Do We Need the Dialectic?
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In reality was Engels who called him the 'workingman philosopher, and it was written on his essay on Feuerbach. And Marx was the one who said 'Here is our philosopher and it was written on a report on the first international on Prague. On the 25th anniversary of his death Lenin spoke favorable about him
mcolome1:"In reality was Engels who called him the 'workingman philosopher, and it was written on his essay on Feuerbach. And Marx was the one who said 'Here is our philosopher and it was written on a report on the first international on Prague. On the 25th anniversary of his death Lenin spoke favorable about him"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).I have already covered the allegation that Marx called Dietzgen "our philosopher" — see my last two replies to ALB on page 12.And sure, Lenin spoke favourably of Dietzgen at times; at other times he criticised him severely. But, as with Engels, Lenin's opinion isn't relevant to what Marx thought of Dietzgen, either.
Here's a couple of footnotes to the chapter on "The Philosophy of Internal Relations" in Berthell Ollman's The Dance of the Dialectic:
Quote:13. Marx's enthusiasm for Dietzgen was not unqualified. To Kugclmann. he writes of a "certain confusion and… too frequent repetition" in a manuscript that Dietzgcn had sent him, but he makes it clear that despite this the work "contains much that is. excellent" (1941,80). Since these comments were directed to the manuscript of Dietzgen's work and forwarded to him, it is not unlikely that they affected the published version.14. Engels writes, "And this materialist dialectic, which for years has been our best working tool and our sharpest weapon, was, remarkably enough, discovered not only by us, but also, independently of us and even of Hegel, by Joseph Dietatgen" (Marx and Engcls 1951,350-51). Engels too was not altogether unambiguous in his estimation of Dictzgen, whose work he, like Marx, first saw in manuscript form. Writing to Marx, Engels complains that Dietzgen's use of the dialectic appears "more in flashes than as a connected whole." "The account of the thing-in-itsclf as a thing made of thought," however, is scored as "brilliant" (Marx and Engels 1941,151).If accurate these show that Marx was not entirely critical of Dietzgen, but what his final opinion was is irrelevant in one sense as this shows that Marx did retain some interest in "philosophy" after 1845. If Ollman's assumption is correct he even commented to Dietzgen on what he'd written. The reference to "phenomenalism" in one of your quotes shows this too.As I said, I'm not sure what all this shows, either way.
ALB, thanks for that.Now, I have in my library all 50 volumes of the MECW (and I spent a couple of hours last night checking every reference to Dietzgen's name as listed in the name index). These volumes also reproduce all of Marx and Engels's correspondence. There is nothing in that correspondence (with Kugelmann) that has Marx saying of Dietzgen's work that it "contains much that is excellent". What he had to say is as I reported it in my last few replies to you.Now, Ollman quotes the Selected Correspondence (a copy of which I do not have), but it is odd that the complete works has no such entry. I hesitate to suggest that Ollman has made a mistake here, but until someone can check the Selected Correspondence, there isn't much else to say.However, in order to make sure I am not attributing to Marx ideas he did not hold, I am now checking all of Marx's letters to Kugelmann, since it is quite clear that the MECW name index is incomplete: it omits some of Marx's references to Dietzgen (e.g., it omits mention of Dietzgen in Marx's letter to Kugelmann, 12/12/1868, volume 43, p.184; there Marx merely talks about Dietzgen's working class credentials "His biography is not quite what I had thought. But I always had a feeling that he was 'not a worker like Eccarius'.") I'll get back to you when I have finished this checking, where I will respond to the other things you say.
Thanks for your researches. By the way, I meant to add that I don't think that Marx would have been being "facetious" when he introduced Dietzgen to the delegates at the Congress of the IWMA in the Hague in 1872 as "our philosopher". At most he may have been being diplomatic, but I see no reason to doubt that he was sincere.
I have the same collection in three languages and you will not find that citation. Many of the biographical data of Dietzgen came through his son,, and some of this achievements and biographical data were published by Plekhanov. The reports of the First International have been published lately, and the 1844 Manuscripts of Marx were kept for long time by members of the Second International. The complete works of Marx and Engels have not been published yet, MEGA is working on a new collection of 132 volumes, and it is going to be in the German Language. In the past many things about Marx and Engels were published by personalities close to them and they were negated and later on they were confirmed with the appearances of new documents, as was the case of the letter of Marx on Simon Bolivar. The critique of Marx toward Dietzgen was based on his writing style because he was not an intellectual, but he did recognize him as a philosopher, and he did make contributions to philosophy, and some petty bourgeois intellectuals will not recognize his contributions because they are always looking for the five legs of the cat, and most of them think that they know more than anybody, and Leninist have always worshipped intellectual. Personally, I think that the main problem of Dietzgen was that he made the same mistake as Engels by trying to apply dialectic to nature, but on his own he came to the materialist conclusion as Marx, in the same manner that it was done by Lewis Morgan
Ok, I have managed to locate the letter in question; it's from Marx to Kugelmann 05/12/1868 (MECW 43, p.173):"Have you got Dietzgen's address? Quite a while ago he sent me a fragment of a manuscript on 'intellectual capacity', which, despite a certain confusion and too frequent repetitions, contained much that was excellent, and — as the independent product of a worker — even admirable."However, which parts Marx so described we have no idea, but, having examined the finished product a few years ago (the editors tell us that this "fragment" was later expanded to form The Nature Of Human Brainwork) I am at a loss to explain which parts could be so described. I am sorry to have to say this, but the book would have to be improved considerably to merit even being called "poor", despite the fact that Marx seems to have admired certain parts of it.Nevertheless, as a later letter of Marx's indicated (which I quoted a few posts ago), his opinion of Dietzgen soured somewhat over the next few years.Ollman is incorrect, though, in some of what he had to say; it wasn't Marx who used the word "brilliant" in relation to Dietzgen, but Engels — he did so in a letter to Marx, dated 06/11/1868 (MECW 43, pp.152-53):"[Referring to the manuscript Dietzgen sent to Marx, who forwarded it to Engels] It is difficult to pass absolutely definite judgement on the thing: the man is not a born philosopher and, in addition, half self-taught. Some of his sources (e.g., Feuerbach, your book, and various trashy publications on the natural sciences) can be immediately traced partly from his terminology, but one cannot tell what else he has read. The terminology, is, of course, still very confused, hence the lack of precision and frequent reiterations in new terms. There is also dialectics in it, but appearing more in the form of flashes than in any connected way. The presentation of the thing-in-itself as a conceivable thing would be very nice and even brilliant if one could be certain that he himself had discovered it. There is plenty of wit in it and, despite the poor grammar, a marked talent for style. All in all, however, a remarkable instinct to think out so much that is correct on the basis of inadequate studies."The repetitions are, as I said, partly as a result of the shortcomings in terminology, partly due to his lack of logical schooling." [Emphases in the original.]Engels then goes on to make a few comments about the need to shorten the work, along lines Marx had suggested in an earlier letter (one that I also quoted a few posts ago).So, it was Engels, not Marx, who used the word "brilliant", but he did so guardedly and on the basis that it was Dietzgen who had made a particular discovery (but, which discovery that was isn't too clear).About Engels's comment that Dietzgen had discovered the 'materialist dialectic' independently, and the widely held view Dietzgen was a worker, I had this to say in one of my Essays:"[Dietzgen], it could be maintained, is a clear example of a proletarian who became a philosopher, and, moreover, a theorist who was respected to some extent by Marx, Engels and Lenin. Indeed, Dietzgen independently discovered, or re-invented, Dialectical Materialism [DM]."Or, so this fable would have us believe."Now, while Dietzgen's working-class credentials are (ahem…, shall we say) highly dubious (see below), his revolutionary sincerity isn't open to question. He was clearly a fellow comrade and nothing said here should be interpreted as detracting from that fact. But, that doesn't mean we should appropriate his work uncritically. That would be to turn him into an icon."Unfortunately, Dietzgen's 'proletarian' credentials are far from convincing. According to the account given by his son [E. Dietzgen (1906), pp.7-33], Dietzgen senior was a 'master tanner', who, after having worked in his father's shop, turned his hand to various different occupations. These included opening a grocery store, running a bakery and a tannery business. After this, he finally assumed control of the family firm in Germany. This means that Dietzgen's proletarian credentials are only marginally more 'convincing' than those of Engels himself!"However, even if it were true that he was a genuine 'horny-handed proletarian', this would still fail to refute the claim made earlier that workers can't form a single DM-idea on their own this side of being 'converted' to the faith by one of the dialectical-elect. This is so for two reasons:"First: Dietzgen's philosophical writings are thoroughly confused, and are vastly inferior even to those of Engels, Lenin and Trotsky…. Now, the Essays published at this site have shown that the philosophical ideas of the DM-classicists make little sense; if that is so, Dietzgen's inferior work stands no chance of holding together. Hence, if Dietzgen was a worker, the claim advanced here (that no worker can comprehend DM) finds ready confirmation in this case: he clearly didn't understand it!"Second, but more importantly: irrespective of whether or not his ideas are comprehensible (or even whether he understood them), Dietzgen didn't actually derive DM-concepts from his own experience. According to his son he learnt them by reading the works of philosophers. [Cf., E. Dietzgen (1906), p.8.] Hence, if anything, this further substantiates the claim being advanced in this Essay: DM-theses may only be obtained (directly or indirectly) from ruling-class sources, and they have to be imported into the working-class movement in this manner — i.e., from the 'outside'."Dietzgen, E. (1906), 'Joseph Dietzgen: A Sketch Of His Life', in J. Dietzgen (1906), pp.7-33.Dietzgen, J. (1906), Some Of The Philosophical Essays On Socialism And Science, Religion, Ethics, Critique-Of-Reason And The World At Large (Charles Kerr).I hasten to add that 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 (not Marx, not Engels, not Plekhanov, not…); indeed, the Essay from which the above was taken is largely aimed at showing this to be the case:http://anti-dialectics.co.uk/page%2009_01.htmSure, comrades mouth DM-jargon, but that jargon makes no more sense than the Christian Trinity (which, incidentally, originated in the same mystical quagmire — NeoPlatonism — as Hegel's dialectic).Incidentally, my estimation of Dietzgen's working class 'credentials' echoes Marx's parallel scepticism (expressed in that letter I quoted in my last post).ALB:"If accurate these show that Marx was not entirely critical of Dietzgen, but what his final opinion was is irrelevant in one sense as this shows that Marx did retain some interest in "philosophy" after 1845. If Ollman's assumption is correct he even commented to Dietzgen on what he'd written. The reference to "phenomenalism" in one of your quotes shows this too.""Interest in" does not mean "approved of". Marx maintained an interest in all manner of things (for example, classical economics); are we to say he approved of it all?Finally, as I noted in an earlier post, since we weren't there (and assuming Marx did call Dietzgen "our philosopher") we can't know what tone he adopted. But, given the things he had to say about the man (in the letters I quoted a few posts ago), I still maintain that Marx was either being facetious, was ribbing him (i.e, pulling his leg), or he was making a joke.
Engels is not relevant because you think that he is not relevant. but I have a different opinion about him, You want to convert your own universe into everybody else universe. I came to the working class movement through the reading of the works of Engels first, and the first books and explanations that were given to me were not through an intellectual, they were through a poor shoe shiner and a tailor who knew about philosophy, economics and political sciences without attending any university
mcolome1, thank you for those comments.However, if you read my response to ALB above, you will see that I have called into question Dietzgen's working class 'credentials' (which Marx also questioned).Moreover, Marx's criticism of Dietzgen wasn't centred on his poor use of language; here it is again:Marx to Engels 04/10/1868: "My view is that J Dietzgen would do best if he condensed all 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." [MECW 43, p.121.]Marx to Engels 05/01/1882: "You will see from the enclosed letter from Dietzgen that the unhappy fellow has 'progressed' backward and 'safely' arrived at Phänomenologie. I regard the case as an incurable one." [MECW 46, p.172.]Marx to Kugelmann, 12/12/1868: "His [Dietzgen's] biography is not quite what I had thought. But I always had a feeling that he was 'not a worker like Eccarius'." [MECW 43, p.184.]Now, I am working class, and up until a few years ago I was a trade union rep (unpaid), so my criticisms of Dietzgen aren't petty-bourgeois. [Anyway, Marx was petty-bourgeois, while Engels was bourgeois; no 'petty' about the latter!]At my site, I am steadily working my way through criticising practically everything that has ever been published in the English language on 'Materialist Dialectics'/Dialectical Materialism, and when I get to Dietzgen, I will let you know.
mcolome1:"Engels is not relevant because you think that he is not relevant. but I have a different opinion about him, You want to convert your own universe into everybody else universe."Steady on there, sunshine! I nowhere said Engels wasn't relevant, period; only that he wasn't relevant to what Marx believed about Dietzgen.Perhaps I can 'convert' you to reading more carefully?"I came to the working class movement through the reading of the works of Engels first, and the first books and explanations that were given to me were not through an intellectual, they were through a poor shoe shiner and a tailor who knew about philosophy, economics and political sciences without attending any university."Fine, but how that addresses the issue under discussion here (i.e., what Marx thought about Dietzgen) isn't too clear.
Rosa Lichtenstein wrote:Ollman is incorrect, though, in some of what he had to say; it wasn't Marx who used the word "brilliant" in relation to Dietzgen, but Engels — he did so in a letter to Marx, dated 06/11/1868 (MECW 43, pp.152-53)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.
If one thing can be seen from these quotes it's that Marx himself thought that we needed the dialectic.That said there's dialectics and there's dialectics. I'm definitely not a fan of Hegelian gobbledygook either.
Marx did not reject dialectic completely., he rejected the mystique part of dialectic, but he kept its revolutionary aspect. He was influenced by Hegel and by Feuerbach. For him philosophy was the Classical German Philosophy, when he was alive there were others places on earth where others peoples were also digging into philosophy, and philosophy did not come from Greece, that is an Eurocentric conception. He was also studying the Asian mode of production and if he had concluded his investigations probably that would have brought new lights on economics and anthropology.
This is what you said: 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).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
DJP:"If one thing can be seen from these quotes it's that Marx himself thought that we needed the dialectic."Fortunately, Marx himself told us what he meant by 'the dialecitc' in the only summary of 'the dialectic method' he published and endorsedin his entire life — and here it is (taken from the Postface to the second edition to Das Kapital):"After a quotation from the preface to my 'Criticism of Political Economy,' Berlin, 1859, pp. IV-VII, where I discuss the materialistic basis of my method, the writer goes on:'The one thing which is of moment to Marx, is to find the law of the phenomena with whose investigation he is concerned; and not only is that law of moment to him, which governs these phenomena, in so far as they have a definite form and mutual connexion within a given historical period. Of still greater moment to him is the law of their variation, of their development, i.e., of their transition from one form into another, from one series of connexions into a different one. This law once discovered, he investigates in detail the effects in which it manifests itself in social life. Consequently, Marx only troubles himself about one thing: to show, by rigid scientific investigation, the necessity of successive determinate orders of social conditions, and to establish, as impartially as possible, the facts that serve him for fundamental starting-points. For this it is quite enough, if he proves, at the same time, both the necessity of the present order of things, and the necessity of another order into which the first must inevitably pass over; and this all the same, whether men believe or do not believe it, whether they are conscious or unconscious of it. Marx treats the social movement as a process of natural history, governed by laws not only independent of human will, consciousness and intelligence, but rather, on the contrary, determining that will, consciousness and intelligence. … If in the history of civilisation the conscious element plays a part so subordinate, then it is self-evident that a critical inquiry whose subject-matter is civilisation, can, less than anything else, have for its basis any form of, or any result of, consciousness. That is to say, that not the idea, but the material phenomenon alone can serve as its starting-point. Such an inquiry will confine itself to the confrontation and the comparison of a fact, not with ideas, but with another fact. For this inquiry, the one thing of moment is, that both facts be investigated as accurately as possible, and that they actually form, each with respect to the other, different momenta of an evolution; but most important of all is the rigid analysis of the series of successions, of the sequences and concatenations in which the different stages of such an evolution present themselves. But it will be said, the general laws of economic life are one and the same, no matter whether they are applied to the present or the past. This Marx directly denies. According to him, such abstract laws do not exist. On the contrary, in his opinion every historical period has laws of its own…. As soon as society has outlived a given period of development, and is passing over from one given stage to another, it begins to be subject also to other laws. In a word, economic life offers us a phenomenon analogous to the history of evolution in other branches of biology. The old economists misunderstood the nature of economic laws when they likened them to the laws of physics and chemistry. A more thorough analysis of phenomena shows that social organisms differ among themselves as fundamentally as plants or animals. Nay, one and the same phenomenon falls under quite different laws in consequence of the different structure of those organisms as a whole, of the variations of their individual organs, of the different conditions in which those organs function, &c. Marx, e.g., denies that the law of population is the same at all times and in all places. He asserts, on the contrary, that every stage of development has its own law of population. … With the varying degree of development of productive power, social conditions and the laws governing them vary too. Whilst Marx sets himself the task of following and explaining from this point of view the economic system established by the sway of capital, he is only formulating, in a strictly scientific manner, the aim that every accurate investigation into economic life must have. The scientific value of such an inquiry lies in the disclosing of the special laws that regulate the origin, existence, development, death of a given social organism and its replacement by another and higher one. And it is this value that, in point of fact, Marx's book has.'"Whilst the writer pictures what he takes to be actually my method, in this striking and [as far as concerns my own application of it] generous way, what else is he picturing but the dialectic method?" [Marx, Capital. Bold emphases added.]http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1867-c1/p3.htmIn the above passage, not one single Hegelian concept is to be found — no "contradictions", no change of "quantity into quality", no "negation of the negation", no "unity and identity of opposites", no "interconnected Totality", no "universal change" –, and yet Marx calls this the "dialectic method", and says of it that it is "my method".To be sure, Narx uses a few Hegelian terms later in that book, but he also tells us that he merely wished to 'coquette' with them — that is, he didn't use them seriously. These days we'd use 'scare' quotes.So, the 'dialectic method', has had Hegel completely excised (upside down, or the 'right way up'). The 'rational core' thus resembles more closely the historical method of Aristotle, Kant and the Scottish Historical School (of Ferguson, Millar, Robertson, Smith, Hume, and Steuart).DJP:"That said there's dialectics and there's dialectics. I'm definately not a fan of Hegalian gobeldygook either."The question then is, what do you mean by 'the dialectic mehod'?
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