Do We Need the Dialectic?
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Marx, The German Ideology, (CW 5, p. 28) wrote:We know only a single science, the science of history. One can look at history from two sides and divide it into the history of nature and the history of men. The two sides are, however, inseparable; the history of nature and the history of men are dependent on each other so long as men exist.
http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1845/german-ideology/ch01a.htm
Interesting quote and interesting idea, but two things. Wasn't the German Ideology a joint Marx-Engels production? And this is a passage they crossed out. It would be interesting to know why, but we'll never know.What do you think they were trying to express in the crossed-out passage?
ALB wrote:What do you think they were trying to express in the crossed-out passage?I think that they were trying to express what I wrote earlier:
LBird, post 418, wrote:The production of knowledge of both natural and social science is done by humans.Natural and social science both employ the same method.If social science can be bourgeois, so can natural science.If natural science can be socially-neutral, so can social science.If anyone disagrees with these theses, please detail the different theories of cognition used by natural and social sciences.I'm with Pannekoek, who argues that scientific knowledge is created by humans (not by nature or a neutral method) and Marx, who argues that humans must unite natural and social science into a singular method.The belief in the separation of natural and social science is a bourgeois ideological belief.The notion that the 'science' of nature has a socially-neutral method, which differs from that of the science of society, has been destroyed by bourgeois philosophers themselves. Even religious thinkers, as you yourself have shown, know this.It's my opinion that 'Engelsian' positivist science is a break with Marx's earlier formulations; a break which was caused by the power of positivist science in the 19th century to influence social ideas, especially Engels' views of science; and a break which leads to the separation of humans from nature and thus politically the separation of party from class.I might be wrong, but in none of the discussions so far, on a number of threads, has there been any proper counter-argument, other than mere repetition of 19th century, outdated, views of 'science'. It's the 'science' we're taught in schools, along with history, politics, economics, sociology, etc., etc.I'm always surprised that Communists who have already come to realise the lies about 'The Market' find it so difficult to overcome similar lies about 'Science'. If we can't trust 'economists', why should we trust 'scientists'? Specialist authority is the antithesis of democratic control: if it's allowed in science, it'll follow in politics.Whoever says 'Scientific Socialism' says 'Leninism', in my opinion.
Do the 'methods' used today to search for a cure for cancer need replacing with some other 'methods'? Is the failure to find a cure for cancer down to bourgeois methodology?
Vin Maratty wrote:Do the 'methods' used today to search for a cure for cancer need replacing with some other 'methods'?Is the failure to find a cure for cancer down to bourgeois methodology?This is a discussion of philosophical ideas, Vin.These ideas have implications in politics.Reducing this to a question of 'cancer cure' is to reduce it to day-to-day concerns.It's a bit like trying to discuss Capital, revolution and Communism, while the other person insists on reducing the issues to day-to-day, real-life, concerns, like 'Never mind the idea of 'free-access', will I still be able to buy a packet of fags?'.If you think that discussing a vital issue like 'finding a cancer cure' answers all our difficulties with 'science', I'm afraid that you're mistaken.Sorry, comrade.
LBird wrote:I think that they were trying to express what I wrote earlier:The production of knowledge of both natural and social science is done by humans.Natural and social science both employ the same method.If social science can be bourgeois, so can natural science.If natural science can be socially-neutral, so can social science.Maybe that was what Marx and Engels meant, but they could also have meant what they actually wrote later on in the manuscript:
Quote:Feuerbach speaks in particular of the perception of natural science; he mentions secrets which are disclosed only to the eye of the physicist and chemist; but where would natural science be without industry and commerce? Even this pure natural science is provided with an aim, as with its material, only through trade and industry, through the sensuous activity of men. So much is this activity, this unceasing sensuous labour and creation, this production, the basis of the whole sensuous world as it now exists, that, were it interrupted only for a year, Feuerbach would not only find an enormous change in the natural world, but would very soon find that the whole world of men and his own perceptive faculty, nay his own existence, were missing. Of course, in all this the priority of external nature remains unassailed, and all this has no application to the original men produced by generatio aequivoca [spontaneous generation]; but this differentiation has meaning only insofar as man is considered to be distinct from nature. For that matter, nature, the nature that preceded human history, is not by any means the nature in which Feuerbach lives, it is nature which today no longer exists anywhere (except perhaps on a few Australian coral-islands of recent origin) and which, therefore, does not exist for Feuerbach.That "natural science" was a human activity that depends on material conditions, themselves the product of human activity. So any history of natural science would also have to be a history of human activity.That nature as we see it today has been shaped by human action, so that the study of nature today is also part of the study of human history.Maybe they crossed out the passage because they felt that the second was a bit too sweeping because it wouldn't apply to all parts of nature, i.e not to those parts that had not been changed by humans.Note in passing their ignorance about the origin of humans. Spontaneous generation ! But they were writing in 1844, before Darwin and his The Descent of Man that came out in 1871.None of this invalidates your theory. At most it would show that Marx and Engels meant something different.
ALB wrote:Interesting quote and interesting idea, but two things. Wasn't the German Ideology a joint Marx-Engels production? And this is a passage they crossed out. It would be interesting to know why, but we'll never know.What do you think they were trying to express in the crossed-out passage?It was a joint venture between Marx and Engels in order to lay down their philosophical and historical agreements. It was only a manuscripts, it was not a finished work, it was not going to be published as a book, it was published as a book by the Institute of Marxism-Leninism of Russia, ( some publishers have printed three volumes ) the original manuscripts did not have a title. .It was like the book What is to be done ? which was not going to be re-published by Lenin either. The 1844 Manuscripts were not going to be published either, they were kept in the vaults of the Second International, and probably they were in the hands of Marx's Archivist who was Edwards Bernstein
Dear all esp Marcos, I think the dictatorship of the proletariat has been misunderstood so many times … But we're doing it one more disservice. Marx is recognising that there are no ideas without people to think them. New ideas do not emerge from the there : they are worked up in the brains of humans, according to their life experience. Ideas battle through the medium of groups of people, classes. For an idea to succeed, those who hold that idea must succeed; for previous ideas to be suppressed, the people that hold those ideas must be suppressed. Hence, the dictatorship of the proletariat, just as the bourgeois dictated to their former feudal masters. It will last as long as the revolution is in doubt; as long as capitalist ideas are strong enough to need suppressing. Otherwise the dictatorship of capital – expressed through living capitalists, and the policeman in every one of our heads – will be re asserted. It doesn't mean jackboots. It does mean class war, rather than mutual compromise. Whichever side is most ruthless, will win. Simon W.
Morgenstern wrote:Hence, the dictatorship of the proletariat, just as the bourgeois dictated to their former feudal masters. It will last as long as the revolution is in doubt; as long as capitalist ideas are strong enough to need suppressing.Surely the use of state power by the majority working class to force the minority capitalist class to give up their ownership and control of the means of production (call it the "dictatorship of the proletariat" if you like, like old-fashioned terminology that is) will not involve the suppression of "capitalist ideas" or any ideas for that matter (not sure how this could be done, anyway, a ban on their expression at meetings, in print, on the media?). What it will involve is the suppression of capitalist property rights and of any action the capitalist minority might take to try to stop this. In other words, the suppression of "capitalist actions". Mere "capitalist ideas" are no threat to a majority with socialist ideas. We may, in fact do, want capitalist ideas to disappear but not by suppressing them.But this of course is a topic for another thread..
Morgenstern wrote:Dear all esp Marcos, I think the dictatorship of the proletariat has been misunderstood so many times … But we're doing it one more disservice. Marx is recognising that there are no ideas without people to think them. New ideas do not emerge from the there : they are worked up in the brains of humans, according to their life experience. Ideas battle through the medium of groups of people, classes. For an idea to succeed, those who hold that idea must succeed; for previous ideas to be suppressed, the people that hold those ideas must be suppressed. Hence, the dictatorship of the proletariat, just as the bourgeois dictated to their former feudal masters. It will last as long as the revolution is in doubt; as long as capitalist ideas are strong enough to need suppressing. Otherwise the dictatorship of capital – expressed through living capitalists, and the policeman in every one of our heads – will be re asserted. It doesn't mean jackboots. It does mean class war, rather than mutual compromise. Whichever side is most ruthless, will win. Simon W.It is off topic, but I think that the dictatorship of the proletariat would have conducted the workers to state capitalism. It was misunderstood and twisted by Lenin, but it was not applicable during the 19th, during the 20th, and it is not applicable on the 21st century
mcolome1 wrote:Morgenstern wrote:Dear all esp Marcos, I think the dictatorship of the proletariat has been misunderstood so many times … But we're doing it one more disservice. Marx is recognising that there are no ideas without people to think them. New ideas do not emerge from the there : they are worked up in the brains of humans, according to their life experience. Ideas battle through the medium of groups of people, classes. For an idea to succeed, those who hold that idea must succeed; for previous ideas to be suppressed, the people that hold those ideas must be suppressed. Hence, the dictatorship of the proletariat, just as the bourgeois dictated to their former feudal masters. It will last as long as the revolution is in doubt; as long as capitalist ideas are strong enough to need suppressing. Otherwise the dictatorship of capital – expressed through living capitalists, and the policeman in every one of our heads – will be re asserted. It doesn't mean jackboots. It does mean class war, rather than mutual compromise. Whichever side is most ruthless, will win. Simon W.It is off topic, but I think that the dictatorship of the proletariat would have conducted the workers to state capitalism. It was misunderstood and twisted by Lenin, but it was not applicable during the 19th, during the 20th, and it is not applicable on the 21st century
Off topic again. Personally, I think that the DOP sounds like Bukharin's theory of socialism in one country, because the only country with certain capitalist development in that historical period was England, and the implementation of the Labour Voucher it is also another error too
It has to be remembered, of course, that the capitalist ideas to be suppressed are in ourselves. After all, once out of sword thrust or gunshot, their only power is that which we give them. The first step is, of course, to wrest state power to ourselves. That means removing the physical force imposing capitalist relations, and dissolving the capitalist relations of production. You can't break a thing until you're holding it. The second is to produce in a way that reinforces the new society that we wish to build. This does not have to be conducted centrally – but it will need, in the first instance, to be regulated fairly centrally. The first steps will be awkward and will seem counterintuitive to the capitalist part of ourselves. It's this combination, especially the second part, that I think is meant by the 'Dictatorship of the Proletariat'. When I'm studying for exams I have the 'Dictatorship of the Student' which is having the self-discipline to get on and study when I'd far rather be slacking – directed change involves discipline and control, and we're fools if we think otherwise. Self- imposed is far preferable. (I'm actually really crap at studying). We also need to change the perception not only of how production is done but of what is produced. This may be generational, depending on the level of shock to the system – a broken society like postwar Japan is much easier to turn to a new direction. The hippies were right – acid in the water supply is the quick answer
The worry will be conservationism. The old, no matter how nice, is riddled with the old relations. Support your local hunt and you support tugging your forelock and the monarchy. Keep the capitalist factories and the need for their products and you keep capitalism. We need to invest in the latest technologies simply because they are the most fluid – remember how once no one knew how to sell the internet? That was a lost opportunity, now it's thoroughly subordinated to capitalism. The next generation of technologies – biotechnology including lifespan extension, even nanotechnology in terms of machinery, are around the corner, and it is these emerging technologies that we need to seize upon. Maybe an indefinite lifespan becomes symbolic of socialism, and we tolerate a more instrumentalist approach to producing goods further down the chain. The point is that changing from capitalism to post-capitalist production will require positive direction and the suppression of capitalism – for example, a factory is a machine for telling the producers that the things they produce are *not theirs*, so to use the existing equipment to produce will require conscious political control. Simple example – relaxation of capitalist discipline. Put in the work you're happy with, don't force yourself, no speed up on conveyor belts, etc. This is the dictatorship of the proletariat over the factory in which we were previously enslaved. Professional psychological help for workaholics – not the driven, of course, a drive to excel will now be something that all can express, but using the numbness of work to avoid the numbness of existence outside of work. The factory system must be overthrown, consciously, and anyone doubting this, thinking that the productive forces of capitalism can just be laid hand to, is someone who needs the dictatorship of the proletariat in their own life's In short, shut up and smoke that … It's the law. In short, anyone who doesn't think that we will have to impose ourselves consciously and forcefully on capitalism is deluding themselves, and in fact is part of the problem. Retaining our socialist character during the revolutionary process will be the ticklish bit. Simon W.LBird wrote:'Never mind the idea of 'free-access', will I still be able to buy a packet of fags?'.This does not remotely resemble my questions to you; questions you have still not attempted to answer.
Vin Maratty wrote:LBird wrote:'Never mind the idea of 'free-access', will I still be able to buy a packet of fags?'.This does not remotely resemble my questions to you; questions you have still not attempted to answer.
Do you want to discuss the philosophy of science, Vin?If not, that's OK by me.
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