| Theory |
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Disputing Dialectics June 11, 2004 by RedStar2000 |
The "importance" of "dialectical materialism" to revolutionary theory has been "accepted orthodoxy" since the days of Marx and Engels themselves.
I don't think it should be considered relevant any longer; what we need now is a Marxism re-founded on an empirical/pragmatic basis...one that evaluates the evidence of practice and observation on its own terms, just like any other real science.
The claim that "dialectics" is the "theory of everything" has turned out, in practice, to be the real understanding of nothing.
We should dump this crap, once and for all!
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A most impressively erudite, not to say "dialectical", post.
Now use it to say something useful about reality, something that cannot be said or even thought using ordinary evidence and reason.
I daresay Hegel's rebellion against the metaphysics of his era was "useful" -- reality really doesn't consist of unchanging entities of internal uniformity. To the extent that his work gave Marx a "scaffold" to erect a theory of social change, it was historically "progressive".
However, in looking at a specific social phenomenon, are "dialectical" clichés of any use? Can they tell us anything that we would not observe anyway?
Are there any modern scientists, historians, etc. so dense as not to be aware of process, complexity, quantum uncertainty, and even the quasi-orderly behavior of chaotic systems?
Are there any serious revolutionaries who are not, at least dimly, aware that the working class is not "an undifferentiated lump" that behaves in a stolid and limited fashion?
It seems to me that the "best" that you can claim is that "dialecticians do it better". The 20th century history of those who claimed to be "masters" of the "dialectic" does not even remotely support such a claim.
In particular, Mao, whom you quote with great admiration, managed to completely overlook the "contradiction" between the nominal "revolutionary" line of his party and its actual class basis and how that would evolve with the passage of time.
Which lands you in a "contradiction" of your own. How did this "master of dialectics" fuck up so badly that the open restoration of capitalism began before his corpse was cold?
Of what use was "dialectics" to him?
Or us?
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First posted at AnotherWorldIsPossible on May 27, 2004
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Well in fact we communists constantly use dialectics to say something useful about reality - we could not analyze reality, make revolutionary strategy or solve any problems without it.
So you say...but heretofore and at the present time, where are the results of those "analyses", "strategies", or "solved problems"?
And to the extent that you have actually achieved any positive results using "dialectics", on what grounds can you assert that those results "could not" have been achieved using ordinary reason and empirical evidence?
All you have to show for your efforts is a bunch of dead revolutions. And they weren't much to brag about when they were alive...to put it charitably.
All of the Leninist parties ("masters of the dialectic") in the advanced capitalist countries are small and weak...and show no signs at this point of ever accomplishing anything.
True, you can reply that things will change...and they certainly will. But why should they change in such a fashion as to bring you to power?
Waving the "dialectical wand" is not an explanation.
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Redstar applies pragmatism, which is a philosophy that denies it is a philosophy. "We just look at things and judge by results," says this philosophy (which is the semi-official outlook of bourgeois society in the U.S.)
I'm not sure what "semi-official" is intended to mean in this context. Many officials in the Bush administration are religious fundamentalists and many others are followers of the despotic Leo Strauss.
But yes, I would not be distressed to be labeled a Marxist-pragmatist...I am most concerned with developing Marxist theory in directions that produce useful results in the struggle for proletarian revolution.
I am uninterested in theology and orthodoxy has no special merit in my eyes.
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Each philosophy serves a class.
Not exactly. Philosophies undoubtedly arise because they serve a particular class at a particular historical moment.
But, as you should know, things change. When the bourgeoisie was still progressive, pragmatic views were useful in the struggle against pre-capitalist mysticism.
A ruling class in decay -- of which our modern capitalist class shows some marked signs -- tends to retreat from rational views and invent or revive obscurantist philosophies...Plato, Hegel, and Nietzsche are all enjoying a fresh popularity in ruling circles these days.
In fact, I'll generalize this point: people really don't like a pragmatic evaluation of their ideas when the real world results disappoint them.
The siren songs of metaphysics sound so much sweeter than the clamor of the real world.
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Pragmatists have their reasoning based (not surprisingly) on pragmatic theory - on short term evaluations of "what works."
Short-term? Make the term as long as you like. But the longer your losing streak continues, the less and less likely your analysis of reality is correct.
Any theory that is unable to meet the tests of the real world for an extended period of time is in very bad shape...again, being charitable about it.
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Mao was a master of dialectics, led a communist party out of a decade of massacres and defeats, defeated one reactionary army after another (KMT, Japan, US) - led a quarter of humanity in the most massive transfer of wealth in history (agrarian revolution in China), built a socialist economy in a backward country, understood-analyzed-exposed the first restoration of capitalism, and led a monumental movement (internationally and especially within China) to fight against these processes.
The fact that capitalism was restored (but only after he died and no longer led the resistance to it) is not a failure (of his line, philosophy and approach), but its vindication.
That's what I "love" about "dialectics"...by mere words you convert defeat into victory.
Hegel would be proud of you; all he was ever able to do with this "marvelous tool" was "prove" that the "highest expression of democracy" was the Prussian despotism.
But let's not overlook that little detail you slipped in; the one where nothing bad happened until Mao died.
Now someone like me, operating with "bourgeois" pragmatism and at least a crude understanding of the role of the masses in Marxist sociology, would be really curious about how the death of one guy could result in a huge change in the nature of a class society virtually overnight???
Was Mao, "like" the king of Prussia, the bodily incarnation of the "historic world-spirit"???
Or, dare it be said, was China's "socialist revolution in a backward country" really a bourgeois revolution wrapped in red flags? Was Marx right about objective material conditions determining "the next stage" of a class society? Or was the "master of the dialectic" right...only he died and everything went to hell?
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In other words, the fact that he was defeated, does not mean that his approach (and dialectics itself) is a failure. No philosophy, however true or powerful, guarantees victory in all moments, in all historic struggles. We are talking revolution here, not magic.
Granted...but the clock is ticking nevertheless. You don't have to "win them all" but you must win some...you must show positive achievements (not old scrapbook photos of your "glory days") if you wish to be thought of as something other than a cult and "dialectics" as something more than just another species of metaphysics.
Like it or not, the real world is the test of theory...for Marxism as for any other science.
Much of Marxism has been empirically verified. Much more of it "looks good"...the evidence is sparse but favorable.
Some parts are shaky...the evidence is mixed.
Ultimately, the "final proof" of Marxism can only be found in a successful proletarian revolution followed by a viable communist society...if that doesn't happen within a century or two, it's pretty certain that Marx was fundamentally wrong. (Though he could still have been right about a lot of other things, of course.)
I would very much like to see Marxism established on a firm empirical foundation...the same foundation that all modern science is based on.
I would like to see a Marxism that works.
In this task, convoluted discussions of "one into two" and "two into one" are about as useful as a third shoe.
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First posted at AnotherWorldIsPossible on May 29, 2004
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Without applying materialist dialectics, is it possible to actually lead people through the process of seeing the need for proletarian revolution? No, it is not.
Is that why you like "dialectics" so much? In the absence of its magical insights, working people would have to figure out the need for proletarian revolution and even make one "on their own".
Horrors!
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However, if you do apply materialist dialectics it becomes possible to win people to a higher vision.
Pure assertion without evidence.
Somewhere in at least one advanced capitalist country, at least one party should have applied "dialectics" correctly...with significant positive results.
It's never happened...not even once.
The only Leninist parties to become mass parties in the "west" did so by becoming explicitly reformist.
How did "dialectics" help them?
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The same is true of people understanding what is happening in the world around them politically. They may understand their own limited experience in limited ways: "work sucks, cops kill, the boss doesn't give a crap about us", they even can begin to get an understanding that capitalist imperialism is itself a problem. However, they must be taken outside their own limited experience.
Indeed they must be either "taken" or "find their own way".
Either may be accomplished without ever mentioning the word or the concept of "dialectics".
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The Marxist Theory of Knowledge helps us to understand that we cannot expect people to spontaneously have the correct views.
It may help you; it doesn't help me. And I'm not at all sure that Marx himself would appreciate the attribution.
His writings rather strongly suggest that he did expect the working class to become "a class for itself" both as a result of the normal functioning of capitalism and the working class struggle against the consequences of that functioning.
As to the origins of a "correct idea", I think no one knows in advance who will come up with one...though the odds heavily favor those who've made an effort to study a situation, problem, etc.
Almost all scientific discoveries these days are made by trained specialists in a particular field...but even so, there is the occasional "gifted amateur" who surprises everyone.
There is no "field" in the area of proletarian revolution in the advanced capitalist countries.
Yes, there are people who claim that such a field exists and who promote themselves as "trained experts" in it.
We have only four limited specimens of proletarian revolution to study: Paris 1871, Petrograd in February 1917, Barcelona in 1936, and Paris again in May 1968. None of them involved a vanguard party with a "mastery" of "dialectics".
Lenin's October 1917 coup is irrelevant...unless you want to do that too. Mao's protracted peasant rebellion is likewise irrelevant; we have no peasantry -- just kulaks and an agricultural proletariat.
Like most of you, I have read a lot about the proletarian revolutions mentioned above -- "the big four" -- looking for "clues" to "what should be done".
The only thing I have come up with is the idea that communists must concentrate on proletarian resistance to capitalist rule and do whatever we can within that context to raise the goal of proletarian revolution itself.
I know "that ain't much"...I am not Marx.
But it is a "guide to action" of sorts; it rules out all forms of electoral politics, alliances with the "progressive wing" of the bourgeoisie, byzantine "struggles" with reformist bureaucracies, support for one's "own" imperialism, etc. -- all things that have failed as abysmally as "dialectics" itself.
It is very "negative"...our focus should be on resistance to the ruling class. At this point in history, anything we say about post-revolutionary society is speculative. There's nothing wrong with that and, as time passes and revolution becomes a more realistic prospect, it will be necessary to struggle among ourselves and with others over what will follow the fall of the old bourgeoisie. But it should be seen as a secondary concern.
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Who raised and trained in this society doesn't want to believe that they can come up with everything on their own? To say that the masses cannot come up with the correct ideas on their own means that you also cannot come up with those ideas on your own! That doesn't feel so good at first, yet isn't it true? Isn't it true that the vast majority of knowledge that you have right now was handed down to you from someone either by mouth, through TV, video, online debates, books or whatever?
Well, somebody is coming up with "correct ideas", right? Knowledge is a social product, true. But it's available to all of us...even more than ever with the internet.
I think I can come up with a "correct idea". I think you could too...and so could Jane and Joe Sixpack. Even Chairman Bob gets one right now and then.
It is objective material conditions that actually make an idea "correct", is it not?
So when those conditions are "ripe", lots of people are going to "spontaneously" develop that "correct idea".
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Time and time again, if materialist dialectics is applied correctly to the problem of raising the consciousness of the mass it proves itself.
Completely unsubstantiated...in the advanced capitalist countries.
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When it is not applied you will end up doing nothing more than building a mass movement at best with no idea where you are headed.
All that you are suggesting here is that we should be very clear where we are headed...and you don't need "dialectics" to be in favor of proletarian revolution or to tell people why they should be in favor of that too.
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First posted at AnotherWorldIsPossible on May 29, 2004
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I don't want to take up people's time with Redstar's arguments -- which have been dissected and refuted on this site many times.
Basically his argument boils down to the old, very American pragmatic argument: "If you are so smart, how come you aren't rich?"
It is indeed an old American saying, probably dating back to the last quarter of the 19th century if not earlier.
In those days, the pragmatic measure of "smartness" was wealth...as it is in the minds of many people today.
In science, the measure of both "smartness" and "richness" is correspondence with objective reality.
As one scientist ruefully mused, "A beautiful theory...destroyed by an ugly fact."
"Dialectics" might be, at least in your eyes, "beautiful". Its performance in developing useful truths to advance proletarian revolution has been nonexistent.
Sorry about that.
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This is especially true when we are discussing a world-historic process of transition -- from class society to classless society on a world scale. This involves processes and forces that are vast and vastly complex.
I actually agree with this statement. But all it does is support my contention that "dialectics" is wholly inadequate and, in fact, utterly useless in trying to grasp this complexity.
One into two? It's more like 73 into 827!
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Only the most classic American pragmatism says "those who lose are then losers, and there is nothing to learn from them, by definition."
In that case, perhaps I'm "neo-classical".
What I would be inclined to suggest is that the lessons of defeated revolutions are usually negative.
The Paris Communards failed to seize the gold in the vaults of the French Central Bank or take the military initiative against the bourgeois forces gathered at Versailles. Big mistakes!
The Petrograd Soviet in March 1917, having overthrown the Czar, failed to smash the bourgeois provisional government at once. Big mistake!
The anarcho-syndicalists in Barcelona failed to smash the bourgeois state machinery in Catalonia. Very big mistake!
The Shanghai Commune dissolved itself on Mao's instructions. Horrible mistake!
Of course, all of those people had to do a lot of correct things (without benefit of "dialectics" except possibly in Shanghai) in order to even reach the point of being able to make those big mistakes. So there are certainly positive lessons to be learned from those events.
But the negative stuff sort of "sticks out"...the revolutionary process rose to a certain level and then fell back. What should we "not do" when (or if) "our turn" comes?
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Redstar is like the cynical guy watching a kid walk a few steps and fall over, and mutter through his cigarette smoke: "Walking proved to be a failure, give up and get used to crawling."
Yeah, I'm really "an old meanie" at heart.
However, as cynical as I am, I have observed that small children do learn to walk.
"Dialectics" always "falls down".
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First these socialist revolutions were soul-stirring and lofty -- they were the highest reaches of humanity (of all human history) and gave a powerful sense of what is possible and achievable through communist revolution. No events in human history have so drastically changed power relations and social conditions as the Soviet and Chinese revolution.
Perhaps I lack "soul"...but I just want to win. Specifically, I want to abolish wage-slavery and class society for good!
The models you applaud and, by inference, wish to emulate didn't do that.
It's a waste of effort to try "tugging on my heart strings" with "the blood of martyrs"...I am not a romanticist.
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The great work by Marx, Das Kapital, is an example of a penetrating, world historic leap in understanding that could not have happened with bourgeois theories and bourgeois logic.
Most of it actually is constructed on the foundations laid by early bourgeois economists, argued in terms of ordinary scientific logic, and even buttressed by a great deal of empirical data gathered from the bourgeois sources of his era.
What you really want to consider, in terms of "what if?", is what if Marx had gained his university education in France or England...where the influence of Hegel was non-existent?
Would he still have hit on the idea of history as process (not just a sequence of random and discrete events)?
There's no way of knowing, of course, but I suspect he would have. The "idea" of "progress" was "in the intellectual air" in the 1830s and 40s...the objective conditions for Marx (or someone) to start thinking along his lines were ripening. Even the idea of evolution was beginning to "look plausible".
I know you profoundly disagree, but I think it was one of history's bad breaks that Marx went to school in Germany at a time when Hegel was "court philosopher" and almost "everyone" in German intellectual life was a Hegelian of some sort.
Yes, Hegel gifted Marx not only with the idea that everything changes -- a true insight -- but that there is "order" in change...it doesn't just happen at random. But the gift was encrusted with so much metaphysical crapola that 150 years later people are still paying ritual obeisance to the encrustations; still insisting that it "must" mean "something"...otherwise Marx wouldn't have "used" it.
Go figure!
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Dialectics is highly efficacious in doing things.
It is a method that enables you to have your actions end up with the effect you want. So that intent and results coincide (more or less -- to the degree allowed by objective reality).
That is what is known as a claim.
Is it true?
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So study and analysis are key to long-term effective change.
That is known as a truism. No one with any sense would argue against it.
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This is contrary to pragmatism which says "let's try this, then try that, then jiggle the ad hoc arrangement yet again."
And this describes one way of approaching reality pragmatically...and also is an excellent summary of "dialectical" practice itself!
Looking at the evidence of Leninist practice in the "west", what do we see? "Let's try this." "Let's try that." Etc., etc., etc.!
Pick a party, any party. Follow the twists and turns of its practice. Try to make some kind of coherent sense of what they've done or even of what they've said.
It's always claimed that their "new line" is a consequence of their "mastery of dialectics"...even when the new line flops even worse than the old line.
Hah! They're are just as pragmatic as I am (and most of them a good deal less principled); trying different things and hoping to find something that works.
Critics are always greeted in lofty tones: "You've failed to grasp the dialectic, Comrade."
Cynic that I undoubtedly am (Marxism-Pragmatism-Cynicism or MPC for short), I suspect the real purpose of "dialectics" since the death of Engels has been to create an "aura" of "intellectual profundity" with which to intimidate critics and often to cloak a real ignorance of material reality.
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Lenin (before arriving in Russia in 1917) did a deep personal re-read of dialectics theory, to make his mind limber, flexible, open, creative and non-dogmatic (while enabling him to have a bull-dog grip on the final goal.)
Hagiography? I liked that part about "deep personal re-read" as opposed to just re-reading. The rest sounds like some kind of gym-routine.
Amazing...the things people can write "with a straight face".
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So we can envy the armchair babblers -- they can pontificate to us about the uselessness of our dialectics, why they neither try nor understand nor even need any of it.
Ah, the armchairs come flying at me again. What did you guys do, buy a warehouse full of them?
I don't blame you for envying me, though. I get to look at reality with clear eyes...and never have to worry how my observations must be made to fit into some archaic Prussian corset.
I get to breathe!
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First posted at AnotherWorldIsPossible on May 30. 2004
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a) he says that revolution is so simple that it is something millions will come to spontaneously, so there is no need for a specific science of revolution, a vanguard, or dialectical analysis. People will just KNOW.
b) he says that revolution is so complicated that you CAN'T know anything about it (really) ahead of time -- and so the claims of Marxism and dialectics are simple self-delusion (or worse, the demand of wannabe communist dictators that people follow them blindly.) [He actually says: "One into two? It's more like 73 into 827!" etc.]
Look at those points (which he makes over and over again) and notice how they are profoundly contradictory -- they can't both be true. But they have this in common: they are both arguments against having Marxism as a science and a vanguard as leadership.
-- emphasis added.
I tried really hard to resist the temptation...but I can't: your problem is that "you don't grasp the dialectic!" *laughs*
Actually, both of my points are so true as to be self-evident.
In the real (if limited) sample of massive proletarian uprisings that are available for our objective examination, no "vanguard parties" armed with "dialectics" played any significant role. Thus I draw the obvious conclusion: they are not needed.
On the other hand, when confronted with Leninist "dialectical" pretensions, I point out the obvious again: the self-directed creative activity of millions and tens of millions of people in making real revolution is far too complicated for you (or anyone) to do anything more than guess!
Mostly, I'm afraid, you guess wrong.
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[Redstar2000 thinks] there is no need to build communist organization, or make profound dialectical communist analyses.
No, I think a communist movement would be useful and I've put forward my ideas on that subject on a number of occasions.
A New Communist Paradigm for the 21st Century
A New Type of Communist Organization
Demarchy and a New Revolutionary Communist Movement
On the other hand, I do think that the phrase "profound dialectical analysis" is an oxymoron.
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Welcome to the armchair.
Yeah. You've thrown so many armchairs at me that there's no room in my apartment for any more...so I'm stacking them in the parking lot outside my building.
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And isn't Redstar's argument just a "slave to heaven" with his constant refrain that "they should not have taken arms" and "it is all negative"?
I said neither one of those things, of course. You are increasingly willing to substitute what you think I "should" have said for what I actually did say.
You read my posts "dialectically", no doubt.
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This is ridiculous on every level.
Good response.
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And the emergence of Revolutionary three-in-one committees from that historic struggle (the January Storm and the emergence of new forms of rule) was crucial for the whole world revolution.
"Dialectical" babble. See, I can respond to your points like you do to mine...if you want to go that route.
Meanwhile, the "three-in-one" committees did not save the Chinese revolution...just in case you hadn't noticed.
The Shanghai Commune might have.
"Crucial role" for the "whole world revolution"? Probably not even a footnote.
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It is only the basis of narrow pragmatism. The view that only some linear final ultimate permanent victory gives anyone a right to speak. And anything else is "negative."
As you have told me often enough, talk is cheap. In science, results talk a lot louder!
"Dialectics" has no results...except failures.
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This is an epochal struggle that will unfold over the next century. If you denounce every advance because it doesn't reach the final goal -- it is just a trick for opposing every advance.
Any vulgar reformist could advance the same argument in the same words.
I agree that it is an "epochal" struggle that will unfold over the next century and perhaps even the one after that.
What we disagree on is precisely what constitutes a genuine advance and what is simply a change of form without substance.
What you have not grasped is that it takes more than "red flags" and "dialectics" to advance the cause of communism...in fact, the red flags and "dialectics" are quite often a distraction and a diversion.
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Nope, you spit on the struggle and sacrifice of our class. over and over. And hold up thoroughly bourgeois and reactionary summations (and lies) arrogantly.
I certainly spit on attempts to obfuscate what is supposed to be a scientific argument with shallow appeals to emotional identification with dead revolutionaries.
Wave that bloody shirt someplace else!
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Yes, of course, you left out the socialist revolution...and you spit on it.
No, I don't "spit" on it...I just don't flop on my belly and worship it, like you do.
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But I'm curious, really for the sake of argument, what method RS thinks we SHOULD use to analyze society, plan our attack, and sum up our efforts in order to make NEW plans, if not dialectics?
I think historical (not "dialectical") materialism is a very useful "tool" for analyzing social reality in all its aspects.
It's based on real evidence, uses the rational logic of all scientific work today, is modest in its claims, does not purport to predict the future in useful detail, etc. We look at classes as they actually are and make reasonable predictions of what they might do next based on their material interests and objective material conditions. If an idea looks good and we put it into practice and it flops, we try to figure out what really went wrong...we don't indulge ourselves in "dialectical" fantasies about how the idea "really worked" (in our heads!).
What we say about material reality is clear and straight-forward, not buried in thickets of impenetrable mysticism. Anyone of normal intelligence can understand what we say and compare it with their own knowledge of material reality...and criticize our analysis if they think that's justified.
And if the criticism is a really good one, we're not ashamed to admit we were wrong...no real scientist is.
Only theologians must constantly scramble for fresh interpretations to protect the integrity of their "sacred dogmas". "God", like the "dialectic", doesn't make "mistakes" -- but mere mortals are always "inadequate" in their "understanding".
Inspite of their unfortunate infatuation with "dialectics", Marx and Engels were fundamentally rational and scientific in their view of world in all of its aspects.
That's a approach that desperately needs to be revived if a new communist movement is to emerge in the reasonably near future.
Will that happen?
Yes, eventually it will. Reason always defeats obscurantism in the end.
But it's never easy.
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First posted at AnotherWorldIsPossible on May 31, 2004
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Perhaps I should have clarified something about my post. It is a rough draft of a part of the second chapter of my dissertation (the rest of the chapter goes on to discuss dialectical materialism & then responds to critiques of dialectics by various scholars, though I have inexcusably left out those of redstar2000).
That's ok, I excuse you. The ideas of ordinary folks without doctorates are of no interest in academia...and you could even "lose brownie points" if you mentioned them.
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Materialism is not a worldview that in & of itself represents one class or another.
No it isn't, that's true.
Which raises an interesting point: can there be any such thing as a "class science"...that is, a systematic collection of observations and explanations that is "true" for one class but "false" for another, not merely in their perceptions, but in objective reality?
The last attempt at that sort of thing was Lysenko, of course, with his neo-Lamarckian "biology" (he should have called it "dialectical biology").
Now it's widely accepted that the rigorous sciences are "class neutral" -- anyone who understands one of them can use it to advance the interests of their class or to oppose the interests of a different class.
Scientific paradigms relating directly to human social behavior are more problematic.
Marxist economists, for example, attack bourgeois economic theory as a pseudo-science...a transparent ideological cover for the interests of the capitalist class with no more than marginal relevance to describing objective reality. Bourgeois economists return the compliment...insisting that they are describing objective reality accurately while Marxists are nothing but special pleaders for the proletariat.
But if there is a science of economics, should it not be "true" regardless of anyone's ideology? A paradigm that accurately describes and explains economic phenomena will operate "no matter what you think."
So if "dialectics" were really a "science" (or meta-science), it would not only operate regardless of what you thought but anyone from any class could learn it and use it for any purpose they pleased.
It wouldn't be a "proletarian science", it would just be a science.
Consider historical materialism. Historians of many ideological persuasions use it in their work (well or poorly)...it has become "obvious" and "self-evident". In fact, any historian who doesn't use it has to apologize for not using it and offer some kind of explanation for his failure to use it.
Historical materialism is true...though the details remain controversial, something that's true of all sciences.
When the claim is made (or implied) that "dialectics" is "special" -- a "proletarian science" inherently beyond the understanding of or use by the bourgeoisie...that suggests to me that "dialectics" is not really a science at all; it's an ideology (in the bad sense of that word).
Finally, I thought this was curious...
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Also Hegelian philosophy is not (as Eurocentric writers claim) the "source" of Marxist dialectics - a great deal came into Marxist dialectics from the study of dialectics in Asian societies.
Did Hegel study "Asian dialectics"? Did Marx? Neither of them read Asian languages; were there translations extant during the first half of the 19th century?
Translations of what?
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First posted at AnotherWorldIsPossible on May 31, 2004
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More dubious "dialectics"...
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In the example of China, the primary contradiction during the periods of civil war was between the classes represented by the CCP & the KMT (big landlords, bureaucrat capitalists & imperialist capital vs. workers, poor & middle peasants & national capital). During the Japanese invasion, the primary contradiction was between Japan & their collaborators & the Chinese people. This changed the nature of some of the contradictions in China from antagonistic to non-antagonistic, requiring changes in the CCP’s policy...
If the CCP had, say, continued to treat the contradiction between the KMT & the CCP as the primary contradiction during WWII, it would not have been able to effectively wage a war of national liberation, which would have isolated it from the Chinese masses (who were demanding resistance to the Japanese invasion). As a result, they would have been unable to lead the revolutionary struggle after WWII.
It would seem to a "vulgar pragmatist" like myself that the "primary contradiction" would depend on which part of China you were speaking of.
In the areas occupied by the Japanese imperialists, resisting that occupation would have been the primary task.
But in the areas controlled by the KMT (a gangster-fascist clique), resisting the KMT and its lackeys would have been the primary task.
To the extent (probably very little) that Mao's forces co-operated with the KMT, that would have ended up strengthening the KMT's potential for resisting revolution after the Japanese were defeated.
Mao's analysis was faulty due to his own patriotism (he was involved in the 1919 patriotic uprising). He assumed that because patriotism was significant to him that it was therefore significant to all Chinese peasants.
Peasants in those days, of course, were uninterested in "China"...their patriotism was primarily focused on their village or county or, at most, region (people who spoke the same dialect of Chinese that they did). I imagine that is probably still the case once you move inwards from the east coast.
To a peasant laboring under the whip of a KMT overseer, appeals to "unite with the KMT to resist the Japanese invasion" in the name of "China" would likely have sounded utterly ridiculous.
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As another example, if the CCP had, as some feminists argue, elevated the contradictions of patriarchy over the class struggle, the result would not have been more liberation for women but less, as such an orientation would have actually meant the evisceration of class struggle & thus would have prevented the emergence of the conditions which allowed the CCP to transform gender relations as extensively as they did.
I have to admit that a proper response to this requires a greater knowledge of Chinese rural gender relations than I possess.
Certainly, there was a transformation...but how "extensive" was it, really?
Did the old custom of young wives being terrorized by mothers-in-law cease? Did the corresponding suicide rate of those young women (the highest in the world) drop accordingly? Did the preferential killing of female infants (later the preferential abortion of female fetuses) change?
If it did, things have certainly all changed back. The young rural wives are once again committing suicide at the highest rates in the world; instead of throwing themselves into rivers or wells, they now do it by drinking containers of pesticides. And for every 100 males who survive to maturity, I think only about 80-85 females do so.
There is no way of knowing, of course, if a far more vigorous campaign against the practical manifestations of patriarchy in Mao's time would have materially changed things in the present.
But feminist speculation along these lines is not, I think, unwarranted; particularly in view of the fact that women occupied very few leadership positions in Mao's party.
Mao's wife was quite exceptional in that regard, and it would not surprise me to learn that her gender was as much a source of the enmity towards her as her politics.
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First posted at AnotherWorldIsPossible on June 1, 2004
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An extraordinarily thoughtful and well-argued response.
I agree with you, as does history itself, that no one mastered the complexities of protracted people's war in a peasant setting better than Mao did. If you wish to give the credit to "dialectics", I won't dispute the point.
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It seems that your argument is not relying upon the historical reality of the Chinese peasantry, but instead on the application of the category of ‘peasant’ as an ideal type & as expressed here, this sees the "peasant" as parochial, concerned only with immediate needs/surroundings...it usually leads to seeing the peasants as backward, incapable of grasping anything of scale or complexity & thus, incapable of real revolution.
You are quite right, of course, to insist that one must talk about a specific peasantry under specific historical circumstances to make really useful statements.
The characterization of the peasantry "as an ideal type" that I offered could well be entirely wrong in specific historical circumstances...but I do think it "holds up well" as a general observation.
I have read a little bit of Chinese history as well as memoirs of Chinese immigrants to the United States...they offer a picture of Chinese peasant life more in accord with my generality than your observations.
Yet I cannot argue that it was not possible that patriotism was considerably more advanced among Chinese peasants than I was aware.
I don't think anyone would argue (especially now!) that peasants are "incapable of real revolution". China has a long history of peasant rebellions, does it not?
In fact, was there not a great rebellion in the mid-19th century, one that even established a kind of "proto-communism" in the extensive "liberated zone" which it controlled?
Had they defeated the Manchu emperor of that era, would the leaders not have established a new imperial dynasty?
What appears to be the case is that peasants are perfectly capable of making successful revolution; what they don't seem to be able to do is rule as "a class for itself".
In the "west", feudalism was wracked by chronic peasant rebellions (often with explicitly religious ideologies)...yet ultimately, it was the rising bourgeoisie that actually dealt the death-blows to the feudal aristocracy as a ruling class (often drawing on the assistance of rebellious artisans and proto-proletarians).
To go further out on a speculative limb, peasants "in general" appear to desire "a good emperor", a "benevolent despot" who will look after their immediate interests.
I know, there have been some striking exceptions to this "pattern"...but I think it is a pattern.
Why? Well, consider what life is actually like in a peasant society, especially one that is pre-literate. Villages are extremely hierarchal, often ruled (formally or informally) by a "council of elders" and an "oral tradition" almost impossible to challenge. Women and youth are nearly at the level of domestic farm animals, to be disposed of according to the eldest male's whim. Superstition is chronic and deeply rooted. There is generally very little contact with "the outside world" and outsiders and their ideas are usually viewed with deep suspicion.
It is a stultifying environment at its best; in times of drought, flood, or other disasters, it is insecure to the point of terror -- famine is usually well within living memory.
Add to this the exploitation and oppression provided by local landlords or even actual aristocrats...and you have a recipe for a class that awaits a redeemer.
It seems to me that this is the truth that Mao grasped (whether "dialectically" or otherwise)...and he was, moreover, intent on being a real redeemer. Unlike other despots who rode to power on the backs of the peasantry, Mao really did "put the peasantry first" or tried to. If they did not always prosper under his rule, it was not because he wasn't trying.
But then what was the case with the educated urban cadre that flocked into the party after 1949? Naturally, they welcomed the USSR model of economic development with its emphasis on technology and urban ascendancy. After the USSR withdrew its support and technical advice, they had to endure Mao's pro-peasant policies in painful silence or do their best to sabotage those policies and advance their own...meanwhile waiting for the emperor to die.
Once he finally did die, they wasted no time "setting things to rights" -- telling the peasants "to get rich is glorious" and looking to the "west" for both models of economic development and investment capital.
The "Communist" Party of China had become bourgeois.
I do not see how Mao's "dialectics" or anyones could have altered this outcome in any significant way.
Perhaps if the Shanghai Commune had defied Mao's orders and refused to abolish itself...
But we'll never know.
Note: I've noticed on this board that people quote Mao as saying "To rebel against reactionaries is justified." But back in the 60s, when I first heard the quote used, it was in a simpler form: "To rebel is justified!" Does anyone know when the "new version" was introduced...and why?
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First posted at AnotherWorldIsPossible on June 3, 2004
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All the physical processes that produce an earthquake (the build up of tension, the eruption that releases tension, the clash between the grinding of plates and the rupture of the materials that hold them gripped) all are intensely determined by the struggle and unity of opposites, and the development of dynamic processes through those struggles of opposites.
If the earthquake is not a process governed by dialectics -- what is it governed by? Metaphysics? Mechanical non-dialectical material laws? And what would they be?
It seems that this denies the universality of contradiction, and posits another set of laws governing whole sets of processes.
Struck by this vivid example of "dialectics in action", I hastened forthwith to this site...
Berkeley Seismological Laboratory
...and searched for "dialectics". Whoops!
Search Results: No matches were found for '(dialectics or dialectic)'
Well, if earthquake scientists are too dumb to respect the "power" of the "dialectic", surely other scientists are not so "reactionary".
So I went to a well-established source of science press releases here...
Science Daily
Unfortunately...
Search Results: No stories were found matching your keyword dialectics
Dear me! How is it that science continues to learn more and more with every passing day while completely ignoring this "powerful" tool called "dialectics"?
Why are they getting the right answers?
How is it that "vulgar pragmatism" is so successful at explaining, in detail, how the real world seems to work?
While the "masters of the dialectic" have a record of almost uninterrupted failure...even in their chosen field of revolution?
Wouldn't it be refreshing if serious revolutionaries said to one another:
"We really don't know how and why massive uprisings of the proletariat take place; let's investigate and find out."
The first step would be to donate "dialectics" to a small museum in Hegel's home town.
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First posted at AnotherWorldIsPossible on June 4, 2004
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There is a huge body of dialectical work on earthquakes, which is (unfortunately) very hard to access in the U.S. During the Cultural Revolution major breakthroughs were made in socialist china on earthquakes (yes, applying dialectics, and even RELYING ON dialectics to make those breakthroughes.)
Well, I don't read Chinese, do you? How do you know this is true? From what I have read of the GPCR, all scientific research pretty much came to a halt (along with much else).
Now that China is capitalist, wouldn't their "breakthroughs" (if they existed) be appropriated by western scientists? There's no longer an ideological barrier...so if the Chinese got something right, why not use it?
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And no one claims that people can't study science (or even advance it) without dialectics.
Though small and even partially enclosed in parentheses, I think that's a crucial concession to my view.
If science can be advanced without dialectics, then what do we need it for?
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The point is that dialectics is a better, more powerful and more correct (true) way of understanding the motion of matter -- and therefore is especially powerful in analyzing complex systems (where the standard empiricism and mechanical materialism of "western" science falls short.)
If that claim could be demonstrated to be true, then I'd have no choice but to swallow all my critical words and (choke!) study "dialectics".
But that's what precisely is in dispute.
The "general laws" of dialectics don't tell you anything useful.
You'd still have to do the same grubby and painstaking investigation of a phenomenon that you'd do even if "dialectics" didn't exist.
And whatever your results, you'd still have to demonstrate their validity through ordinary logic, evidence, etc.
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There are areas of science, and moments in their development, where dialectics was NEEDED to make key breakthroughs.
This is especially true for example in health questions -- where many disorders are complex systemic problems (that standard medicine very often treats as disconnected symptoms, each needing its own specialist.)
Well, I think "standard medicine" is "doing better" on those questions, don't you?
The human body is enormously complex, involves all kinds of subtle "feedback mechanisms", etc. We are still a long way from a truly systematic understanding of how everything "fits together".
The empirical or pragmatic approach tries to break this complexity down to simple processes which can be understood...and then "build up" from there.
It's a long and tedious process...which (like proletarian revolution) may take another century or two to complete.
Does "dialectics" offer a "short-cut"? If so, I don't see what it could be.
Just saying that the human body functions through a large number of complex systems and sub-systems that interact with each other in complex ways...is not saying very much. I just said it and I've never been to medical school.
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The founder of Quantum Physics (Danish scientist Niels Bohr) went to china to study dialectics (in Shanghai) before making his key breakthroughs, and personally took the symbol of taoist dialectics as his personal emblem for the rest of his life? (This was idealist dialectics, not materialist dialectics -- but its power in this case is nonetheless crucial for the ability to analyze sub atomic processes, and breaking with the dominant mechanical materialism of positivist western science.)
Very interesting; I had no idea that Bohr subscribed to Taoism.
You know, of course, that there are at least eight different "schools of thought" about what goes on at the quantum level; mathematically, they are all equivalent. Among the most interesting, in my view, are the "pilot-wave" version (gets rid of "action at a distance" but requires faster than light speed travel) and the "multiple universe" version (every quantum event yields additional universes; all possible outcomes take place).
Bohr's school, still called the "Copenhagen interpretation" in his honor, emphasizes the "observer effect"...nothing has happened until somebody looks.
I think his version is idealist...which is why I'm inclined to favor one of the competing schools.
But no one knows at this point which version, if any, is really true.
By the way, you'll like this. Down at the quantum level, electrons and positrons are constantly materializing out of nothing...and then colliding with each other in mutual annihilation -- all in a space of time too brief for us to "catch them in the act".
Nothing into two...and back into nothing!
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Did that Science Daily report how Stephen Gould and Eldridge's key breakthrough in biological evolution theory (punctuated equilibrium) was done using dialectical analysis?
No, I would have had to search for punctuated equilibrium to find it. And "dialectics" goes unmentioned in the breakthrough papers themselves.
But your example is a good one. The insight of Gould and Eldridge could be and possibly even was derived from a simple empirical observation.
Suppose the absence of "transition forms" in the fossil record is not a "gap" but represents actual reality?
Gould's work was in seashell fossils...of which simply enormous numbers have been discovered and cataloged. And yet, "transition forms" are missing there too.
Is it altogether impossible to imagine him not thinking about this one day...and suddenly wondering if there was no gap? That would mean speciation was a "rapid event". Species remain basically the same for millions and tens of millions of years, changing slowly or not at all...and then, a small number of individuals find themselves isolated in a significantly different environment and evolve so rapidly (over a few thousand years or so) that they become a new species!
Whether Gould used "dialectics" to reach this brilliant insight is irrelevant; he didn't need it.
All that was needed was for someone to set aside the old Darwinian dogma of "gradual change" and actually look at the evidence.
It was there all along.
I contend, obviously, that Marx and Engels likewise did not "need" the "dialectic". The evidence for historical materialism, class struggle, the evolution of capitalism, etc. had been slowly accumulating for 50 years or more.
All someone had to do was look at it.
To be sure, to set aside "all that one has been taught" and look at evidence without prejudice is very difficult. People don't do that very often, with or without "dialectics".
But the real key is not whether or not you think of yourself as a "pragmatist" or a "dialectician"...are you able to see the evidence that is right before your eyes?
If you can, you're going to accomplish something. If you can't, no amount of "dialectical" terminology is going to disguise your ignorance.
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Is it is a surprise (that in the west, in the U.S., in this climate) that these scientists (and many others who are progressive) [who] apply dialectics don't mention it -- and their philosophy doesn't show up in your internet scan?
Well, you could have a good point here...scientists have to compete for research grants the way workers compete for jobs.
But there could be other explanations. For one thing, working scientists do not seem to have much interest in methodological philosophies; it doesn't matter what the source of your hypothesis is. What matters is how it stacks up against objective reality.
"Does it work?"
If some scientist planned his research objectives by reading the Tarot, he couldn't mention this in his published papers...people would think he was a nutball.
But when they read his papers, his colleagues wouldn't be asking themselves "where did he get that idea from?". They'd be asking themselves "does this make sense?".
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The fact is that dialectics (especially materialist dialectics) is an extremely powerful tool for understanding the operations of dynamic complex systems (which includes everything in the universe!). And the fact is that it has been widely used, studied and applied in the development of modern scientists -- including by researchers who (for obvious reasons of political repression) never mentioned their methods and political leanings, and including by researchers in socialist countries who were able to apply and develop dialectical analysis openly.
This is speculative. It would not surprise me if a great many scientists in the "socialist" countries paid ritual lip-service to "dialectics" simply in order to keep their jobs.
I think you would be immensely pleased if you could make a strong case that huge numbers of scientists are "using dialectics" to make great scientific breakthroughs...and just not mentioning it.
If that's the case, the internal security of the international scientific community has reached hitherto unsuspected efficiency.
That seems to me to be highly unlikely.
The "mystique" of the "dialectic" still has considerable appeal in some academic circles...there are always some folks in the market for "a theory of everything" and theologies have largely gone out of fashion among educated people.
Nevertheless, a materialist metaphysics is still fundamentally metaphysical.
Anyone can say anything is the "primary contradiction"...and who can say them nay? On what possible grounds?
The second you appeal to objective and observable reality, you've dispensed with "dialectics" and entered the grubby realm of "trial and error".
There's no "royal road" to geometry, as was pointed out long ago...or any other real knowledge.
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First posted at AnotherWorldIsPossible on June 4, 2004
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In other words, redstar did not have a clue about the impact dialectics has in science, and I was pointing it out.
Whoa! You mentioned two guys...Bohr and Gould!
You suggested Bohr's appreciation of Taoist dialectics ("yin and yang", etc.) was in some sense critical to the discovery of quantum mechanics.
That is simply an absurd claim! The great Austrian physicist Edwin Schrödinger was "on the same track"...had Bohr not existed, Schrödinger would have independently made the same discovery. And Schrödinger was no "dialectician", was he?
The work of Gould I discussed at length...pointing out that a pragmatist could have made the same discovery as Gould did...by simply accepting the available evidence as real.
quote:
In other words, first he claimed no scientists followed dialectics. When I proved that they have and do, he doesn't acknowledge this. He doesn't say "gee, I didn't know." He just turns on a dime and mocks the academics who apply dialectics (despite the fact that they are some of the leading scientists of our time.)
One thing I do not "mock" is good results. My contention is not that no scientist "ever" uses "dialectics". It is that upon investigation, I think it can be shown that any "good result" could have been obtained without "dialectics".
I am not a scientist myself; so it's certainly possible that a scientist could produce a complex result that actually works and claim that this is a consequence of his "dialectical method"...and I would be left speechless since the result itself would be incomprehensible to me.
But why is it unreasonable for me to say that if a lot of scientists were using "dialectics" because "it really works", then this would be public knowledge?
Judging from a quick look at Google(c), the people who are still interested in "dialectics" are academics...philosophers in particular.
And yes, I do tend to "mock" those guys...they've never impressed me with their results.
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Anyway, if you follow this, there is a method and (unfortunately) it is not a method that is trying sincerely to work together to uncover the truth... it is a method of denying the points of others, to score ego points (regardless of the clarity or consistency of the arguments.)
And it is useful to analyze this, because this method (and the pragmatic philosophy that underlies it) is very common in our society -- and we need to train ourselves to recognize it (and not use it ourselves.)
To suggest that someone's arguments, "regardless of their clarity or consistency", are based on the desire "to score ego points" is an evasion!
If you don't wish to discuss the objections I made to "dialectics", fine.
But here's one you cannot evade:
Someone asserts that "X vs. Y" is "the primary contradiction" and someone else says "X vs. Z" is "the primary contradiction"?
How can you decide? If you appeal to objective reality, then you're back in the realm of grubby investigation...which perforce will be empirical.
In the end, you are compelled to do exactly what I would do...except you have to "justify" it in "dialectical terminology" and I don't.
Why bother with what is so obviously superfluous?
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First posted at AnotherWorldIsPossible on June 7, 2004
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quote:
One thing that stands out, in Redstar's remarks, and in his overall posting is that he not only does not see the value in dialectics -- but he (in a larger sense) sees no particular value in ideology and philosophy.
That's probably pretty accurate; there have been many purported "systems of knowledge" (philosophies, ideologies, even theologies)...and rarely have they produced much of interest in the way of results.
An occasional "lucky guess" here and there amidst mountain ranges of garbage.
Meanwhile, empiricism/pragmatism just rolls right along, getting things done and changing the world...though not, of course, necessarily for the better.
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In his view (as others have pointed out) matters in the real world (including both revolution and science) are so obvious that people can discover them with ANY METHODOLOGY, and so complex that they can't really be understood with ANY METHODOLOGY.
No, that's not what I have said.
What I have contended is that real knowledge comes from empirical investigation and pragmatic practice.
I would go on to add that "complete understanding" is probably an illusion for more than very simple problems...but continued investigation and practice can often yield a pretty good approximation.
If the real world is too complex to be completely knowable, it is nevertheless knowable to a very high degree of probability.
But it takes a lot of work to achieve that...empirical and pragmatic work to be precise.
It doesn't "fall out of the sky"...not even "dialectical" skies.
quote:
His complaint is not with dialectics (per se) but also with Marxism, and frankly with the very idea that human subjective consciousness can understand the world (in a deep way) and then change the world ON THAT BASIS.
No, my complaint is with "dialectics", specifically. Marxism stripped of dialectical mysticism strikes me as a very good foundation for both understanding human societies and changing them.
Of course, it may not be "deep" enough for you; I can't help you there.
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He rejects (without discussion even) the very idea of a "theory of everything" (as if it is absurd on the surface.) But I suspect he also rejects a "theory of anything" -- i.e. the very idea of seeking the dynamic interconnections of things.
Perhaps I should have expressed myself more clearly. At the present level of human knowledge, a "theory of everything" is just about certain to be wrong!
What future generations of real scientists may achieve in this regard is impossible to predict. But I would certainly wager my last dollar that it will have nothing to do with "dialectics".
As to the "dynamic interconnections of things", who would deny that? What I deny is that they can be reduced to anything as simple-minded as "one into two"...except verbally, of course.
Indeed, one of the strongest appeals of "dialectics" is that you can "prove" anything with it...while another equally gifted "dialectician" can "prove" the exact opposite.
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In fact, to actually change things we need more than the trial and error method of "knowing that they are happening when they happen." And we have to understand that "the facts' are rarely just the facts -- i.e. the real nature and relations of things in a complex world is not obvious. And the task of of "understanding the facts" is a process that requires philosophy.
No, it requires a more profound investigation that is still empirical and pragmatic.
You seem to be under the misapprehension that empiricism/pragmatism is "unable" to deal with really complicated phenomena...which is a caricature. All of modern science is today highly complicated, highly "dynamic", and 99.999% of that understanding is the achievement of empiricism/pragmatism.
That doesn't "deny" the role of theory, by the way. Theories (or paradigms) are useful guides to further investigation and practice...or not, depending on how well they work!
A theory that produces lousy results in the real world is a bad theory.
That is why I reject the Leninist paradigm...it didn't work!
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This is related to an earlier issue of practice: people seek to change the world, and after they get so far, they realize they need philosophy, because knowing what to do, and how to do it quickly reveals itself as a complex thing.
-- emphasis added.
I think this is a revealing hint as to one of the appeals of the "dialectic".
Within the Leninist paradigm, a vanguard party that has "mastered the dialectic" can quickly evaluate a political situation and, if needs be, abruptly and effectively change its line.
And the "new line" will be "correct" precisely "because" it was determined by the method of "dialectics".
Does it not make you wonder, then, what is the source of the flood of "self-criticisms" from Leninist parties (at least the honest ones)? The "new line" turns out to be wrong much more often than it turns out to be right...and the party admits that this has happened and frequently blames their mistake on a failure to correctly "grasp the dialectic".
Of what use is a "methodology" that yields real world results worse than chance?
You should have flipped a coin; then you'd have been right half the time.
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People who do not dig into practice, who are content to be casual observers of events, can be content to say (from their armchairs) "we will watch things unfold, then we will know where they are going, then we can make our quips and verdicts."
Heads up, redstar2000, incoming armchair!
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But to really understand poverty (its causes, its dynamic, the ways it can be abolished!), you need to go beyond empirical compilation of databits. You need to "connect the dots" in the dynamic and living way that only dialectics can. And when you call for connecting the dots, empiricism can't look up from the grubby investigation -- can't synthesize data. Or as Mao says, can't cross the threshold of perception to the synthesis of conception.
Mao said that?
That's equivalent to the statement that "all (valid) theories originate in dialectics"...an utterly preposterous claim.
Empiricism/pragmatism is perfectly capable of "connecting the dots" and does so all the time.
Granted, there are certain dots that the ruling class would prefer not to see connected...but there are independent radical scientists who do it anyway. And I think their numbers will increase.
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He has the idea that facts speak for themselves, and you look at them with common sense and what they tell you -- and anything else is mystical mumbo jumbo (that he doesn't even need to give the dignity of a look-over before dismissing.)
I've replied to nearly all of the posts in this thread concerning the claimed "utility" of "dialectics"...surely that's "investigation" enough. If you folks, with the best of intentions, nevertheless present such a feeble defense of this "theory of everything"...what need have I to look further?
An extensive knowledge of the "Bible" is not required to refute theological arguments (though it may be useful); a simple glance at the posts made by two of the folks here show that they are having a theological argument.
I try pretty hard to stay clear of that sort of thing.
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First posted at AnotherWorldIsPossible on June 8, 2004
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If you want to know the theory and methods of revolution, you must take part in revolution. -- Mao
Something which he did, of course.
Neither I (in one of my several hundred armchairs which you have so generously bestowed upon me) nor the RCP nor the vast majority of Leninist parties of all types and hues have ever taken part in revolution.
All we know of these matters is "second hand"...and the evidence from the participants is contradictory, to say the least.
Revolutions are clearly "not all the same" and what may have "worked" in one can prove to be a spectacular failure in another.
Further, there is no real example of a successful proletarian revolution in an advanced capitalist country...there's no paradigm to appeal to.
Thus the Maoist paradigm might be a good model for revolutionaries in Colombia. And the classical Leninist paradigm might work in Mexico.
But for the United States and other advanced capitalist countries, you are directly contradicting Mao's own advice to you.
You have not and are not engaged in "making revolution" (for perfectly understandable reasons)...yet you presume that you can do so (someday) by copying revolutions of the past that took place in entirely different circumstances.
My empirical/pragmatic view is that your approach is wacko.
quote:
There is no Marxism stripped of dialectics.
Are you speaking ex cathedra...as when, for example, the Baltimore Catachism states that "There can be no salvation outside the Catholic Church"?
Revolutionaries that freely use empiricism/pragmatism without concerning themselves with orthodoxy (or the appearance thereof) are accordingly free to appropriate that part of Marx's paradigm that most closely reflects reality and dispense with the rest.
Which is, of course, exactly what Lenin and Mao both did...but, unlike me, they were careful to cover their pragmatism with dialectical terminology. They "needed" (or at least wanted) to appear "orthodox"...whereas I am uninterested in such matters.
quote:
Is it a crime of dialectics, and scientific thought -- that someone can come up with a counter-thesis (even one garbed in scientific language)? That's just how the world works, and how ideas advance.
No, that's not the crime of "dialectics"...the crime is that your methodology gives you no idea of how to resolve conflicting hypotheses.
If "X vs. Y" is the "primary contradiction", how do you confirm that idea? If someone else says "X vs. Z" is the "primary contradiction", how do you refute that?
The real world doesn't come with handy and unambiguous labels attached; people impose those labels and...hope they're accurate.
As often as not (if not more so), they are not accurate and the vanguard party (if it's honest) must make yet another public self-criticism.
In real science, the appeal to observation trumps all theory. Better observation can reverse that verdict and it sometimes happens that way. But if you assert X and observation fails to confirm X, you lose...regardless of how "brilliant" or even "dialectical" your theory was.
For example, proletarian revolution in an advanced capitalist country is a hypothesis...there's some fragmentary evidence in its favor but it has yet to be confirmed.
"Dialectics" cannot convert uncertainty into certainty except verbally.
And perhaps that's what you like about it; you don't feel that it's possible to struggle for proletarian revolution "unless" ultimate victory is "certain".
I think proletarian revolution is "worth a shot", win or lose. "To rebel is justified", as some guy said.
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Ah, but you deny that pragmatism is the capitalists' theory. Pragmatism gives us the bomb, the current foreign policy, the environmental mess (what could be more pragmatic than the current use of energy!!)
Why not turn your own sentence on your own ideology.
If pragmatism gives such lousy results in the real world... what then?
Pragmatism is "class neutral" and it "works". So the ruling class uses it with great success...from their class point-of-view.
Lately, I think they have begun to back away from pragmatism, empiricism, and science in general. They seem to be searching for a more ideological framework in which to maintain and justify their power; as I noted in another thread, Straussian neo-Platonic despotism appeals to them, as does a revamped Hegelianism and, of course, religious fundamentalism/Christian fascism. I think all this is a sign of their decay as an effective ruling class.
Perhaps this century will see the working class turn towards pragmatism/empiricism in a revolutionary context...as it begins to "fit itself" for its new historical responsibilities.
We shall see.
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First posted at AnotherWorldIsPossible on June 9, 2004
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On "Dialectics" -- The Heresy Posts May 8, 2003
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| No one should be compelled to live with anyone they despise.
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