ok guys show me what ya folks got

basically, i asked KC to tell me what has he gotten out of dialectics that makes the latter worth as some sort of way of thinking. this is an honest question and i would like people to tell me what kindof insights have they gotten out of this that do not make sense without "dialectics".

i agree rosas method is a little to inciendary and honestly i dont think the issue of dialectics is really that important. i do agree with the "ordinary language" philosophy expressed by rosa and wittgenstein though, and i do think that if something cannot be expressed clearly then it is probably nonsense. furthermore, if something makes really lax use of language, to the point that it could be used for anything just because of its vagueness then its probably nonsense too.

now, what type of insights have you guys gotten from DM?

for example, in my opinion saying that "opposite" charges in physics prove dialectics its a really dishonest use of language. what "opposite charges" mean in the physicist language game has very little to do with the "opposites" use by marxists concerning opposite classes, for example

Comrade, you can use ordinary language to express the same ideas, as Rosa does here:

The class war drives social change -- mediated by the inter-play between the forces and relations of production.

as Hiero said:

She would not explain what this meant. Her defendents gave it a go, and they can only assume. Some say that words like inter-play have been used by Marx, it is possible, in the German Ideaology he uses "intercourse" instead of relations of production.
But basically Rosa's counter theory comes down to replacing words. If we replace mediate with contradiction we are back to Marxist dialectics.

it doesn't matter if we use the same jargon as Marx or invent our own. the point is that dialectics demonstrate why capitalism will fall, due to its own contradictions. that's what I find useful about it.

I think we can verify that the idea of a contradiction in capitalism leads to its decline by examining the move of industry from most first world nations to less developed ones, because the cost of paying for a first world proletariat is too much in this period. anyway, that's an example of a contradiction- the tendency for the rate of profit to fall.

all that rubbish about applying dialectics to nature and physics, I don't see the value in it.

I just think dialectical thought is already a part of natural science and physics. even during marx's lifetime he saw darwin's new theory as a dialectical approach/solution but he must have been well aware that darwin didn't present it as a result of DiaMat. I think marx saw the univerality of the meta-structure of an analysis like darwinism, whereas Darwin was not aware or interested in that, like scientists in general and didn't have any reason to point it out or emphasize it.

it doesn't matter if we use the same jargon as Marx or invent our own. the point is that dialectics demonstrate why capitalism will fall, due to its own contradictions. that's what I find useful about it.

I think we can verify that the idea of a contradiction in capitalism leads to its decline by examining the move of industry from most first world nations to less developed ones, because the cost of paying for a first world proletariat is too much in this period. anyway, that's an example of a contradiction- the tendency for the rate of profit to fall.

i think the jargon is a necessary component of philosophy- because in my opinion, philosophy is after all the abstraction of common language words, and beyond that there is not much to it. So yes, if we do not use the same jargon or not there is a very important difference.

i think the conclusion you came to does not need any "dialectical" method of thinking. its just straight up economics. its like saying keynes was a dialectician because he knew that capitalism was "conflicted" or had contradictions, as you people like to say.

one of the reasons ive heard in this forum about not abandoning DM was because of some sort of need of theory of agency rather than technological determinism. i found this issue interesting, although i find both approaches wrong. could someone elaborate on this?

I just think dialectical thought is already a part of natural science and physics. even during marx's lifetime he saw darwin's new theory as a dialectical approach/solution but he must have been well aware that darwin didn't present it as a result of DiaMat. I think marx saw the univerality of the meta-structure of an analysis like darwinism, whereas Darwin was not aware or interested in that, like scientists in general and didn't have any reason to point it out or emphasize it.

this is wrong. trust me. i study physics and there is no such thing as "dialectical" thought in the field. in fact, if i wrote a thesis about that i would probably be flunked out.

what I'm saying is the various established theories came about as a result of an approach to problems, which you can call a dialectical approach. I mean Marx wasn't saying that without an explicit recognition and conception of dialectical thinking and methods, nothing is or was ever discovered and understood. He was just recognising that analysis of any aspect of the world succeeds when when the phenomena are viewed or analysed dialectically. So whether or not a physicist reads about the metaphysics of dialectics before he sits down to solve a problem or whether he simply sits down and works on it, in the end he will solve his problem when he thinks about it dialectically. Am I making sense? maybe not

one of the reasons ive heard in this forum about not abandoning DM was because of some sort of need of theory of agency rather than technological determinism. i found this issue interesting, although i find both approaches wrong. could someone elaborate on this?

If we look at the relationship between the means of production and the relations of production as a one-way causal relationship which prioritises the former you end up with technological determinism. If you prioritise the other way, you end up with voluntarism.

A dialectical approach which seeks to study the inter-relations between both in their historically specific unfolding, avoids the pitfalls of the above and develops a more complex open-ended explanation.

Have you got any specific questions?