Hello all, I'm new to RevLeft but have read with interest some of Rosa's essays. I too came to reject Hegelianism after: a. Doing a philosophy degree and b. Reading Gerry Cohen's excellent book. My view of dialectics is that they are inessential for Marxism; Marxism as I see it is not a philosophy or an all-encompassing worldview with a spiritual dimension. As such, I follow Lukács in rejecting Engels' remarks on Dialectics having a place in nature, and I also reject them in a philosophical/metaphysical sense. That said (and I haven't yet been able to find a satisfactory answer in Rosa's writings, perhaps someone could link me?):- What makes Historical Materialism "dialectical"? Why the innate conflict in class society? Do we resort to a socially scientific empirical validation from across the history of class society in order to justify HM? Do dialectics only exist within HM? (I think that is their only place, tbh.) Does HM have any dialectical content at all, and if not; why is it a viable theory? (Unless it is seen simply as the aforementioned sociological-empirical hypothesis). The little I have managed to glean so far - though i'm sure Rosa has written more - is that Rosa says HM "makes sense" to workers and socialists; which I agree with but is this any kind of justification for the theory? After all, dialectics "made sense" to Hegel/Heraclitus/Plato etc (Supposedly! ) Personally, I see dialectics in its HM form as an explanatory model which encapsulates real world results in (not to mention common sentiment about ) class society. For that reason and that reason alone, dialectics has a place in Marxism. In this sense, I think Marxism has a powerful claim to being a "scientific" theory. What do you think? I hope someone can give me a conceptually coherent explanation as to how an anti-dialectical Marxist theory of HM can work, i'd be extremely grateful for any replies Edit: What... the... http://www.socialiststeve.me.uk/rosa.htm Is this a joke?!
I think historical dialectics actually create and reinforce class structure, and I think its taken many different forms. I actually see Capitalist society as following a sort of historical materialism, in the sense that if were good and serve the capitalist system well, all want and hunger will be abolished when all the third world countries have WalMarts and McDonalds to feed them. We'll be able to fly our space rockets to Disneyland on the moon, and everyone will live hapily ever after. Im being fecetious, but that is the story weresold in a nutshell. I don't really see much difference between the American Dream and the dream of global, stateless communism sold by the Soviet state. They both claim a final destination where everyones finally happy and in harmony and beyond historical struggle. I see Feudalism in Europe as having been held together by a mystical dialectic. They had a historical framework that held that man was one with nature and God in the garden of Eden, and then he fell from paradise for being bad and had to be punished. Life was now all toil under the vengeanceof a God theyangered. Then the Son of God was born, and you have to submit to his authority, this "Lord" to find salvation, and one day history will end,a nd all will be at peace. In reality The subjugation of "the lord" from the feudal serfdom is the very thing that alienated man from harmony with nature int he first place. That authority argued that only through obedience to the existing state at the time "that of feudalism" would end their condition of suffering and alienation in the middle ages. In the same way the dialectical aim of the American dream sells this same idea, that the present condition can be transcended if we only serve the corporate-state loyaly enough. In the same way, the dialectic aim of Soviet paved Communism said we could only resolve the current epoch of historical conflict by serving the party-state loyally.
