ALB
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“As a form of logic it goes way back to ancient Greece.”
So that’s all you mean by dialectics? Thesis and antithesis confronting each other, resulting in a synthesis? A bit trite, I would have thought, as it’s something that happens everyday in numerous meetings. Who, as you say, can be opposed to that? It will go on as long as there are decisions to be made. In fact, I am sure it has been going on ever since Homo sapiens evolved and so pre-dates Ancient Greece.
The real argument is over whether or not it extends outside the field of human thinking and decision-making. Is it something more than “a form of logic”? Does it apply within (for want of a better term) “Nature”?
Of course everything everywhere is always changing; nothing remains the same. If accepting this is what dialectics is then that’s not a problem. But did and do the changes take place through internal contradiction? Does the fact that the water in a river is not the same as it was a moment before due to some internal contradiction? Does the evolution of a species of life-form that can be traced from the fossil record take place because of internal contradictions within the preceding form? Does water change from liquid to gas spontaneously through internal contradiction?
It is possible to describe some of these changes using the language of Hegelian dialectics (interpenetration of opposites, changes in quantity leading to a change of quality, etc) — Marx himself said he “coquetted” with doing this — but this is still only a way of describing what humans perceive is happening, and not necessarily the most useful or insightful.
Yes, that it’s. It all here (which also has relevance for the other thread on “philosophy”).
https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1859/critique-pol-economy/preface.htm
That’s a matter of opinion. I’ve seen the term “Jungian philosophy” bandied about. In any event he was a dealer in wild, unprovable speculations typical of “philosophers”.
Just been reading in the latest number of the Skeptical Inquirer about poor “Typhoid Mary” who was an asymptomatic typhoid carrier (ie had typhoid but showed no symptoms or effects of it). In the end, she had to be locked away until she died.
Apparently there are hundreds of thousands of asymptomatic COVID-19 carriers out there. They can only be discovered by mass testing but nobody knows for how long they are carriers, at least according to this from the early days of the pandemic.
Let’s hope for their sake that they can get rid of it. Otherwise they could end up being treated like Typhoid Mary or like lepers used to be.
Incidentally this is one good reason why for the moment everybody (else) should wear a mask—not to protect themselves but to protect others. That doesn’t apply to me of course since I’ve not got it and I doubt if I’m asymptomatic.
“You have previously poured scorn on the philosophy of science.”
I don’t recall doing that. In fact I am all in favour of the theory of science, i.e., discussing what we mean when we say we know something and the methods of verifying this. Nothing wrong with that at all. That’s all that’s left of “philosophy” (except, I suppose, folksy sayings about what attitude to take the vicissitudes of life and wild theories often linked to religion, eg Nietzsche, Jung, etc).
Actually, if you read it carefully it is not saying what you seem to think it is saying. It was in fact carefully crafted (it was redrafted several times by the editorial committee) to take into account different emphases while respecting the general position of the author.
All it is saying is that the laws of physics and laws of social evolution are not “entirely equivalent” and that it is rather “contentious” to say so. They may both act on humans as a coercive force but the difference is that the laws of physics, etc are external and operate independently of human action whereas the laws of social evolution are carried out by the actions of people eg through class struggles and through developing new technologies.
We will probably get stick from the other sides as well, eg from those who think that there is no end (aim) of history or who think that the laws of physics are human-made too as well as those who think that the dialectics applies to nature as well as human thought.
Bit of a cheap jibe incompatible with your usual respect for the rules of logic, isn’t it, to say that the passage signals junking the theory of surplus value? Even if the article did say (which it didn’t) that there were no laws of historical and social evolution, it would not follow that the theory of surplus value was wrong.
As you know, A junks B does not imply that A junks C.
A counter-challenge, Wez. Can you point to Marx having written anything or even expressed an interest in philosophy after he had settled his accounts with German philosophy in 1845?
Of course this could just be a question of semantics about what the word “philosophy” means. For Marx it seems to have been German (mainly Hegelian) philosophy. These were the philosophers who he said had only interpreted the world, even the best of them Feuerbach.
After he had settled with them, Marx only expressed ideas on the methodology of economic, social and historical research and analysis. Which falls into the realm of the theory of science not speculative philosophy.
Marx’s contemporaries in the communist movement who did speak about philosophy after 1845 said like Engels that philosophy came to an end with Feuerbach or like Duetzgen that the positive outcome of philosophy was science. Dirtzgen was interested in epistemology, which is a branch of science not philosophy.
As has been pointed out here, it was only an accident of history that the communist who first development a coherent explanation of capitalism and its economic laws happened to have come from a background of German philosophy. I doubt if anyone other communist did. And there is no reason why they should, certainly not today. Marx’s intellectual development is interesting from some points of view but not crucial to being or becoming a socialist/communist.
“In Delray Beach, Florida, several hundred people marched, some carrying signs reading “Count every vote” and “We cannot live under a Marxist government.”
I think we can agree with both those slogans, especially the second. A “Marxist government” is an irrational concept so it can’t exist. So we can’t live under one.
Interview here by a Russian-speaking member of the World Socialist Party (US) of a member of an opposition group there:
http://www.wspus.org/2020/11/whats-going-on-in-belarus/
Not all oppositionists favour the introduction of liberal capitalism which they recognise would lead to the rule of oligarchs as in Russia and the Ukraine.
Bit of a scoop, actually,
Actually his comments were rather offensive.
But the main point was that the panel didn’t accept that IHRA’s tendentious definition that to criticise the foundation of the state of Israel is itself anti-Semitic.
“Imagine waking up and seeing $1,000 in your bank account. Imagine the good feeling when you can pay your rent, or put gas in the car or buy food and after your needs are met, you calmly think about how to move on with life. Imagine knowing your child will never have to go hungry, or your grandparent without medicine. Imagine another world is possible.”
Sone people lack imagination.
A rare judgement that anti-Zionism is not anti-semitic.
No change in Syria either:
As we know, at one point Trump wanted to withdraw US troops from Syria but the military/foreign policy establishment wouldn’t let him. Biden won’t need any persuasion as what not to do. US capitalism’s geopolitical interests will be safe in his hands, safer in fact than in Trump’s who was a bit of an isolationist. Some might even describe him as a “lesser evil” for this !
I listened to this programme on bbc radio 4 last week as I was driving. The one called Tom questions the usefulness of the concept of “white privilege” in the same sort of way as we would and also makes some other good points against the proposition under discussion:
That’s a coincidence as today’s papers are reporting that Scientific Reports has done a U-turn on this claim:
Fuller version here I think.
Apparently it might turn out to be true but only over 500 years as if anyone could say anything about what things will like then or what will happen in between (surely socialism would have been established in the meantime !).
It looks as if the backlash against alarmist claims about global warming is underway. In any event, nobody can claim that capitalist states are not taking measures to try to stop it, inadequate and unco-ordinated as they might be.
