Ok so I was starting to re-read Capital yesterday and looked over the Afterword of the second German edition of the book...and Marx basically says there that he used the dialectical method in its demystified form to write it:

Link

Now that really surprised because from what I read from you, it always seemed as though Marx never referred to his own method as dialectical, and didn't actually say that he used it...but he clearly did.

Clearly Marx is not simply talking about "using dialectial words", he actually says he used the dialectial method and attacked the "mystified" form of it, and found the "rational kernel" inside, and then goes on to say that it is revolutionary and explains what the dialectial method is (in short), and then goes on to say that eventually the dialectics will get into the heads of the rulers of the Prusso-German empire due to the crises of capitalism (a sarcastic comment in defense of the method).

So eh, did you know about the above? And if so, what's your response to it?

I'm not attacking you with this by the way, but I only remember you talking about the "coquetting with dialectial terminology" and that was persuasive, but in the above quote Marx says that his method is dialectical (in its demystified form) and refers to dialectics as revolutionary, something which I believe you denied him ever saying.

This dialectic method, however, bears no resemblance to the garbage which most leftists put out (or which they claim that Marx adhered to).

Ah yes I forgot to add that part, it's from the same Afterword.

I know.

It is clear that Marx employs dialectical terminology throughout Capital.

He also employs abstraction, causal language, historical materialism and other forms commonly applied by social scientists. Nothing wrong with that.

From reading Marx, I get the impression that he came to a deeply anti-philosophical stance; that he despised the philosophers setting up abstract principles upon which the human society operated. For example:

It is quite ironic, then, when Marxists also set up these phantoms upon which to explain things - i.e the unity of opposites and other such garbage.

Capital can be explained through without any dialectical jargon - indeed, it would be far more understandable without it.

Sorry if I am not the person wanting a response from, but that is my view.

What is your view on the matter?

Well I don't disagree on the dialectical jargon not being really helpful or necessary to understanding Capital, but the main reason for why I started this thread was to ask Rosa how she could say that Marx never referred to using dialectics or the dialectical method...when he clearly did.

But yes, I agree with you that there's nothing wrong with that, in fact it proves the point of all those people who were arguing against Rosa from that perspective over the past few years on here!

This has been put to Rosa many times by myself, gilhyle, luis henrique and trivas9, so you should really read these threads more throroughly, rather than just take Rosa's word as the beginning and end of the matter.

I didn't take Rosa's word as the beginning and end of the matter, I just never saw you, Luis Henrique, Trivas9 or gilhyle ever post a direct quote by Marx saying that he actually used the dialectical method and defending it directly, so that there was nothing unclear about it.

I do however remember you pointing to a letter he wrote to Engels, I believe it was, saying that he had great help looking over Hegel's book when he was writing Capital, and also a quote regarding "coquetting".

By the way, it's pretty absurd to say that I take Rosa's word as the beginning and of the matter regarding dialectics. If you had read those threads more thoroughly, you would have known this.

Now, did you ever post the above quote by Marx basically saying directly that he used the dialectical method and defending materialist dialectics versus the "mystified" form of it?

If so, could you please point me to the thread/post where you said this so that I can see how Rosa responded to it?

No. But I'm sure Rosa, who keeps track of these things more than I, will oblige. She didn't give the impression that she thought this revelation represented a threat to her thesis.

Rosa herself has more than once quoted the exact text in your OP. She understands that in a different way from us:

She understands that this means that Marx's method has nothing to do with Hegel's.

I myself have quoted not only that text, but also others, specifically from the Grundrisse, where it is clear that Marx uses some version of "dialectical method". But to argue with Rosa is like argueing with a wall; the best you get, if you keep the adequate distance, is an echo to your arguments.

Luís Henrique

Marx said "dialectical" where the subject was the fact that social relations don't remain static, institutions are in flux, classes and social forms appear and vanish, the categories of language sometimes fail to keep up with this.

But it was Engels who, after Marx was dead, added the comments that "dialectical" means three specific "laws", the "transformation of quantity into quality, and vice versa", the "interpenetration of opposites", and "the negation of the negation". It was also Engels who argued that these concisely worded "laws" govern the entire range of existence, including the creation of solar system, the evolution of life, the theorems of electricity and chemistry, history, and logic. ("Anti-Duhring" and "The Dialectics of Nature").

As for the "triad" of thesis-antithesis-synthesis -- it's customary for secondary sources ("Philosophy Made Simple") to say that Marx got this from Hegel. The fact is, Marx never said it, and, what's more, Hegel never said it either. A generation before Hegel, Fichte said it.

Personally I have no problem with comrade mikelepore's post above. I've never been convinced by Engels' three laws which seem too schematic. Nevertheless, I've always been certain that Marx didn't employ the term dialectic in a cavalier or paradoxic manner in the way Rosa's thesis implies; he meant something specific and valuable.

It seems to me that Marx understood that the Hegelian dialectic was an idealistic representation of processes which were nevertheless happening 'out there' in the real world. In other words: ... In a word, capitalism.

BTB:

And just as many times you and others who accept the 'traditional tale' have had it pointed out to you that Marx helpfully summarised the 'dialectic method' for us, in which there is not one atom of Hegel to be found: no 'unity of opposites', no 'negation' of the negation', no 'contradictions', no 'quantity passing over into quality', no 'mediated totality', no 'universal change'...

The problem is that some of you have been fed this traditional tale for so long that you cannot accept Marx's own very clear words on this issue.

Indeed he did, and we need not speculate as to what that was, for the comrade above quoted the long passage from Das Kapital summarising it for us -- which, once more, contains not one single concept found in the traditional version of the 'dialectic' that Engels, Plekhanov, Lenin and Trotsky dumped on us.

You have also had it pointed out to you that ordinary language is in fact far better at depicting and thus explaining change than is the wooden and obscure terminology you lot have inherited from Hegel (which jargon not one of you can explain), so if we needed a theory of change, dialectical materialism (or 'materialist dialectics') would not be it -- in fact, it would not even make the bottom of the reserve list of likely candidates.

Indeed, Socialist Worker (and other revolutionary papers) make use of ordinary language to explain the complex processes in Capitalism admirably well without using this obscure jargon -- so, in our interface with the class, dialectics is little more than a hinderance.

That alone shows that ordinary language is alright as it is (to paraphrase Witttgenstein) -- indeed we confirm this in practice every day of our revolutionary lives.

Mike:

There is in fact a sticky on this:

http://www.revleft.com/vb/showpost.p...95&postcount=7

LZ, I hope this answers your query; we have in fact been over this here literally dozens of times. Here for example:

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

Well, as Marx pointed out, he did not even own a copy of Hegel's 'Logic' but had to borrow one from Freiligrath -- so much for Marx being an avid fan of Hegel!

And it was most certainly of help to Marx in writing Das Kapital -- just as Paley's Natural Theology (with its 'Design Argument') was useful to Darwin when he wrote On the Origin of Species -- as a foil against which he could rail.

LH:

Marx chose not to publish the Grundrisse, but he did publish the passage quoted above. So, whatever happened to his thinking between the writing of the latter and the publishing of Das Kapital, he clearly began to see things the way I do (or, to put that better, I see things the way Marx came to see them).

Sure I am a 'wall' since I refuse to allow you mystics to continue to get away with besmirching Marx's good name by saddling him to a theory that makes not one ounce of sense, and which not one of you can explain -- especially since he abandoned it himself

And we both know why: I actually take Marx's actual words seriuosly, whereas you lot ignore what you do not like, or which does not fit the 'traditional' tale.

And, one cannot get more 'opposite' to Hegel than abandoning his obscure jargon in its entirety.

So you agree with dialectics just as long it's the definition Marx gave of it here:

He does mention negation there but not the negation of the negation, but anyway, if that is the dialectial method which Marx says he used, would you say that you agree with that method?

And thanks for the links.

LZ:

Well no. Read this passage carefully -- Marx personifies the 'dialectic':

This makes no sense at all. If we are to rescue Marx from incoherence, we are forced to view this passage differently from the way it is usually read.

So, I suspect Marx was being at least ironic here, for the dialectic does not do what he alleges. It fails to explain change and is not an abomination for the 'bourgeoisie' and/or their 'professors' -- they know nothing of it, and in general never have. Most still believe in change too!

And not even Marx believed this:

Or, if he did, then socialism is impossible.

Marx was trying to extricate himself from an ancient and mystical way of viewing the world, one in which hidden forces and intelligences run things. I do not think he saw things clearly everywhere and at all times -- hence the confusion here. This surfaces in his use of 'negation' where he confuses a linguistic category with a process in reality.

The 'rational' content of the 'dialectic' (a term I do not like since it has been ruined by Hegel and his epigones among Marxists -- one cannot use the term now without causing confusion, as this thread at least shows) is thus that which is contained in a modern version of Aristotle's dialectic, and in Kant's.

Hegel's 'dialectic' is useless from beginning to end -- upside down or 'the right way up'.

So much for taking "what Marx actually wrote seriously".

BTB:

In that case, perhaps you'd like to explain what he meant by this:

And, of course, taking Marx's words seriously is not the same as uncritically receiving them. That would be to confuse hero worship with socialism.

Maybe you do not know the difference...

Well some kind of convincing interpretation of this passage is obviously called for. Your attempt, as far as I can make out, is to interpret it as some kind of bizarre paradoxic joke; or that, suddenly, just a few paragraphs on from those you continue to cite as some holy writ, that Marx suddenly lurches into incoherence.

Here's the paragraph: Clearly Marx is comparing the rational form of the material dialectic favourably to the mystified Hegelian dialectic. The latter sanctifies the existing order (why? because the Hegelian dialectic reaches its end in the bourgeois German State - an early declaration of the "end of history" thesis). But, on the contrary, in its rational presentation the dialectic is revolutionary as it understands that the very dialectical process of history which produces the German State also will lead to its negation. Why? because the material dialectic is the class struggle and as long as classes exist the dialectic will continue. I think the statement "it let's nothing impose upon it" is a declaration of the inevitability of the dialectic, because the material forces and relations are in themselves "critical and revolutionary." In other words, capitaist society cannot do otherwise than lead to its own negation.

In the following paragraph he elaborates: It's generally acknowledged that Das Kapital is Marx's attempt "to lay bare the laws of motion which govern the origins, the rise, the development, the decline... of the capitalist mode of production," as Ernst Mandel succinctly put it in his introduction to the Penguin Classics edition of Volume One. Why is it so difficult to understand that the dialectic which Marx concerns himself with are these laws of motion - of capitalist society specifically and class society (i.e. human history) more generally?

BTB, I did not ask for you to explain the passage, but just this clause (as well you know):

I already know what you mystics think about the meaning of the 'dialectic' as you have had it incucated in you by the Hermetic Holy Men -- it's this clause which makes the whole lot an empty charade that I thought you'd struggle to explain.

And it seems I was right, for you ignore it.

And it's not so much this:

as the fact that Marx had already indicated that he had waved this mystical nonsense goodbye, and had already told us he was merely 'coquetting' with this gobbledygook, but that this clause confirms this: he was not being at all serious with these 'concepts' and that is why he personified the 'dialectic'.

Unless, of course, you think Marx was indeed serious here and actually believed the 'dialectic' was a human being?

Hmm. If you're gonna demand explanation then you could at least have the good grace to read it. Here it is for a second time:
Now, this is my interpretation of what Marx meant by the passage (and it does not contain any judgement as to whether the passage is well written or not). Comrades will have to decide for themselves whether it is a more credible interpretation than yours. And if any have an alternative understanding to ours, then by all means they should put it forward.