BTB:

Indeed, as I noted, you ignored the fact that Marx personifies the 'dialectic' underlining how much he is 'coquetting' with this 'theory' -- something he had already told us he was doing.

Except they should only agree with you by ignoring Marx's own admission that he does not take this 'theory' at all seriously -- why else would he 'coquette' with it?

And also consider that in the very next sentence, this is how Marx sums up the Hegelian dialectic: And not as the "gobbledegook" you insist it is.

In fact, one key difference between you and Marx is that he understands Hegel and you, as you admit, do not.

BTB:

And yet we already know that Marx was merely 'coquetting' with Hegelian jargon, and that his non-serious approach to traditional versions of the 'dialectic' (such as the one that has colonised your brain) is confirmed by this passage:

where he personifies it. How non-serious can you get?

But, what about this:

Indeed, other things prevent Hegel from being the first: namely the fact that this 'theory' cannot be made to work whatever you mystics try to do with it.

So, we are still waiting for someone to:

Marx certainly did not.

As we now know, he abandoned it as hopelessly confused, and was content merely to 'coquette' with Hegelian jargon.

Your claim that the passage, "let's nothing impose upon it," is a coded punchline to Marx's disavowal of Hegel doesn't even work in theory of humour terms as it doesn't even function as a punchline, or it is a punchline with no joke. Meanwhile in this paragraph Marx is not engaging in anti-Hegelian punning or parodying, he is stating the militant communist understanding that capitalism cannot escape its own contradictions.

Now either you believe that Marx was deliberately clowning about in order to confuse both his critics and his followers or you've been reading too much Dan Brown and now believe you have the prescience to divine the hidden codes in Marx's writing which even he was unaware of.

Partly our arguments are dependent upon what kind of writer we think Marx to be. The fact that Marx thought he was engaged in the scientific understanding of capitalism does not automatically mean that he wrote only as a scientist - or even saw himself as such. In fact we know that his polemics are anything but.

What you never seems to understand about Marx's style of writing is that he uses metaphor, allusion, and other rhetorical devices in order to drive points home. He does not always write like a detached scientist engaged in dry analytical work; nor was he at all influenced by, still less the precursor of, the conventions of analytical philosophy. Attempting to judge him as such misses the point.

In fact, in all of these arguments with you, what becomes apparent is that you don't read like a Marxist; you read like a Wittgensteinian. The idea that Marx might have uncritically (in philosophical terms) employed a personification of the dialectic (but used it for valid literary impact) is not at all a problem for most of us. For you, if it doesn't conform to your notion of analytical or logical clarity, it gives you nightmares and forces to you to depict Marx as a clown.

Oh, and by the way, referring to something as 'it' as Marx does in this passage, is not exactly the same as personifying 'it', is it?

In fact, the jargon has been explained repeatedly.

for instance, contradiction has been repeatedly explained to mean not just a simple conflict, but a systemic opposition in which the existence of a proletariat implies the destruction of a bourgeoisie. it's relevant to us because it points towards socialism superseding capitalism from the internal dynamics within this contradiction.

You seem to be shifting arguments here. If dialectical terms can be translated into everyday language with little difficulty, then how can it also be 'mystical' at the same time?

If you were correct that dialectical jargon was nonsense, it's version in plain everyday words and phrases would likewise be nonsense.

If you are formally abandoning your claim that dialectics is jibberish, and instead saying that it would be useful when talking to thsoe unfamiliar with marxism to use everyday terms, then I think we're on the same page.

BTB:

Who said it was a 'punchline'?

Unfortunately for you, Marx had already torpedoed this excuse well below the waterline, having earlier endorsed a summary of 'his method' in which there was not one ounce of Hegel to be found: no 'contradictions', no 'quantity passing over into quality', no 'unity of opposites', no 'negation of the negation', no 'mediated totality', no 'universal change'...

In addition, and it's almost as if he had you mystics in mind, he added that he was merely screwing around (i.e., "coquetting") with Hegelian jargon.

So, according to Marx, there are no 'contradictions' in capitalism (or anywhere else, for that matter).

Small wonder then that you lot cannot explain even your own use of this terminally obscure word.

No hidden codes; Marx was quite open about his rejection of the 'dialectic' as you mystics understand it. And he was well-known for his wry sense of humour. It surfaces in all his works. I am amazed you have missed it.

Yes, and we need not speculate, for, and once again (I did say this might take twenty or so repeats before it sinks in -- looks like I underestimated the hold this opiate has on the consolation module in your brain) Marx was clear about what he was doing.

I'd quote that long summary of "his method" that Marx saw fit to include in Das Kapital, but you see it as spam, but in that passage there is no trace whatsoever of Hegel. He is neither 'upside down' or even the 'right way up', he is nonexistent. Yet again (and it seems you need to be told this many times), in that summary there are no 'contradictions', no 'quantity passing over into quality', no 'unity of opposites', no 'negation of the negation', no 'mediated totality', no 'universal change'...

So, the sins you attribute to me we can in fact put down to Marx, for he it was who waved goodbye to the ancient Hermetic world-view that still controls your brain.

And he did tell us too that the ruling ideas are always those of the ruling-class.

Looks like you are determined to prove Marx right, at least in your own case.

Nice rhetoric -- too bad Marx had already shown it to be empty.

And what is wrong with reading Marx like a Wittgensteinian? It beats reading him like a mystic.

But, I am sorry to remove even that crumb of comfort, for:

1) I read Marx this way back in the 1970s before I had even heard of Wittgenstein. You do not need an ounce of the latter's influence to be able to see that Marx himself, in Das Kapital, had put your brand of mysticism behind him. One just has to read him without allowing those pesky "ruling ideas" to control one's thinking -- something you have yet to learn.

2) It's not even a Wittgensteinian reading of Marx. Wittgenstein, if anything, tended to read these classics in the traditional way (if the reports of his 'disciples' are anything to go by), as have other Wittgensteinian Marxists -- like, say, Guy Robinson. So my reading of this is my own -- and, of course, Marx's.

The 'it' is indeed apt if Marx did not want to refer to it is as either an 'he' or a 'she'. So, this personification of the 'dialectic' was more like a reference to its ghostly qualities: a spectre, if you like, that still haunts modern-day Hermeticists like yourself -- in that you all seem to think that capitalism argues with itself (i.e., contains 'contradictions'), and since only human agents can do this, you seem to think Capitalism is a human agent of some sort. But this ghostly agent is not one you can touch or see, or talk to. Hence, this apparition, this spectral 'person' ('Capitalism') is indeed a sexless 'it'.

Marx is clearly parodying your folly.

PRC I see my accusatation that you are a scaredy-cat has stung you into trying at last to defend the indefensible. Too bad for you that this would have been more believable personality make-over had you done this before I branded you in that way.

Where?

1) This is a re-definition of the word, and for no good reason.

2) It does not work, as I have shown. For example, here:

Essay Eight Part One: http://homepage.ntlworld.com/rosa.l/page%2008_01.htm

Essay Eight Part Two: http://homepage.ntlworld.com/rosa.l/page%2008_02.htm

Essay Eight Part Three: http://homepage.ntlworld.com/rosa.l/page%2008_03.htm

Or, more briefly, here:

http://www.revleft.com/vb/showpost.p...&postcount=360

http://www.revleft.com/vb/showpost.p...&postcount=361

http://www.revleft.com/vb/showpost.p...&postcount=362

http://www.revleft.com/vb/showpost.p...4&postcount=14

'Opposing forces':

http://www.revleft.com/vb/showpost.p...&postcount=464

'Contradictions' etc. in Das Kapital:

http://www.revleft.com/vb/showpost.p...&postcount=465

You need to show where I go wrong, or admit:

1) You can't and you are out of your depth, and

2) I was right to say:

PRC:

You need to pay attention: the whole point is that such terms cannot be translated into ordinary language.

I show that to be so in the above links.

Ordinary language can be nonsensical, for example: "The is but of" is nonsense. But dialectics expresses a special kind of untranslatable nonsense. If you want to know what this is, check this out:

Essay Twelve Part One: http://homepage.ntlworld.com/rosa.l/page%2012_01.htm

For comrades who cannot be bothered to read the full account, I have written a shorter summary here:

Summary of Essay Twelve Part One: http://homepage.ntlworld.com/rosa.l/...ve-Part-01.htm

In your dreams...

Marx clearly thought capitalism had contradictions, as he mentions it repeatedly throughout Das Kapital and correspondence years after his supposed denunciation of Hegel (oh, and Marx never minced his words, like you suppose he does in the Afterword). Moreover, those passages which you will no doubt pass off as empty "coquetting" were published six years before the Afterword, without Marx giving the merest hint that they were empty "coquetting". So you expect the reader to swallow the bizarre idea that Marx would smuggle unflagged parodies into the text of his masterpiece, risking the confusion and misinterpretation which has, according to you, distorted the history of Marxism. Oops!

Fortunately most of us aren't that desperate to have you proved right that we would swallow such a poor narrative. I fear you might be in a minority of one in that concern.

I don't know what you're on, but I've talked to you about this issue, including the very issue of contradiction before.

I like how you backpeddle on 'ordinary language werkz better'

Is this an attempt at satire, where you say absurd things like "marx didn't mean what he wrote" to provoke a reaction, Ali G style?

Oh, and here's a few links to where I talked to you about dialectics in the past. Most of these are directly responding to you, even though you claim I never did (another example of your interesting grasp on reality):

http://www.revleft.com/vb/showpost.p...&postcount=234

http://www.revleft.com/vb/showpost.p...&postcount=233

http://www.revleft.com/vb/showpost.p...&postcount=215

http://www.revleft.com/vb/showpost.p...0&postcount=33

http://www.revleft.com/vb/showpost.p...&postcount=181

http://www.revleft.com/vb/showpost.p...&postcount=162

http://www.revleft.com/vb/showpost.p...1&postcount=78

http://www.revleft.com/vb/showpost.p...0&postcount=76

http://www.revleft.com/vb/showpost.p...9&postcount=13

BTB:

Well, as you have had pointed out to you many times, Marx had already told us that he was merely 'coquetting' with this word in Das Kapital, and that includes the Afterword (which is, last time I checked, part of Das Kapital).

Moreover, his use of this word in letters (which he chose not to publish) cannot be considered a part of his more considered thoughts -- or if it is, then he was merely 'coquetting' with that word there too.

Or do you imagine that his unpublished remarks are more important than those he published?

Well, and yet again: we need not speculate, for Marx very kindly indicated what he meant. He added a review of his ideas to the Preface, which he (not me) endorsed as 'his method', but from which every trace of Hegel had been removed: no 'contradictions', no 'quantity passing over into quality', no 'unity of opposites', no 'negation of the negation', no 'mediated totality', no 'universal change'...

Looks like you are going to have to have several dozen more reminders before Marx's intentions register with your class-compromised brain.

So be it. I have been bashing away at this for well over a year with you. i have no problem having to do this for yet another year if need be.

Now, the 'confusion' to which you refer applies only to those who refuse to read what Marx actually tells us. So, do not blame me or Marx; blame yourselves.

Even if I were the only person on the planet who reads what Marx actually said, that would not affect the fact that I am right. I am right, in fact, because I have bothered to read him carefully, unlike you mystics.

PRC:

1) I am in fact on fresh air; I recommend it over the opiate you have imbibed from dialectics.

2) You haven't, to the best of my recollection, debated 'contradictions'with me before. I checked those links and they either skirt the issue, raise other isssus or make the usual mistakes that I have exposed (which you can find at the links I posted in my last reply to you).

So, we still await a clear account of 'dialectical contradictions' (and we have only been doing this for 200 years). Gilhyle and Luis Henrique were the last two to make a serious attempt to do this here, but they had to limp from the field badly bruised. In fact, Gilhyle has not shown his/her face here since.

In what way did I 'backpeddle'?

Well, if you actullay read what he wrote, you will see that he and I see eye-to-eye on this.

If you think otherwise, let's see your arguments/proof.

Thanks for that, but your 'responses' to me were patchy and not consistent, and not like they are now. So, I stand by my claim that I have stung you into action by calling you a 'scaredy-cat'.

I've watched half of David Harvey's first video on Capital, and when he talks about things being in motion, labour as being a process, capital as being a process, and how Bush and Giuliani wanted to get the economy rolling again after 9/11, I then realized that Marx merely used the wrong word - "dialectic" as opposed to the more SCIENTIFIC word "dynamic" (specific due to the usage of that word in physics).

Hegel's idealism, meanwhile, is all about abstracts, which cannot be in motion.

Marx's failure to use a more analytically authoritative word puzzles me.

JR, he qualified his use of this term so that it was more in line with the way you use it, as opposed to the Hegel-nuts who have appropriated it since.

Read this again:

Contrary to popular belief, dialectics isn’t simply a method of thinking about oppositions between labor and capital. Neither is it a grand "synthesis" of "thesis" and "antithesis." It is an attempt to examine any object of our inquiry as a structured totality, as something existing within a larger system, across time, as viewed from different perspectives. Dialectics is the art of context-keeping, because it counsels us to grasp the full context of any object through techniques of abstraction and integration. By examining an object from different vantage points and on different levels of generality, we achieve a more comprehensive grasp of its antecedent conditions, interrelationships, and tendencies.

Trivas:

Except that despite all this self-important posturing, the theory does not work.

"The old economists misunderstood the nature of economic laws when they likened them to the laws of physics and chemistry. A more thorough analysis of phenomena shows that social organisms differ among themselves as fundamentally as plants or animals. Nay, one and the same phenomenon falls under quite different laws in consequence of the different structure of those organisms as a whole, of the variations of their individual organs, of the different conditions in which those organs function, &c. Marx, e.g., denies that the law of population is the same at all times and in all places."

Is this why he did not want to use the word "dynamic", or was that word merely not prevalent - specifically in the physics studies of his time?

What do you mean, exactly (in lieu of the self-important posturing)?

Trivas:

Which word is causing you problems?

JR:

Well, dynamicist theorists go back a long way; they certailnly pre-date theorists like Leibniz and Descartes. in fact this can be traced back to the ancient Greeks:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dynamis

http://books.google.co.uk/books?id=s...um=3&ct=result

So, I do not know why Marx did not use this word, for it seems far better than many he did use, and decidedly better than many his epigones have used since.

It's not the words per se that are the problem, but rather the thought they mean to express. What "theory" are you referring to? How is it relevant to my post? While my response was lucid and informative, yours was merely provocative and mysterious.