Okay, first off, I don't see dialectics as a science; it can be a religion for some and complete bullshit to others, and that's not what I'm interested in arguing. I think it can be useful as one tool, out of many, to be used for interpreting the past, but nothing more than that.

But some people did believe it - like Karl Marx. And keep in mind that this is a thought experiment, something I just thought of and decided to see how people reacted to it:

What if our present society, or something close was the one that Marx envisioned when he was writing the Communist Manifesto?

I mean, he was an intelligent guy; he had to have applied his own theories to themselves. I don't think he simply assumed that every single person alive would immediately see the value of his writing and simply "convert" wholesale.

He knew there would be resistance. And his own system leaves the possibility that it would not (and could not) simply replace the old structures entirely.

What if Karl Marx proposed communism as the antithesis of capitalism, knowing full well that his own system of dialectics implied that the two would eventually synthesize instead of one replacing the other?

What if Marx was secretly anticipating a mixed economy all along?

The synthesis is of capitalist productive forces and communist relations of production, not one or two communist enterprises in a capitalist state.

"Thesis, Antithesis, Synthesis" is not dialectics.

Kun Fana, you seem to be referring to historical materialism, a theory which does not need any dialectics at all for it to work.

Which is a good job, since, as I have shown, dialectics cannot explain change -- or, alternatively, if dialectics were true, change would be impossible. Proof here:

http://z11.invisionfree.com/Kasama_T...?showtopic=460

http://www.revleft.com/vb/showpost.p...4&postcount=23

http://www.revleft.com/vb/showpost.p...5&postcount=24

Capitalism-Thesis, Socialism-Antithesis, Communism-Synthesis.

BenHur:

This would only work if one were stupid enough to think that history had a mind, and that it thought about things -- as Hegel sort of imagined.

Except, this is not even Hegel's schema:

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

It's Kant and Fichte's!

I can see though how this looked appealing in the second half of the nineteenth century but in trying to understand Marxism as a theory I've been having great difficulty reconciling the underlying DM determinism with the need for conscious action - particularly with Lenin who seems to engage in continual double-think. Why do we need the revolutionary party if history, in working through its own contradictions, is propelling us towards a communist resolution?

I've just had a look at Rosa's intro essay and it makes a lot of sense to me - from our vantage point why assume we can squeeze the whole of human history into a single schema particularly given the events of the last 100 years which hardly support the idea of the onward march of history.

History is the study of social evolution. And is there a society without individuals? Individuals do have a mind, don't they?

BenHur:

Indeed, but then history does not, so how can it develop in the way you suggested?

If your read Althussers For Marx, I think chapter Contradiction and Overdetermination, he goes more specifically into contradictions that will lead to social revolution. This idea of overdetermination runs along the lines that certain of societies contradictions need to be highten for a social revolution, just not one between productive forces and relations of production. Thus leading to the idea that revolution in Russia occured because of a overdertmination of contradictions.

There is more to it, but you have to read it for yourself.

Here is the chapter http://www.marxists.org/reference/ar...ermination.htm

I don't think she means History, as a study, is mindless.
I think she meant something more like, "Men make their own history, but they do not make it as they please; they do not make it under self-selected circumstances, but under circumstances existing already, given and transmitted from the past. The tradition of all dead generations weighs like a nightmare on the brains of the living." (Marx)

Hiero:

But, we have yet to have explained to us (by Hegel, Engels, Plekhanov, Lenin, Stalin, Mao, Althusser..., or anyone at Revleft, for that matter -- least of all you) why these are 'contradictions' to begin with.

And, even if we knew why they were, as I have shown, if dialectics were true (and change were the result of these 'internal contradictions') change would in fact be impossible.

Bilan:

No, it's quite clear what I meant: if this idealist schema (Thesis/Anti-thesis, etc., drawn from Kan and Fichte, not Hegel) is correct, then the entire universe, and not just human history, is just an aspect of the development of mind.

Right.

'Mixed economy'? Capitalism is capitalism is capitalism.
And the 'Thesis, antithesis, synthesis' thing is bullshit, but that's already been gone over.

Zero -- we have, and many times since I have been at RevLeft, but I can safely predict it will come up again. This is one 'meme' that refuses to die.

The problem here is that you interpret the Marxist dialectic as deterministic when , in fact, the emphasis on the dialectical interplay between the various elements of a mode of production (and its corresponding political and ideological superstructure) is an attempt to escape the determinism of mechanical materialism. For Lenin, as for the majority of Marxists, humanity is the active agent in history but not under circumstances chosen by itself, but within the conditions bequeathed it by previous generations - and this can include the accidental in history. This is why Lenin (as well as Marx, Engels, Kautsky, Trotsky etc.) were concerned with the importance of organising the active, conscious side of history, i.e. the class struggle.

Again, the point of the dialectic is to escape the notion of a linear "onward march of history". This belongs to the bourgeois ideologues of the Enlightenment. For Marxists, history is uneven in its development and subject to contradiction. Capitalism, for instance, produces material progress, stimulates an increase in scientific knowledge; but increases the alienation of humanity from its species being. It produces material abundance, undreamed of in previous epochs; but increases material inequality and leads to the immiseration of the proletariat and the starvation of those who cannot even rise to the level of the proletariat.

As for history being made intelligible on the basis of a small number of general hypotheses, even Rosa could not deny this without renouncing her fidelity to historical materialism.

Fixed.

So if society doesn't change due to internal factors (whether you want to follow the Marxist tradition and call these factors "contradictions", often used interchangeably with the term "conflicts", or something else), what does change it? Men from Mars? Jehova?

BTB:

But, we do not need the confused jargon that dialecticians have lifted from Hegel to counter what you call 'mechanical materialism'. In fact, as I have shown, that jargon would mean that social change, indeed all change, is impossible.

Perhaps so, but how does the Hermetic jargon dialecticians borrowed from Hegel help here?

BTB:

Where?

Why do you assume that I deny that capitalism changes because of 'internal factors'? All I have done is raise serious doubts that the jargon dialecticians use is of any use at all here.

In fact, I have gone further, and have shown that change would be impossible if dialetics were true.

Anyway, external factors also affect social change.

Unless you think that we can get along without the Sun, say.