yes the theory is that in the process of negating its opposite, something takes on the role once played by that which it negated. therefore the revolutionary class becomes the ruling class.

Z:

We have already seen that this implies that workers become capitalists, the early bourgeoisie become the feudal aristocracy, and the forces of production become the relations of production.

What a brilliant theory...

it doesn't imply that, as I said, it implies that the revolutionary class becomes the ruling class. this is correct. the bourgeosiie went from revolutionary class to ruling class. it turned itno its opposite.

did the bourgeosie therefore become the feudal aristocracy? no. did this need to happen in order for it to convert into its opposite? no. explain to me in what way the bourgeoisie was the opposite of the feudal aristocracy. because the marxist interpretation is that it was the opposite in the sense that the were inc otnradiction with each other due to one being the declinign class and one being the rising class. the correct interpretation is NOT that they were just "opposites" in some abstract sense that can't be explained.

Z:

Let me walk you through it again.

The term ruling class is abstract, whereas real live material feudal aristocrats were not.

The latter, and the real live early bourgeoisie were locked in struggle. Now, Lenin and the other dialectical prophets tell us that things struggle with their opposites.

So, these feudal aristocrats were the opposite of the early members of the bourgeisie.

But, the dialectical prophets also tell us that opposites turn into one another.

Conclusion: the bourgeoisie should have turned into the feudal aristocracy, and vice versa.

And the forces of production should turn into the relations of production, and vice versa.

Dead cats should turn into live cats; your debts should turn into your assets...

What a whacky dialectical world this is...

As you say, no.

But according to the dialectical Holy Books, they should have.

In which case, dialectics cannot explain change.

The explanation of opposites is given above.

In that case, the 'declining class' should have become the 'rising class', and the 'rising class' should have become the 'declining class'.

Whichever way you try to slice it, this whacko theory ends up in the mire.

i'm pretty lost on all of this but didn't sections of the declining class (aristocrats) become members of the rising class (bourgeoisie)? and hasn't the rising class (bourgeoisie) now become the declining class?

jesus this stuff is confusing.

also one thing i never understood with all of this is how the proletariat becomes the final class. shouldn't another section of society rise after the revolution to oppose the proletariat? wouldn't this have to happen for the dialectic or whatever to continue?

misanthro:

No worries. My comments were aimed at showing how useless a concept this is; so if you do not understand it, you are in excellent company, for no one I have met/debated with over the last 25 years can explain it, and no book/article I have read (and I have read literally hundreds on this topic) can explain it either -- that is, not without descending into incoherence, as we see above.

Also:

This is, I suspect, why Stalin and Mao dropped this idea, for it suggested that their regimes would one day fall.

wait, so am i wrong about the rising/declining class thing in my first post?

Whether you are right or not, it has nothing to do with the 'negation of the negation'.

The point is that, according to the dialecticians I have quoted, it is opposites that are in struggle, and they change into one another.

So, the rising bourgeoisie should have turned into the declining aristocracy, and vice versa, and the declining bourgoisie should (soon?) turn into the rising proletariat, and vice versa.

No matter how you try to slice it, this theory just does not work.

Yes. Elements of the landed classes transformed themselves into bourgeoisie. This is not so remarkable given that the industrial revolution began in the countryside, in agriculture.

Because, for the first time in history, the revolutionary class - the working class - will encompass the vast majority of the population it is argued that it will move towards the abolition of all class distinction and, hence, classless society.

The dialectic of class conflict (if it's correct to call it that) will thus reach an end.

CZ:

According to the dialectical classics, things struggle with their opposites and they also turn into them.

So, if what you say is true, then dialectics cannot account for it.

Rosa, now I am not an expert on the Dialectic and have in no way read nearly as much as you (or much in any definition of the word) on the subject, but I can say you do fail to understand what Zurdito is trying to say.

The rising bourgeoisie DID become the declining aristocracy in relation to state power. It was the bourgeoisie that rested from the aristocracy state power, dispossessing the aristocracy and placing them in relation to the state power, the exact position that the bourgeoisie had been before.

Further, it was the bourgeois revolution which in negating the aristocracy forged it's own negation in the working class. Thus the bourgeoisie did in this sense take the place of the declining aristocracy.

Now Rosa, I can guess that you are going to turn around and denounce me as a mystic without even taking note of what I have said. You did this to Zurdito a number of times above. I'm not claiming dialectics as a working philosophy, rather I want to prove this point that you so eagerly wish to ignore. At least in this case we can observe a struggle between opposites which manage to also turn into one another, whether this can be utilized elsewhere is another question (my own opinion is that it is really a matter of semantics, but isn't it all?).

Z91:

Ah but I understand only too well.

Comrades like Zurdito (and I have debated with scores like him over the last 25 years) when forced to read what Engels, Hegel, Lenin, and the rest have to say about change, either refuse to believe their eyes (so manifestly ridiculous is it), or they try to argue that 'opposites' are not contradictories (contradicting, somewhat ironically, Hegel, Engels and Lenin), or that things do not change because of or into their opposites (contradicting Engels, Lenin and Plekhanov, among others), or that such opposites can be defined in an abstract way to get around the problem (Zurdito tried all three avoiding tactics), or that it is just 'semantics' (your ploy -- I deal with that at the end).

But, abstractions cannot struggle. Real live human beings in opposing classes struggle.

These, Lenin (and others) call dialectical opposites. So, these real live individuals must change into their opposites (for there is no other mechanism in dialectics to account for change).

Hence, if the real live individuals who comprised the rising bourgeoisie struggled with the real live individuals in the feudal aristocracy, they must have change into them, and vice versa.

Now, Zurdito, tried to get around this by arguing that the former ruling class (the feudal aristocracy) were replaced as a ruling class by the bourgeois (you tried something similar -- see below).

I do not deny that (for it is part of Historical Materialism); what I deny is that dialectics can explain it.

The abstraction, 'the ruing class', applies to many disparate groups in successive modes of production, and as such is incapable of struggling with anything. As Marx noted, it is real material human beings who engage in class warfare

However, if the rising bourgeoisie changed into the new capitalist class, then according to the dialectical prophets they should, at some point, have been in struggle with them.

That is, the rising capitalist class should have been struggling with itself (the ruling capitalist class!) before the latter existed! If it doesn't do this, if there is no struggle between them, then the former cannot change, for the dialectical prophets tell us that things change only because they struggle with what they become, their opposites (Lenin even calls this an 'absolute'). So, if they struggle with what they become, the rising capitalist class must be in struggle with the ruling capitalist class before it exists.

That is how ridiculous this theory is!

If we deny that, then dialectics has no way of accounting for change.

I can live with that.

You too seem to want to talk in abstractions, but abstractions cannot struggle, and so dialectics cannot explain how or why they change.

But, if what you are saying is true, the rising bourgeoisie became a declining power!

And, since all things change into their opposites, the declining aristocracy must have become a rising power!

So, even your abstract approach does not work.

As far as the 'negation of the negation' is concerned (in the future proletariat), then the proletariat must become the capitalist class, and the capitalist class must become the proletariat, for they are locked in struggle, and are opposites, and change into one another, according to the dialectical Holy Books.

Now, you might want to recast this in terms of abstractions again, but as we have seen not even that will work.

Hence, according to such abstractions, the present working class will become the ruling class, and the present ruling class will become the working class -- in that case, the future working class will comprise a tiny minority of the population.

How will they feed and clothe the world?

You might want to say that the working class are the ruling class, and there are no other classes (in this future classless society). In that case, the present ruling class will not change into its opposite (as we are told all things must), but will remain part of the new ruling class!

Or, they will disappear -- but even if they are liquidated, they will not have changed into their opposites. Another dead end!

Now I do not dispute that the old capitalist class will have to become workers (in bald terms), but dialectics cannot explain why this class has not changed into its opposite, but has remained the ruling class (if the working class is the ruling class). If the old ruling class are denied such power, then not all the working class will be the ruling class, and hence, the latter class will not have changed into its opposite.

Yet another dead end.

Remember, that the above concerns abstractions, which cannot change, and cannot be in struggle, anyway.

I have worked out the formal details behind this criticism here (which shows why, no matter how you try to re-package it, this 'theory' cannot be made to work):

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

No, I only tend to call comrades 'mystics' if they are unreasonable, and that you are not.

As to your point about 'semantics', I wonder if you take the same view of Marx's careful distinctions in Das Kapital between the 'relative form of value' and the 'equivalent form of value' (among the many he made)?

The thing is, as Marx clearly saw, unless we are careful over the things we say/write, we cannot claim to have set-up a scientific theory.

Can you imagine a genuine scientist saying that the difference between, say, rest mass and inertial mass is just one of 'semantics'?

But, even if you were right, it simply means that dialectics has no clear theory of change.

Why do these classes change? You have no explanation.

The dialectical prophets I quoted at least tried to set-up a theory with their use of certain words (ones which they copied from Hegel).

Ignore their words, and you have no theory.

I can live with that, too.

I cannot believe that an individual of Lenin's intelligence, meant to suggest that change was merely a game of identity ping-pong between two ever-present entities as you seem to imply. If he did mean it, he was wrong because even at the abstract level of Hegelian dialectics, the negation of the negation incorporates a process of sublation. The contradiction is both partly preserved but also overcome and produces a new set of opposing relations which also exist in contradiction to each other.

No. It is through the victorious struggle with the feudal ruling class that the rising bourgeoisie become the new capitalist class. But, crucially, before the capitalist class can become itself, it needs to create it's antithesis, the working class (one cannot be a capitalist if there are no proletarians to exploit. Incidentally, this is what is meant by an internal relation - when the existence of one presupposed the existence of the other).

This is how Engels, in Anti-Duhring, illustrates Marx's understanding of the negation of the negation in Kapital: And Marx himself, discussing the new contradictions set up by bourgeois society:

If that is true then you must concede that Marx was not employing the phrase negation of the negation randomly or emptily. But carefully and with purpose.

CZ:

Well it was based on some pretty arcane 'logic' in Hegel's 'Logic', which relied on this very thing.

May I suggest you read Lenin's actual words (and those of Engels and Plekhanov) which are subject to no other interpretation:

Here is where it all originated:

This is from the so-called 'Shorter Logic'; the details are more involved in the actual 'Logic', itself.

Here is Engels:

Engels (1954) is 'Dialectics of Nature', and Engels (1976), is 'Anti-Duhring'.

Here is Plekhanov:

This is from 'The Development of the Monist View of History'.

Here is Lenin:

Lenin (1961), is his so-called 'Philosophical Notebooks', i.e., Volume 38 of his Collected Works.

So, development is a struggle of opposites, and opposites turn into one another -- or, alternatively things turn into their opposites.

One wonders, therefore, how anything can be in struggle with its opposite if it does not exist side-by-side with whatever it is struggling with.

This approach is echoed by many other lesser figures; for example, Novack:

This is Novack's widely circulated 'Intoduction to the Logic of Marxism' -- I bought my copy at Bookmarks, in London.

Here is Cornforth:

This is from Cornforth's 'Materialism and the Dialectical Method' -- again, I purchased my copy from Bookmarks.

Here is Gollobin (the most detailed book I have ever read on this 'theory'):

This is from 'Dialectical Materialism, Its Laws and Categories'.

Many more dialecticians say the same thing, over and over. I posted a long list of such quotations, here:

http://www.revleft.com/vb/showpost.p...6&postcount=27

This is why I have said, many times, that when comrades actually read what this theory is committed to they soon see how ridiculous it is. In that case they all try one or more of the followijg excuses:

(1) They deny these authors meant what they said.

(2) They argue that these quotations are not representative.

(3) They claim that the author in question mis-spoke, or made an error.

(4) They argue that my demolition of this core DM-principle is merely "semantic", or that it is a classic example of "pedantry".

I have dealt with (4) already.

As far as (2) is concerned, it would not be difficult to double or even treble the length of this list of quotations (as anyone who has access to as many books and articles on dialectics as I have will attest). From the above, it is quite clear that dialecticians believe (a) that all change is a result of a "struggles" of "opposites", and (b) that objects/processes change into their "opposites", and (c) that they produce these "opposites" when they change.

As far as (1) is concerned, if the above DM-worthies did not mean what they said then latter-day DM-fans (who advance this excuse) will, it seems, have to ignore their own classics! [Less irrational readers will note that many of the above authors quote one another word-for-word, so they at least thought their sources meant what they said.]

More-or-less the same can be said for excuse (3); if the above worthies miss-spoke, or were wrong, then contemporary DM-clones would be well advised to ignore these error-strewn classics!

I will deal with your other points presently.

CZ:

Yes I know the 'theory' only too well; it just does not work.

Once more, according to the dialectical prophets, quoted above, things are locked in struggle with their opposites, and they change into those opposites.

So, the rising bourgeioise, if it became the capitalist class, must have been in struggle with the capitalist class (that is, with itself, or with its future self!).

Otherwise, Lenin and the rest were wrong -- things do not struggle with their opposites, or change into them.

On the other hand, if the rising bourgeoisis were in struggle with the feudal aristocracy, then they should have turned into the feudal aristiocracy -- otherwise, the dialectical worthies were wrong when they told us that things turn into their opposites, and that they struggle with those opposites.

As I noted earlier, the general proof of this can be found here:

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

No matter how you try to slice it, dialectics cannot be made consistent with Historical Materialism (HM), or with history.

Now, like you, I accept HM, but because dialectics cannot account for change, I reject the latter, rather than the former.

Except he specifically told us he was 'coquetting' with this jargon.

But, he did not say that with respect to the other distinctions he drew.

I researched this and found out that Mao says quite clearly that he rejects that dialectical law. More proof of his revisionism.

http://www.lacan.com/zizmaozedong.htm

Thanks for that, Unicorn.

But, according to Lenin, since no science is final, every Marxist should be a 'revisionist'!

Marx certainly was...