Here is an extract from Chapter 5 of The Holy Family written by Marx in 1844.

It is a very sharp criticism of speculative philosophy...so much so that, in my opinion, Marx almost escaped the mystical swamp of Hegelian "dialectics".

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If from real apples, pears, strawberries and almonds I form the general idea "Fruit”, if I go further and imagine that my abstract idea "Fruit”, derived from real fruit, is an entity existing outside me, is indeed the true essence of the pear, the apple, etc., then in the language of speculative philosophy — I am declaring that "Fruit” is the "Substance” of the pear, the apple, the almond, etc. I am saying, therefore, that to be a pear is not essential to the pear, that to be an apple is not essential to the apple; that what is essential to these things is not their real existence, perceptible to the senses, but the essence that I have abstracted from them and then foisted on them, the essence of my idea — "Fruit”. I therefore declare apples, pears, almonds, etc., to be mere forms of existence, modi, of "Fruit”. My finite understanding supported by my senses does of course distinguish an apple from a pear and a pear from an almond, but my speculative reason declares these sensuous differences inessential and irrelevant. It sees in the apple the same as in the pear, and in the pear the same as in the almond, namely "Fruit”. Particular real fruits are no more than semblances whose true essence is "the substance" — "Fruit”.

Having reduced the different real fruits to the one "fruit" of abstraction — "the Fruit", speculation must, in order to attain some semblance of real content, try somehow to find its way back from "the Fruit", from the Substance to the diverse, ordinary real fruits, the pear, the apple, the almond, etc. It is as hard to produce real fruits from the abstract idea "the Fruit" as it is easy to produce this abstract idea from real fruits. Indeed, it is impossible to arrive at the opposite of an abstraction without relinquishing the abstraction.

The speculative philosopher therefore relinquishes the abstraction "the Fruit", but in a speculative, mystical fashion — with the appearance of not relinquishing it. Thus it is really only in appearance that he rises above his abstraction. He argues somewhat as follows:

If apples, pears, almonds and strawberries are really nothing but "the Substance", "the Fruit", the question arises: Why does "the Fruit" manifest itself to me sometimes as an apple, sometimes as a pear, sometimes as an almond? Why this semblance of diversity which so obviously contradicts my speculative conception of Unity, "the Substance", "the Fruit"?

This, answers the speculative philosopher, is because "the Fruit" is not dead, undifferentiated, motionless, but a living, self-differentiating, moving essence. The diversity of the ordinary fruits is significant not only for my sensuous understanding, but also for "the Fruit" itself and for a speculative reason. The different ordinary fruits are different manifestations of the life of the "one Fruit"; they are crystallisations of "the Fruit" itself. Thus in the apple "the Fruit" gives itself an apple-like existence, in the pear a pear-like existence. We must therefore no longer say, as one might from the standpoint of the Substance: a pear is "the Fruit", an apple is "the Fruit", an almond is "the Fruit", but rather "the Fruit" presents itself as a pear, "the Fruit" presents itself as an apple, "the Fruit" presents itself as an almond; and the differences which distinguish apples, pears and almonds from one another are the self-differentiations of "the Fruit" and make the particular fruits different members of the life-process of "the Fruit". Thus "the Fruit" is no longer an empty undifferentiated unity; it is oneness as allness, as "totality” of fruits, which constitute an "organically linked series of members”. In every member of that series "the Fruit" gives itself a more developed, more explicit existence, until finally, as the "summary” of all fruits, it is at the same time the living unity which contains all those fruits dissolved in itself just as it produces them from within itself...

Speculative philosophy has as many incarnations as there are things, just as it has here in every fruit an incarnation of the Substance, of the Absolute Fruit. The main interest for the speculative philosopher is therefore to produce the existence of the real ordinary fruits and to say in some mysterious way that there are apples, pears, almonds and raisins. But the apples, pears, almonds and raisins that we rediscover in the speculative world are nothing but semblances of apples, semblances of pears, semblances of almonds and semblances of raisins, for they are moments in the life of "the Fruit", this abstract creation of the mind, and therefore themselves abstract creations of the mind. Hence what is delightful in this speculation is to rediscover all the real fruits there, but as fruits which have a higher mystical significance, which have grown out of the ether of your brain and not out of the material earth, which are incarnations of "the Fruit", of the Absolute Subject. When you return from the abstraction, the supernatural creation of the mind, "the Fruit", to real natural fruits, you give on the contrary the natural fruits a supernatural significance and transform them into sheer abstractions. Your main interest is then to point out the unity of "the Fruit" in all the manifestations of its life — the apple, the pear, the almond — that is, to show the mystical interconnection between these fruits, how in each one of them "the Fruit" realises itself by degrees and necessarily progresses, for instance, from its existence as a raisin to its existence as an almond. Hence the value of the ordinary fruits no longer consists in their natural qualities, but in their speculative quality, which gives each of them a definite place in the life-process of "the Absolute Fruit".

The ordinary man does not think he is saying anything extraordinary when he states that there are apples and pears. But when the philosopher expresses their existence in the speculative way he says something extraordinary. He performs a miracle by producing the real natural objects, the apple, the pear, etc., out of the unreal creation of the mind "the Fruit", i.e., by creating those fruits out of his own abstract reason, which he considers as an Absolute Subject outside himself, represented here as "the Fruit". And in regard to every object the existence of which he expresses, he accomplishes an act of creation.

It goes without saying that the speculative philosopher accomplishes this continuous creation only by presenting universally known qualities of the apple, the pear, etc., which exist in reality, as determining features invented by him, by giving the names of the real things to what abstract reason alone can create, to abstract formulas of reason, finally, by declaring his own activity, by which he passes from the idea of an apple to the idea of a pear, to be the self-activity of the Absolute Subject, "the Fruit"

In the speculative way of speaking, this operation is called comprehending Substance as Subject, as an inner process, as an Absolute Person, and this comprehension constitutes the essential character of Hegel's method.
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Everything in italics is from Marx. The bold emphasis is mine.

http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works...ly/ch05.htm#5.2

We can only wonder how things would have been different had Marx vigorously pursued this line of reasoning. We might never have had any concern with the supernatural abstractions of "dialectics" at all.

For a much more philosophically sophisticated explication of this point, see abstraction -- part one: the heart of the beast by Rosa Lichtenstein.

There is a big difference between Marxist and Hegelian philosophy, you know. Misinterpreting quotations is not going to get you anywhere. Hegel, despite his errors, being limited by the time in which he lived, made a very huge contribution to philosophy, and Marx was able to pick up where he left off, fix those mistakes, move on, and put forth scientific socialism.

Oh?

Why don't you explain how I "misinterpreted" this lengthy quotation?

You can't, can you?

That's ok...I freely admit that I have no academic background in philosophy at all and find 99.999% of it completely incomprehensible.

What I liked about this extract is that it is comprehensible. Marx is attacking the very thing that I most dislike about philosophy...the idea that you can effectively describe reality merely by the "correct" manipulation of words.

Which is, of course, exactly what "dialecticians" do.

I think it's a tragedy that Marx and Engels did not "follow through" with this line of attack. Had they done so, then "dialectics" would be properly relegated to some dusty little village museum in Germany.

And our overall theoretical level might be considerably higher than it unfortunately is at present.

Imagine what all those "smart people" in the last century might have done had they not wasted their time and energy on "magical mystery tours" of the "realm of the dialectic".

It's really sad.

Marx and Engels were referring to Hegel's concept of the Absolute Idea, not of dialectics. Why don't you actually read what Marx and Engels had to say about dialectics?

We can also see that scientific advances have been dialectical in some cases, such as Punctuated Equilibrea developed by Stephen Jay Gould and Niles Eldridge.

If it were not for dialectics, Marx and Engels would never have been able to develop their theories! Why don't you actually read up on it and study it, given that it is perhaps the hardest thing to learn about Marxism, instead of devoting lenghty rants against it? You are just going to be laughing stock to any serious Marxist if you don't.

What are trying to say then?

I didn't see anything wrong in the criticism of Marx here. As one reads the entire text (the complete text), one could understand very well what Marx was trying to say here.

It completely disabled idealism and put forward the scientific method of dialectical materialism.

Dialectical materialism is outrightly opposite to idealism, can't you actually see that? <_<

Yes, I've heard that claim before.

It's not a testable hypothesis as stated.

But let's suppose, for the sake of discussion, that it's "true". Marx and Engels needed "dialectics" as a kind of scaffolding from which to erect their theories.

It's my proposition that their theories can now stand on their own and the scaffolding can be torn down and disposed of.

We can use ordinary logic, empirical investigation, and the axioms of the historical materialist paradigm to explain social reality without any "need" for "dialectics".

In fact, it's my opinion that Marx and Engels "could" have "done without dialectics" altogether...and still reached the same conclusions that they did.

Here is something that you might want to think about. It does not matter who "laughs at you". What matters is that you search for the truth no matter where it takes you.

Marx made a favorable reference to Dante on the first page of Das Kapital...Follow your own course and never mind what others say.

I'm doing my best to do that. :P

I believe that I have on several occasions put forth proof for dialectics:

http://www.marxist.com/rircontents.asp

Without dialectics, Marx/Engels could have never examined the inteneral contradictions that drive society forward, as the existence of contradictions is a part of dialectics (a basic one: an organism is living and dying at the same time; unlike a rock, it is alive, yet every second of life is one second closer to death). Engels, and later Lenin had also noted that Capital is rigorously dialectical in content, pointing out numerous contradictions within capitalism itself.

How can you think that we can continue to observe contradictory phenomena by "abandoning the scaffolding" and ceasing to look at such contradictions? Does water graudally cool into a gel, and then freeze? No. Gradual temperature decreases will cause a sudden change in when it will become ice (dialectics, quantity into quality). The communism of the future is a return to primitive communistic systems, but on a much higher, qualitative level (Negation of the negation), etc.

Yes, they would have avoided a useless hypothesis.

In the historical materialist paradigm, societies are "driven forward" not by "internal contradictions" but by changes in the means of production.

Those changes stress the existing relations of production...and eventually cause their replacement with new relations of production.

In my opinion, Marx and Engels could have made that discovery even if they'd never heard of Hegel.

But in real life, we treat living organisms differently from the way we treat dead organisms.

Would you care to be buried at this moment because "in the long run you're dialectically dead"???

Thus your "dialectical labels" reduce to a quip...that no one in practice takes at all seriously.

Well, if they said it then it "must be true", right?

I am not competent to make that call myself. But it does seem to me that Capital would be a far more accessible work minus its baroque "dialectical" flourishes.

Because those "contradictions" don't exist except in the heads of "dialecticians". Real physics tells us all we need to know about the behavior of water under certain conditions.

Who cares? The "case for communism" does not rest in any sense on the forms of pre-class society anymore than it rests on "primate nature".

Communism is a prediction based on a historical materialist analysis of how capitalism works. It may turn out to be a good prediction or a bad one...the jury is "still out".

But suggesting that it's "dialectically inevitable" does not "confirm" the prediction.

Only the actual establishment of a working communist society in real life can confirm that Marx was right.

It can't be done by mere words.

That is exactly what internal contradiction is. The changes in the means of production. Or to be more apt, changes in the mode of production. Adding to that factor, the class contradiction sums up all the contradictions in a society. Changes in the means of production happen only when class contradiction resulted in a revolution for which one class overthrows the other and makes the necessary changes in the mode of production in order to "move forward" society.

I think you merely are confusing things here. Obscuring it, in fact. Dialectics is simply the scientific method of analysing the contradictions for which changes/development occur.

Things don't just happen and develop without contradictions. It is a result of the actions, interactions, reactions within itself and its environment. All matters are interrelated and interact. That is the dialectics.

I don't think we could live with such torture!

Being snickered at by every kid with a patchy goatee wearing 12 different shades of black during open mic night at the coffee houses.

Lucky for me I exchanged coffee houses for pubs in 1985; otherwise I could have suffered severe emotional truama.

The horror......The horror......

We could not have been so lucky. Once political theory is combined with absurd philosophical garbage it may take centuries to filter out the trash....nevermind, it already has.

from red Che

I think you mean "relations of production." changes in the means of production happen constantly without revolution.

I only "copied" it from redstar's post. But, if you read it entirely, I emphasized there that society can move forward only when its mode of production is changed (when the contradiction between the forces of production and relations of production is resolved). And this change can happen only through a revolution by the oppressed class overthrowing the ruling class.

Also, changes in the means of production is in itself a revolution. However, what I am talking here of a revolution is a social revolution, the overthrow of one class by the other.

I stumbled upon a little gem for the "anti-dialecticians" earlier and thought I should share (with this thread being particularly relevant)....

(Italics Wheen's, bold mine.)

Unfortunately, the full transcript of this letter from Marx to Engels, dated 15 August 1857, is not available from the letters archive -- Letters of Marx and Engels: 1857 -- but an interesting observation (and admission) from Marx himself.

As I've had occasion to note before, Marx and Engels made a lot of "off hand" remarks in their private correspondence that I imagine they'd hate to have been "held to account for" publicly.

Here I think we have an awareness on Marx's part of the potential for fraud in "dialectics".

You can "use" it to say anything...provided that you're careful to allow for any possible outcome.

How useful is that?

NOTE: the following is irrellevant to the discussion of dialectics.

Whether or not dialectics was fundamental to the development of Marxism, the theories and literature are there; so is this thread really necessary?

Not if you think "dialectics" is "ok".

If you think it must be criticized and even entirely rejected then this and similar threads in the future are obviously "necessary".

To me it surpasses Hegel by a different term, that of Hegel's limited dialectics of using the family as a model. By refering back to the fruit as seperate from its family isn't he also refering to the seperation of the self from the family.

This seems pertinent in that Hegel based many of his interpretations of the state on his interpretations of the family. To move beyond this would in a sense make Marx more post-modern as to see the self seperate from the state from wence it came to be its own absolute self able to therefore change the state to something different from wence it came.

Red Che, I'm sorry I thought you just made a mistake. I did read your whole post and I thought it was confused. When I went back and looked at it I realized that the only thing copied from Redstar was the words "means of production."

Your statement, which you repeat so: is just wrong. Capitalists constantly revolutionize the means of production while maintaining their class rule and the basic relations of production -- wage labor/capital.

Changes in the means of production in no way requires a revolution. I've seen it myself in the last decades.

And you obviously reject it in favor of Bourgeois philosophy. Good job.

"In the historical materialist paradigm, societies are "driven forward" not by "internal contradictions" but by changes in the means of production."

How is that bourgeois logic?