Rosa Lichtenstein
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DJP (quoting me)
Quote:RL: So, Marx's engagement with Hegel taught him to ignore Hegel completely.DJP: That appears to be false:Marx: 'What was of great use to me as regards method of treatment was Hegel’s Logic at which I had taken another look by mere accident, Freiligrath having found and made me a present of several volumes of Hegel, originally the property of Bakunin. If ever the time comes when such work is again possible, I should very much like to write 2 or 3 sheets making accessible to the common reader the rational aspect of the method which Hegel not only discovered but also mystified.'I have in fact covered this point (and many others that critics of my ideas have raised) in one of my essays:
Quote:Needless to say, Marx never supplied his readers with such a précis. From this we may perhaps draw the conclusion that in the end Marx didn't really think Hegel's method was all that significant or useful. [Indeed, the evidence presented below suggests that this is a gross understatement. — added on edit: omitted from this quotation.] So, despite all the millions of words he committed to paper, Marx didn't consider it important enough to complete these relatively few pages.Meanwhile, and in stark contrast, he spent a whole year of his life banging on about Karl Vogt — but he still couldn't be bothered with this 'vitally important' summary.Even had Marx written such a summary (while he did in fact endorse someone else's summary, and it is a Hegel-free zone — added on edit: see the long quotation for the Postface to the second edition of Das Kapital I added to an earlier post), it would still have meant that only a tiny fraction of Hegel's work is relevant to understanding Das Kapital: a few pages! Attentive readers, too, will no doubt have noticed that Marx tells us that he encountered Hegel's Logic by "accident"; this hardly suggests he was a constant and avid reader of that work. Indeed, he didn't even possess his own copy and had to be given one as a present by Freiligrath!http://anti-dialectics.co.uk/page%2009_01.htm#Marx-And-DM–11%5BIf you are using Internet Explorer 10, you might find the above link and some of those I have used in that essay won't work properly unless you switch to 'Compatibility View' (in the Tools Menu).]Moreover, Hegel didn't discover this 'method'; a gaggle of Neo-Platonist and Hermetic Philosophers did — for example, Plotinus, Proclus, Nicolas Cusanus and Jakob Boehme (to name but a few). Hegel merely added several serious confusions of his own.Finally, the letter you quoted was written fifteen or so years before the Postface to the second edition of Das Kapital, and as I noted in my reply to twc, no unpublished material can countermand a published source, especially if the former was written long before the latter.So, I re-iterate what I said earlier: Das Kapital is a Hegel-free zone.
ALB:
Quote:Presumably the manuscript that Marx was discussing was that later published by Dietzgen as The Nature of Human Brainwork. Anyone reading this will see that it shows no influence of Hegel's thinking at all. It is essentially Kant's theory without the mysterious "thing-in-itself" that Kant argued lay behind the world of appearances (phenomena). According to Dietzgen, there is nothing behind this world; it is the world.Well, it was a fragment of that book; but I disagree. I can detect Hegel's baleful influence on Dietzgen in that book.
Quote:I don't think that Dietzgen would have got the concept of "dialectics" from Hegel either. After all, Kant wrote about it too, In fact that's who Hegel got it from, but giving it a quite different meaning.Sure, he could have caught this malaise from Kant (or from Plato, Aristotle, and any number of Medieval and Renaissance Philosophers), but it would be odd if 'the dialectic' (as it was understood in Germany at that time by everyone) hadn't been caught from Hegel.ALB:
Quote:If only you knew it, Dietzgen as a non-Hegelian is on your side.I don't think so; Dietzgen is an a priori dogmatist of the worst possible kind, confusing garbled a priori psychology with the theory of knowledge (among many other things).
mcolome1:
Quote:Nothing in this discussion is new, it has been analyzed, explained and discussed in the past for several years by members of News and Letters, and several books, articles, and pamphlets have been written by peoples who do know about Hegelian philosophy such as Peter Hudis, Kevin Anderson, Raya Dunayevskaya, CLR James, Isaac, Olga, John Alan, and others. Marx never abandoned Hegel completely, and he inherited from Hegel the concept of alienation which he applied to the fetishism of the commodity1) It may not be new (but I deny this; much of my work is entirely new), but you still can't show where I go wrong.2) You list a number of authors whom you say 'know about' Hegelian Philosophy; but, it remains to be seen if they actually understand it any more than Christian Theologians understand the Trinity or the Incarnation of Christ — which doctrines, as I have pointed out twice already, originated in the same Neo-Platonic quagmire that gave birth to Hegel's 'dialectic'. Indeed, since they have failed to explain what Hegel was banging on about, we needn't delay that conclusion too long: they don't.It isn't possible to understand gobbledygook.3) You can assert that "Marx never abandoned Hegel completely" until the cows next evolve, it will do no good. Marx's summary (not mine), that I added to an earlier post, contains not one atom of Hegel, and yet Marx still calls it 'my method' and 'the dialectic method'.So, and once again, by the time he came to write Das Kapital, Marx had abandoned Hegel in his entirety.Now, if you know of a summary of 'the dialectic method' written and published by Marx, contemporaneous with or subsequent to Das Kapital that supports your belief that Marx hadn't abandoned Hegel completely, don't be shy, let's see it.
twc, thanks for the formatting information; I see indenting quotes uses the same codes as other discussion boards:When it comes to interpreting a writer's views, his/her published work takes precedence over everything else. This doesn't mean that unpublished work/letters are unimportant or should be ignored, only that no unpublished source can countermand the views expressed in published material, especially if the published material was written after the unpublished.So, I begin with the only summary of 'the dialectic method' Marx published and endorsed in his entire life (quoted in an earlier post). That summary contains not one atom of Hegel (upside down or 'the right way up'), and yet Marx still calls it 'his method' and 'the dialectic method' (note: not 'a dialectic method', not yet 'part of the dialectic method', but 'the dialectic method'). So, taking this as our primary source, it is clear that by the time he came to write Das Kapital, Marx had waved 'goodbye' to Hegel in his entirety.In that case, interesting though the passages you quote are, they can't countermand that published source. But what of the things you actually say?
Quote:The only logic that Engels would ever endorse in correspondence with Marx is Hegel’s Science of Logic. Marx and Engels, as fellow refugees from youthful Hegelianism, know each other intimately enough to interpret each other’s direct reference to logic as indirect reference to Hegel.It is precisely Engels’s reference to logic that motivates Marx, in merely endorsing Engels (2), to refer directly to what Engels referred to indirectly — Dietzgen lacked a study of Hegelian logic.Contrary to popular conception, it was Engels who did his level best to wean Hegelian-terminologist Marx from the fond illusion that Capital’s Hegelian-inspired development should remain explicit. We owe much of Capital’s accessible [hybridized] form, such as it is, to Engels’s insistence that Marx directly excise his Hegelian inspiration from the text.Note, that it is Engels who is the implicit referrer to Hegel, and that it is Marx who is the explicit referrer to Hegel.Of course, all this was written at least five years before the Afterword to the second edition of Das Kapital, and hence can't alter the conclusions I drew above. So, while you might be right in what you say about 'logic' — even though there is no way of telling if you are — the fact that no Hegelian 'logic' (but it isn't even logic; it is largely a priori psychology and metaphysics jumbled together with some garbled Aristotle and Kant) appears in Das Kapital tells us all we need to know.twc:
Quote:Marx may well be the disproof of RL's Max Eastman banner.Which was this:
Quote:Hegelism is like a mental disease; you can't know what it is until you get it, and then you can't know because you have got it — Max EastmanIndeed, but only if it is true that Marx had recovered from this affliction.twc:
Quote:RL, you assert “it is quite clear that Dietzgen had studied Hegel.” But that was not clear to Marx and Engels in their 1868 correspondence.I agree, but then these two plainly didn't know everything there was to know about Dietzgen, did they?
Quote:Marx and Engels agree on estimating the worth of Dietzgen’s manuscript (2). They regarded much of it as “entirely his own independent achievement” (where not obviously dependent on Feuerbach or Capital).They both concluded that it was an achievement, probably independent of Hegel, whose characteristic signature was for these fellow Hegelian students quite unmistakable, since they both considered themselves proficient in Hegel to be able detect the source of any Hegelian borrowings, and apparently neither of them could.That’s what impressed them!Maybe so (I have never denied that Marx and Engels held positive views about Dietzgen's work). However, as we now know from Dietzgen's son, Dietzgen senior got many of his ideas from reading philosophy books (see my comments about this on page 13, above). Furthermore, we also know that Marx's opinion of Dietzgen's work nosedived over the next ten or twelve years; you even included the letter I quoted several pages ago:
Quote: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.]So, I'm far from sure what your post has achieved, or was intended to achieve.
Alan:"Phewwww… am i pleased to read that bit by Rosa. I always thought myself as an ignoramus when dialects is raised…(as also when quantum physics is talked about)."Well, the only thing preventing anyone from understanding Quantum Mechanics is their education (not that that is their fault either), whereas, no matter how much an individual is educated, it is no more possible to understand dialectics than it is to understand the Christian Trinity.
Gnome, thank you for those tips, but I tried them out and they didn't seem to work. So, either I misread you, or your explanation might need a little tweeking.Can anyone else tell me how to indent quotations?
twc, thanks for those quotations; taking each in turn:1) I didn't quote the first one since it didn't seem to me to add anything obvious to what we know about Marx's opinion of Dietzgen. But, I assume you included it here because of this passage:"It is bad luck for him that it is precisely Hegel that he has not studied."Except, it is quite clear that Dietzgen had studied Hegel.But, let us assume Marx was right; even then, it isn't too clear what he meant by this. For example, I am glad I have studied Hegel since it has shown me how not to do philosophy. I'm assuming Marx meant it that way, too.How do I know? Well, the only summary of 'the dialectic method' that Marx published and endorsed in his entire life contains not one atom of Hegel, and yet Marx (not me, Marx) calls it 'the dialectic method' (not 'a dialectic method', nor yet 'part of the dialectic method', but 'the dialectic method'), and "my method". So, Marx's engagement with Hegel taught him to ignore Hegel completely.Hence, Marx was lamenting the fact that Dietzgen hadn't done the same.2) You quote this from the Postface to the second edition of Das Kapital:"The fact that the movement of capitalist society is full of contradictions impresses itself most strikingly on the practical bourgeois in the changes of the periodic cycle through which modern industry passes, the summit of which is the general crisis."That crisis is once again approaching, although as yet it is only in its preliminary stages, and by the universality of its field of action and the intensity of its impact it will drum dialectics even into the heads of the upstarts in charge of the new Holy Prussian–German Empire."I have never claimed that Marx didn't use 'the dialectic method' in Das Kapital; the question is: What did he mean by this phrase? Well, we needn't speculate since Marx very kindly told us: in the aforementioned summary of this 'method' no trace of Hegel is to be found. So, Marx's 'method' owes nothing whatsoever to Hegel.But, what about his use of 'contradiction'?Again, as I pointed out in an earlier post (to which yours seems to be a reply), Marx had already told us in the very same Postface that he was merely 'coquetting' with a few Hegelian phrases in Das Kapital. So, that comment will cover the above use of 'contradiction', too.And, we can see that this is so since a literal interpretation of that passage would have to be read as follows:"The fact that the movement of capitalist society is full of arguments/propositions and their negations impresses itself most strikingly on the practical bourgeois in the changes of the periodic cycle through which modern industry passes, the summit of which is the general crisis."Is that really what Marx meant?I think not.
L Bird:"I'm not sure if Rosa thinks that there is anything to 'dialectics' in the sense of 'human discussion'."That is certainly the classical view of the subject, but I prefer not to use the word since it has been ruined by Hegel, and by those who think he had anything uselful to teach humanity.
Er, can someone tell me why I can edit only some of my comments in this thread, but not all of them.And, how do you use the quotation (and indentation) system here?
ALB:"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."Yes, you are right. Apologies.
mcolome1:"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"You really must calm down. The use of the word "period" is quite common in English, and indicates that what one wants to say ends there with no additional qualification intended.So, to make it painfully obvious what I meant, here is my earlier comment rephrased:Steady on there, sunshine! I nowhere said Engels wasn't relevant at all for anything else whatsoever; only that he wasn't relevant to what Marx believed about Dietzgen.And that is confirmed by what I also asaid earlier, which you quote again:"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)."There, you can see what I meant — what Engels had to say is only relveant to what he (Engels) believd about Dietzgen, and no one else.I can only think you have problems with the English language if you think I was making a comment about the relevance of Engels's words to anything else."Being a petty bourgoise is not only a social stand, it is also a mentality"With all due respect, twisting another's words is also symptomatic of another frame of mind, too.
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'?
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.
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.
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.
