Early 20th century anti-Engels thinker

[LBird]

I've just come across the Polish (some-time Marxist) philosopher Stanislaw Brzozowski, who died in 1911 in his early 30s. Clearly, his work pre-dates the post-WW1 works of Lukacs, Korsch, Pannekoek and Gramsci, but pre-figures many of their ideas about Marxist epistemology.

The book is:

Stanislaw Brzozowski and the Polish Beginnings of 'Western Marxism'

Andrzej Walicki (1989) Clarendon Press, Oxford

https://www.abebooks.co.uk/servlet/BookDetailsPL?bi=65350037&afn_sr=CJ&cm_ven=aff&cm_ite=cj

I can recommend this book as one of the clearest that I've yet read, discussing about the epistemological differences between Marx and Engels.

[Young Master Smeet]

You mean he died before the German Ideology was published (1932)?

[LBird]

Young Master Smeet wrote:

You mean he died before the German Ideology was published (1932)?

Yes, and before a great deal else of Marx's 'earlier works' was published.Which just goes to show, even on the basis of what Marx had published, basically Capital alone, many thinkers prior to World War 1 were able to discern where Engels had gone wrong, and why 'materialism' was proving to be an ideology for elites, just as Marx had argued in his Theses on Feuerbach.Many were on to Lenin, well before 1917. Materialism and Empirio-criticism was based upon Engels' ideas, not Marx's. That's why Lenin had to invent the unity 'Marx-Engels', to pretend that these two very different thinkers were one and the same, and thus quotes from Engels alone could be justified.

[Young Master Smeet]

https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1890/letters/90_10_27.htmThis letter may be of interest.  But the point is, Marx and Engels wrote the German ideology together (and after the philosophical manuscripts, 1846), so that chapter on Materialism does belong to them both.This seems apposite:https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1893/letters/93_07_14.htm

[LBird]

Young Master Smeet wrote:

https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1890/letters/90_10_27.htmThis letter may be of interest.  But the point is, Marx and Engels wrote the German ideology together (and after the philosophical manuscripts, 1846), so that chapter on Materialism does belong to them both.This seems apposite:https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1893/letters/93_07_14.htm

We've been through this discussion many times, YMS. I'm not an Engelsist.I gave the reading recommendation so that any comrades wanting to try to come to grips with the differences between Marx and Engels have another source of information.If anyone is already convinced that 'Marx-Engels' is 'joint-individual', then that's fine by me. They can ignore my recommendation.

[Young Master Smeet]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stanis%C5%82aw_Brzozowski_(writer)Let's not forget that Chucky himself published one of the most reductionistic phrases himself: "With me, on the contrary, the ideal is nothing else than the material world reflected by the human mind, and translated into forms of thought."  It took the publication of the German Ideology to displace that phrasing (and note Engel's letter (above) on the same point).

[LBird]

Young Master Smeet wrote:

Let's not forget that Chucky himself published one of the most reductionistic phrases himself: "With me, on the contrary, the ideal is nothing else than the material world reflected by the human mind, and translated into forms of thought."  It took the publication of the German Ideology to displace that phrasing (and note Engel's letter (above) on the same point).

Yeah, and this use of 'reflection' by Marx is discussed in George L. Kline's The Myth of Marx' Materialism, which I tried to initiate a discussion about on a previous thread. For a PDF, see:http://www.worldsocialism.org/spgb/forum/general-discussion/marx-and-myth-his-materialismAlternatively, in the book Philosophical Sovietology: The Pursuit of a Science (which contains Kline's article, pp. 158-203), the phrase is discussed on page 167, with the German original, and a comment by Kline that Fowkes' (Penguin) translation is 'misleading'.

[Young Master Smeet]

The original german:

Quote:

Meine dialektische Methode ist der Grundlage nach von der Hegelschen nicht nur verschieden, sondern hir direktes Gegenteil. Für Hegel ist der Denkprozeß, den er sogar unter dem Namen Idee in ein selbständiges Subjekt verwandelt, der Demiurg des Wirklichen, das nur seine äußere Erscheinung bildet. Bei mir ist umgekehrt das Ideelle nichts andres als das im Menschenkopf umgesetzte und übersetzte Materielle.

And according to google translate "umgesetzte und übersetzte" seems to be the problem (google gives both as translated), but I think -um- and uber- giving the impression of over and around put.  Nonetheless, it is certainly a lot balder than anything Engels put out.Edit: Hmm, interested: after a bit of tinkering, the Internet renders that as 'unreacted/unconverted and translated', which is very different from reflected.  Think we'd need a ruling from a German speaker.

[LBird]

Young Master Smeet wrote:

The original german:

Quote:

Meine dialektische Methode ist der Grundlage nach von der Hegelschen nicht nur verschieden, sondern hir direktes Gegenteil. Für Hegel ist der Denkprozeß, den er sogar unter dem Namen Idee in ein selbständiges Subjekt verwandelt, der Demiurg des Wirklichen, das nur seine äußere Erscheinung bildet. Bei mir ist umgekehrt das Ideelle nichts andres als das im Menschenkopf umgesetzte und übersetzte Materielle.

And according to google translate "umgesetzte und übersetzte" seems to be the problem (google gives both as translated), but I think -um- and uber- giving the impression of over and around put.  Nonetheless, it is certainly a lot balder than anything Engels put out.Edit: Hmm, interested: after a bit of tinkering, the Internet renders that as 'unreacted/unconverted and translated', which is very different from reflected.  Think we'd need a ruling from a German speaker.

Kline's article is centrally concerned with Marx's use of 'Materielle', and he gives 6, 8 or 9 meanings, depending on how you count them, and he comments:

Kline, p168, wrote:

…the interpretation of "das Materielle" as "material world" is highly misleading.

[Young Master Smeet]

'Material' is equally slippery in English, ranging from germane to cloth.  But, even absent the qualification of 'world' ". In my case the opposite is nothing other than the material which is translated and translated in man's head."  Given the opposition to ideal in the preceeding sentence, and discussion of the real, it's clear that material means of or pertaining to matter.

[Anonymous]

LBird wrote:

Young Master Smeet wrote:

https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1890/letters/90_10_27.htmThis letter may be of interest.  But the point is, Marx and Engels wrote the German ideology together (and after the philosophical manuscripts, 1846), so that chapter on Materialism does belong to them both.This seems apposite:https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1893/letters/93_07_14.htm

We've been through this discussion many times, YMS. I'm not an Engelsist.I gave the reading recommendation so that any comrades wanting to try to come to grips with the differences between Marx and Engels have another source of information.If anyone is already convinced that 'Marx-Engels' is 'joint-individual', then that's fine by me. They can ignore my recommendation.

You are like the Marxist-Humanists, anti-Engelsian, but pro-Leninists. Bakunin was an  anti-Marxist, but he was a proto-Leninist. The errors of Engles were known by Marx, the problem is that Engels was financing the research for Das Capital, without Engels he would have never been able to finish Capital, and it was Engles the person who finish the publication of Volume 2, and Volume 3. There is not need  to cite so many books with one book is enough to know that Engels made many mistakes, and one book is enough to know that he also made contibutions to socialism. This is just a petty bourgoise intellectual discussion

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