Also, Rosa, I’m curious. What is your opinion of Ernest Mandel’s parametric determinism?

I disagree. How can you use effectively what you don't understand?

Hyacinth:

I have never actually come across it.

Callinicos's book: "Making History". Ignore the chapter on 'Agency'; it is hopeless.

Bold added and text edited for clarity.

This "feedback loop" - the mediating relation between past, present and future, structure and agency, material conditions of life and our consciousness of them - this is what we mean by dialectical. I'm all for escaping the convoluted and mysterious language of Hegelianism and speculative philosophy if it helps us to clarify the 'rational kernel' of Marx's usage of the dialectic; and 'feedback loop' is perhaps a candidate. However, feedback loops tend to be self-sustaining whereas a dialectical spiral represents a process of mutual development between two or more interrelated aspects of social reality.

Nevertheless, your need to state a feedback loop indicates, for me, why historical materialism requires such a conceptual tool: it helps us to avoid mono-causal models of history and social life.

First of all, why are so obsessed with Maslow's hierarchy of needs? It's not correct and it's flawed at its basis.

If you look at my "hierarchy of needs" it will be different from your "hierarchy of needs", it is a deterministic inane theory:

As for "actualization", there's already a philosophy which covers that; existentialism.

I don't believe that anyone who is anti-dialectics on this forum actually understands it, if they did then I'm sure they would have came to the same conclusion as Marx, Engels, Lenin, Trotsky etc. on the matter; that it is more of a useful tool than the formal metaphysical mode of thought of "ordinary understanding" which begins with a fixed definition of a thing according to its various attributes.

The most modern "form" of dialectics (with a defense of it) can be found in the works of Sarte and Zizek, in Critique of Dialectical Reason and The Parallax View, respectively.

Hmm...I seen people make such analysis and still call it Historical Materialism...

I checked the link and it only uses a sociobiology journal article (which I can't access). It's the same rubbish with evolutionary psychologists, amongst themselves they think they are right (although they do have influence) and can say their theory is the best in their own journals, yet still face hard and convincing criticisms from others in the more wider world.

Why would Marxism need it? How will it take part of Marxism/dyna-mat?

This project sounds interesting but you'll probably need to do lots of research/write a book/etc to support this new theory.

CZ:

All you have done is take perfectly ordinary words, and attach the obscure term 'dialectical' to them -- which is a trick that is no more convincing than that tried out by Christian mystics, who like to attach the equally obscure term 'divine' to similar words.

This would not be quite so bad if a single one of you could explain this 'theory' or make it work; but as I have shown here many times, it cannot even explain change!

Moreover, if this were a successful theory, it is us materialists who would be on the defensive -- the way you lot talk, you'd think dialectics was the most wonderful and successful theory since sliced Aristotle.

But, alas for you dialectical day-dreamers, the situation is the exact opposite. Indeed, one struggles to think of another major political/philosophical theory that is quite so abysmally unsuccessful.

You'd think that you DM-fans would get the message: your 'theory' has already been refuted by history, long before I or Hyacinth were ever thought of.

But, that is where this 'theory' comes into its own, for it convinces it initiates of the exact opposite, since one of the core theses of dialectics is that appearances contradict underlying reality -- hence you never learn from history, you just re-process it so that it conforms to your ideal expectations -- thus providing you lot with badly needed consolation.

No wonder we call dialectics the opiate of petty-bourgeois elements in Marxism. No wonder you cling on to it like the religious cling on to their dogmas.

But, no, in a world where you lot tell us that everything is interconnected, the only two things in the entire universe that are not inter-linked are the long-term failure of Dialectical Marxism and its core theory, 'materialist' dialectics.

You just couldn't make this stuff up...

LZ:

This is a tired old and hackneyed claim made about those of us who are sceptical of this mystical theory, but it is also one that each Marxist sect makes about all the rest (evidence at my site, in Essay Nine Part Two). So we can take this with a pinch of non-dialectical salt.

But, even if that were not so, we would all be in good company, since no one 'understands' this 'theory' -- not Engels, not Plekhanov, not Lenin, not Trotsky, not...

Or if they did, they kept that secret extremely well hidden.

Well I've never used "dialectics" as a way to attack any other ideological tendency or party, that is just inane, and the people who do it only do so because they are petty sectarians.

Didn't you say somewhere that Trotsky understood it better than Lenin?

Also, why do you only criticize and attempt to refute the "old" dialecticians but not the modern ones such as Sartre or Zizek?

The most modern "form" of dialectics (with a defense of it) can be found in the works of Sarte and Zizek, in Critique of Dialectical Reason and The Parallax View, respectively.

Have you read them? Will you attempt to refute them?

LZ:

You are one in a million then.

Not me, sorry.

I have read this material, and much else besides (e.g., Tony Smith, Chris Arthur, Bertell Ollman, Robert Albritton, Jurgen Habermas, Adorno...).

They all indulge in a priori dogmatics, imposing their ideas on nature and society, just like Hegel did, and just as traditional philosophers have always done.

I will be criticising some of them in a later essay.

When I say no one understands dialectics, I am not just picking on dialecticians -- no one understands traditional philosophy either (dialectics being a rather poor cousin here), since traditional philosophy is nothing other than the systematic capitulation to the misuse of language. Hence, it cannot makes sense, and neither can dialectics.

I have a long general argument to that effect here:

http://homepage.ntlworld.com/rosa.l/page%2012_01.htm

This is summarised here:

http://homepage.ntlworld.com/rosa.l/page%20016-12.htm

[I am about to re-write that summary, since it is not as clear as I'd like it to be.]

I have a feeling that a few of the off-topic posts in this thread should be moved to the "Scrapping Dialectics" thread.

The problem with the "dialectical spiral" is that, in the case of four or more aspects, there is no possibility for direct, dynamic interaction inside the "perimeter" known as the "dialectical spiral." In the case of four aspects forming a quadrilateral interaction, this direct, dynamic interaction which I am referring to is diagonal.

There were further developments of that hierarchy, per the wiki.

The point of incorporating this is that there is good reason to trigger revolution in the First World countries, where the alleged "labour aristocracy" exists (no, I don't subscribe to Lenin's LA crap, except to the extent where he was referring to his historical equivalent of modern pro-athlete "celebrities," actor "celebrities," etc.).

http://www.revleft.com/vb/showpost.p...5&postcount=29



If historical materialism can be summed up by the axiom "It is not the consciousness of men that determines their existence, but their social existence that determines their consciousness," then dynamic materialism can be summed up by the axiom "Philosophers have interpreted the world in various ways; the point however is to change it."

I was merely using an example of the "totality" relationship between a past dynamic and a present dynamic (past-present dynamic). HM does NOT work when dealing with present-present dynamics, and dialectics doesn't take into account the "inside the perimeter" interactions that I mentioned above.

So far, sociobiology has no problems if applied to non-humans. With us, of course, political ramifications come about.

Reformulating political theory is one thing... reformulating philosophy is an even bigger challenge.

The problem with this is your starting point: the two ideas are not seperate, and were not until they became the official ideology of the Communist movement. Marx did not even coin or use the term "dialectical materialism", he merely applied a dialectical critique (motion, change as a restult of inner contradictions for example) to materialism.

I am quite intrigued - what insight/explanation does dynamical materialism generate that cannot be provided by, say, conventional social and natural science or philosophy? That is, is there some phenomena that can't be accounted for by conventional science or modern philosophy?

^^^ Comrade, I think it's too much of a hassle to scurry in the conventional sciences and philosophy without noticing a discernable link between the various elements in those conventions.

I am merely suggesting that we who profess to be "Marxists" get past BOTH dialectical and historical materialism onto something that isn't reductionist, something that can incorporate aspects of the conventional sciences and philosophy while still acknowledging that there is no "complete, integral world-outlook" (the very first reductionism that I attacked in my WIP).

For example, take the merger formulas that I keep harping about. Some histomat analysis can explain them, and some diamat philosophy can explain them, but we still don't have a complete picture of all the dynamics associated with the merger formulas (ie, those dynamics that are neither historical nor dialectical).

Excellent question! I would very much like to hear dialecticians answer it; they made the assertion that dialectical materialism adds “motion, change, etc.” to materialism? How is materialism, and contemporary science, incapable of accounting for change such that we need dialectical materialism?

^^^ Comrade, the comrade MS was talking about dyna-mat (in other words, his question was meant for me, specifically), not dia-mat.

Have you read Jonathan Rees's essay?

http://www.anonym.to/?http://www.mar...-dia.htm#ch5):

Trivas:

Have you read my demolition of it (and of Trotsky's appallingly bad logic)?

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

And his name is 'John Rees'; can't you get anything right?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Rees_(UK_politician)

I have only recently begun my study of Hegel, and I am new to the forums. So what I say should be judged in that light. Nevertheless, one thing in particular interested me and I would like to comment on it.

Jacob Richter writes:

"In dyna-mat, the "totality" is limited to more rational relationships, such as the relationship between a past class struggle and a particular class struggle in the present.

Case in point: the relationships between the relative lack of class struggle during the formation of the SPD in Germany (the excitement over German unification under Prussian control) and the relative lack of class struggle today."

Not that I am necessarily against what you are trying to do here - namely, what I interpret as being essentially an attempt to render dialectics less amorphous and therefore the concepts deduced therefrom easier to hold up to scrutiny and collective debate, changing the name from dialectics to "dynamics" doesn't bother me in particular. But there are some problems here. Namely, you take one assumed similarity between isolated historical circumstances and draw a direct conclusion for modern tactics. In any system of reasoning this would be faulty, no less in dialectical thinking. You abstract a historical tendency from two periods that are isolated, assuming that the reasons for the tendency (in this case, the relative lack of class struggle) are identical without examining any of the specific contingencies which must've been at work to render the lack of class struggle. The two situations are definitively not the same, the optimum for organizational structure may be similar, but simply pointing to an abstract similarity is no way to make that case.

Although, since you were just making a simple example I can give you the benefit of the doubt and presume your case for an SPD-like organization for the present contains much more than you write here.

Furthermore, simply because dialectics insists on a view of "totality" does not mean there is any relationship between utterly abstract items (Napoleon's hair and Michelangelo's Sistine Chapel in your example). Totality means that concrete things cannot be analyzed in isolation, but must relate to the whole. Class Struggle is a concrete notion, and therefore has to relate to a Totality, such as History. To take one example of class struggle and compare it with another, while at the same time ignoring the relation which connects them (i.e., History) is a false analysis, and cannot arrive at any concrete truth.

Likewise, while I agree that you are right that Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs does need to be incorporated into Marxism, it must be done so as a concrete historical and social phenomenon. That is, we must not take it immediately as it presents itself, but analyze it in relation to the historical milieu in which it can find existence. In other words, we must incorporate it dialectically.