I hate it when that happens.

Not criticising you, just playing while the cats away.

ANyway, I prefer dialectical because, in my view, 'dialectical' does have a precise meaning which differentiates the result from all metaphysics. I think 'materialist' looses that provisional and intrinsically pragmatic character that all generalisations about forms of thinking have to have...but maybe that will turn out to be another discussion.....but maybe not. You say:

but the problem with the concept of system is that it is very difficult to differentiate it from 'structure' which it resolves into.

Finally, Kronos...you quote again your quote. THe problem with your quote is that it suggests ALthusser sets up a very simplistic straw man. I think ALthusser did set up a straw man, but I dont think it was that simple. HOwever, take it as written. Engels writings are very clear that 'in the final analysis' it is the contradiction between forces and relations which are the basis of change. Some writers like SInger or Callinicos (the latter following ALthusser, though he doesnt like to refer to that anymore) say this concept of the final analysis is meaningless.....maybe so , maybe not (I think not) ....but it is the approach of Marx and Engels and not simplistic as suggested and not involving a singular conception of cause as suggested. Right or wrong, meaningless or not, it certainly allows for heterogenous causal forces: no argument with that. The problem is for Althusser to conceptualise heterogenous causal forces in a non-dialectical manner as part of a single explanatory act.

Ah... I don't think so. "System" allows for internal dynamics, while "structure" seems to be rather static.

Luís Henrique

Luis and gilhyle

Could you identify what you think are the key material contradictions of the capitalist system?

I sure can try...

1. Capitalism can only function if there is a class of people that produces surplus value, that is, a class of people whose material interests imply the demise of capitalism;

2. Capitalism's growth requires the sale of an always increased amount of commodities, but it does not directly produce an increase of consuming power for such commodities;

3. Capitalist competition requires companies to substitute more and more dead labour for living labour, and this undermines the production of surplus value;

4. Capitalism requires a specific commodity - labour force - to be not produced by capitalist methods, which means that a commodity that is increasingly social in all its aspects must be produced by petty private methods.

Luís Henrique

Well, call me a traditionalist, but my view is that the most general contradiction of capitlaism is that "all means for the development of production undergo a dialectical inversion so that they become means of domination and exploitation of the producers" Capital Vol 1, p.799, Penguin Edition.

.....indeed, but 'system' is teleological - as structure is - whereas totality is not......but, look, this is a minor point., unless of course we are discussing 'totality'.....happy to switch

GIL:

Well, you of all people should know that this is not even remotely correct. The 'law of identity' (LOI, which concerns the alleged relation between an object and itself) is in no way connected to the 'law of non-contradiction' (LOC, which concerns the truth-functional relation between a proposition and its own negation).

As I have pointed out to you before, it is only because you have swallowed the confused ideas found in Hegel (and his assumption -- undefended -- that the alleged 'negation' of the LOI implies the LOC), that you can come out with such stuff.

As you should also know, a combination of modal and temporal logic can cope with change; so we do not need 'dialectical logic' to begin with.

In fact, ordinary language handles change far better than both formal and 'dialectical' logic (indeed, dialectics cannot explain change at all -- that was established here)

So, apart from redefining the word (a là CYM -- as 'opposing forces' -- a definition that cannot work anyway; see the link below), dialecticians have nothing to offer us here.

This means, naturally, that dialectics lacks both motivation and rationale.

Small wonder then that it has presided over 150 years of almost total failure. It is well past its sell-by date (which was 2400 BC, if that).

The idea that there are such things 'dialectical contradictions' is taken apart here:

http://homepage.ntlworld.com/rosa.l/page%2008_03.htm

The doctrine of change through 'internal contradictions' is demolished here:

http://homepage.ntlworld.com/rosa.l/page%2008_01.htm

The fanciful idea that opposing forces may be equated with contradictions is rubbished here:

http://homepage.ntlworld.com/rosa.l/page%2008_02.htm

The rest of you mystics do not seem to know much logic, but yet you seem happy to pontificate about it.

No doubt you will be telling brain surgeons their job next week

DOnt think you got what I said...rather you reduced it to the familar. However, the familar is comforting.....on which topic, welcome back ! Too quiet without you. x

The job of a brain surgeon is to fix brains.....put down that cup o' tea and fix them brains, surgeon!....see rosa its easy to tell people their job, whats hard is to do it.

Gil, as usual, you duck the difficult logical issues -- and, even though you seem to know more about brain surgery than logic, I congratulate you on that even more impressive skill you have of inserting your head deep into Hegelian sand.

Well, from here in the sand, what your saying is unclear, is it formal logic or language that handles change ? And what does 'handles change' mean ?

WHat I am talking about is developing a critical self-consciousness of the way in which forms of thinking actually operate to limit what we think and how an awareness of the basic dialectical patterns (inter alia the way in which terms that refer change their sense because they change their reference) and the way in which dialectical methodologies such as theories articulated at different levels of abstraction (e.g. what is true for capitalism per se is often not true for capitalism in practice, but can still be understood not as a counterexample to but as a form of appearance of capitalism) can assist us to understand things more clearly and avoid the fetishization of form that dominant ideologies rely on......none of this has anything to do with formal logic, which is about implication etc., logical relations which are quite inadequate for understanding how theorization occurs.

What your logic cannot do is model theorising and what your ordinary language (itself a fetishised form since you exclude the commonsense dialectical awareness we all actually carry around with us unnamed) does not do is model theorising sufficiently .........and (sorry to be emotive) the pathetic mysitificatory, semi-religious concept of language games illustrates that perfectly. The heart of that concept is mystery.

Gil:

This shows, once more, how little attention you pay to anything that is not ruling-class trype.

In what I posted, I am responding to the sorts of things dialectical dunces say about logic, language and change, so these are not the words I would prefer to use.

Hence, as soon as you tell me what you and your mystical friends mean by the odd things you/they say about logic, language and change, I will enlighten you as to my intentions.

But, I have been asking you this sort of thing for nigh on two years now, and every time you duck and run for cover -- behind another sand dune, I suspect.

Or we get this sort of gobbledygook:

Have you programmed a computer to churn this stuff out?

Or, has that diet of yours -- high in silicates -- affected the language module in your brain?

'My logic'? You praise me too highly. I have yet to re-model it.

Just give me a few years, though...

And your contempt for the material language of the working class (in preference for that of ruling-class hacks) has taken just revenge on you, for you seem quite incapable of writing clear English.

Always assuming, of course, that it was English, and not a pidgin version of Hegelese, or Venusian...

Now, if you can enrol on a crash course in English, and translate the above so that earthlings like me can follow it, I'd appreciate it.

That is, if you are not too busy burrowing in that dune...

[And I do not use 'language games', nor do I refer to them, unless in debate, when I trash the notion -- Wittgenstein's authority or no. So, your latest attempt at invention has back-fired -- rather like your many others.]

Briefly, contradiction is one of the important categories of dialectics, so you would do well to have a firm grasp of them.

From Alexander Spirkin's Dialectical Materialism:

Trivas, none of this works, as I have shown here many times.

For example (but in relation to Mao, but it is easy to translate this into a critique of dialectrics in general):

This was taken from here:

http://www.revleft.com/vb/showpost.p...57&postcount=2

So, you really need to stop quoting tired old formulae that do not, and never did, work.

It's more than clear to me that for you it doesn't work. Therefore I've decided you're a hopeless revisionist.

Please spare us with yet again another expostulation shown here many times.

Trivas:

There is no science that is above revision, and none that has not thrown off the mysticism it once accepted.

This can only mean that for you, Marxism is not a science.

[But we already know that dialectical Marxism is a dogma in your eyes -- and one you cannot defend.]

Spare us then your repetition of tired old nostrums that do not work, and have been shown not to work.

Unless, that is, you can point out the error of my ways...

Think you are up to it?

Glad to hear it, one possible mystification down, now, just an infiniity of options to go.

Gil:

1) I agree; the next to go are those ruling-class nostrums you found in Hegel. [Some hope!]

2) How do you know they are 'infinite'?

3) Can you stop attributing to me ideas you just make up. I have brought this to your attention many times now over the last two years. You never apologise or withdraw them; you just wait a few weeks and invent a few more. But, you are a quick as lightening when you think you have found an error in my posts.

The correct question is why do I believe they are infinite in number, not how do I 'know' they are infinite in number. But thats a by the way. The answer is that I speculate that just as human language is open and capable of infinite new sentences, we are also capable of an infinite number of mystificatory inventions for ideological purposes. Given enough time and enough historical failure to pass on to a form of social organisaton that ceases to encourage mystification, we (i.e. the species) will continue to invent new methods of mystification, whether in religious, philosophical, poetic or folk psychological form. They will all conform to a few patterns, but the variation is potentially endless. In retrospect - even if that point of reflection is the moment of the end of the species - that number will of course be limited and finite. But they are portentially limited, i.e. there will never be a point where all forms of mystification have found expression so that we can then deal with all existing ones and show rationally where they all fail. The closest we can get to that is to focus on certain generic forms of mystification which tend to be shared. However, the attempt rationally to combat even those forms is a quixotic adventure. Mystification is a problem of this world, to be resolved by its transformation not by debate within it.

Debate is never promoted by ascribing wrong ideas to anyone and I apologise (sincerely) for any mis-ascription of ideas to you.

However, your case is a special one since you engage in extended criticism of the ideas of others and, in doing so, rely heavily on highly philosophical assumptions which you often do not articulate. To deal with you (and I use that term in its positive as well as its negative sense) your criticisms must be revealed as flowing from your beliefs. You have decided to delay the positive articulation of your own views until you have completed the criticism of dialectial materialism (see your post on some thread where you reference Alex Callinicos and Cohen). That is a misguided methodology. Criticisms do not stand alone. They stand only in service of a proposition. We do not share a sufficient framework of rationality within capitalist society to be able to carry out a criticism of a complex point of view, such as that of Hegel without doing so from within the articulation of an alternative point of view - that is 'critique' as Marx understood it. But you do not do that. Consequently, I occasionally seek (belatedly ad half heartedly) to poiint to the positive propositions that are the intrinsic concomitants of your negative criticisms. Some of the readers of your criticisms on this board who find them attractive are unaware of the kind of perspective your approach comes from (and leads back to) and that is important in assessing both the positive and negative aspects of your insights. Consequently, I must (insofar as I engage earnestly) continue to ascribe ideas to you until you articulate your own - and dont tell me they are on your website, they arent.

Gil, now:

Gil, earlier, but in a much sloppier frame of mind:

No qualifiactions in sight here concerning 'beliefs', just the usual dialectical bravado, accompanied by assertive posturing that could only have been based on assumed 'knowledge'.

No need to be shy; there's a very simple mathematical proof to show that such sentences can be paired one-one with the reals, which I am sure you know --, or would know if you could access that assertive alter ego of a few days ago (which you now seem to have mysterously abandoned).

Don't tell me Rosa has once again slapped some materialist humility into you?!

Jesus H Christ, and I thought I was boring! You should consider working with chronic insomniacs; you have a natural gift to send people to slee...

Sorry, I drifted off there.

Name one, and if you are right, I will repudiate it immediately, and repent in sackcloth and Gilhyles.

I am glad you have read every single word of the 1.3 million at my website, but I digress in good old Gil-ish fashion.

However, and quite unexpectedly, I disagree with you about Hegel -- it is very easy to demolish his ideas since he was a logical and philosophical incompetent, a genuine Donald Duck of Dialectics. Thales, as a callow youth, would have found him a doddle.

But, no 'point of view' is needed other than a working class refusal to accept the sort of ruling-class bullsh*t you seem to dote on.

That is, in between your meals heavily laced with silcates...

They help comrades make things up, I hear.

What is said wasn't boring at all. It may have used some academic language, but was another way of saying that mysticism does no service to the working class movement, as its rule will be the first in history that will not require mysticisim to maintain its power.

Here is a philosophical perspective you have that would require a lot of justification :

[QUOTE]But, no 'point of view' is needed other than a working class refusal to accept the sort of ruling-class bullsh*t you seem to dote on.[QUOTE]