Can I get a cross-section view of Left-Marxists attitudes to Dialectics please

Dialectics is a method for presentation, not a science. I can say much more on it, but the first mistake many Marxists make is to overstate the significance of the dialectics, referring to it as some secret mystical force without actually knowing how Marx used it.

Pannekoek's 'Lenin as Philosopher' is interesting on this. I'm not really into philosophy though so not going to try to sum it up.

https://www.marxists.org/archive/pannekoe/1938/lenin/index.htm

I agree with what Khawaga said, to give some readings as well and my thoughts,

I don't think the line should be drawn on Lenin or the Second International, but at the stalinist distortions of dialectics as something it's not. I think Bordiga is pretty good at explaining it in his text On the dialectical method but also in Party and Class, echoing a lot of what Engels wrote in part one of Anti-Düring,

I.e it is not a force of sorts or something that tells you the exact future, it's a way to try and understand society as something that is moving and developing both in the now and historically, looking at how movements interact and clash. I think "marxists", or socialists in general, who just assume that all class struggle in the past as having been this static propertyless versus property owning class, which is something I've come across a lot, will quickly lose the plot while looking back at pre-capitalist history, also not understanding actors in civil wars as representatives of a class and mode of production. Like, in Sweden the "national liberation war" from the danish ruled Kalmar Unionen is often seen, even in the left, as just a nationalist project and something removed from class struggle while in reality it was a war between the Swedes and Hansa representing merchant capitalism while the danish represented feudalism. In this case the propertyless do not play any leading role, if they did the capitalist vanguard would have lost because the propertyless and poor peasants formed armed bands and fought for the danish. If we go further back in Swedish history again, there was a struggle between the slave owners, representing a mode of production based on slavery and the church, representing feudalism. The free farmers sided with the slavers under an anti-church program, while the plebeians and alike had no solid alliance.

I've always wondered where the idea that leninism means a vanguard of intellectuals that commits coups separate from the working class, something I've seen from a lot of councilists, came from,

"SPGB, Autonomist and Left-Com responses all welcome."

I'm scared of complicated words like dialectics and without being simplistic the SPGB has a easy-to-read pamphlet all about what causes change.

https://www.worldsocialism.org/spgb/pamphlets/historical-materialism

But from our A-Z

Dialectic. For Socrates, it was teasing out the threads of an argument by asking questions. In Hegel's philosophy, it was the development of the idea through history. With Marx and Engels, however, there is some dispute as to what their version of the dialectic means, or even if they were both talking about the same thing. This apparent confusion is compounded by Plekhanov's term ‘dialectical materialism’, a phrase not used by Marx or Engels, yet this was designated the official philosophy of state capitalist Russia in the years after the Bolshevik revolution.

For Marx, it seems that his dialectic has two main features. Firstly, it is a philosophy of internal relations. Capitalism is a system constituted by its social relations of production, and a change to one relationship will have consequences for the whole system. This philosophical viewpoint tries to understand that process. Secondly, it is a method of abstraction. The key social relationships of capitalism (e.g. value, commodity, class) depend upon, but are not reducible to, material objects. They can only be comprehended as abstractions but they are nonetheless real and can affect our lives profoundly when they mean that profit-making takes priority over human needs. According to Bertell Ollman:

‘Dialectics is not a rock-ribbed triad of thesis-antithesis-synthesis that serves as an all-purpose explanation; nor does it provide a formula that enables us to prove or predict anything; nor is it the motor force of history. The dialectic, as such, explains nothing, proves nothing, predicts nothing, and causes nothing to happen. Rather, dialectics is a way of thinking that brings into focus the full range of changes and interactions that occur in the world.’

That's a pretty good explanation you posted aajohnstone. I like Ollman's book on the dialectic (Dance of the Dialectic) andwhat you quote really cuts through the mystical bs of diamat as the official religion of M-L. If anyone ever tries to trump an argument saying it's "undialectical", you know they are believers in the dialectic rather than just understanding it's a method of presenting the messy interactions and relationships of social life.

By quoting the very last paragraph of that book (also hosted on libcom), I take it that you read whole thing? Do you find it to be an unsatisfying analysis of Lenin's own views?

I would recommend reading Michael Heinrich's short essay "Je ne suis pas marxiste" which "argues that Marx was not after a “Marxism” as an identity-defining “truth.” Rather, he was more interested in the critical business of undermining certainties". Other pieces written in similar vein include 'Between Marx, Marxism, and Marxisms - ways of reading Marx's theory' by Ingo Elbe, and 'Marx? Which Marx?' by Anders Ramsay.

Also written by Heinrich (but isn't tagged to him) is a piece titled 'Invaders from Marx: on the uses of Marxian theory, and the difficulties of a contemporary reading'. In this one, he writes the following:

The linked short review of this book is worth a read on it's own. See here;
https://libcom.org/library/behind-crisis-marxs-dialectics-value-knowledge-guglielmo-carchedi

Edit :just to link this with one of Vlad's other questions, I'd point out that whilst LBird might dismiss Carchedi's defence of 'dialectics' in his work the review I mention here does indicate Carchedi's distinctive view of 'science' as not being class neutral in opposition to the views of Engels, Lenin and Gramsci and in opposition to Engel's attempted basing of 'dialectics' in nature and arguments that favour the claimed 'inevitability' of socialism.

Instead of only being a matter of presentation, I think it makes sense to see dialectics as a set of investigative views of the world, based on the notion of continual change. Metaphysical thought divides the world into categories that it thinks of as stable, self-identical essences, to be catalogued once and for all to describe the world. In contrary, dialectical thought in principle sees all phenomena as transient and containing opposites, or opposed forces, of which the phenomenon itself is only a temporary balance. This gives all phenomena (as parts) and the totality they make up a certain definite volatility, and a tendency to fall apart and to be superseded by new things, new unities as well as new opposites. Concepts and historical reality are seen as part of single, complex process of ongoing change.

I think there's a lot of wankery surrounding the term dialectics (not exclusively the result of the co-option of its terminology by state capitalism and its apologists) but this seems a fairly good starting point for investigating the world, social relations, the surpassing of capitalism, and so on.

Vlad, my boy, Dialectics is this: If Solid + Energy = Fluid, then Fluid - Energy = Solid. It is the art of the other way round - reverse!

To the other unimportant question you raise: "Your view on just how mechanical historical development is. How predictable and true to historical laws human groups and societies are.etc".

I will provide you with the definite answer: 100% predictable, as "in general" material stuff (everything) is just a bunch of electrons and other fellas i'd have to guess at, moving around in perfectly physical (the science!) ways.

Hoping to find your nerves well!

Just posted, a 1947 article

https://socialismoryourmoneyback.blogspot.com/2018/07/dialectical-materialism.html

"cough*

Cheeky git.

it's the message not the messenger, 1904

So to placate your ruffled feathers

hat tip to
http://socialiststandardmyspace.blogspot.com/

My seven year old is currently doing an impersonation of that kid from that old Twilight Zone episode so I'm taking it out on everyone . . . everywhere. You not providing the link for the sad sap who spent an age scanning and proofreading that article simply meant that I finally ripped out my last remaining feathers. (insert grumpy and sleep deprived emoji here.)

It's not a happy time for me on Libcom, either. I got pulled up for not providing links and now i'm pulled up for stealing your link...ahh, well...

i was up against "a holistic way of thinking" and received no likes only hate. story of my life.

I think best 5 pages written on dialectics comes from;

Anti-Dühring by Frederick Engels 1877
Introduction
General

Starting from a bit late in ;

…………In the contemplation of individual things it forgets the connection between them; in the contemplation of their existence, it forgets the beginning and end of that existence; of their repose, it forgets their motion. It cannot see the wood for the trees…

https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1877/anti-duhring/introduction.htm

Fred tends to ruin a lot of stuff by packing a load of shit at the beginnings, and in the middle, of things.

The book was written with Karl’s approval and oversight.

It is quite readable, worthy of discussion at least.

[ most people gag and choke at the idea of ‘dialectics of nature’ thing as if Fred had let an eggy one go in a lift – I think it is ok]

As I think will become clear most people now are already dialectians in their outlook so the difficulty is more about comprehending the non dialectic viewpoint which is a bit historically alien.

[I actually think the Emile Burns translation is much ‘better’ actually – couldn’t say why really as there isn’t much difference, by a strange accident I read it first after paying 50p for it.]

Incidentally I thought Anti-Dühring was one best books I have read on the state of or summary of scentific knowledge circa 1880.

I was quite surprised how far advanced they were; most of it is still ok.

Covering another thread Fred wrote the Housing Question which covered urban housing rent I think but there is a lot of blather in that as well.

I seem to remember that it was Karl who wrote this chapter?

It is in one of the prefaces somewhere I think?

Anti-Dühring by Frederick Engels 1877
Part II: Political Economy
X. From Kritische Geschichte

[ Fom The critical History]

Since political economy, as it made its appearance in history, is in fact nothing but the scientific insight into the economy in the period of capitalist production, principles and theorems relating to it, for example, in the writers of ancient Greek society, can only be found in so far as certain phenomena—commodity production, trade, money, interest-bearing capital, etc.—are common to both societies. In so far as the Greeks make occasional excursions into this sphere, they show the same genius and originality as in all other spheres. Because of this, their views form, historically, the theoretical starting-points of the modern science. Let us now listen to what the world-historic Herr Dühring has to say.

https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1877/anti-duhring/ch22.htm