Dialectical Materialism
- Thread starter TremulousTetra
- Start date
butchersapron
Bring back hanging
It doesn't exist.
belboid
Exasperated, not angry.
Marx called nominalism the first materialism. Althusser called it the Royal Road thereto, and was a proud nominalist.
TruXta
tired
I'm sure we can relate this to the cuts protests somehow?
belboid
Exasperated, not angry.
moon23 is a tory. moon23 is not a tory ...
Athos
Well-Known Member
No, it was me who started talking about relevance. That was a direct response to the OP, who asked what we thought of dialectical materialism; I told him what I thought - that it's largely irrelevant to contemporary workers' struggles. Then I expanded upon that by explaining that, in my opinion, fetishising it is a hinderance to the left. That's not quite the same as saying that it should never be discussed. Rather my point is that it seems to receive more discussion than it ought, which not only takes up the time and effort of people who could be doing something more positive (in terms of practical action to further the struggle), but also alienates the vast majority of workers to whom it seems impenetrable.
Athos
Well-Known Member
Then we disagree.
But my response was to your suggestion that the theory isn't beyond the comprehension of the average working man; I used illiteracy as shorthand for the lack of the education which I feel would be necessary to deal with such topics.
Also, my point wasn't limited to dialectic materialism, but rather to the intricacies of Marxist thought generally.
Athos
Well-Known Member
You don't think that such theoretical discussion can sometimes be used as a cover for so-called revolutianaries' failure to actually do anything? Or that it can be a real turn-off to many working class people, who feel excluded from the revolutionary left by their failure to engage with such ideas?
belboid
Exasperated, not angry.
But as the cast majority of the world w-c is literate....
& agree with TruXta, I dont discuss such things on a day to day basis. Sometimes events throw things up following which a discussion of their theoretical basis becomes relevant, but even then, its fine to do so as long as you can manage to make the arguments relatively simply. Clearly, any mention of the law of excluded middle, or whatever, would drive almost any mildly interested worker to the bar.
Athos
Well-Known Member
You're right. I'm going for a pint!
thank fuck i haven't read it thats all i can say. BORING
dennisr
the acceptable face
its vivian (no its not - it's rick - the people's poet)
There's two things I disagree with in the above. One is anti-Marxist the other is Marxist.
A philosophy which seeks out eternal truths is anti-Marxist. This is precisely Duhring's philosophy. Engels' dialectics were not an attempt to carve eternal metaphysical truths but were invoked precisely to criticise such a point of view. The philosopher who thinks he has discovered some sort of profound eternal truth has merely glorified his own prejudices.
Dialectics was an attempt to characterise and critique such forms of thinking and instead provide a model of thought that would capture the nature of the world by observing how the world forces us to change our model of thought. So quantities transform into qualities and opposites transform into one another. So the character of materialist dialectics are contingent on what we know of the world and how we assess it open mindedly without the need to simply reproduce our old assumption and prejudices and categories.
This is where I am with Engels.
Where I diverge is this idea that our thoughts are a reflection of what we see and when we see water freezing (for example) we are seeing an example of quantitive change transforming into qualitive change in some very general sense. I think the meaning of notions of quantitive change etc. are dependent not merely on what we observe but also how we use them in a context.
So Engels talks at a level of generality which might look as if he is trying to find profound eternal truths, although on a careful reading he isn't. I nevertheless have no taste for talking at that sort of level of generality. It obscures more than it reveals.
So are dialectics a compass? I don't think so. It's not something that shows you the way, but it might show that you've gone the wrong way. It's an attempt to correct a certain sort of error. Marx's dialectics are not prior to his economics but rather stand as a critique of previous economists.
Is Darwin's theory of evolution dialectical? The better point to make is that it isn't what Engels called metaphysical in it's central thesis. It does not set out to describe a lizard as simply a lizard that can only ever evolve into another lizard. The biological categories are fluid necessarily fluid.
ResistanceMP3 said:
Be wary of such revelations is all I can say.
ResistanceMP3 said:
I think the high level of generality I mentioned above simply leads to sloppiness. When water freezes this is what is known as a phase transition - it obeys certain thermodynamic laws, it works in a certain way. A volcano erupting might also be an example of quantity transforming in quality - the gradual build up of pressure producing a sudden eruption. But that's really quite different, it's a tipping point, it's catastrophe theory. Seeing these two examples as examples of some greater category is merely to see what is superficially similar.
TremulousTetra
prismatic universe
delete
TremulousTetra
prismatic universe
has Marxism not achieved more than that, that by design would impose blind stumbling upon us all, anarchism?
What would you point two as the greatest achievement in 100 years, the blind stumbling of anarchism has produced?
TremulousTetra
prismatic universe
Motion isnt meant to be contradictory, is it? Rather all motion is caused by other contradictions. Also, dialectical contradictions aren't as rigid as aristotelian logic contradictions, or as strong. The contradiction of 'A' is not simply 'Not A.'
There is a direct contradiction between the needs of the ruling and working clsses, for example, that drives the nature of class society. There is the contradiction between the desire of the capitalist to pay workers less (to maximise profits) and the need to pay them more (so we can buy the shit that is produced).
TremulousTetra
prismatic universe
Yeah, yeah. But that isn't were hegel STARTED from. He started from, there is nothing you can think of, that is not, in a process of change. One thing is permenant, change. Is this not true?
This is the eternal truth that young Marx and Hegel grasped hold of, everything, literally everything you can think of in the material and philosophical world, is in a permanent process of change. Not only that, but there was a logic to this change. Maybe not one you can use to predict the future, but one you can use to understand why we are here, capitalism. A logic which lays bare the fact that the history of all hitherto existing society, is the history of class struggle.
the logic of Marx and Engels is not the “idea that our thoughts are a reflection of what we see”. [[and not that the idea that what we see is a reflection of our thoughts. Hegel.]] But that there is a dialectical relationship between the thoughts and the material world.
Marx suggested that Labour, was the essence of human nature. It is the process of his labour, that distinguishes him from all other animals. For in that process, thoughts do not merely reflect the material world, thoughts engage with it, and change the material world.
, In his famous example, bee’s do not think about their honeycombs, and come up with a better design. They carry on the relentlessly producing the same honeycomb, way of living, until there is some genetic transformation.
Humans on the other hand, have constantly change their environment, and as they have changed their environment, it has changed the way they have thought about the world. There is not a passive reflection, there is a dynamic interaction.
[I will come back to the rest of what you have said later, if you are still interested.]
BTW.At least you flesh out what you believe dialectical materialism is, and what your criticisms are. Thanks for that. That's all I was interested in.
Athos
Well-Known Member
Anarchism began to bear fruit with the Makhnovischina in Ukraine, and in Spain in the '30s. Sadly, on both occasions, betrayals by so-called Marxists lead to the defeat of the anarchists, and, ultimately to the imposition of brutally repressive regimes.
Can you point me in the direction of Marxism's marvelous victories from the last 100 years?
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