Diamat or materialist dialectics

I just wanted to mention that many of us have (for decades really) referred to communist philosophy as "materialist dialectics" -- both because it helps us take distance from a more mechanical view of materialism and because (as a term) it makes it clear that we are not simply endorsing/applying that particular 1930s codification known as "dialectical materialism."

Discussion over terms and labels are (in the final analysis) semantics and symbolic -- but the heart of it is a process of continuity and rupture:

meaning upholding the creative core of dialectics and scientific materialism, while working to identify and criticize elements of mechanical materialism that have crept into orthodox forms of communist philosophy.

In keeping with actual dialectics, we should seek to keep our philosophical system open ended (not closed, codified self-satisfied, doctrine). A self-critical approach to a self-critical theory -- that is open to both the larger world of thought and the even larger world of practice.

For example, my own materialist dialectics has been (over the last years) making room within it for developments by communist philosophers like Althusser and Badiou -- adding overdetermination as a very important concept on mediation of contradiction, and also finding ways of integrating the badiouan concept of event (alongside and into the previous communist concept of conjuncture).

cheers.

Neither althusser nor badiou are marxists. Sorry for the short response.

I'm not sure what your point is.

First, both Badiou and Althusser are clearly communists -- in the sense that they are part of the partisan struggle to create a classless liberated world -- and they clearly make their contributions (largely philosophical, but at times political) in that framework.

Whether the two are Marxists as well, i suppose, depends on our definition of marxist. (They both consider themselves Marxists... though materialism reveals that you can't decide what someone is (or represents) by simply examining what they believe they are.)

But are you arguing: a) they are not marxist (of your particular kind) so therefore b) what they are saying can't be valid?

And even if they were not Marxists of a particular kind.... what are you arguing? That we have nothing to learn from their work? Why? do we only learn from people who agree with us? (I learned a lot about materialist philosophy by studying Darwin -- especially the examination of Darwin's notebooks by Niles Eldridge... this is true even if Darwin is (obviously) no Marxist. Is that wrong or surprising?

But if you are arguing we can only learn from people who are a specific kind of marxist then it seems to be turning communist theory and philosophy into a strangely mechanical and closed system. Do you start your examination of an idea with the question "is this already something I already agree with?" and then reject it (a priori) if it is not? How will you learn new things that way? How will your communist thinking develop and deepen?

Doesn't communist philosophy develop? Won't new things repeatedly be added to communist philosophy, old things modified, some things problematized? Or do you think "everything we need to know has already been said?"

Marx (coming out of deep training in Hegelian idealist dialectics) posited that there was a materialist version of the Hegelian concept of "negation of negation." Stalin repeats that in his work on diamat. But Mao, after extensive exploration of the concepts and with the infusion of insights from traditional Chinese idealist dialectics, argues that "negation of negation" doesn't exist.

So, what do we do about a controversy like that? Do we say "Marx said it, i believe it, that settles it." (As if we were some kind of communist fundamentalists defending a communist bible prophesy?) Or do we say, such controversies are natural in a developing philosophical exploration, and lets examine the issues on their merits?

And if you think that communist philosophy is a closed system (rooted in what Marx said? Where is your cutoff date for new thinking? Marx after all never wrote a book on philosophy....), how exactly is that dialectical of communist dialectics?

Don't we need to take a dialectical and materialist approach to dialectical materialism (meaning: don't we assume it changes dynamically, and that it needs to be repeatedly tested and developed in relationship with reality and new thinking?)

In the Marxist theory of causality, I think Althusser's concept of overdetermination (drawn interestingly from some insights initially developed in psychoanalytic theory) has great value (in avoiding mechanical causation, inevitabilism and other problems of non-dialectical thinking). Are you arguing that overdetermination is not a contribution to materialist dialectics? If so, what are you saying is wrong with it?

Returning to my earlier point: Marx never wrote a work on philosophy... after his early (some-say semi-hegelian days before 1848). But Althusser's work (for example in his book "Reading Capital") is to examine Marx's great work on economics as if it was an exercise in philosophy. He asks what can we learn and extract philosophically from Marx's work in that way. And (although inevitably there are places I part company with Althusser, including on his rather one-sided structuralist recoil from anything that whiffs of humanism) I think Althusser's work is an extremely insightful excavation of the philosophy (and method) of Marx... and is itself a contribution to our developing communist philosophy.

If you don't agree, that is fine of course. But why? How do you differ?

In short, you apologize for your "short response." But I have to say, it is too short to be clear. I'm just not sure exactly what you are arguing.

Sorry, let's see where I can start.

Marxism is not a "closed" system, and Dialectical Materialism should not be closed either.

However, our lifetime is limited, and we can be a bit a priori in order not to waste our time. I don't have time to read Francis Fukuyama, but I know what he stands for, and I have had the time to read summaries. I know that I don't have much to learn from him politically.

In the same way, Althusser, a stuffy old academic who is assigned to students by "Marxian" stuffy old academics. A man who, inhaling the stale vapours of the closed ivory tower, became intoxicated and could not tell a revolution when it hit him in the head.

I'm sorry, but whatever he may have said years later, his position during the May 68 events is the ultimate litmus test. The country burned around him, and he attacked the students for it, calling them infantile ultra-lefts.

Now you may tell me this is unrelated to philosophy, and I would answer: au contraire! This is the most important philosophical question. If you cannot recognize the transformation of quantity into quality that occurs when the thousands of little slights and injustices transform into an eruption of revolutionary proportions, you have nothing to tell me about philosophy.

And you are not a Marxist.

Mental illness does not count against the man, I judge him on everything but that one tragic incident.

The same goes for Stalin or Mao, who did not really contribute anything theoretically. Stalin's one useful work was on the national question and it was more or less dictated to him by Lenin.

I also don't think it is necessary to change the name of dialectical materialism simply because a parody of it was forced on the world by the bureaucracy.

Shrugs. Well, I suspect that is not a particularly dialectical approach.

First, I think we can learn from many different forces... including (paradoxically) our opponents (who are less reluctant to point out our faults than our friends, for example). That doesn't mean adopting the views of our opponents.

Mao (in his lifelong fight for materialism) argued "no investigation, no right to speak" -- meaning that if you haven't investigated something, your views on it aren't worth much.

No one is arguing that each of us needs to read everything (and I haven't chosen to spent time on Fukuyama either) -- the argument is: If you choose not to investigate something, you don't get to have a verdict that counts for much.

There is a method common among anti-communists: It is "look what XXX did, who cares what he thought?" Meaning (as we all have seen): "Lenin (or stalin, or Mao, or Castro) killed all these people, who cares what their ideas were?"

And it is a method that points people away from ideas, and that imposes (instead) a cartoonish distortion of reality. (Since, obviously the anticommunist claims about communist holocausts are generally distorted and exaggerated).

But we also shouldn't adopt such methods. I hear leftists saying "Heidigger was complicit with Nazis, what could we learn from his philosophy?" And it is a cheap method (largely useful for those who don't WANT to seriously engage ideas). Cuz you pick one political error (or what you believe was an error) and then use that as an excuse to avoid a world of ideas and controversies.

I was personally in france during 1968, I fully appreciate the importance of those upsurges and the political forces that emerged from them. And Althusser (who was always too entangled in the CPF) did not play a major positive role in those key months. But the fact remains that his life's work (on philosophy) is precious for us...

And a method that dismisses a philosopher (and his work on Marxism) because he took an (admittedly) terrible stand at a key juncture is a method that really doesn't see theoretical work as its own sphere, and thinks life is little more than a sequence of political crossroads.

And frankly, there is not a single political figure that can't be smeared by that method... "Lenin arrived in Russia on a German train, what more do you need to know?"
"Mao took American arms and radios when he was in Yenan, what more to you need to know?"
"Althusser strangled his wife in an episode of mental illness, what more do you need to know?"
"Marx once called LaSalle a nigger, what more do you need to know?"
and so on....

I don't actually think it is "necessary" to change the name of dialectical materialism. (Where do we go in life to get confirmation of whether something is "necessary" or merely desireable?) I'm merely explaining that I (and a lot of others) use materialist dialectics for our philosophy because we don't want to be confused with diamat. It works sometimes (to avoid confusion) and it doesn't at other times.

"dialectical and historical materialism" was not a phrase used by marx at all... and we need not be wedded to it in any case. But the point (as you are correctly suggesting) is not the terminology or semantics, but the actual content of our philosophy.

Marx (coming out of deep training in Hegelian idealist dialectics) posited that there was a materialist version of the Hegelian concept of "negation of negation." Stalin repeats that in his work on diamat. But Mao, after extensive exploration of the concepts and with the infusion of insights from traditional Chinese idealist dialectics, argues that "negation of negation" doesn't exist.

As someone very influenced by Raya Dunayevskay and CLR James, I'd be curious to see what Mao's argument was here. I can't help but think of James's in Dialectical Materialism and the Fate of Humanity, when he wrote:

The Stalinist state, the Nazi state, and in their varying degrees all states today, based upon property and privilege, are the negation of the complete democracy of the people. It is this state which is to be destroyed, that is to say, it is this state which is to be negated by the proletarian revolution. Thus, the inevitability of socialism is the inevitability of the negation of the negation, the third and most important law of the dialectic. I have said earlier that the laws of the dialectic are “hypotheses”.