[DJP]

LBird wrote:

DJP, what do you think of my post 265, which I wrote with you in mind, since you mentioned Bertell Ollman's book and critical realism?

Hi. Looks like it's an interesting one but haven't had the chance to read it properly yet!

[DJP]

LBird wrote:

The real issue now is Rosa's holding of an apriori theory, that of Leninism. If Rosa doesn't want to discuss this, that's OK by me.

OK you've lost me now. How is Leninism an a priori theory? 

[DJP]

Rosa Lichtenstein wrote:

Well, one can't get more "opposite" to Hegel than to excise him completely from one's work

That's not what "opposite" means.

Rosa Lichtenstein wrote:

Karl Marx wrote:

The mystifying side of Hegelian dialectic I criticised nearly thirty years ago, at a time when it was still the fashion. But just as I was working at the first volume of “Das Kapital,” it was the good pleasure of the peevish, arrogant, mediocre Epigonoi [Epigones – Büchner, Dühring and others] who now talk large in cultured Germany, to treat Hegel in same way as the brave Moses Mendelssohn in Lessing’s time treated Spinoza, i.e., as a “dead dog.” I therefore openly avowed myself the pupil of that mighty thinker, and even here and there, in the chapter on the theory of value, coquetted with the modes of expression peculiar to him. The mystification which dialectic suffers in Hegel’s hands, by no means prevents him from being the first to present its general form of working in a comprehensive and conscious manner. With him it is standing on its head. It must be turned right side up again, if you would discover the rational kernel within the mystical shell.

Attentive readers will no doubt have noticed that Marx puts his 'avowal' of Hegel in the past tense — "avowed". And there was good reason for this, since his views had changed.

Or rather than attempting mind reading or spirit channeling isn't it simpler to assume he uses the past tense because he is talking about a period of time in the past when he was working on Capital Vol 1?

[DJP]

Rosa Lichtenstein wrote:

Well, I reject all of philosophy as non-sense — not 99.99%, but 100% — and that inlcudes Dietzgen and Pannekoek's versions of it.

Well that's all well and good but the evidence suggests that if you're going to be consistent you're going to have to add Marx to the list too.

[DJP]

Rosa Lichtenstein wrote:

Well, I don't have, nor do I want an a priori theory.

Well you may think that but hasn't it been shown that every theory has to rest on a certain set of unquestionable a priori assumptions?Hence why the "linguistic turn" has been in somewhat of a retreat in recent decades..

[DJP]

LBird wrote:

This lends some credence, I think, to my suggestion that 'dialectics' would best be seen as Marx's early attempt to employ what we now would call 'critical realism'.

In the book isn't Ollman at least partially in agreement with this?

[DJP]

ALB wrote:

Do you think it is possible to understand Marx's Capital without first having mastered Hegel's Logic? Hopefully, the answer will be "no", but what if it's "yes"?

I could ask that I'm not sure what he would answer though if it is "yes" I wouldn't be that surprised, he is a devotee of Dunayevskaya after all…

[DJP]

LBird wrote:

DJP wrote:

Where exactly is it that dialectics has been "so influential"? I'd love to know, everyone I try to start discussing it with at the bus-stop just looks at me funny and runs away!

Well, DJP, it's 'been so influential' enough that SPGB posters here keep mentioning it!

LOL.Who bought this up anyway?But seriously my interest is because I think Marx has something useful to say about the present moment, and in various postfaces, prefaces and footnotes he describes the method he used to construct this work as "dialectical". Now what Marx meant by this, and how this is different from what other people have meant by it is, to me at least, a useful and practical question since I hope the answer will help me in my own work.It is also interesting to compare Marx to others who would not have described their methods as "dialectical". So for example; Do you think it would have been possible to write Capital using the methods based on linguistic analysis that Wittenstien used? What use are the methods of analytic philosophy for creating a critical social theory like the one constructed in Capital?This is where my interests in "dialectic" lie, not in trying to uncover some mystic driving force that controls the universe.

[DJP]

LBird wrote:

Whilst any comrades think that there is anything to dialectics, we have to confront and discuss it, because it has been so influential and damaging for the proletariat.

Where exactly is it that dialectics has been "so influential"? I'd love to know, everyone I try to start discussing it with at the bus-stop just looks at me funny and runs away!

[DJP]

LBird wrote:

'Dialecticians' pretend to have access to an unmediated 'structure'. That is why Leninists favour 'dialectics'. They can claim to have access to a special method, which is not accessible to the class, so they have a more profound consciousness.

Yes but we are not Leninists (except for RL) or "dialecticians" either. Now Marx did have a method that he refered to as "dialectic" if we want to we could discuss what he meant by this and how his method is different from others e.g Wittgenstein.But I don't think the outcome of the world revolution depends on what we come up with!

[DJP]

Rosa Lichtenstein wrote:

So, are there any more 'proof texts' you'd like me to shoot down in flames?

Have you really done that? Anyone who is interested enough and knows how to read and think for themselves can just refer back to the primary texts. I really don't care what you think you have proved or disproved.

[DJP]

Rejecting all "dialectics" out of hand means rejecting Marx's method and the whole of Marx's work with it. RL really does throw the baby and the whole bathtub out with the bathwater.

Marx – Capital Vol 1. wrote:

My dialectic method is not only different from the Hegelian, but is its direct opposite. To Hegel, the life process of the human brain, i.e., the process of thinking, which, under the name of “the Idea,” he even transforms into an independent subject, is the demiurgos of the real world, and the real world is only the external, phenomenal form of “the Idea.” 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.The mystifying side of Hegelian dialectic I criticised nearly thirty years ago, at a time when it was still the fashion. But just as I was working at the first volume of “Das Kapital,” it was the good pleasure of the peevish, arrogant, mediocre Epigonoi [Epigones – Büchner, Dühring and others] who now talk large in cultured Germany, to treat Hegel in same way as the brave Moses Mendelssohn in Lessing’s time treated Spinoza, i.e., as a “dead dog.” I therefore openly avowed myself the pupil of that mighty thinker, and even here and there, in the chapter on the theory of value, coquetted with the modes of expression peculiar to him. The mystification which dialectic suffers in Hegel’s hands, by no means prevents him from being the first to present its general form of working in a comprehensive and conscious manner. With him it is standing on its head. It must be turned right side up again, if you would discover the rational kernel within the mystical shell.In its mystified form, dialectic became the fashion in Germany, because it seemed to transfigure and to glorify the existing state of things. In its rational form it is a scandal and abomination to bourgeoisdom and its doctrinaire professors, because it includes in its comprehension and affirmative recognition of the existing state of things, at the same time also, the recognition of the negation of that state, of its inevitable breaking up; because it regards every historically developed social form as in fluid movement, and therefore takes into account its transient nature not less than its momentary existence; because it lets nothing impose upon it, and is in its essence critical and revolutionary.http://marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1867-c1/p3.htm

Marx was no Hegalian but RL's claim that Marx did not hold Hegel in high regard and ignored him in his later work is again shown to be pure BS.But what is the dialectic in Marx?

Bertell Ollman wrote:

With all the misinformation conveyed about dialectics, it may be useful to start by saying what it is not. Dialectics is not a rock-ribbed triad of thesis-antithesis-synthesis that serves as an all-purpose explanation; nor does it provide a formula that enables us to prove or predict anything; nor is it the motor force of history. The dialectic, as such, explains nothing, proves nothing, predicts nothing and causes nothing to happen. Rather, dialectics is a way of thinking that brings into focus the full range of changes and interactions that occur in the world. As part of this, it includes how to organize a reality viewed in this manner for purposes of study and how to present the results of what one finds to others, most of whom do not think dialectically.[…]Dialectics restructures our thinking about reality by replacing the common sense notion of "thing" (as something that has a history and has external connections with other things) with notions of "process" (which contains its history and possible futures) and "relation" (which contains as part of what it is its ties with other relations). Nothing that didn't already exist has been added here. Rather, it is a matter of where and how one draws boundaries and establishes units (the dialectical term is "abstracts") in which to think about the world. The assumption is that while the qualities we perceive with our five senses actually exist as parts of nature, the conceptual distinctions that tell us where one thing ends and the next one begins both in space and across time are social and mental constructs. However great the influence of what the world is on how we draw these boundaries, it is ultimately we who draw the boundaries, and people coming from different cultures and from different philosophical traditions can and do draw them differently.[…]Unlike non-dialectical research, where one starts with some small part and through establishing its connections to other such parts tries to reconstruct the larger whole, dialectical research begins with the whole, the system, or as much of it as one understands, and then proceeds to an examination of the part to see where it fits and how it functions, leading eventually to a fuller understanding of the whole from which one has begun. Capitalism serves Marx as his jumping-off point for an examination of anything that takes place within it.[…]Given an approach that proceeds from the whole to the part, from the system inward, dialectical research is primarily directed to finding and tracing four kinds of relations: identity/difference, interpenetration of opposites, quantity/quality and contradiction. Rooted in his dialectical conception of reality, these relations enable Marx to attain his double aim of discovering how something works or happened while simultaneously developing his understanding of the system in which such things could work or happen in just this way.http://www.nyu.edu/projects/ollman/docs/dd_ch01.php

Personally I've found this kind of stuff quite useful, but if others do not then I don't really think it's a that much of a problem. Horses for courses and all that…

[DJP]

alanjjohnstone wrote:

So in a few sentences, in words of few syllables,  what will i answer the next time the mention of dialects comes up that will be an immediate, effective put-down that cannot produce any sort of dialectical come-back? 

G.W.F. Hegel – The Phenomenology of Spirit, Preface wrote:

To judge a thing that has substance and solid worth is quite easy, to comprehend it is much harder, and to blend judgment and comprehension in a definitive description is the hardest thing of all.

[DJP]

SPGB wrote:

Dialectics means EvolutionAt the time when Marx was preparing to write his analysis of capitalism, the word "evolution" was not current as an expression covering the process of the development of world capitalism. Although many thinkers recognised that certain changes occurred in nature and history, they had not yet grasped the fact that the process was universal, complementary and unified. They used the expression, "development hypo-thesis," to describe the growth of one form into an-other, within one species. The change from one species into another had not yet been recognised and was to become part of a larger outlook, the evolutionary one.It is significant from this point of view that the word "evolution" does not appear anywhere in the Communist Manifesto, the outlook of which is now recognised as evolutionary. Evolution as an expression covering the comprehensive developmental point of view became recognised with the appearance of Darwin's Origin of Species, in which was proclaimed the theory of organic evolution. This book appeared in 1859, the same year in which Marx's Critique of Political Economy appeared, and by that time Marx had written most of the manuscript that eventually appeared under the title "Capital." Thus most of Marx's important works were either published or in manuscript form before the word "evolution" had become current as the expression of all that is bound up with the process of universal, progressive and unending change, including the mechanism that accomplishes the changes.To the advanced thinkers of Marx's day, "dialectics" signified the science of the process by which change occurred. Since then, dialectical has been replaced by evolutionary and the older word is largely forgotten by all but the out-of-date philosophers living among cobwebs, and the advocates of that modem monstrosity, Russian "Communism." Each scientist is, and must be, an evolutionist in his own field of research, and is therefore, to that extent, a materialist. It is only when he leaves his field, particularly when he looks at society and religion, that he is likely to abandon science and enter the realms of fantasy. The weight of society and traditions, in these particular directions, is heavier than in others because here a scientific outlook is a danger to the existing social arrangements.What Marx and Engels meant by dialectics was made clear in the latter's book, Anti-Duhring, written with the assistance of Marx. In this 'book Engels, when referring to the negation of the negation, and having instanced the growth of a grain of barley to a crop-bearing plant, etc., says: "If I say that all these processes constitute the negation of the negation, I embrace them all under this one law of progress and leave the distinctive features of each special process without particular notice. The dialectic is, as a matter of fact, nothing but the science of the universal laws of motion and evolution in nature, human society and thought." (Landmarks of Scientific Socialism – Anti-Duhring. Kerr edition 1907. p. 173).He further says about modern materialism: "It is in a special sense no philosophy but a single concept of the universe which has to prove and realise itself, not in a science of sciences apart, but in actual science."http://www.worldsocialism.org/spgb/pamphlets/historical-materialism

The pamphlet then goes on to critise the confused "dialecticians" of the type that Rosa is very correct in critising.

[DJP]

Rosa Lichtenstein wrote:

So, in the sense that Marx took Hegel seriously, Das Kapital is indeed a Hegel-free zone.

Karl Marx wrote:

 Here, as in natural science, is shown the correctness of the law discovered by Hegel (in his “Logic”), that merely quantitative differences beyond a certain point pass into qualitative changes.[emphasis mine]

You can give whatever rambling answer you like but the evidence is here. And there's more but I can't be bothered…BTW If you really think that any amount of money or commodities can function as capital please let me know and I'll send you 10p and a half a box of nails. You can report back to us all once you have grown a business empire.I have some sympathy for what you are trying to do. I am certainly very suspicious of those who think that Marx should be read through the prism of Hegel.But I read that one of the reasons you started your project was that those high in the party heirarchy where using terminology from "dialectics" to hoodwink lower party minions into doing there bidding. In that case the problem is more one of hierarchical / leninist party models then of "dialectics" per se. I think you have been avoiding the real issue all along…

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