-- things can only change if they are in dialectical tension ('internal/external contradiction') with their opposites, which they then turn into.

In that case, the bourgeoisie turned into the feudal aristocracy, and vice versa.

Just one more dialectical screw-up...

The bourgeoisie, through its tension with the ruling class, then became the ruling class itself.

The working class will do the same.

[Rosa Lichtenstein]

Z:


The bourgeoisie, through its tension with the ruling class, then became the ruling class itself.

The working class will do the same.

But, the ruling class in this case is the feudal aristocracy.

So, once more the bourgeois must have become the feudal aristocracy, and vice versa.

And the proletariat must become capitalists, and vice versa.

[Zurdito]

Z:



But, the ruling class in this case is the feudal aristocracy.

So, once more the bourgeois must have become the feudal aristocracy, and vice versa.

And the proletariat must become capitalists, and vice versa.

This is wrong because within a mode of production, the classes in tension with each other can't simply be classified as "opposites" by taking each one of their characteristics and osmehow assuming it to be "opposite" to that of the class which they negate. That is vulgar Marxism.

Rather, these distinct classes are "opposite" in the sense that one is the revolutionary class, and the other is the ruling class.

In Marx's dialectic, the revolutionary class becomes the ruling class. The extent to which feudal and bourgeoisie, or bourgeoisie and proletariat, are oppsoites, is the extent to which one is the ruling class, and the other is the revolutionary class. Therefore, to the extent which they are opposites, one takes over the role of that which it negated.

[Rosa Lichtenstein]

Z:
 

This is wrong because within a mode of production, the classes in tension with each other can't simply be classified as "opposites" by taking each one of their characteristics and somehow assuming it to be "opposite" to that of the class which they negate. That is vulgar Marxism.

 
So you say, but Lenin disagrees:
 

"[Among the elements of dialectics are the following:] [I]nternally contradictory tendencies…in [a thing]…as the sum and unity of opposites…. [This involves] not only the unity of opposites, but the transitions of every determination, quality, feature, side, property into every other [into its opposite?]….
 
"In brief, dialectics can be defined as the doctrine of the unity of opposites. This embodies the essence of dialectics….
 
"The splitting of the whole and the cognition of its contradictory parts…is the essence (one of the 'essentials', one of the principal, if not the principal, characteristic features) of dialectics…. 

"The identity of opposites…is the recognition…of the contradictory, mutually exclusive, opposite tendencies in all phenomena and processes of nature…. The condition for the knowledge of all processes of the world in their 'self-movement', in their spontaneous development, in their real life, is the knowledge of them as a unity of opposites. Development is the 'struggle' of opposites…. [This] alone furnishes the key to the self-movement of everything existing…. 
 
"The unity…of opposites is conditional, temporary, transitory, relative. The struggle of mutually exclusive opposites is absolute, just as development and motion are absolute…." [Lenin (1961), pp.221-22, 357-58.]

Notice, according to Lenin --, the 'vulgar Marxist' that he is --, everything turns into everything else: "the transitions of every determination, quality, feature, side, property into every other [into its opposite?]". So the feudal aristocracy must turn into the bourgeoisie, and vice versa, as well as into, for example, tables and chairs, TV sets, the Moon, you, me, George W Bush..., and vice versa.

So, I was perhaps a little too conservative in limiting the changes in my last post.

Now, even if you reject what Lenin said, you are not out of the non-dialectical wood, for you argued in your last post but one:


The bourgeoisie, through its tension with the ruling class, then became the ruling class itself.

So, the ruling class in those days was the feudal aristocracy; in that case, as I noted before, the bourgeoisie must turn into the feudal aristocracy, and vice versa.


Rather, these distinct classes are "opposite" in the sense that one is the revolutionary class, and the other is the ruling class.

Indeed, and these classes are: the bourgeoisie and the feudal aristocracy. So, once more they must turn into one another, and then back again.


In Marx's dialectic, the revolutionary class becomes the ruling class. The extent to which feudal and bourgeoisie, or bourgeoisie and proletariat, are opposites, is the extent to which one is the ruling class, and the other is the revolutionary class. Therefore, to the extent which they are opposites, one takes over the role of that which it negated.

Once more, the proletariat must therefore turn into the bourgeoisie, and the latter must turn into the proletariat.

What a wonderful theory this is...

[Zurdito]

So you say, but Lenin disagrees:

I don't see the relevance. The only bit that might suggest Lenin contradicting me would be the part in brackets - but, was that you who wrote it?

Regarding the rest of it,I concede you could probably find some badly worded or even incorrect sentences by Lenin in dialectics. what does that prove?




So, the ruling class in those days was the feudal aristocracy; in that case, as I noted before, the bourgeoisie must turn into the feudal aristocracy, and vice versa.


Wrong. The revolutionary class turns into the ruling class. Repeating your msitake doesn't make it true, it just makes you wrong twice instead of once.


Indeed, and these classes are: the bourgeoisie and the feudal aristocracy. So, once more they must turn into one another, and then back again.

In terms of class struggle, ruling class and revolutionary class are opposites. the revolutionary class becomes trhe ruling classs. To this extent, the revolutionary class becomes its opposite.

The extent to which the bourgeosiie did not become the feudal aristocracy is the extent to which it was merely different, and not opposite. You seem to suggest that every difference between the two classes implied an "opposite". I repeat: that's vulgar. They were opposite ins peficic ways, and in these ways, the borugeoisie did indeed become the things it had once fought against.





Once more, the proletariat must therefore turn into the bourgeoisie, and the latter must turn into the proletariat.


Wrong again.

[Rosa Lichtenstein]

Z:


The only bit that might suggest Lenin contradicting me would be the part in brackets - but, was that you who wrote it?

No, it is in the original. Lenin says everything turns into everything else -- whacko or what?

But, if you do not like Lenin, perhaps you will like Engels and Plekhanov:


"The law of the interpenetration of opposites.... [M]utual penetration of polar opposites and transformation into each other when carried to extremes...." [Engels (1954), pp.17, 62.]

"Dialectics, so-called objective dialectics, prevails throughout nature, and so-called subjective dialectics, dialectical thought, is only the reflection of the motion through opposites which asserts itself everywhere in nature, and which by the continual conflict of the opposites and. their final passage into one another, or into higher forms, determines the life of nature. Attraction and repulsion. Polarity begins with magnetism, it is exhibited in one and the same body; in the case of electricity it distributes itself over two or more bodies which become oppositely charged. All chemical processes reduce themselves -- to processes of chemical attraction and repulsion. Finally, in organic life the formation of the cell nucleus is likewise to be regarded as a polarisation of the living protein material, and from the simple cell -- onwards the theory of evolution demonstrates how each advance up to the most complicated plant on the one side, and up to man on the other, is effected by the continual conflict between heredity and adaptation. In this connection it becomes evident how little applicable to such forms of evolution are categories like 'positive' and 'negative.' One can conceive of heredity as the positive, conservative side, adaptation as the negative side that continually destroys what has been inherited, but one can just as well take adaptation as the creative, active, positive activity, and heredity as the resisting, passive, negative activity." [Ibid., p.211.]

"For a stage in the outlook on nature where all differences become merged in intermediate steps, and all opposites pass into one another through intermediate links, the old metaphysical method of thought no longer suffices. Dialectics, which likewise knows no hard and fast lines, no unconditional, universally valid 'either-or' and which bridges the fixed metaphysical differences, and besides 'either-or' recognises also in the right place 'both this-and that' and reconciles the opposites, is the sole method of thought appropriate in the highest degree to this stage. Of course, for everyday use, for the small change of science, the metaphysical categories retain their validity." [Ibid., p.212-13.]

"Further, we find upon closer investigation that the two poles of an antithesis positive and negative, e.g., are as inseparable as they are opposed and that despite all their opposition, they mutually interpenetrate. And we find, in like manner, that cause and effect are conceptions which only hold good in their application to individual cases; but as soon as we consider the individual cases in their general connection with the universe as a whole, they run into each other, and they become confounded when we contemplate that universal action and reaction in which causes and effects are eternally changing places, so that what is effect here and now will be cause there and then, and vice versa." [Engels (1976), p.27.]

"Already in Rousseau, therefore, we find not only a line of thought which corresponds exactly to the one developed in Marx's Capital, but also, in details, a whole series of the same dialectical turns of speech as Marx used: processes which in their nature are antagonistic, contain a contradiction; transformation of one extreme into its opposite; and finally, as the kernel of the whole thing, the negation of the negation. [Ibid., p.179.]

"And so every phenomenon, by the action of those same forces which condition its existence, sooner or later, but inevitably, is transformed into its own opposite…." [Plekhanov (1956), p.77.]

Engels (1954) is 'Dialectics of Nature'; Engels (1976) is 'Anti-Duhring'; Plekhanov (1956) is 'The Development of the Monist View of History'.

Or perhaps Novack:


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

Novack (1975) is 'An Introduction To The Logic Of Marxism'.

Or maybe Woods and Grant:


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

"In dialectics, sooner or later, things change into their opposite. In the words of the Bible, 'the first shall be last and the last shall be first.' We have seen this many times, not least in the history of great revolutions. Formerly backward and inert layers can catch up with a bang. Consciousness develops in sudden leaps. This can be seen in any strike. And in any strike we can see the elements of a revolution in an undeveloped, embryonic form. In such situations, the presence of a conscious and audacious minority can play a role quite similar to that of a catalyst in a chemical reaction. In certain instances, even a single individual can play an absolutely decisive role....

"This universal phenomenon of the unity of opposites is, in reality the motor-force of all motion and development in nature…. Movement which itself involves a contradiction, is only possible as a result of the conflicting tendencies and inner tensions which lie at the heart of all forms of matter....

"Contradictions are found at all levels of nature, and woe betide the logic that denies it. Not only can an electron be in two or more places at the same time, but it can move simultaneously in different directions. We are sadly left with no alternative but to agree with Hegel: they are and are not. Things change into their opposite. Negatively-charged electrons become transformed into positively-charged positrons. An electron that unites with a proton is not destroyed, as one might expect, but produces a new particle, a neutron, with a neutral charge.

"This is an extension of the law of the unity and interpenetration of opposites. It is a law which permeates the whole of nature, from the smallest phenomena to the largest...." [Woods and Grant (1995), pp.43-47, 63-71. Bold added.]

This is from 'Reason in Revolt', first edition.

Or Rob Sewell:


"'The contradiction, however, is the source of all movement and life; only in so far as it contains a contradiction can anything have movement, power, and effect.' (Hegel). 'In brief', states Lenin, 'dialectics can be defined as the doctrine of the unity of opposites. This embodies the essence of dialectics…'

"The world in which we live is a unity of contradictions or a unity of opposites: cold-heat, light-darkness, Capital-Labour, birth-death, riches-poverty, positive-negative, boom-slump, thinking-being, finite-infinite, repulsion-attraction, left-right, above- below, evolution-revolution, chance-necessity, sale-purchase, and so on.

"The fact that two poles of a contradictory antithesis can manage to coexist as a whole is regarded in popular wisdom as a paradox. The paradox is a recognition that two contradictory, or opposite, considerations may both be true. This is a reflection in thought of a unity of opposites in the material world.

"Motion, space and time are nothing else but the mode of existence of matter. Motion, as we have explained is a contradiction, -- being in one place and another at the same time. It is a unity of opposites. 'Movement means to be in this place and not to be in it; this is the continuity of space and time -- and it is this which first makes motion possible.' (Hegel)

"To understand something, its essence, it is necessary to seek out these internal contradictions. Under certain circumstances, the universal is the individual, and the individual is the universal. That things turn into their opposites, -- cause can become effect and effect can become cause -- is because they are merely links in the never-ending chain in the development of matter.

"Lenin explains this self-movement in a note when he says, 'Dialectics is the teaching which shows how opposites can be and how they become identical -- under what conditions they are identical, becoming transformed into one another -- why the human mind should grasp these opposites not as dead, rigid, but living, conditional, mobile, becoming transformed into one another.'" [Rob Sewell, from the IMT website. Bold added.]

So, all these 'vulgar Marxists' disagree with you, and agree with me.


Regarding the rest of it,I concede you could probably find some badly worded or even incorrect sentences by Lenin in dialectics. what does that prove?

But, all of dialectics is badly-worded, as the above show.


The revolutionary class turns into the ruling class

Ok: in late feudal society the revolutionary class was, according to you, the bourgeoisie, and the ruling class was the feudal aristocracy. These were the classes in actual struggle.

So, according to the dialectical prophets above, they should turn into one another.

In that case, I was right: the bourgeoisie should turn into the feudal aristocracy, and the feudal aristocracy should turn into the bourgeoisie.

If you deny this, then you will need to say who or what exactly these two classes were struggling against.


The extent to which the bourgeosiie did not become the feudal aristocracy is the extent to which it was merely different, and not opposite. You seem to suggest that every difference between the two classes implied an "opposite". I repeat: that's vulgar. They were opposite ins peficic ways, and in these ways, the borugeoisie did indeed become the things it had once fought against.

Well, 'the ruling class' is an abstraction. It cannot struggle, only its members can, and here the members were real, live feudal aristocrats.

Are you saying that the class the bourgeoisie were struggling against -- very real, material aristocrats -- were not their opposites?

But, according to the dialectical prophets, opposites are locked in struggle.

So, as soon as we can identify the actual classes on the ground in struggle, but refuse to impose an abstraction on things, we should be able to identify these opposites.

What do we find?

Oh dear! Bourgeois merchants and early entrepreneurs in actual struggle with real live material feudal aristocrats.

Conclusion: the latter were indeed the opposites of the former.

So, they should turn into one another.

All hale the loopy dialectic...

[And the forces of production should turn into the relations of production -- oops!]

[Dimentio]

Not that I am a fan of dialectics, but I think the problem here is a minor semantic point. They will not turn into each-other, as productive relations will transform themselves all the time, creating new class systems.

[Rosa Lichtenstein]

But that leaves dialecticians with no theory of change -- just a mere description of it.

[Zurdito]

But that leaves dialecticians with no theory of change -- just a mere description of it.

yes the theory is that in the process of negating its opposite, something takes on the role once played by that which it negated. therefore the revolutionary class becomes the ruling class.

[Rosa Lichtenstein]

Z:


yes the theory is that in the process of negating its opposite, something takes on the role once played by that which it negated. therefore the revolutionary class becomes the ruling class.

We have already seen that this implies that workers become capitalists, the early bourgeoisie become the feudal aristocracy, and the forces of production become the relations of production.

What a brilliant theory...

[Zurdito]

Z:



We have already seen that this implies that workers become capitalists, the early bourgeoisie become the feudal aristocracy, and the forces of production become the relations of production.

What a brilliant theory...

it doesn't imply that, as I said, it implies that the revolutionary class becomes the ruling class. this is correct. the bourgeosiie went from revolutionary class to ruling class. it turned itno its opposite.

did the bourgeosie therefore become the feudal aristocracy? no. did this need to happen in order for it to convert into its opposite? no. explain to me in what way the bourgeoisie was the opposite of the feudal aristocracy. because the marxist interpretation is that it was the opposite in the sense that the were inc otnradiction with each other due to one being the declinign class and one being the rising class. the correct interpretation is NOT that they were just "opposites" in some abstract sense that can't be explained.

[Rosa Lichtenstein]

Z:


it doesn't imply that, as I said, it implies that the revolutionary class becomes the ruling class. this is correct. the bourgeosiie went from revolutionary class to ruling class. it turned itno its opposite.

Let me walk you through it again.

The term ruling class is abstract, whereas real live material feudal aristocrats were not.

The latter, and the real live early bourgeoisie were locked in struggle. Now, Lenin and the other dialectical prophets tell us that things struggle with their opposites.

So, these feudal aristocrats were the opposite of the early members of the bourgeisie.

But, the dialectical prophets also tell us that opposites turn into one another.

Conclusion: the bourgeoisie should have turned into the feudal aristocracy, and vice versa.

And the forces of production should turn into the relations of production, and vice versa.

Dead cats should turn into live cats; your debts should turn into your assets...

What a whacky dialectical world this is...


did the bourgeosie therefore become the feudal aristocracy?

As you say, no.

But according to the dialectical Holy Books, they should have.

In which case, dialectics cannot explain change.


explain to me in what way the bourgeoisie was the opposite of the feudal aristocracy. because the marxist interpretation is that it was the opposite in the sense that the were inc otnradiction with each other

The explanation of opposites is given above.


due to one being the declinign class and one being the rising class. the correct interpretation is NOT that they were just "opposites" in some abstract sense that can't be explained.

In that case, the 'declining class' should have become the 'rising class', and the 'rising class' should have become the 'declining class'.

Whichever way you try to slice it, this whacko theory ends up in the mire.

[misanthroshit]

In that case, the 'declining class' should have become the 'rising class', and the 'rising class' should have become the 'declining class'.

i'm pretty lost on all of this but didn't sections of the declining class (aristocrats) become members of the rising class (bourgeoisie)? and hasn't the rising class (bourgeoisie) now become the declining class?

jesus this stuff is confusing.

[misanthroshit]

also one thing i never understood with all of this is how the proletariat becomes the final class. shouldn't another section of society rise after the revolution to oppose the proletariat? wouldn't this have to happen for the dialectic or whatever to continue?

[Rosa Lichtenstein]

misanthro:

No worries. My comments were aimed at showing how useless a concept this is; so if you do not understand it, you are in excellent company, for no one I have met/debated with over the last 25 years can explain it, and no book/article I have read (and I have read literally hundreds on this topic) can explain it either -- that is, not without descending into incoherence, as we see above.

[Rosa Lichtenstein]

Also:


also one thing i never understood with all of this is how the proletariat becomes the final class. shouldn't another section of society rise after the revolution to oppose the proletariat? wouldn't this have to happen for the dialectic or whatever to continue?

This is, I suspect, why Stalin and Mao dropped this idea, for it suggested that their regimes would one day fall.

[misanthroshit]

wait, so am i wrong about the rising/declining class thing in my first post?

[Rosa Lichtenstein]

Whether you are right or not, it has nothing to do with the 'negation of the negation'.

The point is that, according to the dialecticians I have quoted, it is opposites that are in struggle, and they change into one another.

So, the rising bourgeoisie should have turned into the declining aristocracy, and vice versa, and the declining bourgoisie should (soon?) turn into the rising proletariat, and vice versa.

No matter how you try to slice it, this theory just does not work.

[Hit The North]

i'm pretty lost on all of this but didn't sections of the declining class (aristocrats) become members of the rising class (bourgeoisie)? and hasn't the rising class (bourgeoisie) now become the declining class?

jesus this stuff is confusing.

Yes. Elements of the landed classes transformed themselves into bourgeoisie. This is not so remarkable given that the industrial revolution began in the countryside, in agriculture.


also one thing i never understood with all of this is how the proletariat becomes the final class. shouldn't another section of society rise after the revolution to oppose the proletariat? wouldn't this have to happen for the dialectic or whatever to continue?

Because, for the first time in history, the revolutionary class - the working class - will encompass the vast majority of the population it is argued that it will move towards the abolition of all class distinction and, hence, classless society.

The dialectic of class conflict (if it's correct to call it that) will thus reach an end.

[Rosa Lichtenstein]

CZ:


The dialectic of class conflict (if it's correct to call it that) will thus reach an end.

According to the dialectical classics, things struggle with their opposites and they also turn into them.

So, if what you say is true, then dialectics cannot account for it.

[Niccolò Rossi]

So, the rising bourgeoisie should have turned into the declining aristocracy, and vice versa, and the declining bourgoisie should (soon?) turn into the rising proletariat, and vice versa.

Rosa, now I am not an expert on the Dialectic and have in no way read nearly as much as you (or much in any definition of the word) on the subject, but I can say you do fail to understand what Zurdito is trying to say.

The rising bourgeoisie DID become the declining aristocracy in relation to state power. It was the bourgeoisie that rested from the aristocracy state power, dispossessing the aristocracy and placing them in relation to the state power, the exact position that the bourgeoisie had been before.

Further, it was the bourgeois revolution which in negating the aristocracy forged it's own negation in the working class. Thus the bourgeoisie did in this sense take the place of the declining aristocracy.

Now Rosa, I can guess that you are going to turn around and denounce me as a mystic without even taking note of what I have said. You did this to Zurdito a number of times above. I'm not claiming dialectics as a working philosophy, rather I want to prove this point that you so eagerly wish to ignore. At least in this case we can observe a struggle between opposites which manage to also turn into one another, whether this can be utilized elsewhere is another question (my own opinion is that it is really a matter of semantics, but isn't it all?).

[Rosa Lichtenstein]

Z91:


Rosa, now I am not an expert on the Dialectic and have in no way read nearly as much as you (or much in any definition of the word) on the subject, but I can say you do fail to understand what Zurdito is trying to say.

Ah but I understand only too well.

Comrades like Zurdito (and I have debated with scores like him over the last 25 years) when forced to read what Engels, Hegel, Lenin, and the rest have to say about change, either refuse to believe their eyes (so manifestly ridiculous is it), or they try to argue that 'opposites' are not contradictories (contradicting, somewhat ironically, Hegel, Engels and Lenin), or that things do not change because of or into their opposites (contradicting Engels, Lenin and Plekhanov, among others), or that such opposites can be defined in an abstract way to get around the problem (Zurdito tried all three avoiding tactics), or that it is just 'semantics' (your ploy -- I deal with that at the end).

But, abstractions cannot struggle. Real live human beings in opposing classes struggle.

These, Lenin (and others) call dialectical opposites. So, these real live individuals must change into their opposites (for there is no other mechanism in dialectics to account for change).

Hence, if the real live individuals who comprised the rising bourgeoisie struggled with the real live individuals in the feudal aristocracy, they must have change into them, and vice versa.

Now, Zurdito, tried to get around this by arguing that the former ruling class (the feudal aristocracy) were replaced as a ruling class by the bourgeois (you tried something similar -- see below).

I do not deny that (for it is part of Historical Materialism); what I deny is that dialectics can explain it.

The abstraction, 'the ruing class', applies to many disparate groups in successive modes of production, and as such is incapable of struggling with anything. As Marx noted, it is real material human beings who engage in class warfare

However, if the rising bourgeoisie changed into the new capitalist class, then according to the dialectical prophets they should, at some point, have been in struggle with them.

That is, the rising capitalist class should have been struggling with itself (the ruling capitalist class!) before the latter existed! If it doesn't do this, if there is no struggle between them, then the former cannot change, for the dialectical prophets tell us that things change only because they struggle with what they become, their opposites (Lenin even calls this an 'absolute'). So, if they struggle with what they become, the rising capitalist class must be in struggle with the ruling capitalist class before it exists.

That is how ridiculous this theory is!

If we deny that, then dialectics has no way of accounting for change.

I can live with that.


The rising bourgeoisie DID become the declining aristocracy in relation to state power. It was the bourgeoisie that rested from the aristocracy state power, dispossessing the aristocracy and placing them in relation to the state power, the exact position that the bourgeoisie had been before.

You too seem to want to talk in abstractions, but abstractions cannot struggle, and so dialectics cannot explain how or why they change.

But, if what you are saying is true, the rising bourgeoisie became a declining power!

And, since all things change into their opposites, the declining aristocracy must have become a rising power!

So, even your abstract approach does not work.

As far as the 'negation of the negation' is concerned (in the future proletariat), then the proletariat must become the capitalist class, and the capitalist class must become the proletariat, for they are locked in struggle, and are opposites, and change into one another, according to the dialectical Holy Books.

Now, you might want to recast this in terms of abstractions again, but as we have seen not even that will work.

Hence, according to such abstractions, the present working class will become the ruling class, and the present ruling class will become the working class -- in that case, the future working class will comprise a tiny minority of the population.

How will they feed and clothe the world?

You might want to say that the working class are the ruling class, and there are no other classes (in this future classless society). In that case, the present ruling class will not change into its opposite (as we are told all things must), but will remain part of the new ruling class!

Or, they will disappear -- but even if they are liquidated, they will not have changed into their opposites. Another dead end!

Now I do not dispute that the old capitalist class will have to become workers (in bald terms), but dialectics cannot explain why this class has not changed into its opposite, but has remained the ruling class (if the working class is the ruling class). If the old ruling class are denied such power, then not all the working class will be the ruling class, and hence, the latter class will not have changed into its opposite.

Yet another dead end.

Remember, that the above concerns abstractions, which cannot change, and cannot be in struggle, anyway.

I have worked out the formal details behind this criticism here (which shows why, no matter how you try to re-package it, this 'theory' cannot be made to work):

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


Now Rosa, I can guess that you are going to turn around and denounce me as a mystic without even taking note of what I have said. You did this to Zurdito a number of times above. I'm not claiming dialectics as a working philosophy, rather I want to prove this point that you so eagerly wish to ignore. At least in this case we can observe a struggle between opposites which manage to also turn into one another, whether this can be utilized elsewhere is another question (my own opinion is that it is really a matter of semantics, but isn't it all?).

No, I only tend to call comrades 'mystics' if they are unreasonable, and that you are not.

As to your point about 'semantics', I wonder if you take the same view of Marx's careful distinctions in Das Kapital between the 'relative form of value' and the 'equivalent form of value' (among the many he made)?

The thing is, as Marx clearly saw, unless we are careful over the things we say/write, we cannot claim to have set-up a scientific theory.

Can you imagine a genuine scientist saying that the difference between, say, rest mass and inertial mass is just one of 'semantics'?

But, even if you were right, it simply means that dialectics has no clear theory of change.

Why do these classes change? You have no explanation.

The dialectical prophets I quoted at least tried to set-up a theory with their use of certain words (ones which they copied from Hegel).

Ignore their words, and you have no theory.

I can live with that, too.

[Hit The North]

These, Lenin (and others) call dialectical opposites. So, these real live individuals must change into their opposites (for there is no other mechanism in dialectics to account for change).I cannot believe that an individual of Lenin's intelligence, meant to suggest that change was merely a game of identity ping-pong between two ever-present entities as you seem to imply. If he did mean it, he was wrong because even at the abstract level of Hegelian dialectics, the negation of the negation incorporates a process of sublation. The contradiction is both partly preserved but also overcome and produces a new set of opposing relations which also exist in contradiction to each other.


However, if the rising bourgeoisie changed into the new capitalist class, then according to the dialectical prophets they should, at some point, have been in struggle with them.

That is, the rising capitalist class should have been struggling with itself (the ruling capitalist class!) before the latter existed!
No. It is through the victorious struggle with the feudal ruling class that the rising bourgeoisie become the new capitalist class. But, crucially, before the capitalist class can become itself, it needs to create it's antithesis, the working class (one cannot be a capitalist if there are no proletarians to exploit. Incidentally, this is what is meant by an internal relation - when the existence of one presupposed the existence of the other).

This is how Engels, in Anti-Duhring, illustrates Marx's understanding of the negation of the negation in Kapital:
But what role does the negation of the negation play in Marx? On page 791 and the following pages he sets out the final conclusions which he draws from the preceding fifty pages of economic and historical investigation into the so-called primitive accumulation of capital. [62] (http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1877/anti-duhring/footnotes.htm#n62) Before the capitalist era, petty industry existed, at least in England, on the basis o/ the private property of the labourer in his means of production. The so-called primitive accumulation of capital consisted there in the expropriation of these immediate producers, that is, in the dissolution of private property based on the labour of its owner. This became possible because the petty industry referred to above is compatible only with narrow and primitive bounds of production and society and at a certain stage brings forth the material agencies for its own annihilation. This annihilation, the transformation of the individual and scattered means of production into socially concentrated ones, forms the prehistory of capital. As soon as the labourers are turned into proletarians, their conditions of labour into capital, as soon as the capitalist mode of production stands on its own feet, the further socialisation of labour and further transformation of the land and other means of production, and therefore the further expropriation of private proprietors, takes a new form. Ref:http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1877/anti-duhring/ch11.htmAnd Marx himself, discussing the new contradictions set up by bourgeois society:

The capitalist mode of production and appropriation, hence the capitalist private property, is the first negation of individual private property founded on the labour of the proprietor. Capitalist production begets, with the inexorability of a process of nature, its own negation. It is the negation of the negation. This re-establishes individual property, but on the basis of the acquisitions of the capitalist era, i.e., on co-operation of free workers and their possession in common of the land and of the means of production produced by labour. The transformation of scattered private property, arising from individual labour, into capitalist private property is, naturally, a process, incomparably more protracted, arduous, and difficult, than the transformation of capitalistic private property, already practically resting on socialised production, into socialised property." [K. Marx, Das Kapital, p. 793.]

[Hit The North]

The thing is, as Marx clearly saw, unless we are careful over the things we say/write, we cannot claim to have set-up a scientific theory.

If that is true then you must concede that Marx was not employing the phrase negation of the negation randomly or emptily. But carefully and with purpose.

[Rosa Lichtenstein]

CZ:


I cannot believe that an individual of Lenin's intelligence, meant to suggest that change was merely a game of identity ping-pong between two ever-present entities as you seem to imply. If he did mean it, he was wrong because even at the abstract level of Hegelian dialectics, the negation of the negation incorporates a process of sublation. The contradiction is both partly preserved but also overcome and produces a new set of opposing relations which also exist in contradiction to each other.

Well it was based on some pretty arcane 'logic' in Hegel's 'Logic', which relied on this very thing.

May I suggest you read Lenin's actual words (and those of Engels and Plekhanov) which are subject to no other interpretation:

Here is where it all originated:


"Everything is opposite. Neither in heaven nor in earth, neither in the world of mind nor nature, is there anywhere an abstract 'either-or' as the understanding maintains. Whatever exists is concrete, with difference and opposition in itself. The finitude of things with then lie in the want of correspondence between their immediate being and what they essentially are. Thus, in inorganic nature, the acid is implicitly at the same time the base: in other words its only being consists in its relation to its other. Hence the acid persists quietly in the contrast: it is always in effort to realize what it potentially is. Contradiction is the very moving principle of the world." [Hegel (1975), p.174. Bold added.]

This is from the so-called 'Shorter Logic'; the details are more involved in the actual 'Logic', itself.

Here is Engels:


"The law of the interpenetration of opposites.... [M]utual penetration of polar opposites and transformation into each other when carried to extremes...." [Engels (1954), pp.17, 62.]

"Dialectics, so-called objective dialectics, prevails throughout nature, and so-called subjective dialectics, dialectical thought, is only the reflection of the motion through opposites which asserts itself everywhere in nature, and which by the continual conflict of the opposites and their final passage into one another, or into higher forms, determines the life of nature. Attraction and repulsion. Polarity begins with magnetism, it is exhibited in one and the same body; in the case of electricity it distributes itself over two or more bodies which become oppositely charged. All chemical processes reduce themselves -- to processes of chemical attraction and repulsion. Finally, in organic life the formation of the cell nucleus is likewise to be regarded as a polarisation of the living protein material, and from the simple cell -- onwards the theory of evolution demonstrates how each advance up to the most complicated plant on the one side, and up to man on the other, is effected by the continual conflict between heredity and adaptation. In this connection it becomes evident how little applicable to such forms of evolution are categories like 'positive' and 'negative.' One can conceive of heredity as the positive, conservative side, adaptation as the negative side that continually destroys what has been inherited, but one can just as well take adaptation as the creative, active, positive activity, and heredity as the resisting, passive, negative activity." [Ibid., p.211.]

"For a stage in the outlook on nature where all differences become merged in intermediate steps, and all opposites pass into one another through intermediate links, the old metaphysical method of thought no longer suffices. Dialectics, which likewise knows no hard and fast lines, no unconditional, universally valid 'either-or' and which bridges the fixed metaphysical differences, and besides 'either-or' recognises also in the right place 'both this-and that' and reconciles the opposites, is the sole method of thought appropriate in the highest degree to this stage. Of course, for everyday use, for the small change of science, the metaphysical categories retain their validity." [Ibid., p.212-13.]

"Further, we find upon closer investigation that the two poles of an antithesis positive and negative, e.g., are as inseparable as they are opposed and that despite all their opposition, they mutually interpenetrate. And we find, in like manner, that cause and effect are conceptions which only hold good in their application to individual cases; but as soon as we consider the individual cases in their general connection with the universe as a whole, they run into each other, and they become confounded when we contemplate that universal action and reaction in which causes and effects are eternally changing places, so that what is effect here and now will be cause there and then, and vice versa." [Engels (1976), p.27.]

"Already in Rousseau, therefore, we find not only a line of thought which corresponds exactly to the one developed in Marx's Capital, but also, in details, a whole series of the same dialectical turns of speech as Marx used: processes which in their nature are antagonistic, contain a contradiction; transformation of one extreme into its opposite; and finally, as the kernel of the whole thing, the negation of the negation. [Ibid., p.179. Bold added.]

Engels (1954) is 'Dialectics of Nature', and Engels (1976), is 'Anti-Duhring'.

Here is Plekhanov:


"And so every phenomenon, by the action of those same forces which condition its existence, sooner or later, but inevitably, is transformed into its own opposite…." [Plekhanov (1956), p.77. Bold added.]

This is from 'The Development of the Monist View of History'.

Here is Lenin:


"[Among the elements of dialectics are the following:] [I]nternally contradictory tendencies…in [a thing]…as the sum and unity of opposites…. [This involves] not only the unity of opposites, but the transitions of every determination, quality, feature, side, property into every other [into its opposite?]….

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

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

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

"The unity…of opposites is conditional, temporary, transitory, relative. The struggle of mutually exclusive opposites is absolute, just as development and motion are absolute…." [Lenin (1961), pp.221-22, 357-58.]

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

"'This harmony is precisely absolute Becoming change, -- not becoming other, now this and then another. The essential thing is that each different thing [tone], each particular, is different from another, not abstractly so from any other, but from its other. Each particular only is, insofar as its other is implicitly contained in its Notion...' Quite right and important: the 'other' as its other, development into its opposite." [Ibid., p.260. Lenin is here commenting on Hegel (1995), pp.278-98; this particular quotation coming from p.285. The translation in the edition I have consulted reads differently from the one Lenin used; Hegel is referring to "tones" here, not "things", as the reference to "harmony" indicates.]

"Dialectics is the teaching which shows how Opposites can be and how they happen to be (how they become) identical,—under what conditions they are identical, becoming transformed into one another, -- why the human mind should grasp these opposites not as dead, rigid, but as living, conditional, mobile, becoming transformed into one another." [Ibid., p.109.]

"Development is the 'struggle' of opposites." [Lenin, Collected Works, Volume 13, p.301. Bold added.]

Lenin (1961), is his so-called 'Philosophical Notebooks', i.e., Volume 38 of his Collected Works.

So, development is a struggle of opposites, and opposites turn into one another -- or, alternatively things turn into their opposites.

One wonders, therefore, how anything can be in struggle with its opposite if it does not exist side-by-side with whatever it is struggling with.

This approach is echoed by many other lesser figures; for example, Novack:


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

This is Novack's widely circulated 'Intoduction to the Logic of Marxism' -- I bought my copy at Bookmarks, in London.

Here is Cornforth:


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

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

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

This is from Cornforth's 'Materialism and the Dialectical Method' -- again, I purchased my copy from Bookmarks.

Here is Gollobin (the most detailed book I have ever read on this 'theory'):


"Opposites in a thing are not only mutually exclusive, polar, repelling, each other; they also attract and interpenetrate each other. They begin and cease to exist together.... These dual aspects of opposites -- conflict and unity -- are like scissor blades in cutting, jaws in mastication, and two legs in walking. Where there is only one, the process as such is impossible: 'all polar opposites are in general determined by the mutual action of two opposite poles on one another, the separation and opposition of these poles exists only within their unity and interconnection, and, conversely, their interconnection exists only in their separation and their unity only in their opposition.' in fact, 'where one no sooner tries to hold on to one side alone then it is transformed unnoticed into the other...'" [Gollobin (1986), p.115; quoting Engels. Bold added.]

This is from 'Dialectical Materialism, Its Laws and Categories'.

Many more dialecticians say the same thing, over and over. I posted a long list of such quotations, here:

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

This is why I have said, many times, that when comrades actually read what this theory is committed to they soon see how ridiculous it is. In that case they all try one or more of the followijg excuses:

(1) They deny these authors meant what they said.

(2) They argue that these quotations are not representative.

(3) They claim that the author in question mis-spoke, or made an error.

(4) They argue that my demolition of this core DM-principle is merely "semantic", or that it is a classic example of "pedantry".

I have dealt with (4) already.

As far as (2) is concerned, it would not be difficult to double or even treble the length of this list of quotations (as anyone who has access to as many books and articles on dialectics as I have will attest). From the above, it is quite clear that dialecticians believe (a) that all change is a result of a "struggles" of "opposites", and (b) that objects/processes change into their "opposites", and (c) that they produce these "opposites" when they change.

As far as (1) is concerned, if the above DM-worthies did not mean what they said then latter-day DM-fans (who advance this excuse) will, it seems, have to ignore their own classics! [Less irrational readers will note that many of the above authors quote one another word-for-word, so they at least thought their sources meant what they said.]

More-or-less the same can be said for excuse (3); if the above worthies miss-spoke, or were wrong, then contemporary DM-clones would be well advised to ignore these error-strewn classics!

I will deal with your other points presently.

[Rosa Lichtenstein]

CZ:


It is through the victorious struggle with the feudal ruling class that the rising bourgeoisie become the new capitalist class. But, crucially, before the capitalist class can become itself, it needs to create it's antithesis, the working class (one cannot be a capitalist if there are no proletarians to exploit. Incidentally, this is what is meant by an internal relation - when the existence of one presupposed the existence of the other).

Yes I know the 'theory' only too well; it just does not work.

Once more, according to the dialectical prophets, quoted above, things are locked in struggle with their opposites, and they change into those opposites.

So, the rising bourgeioise, if it became the capitalist class, must have been in struggle with the capitalist class (that is, with itself, or with its future self!).

Otherwise, Lenin and the rest were wrong -- things do not struggle with their opposites, or change into them.

On the other hand, if the rising bourgeoisis were in struggle with the feudal aristocracy, then they should have turned into the feudal aristiocracy -- otherwise, the dialectical worthies were wrong when they told us that things turn into their opposites, and that they struggle with those opposites.

As I noted earlier, the general proof of this can be found here:

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

No matter how you try to slice it, dialectics cannot be made consistent with Historical Materialism (HM), or with history.

Now, like you, I accept HM, but because dialectics cannot account for change, I reject the latter, rather than the former.


If that is true then you must concede that Marx was not employing the phrase negation of the negation randomly or emptily.

Except he specifically told us he was 'coquetting' with this jargon.

But, he did not say that with respect to the other distinctions he drew.

[Unicorn]

I researched this and found out that Mao says quite clearly that he rejects that dialectical law. More proof of his revisionism.



This "cosmic perspective" also grounds Mao's dismissive attitude towards the human costs of economic and political endeavors. If one is to believe Mao's latest biography, [11] he caused the greatest famine in history by exporting food to Russia to buy nuclear and arms industries: 38 million people were starved and slave-driven to death in 1958-61. Mao knew exactly what was happening, saying: "half of China may well have to die." This is instrumental attitude at its most radical: killing as part of a ruthless attempt to realize goal, reducing people to disposable means - and what one should bear in mind is that the Nazi holocaust was NOT the same: the killing of the Jews not part of a rational strategy, but a self-goal, a meticulously planned "irrational" excess (recall the deportation of the last Jews from Greek islands in 1944, just before the German retreat, or the massive use of trains for transporting Jews instead of war materials in 1944). This is why Heidegger is wrong when he reduces holocaust to the industrial production of corpses: it was NOT that, Stalinist Communism was that. [12]

The conceptual consequence of this "bad infinity" that pertains to vulgar evolutionism is Mao's consistent rejection of the "negation of negation" as a universal dialectical law. In explicit polemics against Engels (and, incidentally, following Stalin who, in his "On Dialectical and Historical Materialism," also doesn't mention "negation of negation" among the "four main features of Marxist dialectics"):

Engels talked about the three categories, but as for me I don't believe in two of those categories. (The unity of opposites is the most basic law, the transformation of quality and quantity into one another is the unity of the opposites quality and quantity, and the negation of the negation does not exist at all.) /.../ There is no such thing as the negation of the negation. Affirmation, negation, affirmation, negation in the development of things, every link in the chain of events is both affirmation and negation. Slave-holding society negated primitive society, but with reference to feudal society it constituted, in turn, the affirmation. Feudal society constituted the negation in relation to slave-holding society but it was in turn the affirmation with reference to capitalist society. Capitalist society was the negation in relation to feudal society, but it is, in turn, the affirmation in relation to socialist society.
http://www.lacan.com/zizmaozedong.htm

[Rosa Lichtenstein]

Thanks for that, Unicorn.

But, according to Lenin, since no science is final, every Marxist should be a 'revisionist'!

Marx certainly was...

[Hit The North]

Ro:

I think perhaps part of the problem here is that all the philosophising is at such a level of abstraction that it loses meaning. Thus, there is no way on Earth that Engels, Lenin, Luxemburg, Trotsky, Cliff or any other dialectical Marxist would describe the concrete process of history and class struggle in the way which you claim is consistent with their philosophical speculation. In fact, those five comrades are among the very best interpreters and analysts of the class struggle.

In Anti-Duhring, Engels warns against an analysis which begins and ends at the level of abstract statements such as the negation of the negation. He argues that this abstract formula describes a very general law of development but it cannot disclose an adequate understanding of concrete examples of development in either history or nature. In fact the main thrust of the book is to demonstrate that Marx's analysis in Das Kapital is not, as Duhring argues, derived from Hegelian abstraction, but from a thorough scientific analysis which just so happens to confirm the material dialectic. And there is enough evidence from Marx's own published comments on Kapital that he believed he'd accomplished the same.


Once more, according to the dialectical prophets, quoted above, things are locked in struggle with their opposites, and they change into those opposites.But, as has been pointed out, at a certain level of analysis this is true > in any epoch of class society the subordinate classes are engaged in a struggle with the ruling class. When a subordinate class overthrows the ruling class there is real movement in history. A new social order is established (of a higher kind, if you agree with historical materialism that history in its general movement is a succession of modes of production, each one reflecting mankind's increasing mastery over nature) whereby the former subordinate class installs itself as the ruling class (but of a different kind) and occupies an antagonistic relation to other classes.

Of course, at this level of abstraction, we can see a general patterning of history, but we can't fully understand specific instances of revolution without empirically (and hermeneutically) investigating them.


Except he specifically told us he was 'coquetting' with this jargon.He does write this. He claims he does it in the chapter on value as a homage to Hegel, who, despite his errors and weaknesses, was a great thinker compared to the "mediocre epigones" who were then dismissing him. So I think we can dismiss the idea that this "coquetting" was a means of satirizing Hegel himself and more a genuine nod of solidarity to a significant, former influence.

Moreover, it would be odd if Marx, in his major scientific work, employed these modes of expression in a random or capricious manner. It'd be comparable to Darwin coquetting with passages from Genesis in his Origin Of Species! In Marx's discussion of the primitive accumulation of capital (which Engels quotes from in my post above and which, incidentally, does not belong to the chapter on value which Marx targets as the chapter where the coquetting takes place in the Postface), I think Marx is struck by how the historical process he outlines mirrors, in its general movement, the negation of the negation.

Incidentally, the Postface which you place such emphasis on in order to absolve Marx from complicity in dialectical materialism ends with Marx proclaiming:
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.Now this was written in 1873, a good five years after the original publication of Das Kapital. Are we to believe that he was still coquetting?

[Rosa Lichtenstein]

CZ:


I think perhaps part of the problem here is that all the philosophising is at such a level of abstraction that it loses meaning. Thus, there is no way on Earth that Engels, Lenin, Luxemburg, Trotsky, Cliff or any other dialectical Marxist would describe the concrete process of history and class struggle in the way which you claim is consistent with their philosophical speculation. In fact, those five comrades are among the very best interpreters and analysts of the class struggle.

As the quotations I have listed show, Hegel, Engels, Plekhanov, and Lenin (Mao also) did in fact argue along these lines when they tried to do a little amateur philosophy

I agree with you that this is incompatible with what they believed to be the case in HM, which just shows how useless dialectics is.

That is why I think so much of the concrete analyses developed by the comrades you mention, and reject the philosophical abstactions you refer to. The latter just get in the way.

I wonder why you defend them!


In Anti-Duhring, Engels warns against an analysis which begins and ends at the level of abstract statements such as the negation of the negation. He argues that this abstract formula describes a very general law of development but it cannot disclose an adequate understanding of concrete examples of development in either history or nature. In fact the main thrust of the book is to demonstrate that Marx's analysis in Das Kapital is not, as Duhring argues, derived from Hegelian abstraction, but from a thorough scientific analysis which just so happens to confirm the material dialectic. And there is enough evidence from Marx's own published comments on Kapital that he believed he'd accomplished the same.

Once more, I agree, which underlines, yet again, how useless dialectics is.

We do far better when we ignore it. It neither works in the abstract, nor when we try to apply it to the class struggle, as you have seen.


But, as has been pointed out, at a certain level of analysis this is true > in any epoch of class society the subordinate classes are engaged in a struggle with the ruling class. When a subordinate class overthrows the ruling class there is real movement in history. A new social order is established (of a higher kind, if you agree with historical materialism that history in its general movement is a succession of modes of production, each one reflecting mankind's increasing mastery over nature) whereby the former subordinate class installs itself as the ruling class (but of a different kind) and occupies an antagonistic relation to other classes.

Of course, at this level of abstraction, we can see a general patterning of history, but we can't fully understand specific instances of revolution without empirically (and hermeneutically) investigating them.

Sure, but this just tells me HM does not need dialectics.

Quite the reverse, in fact; it is well off without it.

The more you try to make HM work, the more you have to ignore the input of dialectics.


Now this was written in 1873, a good five years after the original publication of Das Kapital. Are we to believe that he was still coquetting?

Well, did Marx remove that phrase from the Introduction?

So, yes, he was still 'coquetting'.

And we can now see why; the Hegelian input prevents HM from working.

[Hit The North]

Ro:


I wonder why you defend them!I'm curious. Those five would argue that a dialectical understanding of social reality is crucial to their more concrete analyses. They argue for a definite and indispensable connection. You obviously disagree and see no connection between their philosophical musings and their political praxis. Nevertheless, you have devoted a lot of time and energy in exposing this "mystical doctrine" and continue to do so. This is a puzzle. If dialectics is such nonsense and has such little bearing on theory and practice, then why is it so passionately defended or opposed by its adherents and critics?


The more you try to make HM work, the more you have to ignore the input of dialectics.Marx didn't think so. An instant after having confessed to his "coquetting" he writes:
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.
That reads like a generous assessment of Hegel's achievement in the eyes of Marx. A ringing endorsement. Marx obviously believes the dialectics is of value in his analysis of the inner workings of the capitalist mode of production - if only it is stood upright and its rational kernal discovered.

Or in a letter to Kugelman from 1870:
And what this Lange has to say about the Hegelian method and my application of the same is simply childish. First, he understands rien [nothing] about Hegel’s method and, therefore, second, still less about my critical manner of applying it. (bold added) http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1870/letters/70_06_27.htm


So, yes, he was still 'coquetting'. But to what end?

If coquetting with Hegelian modes cannot be interpreted as a slight against Hegel - but against those who mock him - then this just seems to indicate Marx's continuing fidelity to that "mighty thinker".


And we can now see why; the Hegelian input prevents HM from working. I don't quite understand your meaning. Are you suggesting that the reason Marx coquetted with Hegelian modes of expression was because he wanted to demonstrate that the dialectic was a hindrance to historical materialism? Doesn't this put us in the world of eccentric caprice? Couldn't Marx have found a more direct way of stating this? Something like "Everything Hegel wrote was rubbish. Don't even go there! It'll destroy historical materialism." I mean, why deliberately mislead people by claiming that you "critically apply" Hegel's method?

In truth, Rosa, the more evidence which is turned to in terms of Marx's own view on what he was doing, the more insecure your claim that Marx alone is absolved from the sin of dialectical materialism.

[Rosa Lichtenstein]

CZ:


I'm curious. Those five would argue that a dialectical understanding of social reality is crucial to their more concrete analyses. They argue for a definite and indispensable connection. You obviously disagree and see no connection between their philosophical musings and their political praxis. Nevertheless, you have devoted a lot of time and energy in exposing this "mystical doctrine" and continue to do so. This is a puzzle. If dialectics is such nonsense and has such little bearing on theory and practice, then why is it so passionately defended or opposed by its adherents and critics?

Well, that is an entirely separate issue, which I have tried to explain briefly here before. I won't go into it again in this thread since it has little to do with the topic in hand -- you can find the full explanation now here:

http://homepage.ntlworld.com/rosa.l/page%2009_02.htm

It's late and I have to get up early, so I will respond to the other things you say tomorrow.

[Rosa Lichtenstein]

CZ:


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 it turns out that this 'rational kernel' contains no unities of opposites, no negation of the negation, no change of quantity into quality, no 'Totality'.

How do we know this; well as you now know, Marx very helpfully added a summary of that 'rational kernel' 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 at my site.]

So, unlike the other dialectical classicists, Marx's method contains not one atom of Hegel.

And no wonder; we have seen that dialectics (a la Hegel, Engels, Plekhanov and Lenin, etc.) does not work in the abstract or the concrete, and can only be made to work by overlaying it with non-Hegelian concepts drawn from HM.


That reads like a generous assessment of Hegel's achievement in the eyes of Marx. A ringing endorsement. Marx obviously believes the dialectics is of value in his analysis of the inner workings of the capitalist mode of production - if only it is stood upright and its rational kernal discovered

Not so, when you recall Marx endorsed a summary of 'his method' that left Hegel out completely.


And what this Lange has to say about the Hegelian method and my application of the same is simply childish. First, he understands rien [nothing] about Hegel’s method and, therefore, second, still less about my critical manner of applying it. (bold added)

Indeed, his critical method of applying it is to remove everything Hegelian from it, and return it to its source in the materialist method of the Scottish Historical Materialists, from where both Marx and Hegel got these ideas.

That summary confirms it.


But to what end?

If coquetting with Hegelian modes cannot be interpreted as a slight against Hegel - but against those who mock him - then this just seems to indicate Marx's continuing fidelity to that "mighty thinker".

Well, I recognise Plato as a 'mighty thinker', but reject 99% of what he says, and I sometimes play around with his concepts and analogies (such as the Myth of the Cave).

And if Marx really respected Hegel, then why would he 'coquette'?

I screw around with Plato's ideas to show my contempt for that 'mighty' ruling-class hack.

In view of the fact that, according to Marx himself, his 'method' contains no Hegel, I think Marx and I are on the same wavelength.

Except, I do not even 'coquette' with Hegel.

This is because, compared to Plato or Aristotle, Hegel was a dunce.


I don't quite understand your meaning. Are you suggesting that the reason Marx coquetted with Hegelian modes of expression was because he wanted to demonstrate that the dialectic was a hindrance to historical materialism? Doesn't this put us in the world of eccentric caprice? Couldn't Marx have found a more direct way of stating this? Something like "Everything Hegel wrote was rubbish. Don't even go there! It'll destroy historical materialism." I mean, why deliberately mislead people by claiming that you "critically apply" Hegel's method?

I think that by the time he was writing Das Kapital, Marx was returning to Aristotle, and waving goodbye to that logical incompetent, Hegel.

His 'coquetting' use of Hegelian terminolgy was a way of saying 'goodbye'.

In my early days as student, I was a sort of Platonist; when I abandoned it within a year, and began to read and study Wittgenstein, I still used to play around with Platonic terminology; I still do from time to time. I am sure others have been in the same boat.

And this can be asserted with some confidence, since Marx himself -- not me, not James Burnham, not Max Eastman, not Peter Struve -- endorsed a summary of 'his method' in which not a single Hegelain concept can be found.


In truth, Rosa, the more evidence which is turned to in terms of Marx's own view on what he was doing, the more insecure your claim that Marx alone is absolved from the sin of dialectical materialism.

On the contrary, the more we discuss this, the more clear it becomes I am right on the money.

[Hit The North]

I think that by the time he was writing Das Kapital, Marx was returning to Aristotle, and waving goodbye to that logical incompetent, Hegel.


It's an interesting conjecture. Trouble is there is absolutely no textual evidence left by Marx to support it. If Engels is to be believed, Marx nerver mentioned this departure in conversation to even his closest and most trusted collaborator.

[Rosa Lichtenstein]

CZ:


It's an interesting conjecture. Trouble is there is absolutely no textual evidence left by Marx to support it. If Engels is to be believed, Marx nerver mentioned this departure i conversation to even his closest and most trusted collaborator.

Well, I am not the first person to have noticed this; several others thought of it first.

http://216.239.59.104/search?q=cache:q0h2xTznZXcJ:www-econ.stanford.edu/academics/Honors_Theses/Theses_2003/Chau.pdf+Marx+and+Aristotle&hl=en&ct=clnk&cd=1&gl=uk

http://books.google.co.uk/books?id=rA66GMF7aHYC&pg=PA41&lpg=PA41&dq=Marx+and+Aristotle&source=web&ots=yZmSfg2WGW&sig=m4CsfiCT7B-tTWztOMYnMbcMY4A&hl=en

MEIKLE, SCOTT, Essentialism In The Thought Of Karl Marx (Open Court, 1985).

But, even if this is wrong, and it should turn out that Marx accepted the dialectic as Engels, Lenin and the rest did, that would still not make it work, and the job of excising it from Marxist theory would still have to go ahead.

Under those circumstances, Marx's reputation would, in fact, take a blow.

[Rosa Lichtenstein]

Incidentally, evidence that Mao did indeed reject the 'negation of the negation' can be found here (in addition to that given above):

http://books.google.co.uk/books?id=mD8RxEs8xpoC&pg=PA140&lpg=PA140&dq=Mao+Negation+of+the+negation&source=web&ots=nvFSsKgtKk&sig=Tg5ihdFOsJXn_DYMzA2O6TAE3UE&hl=en

http://books.google.co.uk/books?id=0KeE7dMNyl8C&pg=PA442&lpg=PA442&dq=Mao+Negation+of+the+negation&source=web&ots=VQ08ijTJcu&sig=5-nza_L4j_MmkeXhYWVcpPt7LVk&hl=en

Although this is put into context here:

http://books.google.co.uk/books?id=CXsThFu6H3EC&pg=PA157&lpg=PA157&dq=Mao+Negation+of+the+negation&source=web&ots=Yv0jFVtffm&sig=2iTnv20Bo59BqVxoDhZMRrMo4-o&hl=en