Do We Need the Dialectic?
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Young Master Smeet wrote:LBird,I may have been over-reading Pannekoek, it's page 445 in the 1961print:Panekoek wrote:It can be remarked that the addition of decimals fundamentally changed the charcter of 'magntitude' [of a star — YMS] From a quality, a class, an ordinal number, it has turned into a quantity, a measure, an amount that can be divide by fractions, a basis of measure. We cannot speak of a star of the 2,87th magnitude; but we can say it's magnitude is 2.78.
Maybe it was just because I knew he had also written on philosophy, but it does read like the application of dialectic (ish) by a practical scientist. I have to say the idea that being able to measure numerically seems to be a commonplace of defining the advance of a science.
Just had a look, YMS, thanks – by the way, pedantry compels me to detail that the passage starts "It must be remarked…" Given that Pannekoek here remarks on the change from 'quality to quantity', and not Engels' 'quantity to quality', I'm not sure that it's relevant to our discussion on dialectics. Do you have any other examples from Pannekoek (this book or elsewhere) which might lend themselves to 'structure/emergence', rather than dialectics?As I've argued, one of the strengths of Critical Realism lies in its stress on relationships which produce something new. That is, something which didn't exist in the components of the structure prior to the formation of the structure.Endless examples can be given from nature (or our understanding of nature!), human productive activity and from society. Not least, Marx's ideas about 'value'.'Value' is nothing to do with 'quantity/quality', or the other two 'dialectical laws', but can be seen as an emergent property from the particular structure of capitalist society.I personally think that 'structure/emergence' is easy to teach and for workers to employ, whereas dialectics always seems to remain in the gift of priests. No matter how many times I've asked dialecticians to explain, they fail. It's of no use in trying to understand the natural or social world.
Lbird wrote:Given that Pannekoek here remarks on the change from 'quality to quantity', and not Engels' 'quantity to quality', I'm not sure that it's relevant to our discussion on dialectics.Saving that it does seem an intriguing reversal, and, to my reading, suggesting that the transformation from observing qualities and then being able to quantify them is the correct way we should think of them: that should be the dialectical approach.
Young Master Smeet wrote:Lbird wrote:Given that Pannekoek here remarks on the change from 'quality to quantity', and not Engels' 'quantity to quality', I'm not sure that it's relevant to our discussion on dialectics.Saving that it does seem an intriguing reversal, and, to my reading, suggesting that the transformation from observing qualities and then being able to quantify them is the correct way we should think of them: that should be the dialectical approach.
[my bold]Good luck with trying to 'quantify' a quality like 'love'!Was it Einstein who said,"Not everything that can be counted counts.Not everything that counts can be counted."The 'dialectical approach'? A dead end for humanity, in my opinion.
This is another critique made against Engels http://www.newsandletters.org/Issues/1997/Dec/1297war.htm
LBird wrote:Young Master Smeet wrote:Lbird wrote:Given that Pannekoek here remarks on the change from 'quality to quantity', and not Engels' 'quantity to quality', I'm not sure that it's relevant to our discussion on dialectics.Saving that it does seem an intriguing reversal, and, to my reading, suggesting that the transformation from observing qualities and then being able to quantify them is the correct way we should think of them: that should be the dialectical approach.
[my bold]Good luck with trying to 'quantify' a quality like 'love'!Was it Einstein who said,"Not everything that can be counted counts.Not everything that counts can be counted."The 'dialectical approach'? A dead end for humanity, in my opinion.
=============================================================Commentary of Mcolome1We can try to look dialectic in different way, we can try to look for all kind of excuses, and from different sources, and we reach the final conclusion that they are all the same.My conclusion on dialectic is similar to CLR James after he broke up with Dunayeskaya: There is nothing for us in dialectic, as Young Master has indicated it is a just a "dead end for humanity"Pannekoek made a good demolishing job on Lenin pretending to be a philosopher, and he was just able to prove that he was a vulgar materialist, but look at the analysis made by this proto-Leninisthttp://en.internationalism.org/node/3102They were able to break away from Stalinism, but in essence they are Leninists and dialectician.My point is that in order to have a clear understanding of socialism, we must break away from dialectic , from Leninism, and from BolshevismThat is the reason why the approach taken by the Socialist Party on 1959 is the same as the approach taken on November 2013, it did not change, in that aspect the Socialist Party took a much better approach than Marx himself
mcolome1 wrote:…There is nothing for us in dialectic, as Young Master has indicated it is a just a "dead end for humanity"I feel compelled to clear Young Master Smeet of this scandalous allegation!In fact, it's me, LBird, who is the culprit.Hopefully, though, YMS will come to agree with me!
LBird wrote:mcolome1 wrote:…There is nothing for us in dialectic, as Young Master has indicated it is a just a "dead end for humanity"I feel compelled to clear Young Master Smeet of this scandalous allegation!In fact, it's me, LBird, who is the culprit.Hopefully, though, YMS will come to agree with me!
=====================================================Okay. Correction,( let's blame it on the keyboard,) it is L Bird, the important issue is not the person, it is the conception
LBird wrote:Hmmmm….. how many comrades still think of themselves as 'an individual'?I see that while I've been away leafletting for our local election campaign Morgenstern seems to have converted you to Zen Buddhism …
ALB wrote:LBird wrote:Hmmmm….. how many comrades still think of themselves as 'an individual'?I see that while I've been away leafletting for our local election campaign Morgenstern seems to have converted you to Zen Buddhism …
I see that while I've been away having a good night's sleep the bourgeoisie seems to have converted you to Neo Liberalism …
Neo-liberalism is a wrong term used and propagated by the leftwingers, and curiously it is a term created by the capitalist themselves.The anti-neoliberalists are apologists of state capitalism, or state regulation and intervention, measures who have been proposed by several capitalist governments and politicians. It is a clear indication that there is not difference between right wing and left wing Liberalism never existed in its own purity in France and England because the state has always participated in the economics of all class society, therefore, neo-liberalism does not exist either at the present time in any country in the whole world. To speak about neo-liberalism it is like saying that in certain moment capitalism was a public economical system, and everything was privatized by the capitalistsThis is the view of the Socialist Party in regard to neo-liberalismhttp://www.worldsocialism.org/spgb/socialist-standard/2000s/2008/no-1251-november-2008/end-“neoliberalism”
mcolome1 wrote:Neo-liberalism is a wrong term…This was merely meant as a joke, comrade, to echo ALB's use of 'Zen Buddhism', and hopefully to stimulate some discussion about whether we Communists should focus upon 'individuals' (as the ruling class insist that we do) or alternatively focus upon the relationships between 'individuals'.This is all in the context of our discussion about Critical Realism and 'structure/emergence', which as a model stresses 'relationships', as opposed to the so-called 'dialectical laws' (boo! hiss!) of Engels and Lenin.As a model post of objectivity, I'll leave you to judge where my beliefs lie.
LBird,we can't, as yet, quantify love. But if we could build a fully functional computer simulation of a working brain, then it would become literally possible. Also, we can speculate that we could measure hormonal responses to stimulous and assess teh presense of hormones associated with the love instincts. If we could do that, that would be an advance of reason, and we would have turned a quality into a quantity, and thus understand and control it better. We could then obey our new robot overlords…
Looking for something else (Marx's mistaken support for various wars) in Marx Without Myth by Maximilien Rubel and Margaret Manale, and at the risk of waking a sleeping dog, I also found these:24 October 1867: Marx receives a letter from Dietzgen in which "he explained to Marx his own theory of a materialist Weltschauung and remarked that 'science is not so much a matter of fact as it is of explanations for these facts'." (p. 228)May 9 1868: "Already foreseeing the end of his 'Economics', Marx wrote to Joseph Dietzgen that he wanted to undertake a book on dialectics and declared that 'true laws of dialectics are to be found already in Hegel, in a mystic form, however. The problem is to divest them of this form'." (p. 233)1868: "In October Dietzgen sent Marx the manuscript of his work, Das Wesen der menschlichen Kopfarbeit [The Essence of Human Brain Work] for critical appraisal. Marx commented that Dietzgen's writing 'turned in circles', lacked 'dialectic development' and ought to be greatly condensed (to Engels, Oct. 3). Engels found that it showed remarkable instinct and would be 'even brilliant if one could be sure, he had discovered it for himself' (Nov. 6). Marx rejected Engels's suspicion that Dietzgen might have borrowed from other writers, adding that 'it is his misfortune that it was precisely Hegel whom he did not study …' (Nov. 7). To Meyer and August Vogt in New York Marx remarked that, judging from his correspondence with Dietzgen, the latter was 'one of the most genial working men' he knew (Oct. 28). Dietzgen wrote a review of Capital for the Demokratisches Wochenblatt upon Marx's request (Aug.-Sept). In December Marx wrote to Kugelmann about Dietzgen's manuscript, saying that it contained 'despite a certain confusion and excessive repetitiveness much excellent material and—as the independent effort of a working man—is even much to be admired' (Dec. 5)." (p. 239)1875: "In mid-December he [Marx] wrote to Dietzgen that once he had finished with his 'Economics' he intended to write on the subject of dialectics" (p, 300).1882: "On January 5 he [Marx] reported receiving a letter from Dietzgen concerning the latter's recent studies in 'dialectic cognition' and the works of Hegel. To this Marx commented sarcastically that 'the poor fellow has gone forward 'backwards' and 'arrived' at the Phenomenology. I consider the case incurable." (p. 326)
Young Master Smeet wrote:we can't, as yet, quantify love. But if we could build a fully functional computer simulation of a working brain, then it would become literally possible.I know that you're joking, YMS, but this is the philosophical problem that 'emergence' throws into sharp relief.Is 'love' an emergent and unmeasurable property, or something that can be counted by reference to the components of the brain?The bourgeois obssession with 'measurement' is a reflection of their money-oriented ideology. You know, 'they know the price of everything, but the worth of nothing'.This is the whole point of the quote that I gave earlier, about counting/counts. One is an 'objective measurement' (sic) but the other is a 'human estimation'.
YMS wrote:We could then obey our new robot overlords…We already are, comrade…Bourgeois ideologists brainwashing workers: 'You will say you're an individual'Workers lacking class consciousness: 'Yes, I am an individual'The first task of Communists is to shift the ideological focus of our lives onto the relationships between individuals. 'Individuality' is the smoke-screen of the bourgeoisie, to hide exploitation.Then, when asked by bosses, or their lickspittles in the media or education, 'Are you an individual', workers will answer, 'No! I'm a worker'.Then we'll know we're on our way, comrade!
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