BenHur:

So, you believe that the bourgeoisie and the working class will 'combine' do you?

But, according to the dialectical prophets (quoted above), these two classes should change into one another.

You can believe whacko things like this if you want, but the rest of sane humanity will conclude otherwise.

Well, you are the one who thinks that opposites will always and inevitably change into one another (or you should if you 'understand dialectics' as it is laid down in the Holy Books -- quote above): so when are males going to change into females, left hands into right hands, electrons into positrons (or is it protons), the forces of production into the relations of production?

And, until you can show where my arguments go wrong (or where my 'understanding' is defective), I have indeed refuted your mystical 'theory'.

Throwing your toys out of the pram is not an argument.

Maybe it would be good to go back to the initial point.

If we set aside the mystical approach to it, I'd actually argue that it isn't a weltanschauungat at all, but is merely a philosophical generalization and thus simplification of what it expresses.

Well, you'd be almost alone in that, for most Marxists regard it as 'the world-view of the proletariat', and they do so for the reasons I outlined on page one.

I'm not so sure about that.

Well, most "Marxists" are Stalinists and so forth also.

Oh yes, I saw. You are rather addressing Hegelianist dialectics though. What is called materialist dialectics on the other hand was first put forward by people such as Marx and Dietzgen and the latter certainly was a worker even if you don't consider the former to be one. And of course the first proponents of bourgeois materialism so far again before Marx and Dietzgen were - well, obviously bourgeois as well.

Leo:

In view of this:

and the fact that Maoists and Trotskyists accept this view of DM, it is only the libertarian Marxists and you New Communists who might not (however, I do not profess to know whether or not this is so).

In that case most Marxists do accept DM as 'the world-view of the proletariat'.

No those comments apply to both the Hegelians and the 'materialist dialecticians', as is relatively easy to show.

Proof here:

http://homepage.ntlworld.com/rosa.l/page%2002.htm

And Dietzgen wasn't a worker (if by that you mean a proletarian):

This is what I have argued in Essay Nine Part One:

References and links can be found here:

http://homepage.ntlworld.com/rosa.l/page%2009_01.htm

Leo:

Maybe so, but what has that got to do with anything I said?

I am not a "New Communist" or a "libertarian marxist".

Fair enough, the minority isn't always a tiny one though.

Yes, my bad - the Turkish wiki mislead me. He was a self-educated tanner though, an artisan. He wasn't an educated son of the big bourgeoisie anyway. Marx was a journalist who starved most of his life and lived off Engels basically.

I would say it is factually incorrect regardless of the example of Dietzgen. Workers are certainly capable of developing an understanding of what dialectics is as well as developing an opinion based on that understanding. Weren't you a postman yourself?

I think the idea that workers' can't understand dialectics has got to so with Stalinist intellectuals wanting create a mystical, "dialectical" explanation to their actions.

Well, you are saying that dialectics as we know it today in all it's forms has it's roots in the bourgeoisie. I am saying that this applies to materialism as well.

Leo:

I was a postal worker, yes, among other things.

My claim was based on the observation that no one understands this theory (and not just workers), since it is incomprehensible.

Again, as is easy to show.

What dialectically-distracted comrades are good at, however, as this thread alone shows, is regurgitating dialectical phraseology which they plainly haven't given much thought. When asked to explain it, they almost invariably go very quiet, very quickly. A few will put up a weak attempt to do so (Gilhyle and BTB, among others here, are good examples of this), but they soon give up when it becomes apparent that they too cannot explain it. Nor can they tell us who can!

And I have yet to meet anyone in the last 25 or so years who can explain it. Nor have I read a single comprehensible account of it (in the many hundreds of books and articles I have had to endure in that time).

And that is why my materialism is not the same as theirs.

Recall, I am not claiming that everything the bourgeoisie has ever said or which their theorists have ever invented is automatically wrong. My point is that it has been a general ruling-class ploy (from ancient Greek times to today) to argue that there is an invisble world anterior to the senses, which is accessible to thought alone, which is more real that the material world. Now that doctrine plainly this serves their interests.

It is an independent matter whether this family of theories or the arguments in support of them make any sense. In fact, in my essays, I first of all show that they do not, and then I proceed to expose their ideological roots.

It's basics are quite simple in my opinion actually if not complicated with word plays. I think everyone would be able to say that it is basically an analytical logic regarding change and it's dynamics. It basically says everything changes, that these changes occurs of interaction which we regard as conflict, that changes we regard as quantitative lead to those we regard to as qualitative, and that these changes don't happen in a linear or circular but a spiral-like dynamic.

But they weren't really trying to explain what dialectics meant, they were trying to prove that it was the universally true laws of nature, that it was the ultimately correct weltanschauungat. What else can you expect when someone is trying to prove something like that?

OK, but then again it would equally be valid for, let's say, Marx to say that his dialectics was not the same as Hegel's, just as he said his materialism was not the same as Feuerbach's.

Fair enough.

Yes, of course it is clear whose interests idealism served and that idealism was basically wrong. Yet on a different point, it is important to acknowledge the contribution of what idealist philosophy expressed in regards to the development of human thought which itself was of course determined by material conditions and progress. In his Theses on Feuerbach Marx himself says: "The chief defect of all hitherto existing materialism – that of Feuerbach included – is that the thing, reality, sensuousness, is conceived only in the form of the object or of contemplation, but not as sensuous human activity, practice, not subjectively. Hence, in contradistinction to materialism, the active side was developed abstractly by idealism – which, of course, does not know real, sensuous activity as such."

Leo:

But, as I have shown, this makes no sense at all:

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

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

So, it's not the least bit 'simple'.

No, they do not even try to prove it, they just impose it on reality -- as is easy to show, too.

Indeed, and it is also easy to show that he abandoned the 'dialectic' as it is traditionally understood (by the vast majority of Marxists), and thus that he dropped things like the alleged 'law of the transformation of quantity into quality', 'dialectical contradictions', the 'negation of the negation', the 'unity of opposites', etc.

I disagree; idealist thought has contributed zero to human knowledge. It has, on the other hand, contributed much to ruling-class thought.

Well yes, when examined as if it was the laws of nature as claimed, it indeed does not make any sense at all - I never claimed otherwise, but I also said I don't think it was as such either. Yet something which, when declared the universal and the ultimate laws of the universe sounds mad can also be quite simple and basic when considered simply a generalization and simplification of our perceptions for example, of the way we understand things around us.

Well, when someone regards a philosophical generalization and simplification as the ultimately 'true world' theory that is bound to happen, but you know what I mean.

Yes, fair enough.

Certainly he did not regard them as laws anyway.

But ruling-class though itself has contributed massively at times to human knowledge!

Leo:

Which, of course, excludes dialectical materialism (or 'materialist dialectics').

But, not Idealism.

Yeah, because you're such a great judge of all things dialectics.

Cummanach:

Maybe so, maybe not, but until you can show where I go wrong, say, here:

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

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

or in more detail, here:

http://homepage.ntlworld.com/rosa.l/page%2007.htm

the jury is still out on this.

Well, at least excludes it the way it is understood by many, yes.

Regardless of the fact that if it made contribution to ruling-class thought, it at least indirectly make a contribution to human progress, I do think that idealists did make an abstract but direct contribution to aspects of human knowledge as well as to the way social sciences developed to an extent at specific periods.

Leo:

Is there perhaps a version of this ruling-class theory I haven't heard?

Perhaps then you'd like to give us one example of this alleged 'contribution'?

I can't really speak for Gilhyle, but I don't believe either of us have attempted to claim this. I'd like to see the evidence.

So how is your materialism different?

BTB:

If you look at what I actually said, I did not claim this.

It is based on ordinary language.

I wasn't just referring to this thread or any posters in particular, I was trying to refer to the general approach to the question.

I don't know, I don't see dialectics in itself as a "theory" as I said.

Dialectics too can be based on ordinary language.

moved to learning at OPs request.

Leo:

I'd like to see an example where it isn't based on a distortion of it; as Marx noted:

And I note you dodged this challenge:

Referring to this earlier claim of yours:

Perhaps you'll dodge my challenge above, too?