This is from my summary to Essay Eight (the full Essay will go into much more detail when it is posted in a month or so):

More details:

http:www.anti-dialectics.org

I don't know where you got those Lenin quotes from, since you didn't cite the sources (at least not from which work) you got them from, but here's a defence of Lenin's views on dialectics: Leninist Dialectics and the Metaphysics of Positivism

Thanks for that, but I gave my source: it's from Volume 38 of his collected works, his so-called 'Philosophical Notebooks'.

It will appear here, soon:

http://www.marxists.org/archive/leni...w/volume38.htm

But the relevant section is here (half-way down the page):

http://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/work...gic/summary.htm

And he was not the only DM-fan to come out with sub-Aristotelian ideas on motion and change like this; the majority of them do it.

Concerning that 'defence' of Lenin by Ilyenkov, I have read it, and very carefully, and it does not defend Lenin in any recognizable sense of that word. It does not even get positivism right.

Ilyenkov is just a dialectical hack, keen to produce his own a priori dogmatics.

Lenin was no hack, but was, if anything, even more confused than Ilyenkov.

At least Ilyenkov knew some philosophy. Lenin was a novice in this area -- and not a very good one, at that.

Don't get me wrong. Lenin is one of my hero's, but as I say at my site:

"Well, we can recognise Newton's genius while we ignore his Alchemical and Kabbalistic writings, just as we can severely criticise him for wasting his energy on such worthless pursuits. The same applies to the writings of Engels, Lenin and Trotsky. Hence, even though I hold their writings on politics, economics and history in the highest esteem, I am equally critical of the mystical rubbish they saddled us with.

In fact, and on the contrary, a slavish acceptance of everything these great comrades had to say on dialectics, just because they said it, and just because the vast majority of comrades think highly of it, would be tantamount to spitting on their graves.

Marxism, if it is anything, is not a personality cult. Or if it is, then Marx, Engels, Lenin and Trotsky would have been the first to resign.

The radical tradition was built around its lack of respect for tradition. No less so here."

Lenin's words are also here (this is perhaps better than the link I posted above):

http://www.kurtuluscephesi.com/lenin/diyaleken.html

Are you aware that the phrase, self-movement appears in quotation marks in that work? It is odd how you would take such a thing so literally. I have not read the LCW, vol. 38 (Philosophical Notebooks) yet, given my lack of time and busy schedule, but I do have it (I have the entire LCW set). I will lay odds that you have some sort of distortion or misunderstanding of what has been said, given that you have studied for 23 years, and yet you don't seem to understand what Lenin was even talking about. Not to mention that it seems that you were educated by Bourgeois professors of philosophy! You are about as Trotskyist as Ronald Reagan! :P

I have found it strange how you seem to refuse to learn, brush aside refutations (Stephen Jay Gould and punctuated equilibrea accepted by most scientists in that field and so forth), etc. Now you seem to distort works or not notice punctuation that completely changes the original words from how you depcit them. The quotation marks are pretty obvious. You "rebuttal" seems dishonest in not taking that into account.

Are you operating under the misconception that dialecticans think that the laws of formal logic are refuted in every case by dialectical materialism, and that formal logic is always false? Formal logic and dialectical materialism supplement each other; formal logic is true within certain limits, while dialectical materialism suffices to explain things that formal logic can't. Kind of like how lower and higher forms of mathematics supplement each other, quantum mechanics and classical mechanics supplementing each other, etc.

Trotsky had noted that Marxism would be worthless without dialectics (he compared it to a clock without a spring). You seem to take things backward, putting forth formal logic as some kind of Metahysical final and ultimate truth. This is not taking things forward, Rosa. It is a rehash of Borugeois philosophical attacks on Marxism in the guise of "eliminating the crap from Marxism"!

I believe that someone (Miles, was it?) actually read your entire site and went in depth on criticizing your views. He stated that your "rebuttals" basically degenerated into numerous ad hominems.

I would have normally gotten some laughs (and not have even bothered posting a response) out of your "taking things further," but that overlooking the quotation marks caught my eye.

Sorry for a lack of depth right now. I am too busy to make lots of posts. Unlike you, I am interested in learning and practice, and I don't spend all of my spare time in front of a computer like how you and redstar2000 tend to do! :P :P

I know you are referring specifically to something Lenin said, and I won't pretend know what he meant, but I can offer some non-Communist defense of this. When he says that motions are self caused, you could look at this as saying the best way to understand motions is that they are self motivated. In other words the cause of a motion is exactly it self.

This may seam ridiculous but if you look at the origins of what people have labeled the dialects you'll see it goes back to Daoist and Socratic thinking. A thing is both itself and its opposite at once, because things rely on their opposites to be defined. This concept is repeated over and over. A thing is known by its opposite, the rich by the poor, the hot by the cold etc.


Something like motion has an almost infinite or for the sake of our understanding infinite string of causes. Your hand may knock a book off a desk. Gravity makes the book fall, friction was a force acting against your hand as you knocked the book off. Air resistance decreased the falling speed. As Redstar2000 likes to point out the gravity of the crab nebula had an influence on the earth and therefore the book as well, though this gravity is no more than the influence of your body's gravity on the book as you knock it off the table. Furthermore you must look at what it is that caused your hand to move. Metabolic reactions in your stomach to process the food you eat to create energy to move your muscles in your arm and hand. Then you can trace the origins of the food and all the people necessary in the production of the food to get it to you.

You can continue breaking things down into cause and effect until you get back to the origin of the universe. For all intents and purposes the true cause and effect of something, determined in this way, is impossible to ascertain.

However it can be reasonably stated as: the book fell because I knocked it off the table. He is simply saying or rather I am saying that if you make this statement it begs the question what caused your hand to do it and then you go into a seemingly infinite string of ideas such as the one I just presented.

For this reason the most complete answer is to say there was no reason the book moved itself. This way you do not suffer the ignorance of thinking you know something when you do not. You think you know what caused the book to fall but you don't really because if you keep tracing the events you don't know where to go back to. What you do know is that the book fell.

I'm pretty new to this line of thinking. I'm better with Buddhist, for the lack of a better word, logic. But this is my interpretation of what is trying to be said.

Zak, thankyou for those comments, but I am aware of the mystical origin of dialectics.

And they are pre-Socratic; you will find them in ancient religions (with forces of good and bad, night and day, compositioin and dissolution, male and female, etc.).

One of my Essays (yet to be posted) traces this sorry tale.

And of course, there ideas pre-dated science, and are thoroughly mystical; they depend on the view that nature is controlled by intelligneces, or gods, language (as the logos, which moves everything, and does god's will).

This is why I assert that dialecticians have introduced mystical ruling-class ideas into Marxism.

But, as I note, how can something move itself? Well it can only do so if you believe in the creation of energy from nowhere, or that nature is controlled by mind.

Hence, my assertion that Lenin refutes post-Newtonian mechanics.

And, thankyou for all that detail, but I am aware of it too.

But how does any of it show that anything is self-moving? And that it knows where it is going (recall, it cannot be guided by gravity, for that is an external cause), how to get there, and when it has got there (recall also that when, say, a ball hits a wall, the wall, on this 'dialectical' view, will not have stopped the ball (for that is external too), the ball will have stopped itself, using its dialectcal brakes, no doubt).


"For this reason the most complete answer is to say there was no reason the book moved itself. This way you do not suffer the ignorance of thinking you know something when you do not. You think you know what caused the book to fall but you don't really because if you keep tracing the events you don't know where to go back to. What you do know is that the book fell."

Well, I think you are confusing reasons with causes.

But, even if you weren't this does not show how and why Lenin said things move themselves, or rather, why he was right to say they did.

I do not think you have even begun to grapple with that.

Axel, I thought you had advised comrades to ignore us genuine materialists?

"Are you aware that the phrase, self-movement appears in quotation marks in that work? It is odd how you would take such a thing so literally."

Well, I gave you the reference; you check. You will see I am right. [You could then claim that your eyes were being too ‘literal’.]

I also gave you on-line links, too. What more do you want?

So, you see, everyone on the planet ‘distorts’ this passage. Only you, out of the entire population of the planet, knows the exact punctuation marks. [Are you Lenin’s re-incarnation, perhaps?]

But anyway, are you now saying Lenin was being whimsical?

If so, should we now take nothing he says literally? Or, are you like the Christians, who when they find something in the Bible that contradicts science, tell us that the offending passage is 'metaphorical'?

Nice get out.

I don't think.

But, if everything changes as a result of 'internal contradictions', as we are told, then how could anything not be self-moving?

Lenin was just being consistent (for a change).

Or are we now not meant to take the phrase 'internal contradictions' literally?

That's OK; I can live with dialectical poetry.

But you might have to stop calling DM a 'science' (or is that a metaphor too?).

And now we get to your best 'argument' (or is it a metaphor for capitulation??)

"I will lay odds that you have some sort of distortion or misunderstanding of what has been said, given that you have studied for 23 years, and yet you don't seem to understand what Lenin was even talking about. Not to mention that it seems that you were educated by Bourgeois professors of philosophy! You are about as Trotskyist as Ronald Reagan!"

Read it for yourself; if you do not know the sacred dialectical writ well enough to prove me wrong, that's your problem.

I clearly know it better than you, therefore.

So, you know no Formal Logic, and now it seems you have only a tenuous grasp of dialectical logic.

I'd give up while you are behind, if I were you Axel.

"Not to mention that it seems that you were educated by Bourgeois professors of philosophy!"

And Hegel was a coal miner, was he?

But Lenin unwisely learnt from him.

And questioning the thoughts of previous Marxists is enough to disqualify me from being a Trotskyist, is it?

Axel, this shows how steeped in tradition you dialecticians have become; just stop and think: are we never to question anything? Were Lenin, Engels, Trotsky, etc all gods?

It seems you must think so.

And you wonder why I say that the ideas of the ruling-class rule our movement?

You are exhibit A for the prosecution.

"I have found it strange how you seem to refuse to learn, brush aside refutations (Stephen Jay Gould and punctuated equilibrea accepted by most scientists in that field and so forth), etc.."

Well, Gould’s theory is not widely accepted as you assert, but even if it were it does not support your dopey ‘sub-theory’.

As I noted at my site (but your head is so deep in the sand, you did not check):

"But, many things in nature change qualitatively without going through a DM-inspired "nodal point" -- or even a "leap" (Anti-Dühring, p.160).

These include the following: melting or solidifying plastic, metal, rock, sulphur, tar, toffee, sugar, chocolate, wax, butter, cheese, and glass. As these are heated or cooled, they gradually change (from liquid to solid, or the reverse). There isn't even a nodal point with respect to balding heads! In fact, it is difficult to think of a single phase transformation from solid to liquid (or vice versa) that exhibits just such "nodal points" -- and this includes the transition from ice to water (and arguably also the condensation of steam). Even the albumen of fried or boiled eggs changes slowly (but non-nodally) from clear to opaque white while they are being cooked.1

Now, since the duration of a "nodal" point remains undefined (or even so much as mentioned), dialecticians can safely indulge here in some sloppy, off-the-cuff, a priori superscience. A favourite recent example is Steven Jay Gould's theory of Punctuated Equilibria. But, amateur dialectical palaeontologists have failed to notice that the alleged "nodal" points involved last tens of thousands of years, at least. This is a pretty unimpressive "leap" -- it's more like a painfully slow crawl. And since, no individual organism actually changes species, there is no obvious object that alters in quality either. Of course, if we regard a species as an 'object' of some sort -- perhaps stretched out in time --, then that 'object' will naturally alter as changes accumulate. On the other hand, if a species is defined in this way as an object stretched out in time, then it won't have changed. To be sure, that depends on how we define this object and how we depict change. It is no surprise therefore to find these notions are left equally vague by comrades who quote this example.

Moreover, if a species is characterised as a sort of four-dimensional 'sausage', then even if the first 'Law' applied to it, it would not have changed through 'internal contradictions'. This is because it cannot change. Four-dimensional objects do not 'exist' in time to change. Change here would merely be our subjective mis-perception of 'time slices' through it.

Alternatively, if a species is not defined as a four-dimensional 'object', then since no single organism actually evolves, change in any species would not be the result of internal contradictions once again. This is because, on this view no single thing actually changes in an evolutionary sense, whole populations do."


"Formal logic and dialectical materialism supplement each other..."

Wrong; only someone who knows no Formal Logic would say this (or worse, believe it).

To save me having to copy more material from my site, you might like to check what I do say before you make an even bigger fool of yourself:

http://homepage.ntlworld.com/rosa.l/page%2004.htm

http://homepage.ntlworld.com/rosa.l/page%2005.htm

http://homepage.ntlworld.com/rosa.l/page%2006.htm

But, it's OK if this stuff is too difficult for you; you can remain safe in your mystical little world, head in the sand, and ignore us nasty materialists. We don't mind if you retreat into fantasy; the class struggle can then be set in the right direction, without you mystics to foul things up any more.

"I believe that someone (Miles, was it?) actually read your entire site and went in depth on criticizing your views. He stated that your "rebuttals" basically degenerated into numerous ad hominems."

Well, Miles 'said' he read two 50,000 word essays (and he declared he did this within minutes of them being posted), so figure it out for yourself. Another 200, 000 words have been posted since he sulked off, dialectical tail between his legs. So his 'in depth’ analysis of this material has yet to appear.

And, as far as 'depth' was concerned, he just said he was 'not impressed'.

What a profound refutation! I will shut my site down now!

On that basis, as soon as someone says they are 'not impressed' by Das Kapital, you would no doubt say that was an 'in depth' refutation.

Sure my work contains a few ad hominens (but ad hominens, if you care to look up what this means in a logic book, are not all bad -- they can be used to highlight the errors in another's arguments -- and you use them all the time, in fact you pinch Miles's, so you are an ad hominem thief), but it contains much else; but your sensitive eyes will not check. You are happy to be told what to believe.

That's cool. I am not interested in 'debating' with robots like you.

I was basing myself on a tactic of dishonesty I had never seen before from you. I thought that it just boiled down to sheer misunderstanding of the subject at hand. Then I saw this crap.

Of course, it is utterly clear to dialecticians (practical, consistent materialists) that Rosa has not understood a single thing that Marx, Engels, Lenin, and Trotsky have said. I can see why Miles was not impressed, given the lack of any real argument in your rant site (the place where you spend all of your spare time, probably). She also does not understand that thousands of years are actually very short periods of time, geologically speaking. She has understood nothing. She has no influence (most of the so-called Marxist organizations don't have any!) either. I don't need to waste numerous hours proving you wrong. Any dialectican could do that (and when they would do that, you would get evasive). Keep up the rants. I promise you that they will not take the socialist movement one nanometer further. We have nothing to fear from idealists as yourself.

The all wise, Idealist speaketh:

"Then I saw this crap."

You should stop reading your own posts, then.

"Rosa has not understood a single thing that Marx, Engels, Lenin, and Trotsky have said."

That's OK, since it is impossible to understand a single thing any dialectician says on DM. So, I am in good company.

"She also does not understand that thousands of years are actually very short periods of time, geologically speaking."

As we percieve them, they might be, but compared to a boiling kettle they are not, so your 'nodal points' are entirely subjective.

And as I noted, since you never define anything, you can interpret your own 'laws' as you see fit.

So, your 'laws' are entirely subjective, too.

I called this 'theory of yours less than third-rate philosophy on another post; I think I was praising it a little too highly.

"We have nothing to fear from idealists as yourself."

Perhaps that is because we have everythig to fear from mystics like you.

Rosa 1 Confused Sulking Idealist 0.

And, Ax-sell:

I note you have stopped defending your 'inventive' reading of Lenin's pre-Aristotelian mechanics.

The internal contradictions in your head (induced in no small part by my good self -- no, no thanks needed!) must have helped change your mind -- into agreeng with me.

I can live with that, too.

Rosa:

As for not pursuing the Lenin thing futher - like you would listen and actually think about it in the first place.

Your claims of formal logic being rather new (125 years, you said?) is completely absurd. I don't think that there is any credible source that would agree with that.

Also, I need not use Internet posts to refute you, for I can allow history to do that for me. I assure you that you will get nowhere spending all of your time sitting behind a computer, posting away at some rant site. Dialectical materialism derives from actual practice, and it is your loss for refusing to understand it. You will be caught off guard by not understanding dialectics, and you will not be able to lead the masses anywhere. It will be a dialectical, consistent, non-sectarian party based on an iron Bolshevik discipline that will be able to lead the msses forward, not your rant site.

And it will clank when it "walks".

I wonder if there's a club in London or Manhattan that offers "iron Bolshevik discipline"?

Excuse 1917:

"like you would listen and actually think about it in the first place..."

I thought we were trying to ascertain whether or not I had misquoted Lenin; if you cannot prove that I did, you should at least withdraw the slur (and since dialectics does not work, it won't withdraw itself).

You might also like to stop your rather pathetic bleating that I will not listen to you, and not least because that is something you do as a matter of course -- i.e., you won't allow your tender eyes to read what you do not like (or that might upset your mystical ideas), and you warn others off material that lacks your imprimatur, Oh Holy One.

"Your claims of formal logic being rather new (125 years, you said?) is completely absurd. I don't think that there is any credible source that would agree with that."

Well, that is because (1) you have not checked (whereas I have); (2) you would not know where to look (whereas I do); and (3) you are just guessing (and doing it yet again in total ignorance).

Moreover, I did not say what your dialectically-inventive eyes seem to have told you I did; I merely asserted that 95% of FL is under 125 years old.

That is an easily verifiable fact, and I gave references in Essay Four to prove it (not that it needs proving; anyone who knows any FL will know this already -- which is why you do not).

You are only making a fool of yourself by denying it.

However, you seem fond of doing that....

But wait! The big dialectical-guns are about to be wheeled out.

Er... on second thoughts, what is this? Your dad is bigger than mine:

"Also, I need not use Internet posts to refute you, for I can allow history to do that for me."

That's OK: the last 150 years has already refuted DM. So, it is now clear that (1) you cannot refute me and (2) history has refuted your theory.

Odd as it might seem, I can live with both of these.

So, where did your dad go....???

And now we get the usual warnings (a bit like those that 'doctors' used to issue a few generations back that masturbation will make you blind); how many times I have had to read this sort of scary talk (without the scary walk):

"I assure you that you will get nowhere spending all of your time sitting behind a computer, posting away at some rant site. Dialectical materialism derives from actual practice, and it is your loss for refusing to understand it. You will be caught off guard by not understanding dialectics, and you will not be able to lead the masses anywhere. It will be a dialectical, consistent, non-sectarian party based on an iron Bolshevik discipline that will be able to lead the masses forward, not your rant site."

All talk -- no walk.

Anyway, I am happy not to 'understand' dialectics, since from the literally hundreds of books and articles I have had to endure (sorry, read) devoted to this dopey theory, plus the repetitive material posted here by lesser dialectical-clones, it is clear that not only does nobody on the planet understand DM, it is incapable of being explicated by anyone who claims to be human.

So I am in good company.

--------

Just to annoy you I will repeat an earlier 'joke':

How many dialecticians does it take to change a light bulb?

None at all, according to Lenin, it changes itself.


Rosa 2; dialectical windbag 0

--------


Back to materialist sanity at:

http://www.anti-dialectics.org

And redstar2000, like Rosa, has had many years to study Marxism, yet he has not done as such. His anti-Bolshevik stance is pretty much the same as the Bourgeois one!

It looks like Rosa has given herself another point for a subjective "victory." Some people don't seem capable of learning.

Excuse 1917:

"It looks like Rosa has given herself another point for a subjective "victory.""

Well, as objective, subjective, imaginary or just plain made up as my points are, dialectics itself is a 150 year flop.

Get over it.


-------------


DM-failure 150; DM-success 0


Help reverse this at:

http://www.anti-dialectics.org

Nonsensical subjectivism at work here, yet agian. If things were based on the class a person's philosphical views are in favor of, you would be in OI!

And now our dialectical subjectivist is reduced to confessing:

"Nonsensical subjectivism at work here, yet agian"

Thanks for owning up.

"If things were based on the class a person's philosphical views are in favor of, you would be in OI!"

And Hegel was a coal miner, as was Ted Grant.