Trivas:

Not according to Lenin.

Not according to Engels.

[I think you make stuff up as you go along!]

Done it, that's why Marx and I see eye to eye on this, and you do not.

They tell us that 'dialectical opposites' that 'contradict' each other -- and that everything and every process in reality (which includes the forces and relations of production) -- sooner or later turn into one another. This is even called an 'absolute'.

I agree this is absurd, but it is a consequence of the loopy theory you hold.

Once again: small wonder then that dialectics has presided over 150 of almost total failure.

Tested in practice -- refuted by history.

Rosa, just one or two things- obviously you know much more about this than me, as I am just beginning my study of dialectics. Also, time and energy permitting, I plan to read some of your work on the subject once I'm satisfied with my own understanding of it.

Well, I didn't intend to say that abandoning dialectics automatically makes one a renegade from Marxism, although I'm sorry for not making that distinction clearer. All I was saying was that MANY people begin abandoning revolutionary Marxism by rejection of the dialectic, Eduard Bernstein being the classical case and moving on to people like Max Eastman, the guy in your signature.

As for Maoists and Stalinists, I don't think it's quite fair to dialectical Marxism to make them its representatives. For example, Mao put WAY too much emphasis on contradiction, going so far as to argue that the three laws were not relevant or even existent. Similarly the Stalin regime made all kinds of errors when it claimed dialectical justification for its actions.

Correlation but not causation. I would think that it's much more reasonable to blame the failures of Marxism these past 150 years on the betrayals of reformism and Stalinism's horrible misdirection of the workers' movement.

But they were both patent mystics only a few post ago. Citations?
Again, only a metaphysician believes that social revolution is determined by philosophical analysis.

Trivas:

Myystics are allowed to have opinions -- even of they are wrong.

You ignore them anyway; find them yourself. [Most of them can be found in the Anti-Duhring thread.]

Can I suggest you stop doing it then?

RP:

Many are also driven away by the emotive, irrational response they faced and the abuse they received after asking quite reasonable questions. I have had over 25 years of this. Fortunately, I am made of stronger stuff than Max Eastman and James Burnham.

Maybe so, but there is no objective way to decide what is the correct way to apply this theory. In fact, it can be and has been used to justify anything you like and its opposite, and many times over.

You will find the evidence for that here:

http://homepage.ntlworld.com/rosa.l/page%2009_02.htm

Use the 'Quick Links' to go to the 'Case Studies' section. I'd post a direct link, but the anonymiser we use at RevLeft ignores sub-links.

Or paste this directly into your browser's address bar:

http://homepage.ntlworld.com/rosa.l/...tm#CaseStudies

Quite right, but it can suggest causation. Indeed, we'd be foolish to ignore it.

Now, the idea that our core theory has absolutley nothing to do with our abysmal record (especially when dialecticians tell us that this theory is at the heart of all they do and say) is, to my mind, quite ludicrous.

Sure, there are objective factors behind our failure, but we must consider the subjective side, too. If we believe that truth is tested in practice, then practice suggests our theory is not true.

If we ignore the results of practice, what is the point of saying that that is how we test truth?

[Please note that I am not questioning Historical Materialism; in fact I accept it 100%.]

You will find my reasons for saying all this set out in detail, here:

http://homepage.ntlworld.com/rosa.l/page%20010_01.htm

But to be strictly accurate you were a revolutionary for five years or more when you were a member of the SWP. Since then you've been a sectarian who let a philosophical disagreement stand in the way of being active in a revolutionary socialist organisation.

BTB:

Not so (someone has been giving you duff information on me); I was a left labour supporter until in the early 80s I read a pamphlet by Paul Foot on Tony Benn. I joined the SWP soon after. I was highly active in it for three years, then loosely associated with it for another one (but not as a member).

I dropped out for other (personal) reasons. Philosophy had nothing to do with it. I will rejoin (if they will have me back!) when my project is finished,

As far as sectarianism is concerened I am no more, but a lot less, sectarian than the SWP is for putting a mystical 'theory' ahead of the interests of the class -- and even then the SWP only 'discovered' this 'theory' in 1988, when Chris Harman saw the light one day. One of the reasons I joined the SWP was because this 'theory' never appeared in its literature. So, it has only been a 'vitally' important SWP dogma for about 20 years. Duncan Hallas never mentioned it, and Tony Cliff almost totally ignored it. Harman said nothing about it until 1988. Callinicos opposed it for much of the time, relenting a little only in the last ten years or so.

And as far as activism is concerned, us Trots haven't really got much to crow about. Despite nearly 70 years devoted to 'buliding' the party, few of us can boast membership rolls that rise much above the risible. And, what have we succeeded in doing in all that time? Splitting more times than a schizophrenic amoeba on speed.

And you know why I think this is so. I refer you back to my post in the Sectarianism thread.

[In that time, the Maoists and Stalinists have achieved far more than we could ever dream of.]

So, one of the best things I can do for you 'headeless chickens', you mad activists busy going nowhere fast, is to break you from the theory that tells you everything is OK, and Marxism cannot fail, blah blah...

Now, had, say, us Trots, and the IST in particular (the IST does not even have a franchise in the USA, for goodness sake! now that we expelled the IS (for flimsy reasons) a few years ago -- that's how 'successful' we are --, and Respect has just split -- remind me, how did Lindsey do in the London elections in May?), had we been a ringing success then you would have had a point.

But, since the opposite is the case, you don't.

Now, unless you have something substantive to say in reponse to my objections to this failed 'theory' you cling onto as if it were the exact opposite itself, may I respectfully suggest that you return to perfecting your headless chicken impressions?

Have a nice sqwark...

Dystisis
Alternatively, it can be seen as a metaphor which captures in its general form both the movement of world history and the circuit of capital accumulation.

There are two dominant ways of 'tracing' out the movement of history, as either a circle, where human events repeat themselves (as represented in the work of Ibn Khaldoun, a 14th Century Islamic writer and arguably the inventor of social science) or as a linear process (Enlightenment and evolutionary ideas of progress; or, the opposite, the Medieval Christian notion of a steady decline as history winds down towards the "end days".)

The spiral illustrates that rather than endless repetition or an uninterrupted forward march to the future, the world historical process is characterised by reversals and disasters, as well as an accumulation of human mastery over nature.

Meanwhile, in capitalism, the circuit of capital is also similar to a spiral in that a process of expansion is achieved at the completion of the cycle and beginnig of. In the same sense, and linked to the expanded reproduction of capital, Marx's theory of crisis also takes the form of a spiral, with each major crisis forcast to be deeper and more prolonged than the last.

So rather than being a self-negating theory of knowledge, as Rosa suggests, the spiral can be viewed as a useful heuristic device in understanding the often contradictory and ambiguous unfolding of history and capitalism.

BTB:

But, how are we to understand this meatphor?

Engels pictured this as an asymptotoc approach:

Reading between the lines here, it is quite clear that Engels himself sort of half understood the implications of what he was saying: this approach to knowledge in fact undermines itself since human beings will forever remain infinitely ignorant of everything, and thus of anything, including the truth of Engels's own claims (recorded above). This is because, the difference between any large finite body and an infinite body of knowledge is itself infinite

In the face of this, as elsewhere, Engels's reaction is instructive: he just ignored the problem (as do other dialecticians, including BTB) -- even though, on this view, no matter how much human beings might think they knew, it would in fact advance them not one nanometre closer to the Holy Grail of Absolute knowledge.

Nevertheless, even this way of depicting things is misleading; so this is not even a good metaphor. The idea of an asymptotic approach in mathematics is connected with the concept of a limit -- if the limit concerned can be shown to exist. But, if a series has no limit, a set of its partial sums cannot in fact "approach" anything at all. Such a series is therefore said to be divergent -- not convergent. Engels's argument depends on knowledge converging on a limit, which he manifestly neglected to show exists.

The same problem afflicts the 'spiral metaphor', for it too approaches is 'limit' asymptotically. But, once again, this limit has not been shown to exist.

Moreover, and as far as can be ascertained, not a single dialectician (even those familiar with mathematics and logic) has noticed this major flaw in Engels's 'theory', let alone attempted to address it.

Naturally, this means that the asymptotic approach metaphor is completely inappropriate. Either that, or Engels knew there was a limit, constructed it, but forgot to write down the proof (a bit like Pierre Fermat, perhaps) in the margin of the above letter.

However, before anyone tries to locate 'Engels's Last Theorem', it would be much wiser to conclude that this claim was obviously motivated by yet another piece of DM-a priori legislation -- ultimately derived from Hegel -- and one that has been dutifully copied by generations of the DM-faithful ever since.

Even though this implies humanity will always be infiniterly ignortant of everything and anything?

This means that BTB's analysis is likewise infinitely far from the truth. In that case, it stands an infinite probabilty of being false.

In that case, it is the exact opposite of being "a useful heuristic device".

There is no reason to understand the metaphor of the dialectical progression of knowledge mathematically. It merely captures the idea that truth is both absolute and relative at the same time. Truth is relative, it changes inevitably in line with the advance of social cognition, with changing reality and conditions of existence. At the same time truth is absolute because it correctly reflects certain aspects of reality and relations within it.

What you are really objecting to is the fact that all language is metaphorical.

Trivas:

1) Engels and Lenin both understood that metaphor this way.

2) How do you know this: "truth is absolute because it correctly reflects certain aspects of reality and relations within it"?

Or is it another of the dogmas you have accepted on faith.

Then the above sentence is metaphorical --, in which case it is not literally true.

In which case, it is not literally true that all language is metaphorical.

In that case, not all language is metaphorical.

You are just miffed because you know no logic.

Now you make the mistake of equating metaphoircal with falsity -- which isn't very logical at all.

Trivas:

So, we can now add to the long list of things you can't do very well, the following: a serious incapacity to follow an argument.

Read it again, wally: nowhere do I equate falsity with metaphor.

Then what are you arguing here?

Trivas:

Let me walk you through this again more slowly:

1) You claimed that all language is metaphorical.

2) Assume therefore this:- T1: All language is metaphorical.

3) But, is T1 metaphorical itself?

4) If what T1 says is true, then T1 is indeed metaphorical.

5) But, no metaphor is literally true (that is why we call it 'metaphor').

6) Hence, T1 is not literally true.

[This is not the same as literally false. T1 could be neither true nor false.]

7) If T1 is not literally true, then what it says is not literally true, and so it is not literally true that all language is metaphorical.

8) Hence, some language is not metaphorical.

9) In that case, not all language is metaphorical.

You see, you need T1 to be literally true.

And if it is, then not all language is metaphorical (since at least T1 is literally true, and thus not metaphorical).

On the other hand, if T1 is not literally true, then what it says is not literally true. In that case, not all language is metaphorical.

Either way, not all language is metaphorical. [Vel elimination.]

So, you in fact refute yourself.

Now --, do -- you -- want -- this -- explaining -- again --, even -- more -- s -- l -- o -- w -- l -- y --?

No, it doesn't follow that if T1 is not literally true, then what it says is not literally true, and so it is not literally true that all language is metaphorical. It means that T1 is itself a metaphor.

Trivas:

T1: All language is metaphorical.

If this is not literally true, then what it says cannot be literally true, since it is metaphorical.

Now, if this is not so, then you must mean by 'metaphorical' something different from the rest of us. Perhaps you should say what you do mean by 'metaphorical', or by a 'metaphor'. [In your reply, if you reply, try not to be literal, otherwise you will only succeed in refuting yourself again.]

Anyway:

T2: It means that T1 is itself a metaphor.

T3: T1 is a metaphor

Unfortunately, the same constraints apply to these, too.

So, if T2 is a metaphor, then what it says is not literally true. In which case T3 cannot be a metaphor.

On the other hand, if T3 is a metaphor, then what T2 says is indeed literally true. In which case T2 is not metaphorical, and so not all language is metaphorical.

So, in asserting that T1 is a metaphor, you state what you believe to be the literal truth, once again refuting yourself.

Finally, can we have your proof that all langauge is metaphorical?

But you've already conceded that what is metaphorical can indeed be true. So it is the case that T1 is a metaphor and what it says can be literally true.

This is how I understand it, but I could be very, very wrong:

Thesis - coke (which contains caffeine - a stimulant)
Anti-theis - Jack Daniels (which contains alcohol - a depressive)
Synthesis - Jack and coke!

Cheers!

Trivas:

I conceded no such thing. I am arguing hypothetically, based on what I perceive to be your assumptions, and arguing toward a reductio.

And we are still waiting for your proof that all language is metaphorical.