Another favourite response of late is for dialectically-distracted comrades to claim that these Essays contain "nothing new" (or that they have been "plagiarised"). This is just the latest example (reply here).
Despite this, anyone reading my work will find that most of the content of my Essays is entirely original. Where I have borrowed from others, I have generally acknowledged that fact.
Of course, comrades who have made this accusation have been challenged to reveal where these allegedly "plagiarised" ideas have appeared before; to date, not one has responded. Either they cannot provide this information, or they simply enjoy being enigmatic. However, I suspect other motives.
One desperate dialectical soul (10th post down at the above link --, and again, here) even tried to claim I had not written these Essays! Who he supposes the real author to be he mysteriously kept to himself.
Others have begun to claim that I quote the dialectical classics "out of context" (for example, here and here), but when they are asked to explain the 'right context', oddly enough they go rather quiet. In many places, in fact, I endeavour to quote the entire context (for example, here), but even where I do not, it is difficult to defend Engels, for instance, from the charge of out-right inconsistency when he tells us in one breath:
"Finally, for me there could be no question of superimposing the laws of dialectics on nature but of discovering them in it and developing them from it." [Engels (1976), p.13. Bold emphasis added.]
And then in the next he says things like this:
"Motion is the mode of existence of matter. Never anywhere has there been matter without motion, nor can there be…. Matter without motion is just as inconceivable as motion without matter. Motion is therefore as uncreatable and indestructible as matter itself; as the older philosophy (Descartes) expressed it, the quantity of motion existing in the world is always the same. Motion therefore cannot be created; it can only be transmitted….
"A motionless state of matter therefore proves to be one of the most empty and nonsensical of ideas…." [Engels (1976), p.74. Bold emphases added.]
[There are in fact dozens of pages of a priori dogmatics like this in Engels's work alone; these have been collated here.]
Do we really need much context to appreciate the glaring inconsistency here -- especially since this is the traditional way that Philosophy has been practiced for well over two thousand years, which all dialecticians copy (as will be demonstrated in Essay Two)?
Beleaguered dialecticians have also begun to claim that they are "too busy" to work their way through these Essays (or respond to them), a convenient excuse that allows them to continue making all manner of baseless assertions about me and my work, copying hackneyed errors off one another, without actually having read a single one of of them. A particularly good recent example of this syndrome can be found here.
To be sure, no one
has to read a single word I write, but then those who refuse to do so should refrain from passing comment on material about which they know nothing.
[Perhaps the worst offender in this regard, who posts under the name "Volkov", can be found fabulating away here and at RevLeft under the name "Axel1917" [added: he no longer posts at RevLeft]. This comrade is an 'expert' in all I have ever had to say, even though he admits he has not read a single one of my Essays!]
Another excuse is that my work is far too long/difficult -- something that clearly does not prevent them wading through page after page of Hegel's 'Logic', or studying
Das Kapital in detail. Indeed, this does not stop them dismissing my work as a "rant" (another favourite term), or as a "screed", even while they pass judgement on its content in total ignorance. [They even refuse to read the shorter summaries I have written, and warn others to ignore me!]
However, if I write short articles, they are branded "superficial"; if I write long and detailed Essays, they are too long, or are "tedious and boring". In fact, dialecticians already "know the truth" --, and it has "set them free"; i.e., "free" from having to read anything that might disturb their mystical slumber.
Another recent ploy is to argue that while I might have examined the ideas of dialecticians A, B and C, I should have examined instead the work of X, Y and Z. Then another comrade will complain that while I might have examined the ideas of A, B and X, I should have concentrated on C, D, and Z! Another will advise I confine my attention to A, D, and W, and so on.
Trotskyists complain if I quote Stalin and Mao's writings; Maoists and Stalinists moan if I do likewise with Trotsky's; non-Leninist Marxists will bemoan the fact that I have not confined my comments to Hegel and Marx, advising me to ignore the confused or "simplistic" thought of Engels, Plekhanov, Lenin, Stalin, Mao and Trotsky.
Of course, because these comrades have not read my work, none of them know that I have in fact looked at A, B, C, D,.., W, X, Y and Z's work (along with Marx and Hegel's). Indeed, since most of the material dialecticians produce is highly repetitive, this quite often means that to look at A's work is in fact to look at almost everyone else's!
However, the most common complaint on the Internet from academic (or quasi-academic) Marxists is that I have ignored theorists such as Lukacs, Adorno, Habermas, Zizek, Ollman, and the like. In fact, I have explained why I have done this (for example, here). Several of these HCD-theorists [HCD = High Church Dialectician, a term explained in Essay Nine Part Two] will be addressed anyway in later stages of this work. [Sections of Ollman's work, for example, have already been examined in Essay Three Part Two.]
Apart from those listed above, the most common reactions to my work (from comrades who have 'debated' this with me on the internet, or elsewhere) are the following:
(1) An expression of total incredulity that there are genuine Marxists who would even think to question this dearly beloved doctrine, or who claim (as I do) that Philosophy in its entirety is a completely bogus discipline. This is then often accompanied with a parallel inference that I am therefore not a Marxist -- even though Marx, too, rejected Philosophy!
Naturally, the above would mean that being a Marxist is merely a matter of definition (and a rather narrow one at that: i.e., "Only those who do not question tradition are genuine Marxists") --, and, incidentally, one that ignores Lenin's advice that no theory is sacrosanct, or above criticism.
(2) A rapid retreat to the claim that dialectics is not "a royal road to truth", but is merely a "method" (these comrades not noticing that this concession completely undermines its 'objectivity').
(3) The posting of several long (or short) quotations from the DM-classics, often of tenuous relevance.
(4) Page after page of bluster, abuse and misrepresentation.
Naturally, twenty-five years of having to endure such vilification would make anyone (other than a 'saint') rather tetchy, if not somewhat aggressive in return.
[Indeed, from here the reader will see that my forthright response to their attacks on me is something DM-fans cannot stomach. Sure, they can lie about, and abuse me, but Ms Lichtenstein must take this lying down, and be all sweetness and light in return.]
(5) Posing the bemused question: What other concepts are there that could possibly account for change?
However, the apparent obviousness of the reply that these comrades hope to elicit (viz.: "You are right, there are none, so dialectics must be correct…") is itself plainly a consequence of the conceptual desert DM has created inside each dialectical skull. As will soon become apparent from reading the Essays posted at this site (for example, this one), there are in fact countless words and phrases in both the vernacular and the sciences that allow changes of every conceivable sort and complexity to be depicted (and thus explained) in limitless detail. Indeed, ordinary words do this far better than the lifeless and obscure jargon Hegel invented in order to fix something that wasn't broken. Moreover, every single one of these everyday terms can be appropriated with ease for use in HM. In fact, the best revolutionary papers already do this. They
have to if they want to sell copies to workers!
This is quite apart from the embarrassing fact that dialectics itself cannot explain change!
(6) A casting of the usual slurs e.g., "anti-Marxist", "positivist", "sophist", "logic-chopper", "naïve realist", "revisionist", "eclectic", "relativist", "post modernist", "bourgeois stooge", "pedant", "absolutist", "elitist", "empiricist", and so on.
Naturally, when such comrades are described as "mystics" in return, they complain about "name-calling". Once more, they are allowed to dish it out (but not very well), but they cannot take it.
(7) The attribution to me of ideas I do not hold, and which could not reasonably have been inferred from anything I have said or written -- e.g., that I am a "postmodernist" (which I am not), an "empiricist" (same comment), a "Popperian" (I am in fact an anti-Popperian), that I am a "sceptic" (and this, just because I challenge accepted dogma, when Marx himself said he doubted all things and Lenin declared that all knowledge is provisional), that I am an "anti-realist" (when I am in fact neither a realist nor an anti-realist --, I am indeed a "nothing-at-all-ist" with respect to philosophical theory -- this must not be confused with Nihilism!), that I'm a "positivist" (same reply!), that I am a "reformist" (when I am the exact opposite), or that I am a "revisionist" (when Lenin enjoined us all to question accepted theory).
Once more, these are often advanced by comrades who have not read a single one of my Essays (but this does not prevent them from being 'experts' about my work, or from making things up about me), or they have merely skim-read parts of my essays.
Naturally, they would be the first to complain if anyone else did this with the writings of Marx, Engels, and Lenin. [This is just one of the latest examples. Here's another.]
Indeed, Engels himself waxed indignant with Dühring over precisely this point:
"In connection with Herr Dühring's examination of the Darwin case, we have already got to know his habit, 'in the interests of complete truth' and because of his 'duty to the public which is free from the bonds of the guilds', of quoting incorrectly. It becomes more and more evident that this habit is an inner necessity of the philosophy of reality, and it is certainly a very 'summary treatment'. Not to mention the fact that Herr Dühring further makes Marx speak of any kind of 'advance' whatsoever, whereas Marx only refers to an advance made in the form of raw materials, instruments of labour, and wages; and that in doing this Herr Dühring succeeds in making Marx speak pure nonsense. And then he has the cheek to describe as comic the nonsense which he himself has fabricated. Just as he built up a Darwin of his own fantasy in order to try out his strength against him, so here he builds up a fantastic Marx. 'Historical depiction in the grand style', indeed!" [Engels (1976), p.159. Bold emphases added Quotation marks altered to conform to the conventions adopted here.]
Dühring is not allowed to do this, but apparently it's OK for dialecticians to do it to my work!
(8) The rejection of "bourgeois logic" (i.e., modern Fregean and post-Fregean logic).
This is the oddest response, since such comrades invariably know no logic at all (and in many cases, not even Aristotelian logic!), even while they have uncritically swallowed the 'logic' found in Hegel -- who, as we all know, was a fully paid-up member of the working-class,
and not the least bit bourgeois!
So, for such comrades, it is lack of knowledge that makes each and every one of them expert logicians -- a nice 'dialectical contradiction' if ever there was one. [Many even moan when this is pointed out to them; here is a good example.] Plainly, too, that would make George W Bush a leading theoretical Physicist and the late Ronald Reagan a towering authority on brain surgery.
Furthermore, all this is often garnished with stereotypical, ill-informed and erroneous comments maligning Wittgenstein as a "bourgeois" apologist, or as a mystic, or both -- as if Hegel himself were squeaky clean in this regard!
[On that particular issue, see the Additional Essay posted here.]
Of course, it is perfectly possible to be a revolutionary socialist and know no logic at all, but if comrades are going to pontificate about MFL [Modern Formal Logic] (or even AFL [Aristotelian Formal Logic]) they ought to at least learn some first.
(9) Of late, dialectically-desperate comrades have adopted a new tactic when the ridiculous nature of their core belief system has been exposed:
(a) They deny that the dialectical classics say the things that I allege of them, or,
(b) They try to argue that the rather odd things found in the Classical Dialectical Grimoire are not to be taken literally (they are merely "metaphorical", or "whimsical"), or,
(c) They claim that Engels, Trotsky, and/or Lenin, etc., are not authorities when it comes to DM. [Yes, they are
that desperate!]
This they maintain even in the face of the quotations themselves (recent examples of this ploy can be found here, here here, and here), and despite the fact that it has been pointed out to them that similar tactics were adopted by Christians when confronted with modern science -- i.e., these open mystics claim that the Book Of Genesis, for instance, is "metaphorical", too.
However, who exactly is the authority in matters dialectical they mysteriously refuse to reveal (even when asked).
So, DM-fans, it seems, will say anything, try any ploy and dodge, invent and lie, twist and turn beyond even the knotted pretzel stage, rather than question the theory that history has already refuted.
[A good recent example of this can be found in the twisted logic and frenetic special-pleading found here (in the posts of one "Gilhyle").]
Political 'spin doctors' look recklessly truthful, open and honest in comparison!
Finally, dialectically-distracted comrades more often than not either refuse to respond to the vast majority of my criticisms of their embattled theory, or they just ignore them. In fact, this is worryingly reminiscent of the desperate response given under cross examination by William Jennings Bryan, the prosecutor in the infamous "Scopes Monkey Trial" in Tennessee, 1926, summarised for us in this book review:
"But there is also an embarrassing side to Bryan: the 'great commoner' was a Bible-banging fundamentalist. When officials in Dayton, Tennessee decided to roast John Scopes for teaching evolution in 1925, they called in the ageing Bryan to prosecute. The week-long trial became a national sensation and reached its climax when the defence attorney, Clarence Darrow, called Bryan to the stand and eviscerated his Biblical verities. 'Do you believe Joshua made the sun stand still?' Darrow asked sarcastically. 'Do you believe a whale swallowed Jonah? Will you tell us the exact date of the great flood?' Bryan tried to swat away the swarm of contradictions. 'I do not think about things I don't think about,' he said. The New York Times called it an 'absurdly pathetic performance', reducing a famous American to the 'butt of a crowd's rude laughter'. This paunchy, sweaty figure went down as an icon of the cranky right. Today, most Americans encounter the Scopes trial and Bryan himself in a play called Inherit the Wind. I once played the role of Bryan and the director kept saying: 'More pompous Morone. Make him more pompous.'"[James Morone, London Review of Books, 21/02/08. Bold added.]
In my experience, the vast majority of DM-fans "do not think about things they don't think about", either.
Added, 23/03/10 -- the latest, and perhaps the most desperate accusation advanced against me over the last twenty-five years is that
I'm a policeman!
As if a policeman could screw up Dialectical Marxism any better than its own acolytes have managed over the last 130 years or so!
