Do We Need the Dialectic?
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Rosa Lichtenstein wrote:Why is "Philosophy is useless" philosphical? You negelected to demonstrate this point.And even if it were, why is "Philosophy useless" self-negating? Something could still be true but remain useless; for example: The 456,667th mouse born in Japan since 1734 is brown. That could be true. But is it any use? It might be some use, but it doesn't have to be (which is all I need). And it could be false, and still useless. Either way, it could be useless while also being either true or false.
LOL. You're doing philosophy again. I thought that stuff was useless and 100% nonsense.
Rosa Lichtenstein wrote:(to take your example: in neuroscience and cognitive science, Cartesisn ideas are still dominant).Triple LOL. You'll be hard pressed to find any serious "substance dualists" these days, you're at least 50 years behind the times!
Fortunately I think DjP has made my points for me – do I really need to do round 2? Philosophy is only what we call a particular part of brain work. Marx, in hoping for "one, true science" was, I would argue, making the dialectical point that philosophy, science, doing the football pools, are all parts of one activity that we separate out into arbitrary categories. By saying you reject all philosophy you presumably think to say that you do not think in a fanciful way – that you think in terms of what is real. But, again as DJP and ALB have pointed out, this is not only naive realism, but considered nonsense now by just about everyone. Its still philosophy though. It's just the philosophy of the philistine. In any event, people who encourage workers to reject more developed thinking are equally dangerous, whether they presume to do workers' thinking for them or whether they assert that there is nothing to be thought. The answer is that the modern proletariat does all of society's thinking also and is sufficiently intellectually mature to handle the occasional more abstract question. Simon W.
I think there were philosophical differences between Marx and Engels, and Lenin used some of his ideas in order to distort socialism.Dialectic can not be applied to nature as Engels tried to apply on his book Dialectic of Nature, but he did not discuss this conception on his book named Anti-Duhring.I do not know if Marx did not want to have disagreement with his friend, and also Engels was supporting him financially in order to finish the investigation to write the manuscripts of Das Capital, but he did copy blindly the researches made by Lewis Morgan and he said that it was a legacy of Marx, and it was not, it was a legacy of Engels. Part of the bourgeois materialist conception of Lenin that he used on his book Materialism and Empirocriticism were taken from Engels, and then Lenin ended up creating his concept of Dialectical Historical materialism.Dialectic can be used in the realm of the thoughts but it can not be applied to nature, and it is not a law of nature. Engels did write many good books and he is very popular among most of the socialists and communists because he was easier to be understood, and his book Socialism, Utopian and Scientific was used by many study groups within the Leninist vanguard parties. I will not call him a post-Marxist as Raya Dunayeskaya tried to labeled him along with Lenin, because Marx and him made great contributions to socialists thoughts, and Lenin did not make any contribution, on the contrary, he distorted many of their ideas
What we need is a theory of socialism, we do not need a philosophy, and I will not call Marxism a philosophy of liberation. Marx said that it was anti-dialectic to call himself a MarxistPhilosophy for Marx was the German Classical philosophy, Engels was the one who mentioned the English philosophers, and he said that England was the birth place of Materialism.If Marx indicated that ideology is a distorsion of our reality, and that all ideas have been the prevaling ideas of the ruling class, Why do we need a philosophy ?
This is where we diverge. We don't need to open the box labelled bourgeois philosophy. Much. We do, however, if we want to understand what we're doing when we change the system, need to understand the system that we're trying to change. We need to be confident, as democratic revolutionaries, that our class are capable of the intellectual labour of understanding the contradictions of our society and thus how to transform it into a new society – or rather, how to abolish the old. If not that, we are still engaged in an intellectual exercise – but we are executing the last will and testament of a 19th century intellectual without any understanding of what we're doing. So this is not in any way a call to intellectual endeavour for its own sake – it's a call to be actors in our own lives, rather than bystanders. Simon W.
As a follow-up to some quotes I provided from Marx on the ‘Pannekoek’ thread, here's another quote from him, which I think backs up the assertion that ‘science’ is not a ‘neutral method’ but a social activity, and thus science currently plays a part in our lives similar to religion or law. That is, it is an authority above us, and uncontrolled by us. Humans are at the centre of all these social activities, and science must be brought within our democratic control. We must resist the notion that scientists are an acceptable elite, a priesthood who have an esoteric knowledge (like a ‘dialectical method’ which can’t be explained, or understood except by those who have an insight denied to the rest of us), and we must ensure that ‘science’ will be treated similar to how we will treat ‘private property’: it must be communised.
Marx, EPM of 1844 (Collected Works 3, p. 297), wrote:Religion, family, state, law, morality, science, art, etc., are only particular modes of production, and fall under its general law. The positive transcendence of private property as the appropriation of human life, is therefore the positive transcendence of all estrangement – that is to say, the return of man from religion, family, state, [law, morality, science, art,] etc., to his human, i.e., social, existence.[my bold and repeat]http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1844/manuscripts/comm.htm
All this cod philosophy reminds me of a Fish Called Wanda: Wanda: To call you stupid would be an insult to stupid people! I've known sheep that could outwit you! I've worn dresses with higher IQs. But you think you're an intellectual, don't you ape? Otto West: Apes don't read philosophy. Wanda: Yes they do, Otto. They just don't understand it. Now let me correct you on a couple of things, OK? Aristotle was not Belgian. The central message of Buddhism is not "every man for himself". And the London Underground is not a political movement. Those are all mistakes, Otto. I looked them up.
DJP:"LOL. You're doing philosophy again. I thought that stuff was useless and 100% nonsense."You can 'LOL' all you like, but until you can show, as opposed to assert that I am doing philosophy, that is all you comments will ever be — a joke.And I say that with all due respect.
The Lollard:"Triple LOL. You'll be hard pressed to find any serious "substance dualists" these days, you're at least 50 years behind the times!"In fact Cartesianism involves more than Dualism. Happy to explain — if you stop 'LOL'-ing, and ask really nicely.
Rosa Lichtenstein wrote:DJP:"LOL. You're doing philosophy again. I thought that stuff was useless and 100% nonsense."You can 'LOL' all you like, but until you can show, as opposed to assert that I am doing philosophy, that is all you comments will ever be — a joke.And I say that with all due respect.
Rosa, doesn't all this discussion just depend upon how we define 'philosophy'?If it's taken as a 'love of wisdom', I can't see a problem.If it's taken as 'speculative ideas in the service of the contemporary ruling class', then I'm with you!
Morgenstern:"Philosophy is only what we call a particular part of brain work. Marx, in hoping for "one, true science" was, I would argue, making the dialectical point that philosophy, science, doing the football pools, are all parts of one activity that we separate out into arbitrary categories."This looks like speculative metaphysics to me."By saying you reject all philosophy you presumably think to say that you do not think in a fanciful way – that you think in terms of what is real. But, again as DJP and ALB have pointed out, this is not only naive realism, but considered nonsense now by just about everyone."No, it is perfectly clear what I mean: I reject all of philosophy — not 99%, but 100%."In any event, people who encourage workers to reject more developed thinking are equally dangerous, whether they presume to do workers' thinking for them or whether they assert that there is nothing to be thought. The answer is that the modern proletariat does all of society's thinking also and is sufficiently intellectually mature to handle the occasional more abstract question."Well, I am a worker, and until recently a trade union rep (unpaid), but I have no problem with workers investigating/studying "more developed thinking" (not that they need my permission or even acquiescence), but I fail to see why that useless boss-class discipline called 'philosophy' should be included.
L Bird:"Rosa, doesn't all this discussion just depend upon how we define 'philosophy'? If it's taken as a 'love of wisdom', I can't see a problem. If it's taken as 'speculative ideas in the service of the contemporary ruling class', then I'm with you!"The problem with that is that speculative metaphysicians also 'love wisdom'But, I can see no 'wisdom' coming from philsophers, can you? Sure, they might have come up with a few trite maxims that contained good advice, but we can get that from the religious, too — as well as from a good novel, and, indeed, from poetry!And what is wrong with Historical Materialism providing us with 'wisdom'?
The ruling ideas are the ideas of the ruling class. Ruling ideas means pretty much all ideas hitherto. It does not mean that there are your ideas which are obviously right, stand-to-reason ideas, and ideas-which stupid proles-think-instead-of-them-after-school-and-watching-the-news-ideas. It means that *your* ideas, your painfully artful, I-don't-think-like-those-fools ideas, are also ruling class ideas. Revolutionaries are critical of all ideas. Those ideas that you accept, dictate what kind of ruling class scenario you support – or put another way, what version of capital you support. In particular, one could note that the ideas of private property, of *having* rather than *being*, pervade our consciousness and are only noticeable by either a) comparing with societies that have developed differently or b) the proletarian criticism of our on temporary lot. (Hence hippies). The reification of thought into a world that can be had rather than a world of experience – private property, the bourgeois philistine at their most philosophical – finds it's acme in saying that all properties are external to the will of the thinker and there is nothing to be thought at all. What was a numinous, animated world of the 'savage' is now the dusty museum of the bourgeois. in other words, the rejection of our power of thinking over the things that we think, this quotidian objectivity, is actually the bottled quintessence of capital. Our ideas spring from our heads to form an Eden, but we are lifeless husks within it. But then, as we've always maintained, Trotskyists merely represent capital against the capitalists, state capitalism. Wittgensteinian or no. Simon W.
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