Do We Need the Dialectic?

[Rosa Lichtenstein]

mcolome1:

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Marx's letter to Engels : "My view is that Dietzgen would do best if he condensed his ideas into 2 printed sheets and had them printed in his name as a tanner. If he publishes them at the intended length, he will make a fool of himself because of the lack of dialectical development and the running in circles." As he put it in a later letter (11-8068), "it is his bad luck that it was precisely Hegel that he did not study." It looks like  Marx never abandoned Hegel completely.

I covered this several pages ago, where I pointed out that when it comes to deciding at what a certain author believes, published sources take precedence over unpublished, especially when the published material was written after the unpublished.In this case, the above (unpublished) letter was written several years before Marx's published comments about 'the dialectic method', in the Postface to the second German edition.So, my contention still stands: by the time he came to write Das Kapital, Marx had waved 'goodbye' to that mystical bumbler, Hegel — except for the odd phrase or two with which he merely wished to 'coquette'.

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[Rosa Lichtenstein]

mcolome1:

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http://www.internationalmarxisthumanist.org/articles/hegel-in-10-minutes-by-david-blackThis is an article published by the  International Marxist Humanist Organization about Hegel

And in ten minutes, I take Hegel apart, here: http://anti-dialectics.co.uk/Outline_of_errors_Hegel_committed_01.htmAnd, in much more detail here:http://anti-dialectics.co.uk/page%2008_03.htm

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[Anonymous]

Rosa Lichtenstein wrote:

mcolome1:

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Marx's letter to Engels : "My view is that Dietzgen would do best if he condensed his ideas into 2 printed sheets and had them printed in his name as a tanner. If he publishes them at the intended length, he will make a fool of himself because of the lack of dialectical development and the running in circles." As he put it in a later letter (11-8068), "it is his bad luck that it was precisely Hegel that he did not study." It looks like  Marx never abandoned Hegel completely.

I covered this several pages ago, where I pointed out that when it comes to deciding at what a certain author believes, published sources take precedence over unpublished, especially when the published material was written after the unpublished.In this case, the above (unpublished) letter was written several years before Marx's published comments about 'the dialectic method', in the Postface to the second German edition.So, my contention still stands: by the time he came to write Das Kapital, Marx had waved 'goodbye' to that mystical bumbler, Hegel — except for the odd phrase or two with which he merely wished to 'coquette'.

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Marx published Capital in 1867; this is  what he wrote in 1875. : As Marx stated in a passage in Volume Two that Engels left out of the published version, “In my zealous devotion to the schema of Hegelian logic, I even discovered the Hegelian forms of the syllogism in the process of circulation. My relationship with Hegel is very simple. I am a disciple of Hegel, and the presumptuous chattering of the epigones who think they have buried this great thinker appear frankly ridiculous to me.”This should put to rest the claim that “Marx’s mature work in political economy is not dependent upon Hegel and dialectics. See Marx-Engels Gesamtausgabe [MEGA²] (Berlin: Akademie Verlag, 2008), Band II/11, S. 32, Fn. 10. See also Oeuvres de Karl Marx, Economie II, edited by Maximilien Rubel (Paris: Editions Gallimard, 1968), p. 528. The manuscript that this statement appears in was written in 1875.

[Anonymous]

Rosa Lichtenstein wrote:

mcolome1:

Quote:

http://www.internationalmarxisthumanist.org/articles/hegel-in-10-minutes-by-david-blackThis is an article published by the  International Marxist Humanist Organization about Hegel

And in ten minutes, I take Hegel apart, here: http://anti-dialectics.co.uk/Outline_of_errors_Hegel_committed_01.htmAnd, in much more detail here:http://anti-dialectics.co.uk/page%2008_03.htm

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Why so many peoples are wrong and the only one that is correct is you and you are the only who says that you are correct ?

[Rosa Lichtenstein]

Mcolome1, I think you need to edit your last post to make it clear which are your words and which are mine.

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Marx published Capital in 1867; this is  what he wrote in 1875.

In fact, the Postface to the second edition was published in January 1873.But what of the later passage you quoted?

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“In my zealous devotion to the schema of Hegelian logic, I even discovered the Hegelian forms of the syllogism in the process of circulation. My relationship with Hegel is very simple. I am a disciple of Hegel, and the presumptuous chattering of the epigones who think they have buried this great thinker appear frankly ridiculous to me.

I'd appreciate it if you could tell me the exact date of this letter, and to whom it was written, so I can check it in my copy of the complete works.But, let us assume it is 100% genuine; does it prove the things you allege?Not really. As I have pointed out several times: no unpublished source can take precedence over published material when it comes to ascertaining a writer's genuine opinions.But, what does this letter actually tell us?

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I even discovered the Hegelian forms of the syllogism in the process of circulation.

This is on a par with being able to see the face of Jesus Christ in a current bun. I can't see that Marx is being serious here; he is obviously still' coquetting'. 

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My relationship with Hegel is very simple. I am a disciple of Hegel,

Well, I am a disciple of Gottlob Frege, but I disagree with most of what he had to say. Now, we know this was also true of Marx in relation to Hegel, since he published a summary of 'the dialectic method' which contains not one atom of Hegel, but which he still called 'the dialectic method'. If his opinion of Hegel were still as high as some maintain, he wouldn't have done this, or said that. He'd have said something like this:

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Whilst the writer pictures what he takes to be actually my method… what else is he picturing but the dialectic method, providing we incorporate in there some Hegelian logic, but 'the right way up', of course?"

But he didn't; so this published source must take precedence over an unpublished, and ambiguous letter.

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the presumptuous chattering of the epigones who think they have buried this great thinker appear frankly ridiculous to me

I have already covered this point. I think Plato was a 'great thinker' and I am critical of those who would dismiss him with a wave of the hand, but I still disagree with 99.99% of what he had to say.

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This should put to rest the claim that “Marx’s mature work in political economy is not dependent upon Hegel and dialectics.

1) I have never doubted that 'dialectics' was important for Marx, the question has always been what did he (not you, not me, not Engels, not anyone else), what did he think this word meant.Well, we needn't speculate since Marx told us in the Postface to the second edition — and the summary of 'the dialectic method' he quoted and endorsed contains not one milligram of Hegel.2) So, unless you can come up with a comment written and published by Marx, contemporaneous with or subsequent to January 1873, it is settled: Marx's mature work was indeed a Hegel-free zone.

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[Rosa Lichtenstein]

mcolome1:

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Why so many peoples are wrong and the only one that is correct is you and you are the only who says that you are correct ?

In fact, my criticisms of Hegel are commonplace among analytic philosophers, but they aren't generally known to most Marxists since they are almost totally ignorant of this current in modern philosophy.But, let us suppose for one moment that I am the only person in the entire history of the planet who has argued this way, what then?Well, someone has to innovate, someone has to point out that this emperor is not only without clothes, he isn't even an emperor!Can you imagine someone saying this of Copernicus ?

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Why so many peoples are wrong and the only one that is correct is you and you are the only who says that you are correct ?

If we all simply believed only what others accept, there'd be no progress, and we'd all still be living in caves.My arguments stand or fall on their own merit, and do not depend for their validity on how many people I upset in the meantime.

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[Anonymous]

Rosa Lichtenstein wrote:

mcolome1 wrote:

http://www.internationalmarxisthumanist.org/articles/hegel-in-10-minutes-by-david-blackThis is an article published by the  International Marxist Humanist Organization about Hegel

And in ten minutes, I take Hegel apart, here: http://anti-dialectics.co.uk/Outline_of_errors_Hegel_committed_01.htmAnd, in much more detail here:http://anti-dialectics.co.uk/page%2008_03.htm

Why so many peoples are wrong and the only one that is correct is you and you are the only who says that you are correct ? It sounds like talking to yourselvesI think you do not have any understanding of Hegel at all, and think that by critiquing the stupidities of what called itself "dialectical materialism" (a term marx never used and which has nothing to do with Hegelian dialectics or Marx's work) you think you have made some great discovery

[Anonymous]

It do not have to edit anything, you want to be too bossy. My writting appear at the bottom. This is the source who is also shown on the original message published. For you Marx  is a Hegel  free zone, but for me Marx never rejected Hegel completely. This manuscript is from MEGA edition written in 1875 See Marx-Engels Gesamtausgabe [MEGA²] (Berlin: Akademie Verlag, 2008), Band II/11, S. 32, Fn. 10. See also Oeuvres de Karl Marx, Economie II, edited by Maximilien Rubel (Paris: Editions Gallimard, 1968), p. 528. The manuscript that this statement appears in was written in 1875.

[Rosa Lichtenstein]

mcolome!:

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I think you do not have any  understanding of Hegel at all, and think that by critiquing the stupidities of what called itself "dialectical materialism" (a term marx never used and which has nothing to do with Hegelian dialecticsor Marx's work) you think you have made some great discovery

Well, what you think and what you can show or prove are two different things —  so, if you think you can show where my demolition of Hegel's core argument goes wrong, let's hear it.Anyway, let's assume that I do not "have any understanding of Hegel", then I'm in  good company, since no one 'understands' Hegel — or, if they do they've kept that secret well hidden for 200 years.It's not possible to 'understand' Hegel's unique brand of gobbledygook, any more than it is possible to 'understand' the Christian Trinity (which, as I have pointed out several times already, originated in the same Neo-Platonic swamp that spawned Hegel's confused musings — I'm rather surprised avowed atheists give Hegel a second thought (apologies if I assume too much about your beliefs)).

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[LBird]

DJP, further to our discussion of Ollman, some considerations upon dialectics and critical realism.One of the main principles of Critical Realism is that when components are combined in a certain way they might form a new ‘structure’, and this structure might then produce ‘emergent properties’.Of fundamental importance for our understanding is to realise that these ‘emergent properties’ are not located in the components themselves. The ‘emergent properties’ do not exist prior to the building of the structure, so they are by definition historical properties. If the structure collapses, the ‘emergent properties’ are lost, and they now do not exist. They are not present in the wreckage of the structure, within the components, even if all the individual components of the structure remain intact. ‘Emergent properties’ are not parcelled out at a lower level: without the specific relationships, of which the structure consists, they are not in existence. They are relational properties. I will give some examples of this later, if any comrades require them, for understanding. Please ask.My purpose of outlining Critical Realism is to allow us to compare it with a part of Engels’ version of ‘dialectics’.If we look closely at one of Engels’ examples of ‘the transformation of quantity into quality’, we find it is nothing of the sort.

Engels, Anti-Duhring, wrote:

In conclusion we shall call one more witness for the transformation of quantity into quality, namely — Napoleon. He describes the combat between the French cavalry, who were bad riders but disciplined, and the Mamelukes, who were undoubtedly the best horsemen of their time for single combat, but lacked discipline, as follows:“Two Mamelukes were undoubtedly more than a match for three Frenchmen; 100 Mamelukes were equal to 100 Frenchmen; 300 Frenchmen could generally beat 300 Mamelukes, and 1,000 Frenchmen invariably defeated 1,500 Mamelukes.”Just as with Marx a definite, though varying, minimum sum of exchange-values was necessary to make possible its transformation into capital, so with Napoleon a detachment of cavalry had to be of a definite minimum number in order to make it possible for the force of discipline, embodied in closed order and planned utilisation, to manifest itself and rise superior even to greater numbers of irregular cavalry, in spite of the latter being better mounted, more dexterous horsemen and fighters, and at least as brave as the former.

http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1877/anti-duhring/ch10.htmIn fact, what Engels is describing here is not a ‘dialectical transformation of quantity into quality’, but ‘emergence of properties from a new structure’.The mere quantitative addition of ‘Frenchmen’ would not achieve the ‘transformations’ which are described. It is quite clear that even 10,000 Frenchmen, stood as individuals and not in any specific structural relationships, would be defeated by only 1,000 Mamelukes.It is not mere quantitative accretion that produces qualitative change, but the specific structuring of more Frenchmen into an Army. An army is not mere numbers, but specialisation of roles, co-ordination, equipment, training, sub-structures, etc., a structuring which produces properties that don’t exist at the individual level, abilities, efficiencies, ideas, morale, esprit d’corps, a unit that acts as one under a commander. The French Revolutionary armies under Napoleon won battle after battle because their new structures were better than those of the armies opposing them. This was nothing to do with merely increased numbers, as ‘dialectics’ would suggest, but the emergence of new structural properties, as ‘critical realism’ would suggest.Engels’ essentially passive ‘transformation of quantity into quality’ leaves out the human, creative element, which Marx stressed in his Theses On Feuerbach:

Marx wrote:

The chief defect of all hitherto existing materialism – that of Feuerbach included – is that the thing, reality, sensuousness, is conceived only in the form of the object or of contemplation, but not as sensuous human activity, practice, not subjectively. Hence, in contradistinction to materialism, the active side was developed abstractly by idealism – which, of course, does not know real, sensuous activity as such.Feuerbach wants sensuous objects, really distinct from the thought objects, but he does not conceive human activity itself as objective activity.

http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1845/theses/theses.htmCritical Realism depends upon active humans, whereas Engels’ Dialectics ignores the active restructuring by humans of nature and consciousness, in favour of passive contemplation of natural development.

[Rosa Lichtenstein]

mcolome1:

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It do not have to edit anything, you want to be too bossy. My writting appear at the bottom.

It's all the same to me if you can't quite grasp the posting protocols of this site. So, in future, I won't assume you care whether or not your posts resemble a dog's dinner.

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This is the source who is also shown on the original message published. For you Marx  is a Hegel  free zone, but for me Marx never rejected Hegel completely. This manuscript is from MEGA edition written in 1875

So, you can't, or won't, tell me exatly when the letter was written or to whom it was sent. Fine, no matter; I was still able to show that it makes no difference to the fact that Das Kapital is a Hegel-free zone.

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For you Marx  is a Hegel  free zone, but for me Marx never rejected Hegel completely.

What you or I think is irrelevant, it is what Marx had to say about 'the dialectic method' in a published source that is important. So, and unfortunately for you, Marx disagrees with you, as I have shown.That is, unless you can come up with that missing passage, written and published by Marx after January 1873, that summarises 'the dialectic method' in a way that involves Hegelian concepts/'logic'.Oh wait! There isn't one.

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[ALB]

Rosa Lichtenstein wrote:

I have never doubted that 'dialectics' was important for Marx,

Thanks for conceding this point. So what do you think he meant by it? What does non-Hegelian dialectics look like?

Rosa Lichtenstein wrote:

it is settled: Marx's mature work was indeed a Hegel-free zone.

You keep on asserting this but this is a question of historical fact and the facts show that, although he profoundly disagreed with Hegel's idealism and christianity and abandoned the flowery Young Hegelian language of his university and post-graduate and early socialist days, Marx still retained a soft spot for Hegel. Not that this makes any difference either way. Your case against "diamat" (and "philosophy" in general) is not weakened in any way by this. As you yourself have said,

Rosa Lichtenstein wrote:

My arguments stand or fall on their own merit, and do not depend for their validity on how many people I upset in the meantime.

And irrespective of what Marx may or may not have thought or any other appeal to authority.  As it happens, you do have a good case against "diamat".

[Rosa Lichtenstein]

LB:I'm afraid, Critical Realism is just a different  version of the same old a priori dogmatic approach to theory I referred to earlier — yet another example of how the ideas of the ruling-class always rule (in this case, they rule another set of Marxist 'intellectuals').

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The mere quantitative addition of ‘Frenchmen’ would not achieve the ‘transformations’ which are described. It is quite clear that even 10,000 Frenchmen, stood as individuals and not in any specific structural relationships, would be defeated by only 1,000 Mamelukes.It is not mere quantitative accretion that produces qualitative change, but the specific structuring of more Frenchmen into an Army. An army is not mere numbers, but specialisation of roles, co-ordination, equipment, training, sub-structures, etc., a structuring which produces properties that don’t exist at the individual level, abilities, efficiencies, ideas, morale, esprit d’corps, a unit that acts as one under a commander. The French Revolutionary armies under Napoleon won battle after battle because their new structures were better than those of the armies opposing them. This was nothing to do with merely increased numbers, as ‘dialectics’ would suggest, but the emergence of new structural properties, as ‘critical realism’ would suggest.

Is this supposed to be an application of Engels's 'Law'?

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The transformation of quantity into quality and vice versa. For our purpose, we could express this by saying that in nature, in a manner exactly fixed for each individual case, qualitative changes can only occur by the quantitative addition or subtraction of matter or motion (so-called energy)…. Hence it is impossible to alter the quality of a body without addition or subtraction of matter or motion, i.e. without quantitative alteration of the body concerned.[Dialectics of Nature. Bold emphasis alone added.]

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This is precisely the Hegelian nodal line of measure relations, in which, at certain definite nodal points, the purely quantitative increase or decrease gives rise to a qualitative leap; for example, in the case of heated or cooled water, where boiling-point and freezing-point are the nodes at which — under normal pressure — the leap to a new state of aggregation takes place, and where consequently quantity is transformed into quality. [Anti-Duhring. Bold emphases added.]

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For the rest, however, the assurance he gives us is only half right unless it is completed by the Hegelian nodal line of measure relations which has already been mentioned. In spite of all gradualness, the transition from one form of motion to another always remains a leap, a decisive change. This is true of the transition from the mechanics of celestial bodies to that of smaller masses on a particular celestial body; it is equally true of the transition from the mechanics of masses to the mechanics of molecules — including the forms of motion investigated in physics proper: heat, light, electricity, magnetism. In the same way, the transition from the physics of molecules to the physics of atoms — chemistry — in turn involves a decided leap; and this is even more clearly the case in the transition from ordinary chemical action to the chemism of albumen which we call life. Then within the sphere of life the leaps become ever more infrequent and imperceptible. — Once again, therefore, it is Hegel who has to correct Herr Dühring.[Ibid. Bold added.]

If so, have taken this 'law' apart here:http://anti-dialectics.co.uk/page%2007.htm

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[Rosa Lichtenstein]

ALB:

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Thanks for conceding this point. So what do you think he meant by it? What does non-Hegelian dialectics look like?

I haven't 'conceded' anything. I have maintained this all along, and in my Essays. Here, for example, is my reply to twc on page 15, post #146:

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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.

In fact, I have to make this very point up front everytime I discuss this topic, since the first thing I am accused of is denying Marx had a 'dialectic method'. Here, for instance, is a recent example of this (taken from August this year):

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First of all it will help if you get my ideas right:1) I have never denied Marx used dialectics in Das Kapital. What I have denied is that he used anything derived from Hegelian dialectics (upside down or 'the right way up') in that work. The very best he could do was to 'coquette' with a few Hegelian terms-of-art in that book, and the summary of the 'dialectic method' he added to the Postface to the second edition (the only summary he published and endorsed in his entire life) suggests that his 'dialectic method' more closely resembles that of Aristotle, Kant and the 'Scottish Historical School' (of Ferguson, Millar, Robertson, Smith, Hume and Stewart).

 http://www.revforum.com/showthread.php?1883-First-Response-To-Anti-Dialectics-Site&p=11311&viewfull=1#post11311So, please get your facts straight.

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So what do you think he meant by it? What does non-Hegelian dialectics look like?

It doesn't matter what I think, or what you think, or what Engels or anybody else thinks. When it comes to what Marx believed about 'the dialectic method' it is only relevant to consider what he thought.Fortunately, we needn't speculate, since he very helpfully added a summary of 'the dialectic method' to the Postface to the secind edition of Das Kapital. In that summary not one atom of Hegel is to be found, and yet Marx still calls it 'the dialectic method'.So, if you want to know what "non-Hegelian dialectics" looks like (at least as Marx understood the term), check out that summary.My guess, too, is that it also resembles the 'dialectic method' of Aristotle, Kant, and the Scottish Historical School (of Ferguson, Millar, Roberston, Smith, Hume and Steuart), all of whom were influential on Marx (and Hegel).

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You keep on asserting this but this is a question of historical fact and the facts show that, although he profoundly disagreed with Hegel's idealism and christianity and abandoned the flowery Young Hegelian language of his university and post-graduate and early socialist days, Marx still retained a soft spot for Hegel. Not that this makes any difference either way. Your case against "diamat" (and "philosophy" in general) is not weakened in any way by this. As you yourself have said

There is no evidence in published sources (after, say, 1873, when the second edition of Das Kapital came out) to back up the idea that Marx had a 'soft spot' for Hegel. In fact, as the Postface to the second edition shows, Das Kapital is indeed a Hegel-free zone.And I'll keep on asserting this until you, or someone else, comes up with a passage, written and published by Marx after January 1873, that summarises 'the dialectic method' in a way that involves anything specifically Hegelian.

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[ALB]

Fair enough, but I'd say that Dietzgen's "dialectical materialism" is another example of non-Hegelian dialectics and he never was a Hegelian in his younger days. It has nothing to do with Plekhanov/Lenin version as explained by Anton Panneloek in Lenin As Philosopher.

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