Good news for genuine materialists, for Rosa has driven yet another nail into the DM-coffin, so that the dialectcial cadaver can at last be given its long-overdue burial.

I have just published Essay Eleven Part One -- all 39,000 words of it, so there is plenty there for dialectically-distracted comrades to ignore, misconstrue and misquote.

Here is a taster (the links have been removed that explain some of the technical terms (etc.) that I have used):

Read more here:

http://homepage.ntlworld.com/rosa.l/page%2011_01.htm

totality is not a specific thing it is not Marx-speak for "everything". there is no Totality, only particular totalities. and it is no fundamental concept in dialectics, but a particular one developed by Lukacs. if you have a problem with it, take it up with him. It's just his word for the "moreness" than the sum of the parts, if you see what i mean. Now, how about you dedicate a few hundred of your 39,000 words to attacking something which actually exists? thanks.

pretty funny for someone who seems so terrified of being "misquoted", but there you go. typical bloody analyticals...

CMDRetc:

Well, I specifically ruled Lukacs out since his work is wall to wall gobbledygook.

So, in his case it isn't Hamlet without the Prince, but Htentm twiout eth Ripnce.

Well, I am not sure what you are suggesting.

So, until you are more specific, I cannot comment.

And who exactly do I misquote?

[And are all you Dialectical Mystics incapable of being clear, or of constructing a vaguely decent argument? Or of reading what I have written with any care? You, for example, are the umpteenth mystic (at RevLeft alone) to show you need glasses.]

I think he is getting at the fact that you do not expand on Lukacs work even though he is the one who created the definition to the word totality.

What I am getting at is quite simple - you are attacking a concept which you have invented entirely yourself. Find me an example of a theorist of totality within dialectics defining it nebulously as "everything", "nature" or any other such (pre-materialist, pre-dialectical) nonsense, and fine. Attack them. I'll help you out - Lukacs, Sartre and Adorno are the only people i can think of off my head who have anything to say on the matter, along with those they inspired (ie, western marxism as such).

to say nothing of your intellectually defunct dismissal of Lukacs (in the words of that great dialectician Egnignokt, "that sounds like a personal problem."). your engagement with the concept appears to run thus:
Axiom #1: The guy who came up with "totality" is "wall to wall gobbledygook".
Axiom #2: The guy who came up with "totality" came up with "totality".
Conclusion: Totality is gobbledygook!

can anyone say "presuming your conclusion"?

Bretty:

No, it was invented millennia ago by ancient mytics, and put in its classical form by Plato.

Lukacs just added to the confusion.

CMDR:

On the contrary I quote dozens of DM-fans who use the concept, but fail to explain it, as does your hero Lukacs, except he disguises that fact with all that gobbledygook you seem to like.

The other dialectical worthies you quote, if anything, are even worse.

I think an obscure Martian dialect would be clearer.

As I said, you DM-fans are good at invention, and not too good at logic. [Your premisses look like they were constructed by a simpleton, who knows little English.

Plus, you confuse assumptions with axioms, which confirms you know very little logic -- something you share with Hegel and other DM-fans.

That is probably why you lot like mysticism.

And I note you failed to say who I misquoted.

Eh?

In social theory the totality refers to society which is conceived as a system of inter-related parts, or levels of activity. Marxists often refer to it as the Mode of Production and it's analysis underpins what we Marxists refer to as Historical Materialism.

So there's no great mystery there; and Rosa, you don't have to thank me for clearing that up for you.

Z:

Well, if you bothered to find out what I actually say, instead of making stuff up again, you would have seen this (it is in the opening paragraphs of the Essay from which this post was taken):

So, your comments are as irrelevant as we have come to expect from you.

R:

Then perhaps you should have included it in the quotation which prefaces this thread - it would have been less disingenuous. Although, obviously that is your trademark.

Also, it is interesting that you accept the holism of social reality and yet appear to reject the marxist method of demonstrating the (internal) relations of the social system. That would be marxist dialectics, if you didn't know.

Meanwhile, this:

Only emphasizes this:

Lukacs is not my hero, he's a minor league quasi-stalinist with possibly the worst theory of art in leftwing history. However, I see no problems with his use of the word "totality". that definition AGAIN:

but what's this? you claim not to be attacking this concept of totality (or even the general "moreness than the sum of the parts" i referred to earlier)! Just the "holist" conceptions of "nature" that exist only in your little brain. Fantabulous! So, here you are, up against the actual ideas held by actual dialectical materialists and you don't even put up a fight. I do hope you continue to make things easy for us in future.

and still, you have not referred to single actual name in this thread, or a quote. scared of something?

again, that sounds like a personal problem. I have no issue with it. Neither do thousands of others in the tradition of Hegel. The reason for the opacity is quite simply that society is complicated, and elaborating its logic requires complicated concepts and specialist language. Your moaning is especially ironic since Hegel's whole project was to "teach philosophy to speak german", ie, stop it from hiding behind specialist language and make its ideas confront an audience - a true dialectical manoeuvre, if ever there was one. In time, his own concepts have become somewhat specialist, but the very fact that he attracted thousands of young radicals in the early 19th century attests to the fact that this was not always so.

basically, what i'm getting from you is a strong "too thick to understand Hegel, too arrogant to admit it" vibe.

Citizen Z, caught out again making stuff up, whimpers this excuse:

I put stuff in, you moan, I leave stuff out, you moan.

But, still, you canot respond effectively to a single point I have made.

Nevertheless, your trademark is to moan; that you can do.

No, I accepted it before ever I had heard of Marx, since it is implicit in our use of language.

Marxism just systematises this.

No internal relations -- or none you will be able to describe without using those mystical terms you like.

And even now, you cannot come up with an original idea of your own, but have to pinch something off someone else.

You are not much use to anyone/anything, are you?

CMDR (who is fond of non-definitions (or, because he knows little logic, cannot identify one)):

This is a loose characterisation, not a definition.

Big mouth now tries a pathetic insult:

Done it; all quoted in that Essay you did not read before you solied yourself in public.

So why did you allege that I had misquoted someone?

You are right, I have a personal and a logical problem with mysticism, and with gobbledygook that passes for thought.

That you do not says more about you than your embarassing comments have said so far.

This is the fable we are constantly told, and you, in your logically-challenged state, have swallowed it.

He failed badly then; or perhaps you cannot see that -- even if it contradicts your previous point.

I have never said you were too thick to understand Hegel, but if confession is good for the soul, thanks for owning up.

Rosa writes:

Eh?

Class relations are internal relations in so far as they don't exist outside of the social system.

As you admit that historical change is the result of class struggle, you accept the idea that society changes due to its own internal relations.

I serve to point out the obvious to those who's mighty intellect causes them to miss it. You are a lucky beneficiary of my humble service.

Why are word counts so important to this discussion? It seems a little neo-Platonist to me.

Z's best question yet:

Oh dear, right over your head, was it?

That just says they are social relations, not internal relations.

You clearly do not know what an internal relation is, witness this witless comment:

From this it is clear that you think an internal relation is a relation internal to a system.

The term as used by Dialectical Mystics means that either element of the relation presupposes/implies the other.

Don't believe me? Then read Ollman on internal relations

I deny these exist (and for good reason, but I am blowed if I am going to help you out of this hole), except in very highly constrained contexts.

Examples?

Read my Essays.

Looks like I know your 'theory' better than you seem to.

Given the above, you can't even do that.

Blake:

You will need to be a little less enigmatic if you want a reply. What word counts?

And, I agree, these dialectical mystics are NeoPlatonists -- since Plato it was who invented the 'Totality' in this form.

Rosa writes:

No dear, I was merely expressing my amazement at what a crass statement it was. Even if our common-sense use of the word 'society' implies holism (which it doesn't), you need to specify how you conceive of the relations within the 'whole'. Are they on the basis of harmony and stasis or contradiction and movement? What form of holism are you propounding? Given that you reject the dialectical approach of Marx I assume you prefer a more equilibrium-based model - Durkheimian functionalism, perhaps?

Aside from the fact that [a] and [b] don't necessarily contradict each other, let's take this from Olman:

Or this:

Ref: http://www.nyu.edu/projects/ollman/docs/dd_ch02.php

So my example of social classes (or capital and labour to be more precise) as internal relations is fully in accordance with your definition of internal relations (i.e. "that either element of the relation presupposes/implies the other") and Marx's use of it in the analysis of social classes.

So whatever the faults in my thinking, at least in this regard it corresponds to that of Marx.

Z:

But you just said: "Eh?"

So, that was not what you were 'expressing' -- it was a question which suggested you did not get the point, and it seems that this is still the case.

This has nothing to do with what I was saying, so it is clear you did not get the point, as I intimated earlier.

And I am well aware of what Ollman says, and even better, I can show he is deeply confused on this issue (as I will be doing in a later Essay).

Recall, it is not my 'definition' --, and neither is it a definition.

That Marx did or did not use it is beside the point.

Whoever used this term, it is an empty notion.

Since Marx was not god, I am happy to disagree with him on this -- that is, if he used this notion.

But, since the phrase is absent from his writings, I suggest you think again.

I refer the honourable mystic to my earlier comments.

I find philosophy quite hard, especially when it has vague terms, and totality and other DM terms I heard sound vague....

Maybe I'm dumb in philosophy....but I always found it interesting (and slightly misterious)

I see that some people defend Totality, but could they enlighten me on what they think it is?