Wrestling with Marx- Negations, Continuity and change- Help!
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MS – ‘Most leftist groups are dialecticians. You must get in contact with them a little more to understand their world.’
Now your assertions have taken on a confidence concerning my political life experiences! I’ve been a socialist for 40 years and have debated with all varieties of the Left. You really have to learn to differentiate between those who make claims to be this or that and the reality that their claims might well be baseless. I have rarely encountered such a pompous individual as yourself.
MS – ‘Most leftist groups are dialecticians. You must get in contact with them a little more to understand their world.’
Now your assertions have taken on confidence concerning my political life experiences! I’ve been a socialist for 40 years and have debated with all varieties of the Left. You really have to learn to differentiate between those who make claims to be this or that and the reality that their claims might well be baseless. I have rarely encountered such a pompous individual like yourself.
Therefore, they have not rejected dialectic, they are dialecticians too which contradicts your prior message. I have not encountered them, I grew up with them I was part of them, and I grew up being a dialectician and supporter of speculative dialectical materialism and then I recognized that I was mistaken, and I was a hardcore dialectician. I was also a hardcore Leninists and I recognized that I was mistaken too. This is my last message,
MS – Just pointing out that many Leftists claim to be socialists and Marxists – doesn’t make it so, does it?
I was also a hardcore Leninists and I recognized that I was mistaken too.
… and:
that many Leftists claim to be socialists and Marxists
Thing is:
The lesson for me is to maintain Marxism as Marxism and Socialism as Socialism- else it can morph into Leninism or an other type of state capitalism coupling the State with Capital ownership. Dominant narratives conjoining its countering ones. Socialist modes get consumed with State based Capitalist modes?
The real argument is over whether or not it extends outside the field of human thinking and decision-making. Is it something more than “a form of logic”? Does it apply within (for want of a better term) “Nature”?
ALB,
Note to self: it seems I concur that when using semiotic/sign theory, or even dialectics , that it is best to keep it centred on the mental/linguistic activity of society- it is a sociology of language.
Internal meanings applied to the material can go into a pataphysics… with rocks containing an idealism “I am a rock”: So the rock told me! It would create fixed unities of meaning with ideal forms existing in the ether- communicating its essence to us: A little Platonic… Now I lost my track!! The material world of nature does indeed have its independent force, and our thinking will not shape those laws (make the Sun orbit the Earth, no)- but we can put it to use once we have the idea to turn wood into a chair!
Be safe and stay well if you are in lockdown,
L.B
LB – ‘The lesson for me is to maintain Marxism as Marxism and Socialism as Socialism- else it can morph into Leninism or an other type of state capitalism coupling the State with Capital ownership. Dominant narratives conjoining its countering ones. Socialist modes get consumed with State based Capitalist modes?’
The main problem with that perspective is that it was only possible for us to predict the failure of Bolshevism to create socialism was specifically due to our Marxian methodology. Marxism cannot ‘morph into Leninism’ as long as it is preserved as a method and not turned into an ideology as the Bolsheviks and Left attempt to do. Being a socialist without referencing Marx is rather like trying to be a physicist without a reference to Einstein – the Marxist genie is well out of the bottle and there’s no putting it back even if we should wish to do so.
Wez,
Being a socialist without referencing Marx is rather like trying to be a physicist without a reference to Einstein
I have a recollection of this. Think Derrida- ‘there can be no socialism without Marx’ or even Foucault saying he did not have to keep quoting Marx every time he developed an argument as physicists do not keep referencing Einstein each time they talked of physics.
I know Marx can’t morph into Leninism- as I had said: Marx is Marx. But Marx ideas are being fashioned into liberalism, anarchic Capitalism-
So I say again- I read Marx for Marx (writer to reader). No alterations, save time and our immediate understanding. We can preserve it- we can develop it too (if the discipline becomes frozen in time we are stuck in its time, and we need it to keep updated in the here and now).
Einstein and his cohorts used science for the bomb, in that fatal end- Marx wanted change, socialism (and if he got there first: no bomb).
It is out of the bag- and what creativity- Marx for his time, and for our time.
We need to make reference to Marx- I know that. He provided the science of Epochal change, and the end to history, the end to class struggle.
Just noticed my last post was a bit dread- almost a memory of CND.
I am glad I bumped into the SPGB. I had added so much to a pristine Marxist engine, that it seemed to drive all over the place. Good to drive a classic again.
L.B. -I’m interested in how you would seek to counter ‘dominant narratives’ like the one associating socialism with the Bolshevik revolution? I attempted to do this with reference to ‘authenticity’ some time ago and would be interested in your thoughts: https://www.worldsocialism.org/spgb/socialist-standard/2013/2010s/no-1304-april-2013/authenticity/
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