Thesis, antithesis, synthesis

Gator:

Fine, but then you will only be able to describe nature with a new, and obscure, convention, but not be able to explain anything.

This is no explanation (even if it were coherent), but, once more, a re-description set out in a new convention.

No, it's called 'being qualified'.

You'll be saying next that anyone can do brain surgery or design a satellite system.

But even if you were right, I'd still prefer their account of nature to that of a rank amateur, armchair superscientist, who never quite manages to carry out any experiments.

Revol68:

Thanks for proving me right: you are the only one emitting crudities around here.

That's quite apart from the fact that not even you have taken your own advice.

First you made things up about me, and then when you were exposed as a liar, you tried to 'argue' with me (in fluent Martian) -- but you were soon sent away with your tail between your legs.

Rosa is more than a match for a wimp like you.

Have a nice fume....

rosa:

You'll be saying next that anyone can do brain surgery or design a satellite system.

But even if you were right, I'd still prefer their account of nature to that of a rank amateur, armchair superscientist, who never quite manages to carry out any experiments.

Rosa's view now becomes self-parody. treeofjudas' scarcasm is justified.

an inference to the best explanation is a type of inference. people called "scientists" go through programs where they learn to self-consciously apply this inference to a particular subject matter. that's true. but they're exercising an innate human capacity, to make inferences. all fully growed people do this if they have a functioning brain. what differentiates "experts" is not their ability to make inferences but their knowledge of a particular subject matter. and non-scientists are often experts about some subject matter. like an auto mechanic who can diagnose problems in a car. in doing that he or she is applying inference to the best explanation.

t.

Gator (now substituting someone else's irrelevance for argument):

And...?

Revol68:

Oh dear, was it too difficult for you?

I am sorry, I haven't published the 'Janet and John' Essays for your sort yet.

SIMCP:

As he himself says:

And he went on to say Capital:

So, by then, the influence of Hegel on Marx was reduced merely to the use of Hegelian jargon, and only in one chapter of that great book. [His words, not mine!]

I merely go further, and ditch even that.

When I have finished my project of reducing the Hegelian influence on Marxism to dust, I will attempt to re-write Historical Materialism in the language Marx advocated: ordinary language.

I will say no more about that until then.

revol68:

Was that Martian piece you posted?

I'd go further, and say that you do not understand it.

SIMPC:

I hope my previous post answers your request?

It's just that this numpty keeps getting in the way, trying to impress us with 'his' ability to bash away at the keyboard randomly.

revol68:

I have no doubt that your sort of 'know-nothing' said the same of Marx, and of anyone else who actually attempted to further human knowledge and understanding, other than post passages in fluent Martian.

Your flea-like bites trouble me not.

I will, as I said, re-write this in the language Marx said it should, and not the Martian you prefer.

If you do not like that, I should care.

Now toddle off, and play with your toys, sonny.

Historical materialism is a philosophical theory. But I thought Rosa rejects all
philosophical theories. Philosophical theories can be stated in ordinary language and that is a good thing because it makes it easier to evaluate whether they are true or false, but then they are still theories. Note that the theory posits a tendency of development in productive capacity. And why must productivity always grow? This was a problem that G. A. Cohen had to grapple with in "Marx's Theory of History", which was also an attempt to restate the theory of historical materialism in clearer language. And why suppose that the social relations of production -- the class system -- is the only relevant structure of oppression to social struggle? Couldn't oppressed racial or nation groups or women also be agents of history?

t.

revol68:

Which 'concepts' are these?

SIMCP:

'Impressed' with what?

I did not address what you now raise.

Had you asked me about 'subjects' and 'predicates' I'd have told you that it is one of Hegel's biggest blunders: accepting the Identity theory of predication, which turns predicate expressions into the names of 'abstract particulars', thus depriving them of their capacity to be predicates.

[Gator does the same, except he says his predicates 'designate'; same difference.]

You say I have done nothing to disprove Marx's admiration for Hegel. I do not need to: Marx told us himself. His 'admiration' (as expressed in that famous passage in Capital) was put in the past tense, and he limited the influence of Hegel on his thought merely to the jargon he borrowed from him, with which he 'coquetted' -- and then, only in one chapter of that great book.

Pick a fight with Marx (not me) for destroying your illusions in this Hermetic bumbler.

It is based on a series of logical blunders.

It is a nodern branch of Hermetic mysticism.

It has screwed with comrades heads for far too long (look at the rubbish it makes revo68 come out with!).

It has been tested in practice and shown to fail: if you hadn't noticed it already, I am sorry to have to tell you Marxism is an abject failure (or, it can boast very few successes -- so if truth is tested in practice, historyy has refuted this 'theory').

I put that partly down to the pernicious influence of this Hermetic theory.

Now, I set up my site to save me having to explain this over and over again.

So, if you want to know more, I suggest you go there and read the detail have put together on this.

If not, don't.

the atomistic approach to understanding the world, preferred by the empiricists, was rejected by Hegel, as it was by Aristotle, and by Marx. There are necessary relations between things that happen. Everything isn't just one big accident. An example of this is Marx's rejection of "methodological individualism." Methodological individualism is an atomistic approach to society, preferred by empiricists.

t.

revol68:

Unfortunately you keep using words to tell me this.

So, all I can reply is the same as before; I aim to do what Marx said we should, translate such words into ordinary material language so that they make sense.

You stick to Martian if you prefer it.

Gator (getting more desperate by the minute; now he has to invent):

It is a scientific theory.

I really do not think we have anything more to say to one another if you are going to fib like this.

What is the difference between a "scientific theory" and a "philosophical theory"? Physics used to be called "natural philosophy" you know. You might take a look at Daniel Brudney's book "Marx's Attempt to Leave Philosophy." Brudney shows that Marx's attempt was a failure even on Marx's own critieria. I personally don't think there is any way to make a clear differentiation between "science" and "philosophy." I think they run together. Scientists often make philosophical assumptions of various sorts in their theories. But since you think there is a hard and fast distinction, you won't mind telling us what it is. And don't come up with the crap about "apriori pseudoscience" since philosophical statements need not be defended by apriori assumptions. Your spewing the label "apriori superscience" was just a way to cast aspertions on views you don't like without providing actual arguments against them.

t.

Ugh!!

Marx's ideas only become clearer when they are understood in the light of Hegel's method. Marx negated Hegel's idealistic dialectics and incorporated a material dialectics -- dialectical materialism.

I just wish I had more time to sift through the four pages that occured while I've been on vacation.

No, this is not vulgar mechanical formulaic logic in absolutist atomist sedentary terms. What you call logic, is in fact illogical and does NOT represent material reality. It's bougeois logic.

Here are some gems:

Which means that sam is not black haired, not a female, not Jet or Jack, but white haired sam. What makes this particular Sam Sam is just as important to him as what makes him not Sam. Nice try, but you're already on thin ice, and have now fallen through. The rest of this is just going to be fun.

[quoteSentences and beliefs are either true or false.

Let's do it this way. In the real world, things aren't just true or false, unless they are relative to something else. Let's go back to white haired sammy. Suppose I say, Sam has black hair and point to Sam. You go, no, that's not the Sam I mean, I meant that Sam, and point to white haired sam. So, going back to your little tautology, Sam has white hair. I point out a black haired sam, and you say nope. Is the sentence "Sam has black hair" false? Yes and no. Ah, we're not getting to see the beauty of the dialectic.

Sounding a little dialectic here with your use of particular. I'm sure you know about the subcategory of the particular to the general.

These two setences may be true at different times. Sam had black hair when he was younger, and a process ensued that led to his now having white hair.

Wow, sounding a bit dialectic here too!! So, the black haired sam that I pointed out was Sam, just not the sam that is now. So, again, all that is Sam now, is just as important to all that he is as all that he is not is. He is not young, though still male, and he is older, but still the same organism.

Sounds, good, so a quantity of years built up to create a qualitative change, intiatiting a nodal point of negation where young Sam is now Old Sam, and of a specifically different quality. Yup, pretty dialectical. Keep going, you're on a roll!

Yes, he would cease to exist as the sam of the first moment that we hypothetically met. Yup, he's in a constant state of change of unbecoming to become. Yup. You're doing great. All that Sam is is defined in contrast to what he is not, but he's in a constant process of change, and in the moment that we evaluate him, he does become something else and unbecome what he was. He loses skin cellls, maybe loses some hair, all that he was is constantly changing. Yeah, that's dialectics.

How material of you. The internal is primary. That's a fundamental principle of the dialectic. You're doing such a great job disproving the dialectic.

Gee, I don't know. Thesis can be defined through antithesis quite easily. "What color is the sky?" So, I walk outside and discover that it's blue. The antithisis provided the avenue to thesis.

Yes, we must fight racism, but in light of class struggle. All of the oppressions are subordinate and contingent upon the primary social inequality of the existing society of capitalism. Capital is the primary social relationship that drives our society. The classes of society must be smashed. Horizontally linking the struggles of those who are oppressed in opposition to the ruling class, but not allowing another ruling class to form, is crucial to smashing capitalism. The state is the concentration of power and privelige in the hands of the few against the many. The state must be smashed, and to do that, the primary relationship that holds all of society in subordiantion must be smashed.

Hell yeah! Capitalism cannot survive without racism, and it must be smashed, but only a class analysis can facititate this. Otherwise you end up with nationalism movements like the Black Panther Party and AIM. Nationalism is death for workers.

Yeah, no kidding. All forms of exploitation existed in some form, some primary, some secondary, during each of the historical stages of prodution -- Slave, Feudal, and capitalist. Capitalism created racism as a codified force, whereas it existed in a primitive form of a "fear against other" before the rise of the capitalist nation states. Capitalism could never have happened without racism to recreate chattel slavery. The oldest method of production facilitted the newest highest form of production. Marx explains this in "Prmitive Acquisition of Capital" in Capital.

No. This is crap. Race, nation, and gender are not, and should never be the basis for organization as they will jsut recreate the state in a new form. Class should be the basis of organization against the social constructs of race, gender, sexual orientation, and nation. All of the social constructs of capitalism must be negated into their egalitarian opposites through the communist revolution. That's why it's called a social revolution, as it revolts against and negates all forms of oppression within our society.

But anti-racist struggle is equally a necessary condition.

anti-racist struggle within the context of class and against capitalism. The state must be smashed, and to do so it must be seen in context.

Wangwei was unclear whether his 'negation' sign was a sentential operator, a predicate qualifier, a predicate term modifier or a name adjunct.

That's less my fault, than the limits of formal logic. Negation is impossible to express with bourgeois logic.

You're so elitist, that it actually physically sickens me. Thanks for reminding me why I'm a Marxist, as I believe that the workers can run the world, and it seems you think that they need a PHD in your pedantic vulgar materialism.

She can't. She pulled it out of her ass. Lenin said, in "The Philisophical Notebooks" that you can't even begin to fully understand even the first chapter of Capital until you've fully grasped the whole of Hegel's Logic. A major reason for The Grundrisse for shaking up the old Marxist movement was because it exposed, how Marx used, and subsequently negated, Hegel's system of philosophy.

You completely misunderstand Marx, due to your misunderstanding of the dialectic, and misreading of that passage from The German Ideology. I shit on your PHD, mind you, it means jack to me.

In that passage of the German Ideology, Marx is explaining how idealist philosophers create a mystical meaning behind words, and then use those words to do battle with each other in the realm of ideas. Marx had to simplify his language, yet keep the concrete meaning of the language intact. He had to change the form of the ideas, but not alter the content. If you had even a rudimentary understanding of the dialectic you'd be able to understand that. In the Grundrisse, Marx works through the two stages of negation, lower to higher, and eventually is able to leave the shell of Hegel's obscurantist language behind while being able to keep the essence of his ideas. The essence of the material dialectic, antithesis and negation of Hegel's idealist dialectic, was what Marx used to write Capital. The major difference between Capital and Grudrisse, apart from others, is the fact that in Capital, the methodology is buried, and in the Grundrisse it's on the surface and exposed.

Using your logic, your logic mind you, not mine, you'll burn the Bible because it talks too much about god and doesn't have enough wisdom in it. Talk about extremism! I love how you really act like you know what you're talking about.

When I have finished my project of reducing the Hegelian influence on Marxism to dust, I will attempt to re-write Historical Materialism in the language Marx advocated: ordinary language.

HHHAAAhahahahahah!!! You've got to figure out what the dialectic is first! pathetic. Not only are you wrong about the dialectic, you're also to obtuse, egotistical, elitist, and full of yourself to figure it out.

I could have sworn it was Marx who used historical materialism and Engels who used dialectical materialism. I could be wrong though.

Like all good nihilists! Didn't Engels outgrow nihilism by his mid-twenties.

Because Hegel was dead. He brought up the "dead dog" in the present tense. Do you know what you're talking about, or do you just like to throw ideas about and hope nobody jumps on you. I'm not sure what types of sites that you're used to frequenting, but there are some people on here who do know their shit.

Marxism never failed. The "forces of production" argument failed. Marx was specific that the mode of production had to fail, and that lower order communism will be socialism until the forces of production were able to drive the whole of humanity into higher order communism. Lenin, whether accidentally or on purpose, though I lean toward accidental, used the idea that the forces of production alone would steer the proletariat to higher order communism. Also, Lenin believed in maintaining the proletariat as the proletariat after the revolution, and I can't find this in Marx. Marx, in the text you love to quote, The German Ideology was specific that the division between town and country must end, the division between all of the working class actually.

Don't mistake Marx for Leninism. Leninism's a fundamentally different monster, that if you'd like, I would love to discuss when I have the time. I would love to see a thread discuss the differences between Marx and Lenin. I have to contribute more to the one on Marx and Engels though, ah that's neither here nor there.

He also explained these terms using words. Don't blame him if you don't know what the fuck he's talking about.

So, Rosa, there are two distinct binary poles between philosophy and science now? Hmm... how very atomist and empirical of you. So, there is not relation and interelation between philosophy and science? intersting.

me: "But it is equally true that class will "recreate itself" endlessly if the struggle against racism does not become a priority so that the class movement takes on the aims of the anti-racist and anti-patriarchy struggles as its own. "

wangwei:

This contradicts what you say here:

If women or African-Americans are subject to a specific oppression not shared by workers in general, then your reductionism of everything to class means that you effectively do NOT agree that their specific structures of oppression are to be fought. That's because, if they are specific forms of oppression, this will give rise to organizations of these oppressed groups in situations where their specific concerns are being overlooked. You earlier said that fighting racism is essential to a libertarian revolution. There cannot be class unity given the internal divisions in the class, if the specific oppressions are not addressed, autonomy of these oppressed groups accepted, and their specific concerns integrated into, accepted by, the larger movement.

Integrating these concerns/demands means also that the groups oppressed by non-class forms of oppression, also accept the class struggle orientation. It's true that IF i was suggesting a movement solely on a race/nationalist or gender basis, it might have the result you suggest. But that was not what i was suggesting. I was suggesting, to put in your preferred lingo, a "higher synthesis".

And, by the way, there is no such thing as "bourgeois logic". Either types of inference enable us to infer what is likely to be true from true information or not. And it would be useful if you differentiated what RosaL says and what i say since she obviously doesn't agree with me.

t.

I will pat my back for trying, I did for once try to grapple my head around some Political theories instead of by passing them. I’m afraid this is utter bollocks like the many other that I had read.

As like all Bolsheviks they get sent to the gulags and as always, it's the intellectual that are among the first to be sent.

A pause of thought on my way home from work, it’s made me wonder how long it take for people to get to that stage of understanding of utter dribble. Alot of these theories that has sprang up and discussed on here are worthy of carbon dating and dumping in the recycle bin.

Hegelian "dialectics" has a kind of cult following among a small band of marxists, but for the rest of the world it's already in the dustbin of history.

t.

No, I'm not reducing anything to class, but am illustrating how class mediates all other forms of struggle. that's the difference between a class analysis and an analysis of class.

I do not contradict myself whit these two statements:

and

because I'm very careful to note that class oppression must be the basis of organization against capitalism, and not race, nore nation, nor any other form that can allow the state to recreate itself. Organizing on race leads to racist groups like the New Black Panther Party, who hold forth their "special oppression" like some mantle that seperates them from the working class. Blech. Blech. That privilege crap makes me want to vomit. If it weren't for white unemployed British workers during the American Civil war, the British would have entered into the war on the side of the Confederacy. The unemployed, starving, textile workers understood that slavery needed to be smashed and would physically assault any meetings that the bourgeoisie was organizing to aid the confederacy. Multi-racial unity on class lines is what's necessary to defeat racism and, at the same time, build a classless egalitarian society.

i agree, but the integration of the specific concerns of oppressed people have to with the fact tht the state needs to be destroyed. The state mediates the social relationship of capitalism, and needs to be torn down for fundamentally new relationships to be recreated. The specific oppressions need to be seen in light of a continual dispossession of all of the proletariat as the productive working class under capitalism. The point is not to vulgarly overreduce all struggles to class, as mechanical orthodox Marxism does, but to see how the inequalities of the system are recreated and reinforced by class.

Fair enough. I am always concerned, because the primary aspect, at this stage of the social revolution, of oppression is class struggle. When the Communist revolution begins, and the working class begins having state power, the other forms of oppression become primary as the state becomes negated. With the negation of the centralization of power, privilege, and authority in the few against the many is negated, the subsequent effect will be the ending of all forms of oppression.

Yes, there is. bourgeois logic is atomist, empirical, and mechanical. It creates a solipsism, usually tautological, and very syllogistic. Organic logic, a la the dialectic, will be the foundation for the communist revolution. Rosa is just annoying, and actually differentiating between you two, though necessary, would take far more time than I have. You did a good enough job illustrating how she's basically full of shit for the rest of us. Good job by the way, as she's quite full of herself.

in a quote, but is he on the right thread?

Well, it's true that a purely extensional logic, such as the Frege/Russell logic, is preferred by radical empiricists. And radical empiricism is ontologically atomist, and leads, in the social sciences, to methodological individualism. But you may have noticed that i rejected the Frege/Russell logic in my dispute with Rosa. I put forward relevance logic as an alternative. Relevance logic sees intrinsic connections in reality. But this is still not Hegelian "dialectics".

In regard to the dialectic of race and class, there are material advantages that white males have. I'm looking at things from an American point of view. There is no way that a class struggle politics can ignore the severe consequences of structural racism. It's structural in the sense that it isn't just in the realm of "ideology" or "consciousness," as some European anarchists seem to suppose. It's "structural" because there is an actual pattern of advantage from being white and male, and this undermines class consciousness in the USA. The demands of black workers, Latino workers, women help towards developing class consciousness because they force a break from the collusive relationships of much of the white male workforce with the bosses. You can't explain why the majority labor federation in the USA has not accepted any sort of anti-captialist perspective (not since the destruction of the Knights of Labor in the 1880s) unlike in European countries where the major labor federations during the 20th century became officially socialist (even if only a social-democratic form).

The Black Panther Party had various problems but it wasn't racist. It rejected black nationalism and sought white radical allies. It's problem had more to do with its authoritarian and vanguardist tendencies. It's lack of an orientation to workplace organizing reflected the fact that a very large part of the black working class has suffered from extreme structural unemployment. Thus they pursued a community organizing perspective, with things like breakfast for children programs.

t.

Gator:

Your are far too big a fibber for me to bother replying to anything you have to say.

RosaL: "Your are far too big a fibber for me to bother replying to anything you have to say."

And what is it i have lied about? if you can only resort to name-calling, this suggests your viewpoint is bankrupt.

t.

Wangwei:

And Hegel of course was a coal miner, was he?

But if you prefer to listen to a petty-bourgeois logical incompetent and arch mystic like Hegel, that's your problem.

However, the syntactic mess you posted suggests you know little or no logic at all, so you are in no position to judge. This merely confirms it:

Not so; it would only 'mean' what you say if propositions used to assert that this person was white contradicted those that could be used to assert the other things you say. The questions is, do they?

You have done nothing to show they do.

[Spinoza's 'principle', which you are attempting to employ here, is hopeless.

The logic you are using is also sub-Aristotelian.]

And this passage illustrates the damage these Hermetic ideas have done to your brain:

You are relying on the vagueness of language to make a banal observation (about what, though, I wasn't sure); if this is the 'beauty of dialectics' we can well do without it.

I am in fact a working-class woman, who holds down a full-time job, and who is a union representative (unpaid). Before that, I went back into college, paid for it myself, and got an excellent education in Philosophy, Logic and Mathematics -- which expertise I will now use to reduce this sub-Aristotelian theory of yours to dust.

Ignoramuses like you are no use to Marxism, or to my class.

But, now we get this old chestnut:

1) Not even Marx claimed this for his own work.

2) In fact he said the opposite: he noted in Capital that he had merely 'coquetted' with a few bits of Hegelian jargon (and only in one chapter of that great book) -- his words, not mine.

So that was the extent of the 'rational kernel': a few bits of jargon!

3) Lenin himself admitted there were passages in Hegel's 'Logic' he did not understand -- so that must mean that he did not understand Capital, either:

Notice that Lenin did not refer to just 99.9% of Hegel's Logic, but the "whole" of it.

Here is where he admits that he did not understand Hegel's 'Logic': Lenin (1961), pp.103, 108, 117, 229.

And there are several versions of that Logic (parts of which that were not published until after Lenin died, so he knew nothing of them); which logic and which version are you committed to?

You will now have to treat the 'Logic' like the Bible, and wait for a message from on high to help you out, I fear.

Brave words of faith from a true-believer, who has to ignore what Marx himself said to maintain this day-dream.

And your exasperation at not being able to justify your faith in this Hermetic religion is shown by the fact that you have to use scatological language to abuse me.

Well, scatological is an advance on dialectical, so we are getting somewhere I suppose.

He chose not to publish the Grundrisse, so whatever happened to his thoughts between writing that work and Capital, it meant he had by then decided that the only use the 'dialectic' had was to provide him with a few jargonised expressions, with which he merely 'coquetted'.

Again, pick a fight with Marx for ruining you faith, not me.

Eh?

Well, that is one possible interpretation, but the fact that he went on to say that the only use this 'mighty' thinker's work could serve was to provide him with a few bits of jargon (and only in one chapter of Capital), suggests that it is not correct.

That means my interpretation, based on his actual words (past tense, and 'coquetted') is closer to the truth, whereas yours is based on wish-fulfilment only.

Of course, we know you have solid ‘proof’ up your sleeve in the shape of abusive language, which, I have to say, is ever so impressive, and thoroughly scientific

Dialectical Marxism has.

If truth is tested in practice, then dialectics has been refuted by history.

Your head is pressed so far into the sand, I don't wonder you can't see this. [Is there a worker's state on the planet I haven't heard of? Perhaps one that was won by the use of Hegel’s ‘Logic’?]

But he used more words to do that, as you just did.

Ooops!

Eh?

You are getting quite desperate now, and increasingly incoherent:

Well, since no one understands this obscure doctrine (not Lenin, not Engels, not Plekhanov, not you), I am in good company.

How do I know this?

If you ask nicely, I might tell you.

But you will have to stop behaving like a ten year old first.

Think you can manage that?

No more tantrums…?

However, there's plenty more to get your knickers in a twist over, here:

http://homepage.ntlworld.com/rosa.l/

I do not debate with fibbers.