ALB
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The nonsense spouted by that nutty professor was refuted by Belfort Bax as long ago as 1893 in this essay in The Ethics of Socialism:http://www.marxists.org/archive/bax/1893/ethics/14-immortality.htm
I think it better to leave it to the comrades on the ground, Alan. Denouncing the Dean could led to them being hauled up before the Proctor or even the Master and rusticated or whatever they do to recalcitrant students.Meanwhile Class War is preparing to register as a political party. That's them not getting an invite to next year's Anarchist Bookfair. Or is it?http://ianbone.wordpress.com/2013/11/08/class-war-general-election-campaign-update/
Young Master Smeet wrote:when I say "I" I obviously mean the linguistically constructed retroactive justification for the actions of the meat-bot hitting the the keyboard right now.It looks as if we're all Zen Buddhists now! Here's how the sceptic and researcher Susan Blackmore who says she's a bit of buddhist puts the same idea in her The Meme Machine (incidentally, not a very good book as she tries to develop another of Dawkins's silly ideas):
Quote:Everyday experience, ordinary speech and 'common sense' are all in favour of the 'real self', while logic and evidence (and more disciplined experience), are on the side of the 'illusory self'. I prefer logic and evidence and therefore prefer to accept some version of the idea that the continuous, persistent and autonomous self is an illusion. I am just a story about me who is writing a book. When the word 'I' appears in this book, it is a convention that both you and I understand, but it does not refer to a persistent, conscious, inner being behind the words.She's sort of right about this of course and this has implications for the idea of "free will". We've debated this issue of 'free will v determinism' here before since we really do seem to be the Socialist Philosophers of Great Britain.
For those who might not know of it, there's a yahoo mailing list where member's letters to the press are recorded:http://groups.yahoo.com/neo/groups/spgbmedia/conversations/messages
Looking for something else (Marx's mistaken support for various wars) in Marx Without Myth by Maximilien Rubel and Margaret Manale, and at the risk of waking a sleeping dog, I also found these:24 October 1867: Marx receives a letter from Dietzgen in which "he explained to Marx his own theory of a materialist Weltschauung and remarked that 'science is not so much a matter of fact as it is of explanations for these facts'." (p. 228)May 9 1868: "Already foreseeing the end of his 'Economics', Marx wrote to Joseph Dietzgen that he wanted to undertake a book on dialectics and declared that 'true laws of dialectics are to be found already in Hegel, in a mystic form, however. The problem is to divest them of this form'." (p. 233)1868: "In October Dietzgen sent Marx the manuscript of his work, Das Wesen der menschlichen Kopfarbeit [The Essence of Human Brain Work] for critical appraisal. Marx commented that Dietzgen's writing 'turned in circles', lacked 'dialectic development' and ought to be greatly condensed (to Engels, Oct. 3). Engels found that it showed remarkable instinct and would be 'even brilliant if one could be sure, he had discovered it for himself' (Nov. 6). Marx rejected Engels's suspicion that Dietzgen might have borrowed from other writers, adding that 'it is his misfortune that it was precisely Hegel whom he did not study …' (Nov. 7). To Meyer and August Vogt in New York Marx remarked that, judging from his correspondence with Dietzgen, the latter was 'one of the most genial working men' he knew (Oct. 28). Dietzgen wrote a review of Capital for the Demokratisches Wochenblatt upon Marx's request (Aug.-Sept). In December Marx wrote to Kugelmann about Dietzgen's manuscript, saying that it contained 'despite a certain confusion and excessive repetitiveness much excellent material and—as the independent effort of a working man—is even much to be admired' (Dec. 5)." (p. 239)1875: "In mid-December he [Marx] wrote to Dietzgen that once he had finished with his 'Economics' he intended to write on the subject of dialectics" (p, 300).1882: "On January 5 he [Marx] reported receiving a letter from Dietzgen concerning the latter's recent studies in 'dialectic cognition' and the works of Hegel. To this Marx commented sarcastically that 'the poor fellow has gone forward 'backwards' and 'arrived' at the Phenomenology. I consider the case incurable." (p. 326)
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.
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 …
steve colborn wrote:Not another advertiser using this site!I take it the moderator has removed the ad.
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..
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.
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.
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?
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.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.
