I will start with Rosa's misconception about contradictions.

Here is Rosa's understanding of contradiction.

This is the Metaphysical approach that Marx and Engels have already dealt with in their time.

Rosa has broke apart the wage system, capitalist want to pay lower wages, workers want (need) higher wages.

So we have two conflicting sides. There is no doubt about it that their class interest conflict. And I too agree it is a far stretch to call them a contradiction at this stage of analysis.

However these two conflicting sides do not exist independently, they exist together in a system. Two conflicting sides form a thing. In this situation the two conflicting sides form the wage system, capitalism. How can they continue to exist in the same system for so long if they conflict? Hence the system has an inherent contradiction.

So let's go back to the all classic contradiction, productive forces and relations of production. If broken into their two parts, we have socialised labour and private ownership. Outside of their system, in a metaphysical view they do not contitute a contradiction. However nothing exists in such a state, there is no such pure indepdence and if our analysis stops here (as Rosa's does) then our analysis remains as a metaphysical analysis. The productive forces and the relations of production form a system, in todays society they form capitalism. So two conflicting sides form a thing, and that thing has inherent contradictions.

Rosa's error is to break things down and never put them back into context. When we do this, they have no meaning. Relations of production mean nothing, unless we talk about the productive forces. The dialetical materialist breaks these things down, to work out the two conflicting sides. Marx studied the economy of capitalism, he found that the relations of production were bourgeiosie ownership and proleteriat labour, and that the productive forces were more suited to socialised reltions of production, do to mass industry and socialised labour.

Once we break down the system, and understand the two conflicting sides, we place this anlysis back into it's context. It is from this point where we know there are two conflicting sides we can say the thing we have studied has inherent contradicitons, the inherent and primary contradiction in capitalism is the conflict between relations of production and productive forces.

Hiero:

Well, Marx in fact ignored all this sort of stuff (unless you can quote where he discusses the nature of 'dialectical contradictions'), and Engels was almost totally ignorant of logic, and was thus incapable of passing an informed comment in this area.

But, perhaps you can tell us where Engels dealt with the sort of contradictions I mentioned?

Moreover, Engels had to re-define metaphysics (in fact he copied Hegel's re-definition) to make his ideas work. Now, we can all re-define stuff to suite our own ends, but it proves nothing (except perhaps how desperate we might be).

Sure they do not exist independently, but what has that got to do with whether the examples dialectical mystics give of 'dialectical contradictions' are indeed contradictioon to begin with, let alone 'dialectical' ones?

And sure, the capitalists are in struggle with the workers, but why is this a 'contradiction'?

Furthermore, as I have shown, according to Mao, Lenin and Engels, the 'opposites' in a 'dialectical contradiction' in fact turn into one another. That must mean that according to this 'theory', the working class must turn into the capitalist class, and vice versa!

Proof here:

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

Again, this must mean that the 'forces of production' must turn into 'relations of production', and vice versa!

You are welcome to that 'theory'!

Not so; I do not 'break' anything down, and I challenge you to quote where I have done this.

What I have done is point out the simple fact that we still do not know what a 'dialectical contradiction' is, and that if they exist, they would in fact prevent change.

So, nice try Hiero, only it wasn't.

If "this sort of stuff" refers to metaphysical philosophy this just isn't historically accurate. Marx in his salad days dreamt of teaching philosophy and was heavily influenced by Hegelianism. Indeed, he considered himself a student of Hegel all his adult life, but condemned in the strongest possible terms the idealism of the Bauer brothers, Feuerbachian materialism, and the egoistic individualism of Stirner, all which had there roots in left Hegelianism. Marx's materialism was entirely in reaction to and a repudiation of metaphysical philosophy; how can you say he "ignored" it?
This is a total misunderstanding of dialects.

So, Rosa still does not know what a 'dialectical contradiction' is -- or if she does she also know they cannot exist, and so cannot change anything.

Trivas:

Well, we know all this (it is standard fayre), but if Heiro cannot point to where Marx discusses the nature of 'dialectical contradictions', perhaps you can? [Some hope!]

And, as we have already established, by the time it came to writing his most mature work, Das Kapital, Marx had put all this Hegelian stuff behind him, and had abandoned 'the dialectic' as you mystics understand it.

1) Since no one 'understands' dialectics, then it is impossible to 'misunderstand it'.

2) But, let's assume you are correct. In that case, you should find it easy to show where my refutation of this 'theory' of yours goes wrong.

Can you?

Or is this just another dogma you have uncritically swallowed?

However, as if to prove you can't think for yourself, you now copy Gilhyle:

And, as I said to Gilhyle in reply:

The same comment applies to you.

But that is exactly the case.

Capitalists as a class have an interest in keeping wages as low as possible - because that is how surplus value is produced - and they also have an interest in doing the opposite - because they need to sell the stuff their factories produce to realise surplus value.

So, capitalists interests are contradictory.

Luís Henrique

LH:

But, their conjunction would only be a contradiction if you could show that both could be true at once, or both false at once.

Can you?

Moreover, the actual contradiction was:

I am not sure you can do much 'dialectics' with this, but you are welcome to try.

But I've never seen this "refutation" by you anywhere in your voluminous writings, i.e, you've never told me what exactly you thought you were refuting.

Trivas:

That's because you are a rather dopey individual. I have posted these links before, and in reply to you --, and I even posted one in this thread!

The fullest and most up-to-date version can be found here:

http://homepage.ntlworld.com/rosa.l/page%2007.htm

Click on this Quick Link:

"2a) Breaking News: Dialectics Cannot Explain Change"

I'd post a direct link, but the anonymiser RevLeft uses ignores such links.

Or you can read an earlier version here (but this was directed at Mao's version of dialectical change):

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

This was the link I posted above.

Perhaps, nevertheless you can't even articulate what it is you think you're refuting. "[S]hown to be riddled with confusion" does not a refutation make.

Breaking news: dialectics were not meant to explain change.

The problem is, capitalists want to pay workers the least possible. They also want to sell their commodities as fast as possible. Those objectives are mutually exclusive, as workers who earn little money are not likely to buy too much commodities.

Ergo, the class interests of capitalists are contradictory.

Luís Henrique

In truth the capitalist wants to extract the highest surplus value from his workers, thereby insuring himself the greatest possible return on his "investment" (exploitation, if the truth be told). That's why he can often undercut his profit margin by selling more than his competitors.

For example (to repeat):

We saw in a former chapter that the exchange of commodities implies contradictory and mutually exclusive conditions. The differentiation of commodities into commodities and money does not sweep away these inconsistencies, but develops a modus vivendi, a form in which they can exist side by side. This is generally the way in which real contradictions are reconciled. For instance, it is a contradiction to depict one body as constantly falling towards another, and as, at the same time, constantly flying away from it. The ellipse is a form of motion which, while allowing this contradiction to go on, at the same time reconciles it.

http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx...1/ch03.htm#S2a

Trivas:

Read the post and find out.

That's a good job, then, since, as I show, if dialectics were true, then change could not occur.

LH (still battling away with the labour of Sysiphus):

If they are mutually exclusive, then they both cannot take place at the same time, and hence propositions describing them cannot both be true, and cannot therefore constitute an actual contradiction.

This is as far as Gilhyle managed to get in the Anti-Duhring thread, but then began to sulk and would say no more (perhaps because there is no more to say)

Even if they were, they cannot constitute a contradiction unles they could both be true together. [See above.]

But are they even contradictory?

They would be if this were the case:

Capitalist CC wants to pay workers the least possible and Capitalist CC does not want to pay workers the least possible.

That's not much use to you.

And even then, you'd face the same sort of problems that snarled up your last attempt to make sense of this whacko dogma (which fell apart with the Achilles and the Tortoise paradox):

http://www.revleft.com/vb/showpost.p...1&postcount=25

http://www.revleft.com/vb/showpost.p...4&postcount=26

Gil:

yes, we have been through this several times; Marx was here merely 'coquetting' with Hegelian jargon.

How many more times do you need to have this pointed out to you?

How is this accomplished, exactly? Gilhyle's quote demonstrates that Marx makes mention of dialectical contradiction in Capital.
I haven't a clue what this means, I dare say neither do you.

I've read your post and have failed to see what your refutation amounts. What exactly are you refuting? A political strategy, a metaphysic? I haven't a clue.

In your Wittgensteinian zeal to dissolve technical language you forfeit your prerogative to repudiate a long history of philosophical dissent.

Trivas:

So, we can add that to the ever-lengthening list of things about which you 'haven't a clue'.

Read that thread, and weep.

Here:

We have two primary conflicting sides in capitalism, workers and capitalist. You just broke down the capitalism system in a basic way.

I am not arguing with you. I just want to show that two conflicting sides, two contradicting forces constitute a whole.

Exactly.

Engels in anti-during says that dialectics in a materialist sense is quite simple. And it is quite simple; it is show the state of things in motion. It is people like Dühring and Rosa who confuse it.

Like I said I find that they break things down but never put them back into context. If we break down say a grandfather clock to its smallest mechanical components we would understand the qualities of each component. However broken down that far we would say "this is not a clock".

If we are cunning and wanted to trick someone it isn't a clock we might take a handful and ask someone is this a clock? Unless they know their clocks as a trade they would only see a handful of individual mechanical parts. Broken down we can only analyse the smallest components, and we don't have a full picture. When we put each part back together, when we see the relationship between each part and their back into their context we can say "this is a clock, it works because each component is interrelated, and all these parts make a clock".

At the start we know it is a clock, just the same as we know that this current system is capitalism, you don't have to be a Marxist to know this. However Marxists in regards to social things don't accept such things at their face value. If just say that this is capitalism and say socialism comes next, that is a utopian phrase. If we break it down, like a clock, we understand its components; we see such things as working class, capitalist class, banks, surplus value, capital etc. Then when we put them back into the system we see that the system has inherent contradictions, because these conflicting sides are unified in a coherent system. It is then that we say the capitalist system will change because it has inherent contradictions that cannot exist.

At the start this was confusing for me. I first read Stalin's work on Dialectical and Historical materialism, then moved on to Engels part on dialectics in Anti-Duhring. I am also looking at Mao's and Althusser's stuff on dialectics, which expand and correct some misconceptions on contradictions. Now I see Engels stuff very basic, as he is showing a basic natural process. If you read Engels you will see he has already dealt with the arguments Rosa is putting up. Really Rosa has wasted alot of people’s time and her time taking very basics phrases and muddling them into something they are not.

The productive forces ae described as socialised. The relations of production are private. In a system they form a contradiciton. Through revolution the relations of production are socialised. The relations of production have turned into their opposite.

Hiero:

Why is this a 'break'? It merely raises the question, yet to be answered: why is this is a 'contradiction'?

One can freely acknowledge the structural dependency of workers and capitalists, and their conflict, and yet deny this can be called a 'contradiction'.

All you have done, it seems, is reassert a tradition, but not answer the question: why call this a 'contradiction'?

Indeed, we have yet to be told what a 'dialectical contradiction' is.

That's for sure -- because you can't.

Like every other dialectical mystic with whom I have 'debated' this, you merely re-assert a tradition you cannot defend, let alone explain. Not even our resident 'expert', Gilhyle is up to the job!

As I asserted in that other thread:

http://www.revleft.com/vb/showpost.p...65&postcount=7

Which raises the question: why did you begin this thread if you can't answer that question?

We have had this unexplained, mystical tradition rammed down our throats for well over 140 years, and yet no one (not even Hegel) can tell us what a 'dialectical contradiction' is. The best attempts so far to do just this soon collapse under close scrutiny, as I have shown in the Anti-Dühring thread and here:

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

And, of course, that is why I wished you good luck. But, it now seems that you need far more than 'luck'.

You quote this:

But ignored my reply:

And the same comment, it seems, applies to you.

Well, Engels was a confused dogmatist, as I have shown in the Anti-Dühring thread, so I do not know why you are quoting him at me.

Despite these fine words, you still haven't told us what these mysterious things are: 'dialectical contradictions'.

This suggests that you yourself do not know, and have merely accepted a dogma you can neither defend nor explain -- just like you Maoists have accepted that the 'mass line' is 'from the masses' when you have absolutely no evidence to back that up.

You mystics are all suckers for tradition, and seem naively to believe everything you have been told in the Dialectical Holy Books.

And now, you try to impose this mystical view of things on Marx in Das Kapital -- but I have already shown that Marx abandoned this approach to analysing Capitalism when he came to writing that book. So, it's no use you just repeating that tired old, traditional view of Marx.

What you need to do is explain what a 'dialectical contradiction' is, as I originally challenged you to do, and then show why this traditional theory does not collapse into incoherence, as I have shown that it does here:

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

Now, I pointed this out in my reply to you above, but you have just ignored it.

Of course, we both know why you have ignored my challenge: you can't respond to my arguments, so you just repeat the stale, safe and comforting dogmas you have had rammed down your throat. As if we haven't heard it all a million times already!! Just like the genuinely religious, you dialectical mystics find comfort in just repeating safe and re-assuring mantras.

It's not truth you are after, but comforting and safe dogma.

Why read Stalin on this? He is just as repetitive and mantra-like as other dialecticians?

But we know why. You just wanted to hear the comforting words once more. You did not question what he had to say, you just accepted it as if it were the Holy Word from off the mountain.

That is not so. Engels has not dealt with my arguments. I challenge you to show where he has.

And that is no surprise; Engels, as well as Lenin, Stalin and Mao, were almost totally ignorant of logic, even of the bowdlerised Aristotelian 'logic' that Hegel tried to grapple with in his badly misnamed work, 'Logic'.

As it seems you too are, and that is the real reason you cannot answer my criticisms. You do not even so much as try to do so!

But, that does not stop you (plural) pontificating from a position of almost total ignorance.

This is not so. A dialectical 'opposite' is whatever an object or process struggles with, or 'contradicts'. In that case, the forces of production should turn into the relations of production, and vice versa, according to this whacko 'theory' of yours.

So, and yet again: what is a 'dialectical contradiction'?

We have yet to be told. The 'best' attempt so far suggests that they cannot exist, and so cannot change anything --, or if they do exist, that change cannot happen.

The thing capitalism has inherent contradictions. It is the two when they are in a system that form the contradictions.

You either understand it or you don't. Some people here do understand it, and they have moved on to better things. It is you who doesn't understand it, or you purposely missrepresent. The shamefull is that you're so proud of it.