Interview on Marx’s method

[DJP]

Bertram Ollman, author of “Dance of the Dialectic” (and creator of the board game “Class Struggle”) has recently been interviewed here:

Bertell Ollman Interview: Dialectics, Abstraction, Internal Relations

I found Ollmans book very helpful as I have Ilyenkov’s “Dialectical Logic” and Roslyn Bologh’s “Dialectical Phenomenolgy”.

I also have a few of the classics on the subject, Engels, Plekenhov but have yet to dip into them in any great depth.

I think these things take a couple of readings to get the most out of them.

Anyone got any recomendations on other books about Marx’s method of enquiry?

[DJP]

Just read Deitzgen’s “The Positive Outcome of Philosophy”.  I’d highly recommend it to anyone interested in “dialectical monism”.  I like his clear and down to earth style. There’s a talk by Steve Coleman which should be re-uploaded soon that would make a good introduction, as would the one in the book, written by Pannekoek – who all leftist trainspotters should have heard of.It’s online here:http://www.archive.org/details/positiveoutcome00dietgoogHere are some passages I liked

Quote:

 
The first principle, then, declares that A is A, or to
speak mathematically, every quantity is equal to itself.
In plain English : a thing is what it is ; no thing is what
it is not. “Characters which are excluded by any con-
ception must not be attributed to it.” The square is ex-
cluded from the conception of a circle, therefore the pre-
dicate “square” must not be given to a circle. For the
same’ reason a straight line must not be crooked, and a
lie must not be true.

Now this so-called law of thought may be well enough
for household use, where nothing but known quantities
are under consideration. A thing is what it is. Right is
not left and one hundred is not one thousand. Whoever
is named Peter or Paul remains Peter or Paul all his life.
This, I say, is all right for household use.

But when we consider matters from the wider point of
view of cosmic universal life, then this famous law of
thought proves to be nothing but an expedient in logic
which is not adequate to the nature of things, but merely
a means of mutual understanding for us human beings.

Hence the left bank of the Rhine is not the right, because
we have agreed that in naming the banks of a river we
will turn our backs to the source and our faces to the
mouth of the river and then designate the banks as right
and left Such a way of distinguishing, thinking, and
judging is good and practical, so long as this narrow
standpoint is accompanied by the consciousness of its
narrowness. Hitherto this has not been the case. This
determined logic has overlooked that the perception
which is produced by its rules is not truth, not the real
world, but only gives an ideal, more or less accurate, re-
flection of it. Peter and Paul, who according to the law
of identity are the same all their lives, are in fact dif-
ferent fellows every minute and every day of their lives,
and all things of this world are, like those two, not con-
stant, but very variable quantities. The mathematical
points, the straight lines, the round circles, are ideals.
In reality every point has a certain dimension, every
straight line, when seen through a magnifying glass, is
full of many crooked turns, and even the roundest circle,
according to the mathematicians, consists of an infinite
number of straight lines.

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