Is the Unity of Contradictions the only law of Dialectics? [Archive]

UnhappyC

16th April 2008, 19:05

To reduce dialectical materialism to such a simple law(s) is nothing but empty abstractions. What Rosa appears to be rebelling against is the tendency to objectify and idealize history. The subject of these theories ceases to be humanity, but become either abstract entities such as laws of history or entities such as means of production. At best we end up with Althusser's structuralism, at worst - vulgar materialism (Feuerbarch).

Rosa statement that Marx moved away from Hegel his entire life ignores the mountain of evidence which proves that Marx merely righted Hegel's dialectics (man has "found in the fantastic reality of heaven where he sought a supernatural being, only his own reflection).

Dialectical Logic

has as its aim the development of a scientific representation of thought in those necessary moments, and moreover in the necessary sequence, that do not in the least depend either on our will or on our consciousness. In other words Logic must show how thought develops if it is scientific, if it reflects, i.e. reproduces in concepts, an object existing outside our consciousness and will and independently of them, in other words, creates a mental reproduction of it, reconstructs its self-development, recreates it in the logic of the movement of concepts so as to recreate it later in fact (in experiment or in practice). Logic then is the theoretical representation of such thinking.marxists.org/archive/ilyenkov/works/essays/essayint.htm

One of them best example is found here:
marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1857/grundrisse/ch02.htm#p140
Compare this quote from Marx's preparatory notes for Capital:

Considered as values, all commodities are qualitatively equal and differ only quantitatively, hence can be measured against each other and substituted for one another (are mutually exchangeable, mutually convertible) in certain quantitative relations. Value is their social relation, their economic quality. A book which possesses a certain value and a loaf of bread possessing the same value are exchanged for one another, are the same value but in a different material. As a value, a commodity is an equivalent for all other commodities in a given relation. As a value, the commodity is an equivalent; as an equivalent, all its natural properties are extinguished; it no longer takes up a special, qualitative relationship towards the other commodities; but is rather the general measure as well as the general representative, the general medium of exchange of all other commodities. As value, it is money. But because the commodity, or rather the product or the instrument of production, is different from its value, its existence as value is different from its existence as product. Its property of being a value not only can but must achieve an existence different from its natural one. Why? Because commodities as values are different from one another only quantitatively; therefore each commodity must be qualitatively different from its own value. Its value must therefore have an existence which is qualitatively distinguishable from it, and in actual exchange this separability must become a real separation, because the natural distinctness of commodities must come into contradiction with their economic equivalence, and because both can exist together only if the commodity achieves a double existence, not only a natural but also a purely economic existence, in which latter it is a mere symbol, a cipher for a relation of production, a mere symbol for its own value. As a value, every commodity is equally divisible; in its natural existence this is not the case. As a value it remains the same no matter how many metamorphoses and forms of existence it goes through; in reality, commodities are exchanged only because they are not the same and correspond to different systems of needs. As a value, the commodity is general; as a real commodity it is particular. As a value it is always exchangeable; in real exchange it is exchangeable only if it fulfills particular conditions. As a value, the measure of its exchangeability is determined by itself; exchange value expresses precisely the relation in which it replaces other commodities; in real exchange it is exchangeable only in quantities which are linked with its natural properties and which correspond to the needs of the participants in exchange.And try to understand it without reading Hegel's "The Science of Logic" [specifically his work on Being]:
marxists.org/reference/archive/hegel/works/hl/hlbeing.htm#HL1_81

For Hegel the determinations as moments of Being are: Quality-Quantity-Measure
Now compare this with Marx's "Transformation of the commodity into exchange value; money" as quoted above.
Product - Commodity - Exchange Value (money)
For Marx, they are merely moments of Capital "that do not in the least depend either on our will or on our consciousness." [Ilyenkov]

Sorry for the rambling but Rosa's personal crusade must be stripped of its veil of mysticism and shown for what it truly is, revisionism. For a thorough introduction to Dialectical Logic I recommend Evald Ilyenkov's "Dialectical Logic found here: marxists.org/archive/ilyenkov/works/essays/essayint.htm

I cannot post complete links which is why I resorted to merely pasting the links themselves in my post. I feel that they are essential to it.

Rosa Lichtenstein

16th April 2008, 20:35

UnhappyC:

Rosa statement that Marx moved away from Hegel his entire life ignores the mountain of evidence which proves that Marx merely righted Hegel's dialectics (man has "found in the fantastic reality of heaven where he sought a supernatural being, only his own reflection).

What 'mountains'? More like 'mole hills'!

And dialectical 'logic' does not work, at any level.

Proof? Try this for size:

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

http://www.revleft.com/vb/showpost.php?p=986496&postcount=7

The above relates to Mao's 'theory', but it also applies to Engels's, Hegel's, Plekhanov's and Lenin's versions, too.

And this:

http://homepage.ntlworld.com/rosa.l/Outline_of_errors_Hegel_committed_01.htm

Sorry for the rambling but Rosa's personal crusade must be stripped of its veil of mysticism and shown for what it truly is, revisionism. For a thorough introduction to Dialectical Logic I recommend Evald Ilyenkov's "Dialectical Logic' found here: marxists.org/archive/ilyenkov/works/essays/essayint.htm

Oh, please, not Ilyenkov's confused book? Do me a favour!

You need to tackle my actual arguments, and resist the tempatation merely to repeat tired old dialectical cliches.

Rosa's personal crusade must be stripped of its veil of mysticism and shown for what it truly is, revisionism.

What 'mysticism'? I note you did not say (mainly because there isn't any!).

And Marx was a 'revisionist', too; that is the essence of a scientific view of reality -- to question received 'wisdom'. The way you talk, Marxism is just a set of eternal dogmas.

What Rosa appears to be rebelling against is the tendency to objectify and idealize history.

Where on earth did you get that odd idea from?

What I am 'rebelling' against is a 'theory' that makes not one ounce of sense, and which has presided over 150 years of almost total failure.

Dystisis

16th April 2008, 21:17

Kronos

16th April 2008, 21:28

has as its aim the development of a scientific representation of thought in those necessary moments, and moreover in the necessary sequence, that do not in the least depend either on our will or on our consciousness.UnhappyC, the ambiguity of Hegel's dialectical law, as I understand it, can be expressed in very simply terms. I will admit to passing through Hegel rather quickly many years ago so I won't have an understanding as thorough as your own, or even Rosa's. However, I might be able to produce a very easy example which demonstrates how this dialectic is vague at best, or simply not true at worst.

In the above quote, the "scientific representation of thought in those necessary moments" says to me that every and all instances of decision involve and follow the form of the triad- thesis, antithesis, synthesis. That is to say that the material conditions in the world are in conflict with each other and develop new, different material conditions due to this stress. I certainly don't see how that is possible with inert, inanimate material. Rather than understanding "change" as the necessary consequence of conflicting material relations (and they don't "conflict"....this is an anthropomorphic concept), perhaps it is easier to think of it as simply forces interacting...none of which are "struggling" with one another.

If you accept this view, we can move on to see how the dialectic applies to conscious thinking. I mentioned above these "instances of decision". Here one might say that the dialectic is evident in the logic used during a decision made by someone who is affected by external conditions in the environment. When a person makes a decision to act, that decision, that specific choice of action, cannot be thought of as necessary, but contingent. For example, John is broke. Thesis. John decides he needs money. Antithesis. John sells his father's golf clubs to the kid next door. Synthesis. Now, are we really to say that his choice was necessary and that this "dialectical contradiction" is what caused John to decide to sell the clubs? We certainly can, but it is a post hoc explanation of causes. What I mean here is that if John decided to do something else, rather than sell the clubs, we would have to say that his alternative choice of action was determined by the same dialectical conflict which, if fate had it otherwise, would cause him to sell the clubs. It cannot be both. I mean, the "dialectical contradiction" which caused John's actions cannot determine both results to happen, unless the dialectic is schizophrenic.

My point here is that the dialectical description of change, concerning how and why people make decisions, is a post hoc ambiguity which works only after the fact.

Therefore, the "scientific representation of thoughts" in "this instance" cannot be attributed to such dialectical rules of change. There is indeed a scientific explanation for everything (if there isn't, there cannot be knowledge about that which cannot be expressed in scientific terms.....philosophers, mystics, theologists, etc., never seem to understand that), but to delineate human activity to specific results, specific choices, is literally impossible in advance.

This is the ambiguity of the dialectical rule when applies to human behavior.

At best one can say "oh boy...John is broke and he's gonna do something to get some cash".....but never can we know in advance. If we cannot know what he will do, but know he will do something, we are suspended in a kind of dialectical limbo....where we wait for him to act so that we can declare, post hoc, "see! I told you Hegel was right!"

Other than that, I think the dialectic is relevant for describing physical, chemical, and mechanical operations and behaviors. When hydrogen and oxygen combine and make water, it isn't because they are conflicting or struggling, but simply because that is what happens. If "dialectical" is a fancy way of saying "this and that make this", then I'll take it.

The very terms "conflict" and "struggle" have anthropomorphic relevancy only. Inanimate matter experiences no such things.

Kronos

16th April 2008, 21:39

...oh and if I'm not understanding the point of the quote I argued against, I apologize in advance. I do that often. I tend to jump in over my head.

UnhappyC

16th April 2008, 22:11

UnhappyC:
What 'mountains'? More like 'mole hills'!

What did Marx mean by these quotes?
marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1870/letters/70_06_27.htm

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. In one respect he reminds me of Moses Mendelssohn. That prototype of a windbag once wrote to Lessing asking how he could possibly take ‘that dead dog Spinoza’ au sérieux! In the same way, Mr Lange expresses surprise that Engels, I, etc., take au sérieux the dead dog Hegel, after Büchner, Lange, Dr Dühring, Fechner, etc., had long agreed that they — poor dear — had long since buried him. Lange is naïve enough to say that I ‘move with rare freedom’ in empirical matter. He has not the slightest idea that this ‘free movement in matter’ is nothing but a paraphrase for the method of dealing with matter — that is, the dialectical method.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1868/letters/68_03_06.htm

He[Duhring] knows full well that my method of exposition is not Hegelian, since I am a materialist, and Hegel an idealist. Hegel’s dialectic is the basic form of all dialectic, but only after being stripped of its mystical form, and it is precisely this which distinguishes my method.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1867/letters/67_11_07.htm

[Marx on Capital] [...] that some notice will be taken of this first attempt at applying the dialectic method to political economy.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1867/letters/67_06_27.htm

Now if I wished to refute all such objections [Engels objecting to Marx's intentional abridging of examples of the dialectical method in Capital] in advance, I should spoil the whole dialectical method of exposition. On the contrary, the good thing about this method is that it is constantly setting traps for those fellows which will provoke them into an untimely display of their idiocy.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1867/letters/67_06_22.htm

With regard to the development of the form of value, I have both followed and not followed your advice, thus striking a dialectical attitude in this matter, too. That is to say, 1. I have written an appendix in which I set out the same subject again as simply and as much in the manner of a school text-book as possible, and 2. I have divided each successive proposition into paras. etc., each with its own heading, as you advised. In the Preface I then tell the ‘non-dialectical’ reader to skip page x-y and instead read the appendix. It is not only the philistines that I have in mind here, but young people, etc., who are thirsting for knowledge.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1858/letters/58_07_14.htm

Kindly let me have Hegel’s Philosophy of Nature as promised. I am presently doing a little physiology which I shall combine with comparative anatomy. Here one comes upon highly speculative things, all of which, however, have only recently been discovered; I am exceedingly curious to see whether the old man may not already have had some inkling of them.[...] Everything consists of cells. The cell is Hegelian ‘being in itself’ and its. development follows the Hegelian process step by step right up to the final emergence of the ‘idea’ — i.e. each completed organism.

marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1858/letters/58_05_31.htm

This dialectic [Hegelian] is, to be sure, the ultimate word in philosophy and hence there is all the more need to divest it of the mystical aura given it by Hegel.

I fail to see how one can dismiss these quotes as unessential.
I will address the subsequent replies later on.

Rosa Lichtenstein

16th April 2008, 22:13

I am sorry Dystisis, but I understood not one sentence of your post.

What are you trying to say?

----------------------------
Kronos, welcome back, but you are far too accommodating with this pernicious and thoroughly confused thought-form -- 'dialectics'.

Check this out:

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

Rosa Lichtenstein

16th April 2008, 22:30

UnhappyC:

What did Marx mean by these quotes?

Well, we needn't speculate, for he added a summary of his method to the introduction to Das Kapital:

"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.]

So, Marx's 'method', his version of 'dialectics', contains not one ounce of Hegel; no 'unities of opposites', no 'negation of the negation', no 'contradictions', no 'Totality'.

In that case, the 'rational kernel' has Hegel completely removed!

Now, you might not like this, but I suggest you pick a fight with Marx, not me, for that is his method, and published right at the start of his most important piece of work -- not in an obscure letter.

And of the few occurences of such terms in Das Kapital, Marx says he was merely 'coquetting' with them.

But, you might be tempted to say that Marx called Hegel a 'mighty thinker'; well, I think Plato is a 'mighty thinker', but I disagree with 100% of what he says. Same with Marx -- according to the implication of his own words.

But, you promised 'mountains' of evidence!

As I said, it looks more like a 'mole hill', and even then, it fails to support your case.

I fail to see how one can dismiss these quotes as unessential.

Many are from before he wrote Das Kapital -- so whatever happened to Marx's thought between, say, 1858, and writing his masterpiece, he clearly moved away from Hegel, to such an extent that he merely wished to 'coquette' with a few bits of Hegelian jargon.

I go further, and ditch the lot.

Anyway one of your quotes is from Engels, not Marx!

marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1858/letters/58_07_14.htm

I do not doubt Engels was taken in by this gobbledygook, for he was a philosophical incompetent.

Hit The North

16th April 2008, 22:40

So, Marx's 'method', his version of 'dialectics', contains not one ounce of Hegel

Except we know that it's not true, because later, inthe same article which you accord such priority, Marx goes on to argue:

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. http://www.marxists.org/subject/dialectics/marx-engels/capital-afterward.htm

So logically, if Marx's method is a dialectic (as you admit he claims) it must contain, at least, the general form of Hegel's exposition - which could possibly amount to a couple of ounces of Hegel (you know, given the total weight of a tome like Das Kapital :D).

Rosa Lichtenstein

16th April 2008, 22:49

CZ, quoting Marx:

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

And yet, and once more, we need not speculate, for Marx himself tells us that he was content merely to 'coquette' with Hegel's 'mighty' contribution, in this regard.

And, you will note that the relative pronoun "its" refers back to 'the mystification which diialectic suffers in Hegel's hands', which Marx calls its 'general form' --and which Marx was keen to ditch.

So, no wonder he merely 'coquetted' with a few bits of Hegelian jargon, and appealed to a summary of 'his method' that contained not one atom of Hegel.

Hit The North

16th April 2008, 23:02

Many are from before he wrote Das Kapital -- so whatever happened to Marx's thought between, say, 1858, and writing his masterpiece, he clearly moved away from Hegel, to such an extent that he merely wished to 'coquette' with a few bits of Hegelain jargon.Actually, out of seven quotes, three of them are post-publication of Vol One and two of them were written during the writing of the said masterpiece.

Rosa, this really is a game that you cannot win. Nowhere does Marx disavow his debt to Hegel never mind repudiate him. Even after the first volume of Kapital is published he continues to describe his method as a 'dialectic'. Nowhere does he state that he dumped Hegel in favour of Aristotle when he composed Kapital (another of your hypotheses).

The only textual evidence you present is supported by your own idiosyncratic interpretation and one which can be challenged. I'd argue (taking the Afterword as a whole, rather than isolating one paragraph from its relation to its fellows, sans your method) that the reason Marx places such premium on this particular review is precisely because it contains no Hegelian jargon which serves Marx's purpose of refuting those reviewers who accuse him of simple-mindedly superimposing unwieldy Hegelian idealism onto the subject of political economy. Marx quotes it with favour in order to distance himself from the idealism of Hegel (and the attendent charge of metaphysics), not from the proposition that material social reality can be grasped dialectically. This is an assertion which, as far as the archive tells us, he held onto 'til his death.

Hit The North

16th April 2008, 23:03

And, you will note that the relative pronoun "its" refers back to 'the mystification which diialectic suffers in Hegel's hands', which Marx calls its 'general form' --and which Marx was keen to ditch.

In my reading the 'it' refers to the dialectic, not the mysticism. And whilst it would be difficult for us to prove my interpretation over yours, mine at least corresponds to his later statements.

Rosa Lichtenstein

16th April 2008, 23:44

CZ:

Actually, out of seven quotes, three of them are post-publication of Vol One and two of them were written during the writing of the said masterpiece.

Depends which edition of volume one you are talking about, but even so, they are all covered by the remarks he made in that published work, as we have discussed before.

Rosa, this really is a game that you cannot win. Nowhere does Marx disavow his debt to Hegel never mind repudiate him. Even after the first volume of Kapital is published he continues to describe his method as a 'dialectic'. Nowhere does he state that he dumped Hegel in favour of Aristotle when he composed Kapital (another of your hypotheses).

But, and once more, to save you and me speculating, Marx very kindly added a summary of 'his method', his verson of the 'dialectic':

"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.]

So, yet again, here Marx calls this summary 'his method', in which not one microgram of Hegel is to be found.

And, as if to rub it in, Marx told us that he was merely 'coquetting' with Hegel's 'mighty' contribution to thought -- hardly a ringing endorsement.

The only textual evidence you present is supported by your own idiosyncratic interpretation and one which can be challenged. I'd argue (taking the Afterword as a whole, rather than isolating one paragraph from its relation to its fellows, sans your method) that the reason Marx places such premium on this particular review is precisely because it contains no Hegelian jargon which serves Marx's purpose of refuting those reviewers who accuse him of simple-mindedly superimposing unwieldy Hegelian idealism onto the subject of political economy. Marx quotes it with favour in order to distance himself from the idealism of Hegel (and the attendent charge of metaphysics), not from the proposition that material social reality can be grasped dialectically. This is an assertion which, as far as the archive tells us, he held onto 'til his death.

Not so, we have Marx's own words -- not mine, not James Burnham's, not Peter Struve's -- that his method contains not one atom of Hegel.

Now, you say that Marx quoted this to distance himself from Hegel's idealism, but that is your interpretation.

Marx, on the other hand, calls this summary, 'his method' -- and it contains no 'contradictions', no 'negation of the negation', no 'unities of opposites' -- everything that later dialecticians foisted on Marx is absent from this summary of 'his method'.

And the few bits of jargon that appear in Das Kapital itself --, well, as we know, Marx merely 'coquetted' with them.

So, the weight of evidence is against you, as you have had pointed out to you many times.

In my reading the 'it' refers to the dialectic, not the mysticism. And whilst it would be difficult for us to prove my interpretation over yours, mine at least corresponds to his later statements.

Well, as you say, you can't prove that; until you can, we will have to refer to that long summary of 'his method' as cast iron proof that Hegel was expunged from Das Kapital.

Hit The North

17th April 2008, 02:30

R:
Depends which edition of volume one you are talking about, but even so, they are all covered by the remarks he made in that published work, as we have discussed before.So your argument is that when he was in the process of writing Kapital he believed he was utilising a dialectic method, as evinced by these two quotes:
Now if I wished to refute all such objections [Engels objecting to Marx's intentional abridging of examples of the dialectical method in Capital] in advance, I should spoil the whole dialectical method of exposition. On the contrary, the good thing about this method is that it is constantly setting traps for those fellows which will provoke them into an untimely display of their idiocy.
With regard to the development of the form of value, I have both followed and not followed your advice, thus striking a dialectical attitude in this matter, too. That is to say, 1. I have written an appendix in which I set out the same subject again as simply and as much in the manner of a school text-book as possible, and 2. I have divided each successive proposition into paras. etc., each with its own heading, as you advised. In the Preface I then tell the ‘non-dialectical’ reader to skip page x-y and instead read the appendix. It is not only the philistines that I have in mind here, but young people, etc., who are thirsting for knowledge. That after publication of the first edition he wrote:

[Marx on Capital] [...] that some notice will be taken of this first attempt at applying the dialectic method to political economy.That later in 1868 he wrote:
He[Duhring] knows full well that my method of exposition is not Hegelian, since I am a materialist, and Hegel an idealist. Hegel’s dialectic is the basic form of all dialectic, but only after being stripped of its mystical form, and it is precisely this which distinguishes my method.
Then later still, in 1870 he confessed
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. In one respect he reminds me of Moses Mendelssohn. That prototype of a windbag once wrote to Lessing asking how he could possibly take ‘that dead dog Spinoza’ au sérieux! In the same way, Mr Lange expresses surprise that Engels, I, etc., take au sérieux the dead dog Hegel, after Büchner, Lange, Dr Dühring, Fechner, etc., had long agreed that they — poor dear — had long since buried him. Lange is naïve enough to say that I ‘move with rare freedom’ in empirical matter. He has not the slightest idea that this ‘free movement in matter’ is nothing but a paraphrase for the method of dealing with matter — that is, the dialectical method.But, suddenly in 1873, Marx endured a complete sea-change, not only in his method, but in his own retrospective understanding of the method he employed in his magnum opus six years earlier. What's more, having had this revelation, he signals it to the world with the words:

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

But something doesn't ring true. This elliptical allusion to such a major shift in his thinking is quite uncharacteristic. You'll agree with me that generally speaking, Marx was renowned for his bluntness, no? So why has his forthrightness suddenly abandoned him - and on such a crucially important issue as a change in his methodology?

Not so, we have Marx's own wordsThis hardly needs to be pointed out, but they are not Marx's own words, they belong to a reviewer. Marx merely indicates that they represent a reasonable approximation of his method - "the dialectical method".

Marx, on the other hand, calls this summary, 'his method' -- and it contains no 'contradictions', no 'negation of the negation', no 'unities of opposites' -- everything that later dialecticians foisted on Marx is absent from this summary of 'his method'.No he doesn't. He writes, "Whilst the writer pictures what he takes to be actually my method" which is not the same as Marx claiming that the review is a complete summary of his method. But even if Marx thought it was a complete summary of his method, what is it that the reviewer is picturing, according to Marx? Yes, that's right: "what else is he picturing but the dialectic method?" As in:
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?

So, the weight of evidence is against you, as you have had pointed out to you many times.
Sorry, Rosa, but you need to pull off an inversion of reality of truly Hegelian proportions for that argument to stick :D.

UnhappyC

17th April 2008, 02:45

UnhappyC:
So, Marx's 'method', his version of 'dialectics', contains not one ounce of Hegel; no 'unities of opposites', no 'negation of the negation', no 'contradictions', no 'Totality'.

In that case, the 'rational kernel' has Hegel completely removed!
The very next lines after your quotation:

Of course the method of presentation must differ in form from that of inquiry. The latter has to appropriate the material in detail, to analyse its different forms of development, to trace out their inner connexion. Only after this work is done, can the actual movement be adequately described. If this is done successfully, if the life of the subject-matter is ideally reflected as in a mirror, then it may appear as if we had before us a mere a priori construction.
My dialectic method is not only different from the Hegelian, but is its direct opposite. To Hegel, the life-process of the human brain, i.e., the process of thinking, which, under the name of “the Idea,” he even transforms into an independent subject, is the demiurgos of the real world, and the real world is only the external, phenomenal form of “the Idea.” With me, on the contrary, the ideal is nothing else than the material world reflected by the human mind, and translated into forms of thought."[my underscore] And further down the very same document you quoted

In its rational form [dialectic] it is a scandal and abomination to bourgeoisdom and its doctrinaire professors, because it includes in its comprehension and affirmative recognition of the existing state of things, at the same time also, the recognition of the negation of that state, of its inevitable breaking up; because it regards every historically developed social form as in fluid movement, and therefore takes into account its transient nature not less than its momentary existence; because it lets nothing impose upon it, and is in its essence critical and revolutionary.
The contradictions inherent in the movement of capitalist society impress themselves upon the practical bourgeois most strikingly in the changes of the periodic cycle, through which modern industry runs, and whose crowning point is the universal crisis. That crisis is once again approaching, although as yet but in its preliminary stage; and by the universality of its theatre and the intensity of its action it will drum dialectics even into the heads of the mushroom-upstarts of the new, holy Prusso-German empire.You appears to be stuck in a Feuerbachian natural state i.e., vulgar materialism. Maybe you should [re]read Spinoza's work on Substance.

Now, you might not like this, but I suggest you pick a fight with Marx, not me, for that is his method, and published right at the start of his most important piece of work -- not in an obscure letter.
Marx is not true to himself when in private - He is a different thinker when talking or writing in private?

Anyway one of your quotes is from Engels, not Marx!

marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1858/letters/58_07_14.htm

I do not doubt Engels was taken in by this gobbledygook, for he was a philosophical incompetent.Oh lordy lord!

In my reading the 'it' refers to the dialectic, not the mysticism. And whilst it would be difficult for us to prove my interpretation over yours, mine at least corresponds to his later statements.
It certainly does refer to dialectic and not the mysticism. Only through Rosa's rose coloured glasses can "it" be interpreted as mysticism.

EDIT - I've removed some of my comments since CZ replies were much clearer than mine.

Rosa Lichtenstein

17th April 2008, 10:30

CZ:

Now if I wished to refute all such objections [Engels objecting to Marx's intentional abridging of examples of the dialectical method in Capital] in advance, I should spoil the whole dialectical method of exposition. On the contrary, the good thing about this method is that it is constantly setting traps for those fellows which will provoke them into an untimely display of their idiocy.

Indeed, he did lay traps: for the lot of you have simply ignored the fact that he was 'coquetting' all along. And you have fallen right in it.

The other quotations, I think we have already been over, so I do not know why you are repeating them.

But, suddenly in 1873, Marx endured a complete sea-change, not only in his method, but in his own retrospective understanding of the method he employed in his magnum opus six years earlier. What's more, having had this revelation, he signals it to the world with the words:

What can I tell you? Marx himself went out of his way to include a summary of 'his method'.

Since you like repetition, here it is again:

"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.]

'His method', the 'dialectic method' he used (not the one all his supposed 'followers' have used) contains not one atom of Hegel -- no 'contradictions', no 'negation of the negation', no 'unities of opposites', no 'Totality'.

Now, there would be no 'trap' here for you if you'd only listen to what Marx is telling you.

But something doesn't ring true. This elliptical allusion to such a major shift in his thinking is quite uncharacteristic. You'll agree with me that generally speaking, Marx was renowned for his bluntness, no? So why has his forthrightness suddenly abandoned him - and on such a crucially important issue as a change in his methodology?

Not so, he went through similar rapid changes in the 1840s, some of which he spoke about in letters and published and unpublished writings, others not.

This hardly needs to be pointed out, but they are not Marx's own words, they belong to a reviewer. Marx merely indicates that they represent a reasonable approximation of his method - "the dialectical method".

Indeed, but we have Marx's words that this is 'his method'; and he calls it this in spite of the fact that every shred of Hegel has been expunged.

This is no problem for me, but it is a huge headache for you.

No he doesn't. He writes, "Whilst the writer pictures what he takes to be actually my method" which is not the same as Marx claiming that the review is a complete summary of his method. But even if Marx thought it was a complete summary of his method, what is it that the reviewer is picturing, according to Marx? Yes, that's right: "what else is he picturing but the dialectic method?"

Indeed, and according to Marx (i.e., in his own words) it is a picture of 'his method' -- and why would he include a false picture right at the beginning of his most important work?

Your picture has Hegel in it; Marx's (or at least the one he endorsed) does not.

Sorry, Rosa, but you need to pull off an inversion of reality of truly Hegelian proportions for that argument to stick

Not so; all I have to do is stick to what Marx actually said, as opposed to what you would like him to have said.

Rosa Lichtenstein

17th April 2008, 10:47

UnhappyC -- you can quote Marx at me all day, it will do you no good.

The very next lines after your quotation:

And we now know what he meant by this, for he very helpfully included a summary of 'his method', his version of 'dialectics':

"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.]

You will note that 'his method' contains no trace of Hegel -- no 'contradictions', no 'negation of the negation', no 'unity of opposites', no 'Totality'.

So, once more, pick a fight with Marx, not me, for destroying your illusions.

Now, where we later find Hegelian jargon, Marx was also quite clear: he was merely 'coquetting' with it.

That's how much respect he had for that logical incompetent, Hegel.

You appear to be stuck in a Feuerbachian natural state i.e., vulgar materialism. Maybe you should [re]read Spinoza's work on Substance.

Maybe you should read my work before you make up stuff about me?

No, I am not a Feuerbachian, and Spinoza, too, was a philosophical incompetetent -- only marginally less so than Hegel.

All you can do to defend your case is quote confused mystics at me!

I was studying Spinoza, and rejecting it as wall-to-wall gobbledygook, long before many at RevLeft were alive.

Marx is not true to himself when in private - He is a different thinker when talking or writing in private?

What can I tell you? His published work is a better guide to his thought than private musings, and should rightly be used to interpret those musings. That is what I have done.

You need to address that.

It certainly does refer to dialectic and not the mysticism.

How do you know?

Only through Rosa's rose coloured glasses can "it" be interpreted as mysticism.

Why do you say this, if Marx's own words support my case, but refute yours?

UnhappyC

17th April 2008, 14:04

UnhappyC -- you can quote Marx at me all day, it will do you no good.

You fail to understand a simple seven page afterword in which Marx clearly lays bare his debt to the philosophic method of Hegel. You scrub clean Marx's Dialectical (his version as you put) of any substance.

CZ clearly explained what Marx meant without the need to look into tea leaves because Marx specifically told us that his method is the Hegelian method in its 'rational form'.

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?
Of course the method of presentation must differ in form from that of inquiry. The latter has to appropriate the material in detail, to analyse its different forms of development, to trace out their inner connexion. Only after this work is done, can the actual movement be adequately described. If this is done successfully, if the life of the subject-matter is ideally reflected as in a mirror, then it may appear as if we had before us a mere a priori construction.
My dialectic method is not only different from the Hegelian, but is its direct opposite. To Hegel, the life-process of the human brain, i.e., the process of thinking, which, under the name of “the Idea,” he even transforms into an independent subject, is the demiurgos of the real world, and the real world is only the external, phenomenal form of “the Idea.” With me, on the contrary, the ideal is nothing else than the material world reflected by the human mind, and translated into forms of thought.
What else is this if not for the dialectical method!

The phrase "the ideal is nothing else than the material world reflected by the human mind, and translated into forms of thought" we see that the bare object in-itself free from any human contact (Feuerbach) is an empty abstraction. The need for developed logical categories such as contradiction, quality, quantity etc. becomes apparent when we want to hold the subject of thought to the same rigor of scientific inquiry found in any other science.

Of course the Hegelian jargon can be confusing and taken as the subject of in lieu of humanity like Hegel 'Spirit' and Stalin's 'laws of history' and 'means of production' (Dialectical and Historical Materialism). This is why one must "appropriate the material in detail, to analyse its different forms of development, to trace out their inner connexion. Only after this work is done, can the actual movement be adequately described."

The consciousness of society is the ideal reflection of things as they are. Hegel started from the ideally posited - the consciousness of society because he failed to understand Spinoza's one substance. "There are not two different and originally contrary objects of investigation body and thought, but only one single object, which is the thinking body of living, real man (or other analogous being, if such exists anywhere in the Universe), only considered from two different and even opposing aspects or points of view." In man matter has the property of thought. It is in man that Nature really performs, in a self-evident way, that very activity that we are accustomed to call ‘thinking’." Thinking is the action of the brain and not the product of an action itself.

Thinking when turned towards itself shows that it is dialectical in nature because it objectifies itself. Hegel started from this objectified thinking and Marx knocked it (thought) back into place. The dialectical method should not be viewed as an instrument through which we gain knowledge for if it is used this way we quickly fall into the trap of idealism (laws of history).

By the way Rosa, I would not quote Max Eastman if I were you.
By 1941 Eastman had largely abandoned his former left-wing beliefs and connections. He was hired that year as a roving editor for Reader's digest magazine and stayed in the job for the remainder of his life, writing articles critical of socialism and communism, and actively supporting McCarthyism. Eastman's repudiation of socialism in general and communism in particular reached its high water-mark with the publication of Reflections on the Failure of Socialism in 1955.

UnhappyC

17th April 2008, 14:05

I would like mathematical concepts to strictly be applied to where we can do so, not only at a theoretical level. Look at the What is certain? thread and see what I wrote about that there... Basically only at a (possibly sub-) atomic scale, where each entity is equal to another:

Mathematical truths are of the poorest kind as they can only attest to the simplest objects. The object is limited to space - time extension and appear as something quite outside the object.
Even old Hegel grasp this:

The process of mathematical proof does not belong to the object; it is a function that takes place outside the matter in hand. Thus, the nature of a right-angled triangle does not break itself up into factors in the manner set forth in the mathematical construction which is required to prove the proposition expressing the relation of its parts. The entire process of producing the result is an affair of knowledge which takes its own way of going about it.I can go about trying to discover the smallest possible particle of matter but in the end we are left with the poorest kind of knowledge devoid of any theory. We are left with nothing else to say than that it is.

If we were to attempt to explain what a man is by enumerating the different parts of the body and their organic composition we would be left with something quite different than a man. The job of scientific inquiry is to "analyse its [the object] different forms of development, to trace out their inner connexion. Only after this work is done, can the actual movement be adequately described." We have to unite all the different particulars into a coherent object.

I am not denying the importance of quantum-physics. All I am saying is that to attempt to construct a concrete conception of the world (whole) on the back of the particulars will inevitably lead towards an abstract determination of the world devoid of any theoretical understanding.

The concrete is concrete because it is the concentration of many determinations, hence unity of the diverse. It appears in the process of thinking, therefore, as a process of concentration, as a result, not as a point of departure, even though it is the point of departure in reality and hence also the point of departure for observation [Anschauung] and conception.[...] [T]he abstract determinations lead towards a reproduction of the concrete by way of thought. In this way Hegel fell into the illusion of conceiving the real as the product of thought concentrating itself, probing its own depths, and unfolding itself out of itself, by itself, whereas the method of rising from the abstract to the concrete is only the way in which thought appropriates the concrete, reproduces it as the concrete in the mind.I strongly suggest you read marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1857/grundrisse/ch01.htm#3 "The method of political economy". Marx lays out in plain language his method.

UnhappyC

17th April 2008, 14:43

UnhappyC, the ambiguity of Hegel's dialectical law, as I understand it, can be expressed in very simply terms.

[snip]

Other than that, I think the dialectic is relevant for describing physical, chemical, and mechanical operations and behaviors. When hydrogen and oxygen combine and make water, it isn't because they are conflicting or struggling, but simply because that is what happens. If "dialectical" is a fancy way of saying "this and that make this", then I'll take it.

Hegel never used thesis, antithesis, synthesis. While I believe that it certainly is a valid method of learning dialectics it can quickly become a crutch limiting the development of our understanding.

The contradictions in nature in-itself are an idealistically posed problem and you accurately describe this with your use of the oxygen-hydrogen example. The world in-itself does not exist as far as Understanding is concerning. This does not mean that the objective existence of the material world is denied if it has not come into contact with consciousness. Nature in-itself is an empty abstraction vis-à-vis Understanding and one can see where it leads to by following Feuerbach up the blind alley that is vulgar materialism. It is tantamount to attempting to know the world before knowing it - you cannot know the object without actually delving into it.

If I have a master theory which attempts to explain everything in the universe and I walk around comparing this theory to the sensuous world, my theory will inevitably fall into contradiction. My theory is not the source of knowledge. Knowledge arises out of my conscious attempts at understanding the world and its apparently opposite nature with my consciousness. Consciousness is merely the material world (which has historically developed up to this point in time) ideally posited in humanity. Understanding sets itself up only to be knocked down again and again.

For a much better explanation of the dialectical nature of thought may I suggest reading Evald Ilyenkov's "Dialectical Logic", specifically the chapter on Spinoza.
marxists.org/archive/ilyenkov/works/essays/essay2.htm

In it Ilyenkov clearly explains why thought is viewed as unrelated and even opposite to the object of cognition (hint: it's because thought is already objectified thought by this point).
Hope this helps.

Rosa Lichtenstein

17th April 2008, 14:56

UnhappyC:

You fail to understand a simple seven page afterword in which Marx clearly lays bare his debt to the philosophic method of Hegel.

You fail to note that he himself told us of the 'debt' he owed to Hegel, for he quoted a summary of 'his method', in which all traces of Hegel had been removed. Some debt!

And so indebted was he to that logical incompetent, he merely 'coquetted' with a few bits of Hegelian jargon in Das Kapital.

So, quote Marx at me all day long, it matters not: Marx agrees with me, not you.

You scrub clean Marx's Dialectical (his version as you put) of any substance

On the contrary, Marx did this when he quoted a passage, which he said pictured 'his method', from which Hegel has been completely excised, and not by me.

Anyway, as I have shown in numerous threads here, and at my site, there is no 'substance' to dialectics to begin with, so no wonder Marx ditched it.

CZ clearly explained what Marx meant without the need to look into tea leaves because Marx specifically told us that his method is the Hegelian method in its 'rational form'.

Yes, he has been trying to do this here now for nearly two years, and has been refuted every time by me -- and I have had to listen to the same stuff that he produced, and now you, for well over 20 years -- and I still refuse to buy it.

Marx himself, not me, quite clearly told us what the 'rational kernel' is: it contains not one atom of Hegel -- no 'contradictions', no 'unity of opposites', no 'negation of the negation', no 'quantity into quality', no 'Totality'...

Yet again: pick a fight with Marx, not me.

What else is this if not for the dialectical method!

The phrase "the ideal is nothing else than the material world reflected by the human mind, and translated into forms of thought" we see that the bare object in-itself free from any human contact (Feuerbach) is an empty abstraction. The need for developed logical categories such as contradiction, quality, quantity etc. becomes apparent when we want to hold the subject of thought to the same rigor of scientific inquiry found in any other science.

Well, I fail to see how this supports your case.

And I disagree with Marx here anyway. The 'theory' of reflection (simple or complex) does not work -- but we can begin another thread on that.

And, I note that you have to introduce those incoherent Hegelian notions ("contradiction, quality, quantity etc.") that Marx had edited out of 'his method', to make this fairy tale work.

He left these incoherent terms behind -- so should you.

Of course the Hegelian jargon can be confusing and taken as the subject of in lieu of humanity like Hegel 'Spirit' and Stalin's 'laws of history' and 'means of production' (Dialectical and Historical Materialism). This is why one must "appropriate the material in detail, to analyse its different forms of development, to trace out their inner connexion. Only after this work is done, can the actual movement be adequately described."

Hegelian jargon is not 'confusing', it is confused and incoherent. And it does not work.

If you follow the link I included earlier, you will see what I mean by that:

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

http://www.revleft.com/vb/showpost.php?p=986496&postcount=7

The consciousness of society is the ideal reflection of things as they are. Hegel started from the ideally posited - the consciousness of society because he failed to understand Spinoza's one substance. "There are not two different and originally contrary objects of investigation body and thought, but only one single object, which is the thinking body of living, real man (or other analogous being, if such exists anywhere in the Universe), only considered from two different and even opposing aspects or points of view." In man matter has the property of thought. It is in man that Nature really performs, in a self-evident way, that very activity that we are accustomed to call ‘thinking’." Thinking is the action of the brain and not the product of an action itself.

Thinking when turned towards itself shows that it is dialectical in nature because it objectifies itself. Hegel started from this objectified thinking and Marx knocked it (thought) back into place. The dialectical method should not be viewed as an instrument through which we gain knowledge for if it is used this way we quickly fall into the trap of idealism (laws of history).

Yes, yes, I have read the brochure many times, and had this sort of stuff thrown at me for decades.

It bores me rigid; so please desist. I did try to tell you not to keep quoting tired old dialectical cliches at me.

And stop telling me about Spinoza; I want to hang on to my lunch a bit longer.

By the way Rosa, I would not quote Max Eastman if I were you.

You must think I came down in the last shower of rain. I have been a socialist now for over 30 years, a Marxist for over 25, and a revolutionary socialist for over 20.

I know all about Max Eastman; but he was right about dialectics -- it is a disease of the intellect.

Small wonder then that Marx kissed it goodbye in Das Kapital.

RedAnarchist

17th April 2008, 14:59

How come you were a Marxist for 5 years without being a revolutionary socialist, because aren't they sort of the same thing?

Rosa Lichtenstein

17th April 2008, 15:05

No, I was attracted to Marxism, but put off by my false belief that he accepted dialectical materialism, or rather, that to be a Marxist one had to accept that theory.

When I read Gerry Cohen's book ('Karl Marx's Theory of History -- A Defence'), even though I disagreed with Cohen's technological determinism, and his functionalism, I realised historical materialism did not need Hegel, and I gravitated toward the Marxist left almost overnight.

Up until then, I was a sort of left Labour supporter (around Tony Benn, etc.).

It took me about 5 years from then to decide to join a revolutionary party (I had to decide which one was the best), and so that explains the time difference.

UnhappyC

17th April 2008, 15:27

I realised historical materialism did not need Hegel, and I gravitated toward the Marxist left almost overnight.

Could you point me towards a book or one of your essays which explains this clean version of historical materialism?

ty

Kronos

17th April 2008, 16:20

The contradictions in nature in-itself are an idealistically posed problem and you accurately describe this with your use of the oxygen-hydrogen example.

This is not a "contradiction" though. The mechanical operations in nature do not result from contradictions, because no two entities, bodies, or forces oppose each other...they simply relate. First you must understand that much of the terminology used by philosophers while modeling the universe in terms of "contradicting forces" are anthropomorphic. They are humanizing the universe, as if it struggles, as if it works, as if it experiences pain, or pleasure, or discontent, or expectation, or anticipation. No. When an apple falls off a tree and hits the ground, it wasn't "fighting" against gravity no more than gravity was fighting against the apple which struggled to stay attached to the limb. Here you do not have inertia versus gravity, or motion versus rest. You simply have forces operating through relations, and the effects of these relations are not to the expense of any other. Nowhere in nature is there "contradiction", because no one force is jeopardized by another.

If I have a master theory which attempts to explain everything in the universe and I walk around comparing this theory to the sensuous world, my theory will inevitably fall into contradiction.

Again I think the term "contradiction" is confused. If a theory is not accurate, or simply wrong, it does not mean that there is contradiction, but that there is incompleteness. If an experiment yields unexpected results, it can only mean that there are factors involved which were not accounted for. This does not mean the scientific method in such a case is wrong...but only that there are additional factors involved in the conclusion which were not known. It is the nature of theory to use induction, and while induction does not promise a specific conclusion, or even logically prove a result was necessary (see Hume), it is relevant because it is statistical- 99 times so far the sun has risen. I cannot logically prove that it will rise tomorrow....but I don't need this certainty to utilize the scientific method and understand nature. Theory does not have to be complete to be useful. We accommodate the world through such "trial and error", but there is no "contradiction" when we are wrong and/or incomplete in our knowledge.

Knowledge arises out of my conscious attempts at understanding the world and its apparently opposite nature with my consciousness. Consciousness is merely the material world (which has historically developed up to this point in time) ideally posited in humanity. Understanding sets itself up only to be knocked down again and again.

I don't really know how to respond to this. I certainly don't believe that consciousness is the material world. Rather I believe that consciousness can only be described as a kind of emergent property of the neural net, and that it is epiphenomenal- it is contingent to the nervous system but has no reciprocal effect on it. Thinking does not "cause" behavior, but vice-versa, and therefor thinking has no causal relevancy. Consciousness emerges due to the mechanical operations of the nervous system and does not influence or affect the external world. If I think I have made a decision to "raise my right hand", I am failing to understand that there are innumerable executive functions in the nervous system which precede this action and which finally come to realization in consciousness after this fact.

In it Ilyenkov clearly explains why thought is viewed as unrelated and even opposite to the object of cognition

I have never heard of this "Ilyenkov", but I will say right away that I suspect substance dualism from reading that statement. I will check him out though.

Rosa Lichtenstein

17th April 2008, 17:11

UnhappyC:

Could you point me towards a book or one of your essays which explains this clean version of historical materialism?

It's not been written yet; I am more concerned to stop the poison dripping into the system first. That will take me another ten years at least (I have been at this now for ten years already).

The best available alternative I can think of is a cross between Gerry Cohen's 'Karl Marx's Theory of Hisrory -- A Defence' (minus the techologcal determinism and functionalism), and Alex Callinicos's 'Making History' (minus the Hegelian jargon).

Rosa Lichtenstein

17th April 2008, 17:15

Kronos:

Rather I believe that consciousness can only be described as a kind of emergent property of the neural net, and that it is epiphenomenal- it is contingent to the nervous system but has no reciprocal effect on it. Thinking does not "cause" behavior, but vice-versa, and therefor thinking has no causal relevancy. Consciousness emerges due to the mechanical operations of the nervous system and does not influence or affect the external world. If I think I have made a decision to "raise my right hand", I am failing to understand that there are innumerable executive functions in the nervous system which precede this action and which finally come to realization in consciousness after this fact.

You might like to rethink this, since 'consciousness' is, in philosophy, a bogus noun invented to try to solve the Cartesian 'problem'; a classic case, as Wittgenstein saw it, of a substantive invented in place of a critique, which then forces theorists into looking for something to answer to this invented term.

So, then we have 'emergent' properties (a phrase equally meaningless), invented also to solve a spurious 'problem'.

There is no 'problem' of 'consciousness', for we all know how to use the word 'conscious' and its cognates.

UnhappyC

17th April 2008, 17:37

This is not a "contradiction" though. The mechanical operations in nature do not result from contradictions, because no two entities, bodies, or forces oppose each other...
This is basically what I said. The ideal comes into contradiction with the material world...

I don't really know how to respond to this. I certainly don't believe that consciousness is the material world.
Neither do I, at least least not in-itself, I'm not a Kantian who applies reason as an instrument. Hegel destroyed that understanding of reason 200 years ago in his introduction to the Phenomenology of Spirit.

I agree with Marx's take on this:

With me, on the contrary, the ideal is nothing else than the material world reflected by the human mind, and translated into forms of thought.I do not know how you could of interpreted my statement to mean the exact opposite.

Thinking does not "cause" behavior, but vice-versa, and therefor thinking has no causal relevancy. Thinking is the 'behaviour'! Your version turns Idealism into a purely mechanistic world outlook ("the point of view that considers the sole ‘objective’ properties of the real world to be only the spatial, geometrical forms and relations of bodies.") Mysticism is the inevitable companion of mechanism. You have merely moved 'cause' deeper within the problem. If from your point of view thinking does not cause the material changes in the body (and Marx and Spinoza would agree with you) but the other way around then ask yourself what causes the body in the first place to change. You end up on a wild goose chase always looking for the initial cause. The enigma was solved by Spinoza (at least in a very general way) by stating that thinking as thought is a property of matter found in man. Marx refined this position by adding "only nature of necessity thinks, nature that has achieved the stage of man socially producing his own life, nature changing and knowing itself in the person of man or of some other creature like him in this respect, universally altering nature, both that outside him and his own." Ilyenkov

Consciousness emerges due to the mechanical operations of the nervous system and does not influence or affect the external world. If I think I have made a decision to "raise my right hand", I am failing to understand that there are innumerable executive functions in the nervous system which precede this action and which finally come to realization in consciousness after this fact.You would not describe what a leg does by explaining how it works would you? "The fullest description of the structure of an organ, i.e. a description of it in an inactive state, however, has no right to present itself as a description, however approximate, of the function that the organ performs, as a description of the real thing that it does." You isolate consciousness from necessity. The behaviour of a leg is walking and the behaviour of the brain is thinking.

I have never heard of this "Ilyenkov", but I will say right away that I suspect substance dualism from reading that statement. I will check him out though.To quote Ilyenkov again and place the final nail in the coffin of Descartes' "substance dualism" (which oddly enough you condemn and quite rightly so but then go on to repeat almost word for word in your own explanation of consciousness['Consciousness emerges due to the mechanical operations of the nervous system and does not influence or affect the external world.'] your explanation already presuppose a objectification of thought as something unrelated to the material world).

Thinking does not evoke a spatially expressed change in a body but exists through it (or within it), and vice versa; any change, however fine, within that body, induced by the effect on it of other bodies, is directly expressed for it as a certain change in its mode of activity, i.e. in thinking. The position set out here is extremely important also because it immediately excludes any possibility of treating it in a vulgar materialist, mechanistic key, i.e. of identifying thought with immaterial processes that take place within the thinking body (head, brain tissue), while nevertheless understanding that thought takes place precisely through these processes. [...] For to explain the event we call ‘thinking’, to disclose its effective cause, it is necessary to include it in the chain of events within which it arises of necessity and not fortuitously. The ‘beginnings’ and the ‘ends’ of this chain are clearly not located within the thinking body at all, but far outside it.

Kronos

17th April 2008, 19:53

You might like to rethink this, since 'consciousness' is, in philosophy, a bogus noun invented to try to solve the Cartesian 'problem'; a classic case, as Wittgenstein saw it, of a substantive invented in place of a critique, which then forces theorists into looking for something to answer to this invented term.

So, then we have 'emergent' properties (a phrase equally meaningless), invented also to solve a spurious 'problem'.

There is no 'problem' of 'consciousness', for we all know how to use the word 'conscious' and its cognates.

I know of no other way to describe the term "consciousness", other than in the first person directive of "I am conscious", in a context which would define it for someone else. What am I to say when someone asks "what is consciousness"?

I understand what you are saying, but the moment we attempt to describe consciousness, we find difficulties, especially if we suppose it is an independent entity of its own. If there is a better way to rid thinkers and philosophers of the suspicion that consciousness is some kind of "spirit" that survives the body, rather than giving a purely material, neurological description, then please do tell. Perhaps I should have said "when the body does this and that...something happens which we call consciousness"?

Again though I agree that the only demonstrable use of the term consciousness is in the use of it as we acknowledge that we are aware, to someone else.

"Yes, I am conscious".

"He is conscious".

These alone provide the appropriate context in which the term can be behaviorally meaningful. Doing communication proves there is consciousness, but "explaining" it involves endless language games. I'm simply trying to play that game better then the "ontologists".

Rosa Lichtenstein

17th April 2008, 20:39

Kronos:

I know of no other way to describe the term "consciousness", other than in the first person directive of "I am conscious", in a context which would define it for someone else. What am I to say when someone asks "what is consciousness"?

But, you will notice that when you say "I am conscious" you are using a verb of state, not a noun.

But, there are plenty of ways we express this word: doctors report to us that their patients are conscious, or otherwise, people say they are conscious of their responsibilities, and the like. Often it works as a synonym for 'aware'.

If someone asks you what is 'consciousness', you give them examples, as I have done.

You certainly should not play the Cartesian game of suggesting there is something going on inside us all named by this word.

Check these out:

http://uk.geocities.com/philosocbbk/HanflingTalk.htm

http://www.def-logic.com/articles/silby013.html

Kronos

17th April 2008, 21:25

The ideal comes into contradiction with the material world... Before you said:

The contradictions in nature in-itself are an idealistically posed problemCongruent, yes, but still I don't see how an "ideal", which I define as both having knowledge and an intention in mind with that knowledge- example: I know that I can climb (knowledge). Ideally I want to be at the top of that mountain (intention), therefore I intend to climb it (ideal), can contradict a material state of affairs.

Here there is no contradiction in wanting to climb the mountain and not yet climbing to the top. Climbing the mountain does not resolve a contradiction, but merely achieves the ideal which is posited intentionally. If you say that remaining at the bottom while I prefer to climb to the top is a "problem", then you are supposing that the material world is in conflict while that problem exists. The conflict is mine, and it exists only insofar as I do not reach my ends. The world, however, has no ends (see Spinoza's "non-teleological" conception of the universe), so contradiction cannot exist for it.

I suspect that you are moving in the direction Hegel did with his idea that the for-itself is in a process of becoming absolute in-itself, and that some kind of "totality" will be achieved somehow when these two entities absolve one another. To the extent that I can grasp this idea, it still seems impossible if I have in mind a conception of an infinite universe, which I do. Like Spinoza, I see no "end" in existence, and therefore I can't imagine a teleological process of becoming. Can the universe finalize, can it stop at some kind of completion? I don't think so.

Also, if you haven't read what Sartre does with Hegel's ontology, you should check it out. Essentially Sartre (in Hegelian terms, mind you) is denying the "absolute" which Hegel proposes, and claims instead that the for-itself is incompatible with the in-itself, a literal impossibility. To quote him: "consciousness is what it is not and not what it is". Sartre says that by virtue of the fact that consciousness is intentional, it is literally "lacking" in being- the intentional is a negation of being....a moving toward what is not. In my example above, this "what is not" is my being at the top of that mountain. Therefore the ideal is not, but instead is a projection into a non-existent future. At that moment my consciousness is reaching toward an end, because it is lacking, and this end is no more real than my consciousness. Both transcend the material and exist as negations of reality. They both are-not.

Anyway that stuff is sticky and I don't want to go back to it. I am trying to unlearn most everything I once knew and become a logical positivist. From this moment forward I will disassemble any argument you give me, climb up the ladder, and then kick it down so you can't catch me. So there.

I'm telling you the revolution is not going to happen if we waste away arguing about Hegel. And furthermore, my motives are to empower the working classes with a sense of responsibility and courage- I don't want them getting confused and wondering if God is out to get them or disapproves of what they do. If God does exist and has it out for my comrades, then I'll deal with God myself. Only after capitalism is abolished and only one class exists will I participate in metaphysical thinking.....and I got plenty of it I assure you. Metaphysics, mysticism, religion, all of it.....as long as there exists conflicting classes and class interests, these subjects will only work to make things worse. Right? My God is better than yours, yada, yada, yada. Will God punish me if I steal a loaf of bread, yada, yada, yada. Do I deserve to be imprisoned because I spray painted an anarchy sign on the bus stop, yada, yada, yada. Am I developing into absolute spirit through my deontological freedom to make right ethical decisions, yada, yada, yada.

These questions got to go and the proletariat needs to tighten up, grab his balls and give them a good tug. Hegel does not help the proletariat with moral decisions....he only confuses him.

Sometimes I feel like Hegel should be left to the pedantic elites to discuss and not the ordinary working classes.....most of which are not every intelligent. To them, Hegel can be as scary as he can be enlightening. I want the proletariat to arrange a hierarchy of powers and organize himself according to his usefulness. I would never approach a thirty year old working class man who barely finished highschool and hand him Hegel's Phenomenology of Spirit. I would instead hand him a gun and tell him to trust our elites, our vanguard, as Lenin did, and work together like a well oiled machine.

p.s. I'm not ranting. Don't ban me. I'm just trying to produce some team spirit here. You know, like a cheerleader.