Comrades might like to read my latest essay, just posted. Here is an edited taster:

This is, of course, just a snippet; the rest can be found here:

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

It is weird that Marxists still use DM even though the stuff you highlight, like orbits and such, dont work in a dialetical way.

Kind of makes you think they missed the 'scientific' part in scientific socialism.

However, is it purely DM that suffers from an inability to explain things like this due to the laws it abides by?

Do other philosphies suffer from similar problems while maintaining that they have the correct philosophy?

Should marxists just dump philosophy all together?

If DM cannot even stand up to relatively basic ( ) sciences, why havent the dialecticians stopped using DM?

I read much of the linked article. Dialectics is not being quite so confusing anymore

Dialectical Materialism is not necessarily Marxist. I don't recall Marx ever mentioning anything about dialectics.

BCS, yes, I claim they all do, but I do not in general try to show this at my site since I am only interested in helping kill-off this Hermetic theory.

As I note in Essay Twelve (summary link posted on another thread), all philosophical theories (not just DM) derive from a crazy use of language that was initiated in ancient Greece, when metaphysicians fetishised language (for reasons I spell out), misconstruing what was in effect the product of the social relations between human beings (i.e., language) as if they were the real relations between things, or those things themselves (this mirrors Marx's analysis of the fetishisation of money in Capital). you can see other comrades doing this here as they spin linguistic webs out of meaningless phrases and imagine they are generating knowledge (on the cheap).

Recall, that I claim that Historical Materialism is a science.

Yes we should dump philosophy altogether; all we need is more and better science.

DM-fans cling onto dialectics (and stopper they ears and eyes against my ideas -- you have seen several of these sad comrades doing that on this board -- but they all do it) because it acts as a form of consolation to them (it acts as an opiate).

I will explain that in my next Essay, which will be posted in early July (with a bit of luck!).

You can read a summary of that essay here:

http://homepage.ntlworld.com/rosa.l/page%20016-9.htm

RedHerman, you are right in the first half of what you say (the term 'dialectical materialsm' was invented by Plekhanov), but Marx does refer to the dialectic and to Hegelian concepts throughout much of his work (sometimes negatively, as in the Poverty of Philosophy, sometimes not, as in the Grundrisse).

But, in Capital he later said he had 'coquetted' with Hegelian terms -- which is rather odd, since that suggests he merely used them superficially (and thus that Lenin was wrong when he said that to understand Capital one had to have read and thoroughly understood the whole of Hegel's Logic).

So Marx was an inconistent dialectician, and there is precious little evidence that he agreed with Engels on the use of the 'dialectic' in nature.

Which is fortunate, since it saves Marx from being implicated in one of the weakest philosophical theories ever to have been dreamt up: dialectical materialism.

Hey Rosa,

I dont know if i should start a new thread about this, since its a little off topic.

But its still about dialectics so you seem to be the person to ask.

There is a guy called John Maynard Smith, who was a evolutionary biologist and for a period a marxist.

Well aparently he saw a conflict between darwinian evolution theory and DM.

In the end he chose Darwin over Marx.

Obviously Marxists think that Evolution theory is fact.


John Maynard Smith, at first thought that evolution was dialectical, and did experiments to try and prove dialectal elements in evolution. But he failed.

So what is the position for marxists with respects evolution?

Does Marxism oppose Darwin on human nature only bacause of dialectical materialism?

Is it DM that is to blame for opposing somthing thats is one of the most amazing discoveries?

http://www.marxist.com/Theory/study_guide1.html

Every time i research DM i seem to find the best in the particular field say DM is wrong, whether they are marxist or not.

I might post this in Science and Environment if your unsure.

BCS:

Well Maynard Smith adopted a rightwing version of NeoDarwinism, so I suspect, but I do not know if, that affected his change of mind.

He took exception to Gould and Eldredge's theory for all sorts of reasons (none of which seem powerful enough to my mind, but I am not a biologist), but as has been pointed out on other threads here, not even the theory of Punctuated Equilibrium supports dialectics.

Marxists should certainly accept the theory of evolution (not that they need me to tell them to do so!!), as the best explanation we yet have of the origin and development of life (except it does not seem to work when you get to human development -- which is where Historical Materialism takes over).

Dialectics does not clash with evolutionary theory, but not because dialectics is right; it is because dialectics is far too confused a 'theory' to clash with anything.

It will need to be clarified considerably before we know if it clashes even with creationism....