Bertrand Russell
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I’m glad you have found your religion Marcus. Marxism is dialectical, no Marxism = no socialism and no hope of a ‘coherent theory’ of anything. As far as I know the best that can be said of Lenin was that he started out as an idealist before his megalomania forced him to rationalize the brutality of his political actions – just propaganda he convinced himself of and he certainly had no claims to be any kind of philosopher – not even a third rate one.
Religion is believing in a god, and I do not have any god, the Socialist Party has a pamphlet named: How the gods were made, which might help you to understand that. There is no such thing as Marxism, it was created by Bakunin, Engels, and some of Marx collaborator, that would be the real religion because it would turn Marx into a god which can not be questioned and everything is perfect, and there are many errors and flaws within Marx and some of his ideas belong to his time, and Marx himself said that he was not a Marxist. The socialist party has accepted the most acceptable conception of Marx, or the Marxian theory. I think Lenin was closer to Marx ideas at the beginning of his political career, and then he twisted everything. Dialectic is only applicable to the realm of the mind. Socialism existed before Marx and Engels and they recognized that even more Engels said on his book Utopian and scientific socialism, that it is a creation of the working class, socialism/communism was defined a long time ago. Lenin did not convince himself, he convinced millions of millions, and the Russian revolution was the catalyzation to spread his ideas
Mattick jnr’s ‘Marx’s Dialectic’: https://libcom.org/library/marxs-dialectic-paul-mattick-jr
Heavy going but this is the passage I retained (from the German Ideology):
“where real life starts, there consequently begins real, positive science, the expounding of the practical activity, of the practical process of development of people. Phrases about consciousness end, and real knowledge has to take their place. When reality is described philosophy as an independent pursuit loses its medium of existence. At the best its place can only be taken by a summing-up of the most general results, abstractions which are derived from the observations of the historical development of people. These abstractions in themselves, divorced from real history, have no value whatever. They can only serve to facilitate the arrangement of historical material.” (Marx and Engels 1976, 37)6
https://www.radicalphilosophy.com/article/jospeh-dietzegen
It was Joseph Dietzgen, it was not Georgki Plekhanov as it has been said by many years, and it was not Anton Pannekoek either. Marx created the Materialist Conception of History, clearly and simply defined by Engels on Marx funeral:
Just as Darwin discovered the law of development or organic nature, so Marx discovered the law of development of human history: the simple fact, hitherto concealed by an overgrowth of ideology, that mankind must first of all eat, drink, have shelter and clothing, before it can pursue politics, science, art, religion, etc.; that therefore the production of the immediate material means, and consequently the degree of economic development attained by a given people or during a given epoch, form the foundation upon which the state institutions, the legal conceptions, art, and even the ideas on religion, of the people concerned, have been evolved, and in the light of which they must, therefore, be explained, instead of vice versa, as had hitherto been the case.
None of the above alters the fact that all Marx’s work is infused with the dialectical method. ‘Internal relations’ are described in terms of the interpenetration of opposites, the transformation of quantity into quality and the negation of the negation. This is the only way to understand the internal contradictions that transform something into something else. All of this is in the philosophical tradition going back to Plato. It is purely cultural bias that seeks to deny this and replace it with the religion of science.
I think, perhaps inadvertently, you have put your finger on it: that the language of dialectics is a cultural way of describing observed phenomena learned in particular by those who attended a German university in the first half of the 19th century (like you know who).
In other words, as Marcos has pointed out, dialectics is one way of describing observed changes in phenomena not something that is in the phenomena themselves. It belongs to the realm of human thought not to that of “Nature”.
I am sure it is possible to describe observed changes in this language even if this might be a bit convoluted. Anyway, have a go at explaining how water changes from liquid to gas or how an animal species evolved in terms of changes in “internal relations”. I am sure you can.
We do love philosophy discussions here. But, to be fair, we do discuss other things too,
marcos wrote: “Marx created the Materialist Conception of History, clearly and simply defined by Engels…”
This is a myth, marcos.
All the evidence shows that Engels ‘created’ what he then ‘clearly and simply defined’.
I’d advise any comrades interested in this issue to read Terrell Carver’s Marx & Engels: The Intellectual Relationship, especially chapters 4 (The Invention of Dialectics) and 5 (‘Second Fiddle’?).
‘In other words, as Marcos has pointed out, dialectics is one way of describing observed changes in phenomena not something that is in the phenomena themselves. It belongs to the realm of human thought not to that of “Nature”.’
This implies that scientific descriptions of nature are not human creations but are somehow ‘Godlike’ pronouncements that exist outside of their cultural context. Science is created by scientists who are as human as anyone else. Science is a human construct and one of the most powerful descriptions of observed phenomena that we have but its origins are philosophical (i.e. logic, reason, empiricism etc.).
It doesn’t imply that at all. Of course science is a human construct — a phenomenon of the mind as Marcos points out — and so is also culturally influenced. What we are looking for is a description that reliably predicts the course of a series or set of phenomena and so is of more practical use.
But you need to be careful, Wez, in case you catch bird flu — and have to self-isolate 😊
Yeah, I keep waiting to hear the fluttering of idealist wings.
‘ What we are looking for is a description that reliably predicts the course of a series or set of phenomena and so is of more practical use.’
And that is precisely what Marx’s theory of history does – based on dialectical philosophy. It doesn’t get more ‘practical’ than that. If you agree that both philosophy and science are a ‘phenomena of the mind’ we have no debate. Your statement that science gives us access to something that is in the phenomena themselves implies a contrast with philosophy in general – even materialist philosophy?
ALB wrote: “What we are looking for is a description that reliably predicts…“.
This is not what Marx was concerned with, ALB.
He was concerned with our human power to actively ‘CHANGE’ our world, not to passively ‘PREDICT’ the world.
Marx wasn’t a 18th century materialist, as Engels erroneously thought.
Of course, ‘materialists’ regard any reference to Marx’s ‘conscious activity’ as simply ‘idealism’. That is the fruit of Engels’ misunderstanding: a supposed ongoing ‘great battle’ between ‘ideas’ and ‘matter’. Marx disposed of that ideology in the 1840s, but Engels resurrected it. That’s the tradition within which the SPGB stands, and it’s the same one as Lenin, Plekhanov, Kautsky, Trotsky, etc…
It’s a dead end, comrades.
“This is not what Marx was concerned with, ALB. He was concerned with our human power to actively ‘CHANGE’ our world,”
LBird, i think i have raised the point of your own lack of action to change the world by declining to join the only political organisation i think you empathise with, despite your disagreements.
“Language serves not only the purpose of distinguishing things but also of uniting them – for it is dialectic.” – Dietzgen, June 9, 1886
In November, Engels bicentennial, arises. This will offer you ample opportunity to critique all things Engelsist.
alanjjohnstone wrote: “LBird, i think i have raised the point of your own lack of action to change the world by declining to join the only political organisation i think you empathise with, despite your disagreements.”
But I haven’t been ‘inactive’, alan. I’ve spent several years, with much input from the posters here (many who have now left), trying to get to grips with Marx’s development and creation. It’s become very clear to me (perhaps too slowly, unlike Marx’s very quick reaction of “All I know is that I’m not a ‘Marxist’! “, when confronted with the fruits of Engels’ teachings within the French Materialists) that what passes as ‘Marxism’ has nothing whatsoever to do with Marx.
But, for a worker who has had to struggle to throw off the imbecilities of the ‘Trotskyists’, who were completely dominant in the schools and universities when I first started to enquire about ‘Marxism’ and communism, I haven’t done too badly. I got my first degree at 32, so I’m hardly a ‘quick developer’, more of a ‘relentless plodder’. But such is the life of workers under capitalism.
As for the SPGB, and my joining, you’re correct that I’m attracted to your openness and willingness to sustain criticism, and alleged commitment to ‘democracy’, which are all the complete opposite to the Trot parties. But…
… my attempts to point out the contradiction between ‘democracy’ and ‘materialism’ (as Marx also pointed out) have been met with simple hostility. It would seem pointless to join a party that says one thing, but thinks another. I must say, too, that it’s a very big surprise that not one other poster has even attempted to discuss this political problem. It seems that the ideology of ‘materialism’ is at the very roots of the party (which is fair enough if that’s what’s honestly believed), but it would seem to preclude the joining by a Marxist, who would insist on the democratic control of the social production of ‘truth’.
So, I do ’empathise with’ the ostensible ideas of the SPGB, but to me, the membership don’t!
BTW, Bertrand Russell was talking through his arse, as even he himself later admitted (regarding the ideology of mathematics in the late 19th/ early 20th centuries). Perhaps it’s unnecessary to say this, but most mathematicians are ‘materialists’. Marx and Einstein seem to have been left to rot. Capitalism, eh?
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