Do We Need the Dialectic?
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I think Marx was more influenced by Feuerbach than by Hegel, and he also broke away from the methaphyisical conceptions of Feuerbach, therefore, Marx was not a Hegelian from the beginning up to the end of his life, as the Marxist-Humanists and the follower of Raya Dunayeskaya have claimed for several years. Marx did not write Capital based on the Hegelian dialectic either, I have read Capital and I have not seen any dialectic conception in any of the three volumes, he was a critical materialist
mcolome1:"And the word Period sounds like the typical imposition of peoples who think that they know everything. Being a petty bourgoise is not only a social stand, it is also a mentality"You really must calm down. The use of the word "period" is quite common in English, and indicates that what one wants to say ends there with no additional qualification intended.So, to make it painfully obvious what I meant, here is my earlier comment rephrased:Steady on there, sunshine! I nowhere said Engels wasn't relevant at all for anything else whatsoever; only that he wasn't relevant to what Marx believed about Dietzgen.And that is confirmed by what I also asaid earlier, which you quote again:"Thanks for that, but Engels's opinion is hardly relevant to what Marx thought about Dietzgen (and we now know what that was — see his comments in my last post)."There, you can see what I meant — what Engels had to say is only relveant to what he (Engels) believd about Dietzgen, and no one else.I can only think you have problems with the English language if you think I was making a comment about the relevance of Engels's words to anything else."Being a petty bourgoise is not only a social stand, it is also a mentality"With all due respect, twisting another's words is also symptomatic of another frame of mind, too.
ALB:"For the record, Ollmann does not claim that it was Marx that used this word. Re-read the footnote and you'll see he says Engels did."Yes, you are right. Apologies.
Er, can someone tell me why I can edit only some of my comments in this thread, but not all of them.And, how do you use the quotation (and indentation) system here?
(quote=Rosa Lichtenstein)And, how do you use the quotation (and indentation) system here?(/quote)But instead with square brackets rather than parentheses, thus:
Rosa Lichtenstein wrote:And, how do you use the quotation (and indentation) system here?Any name or reference can be substituted after the first bracketed 'quote'….or none at all.
Joseph Dietzgen wrote:And, how do you use the quotation (and indentation) system here?You'll get the hang Can't answer why you're unable to edit all of your comments.
"when I say that no worker could possibly understand DM, I do not intend to demean them, since I also claim that no one could possibly understand this theory " Phewwww… am i pleased to read that bit by Rosa. I always thought myself as an ignoramus when dialects is raised…(as also when quantum physics is talked about).
alanjjohnstone wrote:"when I say that no worker could possibly understand DM, I do not intend to demean them, since I also claim that no one could possibly understand this theory " Phewwww… am i pleased to read that bit by Rosa. I always thought myself as an ignoramus when dialects is raised…ajj, all you need to know about 'dialectics' is that it comes from the Ancient Greek 'dia-lego', which literally means 'through-talk' (or 'talk through', or discuss).There can't be a 'dialectic in nature' because the only part of nature that talks and discusses is humanity.Dialectic can only refer to conscious human activity: rocks don't talk, nature 'tells' us nothing unbidden.As to whether it's useful to discuss whether a 'dialectical method' exists which can be used to try to understand nature, I'm not sure. Every time I've tried to get someone to describe this epistemological method to me, they seem to lose their temper because I'm apparently thick or something. It seems to me to have a bit of a religious overtone to it, in that one must have faith in what one is being told, and not ask critical questions (ironically, given 'dia-lego'!) of either the method or the person describing it.Perhaps Rosa can contribute here; they, too, seem to have taken a lot of stick from the 'dialecticians'. I'm not sure if Rosa thinks that there is anything to 'dialectics' in the sense of 'human discussion'.
Reinstating Omitted References(1) Marx–Engels Correspondence
(1) Marx, 7 Nov 1868, wrote:I regard Dietzgen’s development, in so far as Feuerbach, etc. — in short, his sources — are not obvious, as entirely his own independent achievement. For the rest, I agree with everything you say. I will say something to him about the repetitions [i.e., in agreement with Engels-to-Marx of 10 Oct 1878].It is bad luck for him that it is precisely Hegel that he has not studied.(2) Capital Vol. 1 — Afterword to the Second German Edition
(2) Marx, 24 Jan 1873, wrote:The fact that the movement of capitalist society is full of contradictions impresses itself most strikingly on the practical bourgeois in the changes of the periodic cycle through which modern industry passes, the summit of which is the general crisis.That crisis is once again approaching, although as yet it is only in its preliminary stages, and by the universality of its field of action and the intensity of its impact it will drum dialectics even into the heads of the upstarts in charge of the new Holy Prussian–German Empire.[Emphases and mid-paragraph breaks added.]
L Bird:"I'm not sure if Rosa thinks that there is anything to 'dialectics' in the sense of 'human discussion'."That is certainly the classical view of the subject, but I prefer not to use the word since it has been ruined by Hegel, and by those who think he had anything uselful to teach humanity.
twc, thanks for those quotations; taking each in turn:1) I didn't quote the first one since it didn't seem to me to add anything obvious to what we know about Marx's opinion of Dietzgen. But, I assume you included it here because of this passage:"It is bad luck for him that it is precisely Hegel that he has not studied."Except, it is quite clear that Dietzgen had studied Hegel.But, let us assume Marx was right; even then, it isn't too clear what he meant by this. For example, I am glad I have studied Hegel since it has shown me how not to do philosophy. I'm assuming Marx meant it that way, too.How do I know? Well, the only summary of 'the dialectic method' that Marx published and endorsed in his entire life contains not one atom of Hegel, and yet Marx (not me, Marx) calls it 'the dialectic method' (not 'a dialectic method', nor yet 'part of the dialectic method', but 'the dialectic method'), and "my method". So, Marx's engagement with Hegel taught him to ignore Hegel completely.Hence, Marx was lamenting the fact that Dietzgen hadn't done the same.2) You quote this from the Postface to the second edition of Das Kapital:"The fact that the movement of capitalist society is full of contradictions impresses itself most strikingly on the practical bourgeois in the changes of the periodic cycle through which modern industry passes, the summit of which is the general crisis."That crisis is once again approaching, although as yet it is only in its preliminary stages, and by the universality of its field of action and the intensity of its impact it will drum dialectics even into the heads of the upstarts in charge of the new Holy Prussian–German Empire."I have never claimed that Marx didn't use 'the dialectic method' in Das Kapital; the question is: What did he mean by this phrase? Well, we needn't speculate since Marx very kindly told us: in the aforementioned summary of this 'method' no trace of Hegel is to be found. So, Marx's 'method' owes nothing whatsoever to Hegel.But, what about his use of 'contradiction'?Again, as I pointed out in an earlier post (to which yours seems to be a reply), Marx had already told us in the very same Postface that he was merely 'coquetting' with a few Hegelian phrases in Das Kapital. So, that comment will cover the above use of 'contradiction', too.And, we can see that this is so since a literal interpretation of that passage would have to be read as follows:"The fact that the movement of capitalist society is full of arguments/propositions and their negations impresses itself most strikingly on the practical bourgeois in the changes of the periodic cycle through which modern industry passes, the summit of which is the general crisis."Is that really what Marx meant?I think not.
Gnome, thank you for those tips, but I tried them out and they didn't seem to work. So, either I misread you, or your explanation might need a little tweeking.Can anyone else tell me how to indent quotations?
Alan:"Phewwww… am i pleased to read that bit by Rosa. I always thought myself as an ignoramus when dialects is raised…(as also when quantum physics is talked about)."Well, the only thing preventing anyone from understanding Quantum Mechanics is their education (not that that is their fault either), whereas, no matter how much an individual is educated, it is no more possible to understand dialectics than it is to understand the Christian Trinity.
Rosa Lichtenstein wrote:twc, thanks for those quotations; taking each in turn:1) I didn't quote the first one since it didn't seem to me to add anything obvious to what we know about Marx's opinion of Dietzgen. But, I assume you included it here because of this passage:"It is bad luck for him that it is precisely Hegel that he has not studied."Except, it is quite clear that Dietzgen had studied Hegel.But, let us assume Marx was right; even then, it isn't too clear what he meant by this. For example, I am glad I have studied Hegel since it has shown me how not to do philosophy. I'm assuming Marx meant it that way, too.How do I know? Well, the only summary of 'the dialectic method' that Marx published and endorsed in his entire life contains not one atom of Hegel, and yet Marx (not me, Marx) calls it 'the dialectic method' (not 'a dialectic method', nor yet 'part of the dialectic method', but 'the dialectic method'), and "my method". So, Marx's engagement with Hegel taught him to ignore Hegel completely.Hence, Marx was lamenting the fact that Dietzgen hadn't done the same.You've got the wrong end of the stick again.Presumably the manuscript that Marx was discussing was that later published by Dietzgen as The Nature of Human Brainwork. Anyone reading this will see that it shows no influence of Hegel's thinking at all. It is essentially Kant's theory without the mysterious "thing-in-itself" that Kant argued lay behind the world of appearances (phenomena). According to Dietzgen, there is nothing behind this world; it is the world. As he put it,
Quote:Phenomena or appearances appear – voilà tout.Hence Marx's reference in one of the quotes you found to Dietzgen progressing backwards to "Phänomenologie".To an objective observer, it is clear that Marx is criticising Dietzgen for not having read Hegel. I don't think Dietzgen did and that of course is to his credit (as you have pointed out, to really understand Hegel you have to be a christian).I don't think that Dietzgen would have got the concept of "dialectics" from Hegel either. After all, Kant wrote about it too, In fact that's who Hegel got it from, but giving it a quite different meaning.If only you knew it, Dietzgen as a non-Hegelian is on your side.This is all getting a bit esoteric. SPGB will soon stand for Socialist Philosophers of Great Britain !
Rosa, here’s how to indent quotations of TEXT for NAME: [qvote=NAME] TEXT [/quote] That produces
NAME wrote:TEXT
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