[ALB]

This affair is having a direct effect on us. We were due to speak at a meeting of the Balliol College Left Caucus on 5 December in the college, but the Dean has decreed that no non-students (except Party members by written invitation) can attend. He's afraid that if open to the public Ian Bone's "anarchists" might turn up and cause trouble. Unlikely, but the police seem to have really frightened the college authorities.This has created a problem for us because we make it a principle of all our meetings being open to everyone. It could be argued that this is not a meeting arranged by us, but we are reluctant to accept this fall-out from the police intimidation and an alternative venue has had to be found for the meeting to go ahead.

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Are you sure you're the right Rob?

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LBird wrote:

Hmmmm….. how many comrades still think of themselves as 'an individual'?

I see that while I've been away leafletting for our local election campaign Morgenstern seems to have converted you to Zen Buddhism …

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steve colborn wrote:

Not another advertiser using this site!

I take it the moderator has removed the ad.

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They have actually registered the following variations of their name with the Electoral Commission:Trade Unionist and Socialist Coalition Trade Unionist and Socialist Candidate Scottish Trade Unionist and Socialist Coalition Welsh Trade Unionist and Socialist Coalition Carlisle Socialist and Trade Union Candidate Solidarity – Trade Unionist and Socialist Coalition (Joint Description with Solidarity – Scotland's Socialist Movement) Trade Unionists and Socialists Against Cuts Preston Independent Socialists Against the Cuts Scottish Coalition Against Cuts  Scottish Anti-Cuts Coalition We have also registered variants of our name, eg World Socialist Movement, World Socialist Party (GB) and World Socialist Party (EU) but we've never used them. Perhaps we should use one of them in next year's Euroelections which are going to be a festival of xenophobia so we stand out against all the others..

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LBird wrote:

Once comrades get the hang of seeing things as 'structures' (ie. the things in a particular relationship) and that 'structures' have properties that 'emerge' from the relationship, not from the things as individual things which just happened to be heaped together[my emphasis).

Actually of course comrades (at least those interested in the subject) have long known this from reading Dietzgen and Pannekoek.

[ALB]

Fair enough. I don't feel very strongly about this, though I think quantity/quality works rather well with the effects of an increase or decrease of temperature on H2O. But I suppose this could also be expressed as a relationship between temperature and H2O. I'm not going to get worked up about it as we're not talking about a 'law of nature' but only about a way of describing something.

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LBird wrote:

ALB wrote:

Aren't "the transformation of quantity into quality" and "the emergence of structure" just two different ways of describing the same phenomena?

No. One is a supposed 'law'.

But that's the opposite of what you just said to YMS:

LBird wrote:

YMS wrote:

My reading of Pannekoek was that quantity/quality wasn't in nature, but the development of the human understanding of nature.

Yeah, understanding, not nature.

Obviously I don't think it's a "law of nature" any more than Pannekoek would have done. Insofar as Engels thought it was he was wrong. I was merely expressing some support for it as a human description of some observed phenomena with a view to understanding it.

LBird wrote:

The issue is, does using a theory of 'quantity/quality' give a better understanding than 'structures/emergence'?

That's what I was trying to say. Or, rather, does the description (form of words) 'quantity/quality' give a better understanding of some phenomena than the description 'structures/emergence'? If not, why not?

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Now that the discussion on the dialectic is over, it seems the position is still the same as it was as set out in 1956 quoted in the opening post to this thread:

Quote:

The subject of dialectics has not received a great deal of attention in the Socialist Party. It may be thought it is of not much concern to us. Nevertheless, all sorts of ideas on the subject have flitted through the Party from time to time. We may not accept Engels's Dialectics of Nature or Anti-Duhring, but at least we have never rejected them.

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Aren't "the transformation of quantity into quality" and "the emergence of structure" just two different ways of describing the same phenomena? The question that then arises is which is the better one. Which involves having criteria to judge the adequacy/usefulness/"truth" of statements about the real world.. But (at the risk of setting an old hare running) what?Actually, personally I quite like the description "transformation of quantity into quality", which does fit some things that happen. This without thinking that it's a law of nature or agreeing with all of Engels's examples.

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Young Master Smeet wrote:

Indeed, we can keep working with the postface as the primary source, but if we look here again at this sentence:

Marx wrote:

The mystification which dialectic suffers in Hegel’s hands, by no means prevents him from being the first to present its general form of working in a comprehensive and conscious manner.

Hegel's dialectic is referred to without article, which usually is suggestive of a definite article.

That's only in an English translation of what Marx originally wrote in German.So, if we are to continue with this talmudic analysis of a text, then we need to refer to the original German. And you're right. It does say "die Dialektik".

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LBird wrote:

Other than some mentions of Hegel's name, and some throwaway remarks, I'm inclined to agree with Rosa's stance that 'there isn't an atom of Hegel' in Marx's works.

Those were the couple of atoms I was talking about! Incidentally, I don't think RL goes that far: the claim was referring to Capital not all of Marx's works.Whether we like it or not, I can't see how it can be denied that Hegel was an influence on Marx or that he was once a "Young Hegelian". After all, he became a socialist/communist through wrestling with Hegelian ideas and coming to the conclusion, for instance, that the criticism of religion was not just an intellectual exercise but led to a criticism of the material conditions that gave rise to religion and so to working to end these conditions.

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Rosa Lichtenstein wrote:

supports your view of the relation between Marx and Hegel.

I don't know what you think "our" view of this is. You seem to think that we are claiming that Marx was a devoted follower of Hegel to his dying day. Nobody  here has said that. The difference is minimal. You say there is not an atom of Hegel in Marx's 1873 Postface. We say there's maybe a couple. So this really is an argument about how many atoms can dance on a pinhead. And it doesn't make any difference who is right. You'll remain a Leninist and we'll remain socialists.In fact I can't think what you are trying to achieve here, apart from publishing your own. writings (and comparing yourself to Copernicus). None of us here accept Leninist "diamat'. So you are preaching to the converted on this point. You're actually weakening your case with your obsessive dogmatism.

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Rosa Lichtenstein wrote:

This isn't so with all the unpublished letters comrades have quoted — they do seem to contradict the summary Marx published in the Postface.

Another concession to the facts. They certainly do "seem" to contradict your argument (that Marx completely abandoned and contradicted Hegel), but they don't contradict what he wrote in the 1873 Postface. They help explain it: that Marx wasn't a full-blooded Hegelian but that he took something from him and was prepared to recognise this. A bit like you with regard to Wittgenstein and linguistic philosophy.

[ALB]

Here's Rosa Luxemburg's take on co-operatives, from her pamphlet Reform or Revolution:

Quote:

Co-operatives – especially co-operatives in the field of production constitute a hybrid form in the midst of capitalism. They can be described as small units of socialised production within capitalist exchange.But in capitalist economy exchanges dominate production. As a result of competition, the complete domination of the process of production by the interests of capital – that is, pitiless exploitation – becomes a condition for the survival of each enterprise. The domination of capital over the process of production expresses itself in the following ways. Labour is intensified. The work day is lengthened or shortened, according to the situation of the market. And, depending on the requirements of the market, labour is either employed or thrown back into the street. In other words, use is made of all methods that enable an enterprise to stand up against its competitors in the market. The workers forming a co-operative in the field of production are thus faced with the contradictory necessity of governing themselves with the utmost absolutism. They are obliged to take toward themselves the role of capitalist entrepreneur – a contradiction that accounts for the usual failure of production co-operatives which either become pure capitalist enterprises or, if the workers’ interests continue to predominate, end by dissolving.

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