GDII:

Ah, yet another sad mystic reduced to making stuff up about me because he/she cannot respond to my demolition of her/his pet 'theory.

In fact, what I do not like is the importation of mystical and useless concepts into science, which, if correct, would mean that change is impossible.

And you have not been here long enough to see my many politcal posts.

[I have in fact been a revolutionary Marxist for longer than most RevLefters have been alive.]

Perhaps you missed this:

Clearly, you are next sub off the bench.

Now, you have been asked to explain where I go wrong; instead of doing that, you just make stuff up about me, and moan.

Have all you mystics been cloned somewhere? You all respond in the exactly same boorish manner.

Scores of examples of the same sort of thing are logged here

http://homepage.ntlworld.com/rosa.l/RevLeft.htm

Ah, at last, an in-depth explanation of change (Newton, Darwin and Einstein eat your hearts out!):

But, according to the Dialectical Magi, opposites not only struggle with one another, they inevitably turn into one another.

Here is the refutation you keep ignoring (from higher up this page, so you have no excuse):

The last sentence sums you up rather well.

Now, instead of lying about me, care to show where my argument goes wrong -- if you can...?

I don't understand how you cannot understand contradictions or change, you write so much but understand so little. You write nonsense and you ask me to debate you.

Chickens like to eat pork. Prove me wrong!

Dialectical Materialism is simple but you need to make an effort and read about it to understand it clearly.

But you don't even get the simple part, you are refuting something that trotsky said but the most irrelevant part and even that you misunderstood.

Why don't you apply your way of thought about the randomness of life to explain class conflict?

GDII:

As predicted, that is your only reply; the reply one would expect of a born again Christian, too: 'you just don't understand'.

What you really mean is that I don't agree with you, and then you have the cheek to turn round and blame me for the defects in your own 'theory'!

Once more, instead of just moaning, you need to address my refutation of your 'theory', or show where my assumptions and/or reasoning goes wrong.

What has this got to do with anything?

As I have told you many times, I have been studying this hopeless 'theory' for longer than most RevLefters have been alive. The problem is that I know it better than you do, that's why you can't respond.

Ok, smarty pants, which of my assumptions is incorrect, and where does my argument go astray?

I have asked you this several times and the fact that you can't or won't tell us suggests that you have no effective response to make -- hence your repeated attempts to distract attention.

What are you talking about? What way of thought of mine about 'the randomness of life' are you on about? I have expressed no opinion on this.

Still making stuff up as you go along, I see.

Yet more delaying tactics on your part.

But, then, you are just like the many hundreds of dialectical mystics I have 'debated' with over the last 25 years or so.

No change there, then.

You lot are living disproof of the doctrine of universal change.

"DM is the sum up, the generalization and the aggregate of all science.Like ie, biology is a sub-... thing (excuse my english) for chemistry, etc, DM is the summarization of all science, which describe how things change etc".

comments?

That quote is fundamentally false. DM cannot be a science, or a 'sum' of science, as DM has no scientific method.

It is pure speculation.

- August

Well Newton's Law of Gravity is pure speculation, but it's speculations have been proven to be very well founded by experiment. The dialectical method as applied to historical materialism by Marx is another form of speculation that has been remarkably prophetic in the 150 years or so since he made it.

Cummanach:

His theory of gravity was certainly speculative, but his mathematical and phyical theory of motion wasn't, since it was based on the previous 400 years of impetus theory, Galileo's and Descartes' work, and Kepler's laws, as well as advances in analytic geomety, algebra and observational astronomy.

Moreover, Newton's theory does not imply that change is impossible, which dialectics does, as my posts in this and other threads show; for example, here:

Quotations from the Dialectical Gospels:

http://www.revleft.com/vb/showpost.p...4&postcount=23

Argument:

http://www.revleft.com/vb/showpost.p...5&postcount=24

But, Marx abandoned the 'dialectic', as it has traditionally been understood, by the time he came to write Das Kapital, as I have also shown here many times.

For example here:

http://www.revleft.com/vb/scrapping-...34/index4.html

http://www.revleft.com/vb/showpost.p...4&postcount=73

http://www.revleft.com/vb/showpost.p...6&postcount=75

http://www.revleft.com/vb/showpost.p...&postcount=114

http://www.revleft.com/vb/showpost.p...&postcount=124

Most recently, here:

http://www.revleft.com/vb/why-dm-con...43/index3.html

and on the subsequent pages.

Bulk Sheep:

It can't be for several reasons, the most important one being that if dialectics were true, change would be impossible.

I would be interested to see if there is even one of the few people on this board who have any sympathy for your views who accepts this particular sophistic absurdity. It is up there with your quite incredible claim that Marx had abandoned dialectics when he wrote capital as one of the parts of your view that is of the flat earth type - I suspect that you are alone (at least on this board and maybe everywhere) in these two particular claims.

Rosa, no offense, but a short summary of your argument wouldn't be uncalled for, instead of sending me off on a homework assignment

All Galileo's, Descartes, Kepler's theories were speculation as well. Speculation well justified by experiment. Applying abstract mathematics to physical reality is speculation. Brilliant speculation. All Science is speculation.
It speculates that patterns exist in Nature, but can never prove this hypothesis because we can't see into the future. But as the evidence piles up, we come to accept it.

Newton's theory implied impossibilities if looked at one way. This is why Einstein produced his theory of relativity to deal with those shortcomings. Yet Newtonian Mechanics is still fruitfully used to this day, in practical situations where velocities are much smaller than the speed of light.

Dialectics as used by Marx for the scientific study of history, were a resoundingly successful set of speculations.

WindyGils:

Oh dear! Once again you have turned down yet another golden opportunity to put me in my place, and defend the 'world-view' of the proletariat.

But what do you do, Windy? Instead of demonstrating which, if any, of my assumptions is false, or where my reasoning goes astry, all you so is defelct attention on to me.

As I argued earlier:

And as for your question whether anyone here (belonging to the esoteric Dialectical Cabal, I presume) accepts my alleged 'sophistry' (and you have yet to show where my argument is sophistical), you might just as well ask a bunch of creationists if they accept Darwin's theory.

They, like you, prefer personal attacks over substance, Windy.

[However, I prefer both when it comes to you.]

Finally, with respect to your other claim about my demonstration that Marx abandoned the dialectic when he wrote Das Kapital, you have yet to show where it is mistaken, despite your many unsuccessful attempts to do so.

And good luck there, since Marx himself indicated he did precisely what I allege.

Cumannch:

I have in fact posted several, and in this thread! You need to wake up.

Well, you seem to think that all science is speculative; but the fact is that mathemtics is not abstract.

But, even if it were, how is counting, say, speculative? How is the application of rules and principles derived from ballistics, building, and commerce speculative?

And how is observational astronomy speculative?

I think you are confusing 'speculative' with 'hypothetical'. They are not at all the same.

But, even if you were right, and all of this was 'speculative', there would still be different sorts of speculation -- that which makes sense and that which doesn't.

Dialectics falls into the latter category; not only does it fail to explain change, if it were true, change would be impossible.

I see you have swallowed the standard line. But in what way did Newton's theory imply 'impossibilities'?

But even if it did, scientists at least tried to invent new theories to get around the difficulties they saw in his theory.

Dialecticians do not, they just make personal attacks on those who expose the impossibilities in their 'theory' -- or they, like you, make lame excuses.

And yet dialectical Marxism is spectacularly unsuccessful.

So, if truth is tested in practice, dialectics must be false.

Indeed, history has refuted it.

[Good job then that Marx abandoned the 'dialectic' when he wrote Das Kapital.]

Rosa,

A scientific hypothesis is a form of speculation. It speculates that patterns observed in the past will repeat themselves in the future, or that new data about the past will reveal the same pattern, given the same circumstances. That's hardly controversial.

'Observational Astronomy' is speculation if you want talk about it that way. It speculates that all the previous hypotheses it uses to make it's measurements - all of Galileo's etc hypotheses are correct and hence that it's observations are actually meaningful.

Human History and Society are the most complex subjects for study, at the other end of the spectrum from the mechanics of lifeless atoms. Of course the analysis is going to be crude relative to quantum mechanics.

According to Marx, Dialectical Philosophy helped him make the powerful analysis of human history and society that is a part of Marxism. That's about the only interest I have in dialectics.

Cumannach:

Well, your crude typology cannot, it seems, distinguish a scientific hypothesis from flights of fancy. In that case, it is a useless word, as you interpret it.

It looks like, for you, everything is 'speculation'. That makes your interpretation of this word even more useless.

Once again, even if you are right, there is a world of difference between a 'speculative' scientific hypothesis and the 'speculation' found in dialectics, which, if correct, would make change impossible.

I note you keep ignoring that fatal defect -- as I predicted.

But you also keep ignoring the fact that Marx abandoned 'the dialectic' by the time he came to write Das Kaiptal.

And no wonder, 'the dialectic' gives 'speculation' a bad name.

Well, in fairness I wasn't the one who introduced 'speculation'. I agree it's a silly word to use in this discussion. Maybe I can't fathom the profound philosophical depths of the errors of dialectics, or maybe I'm not interested, but I still think it was a way of thinking that helped Marx develop his revolutionary theory. That puts it in my good books. As for Marx abandoning dialectics in Kapital, well he had already developed much of his theory by the time he wrote the Communist Manifesto. So...?

FYI: This is not a fact.

Cumannach:

Maybe so, but you certainly made an art form of it.

Well, so this: dialectics simply does not work.

Hence, the fact that this 'theory' has presided over 150 years of the almost total failure of Dialectical Marxism is no big surprise.

BTB:

Well you, and a host of others, certainly haven't been able to show why it isn't, or where my arguments showing it is go wrong.

Thats not how it goes....you make your claims, its explained to you why they are wrong, you dont accept that others finish posting and simply because you make the last post you think your arguments remain intact. Your dialectics and Capital argument isnt even coherent, you cant even say when Marx made this supposed transition.

WindGil:

What you really mean by 'explained' here is that you just repeated the traditional fairytale, and expected that to win the day. You really are going to have to do better than that to refute my arguments.

Even so, your 'explanations' only worked because the lot of you simply ignore Marx's own words.

Some 'explanation' that was, then!

And this is just another way of saying that I have a lot more stamina than the lot of you put together.

And, I can defend my position; which is more than we can say for you the rest of your Hermetic cabal.

1) Coming from someone who accepts a theory that can't explain change, and which is so incoherent that if it were, per impossible, true it would mean that change could not happen, this is a bit rich.

2) Why do I have to pin-point the exact day, hour, and minute when Marx changed his mind? The important fact is that he did, as he himself indicated in Das Kapital.

You just can cope with that, since it threatens your source of opiates.

And I note once again that you can't respond to my demolition of the dialectical 'theory' of change, so you just distract attention by attacking me.

Same old same old...