Karl Marx famously had many things to say about philosophy (often taking the form of convenient but potentially misleading bite-sized epigrams). Much of his work in the field of "thinking about thinking" was done in the mid 1840's when Marx was a precocious 20-something who was fresh out of university, perhaps still harbored hopes of an academic career, and remained somewhat under the spell of intellectual currents that had swept through the upcoming generation of German intelligentsia (a generation which more or less met an untimely end due to the harsh advent of political reaction at the end of the decade). Politically Marx had not completely escaped the sway of the rising bourgeoisie liberal sentiment.

Still, we don't say he was "precocious" for nothing as during this time he grappled with Proudhon, Grun and the "true socialists", egoism (Stirner), amongst many other run-ins (including Bakunin/anarchism) besides. The 40s were for him an intellectual crucible that would be mirrored by the political crucible that closed the decade. Marx was a whirlwind during this period, which culminated with the Manifesto and the beginning of his radical journalistic career (and ended with his bitter exile).

The only trouble is that there is much controversy regarding the relationship between his work in the 40s (a body of work generally termed Young Marx) and his more mature outputs that constitute orthodox Marxist canon (starting with the Manifesto). Latter day thinkers wishing to take a more "philosophical" turn see a downhill path where Marx peaks early and then burns less brightly over time. There are many theories to explain this: perhaps Marx "forgot" his own earlier work, perhaps his relationship with the coarse Engels led him far astray. Perhaps Engels as his executor un/intentionally "corrupted" and/or "misinterpreted" Marx. Perhaps Marx hit a lull but then returned to form later such as when he declared himself "a pupil of that great thinker" (ie Hegel, whilst preparing Capital vol I)

None of these "theories" are grounded in anything but the self-serving fancies of their creators. All such 'conjectures' are patently and provably false..and disingenuous. The issue is simple and unavoidable: was Marx a revolutionary or not? The answer for us is an emphatic, resouding yes. This fact casts the study of "how he got there" in a different light: rather than a possible ending point -- by denying or deemphasizing the rest of his career -- it must be a point of departure.

Thus, we can and should approach the subject of Young Marx with an open mind but we should also be aware of the CAUTION: DANGER AHEAD signs posted on the roads.

Our first order of business is to determine what Marx actually did say on the subject. From there we can "unpack" those statements and look to follow the strands of logic that he followed to arrive at the conclusions he did. Finally we can ask if these matters retained the same importance for Marx that he attached to them at the time..or if perhaps estimations changed over time (if so, how?).

Ultimately, this leads up to the question: (why) is this important for us now?

We already have a strong hint to point us in the right direction. Marxism as a science is characterized by a HIGHLY developed theoretical framework..this is in fact what marks it as a science. Each link in the chain of developing Marxism is integral to the whole of Marxism and must be verified most thoroughly with the utmost rigor. These things are hardly possible without a consistent logic (for which the formal Aristotelian variety does not suffice) and the most advanced possible world view.

How we procure those two things is a story unto itself..

Which of Hegel's work will we start with? I should probably start reading (I am slow).

Which of Hegel's work will we start with? I should probably start reading (I am slow).

Well, that wouldn't be slow that would be..glacial :)

Anax told me once that in retrospect, the historical trajectory of thinking appears to be an uninterrupted chain or a conversation playing out over time and generations. This holds true despite the many quirks or blindspots of any given thinker in the chain -- for instance, Engels once compared the complex and elaborate system Hegel constructed to an abortion, despite his great respect for Hegel's intellectual contributions.

Hegel is situated in a place of prominence within the historical conversation because he arrives at a point of crisis where it is openly in question whether the "queen of the sciences" could, even in principle, maintain her throne..not only because it is besieged by the empirical/natural sciences but also because its own status as a science had been cast into grave doubt.

This was the work of Kant, Hegel's immediate predecessor from our perspective(in the sense that Hegel was "replying" to Kant). The issue that shook philosophy to its knees was the fact that thinking was necessarily grounded on empirical data and observations.

How, exactly, was that possible? How could thinking/logic/reason enjoy any primacy over the natural sciences if it was wholly dependent on them for its content? Worse, how could sensory data be trusted, given that it came from an external source? How could one verify the legitimacy of that source? How could one even *probe* that source? So long as nature and cognition were separated, the problem seemed intractable. One could devise clever systems that side-stepped the problem (such as Spinoza who melded God and Nature into a unitary "substance") but these invariably appealed to the Divine.

And, while philosophy might be able to entertain/survive clandestine overtures to the heavens, it was beyond clear that explicit appeals in that direction were not a solution but a capitulation (to religion).

Kant responded by deepening and completing the cleavage: the phenomenal world (senses) was but a depiction of the transcendental world. In this sense there is not one world but two, one of which is a vulgar imitation of the other. This was the only logical path forward given that consciousness and matter are separate things. The alternative, that consciousness and matter are not separate things but fundamentally the same, is untenable because it simply cedes the field to physics/mechanics which held unchallenged hegemony within the domain of matter.

Mechanics, in turn, did not escape the problem as to how *it* could be grounded. If Newton had formalized cause and effect, the question of the underlying reasoning was left open (to some extent this was the original occasioning of the dictum "Shut up and calculate"). In addition, it failed to answer the ancient Skeptics who insisted "what is the cause of the cause?" (and one can repeat this exercise ad infinitum). Newton ultimately retreated to the idea of the First Cause which was exempted from itself requiring a cause -- and which was largely conceived to be God (or at least "His" divine finger/spark)

Hegel did not accept any of these developments as scientific. And it was this premise that drove him toward the system-building that Engels later termed "a colossal miscarriage"..but it also steered him toward an entirely different model of how things develop: the dialectic. The latter, the dialectic, was a progressive development, while the former represented the last ditch effort to save philsophy-as-such.

As we shall see, all subsequent denials of Hegel's conclusion that his radical approach was the only method of saving philosophy amount to one sticking his fingers in his ears and sing songing "I can't hear you".

It seems that Hegel took the "first cause" crap and turned it upside down. It wasn't that everything stemmed from an immaterial (spiritual) first cause, it was the opposite: everything was progressing through dialectics toward a spiritual completion or something. Human society was developing toward some kind of cosmic consciousness! I guess that came from Hegel's idealism?

Anyway, maybe my mind is too simple or something, but the self-consciousness of the self and the self-consciousness of the other leading to lord and slave? I don't see that. Like I say, my approach is no doubt baser, but one group subjecting another strikes me as far down the road from the development of consciousness. I may be too "classical" and need help.

It seems that Hegel took the "first cause" crap and turned it upside down. It wasn't that everything stemmed from an immaterial (spiritual) first cause, it was the opposite: everything was progressing through dialectics toward a spiritual completion or something. Human society was developing toward some kind of cosmic consciousness! I guess that came from Hegel's idealism?

Anyway, maybe my mind is too simple or something, but the self-consciousness of the self and the self-consciousness of the other leading to lord and slave? I don't see that. Like I say, my approach is no doubt baser, but one group subjecting another strikes me as far down the road from the development of consciousness. I may be too "classical" and need help.

The problem with me, girls, and Hegel is all the same: we talk a lot ;) Hegel said so many different things that he is susceptible to just about any interpretation along the idealist spectrum. The trick is to ignore the (copious) distractions and find the kernel in Hegel that is NOT a metaphysical form of idealism (because, believe it or not, that is what Hegel was writing against). Thus our reading -- and this is how Marx takes up the mantle as well -- can more or less ignore the subject/object paradigm (except as a footnote regarding the later retreat from Marx to exactly that perspective..ESPECIALLY on the part of Western Marxists).

So we are after something a little different than an understanding of Hegel's system -- we are trying to divulge how he advanced logic (thinking about thinking) to the point that Marx got his hands on it and upended it (which, ironically, turned it right side up).

The dialectic takes the stage as the key to self-grounding. Hegel's Phenomenology of Spirit is NOT merely a chronicle of the development of Spirit/Geist -- he does that much more straightforwardly later in the Philosophy of Spirit (and, arguably, in the parallel Philosophy of Nature from the same Encyclopedia). Instead, Hegel sets the task of making the case that philosophy MUST be systematic and it must be self-grounding and self-determining (which basically forces it to be systematic since there is no other source for it to incorporate ad hoc/non-system elements). Hegel is adamant that there is no other way than his for philosophy to be scientific (and thus his project is entirely synonymous with "saving philsophy" since if it is not scientific it is religion..worth noting this conclusion because in one fell swoop Hegel has dismissed much of the Idealism that previously constituted philosophy).

How does the dialectic serve Hegel's purpose? Hegel says that undifferentiation (being and nothing or non-being) has an INTERNAL contradiction (here we would enter into the realm of subject/object and consciousness that you allude to..and, which, with a mischievous grin, I am going to proceed to ignore entirely..even taking great pains to do so). This internal contradiction doesn't simply fester -- it acts as a MOTIVE force toward its own resolution because the idea is rational and contradiction is an element of irrationality which is impermissible. However, any resolution is only partial in the sense that overcoming one contradiction invariably produces others. This is because, at each successive stage, its determination is incomplete. On a more grandiose scale, the determination is incomplete because it is not plainly self-motivated. Even self-recognition is not enough (a la the Master/Slave paradigm) because this lacks a certain determination. Only when the idea recognizes its own CREATIVE power of determination (ie that nothing else but itself is doing the determining) does it complete itself.

That is the nutshell version of how Hegel did away with transcendentalism, a priori reasoning, and God and why he said he HAD to do so for the "science of science" to even exist.

EDIT: there is one other point that has to be dispensed with. It is intertwined with further concepts that have not been introduced here but this is as good a place as any to mention it.

In addition to everything else, Hegel also denies that consciousness is the source of cognition for the idea/logic/rationality. This is because logic has to be SELF-grounded or you can't trust it (any external source is ultimately God/transcendent/illicit-unfounded). The mind/matter schism goes away with a whimper in this formulation since consciousness is removed from logic by pointing out that consciousness is not synonymous with the idea and therefore can't condition the idea.

Personally I don't have a problem with ceding the field to physical sciences. It seems this is a problem for the philosopher's trade. What is the advantage in superseding verifiable science?

Who want to save philosophy anyways? Besides philosophers...

Is this a solution looking for a problem?

Humbug.

(FYI, I've just ordered ' Introduction to Hegel - A Graphic Guide)

Personally I don't have a problem with ceding the field to physical sciences. It seems this is a problem for the philosopher's trade. What is the advantage in superseding verifiable science?

Who want to save philosophy anyways? Besides philosophers...

Is this a solution looking for a problem?

We're getting there. The key thing to remember is that Hegel's goals are not our goals. What is more, science does not exist in a vacuum..hence bourgeoisie science is founded on the ruling premises of bourgeoisie society. This does not necessarily invalidate its empirical results but it renders the enterprise suspect in its interpretations, dictums, and applications, narrow-mindedness, limitations, and scope.

Hegel scored a lasting and indelible blow against mechanics -- this is what Marx refers to when he says that materialism has developed only passively while it was left to idealism to develop the active dimension. As we know, Marx is ultimately after a science of society -- which bourgeoisie science proved (and continues to prove) singularly unable to obtain. Marx wants to know how it is that society does not simply repeat like a pendulum or celestial body or any other object of mechanical investigation -- it advances. (this is the active dimension and this is where his dialectic emerges).

In essence, you are asking: why all the fuss? This is a perfectly sensible question but it is important to realize that the "fuss" is critical to developing the kind of materialism we've pledged our allegiance to.


(FYI, I've just ordered ' Introduction to Hegel - A Graphic Guide)

Ha, I had a true laugh out loud moment when I realized the thrust of this bit of irreverence. GWF Hegel: The Comic Book. You get any more subtle and I'm gonna have to start taking aricept again to keep up :)

Ha, I had a true laugh out loud moment when I realized the thrust of this bit of irreverence. GWF Hegel: The Comic Book.

I ain't laughing, I'm going to order one, too.

I am really, eagerly, waiting to see how "we" are going to push through 'The Hegel' and find those kernels you speak of. I will continue to plow through "Phenom o' Spirit" until I am directed elsewhere.

Do the kernels pop out at you? Because, I don't think they do for me.

In essence, you are asking: why all the fuss? This is a perfectly sensible question but it is important to realize that the "fuss" is critical to developing the kind of materialism we've pledged our allegiance to.



Gonna have to do better, that still looks like an answer in search of a question. Why shouldn't we study this question in the manner that we study ecology?

As is sometimes the case, you credit me too much:

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1848312083?keywords=introduction%20to%20hegel%20graphic%20guide&qid=1443813301&ref_=sr_1_fkmr2_1&s=books&sr=1-1-fkmr2

I'm going the extra mile, bub.

I ain't laughing, I'm going to order one, too.

I am really, eagerly, waiting to see how "we" are going to push through 'The Hegel' and find those kernels you speak of. I will continue to plow through "Phenom o' Spirit" until I am directed elsewhere.

Do the kernels pop out at you? Because, I don't think they do for me.

We already did the kernel..

No God, no Ideals (=transcendentals/thing-in-itself), no omni Consciousness or Shadow World, no First Cause or..

..so what ARE we left with?

Only Logic, allowed to develop on its own basis -- followed by a desperate rearguard action to preserve any shred of the discipline that had arrived tattered and bloodied at this point (we can skip that part although it has a few high notes that are nice to be aware of)

The fact that this Logic is held separate and apart -- detached -- from reality functions as proof that philosophy isn't quite dead yet. We need to twist the knife a little more. But it ain't gonna hop outta bed and run a marathon either -- lets say its on a ventilator at this point.

EDIT: as soon as I'm past Hegel's part of the story I'm going to start putting up Marx and Lenin quotes. Hegel quotes are too confusing. My goal is to convince you this undertaking is not voodoo -- or if it is, its the same kind of voodoo Marx and Lenin were practicing.

Gonna have to do better, that still looks like an answer in search of a question. Why shouldn't we study this question in the manner that we study ecology?

As is sometimes the case, you credit me too much:

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1848312083?keywords=introduction to hegel graphic guide&qid=1443813301&ref_=sr_1_fkmr2_1&s=books&sr=1-1-fkmr2

I'm going the extra mile, bub.

Most of the material covered in the book is going to be academic at this point. Anax's "10 pages of Hegel is all we need" comment isn't *that* far off.


Why shouldn't we study this question in the manner that we study ecology?

Knowledge does not necessarily or automatically confer understanding. This is illustrated by the fact that one can produce reams and reams of telling statistics about capitalism..without knowing what it is they tell us. This theme is reinforced when we recognize that many of the quantifications represent FORMS that mask the underlying relationships (hence prices do not immediately correspond to value and not at all on the individual level). In fact, it is not clear that one could start at prices (the phenomenal level) and ever arrive at a theory of value. Marx sums up when he says that if reality conformed to appearances, then there would be no science -- reality would be immediate (ie without mediation).

There are more "layers" than you think..

Most of the material covered in the book is going to be academic at this point. Anax's "10 pages of Hegel is all we need" comment is *that* far off.



Knowledge does not necessarily or automatically confer understanding. This is illustrated by the fact that one can produce reams and reams of telling statistics about capitalism..without knowing what it is they tell us. This theme is reinforced when we recognize that many of the quantifications represent FORMS that mask the underlying relationships (hence prices do not immediately correspond to value and not at all on the individual level). In fact, it is not clear that one could start at prices (the phenomenal level) and ever arrive at a theory of value. Marx sums up when he says that if reality conformed to appearances, then there would be no science -- reality would be immediate (ie without mediation).

There are more "layers" than you think..

Ok, now you're getting somewhere. I think you might eventually come up with the LTV but not in a minute, more like generations as work is continually refined and blind alleys, inadequate conclusions and wizzbang explanations are dismissed. And of course, given the weight that these questions have relevant to functioning society there would be much monkey business such as we see whenever science threatens the ruling class's pockets today. Could be that Darwin only got wide acceptance because he could be perverted to ruling class usage.

Could be that Darwin only got wide acceptance because he could be perverted to ruling class usage.

That's kind of the thing - Darwin wasn't "perverted". He was practicing bourgeois science. The only reason it took so long for his findings to register is the hangover of huge religious edifices and the lag of technology. Really by the end of the 19th century any scientist worth his salt (and the few her salts) accepted his findings and were working on refining the theory - testing the evidence and tracing its predictive capacity. The science is paid for by the bourgeoisie because it is vital to development, technology, and progress - on their terms.


And of course, given the weight that these questions have relevant to functioning society there would be much monkey business such as we see whenever science threatens the ruling class's pockets today

This is dead-on.

That's kind of the thing - Darwin wasn't "perverted". He was practicing bourgeois science. The only reason it took so long for his findings to register is the hangover of huge religious edifices and the lag of technology. Really by the end of the 19th century any scientist worth his salt (and the few her salts) accepted his findings and were working on refining the theory - testing the evidence and tracing its predictive capacity. The science is paid for by the bourgeoisie because it is vital to development, technology, and progress - on their terms.



This is dead-on.

What I had in mind was Social Darwinism. The utility of that perversion was immense, giving "scientific" justification for ruling class dominance and imperialism. To be sure, Darwin was immersed in booj society where such assumptions were more than happy to have science join god in celebrating their "natural" superiorty. But, best of my knowledge Darwin never 'went there'.

Sadly, Wallace did 'go there', that petty booj Presbyterian Scotsman carried these assumptions, which were often presaged in his great work, 'The Malay Archipelago', into his later life, making a hateful fool of himself. Engels sure had his lunch.

Let me try a different tack. Perhaps the initial mistake was mine because despite the thread title, this was not particularly going to be a thread starring GWF Hegel.

How about a bit of reverse engineering. What do you guys think about the subjects of logic, thinking, materialism, world views, and related? Do you feel these are straightforward topics of little interest? Does that contention not belie much of the theoretical and practical content of Marxism and particularly of Marx, Engels, and Lenin themselves?

On the other hand, if those topics are of some significance, where do you locate the starting point to discuss them?

On the other hand, if those topics are of some significance, where do you locate the starting point to discuss them?

I would say materialism would be the starting point. No one, and I mean no one, is a materialist - at least consciously. I can't remember the last time I have read a history book or an economic book or a philosophical book where the author was a thorough-going materialist. I just finished a book on the economy of Ancient Greece and the author spent most of the first chapter explaining how slavery was not the basis of the "misnamed" "slave societies" and how slave did not constitute a "class" because (get this) they were not considered citizens. He mentions Marx by way of how some have mistaken ancient societies for modern ones because of some sort of anachronistic misunderstanding. Then he goes on for fourteen chapters - exclusively about slavery. He also says that since he can show that slaves and citizens were grouped into numerous and varied "strata" and that disproves "classes". His book is heavily footnoted and is without doubt scholarly, but to paraphrase Plekhanov - "all of the factors are correct, but without the materialist basis, they become skewed."

Sorry, this has bugged me for a couple of days - kinda' got it off my chest. Let's start doing it.

I ain't doing this for pleasure, therefore I favor a direct and practical approach. We do this because we percieve the necessity of a revolution and Marx has provided the means for a scientific understanding the what and why. (Lenin, the when & how)

At some level all of that is relevant and might be referred to as necessary, I am not sure that it is necessary at the level we are operating to expend effort on that 'higher level' stuff(mebbe I got that wrong). If I am trying to solve a problem of evolutionary theory intimate knowledge of molecular biology will not be helpful, though MB nonetheless is the basis of all I do. So I think Dhalgren is right, materialism is a level of understanding which is practical, understanding history and even introducing some degree of prediction.

Ya shouldn't have waved Hegel around, a red flag for some of us old bull-heads. Shit, now I got that damn picture book coming.

So then, materialism, and that must mean dead Greeks, Democritus and especially Epicurus.

So then, materialism, and that must mean dead Greeks, Democritus and especially Epicurus.

And Heraclitus, and maybe a little Zeno to round things out (he-he). Then, at some point, the dead Rooskies, again.

I ain't doing this for pleasure, therefore I favor a direct and practical approach. We do this because we percieve the necessity of a revolution and Marx has provided the means for a scientific understanding the what and why. (Lenin, the when & how)

At some level all of that is relevant and might be referred to as necessary, I am not sure that it is necessary at the level we are operating to expend effort on that 'higher level' stuff(mebbe I got that wrong). If I am trying to solve a problem of evolutionary theory intimate knowledge of molecular biology will not be helpful, though MB nonetheless is the basis of all I do. So I think Dhalgren is right, materialism is a level of understanding which is practical, understanding history and even introducing some degree of prediction.

Ya shouldn't have waved Hegel around, a red flag for some of us old bull-heads. Shit, now I got that damn picture book coming.

So then, materialism, and that must mean dead Greeks, Democritus and especially Epicurus.

The reason that we dig (a little ways) into foundations is because we are at the moment where those foundations are precisely what are being forgotten and/or undercut -- even, in many cases, by well-meaning (which isn't really a thing) leftists.

Real sensuous activity -- where practice and the intellect are finally seen as inseparably conjoined -- is indeed the motivating force of human society (materialism). However, this was an immense discovery and not simply a common place that was criminally overlooked until Marx came along. In particular, it possess an inner logic of its own (the dialectic).

The dialectic, of course, was originally conceived in an entirely different context. Materialism, as well, also changed dramatically to accommodate and come into accord with the the new discoveries. Yet these two advances are barely recognized let alone acknowledged in the present day.

Not coming to terms with this state of affairs can only result in substitutionism. For which there is little else to turn to but empiricism, which is mostly imported whole without any notable alterations. For many pragmatic purposes, nothing more is required -- but failure to supersede this perspective nevertheless represents a dangerous degradation.

Feuerbach for example, took the enormous stride of declaring that God does not create man; Man creates god. This however does not go far enough because, quite literally, the roles are merely reversed. The wrong type of abstraction still prevails.

Following this general line of thought to its end is very important because we are trying to weaponize critical thinking.

The reason that we dig (a little ways) into foundations is because we are at the moment where those foundations are precisely what are being forgotten and/or undercut -- even, in many cases, by well-meaning (which isn't really a thing) leftists.

Real sensuous activity -- where practice and the intellect are finally seen as inseparably conjoined -- is indeed the motivating force of human society (materialism). However, this was an immense discovery and not simply a common place that was criminally overlooked until Marx came along. In particular, it possess an inner logic of its own (the dialectic).

The dialectic, of course, was originally conceived in an entirely different context. Materialism, as well, also changed dramatically to accommodate and come into accord with the the new discoveries. Yet these two advances are barely recognized let alone acknowledged in the present day.

Not coming to terms with this state of affairs can only result in substitutionism. For which there is little else to turn to but empiricism, which is mostly imported whole without any notable alterations. For many pragmatic purposes, nothing more is required -- but failure to supersede this perspective nevertheless represents a dangerous degradation.

Feuerbach for example, took the enormous stride of declaring that God does not create man; Man creates god. This however does not go far enough because, quite literally, the roles are merely reversed. The wrong type of abstraction still prevails.

Following this general line of thought to its end is very important because we are trying to weaponize critical thinking.

I'm afraid I remain unconvinced as to the utility of abstract logic in the pursuit of revolution. For example, I do not understand what I bolded above, do not understand the relevance of the first paragraph, do not see what's wrong with Feuerbach's statement, nor why it should matter.

Nonetheless, do continue, perhaps an 'aha!' moment will occur, I'll pester you until you can make it plain to a six year old.

Just on a practical level, there is an almost constant error made by nearly everyone when dealing with materialism - especially dialectical materialism. One of the complaints you read or hear all the time is that dialectical materialism does not take into account other sources of change and movement in history; i.e. 'social development', 'individual human action', 'natural phenomenon', to name a few. The error is that all of those listed "oversights" arte subsumed in materialism. The "dialectic" part is the method by which material existence develops. Everything falls within material existence - there is nothing else. The dialectic is not active in just the "overall" development of existence, it is at work in every divisible part of existence down to the sub-quark level and up to the universal level. When anyone tries to say that this or that aspect of this or that is not covered by dialectical materialism, they do not understand what they are taking about.

I have seen variations on this misunderstanding of dialectics and it always puzzles me: does the speaker just simply not understand dialectics or does he/she understand and willfully misinform? I tend to lean toward the latter, but that is a little on the CT side. I don't know, but it is a persistent phenomenon.

Just as a humorous aside, I was reading this philosophy book "for the masses" called "The Living Philosophies", published in 1947. It is pretty good as far as being easy to read, but when it got to dialectical materialism, it became sorta funny. Up until the section on dialectical materialism the author was pretty good and neutral. His run down of materialism and its slight variations were good. But when he gets to dialectical materialism it just goes downhill. He talks about the above listed "exceptions" to dialectic, but he then launches into an anti-communist jag; about how communism is both dictatorial and oppressive of human rights and freedoms. No examples given, just the bald statements, I guess 'nough said.

So I'm halfway thru the Hegel comic book. Initially biographical, we are getting into the meat of it and my mind reels, mentally seasick.

Concerning the 'Stations of the Cross': as a Catholic schoolboy it was mandatory to attend these ceremonies at the end of every school day during Holy Week. I invariably got nauseous from the incense. Here we go again. Forgive me but it seems this guy is just making up shit.

So I come to these two paraphrases(dangerous, I know) talking about two kinds of logic:


Kant:

1. The analytic logic of understanding which focusses the data of sense-experience to yield knowledge of the natural phenomenal world.

2. The dialectic logic of understanding which operates independently of sense-experience and erroneouslyprofesses to give knowledge of the transcendent noumena("things in themselves" or also the "infinite' or the "whole").


Hegel:

1. Analytic understanding is only adequate for natural science and practical everyday life, not for philosophy.

2. Dialectic reason is not concerned with Kant's "transcendent", nor with the abstract "mutilated" parts of reality, but with reality as a totality, and therefore gives true knowledge.

"True" knowledge? I smell a blowhard. To me, the operative: "operates independently of sense-experience". Mebbe I'm just a dumb animal but what else is there?

I've been familiar with the dialectic of ecology for half a century, similar but not the same.

You're gonna really regret that title, Kid.

I used to enjoy reading...gimme that shovel, back to the stables.

So I'm halfway thru the Hegel comic book. Initially biographical, we are getting into the meat of it and my mind reels, mentally seasick.

Concerning the 'Stations of the Cross': as a Catholic schoolboy it was mandatory to attend these ceremonies at the end of every school day during Holy Week. I invariably got nauseous from the incense. Here we go again. Forgive me but it seems this guy is just making up shit.

So I come to these two paraphrases(dangerous, I know) talking about two kinds of logic:





"True" knowledge? I smell a blowhard. To me, the operative: "operates independently of sense-experience". Mebbe I'm just a dumb animal but what else is there?

I've been familiar with the dialectic of ecology for half a century, similar but not the same.

You're gonna really regret that title, Kid.

I used to enjoy reading...gimme that shovel, back to the stables.

Here is the way I look at it (and, of course, I could be so wrong that the Kid will just ignore me outa pure embarrassment): The dialectical is to materialism (and the becoming of everything) as natural selection is to evolution. This may be too simplistic or plain wrong, but it is how I grasp it. Reality, material existence, is in a constant state of change. It never stops, it is in total transition, at all times. Dialectics is what "drives" this constant change, it is the motor, the thing that keeps things moving on the level of total existence.
When we try and look at things materialistically, we analyze the situation, the 'occurrences' using the dialectic. In this way we can discern the movements, their causes and come to understand the likely direction of movement.

This makes sense to me, but I can't be sure if it actually makes sense - I guess I'll find out.

I served the Stations many times. That cross gets damn heavy after a while and those last few Stations are a draaaaaag

Anyway, I'm not sure if what your book says or what Dhalgren says is valid or not (or to what extent)..I am only sure that it is all beside the point.

You can't really build a schema to explain the "Universe" using philosophy (or as quantum scientist Chris Fuchs puts it-- Nature says "I can't stop you from interpreting me in that way..but please don't").

At any rate, the dialectic is not the same thing as Geist for Hegel (I know Anax feels that Geist is a problematic concept because in English it is almost impossible not lapse into thinking of it as Ghost/Spirit) -- the dialectic is INTERNAL if for no other reason than the contradictions are internal. That is an important aspect of *self*-motivation. External contradictions lead us in a very different direction (eg, Bukharin partly came to espouse the NEP based on a rejection of the "voodoo" of Hegel -- because to the jaundiced Western eye Hegel was an embarrassing dingle-berry on Marxism. NB the NEP was premised on the idea of suppressing conflict even at serious cost to socialist construction).

What we're going for is more like this: it is much easier to sway the future when you have the ability to anticipate it. Funny thing, the capitalist class mostly subscribes to the opposite idea:: it is much easier to anticipate the future when you have the power to sway it (ie "we make history, you just write about it afterwards").

Here is the way I look at it (and, of course, I could be so wrong that the Kid will just ignore me outa pure embarrassment): The dialectical is to materialism (and the becoming of everything) as natural selection is to evolution. This may be too simplistic or plain wrong, but it is how I grasp it. Reality, material existence, is in a constant state of change. It never stops, it is in total transition, at all times. Dialectics is what "drives" this constant change, it is the motor, the thing that keeps things moving on the level of total existence.
When we try and look at things materialistically, we analyze the situation, the 'occurrences' using the dialectic. In this way we can discern the movements, their causes and come to understand the likely direction of movement.

This makes sense to me, but I can't be sure if it actually makes sense - I guess I'll find out.

The utility of it is the main thing.

It is a way of looking at things that is about second nature to me, cousin gave me his BSCS Green Version HS Bio text when I was ten. Perhaps all the fuss about it confuses me. I think I can use this wrench without knowing metallurgy. But what bothers me is the implication, all the wacked out shit is part and parcel of this evil fucker's 'system'. Other than the dialectic we don't need Hegel, I don't think. Let Kid proceed, make his case and I'm gonna keep at this comic book cause people seem to think it's important even though I got my doubts. And it gives me something to complain about and annoy Kid.

Sure it is a tool, and like any tool, it it best used in the hands of an expert/specialist. And not everybody needs to know how to rebuild a transmission.


However, Lenin says that the (principal!) duty of every revolutionary is to inform the masses of a revolutionary situation. Unless we assume that a stock revolutionary situation exists at all times, this begs many questions: what constitutes a revolutionary situation, how is it identified, why does it come into effect? We need some serious firepower to answer those questions --and Lenin is clear that most of a revolutionary's duties are performed in NON-revolutionary times: in preparation for the pivotal moment. When it comes it presents a test of our preparation, dedication, sophistication, and effort level.

Lenin says every cook must learn to govern the state. Perhaps we may follow that up by adding that every grease monkey must come to understand the negation of the negation. (how do you think I got my start ;)?)

Sure it is a tool, and like any tool, it it best used in the hands of an expert/specialist. And not everybody needs to know how to rebuild a transmission.


However, Lenin says that the (principal!) duty of every revolutionary is to inform the masses of a revolutionary situation. Unless we assume that a stock revolutionary situation exists at all times, this begs many questions: what constitutes a revolutionary situation, how is it identified, why does it come into effect? We need some serious firepower to answer those questions --and Lenin is clear that most of a revolutionary's duties are performed in NON-revolutionary times: in preparation for the pivotal moment. When it comes it presents a test of our preparation, dedication, sophistication, and effort level.

Lenin says every cook must learn to govern the state. Perhaps we may follow that up by adding that every grease monkey must come to understand the negation of the negation. (how do you think I got my start ;)?)

Fine, so convince me that all this 'negation of the negation' crap is more than pretentious navel gazing. Cause while I guess it ain't I can't make heads nor tails of it. Something concrete, cause 'being' and 'becoming' sounds like so much shit to me. How do you apply this? If ya can't I don't see the point.

At least with Epicurus ya got something useful.

Fine, so convince me that all this 'negation of the negation' crap is more than pretentious navel gazing. Cause while I guess it ain't I can't make heads nor tails of it. Something concrete, cause 'being' and 'becoming' sounds like so much shit to me. How do you apply this? If ya can't I don't see the point.

At least with Epicurus ya got something useful.

Without the negation of the negation, the dialectic is inert.

Still, don't think that my intention here is to declare philosophy dead only to toast the health of philosophy. Marx wrote something similar once -- Revolution is dead; Long live the Revolution! -- in the aftermath of '48. And I'm quite sure he was being intentionally "dialectical" (and a bit of smartass).

Instead, I am trying to show you the culmination of millenia of Thinking About Thinking and then show you why it was essentially self-defeating. That serves as the launching pad to examine the retinue of idealists who continue to swear fealty to the deposed Queen of the Sciences. These are not a small suite of retainers -- these are the scores of bourgeoisie apologists, hangers on, functionaries, and true believers. The breadth of its (baleful) influence belies its decrepitude and also its impotence.

Hegel's intervention to save the patient flatlined the patient (vegetative state) -- everything since has just been Weekend at Bernie's skits and debates about whether to remove the feeding tube. Thats what is meant by the phrase "Philosophy didn't die with Hegel..but it should have".

Still, sometimes I can't tell if you guys have restless leg syndrome, cold feet, or both. An entirely separate issue that you are pressing is the fact that Hegel DID make key advances (including the much ballyhooed dialectic) and the fact that by rejecting much of what was passed down to him as inadmissible IN PRINCIPLE, he dispensed with quite a large swath of idealist pap right then and there (which for us is a helpful service).

What remains is to demystify the dialectic which is basically a matter of going back to Hegel's radical conclusions and finding the place where they collapse on themselves. If you read your Lenin, that place is his (Lenin's) Reflection Theory (often referred to as the Correspondence theory -- ie "thought corresponds to reality"). Of course, Marx says the same thing but not, perhaps, in so many words.

Just on a practical level, there is an almost constant error made by nearly everyone when dealing with materialism - especially dialectical materialism. One of the complaints you read or hear all the time is that dialectical materialism does not take into account other sources of change and movement in history; i.e. 'social development', 'individual human action', 'natural phenomenon', to name a few. The error is that all of those listed "oversights" arte subsumed in materialism. The "dialectic" part is the method by which material existence develops. Everything falls within material existence - there is nothing else. The dialectic is not active in just the "overall" development of existence, it is at work in every divisible part of existence down to the sub-quark level and up to the universal level. When anyone tries to say that this or that aspect of this or that is not covered by dialectical materialism, they do not understand what they are taking about.

I mostly agree with this, although it is important not to make a fetish (ie objectify) of the dialectic. Thinking develops (advances) dialectically. What then comes into question is the nature of the relationship between thinking and Nature (external reality). If thinking truly corresponds to reality then Nature must also develop dialectically. Most Hegel scholars end by denying such a correspondence.

Interestingly, Hegel himself does not issue such a denial -- he actually locates the completion of the dialectic in civil society (and a particular civil society at that!). Hegel takes a long and winding path through Nature itself to arrive at his final destination -- its just that the works he does this in are amongst his least studied and are mostly ignored or outright dismissed as poppycock.

It is clear that merely denying a correspondence theory is untenable -- decoupling Thought and Nature completely leads back to pre-Hegel philosophy which has already been sliced to ribbons. Hegel endeavors to show that supposing the separation of Thought and Nature dialectically leads to their unity (interpenetration of opposites --and you thought that was just a bawdy term!)

Even though his attempt ultimately ends with guffaws all around, even in this he nevertheless sees further than his pale imitators and disciples, and would be interpreters.

In one of his (deservedly) least celebrated works, Marx reminds us that a dwarf on a pedestal still can't see very far. Well, Hegel was no dwarf. Marx truly did stand on the shoulders of giants although I would rather press the point in other arenas than philosophy.

Without the negation of the negation, the dialectic is inert.

Still, don't think that my intention here is to declare philosophy dead only to toast the health of philosophy. Marx wrote something similar once -- Revolution is dead; Long live the Revolution! -- in the aftermath of '48. And I'm quite sure he was being intentionally "dialectical" (and a bit of smartass).

Instead, I am trying to show you the culmination of millenia of Thinking About Thinking and then show you why it was essentially self-defeating. That serves as the launching pad to examine the retinue of idealists who continue to swear fealty to the deposed Queen of the Sciences. These are not a small suite of retainers -- these are the scores of bourgeoisie apologists, hangers on, functionaries, and true believers. The breadth of its (baleful) influence belies its decrepitude and also its impotence.

Hegel's intervention to save the patient flatlined the patient (vegetative state) -- everything since has just been Weekend at Bernie's skits and debates about whether to remove the feeding tube. Thats what is meant by the phrase "Philosophy didn't die with Hegel..but it should have".

Still, sometimes I can't tell if you guys have restless leg syndrome, cold feet, or both. An entirely separate issue that you are pressing is the fact that Hegel DID make key advances (including the much ballyhooed dialectic) and the fact that by rejecting much of what was passed down to him as inadmissible IN PRINCIPLE, he dispensed with quite a large swath of idealist pap right then and there (which for us is a helpful service).

What remains is to demystify the dialectic which is basically a matter of going back to Hegel's radical conclusions and finding the place where they collapse on themselves. If you read your Lenin, that place is his (Lenin's) Reflection Theory (often referred to as the Correspondence theory -- ie "thought corresponds to reality"). Of course, Marx says the same thing but not, perhaps, in so many words.

Is it necessary for our purposes to 'demystify'? A big part of the 'mystery' is the terminolgy, it's all GEEK to me, with all that implies. Pompous and grandiose too.(To a degree that's to be expected, most anyone who has ever done 'anything' seems to think they've got the best thing since sliced bread.)

Instead of tossing about abstract terms let's have some concrete examples.

Instead of tossing about abstract terms let's have some concrete examples.

I have to agree with Brother Pig, here. For instance:


That serves as the launching pad to examine the retinue of idealists who continue to swear fealty to the deposed Queen of the Sciences. These are not a small suite of retainers -- these are the scores of bourgeoisie apologists, hangers on, functionaries, and true believers. The breadth of its (baleful) influence belies its decrepitude and also its impotence.

I think what you are saying, here, is that since so much of liberal/bourgeois ideology is couched in and supported by philosophies of one stripe or the other, and that since this stuff permeates everything we come in contact with in this society, therefore we should try and understand what underpins bourgeois ideology and so be better prepared to counter it.

One thing blindpig is objecting to ( am presuming, so correct me if I'm wrong), and I do as well, is the language. Not the terminology so much, as the language all this stuff is couched in. Why can't we discuss these issues the way an agronomist would discuss planting or cross pollination. Or the way a mechanic would discuss the best way to repair or put together a pulley system of a small engine.

When The Pig talks about "tools", he is talking about nuts and bolts issues, common parlance is needed. If you are using terms we don't understand, then gives us the definition and we'll plod along. It is the convolutedness of the language that confuses me - I think that's what Pig meant by "it's all GEEK to me." It is hard to follow.

Concrete examples?

"The history of all hitherto existing societies is the history of class struggle."

Surplus value as the heinous secret by which the capitalist exploits the proletariat and also as the real relation that underlies profits

The derivation of value, use value and exchange value as existing in an intricate interrelationship that is the true basis of the capitalist system of production

Parting the veil of commodity fetishism

Communism as the resolution of the antagonisms of class society whereby the final ruling class (the proletariat) abolishes itself and thence the entire rotten system

The necessity for each social system to be superseded in its turn as it ceases to be correspond to the reality of how society (re)produces itself (Hegel: the rational is the real; the real is the rational)

There is a reason no bourgeoisie thinker has ever arrived at any of these results, and it is not entirely a matter of ideological fog.

I think what you are saying, here, is that since so much of liberal/bourgeois ideology is couched in and supported by philosophies of one stripe or the other, and that since this stuff permeates everything we come in contact with in this society, therefore we should try and understand what underpins bourgeois ideology and so be better prepared to counter it.

It runs deeper than this. Lenin did not write Materialism and Empirio-criticism as an academic counter to moribund philosophers. The ideas of the ruling class are always the ruling ideas of society -- not only must the lie be put to these ideas, but a positive program must be built up in their stead. In particular, a positive program that opens up and allows for (the possibility of) Revolution.

Opportunism is everywhere and always an obstacle, guys. Staying on the straight and narrow is hard work.

You are right that delving into these matters is not a NEED (or even feasible) for the working class as a whole -- much as Anaxarchos once quipped that most Fosterites had no idea who William Z Foster was. However, that does not absent the leading edge of the proletariat from its responsibilities in this regard. If matters are obvious on their face, why Marx? There was a rich tradition of socialism before Marx after all.

None of what I am proposing is anathema to being a working joe either. Perhaps Anax put it more palatably when he said that "every man is a philosopher". Of course, I think he meant something closer to Philosophe, as in the thinkers of the Enlightenment who for the most part were not professional philosophers.

It runs deeper than this. Lenin did not write Materialism and Empirio-criticism to counter academic philosophers. The ideas of the ruling class are always the ruling ideas of society -- not only must the lie be put to these ideas, but a positive program must be built up in their stead. In particular, a positive program that opens up and allows the possibility of Revolution.

The only instance that I can think of off hand of the ruling class argument is the eternal appeal to 'human nature'. Easily refuted historically.

The ruling class ideas with which we contend do not present themselves in this form, they ain't exhuming Bill Buckley any time soon. And the working class wouldn't pay attention anyway. Today these ideas are 'stealthed' in the news, advertising, entertainment, along with education. Unlike the 19th and early 20th centuries there is no discourse other than academic. Access to the public's attention has been monopolized and I think we don't admit the extent of this problem. Don't know that we can afford to wait until the public's attention is focused thru inconveince and suffering.

If the likes of Zizek were relevant I could see the utility, though a punch in the nose would more satisfying in that case. Still, I can hypothetically see utility versus opportunist argument. But there ain't much point in in-fighting if there's nothing to fight over.

More I think about it, history, viewed through class analysis, provides a whole lot.

These are results, a still photo. I want an 'instructive video'(normally I much perfer text but in this case extreme measures are necessary).


The history of all hitherto existing societies is the history of class struggle."

How is this a result of dialectic reasoning?

How is this a result of dialectic reasoning?

History is not the story of Great Men or Nations of Destiny or any such bunk.

Here is Marx in the famous Chapter 32. Note that this is NOT the much criticized Grundrisse (panned for being "too philosophical")


At a certain stage of development, it brings forth the material agencies for its own dissolution. From that moment new forces and new passions spring up in the bosom of society; but the old social organisation fetters them and keeps them down. It must be annihilated; it is annihilated. Its annihilation, the transformation of the individualised and scattered means of production into socially concentrated ones, of the pigmy property of the many into the huge property of the few, the expropriation of the great mass of the people from the soil, from the means of subsistence, and from the means of labour, this fearful and painful expropriation of the mass of the people forms the prelude to the history of capital. It comprises a series of forcible methods, of which we have passed in review only those that have been epoch-making as methods of the primitive accumulation of capital. The expropriation of the immediate producers was accomplished with merciless Vandalism, and under the stimulus of passions the most infamous, the most sordid, the pettiest, the most meanly odious. Self-earned private property, that is based, so to say, on the fusing together of the isolated, independent labouring individual with the conditions of his labour, is supplanted by capitalistic private property, which rests on exploitation of the nominally free labour of others, i.e., on wage labour


The capitalist mode of appropriation, the result of the capitalist mode of production, produces capitalist private property. This is the first negation of individual private property, as founded on the labour of the proprietor. But capitalist production begets, with the inexorability of a law of Nature, its own negation. It is the negation of negation. This does not re-establish private property for the producer, but gives him individual property based on the acquisition of the capitalist era: i.e., on cooperation and the possession in common of the land and of the means of production.

The transformation of scattered private property, arising from individual labour, into capitalist private property is, naturally, a process, incomparably more protracted, violent, and difficult, than the transformation of capitalistic private property, already practically resting on socialised production, into socialised property. In the former case, we had the expropriation of the mass of the people by a few usurpers; in the latter, we have the expropriation of a few usurpers by the mass of the people.

https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1867-c1/ch32.htm


These are results, a still photo. I want an 'instructive video'

I humbly submit that you are being too doctrinaire in AVOIDING doctrine. The examples stand as still frames to you 1) because they have already been scientifically elaborated and 2) because you are willing to accept them without a deep level of inspection.

1) reflects a misunderstanding on how materialism shows itself in sensuous real world practice (you don't need dialectics to change an oil filter, you need an oil wrench) [Note: this is actually backwards, but here it would be too awkward to phrase it the other way 'round -- the question being how real sensuous practice manifests its materiality in thinking]

2) displays a peculiar prejudice that has proven very hard to unseat. You are sure that Marx is right but are uncomfortable with his "namby pamby" side and would rather pretend it doesn't exist since you feel it is so much crap. (and I'm not talking about the Paris Manuscripts here -- where you might have a case -- the same thing is in evidence in the passages I quoted from Capital Vol I).

The thing is, Marx is MUCH more puissant than you assume. When he is locked in, every sentence functions like a cross hair for zeroing in on his target. Marx had a division of labor within his own works -- in his lesser writings he let out all of his self-indulgence like a supernova. In his careful, focused works he is a clinical assassin.

For this reason alone (and there are many others), your operating thesis cannot be correct. Besides, it can only lead to dogmatism or crude revisionism: if you would like to reduce the matter to only its structural framework that is done in the Manifesto. Even so, the Manifesto is much more sophisticated than what you are advocating (EDIT: which I see a base-level operationalism: "if it works then it gets the job done". Wrong, wrong, wrong, 1000 times wrong)

History is not the story of Great Men or Nations of Destiny or any such bunk.

Here is Marx in the famous Chapter 32. Note that this is NOT the much criticized Grundrisse (panned for being "too philosophical")





https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1867-c1/ch32.htm



I humbly submit that you are being too doctrinaire in AVOIDING doctrine. The examples stand as still frames to you 1) because they have already been scientifically elaborated and 2) because you are willing to accept them without a deep level of inspection.

1) reflects a misunderstanding on how materialism shows itself in sensuous real world practice (you don't need dialectics to change an oil filter, you need an oil wrench) [Note: this is actually backwards, but here it would be too awkward to phrase it the other way 'round -- the question being how real sensuous practice manifests its materiality in thinking]

2) displays a peculiar prejudice that has proven very hard to unseat. You are sure that Marx is right but are uncomfortable with his "namby pamby" side and would rather pretend it doesn't exist since you feel it is so much crap. (and I'm not talking about the Paris Manuscripts here -- where you might have a case -- the same thing is in evidence in the passages I quoted from Capital Vol I).

The thing is, Marx is MUCH more puissant than you assume. When he is locked in, every sentence functions like a cross hair for zeroing in on his target. Marx had a division of labor within his own works -- in his lesser writings he let out all of his self-indulgence like a supernova. In his careful, focused works he is a clinical assassin.

For this reason alone (and there are many others), your operating thesis cannot be correct. Besides, it can only lead to dogmatism or crude revisionism: if you would like to reduce the matter to only its structural framework that is done in the Manifesto. Even so, the Manifesto is much more sophisticated than what you are advocating (EDIT: which I see a base-level operationalism: "if it works then it gets the job done". Wrong, wrong, wrong, 1000 times wrong)

Your 1st sentence is cheap baiting and was unnecessary.

When I mentioned 'negation' it was not concerning that particular concept but but rather what I find high sounding language in general.

I do not do 'deep level of inspection' because I have a shallow intellect, I SO don't care how 'real sensous practice manifests itself materiality in thinking'. To be sure there is resistance to high faluatin language, but I keep plugging at it though I do not really see practical purpose. And I will finish the comic book. I have no operating thesis and am only advocating my incapacity of understanding in this fashion. Sorry for being too 'operational', it's all I got.

I do come to wonder whether the great revolutionaries of the last century(besides Lenin) mastered this stuff. Hell, maybe they did, they all attended university.(Regardless, I couldn't carry their jock straps)

A man should work with the tools with which he is most suited, hand me a broom or a rifle. Please do continue, Dhal can hang with it, perhaps Allen will pipe up and there's always the silent watchers. I will audit the course and try to keep my unlearned protestatioins to myself.

I'm not trying to draw blood BP. There was a guy in the 90s played ball for San Diego, Greg Vaughn, teammates with batting champ Tony Gwynn. Tony saw him taking batting practice one day and asked him why he kept laying off a certain pitch in games. Vaughn says "I can't hit that" and Tony shoots back "Sure you can". Next year Vaughn not only upped his average, he hit 50 home runs.

(story might be apocryphal)

Point being, everybody has holes in their swing (except maybe Barry Bonds). But sometimes you think you have more holes than you really do.

I'm not trying to draw blood BP. There was a guy in the 90s played ball for San Diego, Greg Vaughn, teammates with batting champ Tony Gwynn. Tony saw him taking batting practice one day and asked him why he kept laying off a certain pitch in games. Vaughn says "I can't hit that" and Tony shoots back "Sure you can". Next year Vaughn not only upped his average, he hit 50 home runs.

(story might be apocryphal)

Point being, everybody has holes in their swing (except maybe Barry Bonds). But sometimes you think you have more holes than you really do.

I understand, you are, after all, "Mr Nice Guy". Believe me, I know the theory(of your story), I just don't entirely believe it. Anax believes that most people can do most anything and generally speaking I'd agree, but after having really struggled with this abstract theoretical material for six years I don't think it useful for you to waste your effort on my sorry ass. What am I gonna do with it anyway, I'm 61 years old. You should be expending your effort on younger people who will be around for the long haul.

I understand, you are, after all, "Mr Nice Guy". Believe me, I know the theory(of your story), I just don't entirely believe it. Anax believes that most people can do most anything and generally speaking I'd agree, but after having really struggled with this abstract theoretical material for six years I don't think it useful for you to waste your effort on my sorry ass. What am I gonna do with it anyway, I'm 61 years old. You should be expending your effort on younger people who will be around for the long haul.

Don't sell yourself short. You are dogged, rugged, and have a marvelously succinct wit. You and me and Dhal have already went through a good portion of the crucible together -- and it took me the longest to figure it out (Anax says I have ADD, thats why I downgraded you to restless leg syndrome ;))


Your 1st sentence is cheap baiting and was unnecessary.

I'm not sure which one is the offending sentence. If you mean the idea that History is not the story of Great Men, my point is only that the materialist theory of history is a significant advance over the previous conception. In reply to you asking for examples of materialism in practice. Not intended as a low blow, should have expounded further.

Don't sell yourself short. You are dogged, rugged, and have a marvelously succinct wit. You and me and Dhal have already went through a good portion of the crucible together -- and it took me the longest to figure it out (Anax says I have ADD, thats why I downgraded you to restless leg syndrome ;))



I'm not sure which one is the offending sentence. If you mean the idea that History is not the story of Great Men, my point is only that the materialist theory of history is a significant advance over the previous conception. In reply to you asking for examples of materialism in practice. Not intended as a low blow, should have expounded further.

Jesus, next you'll tell me to have a positive attitude. Please. And please cut the crap, those discussions years ago, especially with you, Anax & Rusty, left me a slack jawed observer, considerably above my pay grade. So don't give me that 'little old me' bullshit, I've seen what you can do. One of Anax's few mistakes was calling me a 'sandbagger', it wasn't an act.

Yes, it was 'great men', you'd teach your grandmother to suck eggs.

I found out recently that my maternal grandmother carried a dictionary with her everywhere and anytime she didn't know a word she looked it up. Maybe she'd teach me :D

I found out recently that my maternal grandmother carried a dictionary with her everywhere and anytime she didn't know a word she looked it up. Maybe she'd teach me :D

That's how I first read Origin of the Species, had to look up every other word and still didn't get it quite right cause some things I thought I knew I really didn't.

That's how I first read Origin of the Species, had to look up every other word and still didn't get it quite right cause some things I thought I knew I really didn't.

When Bukharin and Preobrazhensky wrote "The ABC of Communism", it was not a "dumbed-down" version of theory and application. The book is a straightforward, no nonsense, breakdown of the cases, the issues, the background and substance of 'communism'. They wrote this book specifically for non-academic working people. Using direct language and common words - no frills.

I have read philosophy all my life - probably understood a third of what I read. But I would re-read and re-read and then read it again. I have a piss-poor American university education and I can usually think my way out of a wet paper bag. But taking the discussion out of the academic, ivory tower, milieu (heh, what can I say?) is a must. We are not trying to impress any academic or bourgeois observer, we are talking about working class life and death, to working class men and women. If we can't communicate directly and successfully among our own class, what are we doing?

I am not suggesting that the pursuit of these areas of study are not need - are not necessary - but they have to be for us or they are to no purpose. We have to make it clear, and communicate that clarity, that mastering these issues in theory is a must. Then we have to adequately communicate the process of that mastery.

One last stab at this. I could write a directional paper on how to remove an old automatic transmission and install a new manual transmission, along with installing the new manual clutch in a American automobile. Now, I could write that using language and style that would be very difficult to follow. Or I could write in such a way, that anyone could follow it and do the job. I do not accept that philosophical concepts and materialist reality are in any significant way different from dealing with mechanical issues - it all is, after all, material, right?

When Bukharin and Preobrazhensky wrote "The ABC of Communism", it was not a "dumbed-down" version of theory and application. The book is a straightforward, no nonsense, breakdown of the cases, the issues, the background and substance of 'communism'. They wrote this book specifically for non-academic working people. Using direct language and common words - no frills.

I have read philosophy all my life - probably understood a third of what I read. But I would re-read and re-read and then read it again. I have a piss-poor American university education and I can usually think my way out of a wet paper bag. But taking the discussion out of the academic, ivory tower, milieu (heh, what can I say?) is a must. We are not trying to impress any academic or bourgeois observer, we are talking about working class life and death, to working class men and women. If we can't communicate directly and successfully among our own class, what are we doing?

I am not suggesting that the pursuit of these areas of study are not need - are not necessary - but they have to be for us or they are to no purpose. We have to make it clear, and communicate that clarity, that mastering these issues in theory is a must. Then we have to adequately communicate the process of that mastery.

One last stab at this. I could write a directional paper on how to remove an old automatic transmission and install a new manual transmission, along with installing the new manual clutch in a American automobile. Now, I could write that using language and style that would be very difficult to follow. Or I could write in such a way, that anyone could follow it and do the job. I do not accept that philosophical concepts and materialist reality are in any significant way different from dealing with mechanical issues - it all is, after all, material, right?


Marx & Lenin said this stuff was important, who am I to argue with them? Yet I cannot get this stuff to compute, stringing words together to no purpose, as comprehensible as Cyrillic is to me. Just a lout whose gut reaction to 'thinking about thinking' is that it is so much navel gazing. Not saying I'm right about that, smart people all say I'm wrong, just that it's all I can see, even on my tiptoes.

When Bukharin and Preobrazhensky wrote "The ABC of Communism", it was not a "dumbed-down" version of theory and application. The book is a straightforward, no nonsense, breakdown of the cases, the issues, the background and substance of 'communism'. They wrote this book specifically for non-academic working people. Using direct language and common words - no frills.

You've been doing your homework. The book is situated in an odd and fleeting moment in time but this hardly diminishes its sweep nor its influence. I told you that you would like Nikolai Ivanovich (although he is much better when he plays it straight..at one point he issues the disclaimer that "I barely included any of my own ideas". Lenin says that Bukharin's thinking can only questionably said to be Marxist..and he is not wrong in some respects.)

The book is situated in an odd and fleeting moment in time but this hardly diminishes its sweep nor its influence.

We find ourselves, here and now, "in an odd and fleeting moment". But it is at the opposite terminal to the Soviet 1920s. We are in a place where there is no class consciousness to speak of. You can pull that consciousness out of a person in direct questioning and discussions of current society and events (and recent history, too). But any kind of "solidarity" shimmers away like heat off a blacktop.

We need tools and we need guidance and we need organization. What was it about the chicken and the egg, again?

Marx & Lenin said this stuff was important, who am I to argue with them? Yet I cannot get this stuff to compute, stringing words together to no purpose, as comprehensible as Cyrillic is to me. Just a lout whose gut reaction to 'thinking about thinking' is that it is so much navel gazing. Not saying I'm right about that, smart people all say I'm wrong, just that it's all I can see, even on my tiptoes.

I'm in the kitchen with a butcher's knife drawing a bead on Philosophy to hack it to pieces, and you are complaining that I am being too "philosophical" about it :D

'Thinking about thinking' is synonymous with logic. It is absolutely necessary for our analysis so that we do not succumb to the siren songs of opportunism. Not because of biblical style "temptations" but because it is too easy to lose focus on what does and does not matter (and, naturally, this depends on what "level" you are talking about)

Scientific socialism emerges of and from this iron discipline and commitment to rigor. Otherwise, why not simply accept moral, ethical, or "humanitarian" or idealistic rationales for socialism? Why look to a belated and ponderously slow historical process rather than try to forge the new society in the here and now? Why insist on grounding socialism in the logic of society itself rather than simply co-opting the thinking of the day to the purpose?

Sticking to principles can only become a mantra when there is a clearly defined way to determine what is and is not a principle. Lacking such, it is not even possible (WHICH principles and WHY?)

We find ourselves, here and now, "in an odd and fleeting moment". But it is at the opposite terminal to the Soviet 1920s. We are in a place where there is no class consciousness to speak of. You can pull that consciousness out of a person in direct questioning and discussions of current society and events (and recent history, too). But any kind of "solidarity" shimmers away like heat off a blacktop.

We need tools and we need guidance and we need organization. What was it about the chicken and the egg, again?

Lenin's first major influential work was The Development of Capitalism In Russia. Many eyes were opened in radical underground circles by Lenin's extensive use of statistical data (this is highly notable in Marxist canon -- Engels's copious use of data in The Conditions of the Working Class in England greatly swayed Marx; in turn Marx was one of the first to use the British Blue Books for substantive research). Lenin's conclusion -- which expanded and developed upon the same conclusions, adding rigor, that come out of breakup of the Black Repartition -- were inescapable and set the stage for his revolutionary career.

The point for us is to not assume that things are obvious. Income disparity (and the general idea of "divergence" within capitalism) exists, yes. But what are the actual gradations. What % of the population are the developed countries? What % of the world is "middle class"? How does one define one's terminology? (remember, it was considered scandalous that waves of refugees flowing into Europe seemed to all possess tricorders..err, "smart phones").

Enormous subtleties of the palette are missed by painting in broad brush strokes and this loss of detail can greatly color our ideas on issues such as class consciousness.

EDIT: I don't even like eggs. Now lets get down to business sucking eggs, shall we :)?

Lenin's first major influential work was The Development of Capitalism In Russia. Many eyes were opened in radical underground circles by Lenin's extensive use of statistical data (this is highly notable in Marxist canon -- Engels's copious use of data in The Conditions of the Working Class in England greatly swayed Marx; in turn Marx was one of the first to use the British Blue Books for substantive research). Lenin's conclusion -- which expanded and developed upon the same conclusions, adding rigor, that come out of breakup of the Black Repartition -- were inescapable and set the stage for his revolutionary career.

The point for us is to not assume that things are obvious. Income disparity (and the general idea of "divergence" within capitalism) exists, yes. But what are the actual gradations. What % of the population are the developed countries? What % of the world is "middle class"? How does one define one's terminology? (remember, it was considered scandalous that waves of refugees flowing into Europe seemed to all possess tricorders..err, "smart phones").

Enormous subtleties of the palette are missed by painting in broad brush strokes and this loss of detail can greatly color our ideas on issues such as class consciousness.

This is good. I am going to do some digging around, see what's there. I noticed that 'tricorder' thing in a CBS piece on the 'refugees'. This one young man seemed to be watching himself on his phone and managed to turn around with an appropriate look of "abjectness". Not saying it wasn't real, just that it looked 'funny'.

I'll be back...

This is good. I am going to do some digging around, see what's there. I noticed that 'tricorder' thing in a CBS piece on the 'refugees'. This one young man seemed to be watching himself on his phone and managed to turn around with an appropriate look of "abjectness". Not saying it wasn't real, just that it looked 'funny'.

I'll be back...

The idea of two great classes is a product of Logic. There are so, so many shades of grey in reality..more than 50 even.

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/thumb/4/4b/Fifty-Gray-poster.jpg/220px-Fifty-Gray-poster.jpg

The new name for navel gazing is "fan fiction". And it includes a healthy side helping of titillation. But I'll leave the commentary to Steppling.

I'm in the kitchen with a butcher's knife drawing a bead on Philosophy to hack it to pieces, and you are complaining that I am being too "philosophical" about it :D

'Thinking about thinking' is synonymous with logic. It is absolutely necessary for our analysis so that we do not succumb to the siren songs of opportunism. Not because of biblical style "temptations" but because it is too easy to lose focus on what does and does not matter (and, naturally, this depends on what "level" you are talking about)

Scientific socialism emerges of and from this iron discipline and commitment to rigor. Otherwise, why not simply accept moral, ethical, or "humanitarian" or idealistic rationales for socialism? Why look to a belated and ponderously slow historical process rather than try to forge the new society in the here and now? Why insist on grounding socialism in the logic of society itself rather than simply co-opting the thinking of the day to the purpose?

Sticking to principles can only become a mantra when there is a clearly defined way to determine what is and is not a principle. Lacking such, it is not even possible (WHICH principles and WHY?)

Sez you.....

I am not 'sticking to principles', I got none, at least not in this regard, I'd have to at least think I knew what I was talking about. I am simply unequipped for this conversation. Look at youze guys, you were studying this stuff well before it's possible utility was apparent to you, you like thinking about thinking. Jesus christ, you were paying to do so!

Have I ever mentioned that I'm not an intellectual? Where's that broom, somebody gotta do it.

Have I ever mentioned that I'm not an intellectual? Where's that broom, somebody gotta do it.

Careful with that broom - you know history has a dustbin!

Most of the "intellectuals" (self described) I have known ain't worth a plug nickel...combined. Once the language and style are made to disappear, the actual information, ideas, discoveries are accessible to anyone with common sense. Anax is right, when he says (paraphrase) any mechanic or coal miner can grasp and use any of Marx; and from my view, there are loads of 'academics' who couldn't find their own asses with both hands.

That vignette by Reed, where the two "uneducated" soldiers are talking to the know-it-all university student, I think, is understood clearly by most folks. The soldiers were showing their grasp of the main issue, while the student was just showing his ass.

We just must make sure we are not doing the latter, ourselves :) I think there is no problem with standing up and saying, "Herr professor, could you put that last piece you said in some form of English? Thank you."

If there is one other person out there reading this who has a problem grasping some of this stuff, we have to speak up and ask for a clearer, simpler explanation. That, I think, is our job.

Careful with that broom - you know history has a dustbin!

Most of the "intellectuals" (self described) I have known ain't worth a plug nickel...combined. Once the language and style are made to disappear, the actual information, ideas, discoveries are accessible to anyone with common sense. Anax is right, when he says (paraphrase) any mechanic or coal miner can grasp and use any of Marx; and from my view, there are loads of 'academics' who couldn't find their own asses with both hands.

That vignette by Reed, where the two "uneducated" soldiers are talking to the know-it-all university student, I think, is understood clearly by most folks. The soldiers were showing their grasp of the main issue, while the student was just showing his ass.

We just must make sure we are not doing the latter, ourselves :) I think there is no problem with standing up and saying, "Herr professor, could you put that last piece you said in some form of English? Thank you."

If there is one other person out there reading this who has a problem grasping some of this stuff, we have to speak up and ask for a clearer, simpler explanation. That, I think, is our job.

Anyone who breaches the subject of philosophy is an intellectual or at least a wannabe. Nothin wrong with that, somebody gotta do it.

Not sure that Anax said "any of Marx" and I might disagree with that. A general understanding of LTV, yes, and I accept that many folks can grasp talking about the dialectic better than I. And abstract matters in general. Somehow I think this ties in with my lack of appreciation of Art. Especially modern stuff, does nothing for me, representational is fine though I usually like it for it's historical value and not so much aesthetics.

Zizek is not a communist, is not a socialist. Zizek is a fascist, and a philosopher.


Slavoj Žižek: The Cologne attacks were an obscene version of carnival
Were the recent Cologne sex attacks a deliberate assault on western values and a middle-class sense of decency?
BY
SLAVOJ ZIZEK




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Who are the “hateful eight” in Quentin Tarantino’s film of the same name? The ENTIRE group of participants - white racists and the black Union soldier, men and women, law officers and criminals – they are all equally mean, brutal and revengeful. The most embarrassing moment in the film occurs when the black officer (played by the superb Samuel L. Jackson) narrates in detail and with obvious pleasure to an old Confederate general how he killed his racist son, who was responsible for many black deaths. After forcing him to march naked in cold wind, Jackson promises the freezing white guy he will get a warm cover if he performs fellatio, but after the guy does so, Jackson reneges on his promise and lets him die. So there are no good guys in the struggle against racism – they are all engaged in it with the utmost brutality. And is the lesson of the recent Cologne sex attacks not uncannily similar to the lesson of the film? Even if (most of) the refugees are effectively victims fleeing from ruined countries, this does not prevent them from acting in a despicable way. We tend to forget that there is nothing redeeming in suffering: being a victim at the bottom of the social ladder does not make you some kind of privileged voice of morality and justice.

But this general insight is not enough – one has to take a close look at the situation which gave birth to Cologne incident. In his analysis of the global situation after the Paris bombings1, Alain Badiou discerns three predominant types of subjectivity in today’s global capitalism: the western “civilised” middle-class liberal-democratic subject; those outside the west possessed by the “desire for the west le desir d’Occident,” desperately endeavouring to imitate the “civilised” life-style of the western middle classes; and the fascist nihilists, those whose envy at the west turns into a mortal self-destructive hatred. Badiou makes it clear that what the media call the “radicalisation” of Muslims is Fascisation simple and pure:

“this fascism is the obverse of the frustrated desire for the west which is organized in a more or less military way following the flexible model of a mafia gang and with variable ideological colorisations where the place occupied by religion is purely formal.”


The western middle class ideology has two opposed features: it displays arrogance and belief in the superiority of its values (universal human rights and freedoms threatened by the barbarian outsiders), but, simultaneously, it is obsessed by the fear that its limited domain will be invaded by the billions outside, who do not count in global capitalism since they are neither producing commodities nor consuming them. The fear of its members is that they will join those excluded.

The clearest expression of the “desire for the west” are immigrant refugees: their desire is not a revolutionary one, it is the desire to leave behind their devastated habitat and rejoin the promised land of the developed west. (Those who remain behind try to create there miserable copies of western prosperity, like the “modernised” parts in every third world metropolis, in Luanda, in Lagos, etc, with cafeterias selling cappuccinos, shopping malls, and so on).

But since, for the large majority of pretenders, this desire cannot be satisfied, one of the remaining options is the nihilist reversal: frustration and envy get radicalised into a murderous and self-destructive hatred of the west, and people get engaged in violent revenge. Badiou proclaims this violence a pure expression of death drive, a violence that can only culminate in acts of orgiastic (self)destruction, without any serious vision of an alternate society.

Badiou is right to emphasise that there is no emancipatory potential in fundamentalist violence, however anti-capitalist it claims to be: it is a phenomenon strictly inherent to the global capitalist universe, its “hidden phantom”. The basic fact of fundamentalist fascism is envy. Fundamentalism remains rooted in the desire for the west in its very hatred of the west. We are dealing here with the standard reversal of frustrated desire into aggressiveness described by psychoanalysis, and Islam just provides the form to ground this (self)destructive hatred. This destructive potential of envy is the base of Rousseau’s well-known distinction between egotism, amour-de-soi (that love of the self which is natural), and amour-propre, the perverted preferring of oneself to others in which a person focuses not on achieving a goal, but on destroying the obstacle to it:

“The primitive passions, which all directly tend towards our happiness, make us deal only with objects which relate to them, and whose principle is only amour-de-soi, are all in their essence lovable and tender; however, when, diverted from their objects by obstacles, they are more occupied with the obstacle they try to get rid of, than with the object they try to reach, they change their nature and become irascible and hateful. This is how amour-de-soi, which is a noble and absolute feeling, becomes amour-propre, that is to say, a relative feeling by means of which one compares oneself, a feeling which demands preferences, whose enjoyment is purely negative and which does not strive to find satisfaction in our own well-being, but only in the misfortune of others.”2

An evil person is thus not an egotist, “thinking only about his own interests”. A true egotist is too busy taking care of his own good to have time to cause misfortune to others. The primary vice of a bad person is that he is more preoccupied with others than with himself. Rousseau is describing a precise libidinal mechanism: the inversion which generates the shift of the libidinal investment from the object to the obstacle itself. This could well be applied to fundamentalist violence – be it the Oklahoma bombings or the attack on the Twin Towers. In both cases, we were dealing with hatred pure and simple: destroying the obstacle, the Oklahoma City Federal Building, the Twin Towers, was what really mattered, not achieving the noble goal of a truly Christian or Muslim society.3

Such a fascisation can exert a certain attraction to the frustrated immigrant youth which cannot find a proper place in western societies or a prospect to identify with – fascisation offers them an easy way out of their frustration: an eventful risky life dressed up in a sacrificial religious dedication, plus material satisfaction (sex, cars, weapons…). One should not forget that the Islamic State is also a big mafia trading company selling oil, ancient statues, cotton, arms and women-slaves, “a mixture of deadly heroic propositions and, simultaneously, of western corruption by products”.

It goes by itself that this fundamentalist-fascist violence is just one of the modes of violence that pertains to global capitalism, and that one should bear in mind not only the forms of fundamentalist violence in western countries themselves (anti-immigrant populism, etc), but above all the systematic violence of capitalism itself, from the catastrophic consequences of global economy to the long story of military interventions. Islamo-Fascism is a profoundly reactive phenomenon in Nietzschean sense of the term, an expression of impotence converted into self-destructive rage.

While agreeing with the overall thrust of Badiou’s analysis, I find three of its claims problematic. First, the reduction of religion, the religious form of fascist nihilism, to a secondary superficial feature: “Religion is only a clothing, it is in no way the heart of the matter, only a form of subjectivisation, not the real content of the thing.” Badiou is totally right in his claim that the search for the roots of today’s Muslim terrorism in ancient religious texts (the “it is all already in Quran” story) is misleading: one should instead focus on today’s global capitalism and conceive Islamo-fascism as one of the modes to react to its lure by way of inverting envy into hatred. But is, from a critical standpoint, religion not always a kind of clothing, rather than the heart of the matter? Is religion not in its very core a “form of subjectivisation” of people’s predicament? And does this not imply that a clothing IS in some sense the “heart of the matter”, the way individuals experience their situation – there is no way for them to step back and see somehow from outside how things “really are”… Then, the all too fast identification of refugees and migrants with a “nomadic proletariat”, a “virtual vanguard of the gigantic mass of the people whose existence is not counted prise en compte in the world the way it is”. Are migrants (mostly, at least) not those most strongly possessed by the “desire for the west”, most strongly in the thrall of hegemonic ideology? Finally, the naïve demand that we should:

“go and see who is this other about whom on talks, who are they really. We have to gather their thoughts, their ideas, their vision of things, and inscribe them, and ourselves simultaneously, into a strategic vision of the fate of humanity”.

Easy to say, difficult to do. This other is, as Badiou himself describes, utterly disoriented, possessed by the opposing attitudes of envy and hatred, a hatred which ultimately expresses its own repressed desire for the west (which is why hatred turns into a self-destruction). It is part of a naive humanist metaphysics to presuppose that beneath this vicious cycle of desire, envy and hatred, there is some “deeper” human core of global solidarity. Stories abound about how, among the refugees, many Syrians are an exception: in transition camps they clean the dirt they leave behind, they behave in a polite and respectful way, many of them are well-educated and speak English, they often even pay for what they consume... in short, we feel they are like ourselves, our educated and civilised middle classes.

It is popular to claim that the violent refugees represent a minority, and that the large majority has a deep respect for women… while this is of course true, one should nonetheless cast a closer look into the structure of this respect: what kind of woman is “respected”, and what is expected from her? What if a woman is “respected” insofar (and only insofar) as she fits the ideal of a docile servant faithfully doing her home chores, so that her man has the right to explode in fury if she “goes viral” and acts in full autonomy?

Our media usually draw a distinction between “civilised” middle-class refugees and “barbarian” lower class refugees who steal, harass our citizens, behave violently towards women, defecate in public... Instead of dismissing all this as racist propaganda, one should gather the courage to discern a moment of truth in it: brutality, up to outright cruelty towards the weak, animals, women, etc, is a traditional feature of the “lower classes”; one of their strategies of resisting those in power always was a terrifying display of brutality aimed at disturbing the middle-class sense of decency. And one is tempted to read in this way also what happened on New Year’s Eve in Cologne – as an obscene lower-class carnival:

“German police are investigating reports that scores of women were sexually assaulted and mugged in Cologne city centre during New Year’s Eve celebrations, in what a minister called a ‘completely new dimension of crime’. According to the police, those allegedly responsible for the sex attacks and numerous robberies were of Arab and north African origin. Over 100 complaints were filed to police, a third of which were linked to sexual assault. The city centre turned into a ‘lawless zone’: between 500 and 1000 men described as drunk and aggressive are believed to have been behind the attacks on partygoers in the centre of the western German city. Whether they were working as a single group or in separate gangs remains unclear. Women reported being tightly surrounded by groups of men who harassed and mugged them. Some people threw fireworks into the crowds, adding to the chaos. One of the victims had been raped. A volunteer policewoman was among those said to have been sexually assaulted.”4

As expected, the incident is growing: now over 500 complaints have been filed from women, with similar incidents in other German cities (and in Sweden). There are indications that attacks were coordinated in advance, plus right-wing anti-immigrant barbarian “defenders of the civilised west” are striking back with attacks on immigrants, so that the spiral of violence threatens to be unleashed… And, as expected, the politically correct liberal Left mobilised its resources to downplay the incident in the same way it did in the case in Rotherham.

But there is more, much more, to it: the Cologne carnival should be located in the long line whose first recorded case reaches back to Paris of the 1730s, to the so-called “Great Cat Massacre” described by Robert Darnton5, when a group of printing apprentices tortured and ritually killed all the cats they could find, including the pet of their master’s wife. The apprentices were literally treated worse than cats adored by the master’s wife, especially la grise (the grey), her favorite. One night the boys resolved to right this inequitable state of affairs: they dumped sack-loads of half-dead cats in the courtyard and then strung them up on an improvised gallows, the men delirious with joy, disorder, and laughter... Why was the killing so funny?

During carnival the common people suspended the normal rules of behavior and ceremoniously reversed the social order or turned it upside down in riotous procession. Carnival was high season for hilarity, sexuality, and youth run riot, and the crowd often incorporated cat torture into its rough music. While mocking a cuckold or some other victim, the youths passed around a cat, tearing its fur to make it howl. Faire le chat, they called it. The Germans called it Katzenmusik, a term that may have been derived from the howls of tortured cats. The torture of animals, especially cats, was a popular amusement throughout early modern Europe. The power of cats was concentrated on the most intimate aspect of domestic life: sex. Le chat, la chatte, le minet mean the same thing in French slang as “pussy” does in English, and they have served as obscenities for centuries.

So what if we conceive of the Cologne incident as a contemporary version of faire le chat? As a carnivalesque rebellion of the underdogs? It wasn't the simple urge for satisfaction of sexually starved young men – this could be done in a more discreet, hidden way – it was foremost a public spectacle of installing fear and humiliation, of exposing the “pussies” of the privileged Germans to painful helplessness. There is, of course, nothing redemptive or emancipatory, nothing effectively liberating, in such a carnival – but this is how actual carnivals work.

This is why the naive attempts to enlighten immigrants (explaining to them that our sexual mores are different, that a woman who walks in public in a mini skirt and smiles does not thereby signal sexual invitation, etc.) are examples of breath-taking stupidity – they know this and that's why they are doing it. They are well aware that what they are doing is foreign to our predominant culture, but they are doing it precisely to wound our sensitivities. The task is to change this stance of envy and revengeful aggressiveness, not to teach them what they already know very well.

The difficult lesson of this entire affair is thus that it is not enough to simply give voice to the underdogs the way they are: in order to enact actual emancipation, they have to be educated (by others and by themselves) into their freedom.

http://www.newstatesman.com/world/europe/2016/01/slavoj-zizek-cologne-attacks

So Zizek can indulge in Orientalism cause Slovens are not Slavs but Aryans, just like the Ukes in Kiev.

Zizek is not a communist, is not a socialist. Zizek is a fascist, and a philosopher.

He is a pustule, a whore, an empty sac. The son of a bitch is a Strasser leftist, which, of course, equals Nazi.

More proof of this thread's assertion...

Academia: Hands off Revolutionary Philosophy!
by ANDRE VLTCHEK

Philosophers have been muzzled by the Western global regime; most of great modern philosophy concealed from the masses. What has been left of it, allowed to float on the surface is toothless, irrelevant and incomprehensible: a foolish outdated theoretical field for those few remaining intellectual snobs.

Philosophy used to be the most precious crown jewel of human intellectual achievement. It stood at the vanguard of almost all fights for a better world. Gramsci was a philosopher, and so were Lenin, Mao Tse-tung, Ho-Chi-Minh, Guevara, Castro, Frantz Fanon, Senghors, Cabral, Nyerere and Lumumba, to name just a few.

To be a thinker, a philosopher, in ancient China, Japan or even in some parts of the West, was the most respected human ‘occupation’.

In all ‘normally’ developing societies, knowledge has been valued much higher than material possessions or naked power.

In ancient Greece and China, people were able to understand the majority of their philosophers. There was nothing “exclusive” in the desire to know and interpret the world. Philosophers spoke to the people, for the people.

Some still do. But that whoring and servile Western academic gang, which has locked philosophy behind the university walls, viciously sidelines such men and women.

Instead of leading people to the barricades, instead of addressing the most urgent issues our world is now facing, official philosophers are fighting amongst themselves for tenures, offering their brains and bodies to the Empire. At best, they are endlessly recycling each other, spoiling millions of pages of paper with footnotes, comparing conclusions made by Derrida and Nietzsche, hopelessly stuck at exhausted ideas of Kant and Hegel.

At worst, they are outrightly evil – making still relevant revolutionary philosophical concepts totally incomprehensible, attacking them, and even disappearing them from the face of the Earth.

***

Only the official breed, consisting of almost exclusively white/Western ‘thought recyclers’, is now awarded the right to be called ‘philosophers’.

My friends in all corners of the world, some of the brightest people on earth, are never defined as such. The word ‘philosopher’ still carries at least some great theoretical prestige, and god forbid if those who are now fighting against Western terror, for social justice or true freedom of thought, were to be labeled as such!

But they are, of course, all great philosophers! And they don’t recycle – they go forward, advancing brilliant new concepts that can improve life on our Planet. Some have fallen, some are still alive, and some are still relatively young:

Eduardo Galeano – one of the greatest storytellers of all times, and a dedicated fighter against Western imperialism. Noam Chomsky – renowned linguist and relentless fighter against Western fascism. Pramoedya Ananta Toer – former prisoner of conscience in Suharto’s camps and the greatest novelist of Southeast Asia. John Steppling – brilliant American playwright and thinker. Christopher Black – Canadian international lawyer and fighter against illegal neo-colonialist concepts of the Empire. Peter Koenig – renowned economist and thinker. Milan Kohout, thinker and performer, fighter against European racism.

Yes – all these great thinkers; all of them, philosophers! And many more that I know and love – in Africa and Latin America and Asia especially…

For those who insist that in order to be called a philosopher, one has to be equipped with some stamp that shows that the person has passed a test and is allowed to serve the Empire, here is proof to the contrary:

Even according to the Dictionary of Modern American philosophers (online ed.). New York: Oxford University Press:

“The label of “philosopher” has been broadly applied in this Dictionary to intellectuals who have made philosophical contributions regardless of academic career or professional title. The wide scope of philosophical activity across the time-span of this Dictionary would now be classed among the various humanities and social sciences which gradually separated from philosophy over the last one hundred and fifty years. Many figures included were not academic philosophers but did work at philosophical foundations of such fields as pedagogy, rhetoric, the arts, history, politics, economics, sociology, psychology, linguistics, anthropology, religion, and theology.”

In his brilliant upcoming book Aesthetic Resistance and Dis-Interest, my friend John Steppling quotes, Hullot-Kentor:

“If art – when art is art – understands us better than we can intentionally understand ourselves, then a philosophy of art would need to comprehend what understands us. Thinking would need to become critically imminent to that object; subjectivity would become the capacity of its object, not simply its manipulation. That’s the center of Adorno’s aesthetics. It’s an idea of thought that is considerably different from the sense of contemporary “theory”, where everyone feels urged to compare Derrida with Nietzsche, the two of them with Levinas, and all of them now with Badiou, Žižek and Agamben. That kind of thinking is primarily manipulation. It’s the bureaucratic mind unconsciously flexing the form of social control it has internalized and wants to turn on others.”

Western academia is rigidly defining, which lines of thought are acceptable for philosophers to use, as well as what analyses, and what forms.

Those who refuse to comply are ‘not true philosophers’. They are dilettantes, ‘amateurs’.

And those who are not embraced by some ‘reputable’ institution are not to be taken seriously at all (especially if they are carrying Russian, Asian, African, Middle Eastern or Latino names). It is a little bit like with journalism. Unless you have an ‘important’ media outlet behind you (preferably a Western one), unless you can show that the Empire truly trusts you, your press card is worth nothing, and you would not even be allowed to board a UN or a military flight to a war zone.

Your readers, even if numbering millions, may see you as an important philosopher. But let’s be frank: unless the Empire stamps its seal of acceptance on your forehead of backside, in the West you are really nothing more than worthless shit!


BLURRING THE WORK OF REVOLUTIONARY PHILOSOPHERS

After all that I have witnessed and written, I am increasingly convinced that Western imperialism and neo-colonialism are the most urgent and dangerous challenges facing our Planet. Perhaps the only challenges…

I have seen 160 countries in all corners of the Globe. I have witnessed wars, conflicts, imperialist theft and indescribable brutality of white tyrants.

And so, recently, I sensed that it is time to revisit two great thinkers of the 20th Century, two determined fighters against Western imperialist fascism: Frantz Fanon and Jean-Paul Sartre.

The Wretched of the Earth, and Black Skin, White Masks – two essential books by Frantz Omar Fanon, a Martinique-born Afro-Caribbean psychiatrist, philosopher, revolutionary, and writer, and a dedicated fighter against Western colonialism. And Colonialism and Neocolonialism, a still greatly relevant book by Jean-Paul Sartre, a prominent French resistance fighter, philosopher, playwright and novelist…

I had all three books in my library and, after many years, it was time to read them again.

But my English edition of Colonialism and Neocolonialism was wrapped in dozens of pages of prefaces and introductions. The ‘intellectual cushioning’ was too thick and at some point I lost interest, leaving the book in Japan. Then in Kerala I picked up another, this time Indian edition.

Again, some 60 pages of prefaces and introductions, pre-chewed intrusive and patronizing explanations of how I am supposed to perceive both Sartre and his interactions with Fanon, Memmi and others. And yes, it all suddenly began moving again into that pre-chewed but still indigestible “Derrida-Nietzsche” swamp.

Instead of evoking outrage and wrath, instead of inspiring me into taking concrete revolutionary action, those prefaces, back covers, introductions and comments were clearly castrating and choking the great messages of both Sartre and Fanon. They were preventing readers and fellow philosophers from getting to the core.

Then finally, when reaching the real text of Sartre, it all becomes clear – why exactly is the regime so determined to “protect” readers from the originals.

It is because the core, the original, is extremely simple and powerful. The words are relevant, and easy to understand. They are describing both old French colonialist barbarities, as the current Western neo-colonialism. God forbid someone puts two and two together!

Philosopher Sartre on China and Western fascist cultural propaganda:

“As a child, I was a victim of the picturesque: everything had been done to make the Chinese intimidating. I was told about rotten eggs… of men sawn between two planks of wood, of piping and discordant music… [The Chinese] were tiny and terrible, slipping between your fingers, attacked from behind, burst out suddenly in a ridiculous din… There was also the Chinese soul, which I was simply told was inscrutable. ‘Orientals, you see…’ The Negroes did not worry me; I had been taught that they were good dogs. With them, we were still among mammals. But the Asians frightened me…”

Sartre on Western colonialism and racism:

“Racism is inscribed in the events themselves, in the institutions, in the nature of the exchange and the production. The political and social statuses reinforce one another: since the natives are sub-human, the Declaration of Human Rights does not apply to them; conversely, since they have no rights, they are abandoned without protection to the inhuman forces of nature, to the ‘iron laws’ of economics…”

And Sartre goes further:

“Western humanism and rights discourse had worked by excluding a majority of the world’s population from the category of humans.”

I address the same issues and so is Chomsky. But the Empire does not want people to know that Sartre, Memmi and Fanon spoke ‘the same language’ as we do, already more than half a century ago!

Albert Memmi:

“Conservatism engenders the selection of mediocre people. How can this elite of usurpers, conscious of their mediocrity, justify their privileges? Only one way: diminish the colonized in order to exult themselves, deny the status of human beings to the natives, and deprive them of basic rights…”

Sartre on Western ignorance:

“It is not cynicism, it is not hatred that is demoralizing us: no, it is only the state of false ignorance in which we are made to live and which we ourselves contribute to maintaining…”

The way the West ‘educates’ the world, Sartre again:

“The European elite set about fabricating a native elite; they selected adolescents, marked on their foreheads, with a branding iron, the principles of Western culture, stuffed into their mouths verbal gags, grand turgid words which stuck to their teeth; after a brief stay in the mother country, they were sent back, interfered with…”

***

It is actually easy to learn how to recycle the thoughts of others, how to compare them and at the end, how to compile footnotes. It takes time, it is boring, tedious and generally useless, but not really too difficult.

On the other hand, it is difficult to create brand new concepts, to revolutionize the way our societies, and our world are arranged. If our brains recycle too much and try to create too little, they get lazy and sclerotic – chronically sclerotic.

Intellectual servility is a degenerative disease.

Western art has deteriorated to ugly psychedelic beats, to excessively bright colors and infantile geometric drawings, to cartoons and nightmarish and violent films as well as “fiction”. It is all very convenient – with all that noise, one cannot hear anymore the screams of the victims, one cannot understand loneliness, and comprehend emptiness.

In bookstores, all over the world, poetry and philosophy sections are shrinking or outright disappearing.

Now what? Is it going to be Althusser (mostly not even real Althusser, but a recycled and abbreviated one), or Lévi-Strauss or Derrida, each wrapped in endless litanies of academic talk?

No! Comrades, philosophers, not that! Down with the sclerotic, whoring academia and their interpretation of philosophy!

Down with the assassins of Philosophy!

Philosophy is supposed to be the intellectual vanguard. It is synonymous with revolution, humanism, and rebellion.

Those who are thinking about and fighting for a much better world, using their brains as weapons, are true philosophers.

Those who are collecting dust and tenures in some profit-oriented institutions of higher ‘learning’ are definitely not, even if they have hundreds of diplomas and stamps all over their walls and foreheads!

They do not create and do not lead. They do not even teach! They are muzzling knowledge. To quote Fanon: “Everything can be explained to the people, on the single condition that you want them to understand.” But “they” don’t want people to understand; they really don’t…

And one more thing: the great thoughts of Fanon and Sartre, of Gramsci and Mao, Guevara and Galeano should be gently washed, undusted and exhibited again, free of all those choking ‘analyses’ and comparisons compiled by toxic pro-establishment thinkers.

There is nothing to add to the writing of maverick revolutionary philosophers. Hands off their work! Let them speak! Editions without prefaces and introductions, please! The greatest works of philosophy were written with heart, blood and passion! No interpretation is needed. Even a child can understand.

http://www.counterpunch.org/2016/02/26/academia-hands-off-revolutionary-philosophy/

Hell yes, and I'm a philosopher too, who knew? And yet the author fails to mention Marx in his enumeration of likely and very unlikely suspects, go figure. I do not think that having a 'philosophy' about one specific subject makes one 'a philosopher'. And that's my philosophy........

Hell yes, and I'm a philosopher too, who knew? And yet the author fails to mention Marx in his enumeration of likely and very unlikely suspects, go figure. I do not think that having a 'philosophy' about one specific subject makes one 'a philosopher'. And that's my philosophy........

When I was a kid, maybe 12-13, I was trying to plow a small field - garden, really - with a plow and mule. I was making a mess of it; the rows were all over the place and I was wearing myself out and embarrassing the mule. My grandfather, who was 80 or so, came up and stopped me. He took the reins from my hands and grabbed the plow. He said, "I swear to my goodness, I cannot believe a big old boy like you can't even plow a mule!" I made some kind of lame excuse and my grandfather just said "Get up!" to the mule and started plowing. He plowed, walking beside, not behind, the plow and using only one hand. His row was just the right depth, straight as an arrow, and he wasn't even breathing hard when he got back to where I was standing. He said, "The mule knows what to do. The plow knows what to do. You just walk along behind 'em and try not to mess 'em up.". He handed me the reins and walked away. That's what I call "philosophy".

When I was a kid, maybe 12-13, I was trying to plow a small field - garden, really - with a plow and mule. I was making a mess of it; the rows were all over the place and I was wearing myself out and embarrassing the mule. My grandfather, who was 80 or so, came up and stopped me. He took the reins from my hands and grabbed the plow. He said, "I swear to my goodness, I cannot believe a big old boy like you can't even plow a mule!" I made some kind of lame excuse and my grandfather just said "Get up!" to the mule and started plowing. He plowed, walking beside, not behind, the plow and using only one hand. His row was just the right depth, straight as an arrow, and he wasn't even breathing hard when he got back to where I was standing. He said, "The mule knows what to do. The plow knows what to do. You just walk along behind 'em and try not to mess 'em up.". He handed me the reins and walked away. That's what I call "philosophy".

Who needs Nietzche or Satre when ya got that?

I may or may not have told this story before but the reason I bombed out of university was my complete disenchantment within my major of pure mathematics. You are regularly taught such things as "A segment of a line is equal to the entire line" (in popular culture this manifests in such pronouncements as "the coastline of Britain is infinite"). And the objective nature of such findings is never questioned. Its not confined to set theory either -- ever tried to understand the hullabaloo behind Euclid's Fifth Postulate? (which is intimately connected to modern theories of physics via non-Euclidian geometries).

That's about the time I got interested in something more coherent..

..Hegel

(funny aside, after I name dropped GWF, Anax's first message to me on Prog Indy was "welcome, fellow practitioner of the Dark Arts". That was almost a decade ago.)

Who needs Nietzche or Satre when ya got that?

I really need to get around to my tract on how Nietzsche is just a tranny version of Max Stirner working a corner in the red light district. And I'm not even joking :)

That's about the time I got interested in something more coherent

All things are relative(after a fashion).

GWF?

All things are relative(after a fashion).

GWF?

Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel. Me 'n him are on a first initials basis (although sometimes I call him by his SOBriquet, if you dig..)

Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel. Me 'n him are on a first initials basis (although sometimes I call him by his SOBriquet, if you dig..)

Ya see how slow I am with this stuff?

Yep 10 years in a couple months, what we got to show?

Personally, I am a lot more educated than I was(again, that 'relative' thing), but to what purpose? The personal attainment feels somehow wrong, lacks effective purpose.My politics have certainly crystalized and become coherent, thanks for that. Anax said the act of getting this place going was 'doing something' but given the long running stagnation sometimes I wonder. Lack of patience for sure but mortality is becoming an issue.

Lack of patience for sure but mortality is becoming an issue

Man, you said it. Talkin' about "grey beards" - and the real kind, not the "mentor" kind. Every chance I get to talk to anybody about working class conditions, I have to be so careful with what I say and how I say it. I can't tell you how many times I have "killed the party" or found myself talking to thin air. I have actually pissed people off by just mild statements of fact and vaguely leading questions. It's like I'm wearing a wire or something...

Man, you said it. Talkin' about "grey beards" - and the real kind, not the "mentor" kind. Every chance I get to talk to anybody about working class conditions, I have to be so careful with what I say and how I say it. I can't tell you how many times I have "killed the party" or found myself talking to thin air. I have actually pissed people off by just mild statements of fact and vaguely leading questions. It's like I'm wearing a wire or something...

It's like living at DU, "Why do you hate America?"

It's like living at DU, "Why do you hate America?"

No shit! I was talking to this guy who was handing out material for The Bern, and I swear he was from DU. The things he said were just spookily DU-ish.

I've been kicking around the idea of voting for Trump in the Republican primary. The USA deserves an election between Trump and Clinton - hell, they should draw straws and run on the same ticket...

No shit! I was talking to this guy who was handing out material for The Bern, and I swear he was from DU. The things he said were just spookily DU-ish.

Even here in Geezerville that doubles as Republican National Headquarters there are a few "Honk for Bernie" meetups. My brother and I have "Honk if you Wonk" t-shirts. Think that's close enough?

Even here in Geezerville that doubles as Republican National Headquarters there are a few "Honk for Bernie" meetups. My brother and I have "Honk if you Wonk" t-shirts. Think that's close enough?


Dude, Upstate SC is the home of Graham, Gowdy, Ingles, Demint. The joy of liberal-baiting is lost to me. Haven't seen the precinct #s yet but I bet mine went for Trump by 65-70%. But I think the Burn is going to surprise Hillary some, her act with black folks is so sorry & ragged, she got all the sincerity of a hyena.

Even here in Geezerville that doubles as Republican National Headquarters there are a few "Honk for Bernie" meetups. My brother and I have "Honk if you Wonk" t-shirts. Think that's close enough?


If "Wonk" is a euphemism for "Wank", then its dead-on. I saw a picture of a sign or a tee-shirt, can't remember ('Geezerville', eh?), it said: "I won't vote for Monika Lewinsky's ex-boyfriend's wife." I have to admit, it made me chuckle.

her act with black folks is so sorry & ragged, she got all the sincerity of a hyena.

Oh man, if I hear her try to sound sincere about Black oppression in this country one more time, I am gonna lose it.

Oh man, if I hear her try to sound sincere about Black oppression in this country one more time, I am gonna lose it.

No es tu abuela?

No es tu abuela?

Actually, my daughter has been doing a heritage search or family tree thing and she discovered that my great-great grandparents were listed on their marriage license as "mulattos". So as far as my abuela goes...

Actually, my daughter has been doing a heritage search or family tree thing and she discovered that my great-great grandparents were listed on their marriage license as "mulattos". So as far as my abuela goes...

I'm Scot Irish on one side and Swede on the other. Sometimes I feel like I let my ancestors down by being a nerd. Sometimes I feel like I let my ancestors down whenever I drink a non-alcoholic beverage

EDIT: hit send too fast, forgot the punchline

I'm Scot Irish on one side and Swede on the other. Sometimes I feel like I let my ancestors down by being a nerd. Sometimes I feel like I let my ancestors down whenever I drink a non-alcoholic beverage

EDIT: hit send too fast, forgot the punchline

I can't understand how any working class person could NOT drink a LOT of alcoholic beverages - Celto-Aryans or not! I am a Fundamentalist Atheist, so my opiate of the masses is actually opium - da-boom!

I'm Scot Irish on one side and Swede on the other. Sometimes I feel like I let my ancestors down by being a nerd. Sometimes I feel like I let my ancestors down whenever I drink a non-alcoholic beverage

EDIT: hit send too fast, forgot the punchline

Heh, I'm a bastard w/German/Pole/Irish/French on the matrilineal side. Birthmother won't give up the goods but strongly suspect Jewish on the partilineal side. I don't give a fuck.

So until recently I had not heard of Lukacs, at least I can't remember. Of recent I see him referred to by Steppling and other commentators. So I'm posting this to get a rise out of the Kid. Looks OK at a glance but a glance has often not been adequate...

******************************

The Destruction of Reason. Georg Lukács 1952

CHAPTER III
Nietzsche as Founder of Irrationalism
in the Imperialist Period

Written: by Georg Lukacs, completed in 1952;
First Published: in German in 1962 by Hermann Luchterhand Verlag GmBH;
Source: Destruction of Reason, by Georg Lukacs, published by Merlin Press, ISBN 085036 247 4;
Translated: by Peter R. Palmer, 1980;
Transcribed: by Robert Cymbala, 2005 and published here with the permission of Merlin Press.
1

It may be postulated as a general statement that the decline of bourgeois ideology set in with the end of the 1848 revolution. Of course we can find many latecomers — especially in literature and art — for whose work this thesis by no means holds good (we need only to mention Dickens and Keller, Courbet and Daumier). These latter names apart, the period between 1848 and 1870 was rife with significant transitional figures who, while their work does reflect features of the decline, were in no wise party to it with regard to the central substance of their output (e.g., Flaubert, Baudelaire). Certainly the decline started much earlier in the sphere of theoretical learning, particularly economics and philosophy; bourgeois economics had produced nothing original and forward-looking since the demise of the Ricardo school in the 1820s, while bourgeois philosophy had yielded nothing new since the demise of Hegelianism (1830s and 1840s). Both these fields were completely dominated by capitalist apologetics. A similar situation obtained in the historical sciences. The fact that the natural sciences continued to make enormous strides during this period — Darwin’s great work appeared between 1848 and 1870 — does not affect the picture one bit; there have been new discoveries in this area right up to the present. This in itself did not forestall a certain degeneration of general methodology, an increasingly reactionary slant in the bourgeois philosophy of natural sciences, and an ever-growing zeal in the use of their findings for the propagation of reactionary views. (We are not now speaking of ideological evolution in Russia. Here the year 1905 corresponded to 1848 in the West — and only twelve years afterwards came the socialist revolution.)

Much more...

https://www.marxists.org/archive/lukacs/works/destruction-reason/ch03.htm

Apparently there is a Hegel renaissance going on which is bent upon disassociating Hegel from Marx. That they want Hegel back is just another indication of the degeneracy of late stage capitalism.


Much of the antipathy towards Hegel finds its source in the fact that his thought was seen to lead to Marx and Marxism. But, as Beiser acknowledges, after the dissolution of the Soviet Union and the collapse of the eastern European Stalinist states, “Marxism suffered—for better or worse—a steep decline in prestige. But as Marx’s star fell, Hegel’s only rose.” The clear implication is that with Marxism out of the way Hegel could again be seen as politically non-threatening, and he “was restored to the pantheon of great philosophers, taking his place alongside Leibniz and Kant.” (2) So much for judging philosophical works based on the soundness and validity of the arguments! This statement is a rare admission that political considerations are a substantial factor in their acceptance or rejection by the academy.

https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2009/11/hege-n05.html



Why am I not surprised that the Trots find this interesting? Go read it there if you want the rest.

So much for judging philosophical works based on the soundness and validity of the arguments! This statement is a rare admission that political considerations are a substantial factor in their acceptance or rejection by the academy.

Political considerations have forever been substantial factors in the place held by various philosophies and philosophers. The Trots, here, are either dumb fucks or playing cute - I know which one seems most likely...

Just cause I ain't got it don't mean I don't get it.

https://ia800200.us.archive.org/BookReader/BookReaderImages.php?zip=/15/items/tfomlp/The%20Fundamentalist%20of%20The%20Marxist%20Lenin%20Philosophy_jp2.zip&file=The%20Fundamentalist%20of%20The%20Marxist%20Lenin%20Philosophy_jp2/The%20Fundamentalist%20of%20The%20Marxist%20Lenin%20Philosophy_0001.jp2&scale=4&rotate=0

https://ia800200.us.archive.org/BookReader/BookReaderImages.php?zip=/15/items/tfomlp/The%20Fundamentalist%20of%20The%20Marxist%20Lenin%20Philosophy_jp2.zip&file=The%20Fundamentalist%20of%20The%20Marxist%20Lenin%20Philosophy_jp2/The%20Fundamentalist%20of%20The%20Marxist%20Lenin%20Philosophy_0003.jp2&scale=4&rotate=0

https://ia800200.us.archive.org/BookReader/BookReaderImages.php?zip=/15/items/tfomlp/The%20Fundamentalist%20of%20The%20Marxist%20Lenin%20Philosophy_jp2.zip&file=The%20Fundamentalist%20of%20The%20Marxist%20Lenin%20Philosophy_jp2/The%20Fundamentalist%20of%20The%20Marxist%20Lenin%20Philosophy_0013.jp2&scale=4&rotate=0

https://archive.org/stream/tfomlp/The%20Fundamentalist%20of%20The%20Marxist%20Lenin%20Philosophy#page/n1/mode/2up

Gonna see if I can find this on paper, spend too much time staring at screens as is.

Edit: I may not got it or get it, seems like only 1 copy on internet for 40 bucks at Amazon...
Edit 2: Fuck it, pulled the trigger, them gift cards are good for something.

A parody account, nonetheless...


Slavoj Tweezek ‏@SlavojTweezek 13m13 minutes ago
The space between civilization and anarchy is as small as that between philosophy and bullshit.
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prz grz ‏@unhaunting 22 May 2014
im so ruthlessly commited to Dialectics that i am constantly at war with the person i was two days ago, who is a clown and a coward

so that's what it is.....

This is What Happens When You Lose the Dialectic
Posted on June 5, 2016 by Asher Wycoff
Taking potshots at analytical Marxism probably isn’t the most productive use of my time, seeing as the approach hasn’t been especially popular in the past decade and change. But I’ve nonetheless found it difficult to escape its shadow, being a political scientist of sorts, as well as an insufferable leftist who talks about Marxism at parties. (I can’t tell you how many times I’ve been asked, after enumerating my research interests, whether I draw on G. A. Cohen.)

My impatience with analytical Marxism largely derives from my impatience with analytic philosophy more generally. I have immense difficulty believing that condensing every political and social issue into a logical proof or game theoretical model helps us engage them in any substantive way. But the exceptionally frustrating thing about analytical Marxism is the way in which it endeavors to improve (even salvage) the Marxist approach by getting rid of its most valuable component: the dialectic.

Consider the problem of defining class. Herbert Kitschelt (not an analytical Marxist, but a helpful elucidator in this case) highlights a very real issue:

… Marxist debates have often engaged in a sterile confrontation between objectivist and voluntarist class conceptions. Objectivists claim that property relations of social categories (‘class in itself’) eventually give rise to conscious class mobilization under the impact of increasingly bitter distributive struggles with capital and a general decline of the economy. … But such economic determinism has failed to predict empirical class action adequately. Conversely, political voluntarism renders class theory tautological; whenever political actors define themselves as classes, social classes exist and make a difference (The Transformation of European Social Democracy, p. 13).

The problem, empirically, is as follows. Defining and operationalizing the working class in strictly objectivist terms does not yield the conclusion that it has, as Marx and Engels predicted, come to comprise the majority of society, or consistently served as a principal actor in deciding policy outcomes. If one tries to sidestep this problem – as, say, Adam Przeworski does – by defending a voluntarist conception of the working class, one gets caught in a tautology that explains nothing.

This opposition between objectivist and voluntarist conceptions of class misses the mark, however, by insisting that we must choose between class-in-itself and class-for-itself. This is a false choice that misses the point of these categories to begin with. (Would Kant impel us to choose between the noumenal and the phenomenal?) This is why the work of Przeworski is particularly dispiriting. He understands that “[c]lasses are not a datum prior to the history of concrete struggles” (Capitalism and Social Democracy, p. 69), but only in a one-sided way. That the working class is a datum formed out of concrete struggle means, for Przeworski, that it functions solely as a site of identification and mobilization.

The working class is not, however, formed only by the “subjective” political actions of its members, but also by its “objective” location within a matrix of property, production, and distribution relations. What Przeworski ignores is that the constitution of the capitalist system, which makes the working class a comprehensible entity, is itself a product of struggle; continual bourgeois domination, strike breaking, the enforcement of property laws, etc. cannot be understood except as tools of the capitalists in class struggle. What we have is an oscillation between, and a mutual constitution of, the objective and the subjective. Class struggle does not only occur when classes act in conscious concert, as Przeworski seems to suppose. It is ever-present, sustained by the logics of everyday life within the capitalist system.

The choice between “voluntarist” and “objectivist” conceptions of class is thus a false one, with which we are presented only when we lose sight of the dialectic and suppose that everything must be flattened into a typology of stable categories. And unsurprisingly, choosing either option over the other leaves us with a notion of class that is unworkable.

Analytical Marxism’s rejection of the dialectic amounts to a rejection of Marx’s method, which is truly unfortunate. Marx’s methodological insights are incredibly valuable and underutilized in the social sciences. Consider this excerpt from “The Method of Political Economy” in the introduction to the Grundrisse:

It seems to be correct to deal with the real and the concrete, with the real precondition, thus to begin, in economics, with e.g., the population, which is the foundation and the subject of the enter social act of production. However, on closer examination, this proves false. The population is an abstraction if I leave out, for example, the classes of which it is composed. These classes in turn are an empty phrase if I am not familiar with the elements on which they rest, e.g. wage labor, capital, etc. These latter in turn presuppose exchange, division of labor, prices, etc. … Thus, if I were to begin with the population, this would be a chaotic conception of the whole, and I would then, by means of further determination, move analytically towards ever more simple concepts, from the imagined concrete towards ever thinner abstractions until I had arrived at the simplest determinations. From there the journey would have to be retraced until I finally arrived at the population again, but this time not as the chaotic conception of the whole, but as a rich totality of many determinations and relations (p. 100).

Contrast this with the far more reductive approach laid out by Jon Elster in his “Case for Methodological Individualism:”

By methodological individualism I mean the doctrine that all social phenomena (their structure and their change) are in principle explicable only in terms of individuals – their properties, goals, and beliefs. This doctrine is not incompatible with any of the following true statements.(a) Individuals often have goals that involve the welfare of other individuals. (b) They often have beliefs about supra-individual entities that are not reducible to beliefs about individuals. “The capitalists fear the working class” cannot be reduced to the feelings of capitalists concerning individual workers. By contrast, “The capitalists’ profit is threatened by the working class” can be reduced to a complex statement about the consequences of the actions taken by individual workers. (c) Many properties of individuals, such as “powerful,” are irreducibly relational, so that accurate description of one individual may require reference to other individuals (p. 453).

Whereas Marx proposes an oscillation between the abstract and the concrete, so that the simplest determinations may be articulated and totalities may be understood as richly as possible, Elster proposes a nosedive into the concrete, after which we will be so bloodied and battered that no ascension back toward the totality is possible. Instead, we writhe on the cold ground, desperately flopping toward relations between multiple individuals, but never able to conceive of anything on a grander scale than that.

Yet following Elster’s lead, we still use comparatively abstract categories of “worker” and “capitalist,” seeing classes as incentive structures directing rational individuals. But we are compelled to suppose these categories, not to mention the nebulous model of individual “rationality” that purportedly persists within them, without justifying or articulating them in any real sense. When we dispense with the dialectical movement between abstract and concrete as Elster does, then, we get the worst of both worlds. We wind up incapable of conceiving a rich totality, and using chaotic abstractions anyway.

When you lose the dialectic, you lose Marxism’s central critical and analytical tool. You reduce Marxist categories to the flattest possible caricatures, and then proceed to use them anyway. If you see no value in the dialectic, why bother with Marxism at all?

https://asherwycoff.wordpress.com/2016/06/05/this-is-what-happens-when-you-lose-the-dialectic/

This is What Happens When You Lose the Dialectic

I don't really "get" the 'objective into subjective back to objective' thing. I understand "objective" and "subjective", but I guess my brain power is limited in the back and forth.

In my dim understanding, dialectic is a description of the basic aspect of the nature of Nature. Everything in existence is dialectic in nature. Dialectical materialism is the truth of our existence, our natures, our history, ourselves. Conflicts inherent in a reality that is constituted of bodies in motion through space over time can only be understood in the dialectic. You don't even have to be a Marxist or have Marxist leanings to grasp the truth of this. I heard a talk by Christopher Hichens about his adherence to dialectical materialism - granted he was a Marxist at one time, but he certainly wasn't at the time of his talk.

I may be wrong, but the author of this piece sounded as though he thought of the idea of classes in terms of the working class, alone.


This is why the work of Przeworski is particularly dispiriting. He understands that “[c]lasses are not a datum prior to the history of concrete struggles” (Capitalism and Social Democracy, p. 69), but only in a one-sided way. That the working class is a datum formed out of concrete struggle means, for Przeworski, that it functions solely as a site of identification and mobilization.

This quotation of Przeworski is obviously out of context, but "classes" do not exist, historically, prior to "concrete struggles". Conflict between social groupings led to the formation of classes. And, of course, the working class was not engendered until the rise of capitalism. I guess I am unsure what the author is getting at, here. I don't know what he means by "one-sided", or at least it is unclear in the passage.

Critique of Hegel’s Philosophy of Right
Karl Marx, 1843

§ 261. In contrast with the spheres of private rights and private welfare (the family and civil society), the state is from one point of view an external necessity and their higher authority; its nature is such that their laws and interests are subordinate to it and dependent on it. On the other hand, however, it is the end immanent within them, and its strength lies in the unity of its own universal end and aim with the particular interest of individuals, in the fact that individuals have duties to the state in proportion as they have rights against it (see § 155).

The foregoing paragraph advises us that concrete freedom consists in the identity (as it is supposed to be, two-sided) of the system of particular interest (the family and civil society) with the system of general interest (the state). The relation of these spheres must now be determined more precisely.

From one point of view the state is contrasted with the spheres of family and civil society as an external necessity, an authority, relative to which the laws and interests of family and civil society are subordinate and dependent. That the state, in contrast with the family and civil society, is an external necessity was implied partly in the category of ‘transition’ (Übergangs) and partly in the conscious relationship of the family and civil society to the state. Further, subordination under the state corresponds perfectly with the relation of external necessity. But what Hegel understands by ‘dependence’ is shown by the following sentence from the Remark to this paragraph:

§ 261.... It was Montesquieu above all who, in his famous work L’Esprit des Lois, kept in sight and tried to work out in detail both the thought of the dependence of laws in particular, laws concerning the rights of persons - on the specific character of the state, and also the philosophic notion of always treating the part in its relation to the whole.

Thus Hegel is speaking here of internal dependence, or the essential determination of private rights, etc., by the state. At the same time, however, he subsumes this dependence under the relationship of external necessity and opposes it, as another aspect, to that relationship wherein family and civil society relate to the state as to their immanent end.

‘External necessity’ can only be understood to mean that the laws and interests of the family and civil society must give way in case of collision with the laws and interests of the state, that they are subordinate to it, that their existence is dependent on it, or again that its will and its law appear to their will and their laws as a necessity!

But Hegel is not speaking here about empirical collisions; he is speaking about the relationship of the ‘spheres of private rights and private welfare, of the family and civil society,’ to the state; it is a question of the essential relationship of these spheres themselves. Not only their interests but also their laws and their essential determinations are dependent on the state and subordinate to it. it is related to their laws and interests as higher authority, while their interest and law are related to it as its ‘subordinates’. They exist in their dependence on it. Precisely because subordination and dependence are external relations, limiting and contrary to an autonomous being, the relationship of family and civil society to the state is that of external necessity, a necessity which relates by opposition to the inner being of the thing. The very fact that the laws concerning the private rights of persons depend on the specific character of the state and are modified according to it is thereby subsumed under the relationship of external necessity’, precisely because civil society and family in their true, that is in their independent and complete development, are presupposed by the state as particular spheres. ‘Subordination’ and ‘dependence’ are the expressions for an external, artificial, apparent identity, for the logical expression of which Hegel quite rightly uses the phrase ‘external necessity’. With the notions of ‘subordination’ and ‘dependence’ Hegel has further developed the one aspect of the divided identity, namely that of the alienation within the unity.

On the other hand, however, it is the end immanent within them, and its strength lies in the unity of its own universal end and aim with the particular interest of individuals, in the fact that individuals have duties to the state in proportion as they have rights against it.

Here Hegel sets up an unresolved antinomy: on the one hand external necessity, on the other hand immanent end. The unity of the universal end and aim of the state and the particular interest of individuals must consist in this, that the duties of individuals to the state and their rights against it are identical (thus, for example, the duty to respect property coincides with the right to property).

This identity is explained in this way in the Remark [to § 261]:

Duty is primarily a relation to something which from my point of view is substantive, absolutely universal. A right, on the other hand, is simply the embodiment of this substance and thus is the particular aspect of it and enshrines my particular freedom. Hence at abstract levels, right and duty appear parcelled out on different sides or in different persons. In the state, as something ethical, as the interpenetration of the substantive and the particular, my obligation to what is substantive is at the same time the embodiment of my particular freedom. This means that in the state duty and right are united in one and the same relation.

§ 262. The actual Idea is mind, which, sundering itself into the two ideal spheres of its concept, family and civil society, enters upon its finite phase, but it does so only in order to rise above its ideality and become explicit as infinite actual mind. It is therefore to these ideal spheres that the actual Idea assigns the material of this its finite actuality, viz., human beings as a mass, in such a way that the function assigned to any given individual is visibly mediated by circumstances, his caprice and his personal choice of his station in life.

Let us translate this into prose as follows:

The manner and means of the state’s mediation with the family and civil society are ‘circumstance, caprice, and personal choice of station in life’. Accordingly, the rationality of the state [Staatsvernunft] has nothing to do with the division of the material of the state into family and civil society.

The state results from them in an unconscious and arbitrary way. Family and civil society appear as the dark natural ground from which the light of the state emerges. By material of the state is meant the business of the state, i.e., family and civil society, in so far as they constitute components of the state and, as such, participate in the state.

This development is peculiar in two respects.

1. Family and civil society are conceived of as spheres of the concept of the state, specifically as spheres of its finiteness, as its finite phase. it is the state which sunders itself into the two, which presupposes them, and indeed does this ‘only in order to rise above its ideality and become explicit as infinite actual mind’. ‘It sunders itself in order to...’ It ‘therefore assigns to these ideal spheres the material of its finite actuality in such a way that the function assigned to any given individual is visibly mediated, etc’. The so-called ‘actual idea’ (mind as infinite and actual) is described as though it acted according to a determined principle and toward a determined end. It sunders itself into finite spheres, and does this ‘in order to return to itself, to be for itself’; moreover it does this precisely in such a way that it is just as it actually is.

In this passage the logical, pantheistic mysticism appears very clearly.

The actual situation is that the assignment of the material of the state to the individual is mediated by circumstances, caprice, and personal choice of his station in life. This fact, this actual situation is expressed by speculative philosophy [der Spekulation] as appearance, as phenomenon. These circumstances, this caprice, this personal choice of vocation, this actual mediation are merely the appearance of a mediation which the actual Idea undertakes with itself and which goes on behind the scenes. Actuality is not expressed as itself but as another reality. Ordinary empirical existence does not have its own mind [Geist] but rather an alien mind as its law, while on the other hand the actual Idea does not have an actuality which is developed out of itself, but rather has ordinary empirical existence as its existence [Dasein].

The Idea is given the status of a subject, and the actual relationship of family and civil society to the state is conceived to be its inner imaginary activity. Family and civil society are the presuppositions of the state; they are the really active things; but in speculative philosophy it is reversed. But if the Idea is made subject, then the real subjects - civil society, family, circumstances, caprice, etc. - become unreal, and take on the different meaning of objective moments of the Idea.

2. The circumstance, caprice, and personal choice of station in life, through which the material of the state is assigned to the individual, are not said directly to be things which are real, necessary, and justified in and for themselves; qua circumstances, caprice, and personal choice they are not declared to be rational. Yet on the other hand they again are, but only so as to be presented for the phenomena of a mediation, to be left as they are while at the same time acquiring the meaning of a determination of the idea, a result and product of the Idea. The difference lies not in the content, but in the way of considering it, or in the manner of speaking. There is a two-fold history, one esoteric and one exoteric. The content lies in the exoteric part. The interest of the esoteric is always to recover the history of the logical Concept in the state. But the real development proceeds on the exoteric side.


Tons more:https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1843/critique-hpr/ch01.htm

I'll post more later.

In my dim understanding, dialectic is a description of the basic aspect of the nature of Nature. Everything in existence is dialectic in nature. Dialectical materialism is the truth of our existence, our natures, our history, ourselves. Conflicts inherent in a reality that is constituted of bodies in motion through space over time can only be understood in the dialectic.

Hey Dhal, you remember the Skeptics right? (this isn't a 'grandpa' joke, I promise). Well, Hegel took their criticism to heart -- the (philosophical) concept of "causation" not only leads to major headaches, it also inescapably leads to capital I Idealism. (this is what he said..I will add quotes if you like -- but even Anax swore off invoking Hegel directly).

The reasoning Hegel offered (and this flips the script on almost everything you ever hear claimed regarding ol GWF) is that you can keep peeling back layers forever -- in essence "When Good Infinities Go Bad". The only alternate recourse is to introduce a First Cause or Prime Mover. Get it? ALL Idealism ends up in the same place: God. Hegel is calling out basically all previous philosophy for being metaphysical.

But Hegel saw his (only) way out of the trap of metaphysics: philosophy has to be systematic and in particular the system has to be SELF-GROUNDED and not contingent (this is an active evolution and NOT a passive state of being -- SPOILER ALERT: the mechanism of self-justification is INTERNAL contradiction).

At any rate, dialectics is very much NOT a (direct) system for underwriting the natural sciences (Hegel went off the rails here).

A Clarification of Subjective and Objective Dialectics
ON FEBRUARY 6, 2016 BY VNGIAPAGANDAIN DIALECTICS, IDEOLOGY
Introduction

I find that in many discussions and applications of dialectics the difference and connection of subjective and objective dialectics isn’t clearly defined or appreciated. This can lead to confusion about how to understand objective reality, consciousness, and what a sensible application of dialectics entails. It’s also responsible for an uninformed denigration of Marxist-Leninist dialectics in circles inclined to think of it as “dogmatic” or “rigid” or the like.

For a quick overview of the basic relationships: how matter acts (objective dialectics) becomes impressed on the brain and phenomenologically reproduced in the formation of an experience of consciousness, as well as becoming formative of unconscious activity. This consciousness is also made of material that acts dialectically. Subjective dialectics are, in one sense, this consciousness living and working towards an understanding of the world and, in another sense (if developed), the purposeful use of a dialectical method of logic. While conscious thought naturally acts in a dialectical fashion, as anything does, without the dialectical method this is not systematized and tends to fall into all sorts of confusion. When individuals interact to form social and class subjects, a qualitative change occurs, as the individuals reflect their place and struggle within the social subject rather than being primarily formative of it.


Objective Dialectics and the Brain

The term “objective dialectics” refers to the actually existing substance and movement of material. When Engels describes chemical processes as a set of quantity-quality changes based on atomic and molecular formation, what is being described is an actually existing relationship of what current science has led us to term atoms and molecules. Some would have it that this kind of reasoning is somehow a “stultifying” or “rigid” because it tries to “fix” empirical phenomena into a specified theoretical framework, yet nothing described by Engels in his Dialectics of Nature (taking historical context and personal limits into account) is really wrong or “rigid.” He describes actually existing material relationships as they were thought to exist at the time and shows that they behave in certain dialectical ways, and he quite purposefully reworks Hegelian philosophical categories into a scientific understanding of reality to do so. There is nothing rigid here, as Engels especially identified his work, and the application and development of dialectical materialism itself, as tentative and subject to revision as science brings new understandings to light. It should be noted early on here that both Marx and Engels shared the view that Hegel was for the most part wrong on pretty much everything if taken strictly at his word (they repeatedly make statements along these lines), and that it was his method that had to be salvaged and applied from a consciously materialist standpoint. This involved significant modification and re-conceptualization, and the development of this can be seen most directly and clearly in Engels’s works Anti-Dühring and Dialectics of Nature.

There should be no confusion: the material relationships are real. When water turns from liquid into ice, there is a very real material change that happens on the basis of the subtraction of energy in the form of heat. The quantitative relation of heat (quantified atomic motion) results in the change of state (a significant concrete change in quality) of a group of water molecules. Entirely apart from human cognition, liquid and solid water are still quite different things. Entirely apart from ideal dialectics of what quantity forms a certain quality or what quality means quantitatively, these relationships remain. It is the goal of dialectical materialism to elucidate the nature of these changes through conceptualizing them at multiple levels and from multiple perspectives so as to bring out the complex interrelationships that are involved.

Given that matter is in itself dialectical, how do these interactions result in the emergence of an organization of matter that results in a manner of cognition from which subjective dialectics can emerge? Though not explicitly done through the theoretical framework of dialectical materialism, in Incomplete Nature, Terrence Deacon describes how mind emerged from matter in a way that is easy to understand through dialectical materialism, as it involves objective quantity-quality relationships. He interprets qualitative jumps in physical relationships (for instance, from the world of chemistry to the world of biology, as interpreted by scientists) as a progression of supervenient levels with emergent properties determined by particular sets of constraints that occur on each of these levels. For example, this progression can occur through a process he terms “morphodynamics.” This is “dynamical organization exhibiting the tendency to become spontaneously more organized and orderly over time due to constant purturbation, but without the extrinsic imposition of influences that specifically impose that regularity.” Through this process, constraints inherent in the physics of thermodynamics arrive at, due to perturbation resulting from the tendency towards entropy, contragrade processes that perform the physical work necessary to develop new emergent properties that can reproduce themselves.

At higher levels of supervenience, a process of what Deacon terms “teleodynamics” occurs. He defines this as,

A form of dynamical organization exhibiting end-directedness and consequence-organized features that is constituted by the co-creation, complementary constraint, and reciprocal synergy of two or more strongly coupled morphodynamic processes.
A multitude of teleodynamic processes can interact within and across levels, each affecting each other’s end-directedness and possibly forming a larger supervenient teleodynamic process that he termed to be “teleogenic,” wherein self-referential loops of “causality” intertwine and form “causal” properties (with a consciously dialectical method, these would be better called processes of becoming rather than all these twists and turns of positive causality) that can form adaptations to environments and preserve its generative processes. The application of complexity theory that Deacon determines should be the mode of understanding how this process plays out may be worth studying through the lens of dialectical materialism, especially because I think that without a strict materialist method, complexity theory tends to veer off into idealism when applied to social reality. “The movement will dynamically emerge out of the complexity of human society, man, it’s just under the surface!”

Through these progressive levels of new emergent properties (all of course in dialectical relation with each other throughout these levels), eventually the extremely complex organization and dynamical properties of the brain, and the personal mind that forms from its function, is brought about. So the mind can be thought of as the result of material acting dialectically throughout a series of supervenient quantitative-qualitative changes in how material interacts with itself.

With his theory, Deacon shares with Hegel an application of a theory of negativity for understanding reality, though Deacon does this from a materialist perspective. He describes a basic incompleteness inherent in material reality emerging from basic contradictions (not a term he uses) in thermodynamics forming into emergent levels of organization with new properties. This basic negativity is popularly seen in the concept of attractors from complexity theory. He also determines the properties of the supervenient levels by the constraints imposed by themselves and externally, i.e., these are negatively determined. It is interesting to note that Istvan Mészáros in Vol. 1 of his Social Structure and Forms of Consciousness identifies a tendency to theorize phenomena as negatively determined in the core of liberalism.

Dialectical materialism, however, is a method meant to see the multi-sidedness of phenomena, incorporating positive and negative aspects into a whole that develops through the expression of the resulting contradictions. Theorizing the development of material through constraints leaves a kind of formal understanding in place and needs to be complemented with a positive aspect of becoming that forms within these constraints, making up a substance that develops positively through these negative impositions. The big bang is thought to not only have positively exploded, but also to have created its own constraints in this explosion with the fundamental forces.

What about all of this is at all “stultifying” or “rigid”? And yet all this fits rather well into the theory of dialectics that Engels developed, though some would still believe this to be somehow distinct from True Marxism because it does not reach the heights of their own no doubt highly “nuanced” interpretation of what Marx’s dialectics must have been. It is, however, known from their correspondence that Marx worked with Engels on Anti-Dühring and followed Engels’s work that would become the Dialectics of Nature when he was still alive and was supportive of the project.

I personally believe the rejection of Engels’s theory of dialectics is related to the need to denigrate Soviet science as part of the class struggle, which is a major reason for the complete demonization of Lysenko as well, who actually turned out to be ahead of his time on several issues. The relation of Lysenko’s critique of genetics to the current theory of epigenetics is especially of interest, but unfortunately I’m not aware of any tanky biologists willing to explore the subject from a generous anti-revisionist perspective, and I certainly don’t have the education to carry out such a study myself. However, it is interesting to note that transgenerational epigenetic inheritance – this can be considered the modern terminology for some of the biological relationships Lysenko was aiming to develop (though, as with anything old and scientific, he was of course wrong on many of the specifics) – is now acknowledged to be a thing, and demonization of Lysenko actually played a role in resistance to this being acknowledged. Lysenko is an interesting case of anti-communism, becoming something of a scientific mini-Stalin, which was formative of a general mythology of the USSR as a place where relentless oppression occurred that was carried out by “totalitarian” monsters on a populace that was apparently defenseless against this but could force the defeat of the Nazis. One can even see a similar myth used to attack Soviet psychology, where Vygotsky is frequently presented as having been suppressed, despite there not really being any evidence that this occurred, simply because nothing good can be thought to have come out of the USSR of that era without having to have gone through some process of oppression. All these myths arise from the same need of the bourgeoisie to create an ideological moat at the periphery of liberalism – this is of course among the many reasons that anti-communism has to be radically rejected.

So, in summary, the movement of material (understood to be dialectical) results in the formation of a personal consciousness that then interacts with the world.

Psychology and Individual Subjective Dialectics

This personal consciousness forms a subject that is acted upon. As the world impacts the subject, the subject reacts through synthesizing thought and reacting purposefully. This is a process occurring through the brain, and is therefore biologically determined. Though there may seem to be a strict differentiation between the material and the consciousness, this is all formed by concrete interactions of material and energy. When you see something, this is light bouncing off of an object into the eye, causing a signal that is then understood in the brain as to indicate a shape and color, before these signals are sent to other parts of the brain for processing into a working understanding and possible purposive action (or just ignoring the information, as is most often the case). All of these connections are immediate, so there is no solipsistic divorce between material and mind.

In some leftist circles their theory of the subject leads directly into an anti-essentialism that denies the physiological reality of what the subject acts through and their personal psychology. This is the material basis for the subject, which has specific constraints that form its structure, phenomenology, and potential for change. Anti-essentialism can lead to the sort of utopian thinking we see in today’s left, as well as the Foucauldian overemphasis on narratives and superstructure (or even the obliteration of the base-superstructure dialectic entirely) that is so popular in the post-Marxist “left.” The effects of this kind of thinking are especially obvious in the case of Foucault, whose theory led to a politics of speaking “uncomfortable truths” that he called “parrhesia” in inspiration from the Greek cynics, and particularly the (myth) of Diogenes of Sinope (a horrible misogynist and racist if his myth is true, and a sort of Zizek of antiquity). We know now better than ever how ineffective this mode of “radicalism” is within a capitalist society that excels at defanging even the most aggressive verbal attacks, becoming metabolized in the system for profit or succor as anything else does. I believe a close examination of Marx’s development of historical materialism reveals how his admiration for the science of the era, and Darwin especially, led to an acknowledgement of the limitations of the human mind that resulted in the recognition of the primacy of material factors over human consciousness.

While any effort to generally prefer biological explanations over cultural explanations for society should be rejected outright, especially because it is frequently used as a tool to justify bourgeois class oppression, the biological nature of the mind and subject should still be appreciated. For instance, all communists become aware of how fixed many people’s minds are in certain areas. In a one-on-one conversation a person can convince another of many things, but once this infringes on a certain area that has been more significantly structured by years of internalization of capitalist and imperialist narratives, rejection becomes absolute, and often this can even retroactively undo the previous persuasion. These narratives form real material structures that cannot be simply changed through a brief imposition of logic – the material structure cannot simply absorb this logic and immediately make the change, and a style of argumentation that relies on ignoring this material limitation should be critiqued.

I also want to note that anti-essentialism can itself lead to a destabilization of the subject in a way that can produce delusional thinking. The rejection of limits to thought can lead to a subjective overreaching that cannot be sustained except through delusional styles of thought. For instance, if a person who, due to their personal history, has an introverted relation to society suddenly decides to become extroverted and act in that way, these behaviors that are not yet structured in the subject can only be acted out through delusional means that ignore the deeper structuring of the brain. The neural connections and subjective associations that an extroverted person would have developed simply do not exist yet, and to move from the initial introversion would require its own developmental process.

The more basic aspects of phenomenological experience, such as emotion and sensation, over time become, though they may not ever seem to be, integrated with and by a linguistic superstructure that develops as the subject matures through experience being symbolically internalized and associations being made from and of these symbols, and the resulting symbolic structures become more and more directed back into the more basic brain functions as a person matures. This process creates a whole, more or less integrated subjective structure that is experienced both consciously and unconsciously. This inversion of the intellectualization process (first from basic functions structuring advanced functions, then to advanced functions structuring basic functions) during maturation exhibits a type of developmental negation-of-the-negation relationship in how human brains develop with how the subject interacts with their environment. So more basic phenomenological feelings, though they are dialectically interpenetrated and form contradictions between and within each other even without the influence of language (this can be observed in animals), all become not simply interpenetrated by language, but essentially structured by language as the aforementioned dialectical inversion occurs, as this is the key symbolic method through which humans come to understand themselves and their environment, how they see themselves working within their environment.

As a result of this structuralization of experience by language, conscious logic also functions dialectically in certain ways with or without any understanding of this process by the individual. Even with those who remain stuck in metaphysical thought patterns, categorizing phenomena more or less rigidly into their boxes so that they can be played around with as mechanical parts with which to work out how the world functions, this method of thought still functions dialectically, it just imposes artificial rigidity and blocks the conceptualization of interpenetration and contradiction. This is why a consciously dialectical method of thought and logic is so important for communists.

To clarify the importance of Hegel for Marxists, at least in this respect, understanding his work is important for internalizing his systematization of logic into a fully dialectical whole, removing the antinomies that Kant recognized had plagued philosophy and which he didn’t see as resolvable. In a sense, Hegel had reached the end of a line of thinking by fully developing a dialectical logic that not only encompassed past logical systems, but created a method of logic that had set mechanisms through which it did so. Understanding such a system provides a powerful tool for communists to use when interpreting and conceptualizing the world, as it allows us to remain agile in how we think and act. While, again, Hegel was mostly wrong in his interpretation of reality itself on account of his idealism and its effects (Engels at one point describes Hegel’s work as a “dialectical poem”), understanding and applying his core logical system (the famous kernel), while keeping in mind that this is necessarily and fundamentally modified by materialism, is vital for systematizing logical thought towards being consciously dialectical.

Ideology and Social Subjectivity

Subjective dialectics external to individual subjects form the realm of the socially ideal (as conceptualized by Ilyenkov) and of ideology, both of these functioning in logical terms, as language itself is, through metaphor, syllogism, and semantics. On a personal basis, the ideal and ideology form from interactions with the environment. Ideology exists not within the subject, but within society, and cannot be divorced from society due to the social nature of humans. This is not as a sum of individuals in interaction, but rather it involves a quantitative-qualitative jump between psychology and sociology. As with the matured interaction between basic and advanced brain structures, the social ideological structures return back onto individual subjects and become the primary determinant in what people come to believe. Returning to Deacon, society is a supervenient process over individual subjects that has the property of what he would (of course, given his positivism) call “reverse causality.”

The nature of the ideal as used by Marx was clarified by Ilyenkov. Ilyenkov saw that Marx’s concept of the ideal had not only an individual, but also a social ontology. An example of this conceptualization occurs when Marx describes the value of money as an ideal property, not only meaning that it is ideal within the mind of any single person, but also that it acts through the interaction of socially subjective dialectics to form an ideal object that, as it were, imposes itself on society from without and comes from a shared ideological reflection of material constraints that develop out of material relationships of exchange. This manner of understanding ideal objects is vital for reaching past the solipsistic modes of thought that liberalism proliferates.

I’d argue that this shouldn’t even be thought of as inter-subjective, in the psychological sense, but socially subjective. As in, shared ideal objects are formative of social and class subjects. In the case of the nation, this could be related to the arguments put forth by Stalin in his work Marxism and the National Question. For instance, take Stalin’s summary of what factors are formative of a nation:

A nation is a historically constituted, stable community of people, formed on the basis of a common language, territory, economic life, and psychological make-up manifested in a common culture.
These are phenomena related to shared ideal objects within a group of people. Or, rather, people form groups and are seen as being grouped around this sort of sharing of ideal objects.

These subjective dialectics, forming the realm of ideology, are plastic and are formed through the interaction of humans and their environment in their metabolism of nature for themselves. The example of money value is informative here as a bit of an extreme case (though Marx formed many similar concepts): no one decided for money to have value, this was simply an emergent property of exchange relationships that became internalized and acted out even though this process wasn’t really understood until Marx himself. In this era of (and Marxists should be happy about this) lost illusions, examples of this nature are perhaps less common than in the past, but human societies have formed around socially ideal processes revolving around non-understood material relationships as a rule, including our own.

A goal of communism is to socialize awareness of this so as to bring humanity into a kind of conscious social subjectivity. This can’t be thought of as something that simply falls out of the sky once communism wins, but rather it is an understanding to be built socially and purposefully for internalization and further development by everyone. This might seem to a liberal as a de-individuation, but it is actually a true-individuation. Not being able to see how society determines you as an individual means you have less conscious and reflective ability to have agency over this process.

Lastly I’d just like to touch on differentiating Marxism as applied to ideological critique and Marxism as applied as a science. Ideological critique, though valuable for shifting opinions and perspectives, cannot be understood as something that gives solid ground to stand on, that offers objectivity. You can critique ideology all day, but you won’t reach any kind of truth. Ideology is made up of multivalent symbols with extremely complex interrelationships. An individual’s ideology is never constant and even changes in the topic being spoken on during the process of speech, even during the process of expressing a single word. And social ideology is no less slippery. While ideological forms and ideal objects certainly need to be critiqued, this cannot be thought of as formative of Marxism-Leninism as a science nor as essential to revolution, though Marxism-Leninism as a science should be used to help determine methods and strategies for ideological critique.

Though any science is made up of ideology, its internal logic ensures a degree of objectivity if applied correctly. As Marx expressed, being scientific means investigating and theorizing that which cannot immediately be perceived or understood – it means reaching behind appearances. Marx’s method of dialectical materialism is a powerful tool for doing this, and therefore should be understood as a scientific method (and a scientific method superior to the vulgar materialism and empiricism that is still so prevalent today). Through Marx’s application of dialectical logic, he was able to identify the material factors and conscious and unconscious social relationships that formed the way capitalism actually functioned. No easy task, as anyone who reads Capital quickly comes to understand. As Marx developed his theory, he tested it against studied phenomena to verify whether his ideas were correct and to sharpen them, spending years in libraries reading through texts on economics, surveys of economic activity, and the like. This study of objective relationships and underlying reality is of primary importance for Marxist-Leninist praxis.

Conclusion

Hopefully the above has clarified the nature of dialectics as they occur objectively, individually, and socially. Reaching a higher understanding of dialectical materialism is vital for communists – dialectical materialism is Marxist philosophy. And, in another direction, as Marx and Engels say in the German Ideology, “for the practical materialist, i.e., the communist, it is a question of revolutionizing the existing world, of practically coming to grips with and changing the things found in existence.” In other words, to be a communist is to be a practical materialist and to be a practical materialist is to be a communist.

https://vngiapaganda.wordpress.com/2016/02/06/subjective-and-objective-dialectics/

Paging Dr KOBH, paging Dr KOBH......

Karl Marx
The Poverty of Philosophy
Chapter Two: The Metaphysics of Political Economy

The Method

Contents:

First Observation
Second Observation
Third Observation
Fourth Observation
Fifth Observation
Sixth Observation
Seventh Observation



Here we are, right in Germany! We shall now have to talk metaphysics while talking political economy. And in this again we shall but follow M. Proudhon's “contradictions.” Just now he forced us to speak English, to become pretty well English ourselves. Now the scene is changing. M. Proudhon is transporting us to our dear fatherland and is forcing us, whether we like it or not, to become German again.

If the Englishman transforms men into hats, the German transforms hats into ideas. The Englishman is Ricardo, rich banker and distinguished economist; the German is Hegel, simple professor at the University of Berlin.

Louis XV, the last absolute monarch and representative of the decadence of French royalty, had attached to his person a physician who was himself France's first economist. This doctor, this economist, represented the imminent and certain triumph of the French bourgeoisie. Doctor Quesnay made a science out of political economy; he summarized it in his famous Tableau économique. Besides the thousand and one commentaries on this table which have appeared, we possess one by the doctor himself. It is the “Analysis of the Economic Table,” followed by “seven important observations.”

M. Proudhon is another Dr. Quesnay. He is the Quesnay of the metaphysics of political economy.

Now metaphysics – indeed all philosophy – can be summed up, according to Hegel, in method. We must, therefore, try to elucidate the method of M. Proudhon, which is at least as foggy as the Economic Table. It is for this reason that we are making seven more or less important observations. If Dr. Proudhon is not pleased with our observations, well, then, he will have to become an Abbe Baydeau and give the “explanation of the economico-metaphysical method” himself.



First Observation

“We are not giving a history according to the order in time, but according to the sequence of ideas. Economic phases or categories are in their manifestation sometimes contemporary, sometimes inverted.... Economic theories have nonetheless their logical sequence and their serial relation in the understanding: it is this order that we flatter our- selves to have discovered."

(Proudhon, Vol. I, p. 146)

M. Proudhon most certainly wanted to frighten the French by flinging quasi-Hegelian phrases at them. So we have to deal with two men: firstly with M. Proudhon, and then with Hegel. How does M. Proudhon distinguish himself from other economists? And what part does Hegel play in M. Proudhon's political economy?

Economists express the relations of bourgeois production, the division of labour, credit, money, etc., as fixed, immutable, eternal categories. M. Proudhon, who has these ready-made categories before him, wants to explain to us the act of formation, the genesis of these categories, principles, laws, ideas, thoughts.

Economists explain how production takes place in the above-mentioned relations, but what they do not explain is how these relations themselves are produced, that is, the historical movement which gave them birth. M. Proudhon, taking these relations for principles, categories, abstract thoughts, has merely to put into order these thoughts, which are to be found alphabetically arranged at the end of every treatise on political economy. The economists' material is the active, energetic life of man; M. Proudhon's material is the dogmas of the economists. But the moment we cease to pursue the historical movement of production relations, of which the categories are but the theoretical expression, the moment we want to see in these categories no more than ideas, spontaneous thoughts, independent of real relations, we are forced to attribute the origin of these thoughts to the movement of pure reason. How does pure, eternal, impersonal reason give rise to these thoughts? How does it proceed in order to produce them?

If we had M. Proudhon's intrepidity in the matter of Hegelianism we should say: it is distinguished in itself from itself. What does this mean? Impersonal reason, having outside itself neither a base on which it can pose itself, nor an object to which it can oppose itself, nor a subject with which it can compose itself, is forced to turn head over heels, in posing itself, opposing itself and composing itself – position, opposition, composition. Or, to speak Greek – we have thesis, antithesis and synthesis. For those who do not know the Hegelian language, we shall give the ritual formula: affirmation, negation and negation of the negation. That is what language means. It is certainly not Hebrew (with due apologies to M. Proudhon); but it is the language of this pure reason, separate from the individual. Instead of the ordinary individual with his ordinary manner of speaking and thinking we have nothing but this ordinary manner purely and simply – without the individual.

Is it surprising that everything, in the final abstraction – for we have here an abstraction, and not an analysis – presents itself as a logical category? Is it surprising that, if you let drop little by little all that constitutes the individuality of a house, leaving out first of all the materials of which it is composed, then the form that distinguishes it, you end up with nothing but a body; that, if you leave out of account the limits of this body; you soon have nothing but a space – that if, finally, you leave out of the account the dimensions of this space, there is absolutely nothing left but pure quantity, the logical category? If we abstract thus from every subject all the alleged accidents, animate or inanimate, men or things, we are right in saying that in the final abstraction, the only substance left is the logical category. Thus the metaphysicians who, in making these abstractions, think they are making analyses, and who, the more they detach themselves from things, imagine themselves to be getting all the nearer to the point of penetrating to their core – these metaphysicians in turn are right in saying that things here below are embroideries of which the logical categories constitute the canvas. This is what distinguishes the philosopher from the Christian. The Christian, in spite of logic, has only one incarnation of the Logos; the philosopher has never finished with incarnations. If all that exists, all that lives on land, and under water, can be reduced by abstraction to a logical category – if the whole real world can be drowned thus in a world of abstractions, in the world of logical categories – who need be astonished at it?

All that exists, all that lives on land and under water, exists and lives only by some kind of movement. Thus, the movement of history produces social relations; industrial movement gives us industrial products, etc.

Just as by means of abstraction we have transformed everything into a logical category, so one has only to make an abstraction of every characteristic distinctive of different movements to attain movement in its abstract condition – purely formal movement, the purely logical formula of movement. If one finds in logical categories the substance of all things, one imagines one has found in the logical formula of movement the absolute method, which not only explains all things, but also implies the movement of things.

It is of this absolute method that Hegel speaks in these terms:

“Method is the absolute, unique, supreme, infinite force, which no object can resist; it is the tendency of reason to find itself again, to recognize itself in every object.”

(Logic, Vol. III [p. 29])

All things being reduced to a logical category, and every movement, every act of production, to method, it follows naturally that every aggregate of products and production, of objects and of movement, can be reduced to a form of applied metaphysics. What Hegel has done for religion, law, etc., M. Proudhon seeks to do for political economy.

So what is this absolute method? The abstraction of movement. What is the abstraction of movement? Movement in abstract condition. What is movement in abstract condition? The purely logical formula of movement or the movement of pure reason. Wherein does the movement of pure reason consist? In posing itself, opposing itself, composing itself; in formulating itself as thesis, antithesis, synthesis; or, yet, in affirming itself, negating itself, and negating its negation.

How does reason manage to affirm itself, to pose itself in a definite category? That is the business of reason itself and of its apologists.

But once it has managed to pose itself as a thesis, this thesis, this thought, opposed to itself, splits up into two contradictory thoughts – the positive and the negative, the yes and no. The struggle between these two antagonistic elements comprised in the antithesis constitutes the dialectical movement. The yes becoming no, the no becoming yes, the yes becoming both yes and no, the no becoming both no and yes, the contraries balance, neutralize, paralyze each other. The fusion of these two contradictory thoughts constitutes a new thought, which is the synthesis of them. This thought splits up once again into two contradictory thoughts, which in turn fuse into a new synthesis. Of this travail is born a group of thoughts. This group of thoughts follows the same dialectic movement as the simple category, and has a contradictory group as antithesis. Of these two groups of thoughts is born a new group of thoughts, which is the antithesis of them.

Just as from the dialectic movement of the simple categories is born the group, so from the dialectic movement of the groups is born the series, and from the dialectic movement of the series is born the entire system.

Apply this method to the categories of political economy and you have the logic and metaphysics of political economy, or, in other words, you have the economic categories that everybody knows, translated into a little-known language which makes them look as if they had never blossomed forth in an intellect of pure reason; so much do these categories seem to engender one another, to be linked up and intertwined with one another by the very working of the dialectic movement. The reader must not get alarmed at these metaphysics with all their scaffolding of categories, groups, series, and systems. M. Proudhon, in spite of all the trouble he has taken to scale the heights of the system of contradictions, has never been able to raise himself above the first two rungs of simple thesis and antithesis; and even these he has mounted only twice, and on one of these two occasions he fell over backwards.

Up to now we have expounded only the dialectics of Hegel. We shall see later how M. Proudhon has succeeded in reducing it to the meanest proportions. Thus, for Hegel, all that has happened and is still happening is only just what is happening in his own mind. Thus the philosophy of history is nothing but the history of philosophy, of his own philosophy. There is no longer a “history according to the order in time,” there is only “the sequence of ideas in the understanding.” He thinks he is constructing the world by the movement of thought, whereas he is merely reconstructing systematically and classifying by the absolute method of thoughts which are in the minds of all.



Second Observation

Economic categories are only the theoretical expressions, the abstractions of the social relations of production, M. Proudhon, holding this upside down like a true philosopher, sees in actual relations nothing but the incarnation of the principles, of these categories, which were slumbering – so M. Proudhon the philosopher tells us – in the bosom of the “impersonal reason of humanity.”

M. Proudhon the economist understands very well that men make cloth, linen, or silk materials in definite relations of production. But what he has not understood is that these definite social relations are just as much produced by men as linen, flax, etc. Social relations are closely bound up with productive forces. In acquiring new productive forces men change their mode of production; and in changing their mode of production, in changing the way of earning their living, they change all their social relations. The hand-mill gives you society with the feudal lord; the steam-mill, society with the industrial capitalist.

The same men who establish their social relations in conformity with the material productivity, produce also principles, ideas, and categories, in conformity with their social relations.

Thus the ideas, these categories, are as little eternal as the relations they express. They are historical and transitory products.

There is a continual movement of growth in productive forces, of destruction in social relations, of formation in ideas; the only immutable thing is the abstraction of movement – mors immortalis.

[Marx quotes these words from the following passage of Lucretius's poem On The Nature of Things (Book III, line 869): “mortalem vitam mors cum immortalis ademit” ("when mortal life has been taken away by immortal death").]



Third Observation

The production relations of every society form a whole. M. Proudhon considers economic relations as so many social phases, engendering one another, resulting one from the other like the antithesis from the thesis, and realizing in their logical sequence the impersonal reason of humanity.

The only drawback to this method is that when he comes to examine a single one of these phases, M. Proudhon cannot explain it without having recourse to all the other relations of society; which relations, however, he has not yet made his dialectic movement engender. When, after that, M. Proudhon, by means of pure reason, proceeds to give birth to these other phases, he treats them as if they were new-born babes. He forgets that they are of the same age as the first.

Thus, to arrive at the constitution of value, which for him is the basis of all economic evolutions, he could not do without division of labour, competition, etc. Yet in the series, in the understanding of M. Proudhon, in the logical sequence, these relations did not yet exist.

In constructing the edifice of an ideological system by means of the categories of political economy, the limbs of the social system are dislocated. The different limbs of society are converted into so many separate societies, following one upon the other. How, indeed, could the single logical formula of movement, of sequence, of time, explain the structure of society, in which all relations coexist simultaneously and support one another?



Fourth Observation

Let us see now to what modifications M. Proudhon subjects Hegel's dialectics when he applies it to political economy.

For him, M. Proudhon, every economic category has two sides – one good, the other bad. He looks upon these categories as the petty bourgeois looks upon the great men of history: Napoleon was a great man; he did a lot of good; he also did a lot of harm.

The good side and the bad side, the advantages and drawbacks, taken together form for M. Proudhon the contradiction in every economic category.

The problem to be solved: to keep the good side, while eliminating the bad.

Slavery is an economic category like any other. Thus it also has its two sides. Let us leave alone the bad side and talk about the good side of slavery. Needless to say, we are dealing only with direct slavery, with Negro slavery in Surinam, in Brazil, in the Southern States of North America.

Direct slavery is just as much the pivot of bourgeois industry as machinery, credits, etc. Without slavery you have no cotton; without cotton you have no modern industry. It is slavery that gave the colonies their value; it is the colonies that created world trade, and it is world trade that is the precondition of large-scale industry. Thus slavery is an economic category of the greatest importance.

Without slavery North America, the most progressive of countries, would be transformed into a patriarchal country. Wipe North America off the map of the world, and you will have anarchy – the complete decay of modern commerce and civilization. Cause slavery to disappear and you will have wiped America off the map of nations.[*1]

Thus slavery, because it is an economic category, has always existed among the institutions of the peoples. Modern nations have been able only to disguise slavery in their own countries, but they have imposed it without disguise upon the New World.

What would M. Proudhon do to save slavery? He would formulate the problem thus: preserve the good side of this economic category, eliminate the bad.

Hegel has no problems to formulate. He has only dialectics. M. Proudhon has nothing of Hegel's dialectics but the language. For him the dialectic movement is the dogmatic distinction between good and bad.

Let us for a moment consider M. Proudhon himself as a category. Let us examine his good and bad side, his advantages and his drawbacks.

If he has the advantage over Hegel of setting problems which he reserves the right of solving for the greater good of humanity, he has the drawback of being stricken with sterility when it is a question of engendering a new category by dialectical birth-throes. What constitutes dialectical movement is the coexistence of two contradictory sides, their conflict and their fusion into a new category. The very setting of the problem of eliminating the bad side cuts short the dialectic movement. It is not the category which is posed and opposed to itself, by its contradictory nature, it is M. Proudhon who gets excited, perplexed and frets and fumes between the two sides of the category.

Caught thus in a blind alley, from which it is difficult to escape by legal means, M. Proudhon takes a real flying leap which transports him at one bound into a new category. Then it is that, to his astonished gaze, is revealed the serial relation in the understanding.

He takes the first category that comes handy and attributes to it arbitrarily the quality of supplying a remedy for the drawbacks of the category to be purified. Thus, if we are to believe M. Proudhon, taxes remedy the drawbacks of monopoly; the balance of trade, the drawbacks of taxes; landed property, the drawbacks of credit.

By taking the economic categories thus successively, one by one, and making one the antidote to the other, M. Proudhon manages to make with this mixture of contradictions and antidotes to contradictions, two volumes of contradictions, which he rightly entitles: Le Système des contradictions économiques. [The System of Economic Contradictions]



Fifth Observation

“In the absolute reason all these ideas... are equally simple, and general.... In fact, we attain knowledge only by a sort of scaffolding of our ideas. But truth in itself is independent of these dialectical symbols and freed from the combinations of our minds.”

(Proudhon, Vol. II, p. 97)

Here all of a sudden, by a kind of switch-over of which we now know the secret, the metaphysics of political economy has become an illusion! Never has M. Proudhon spoken more truly. Indeed, from the moment the process of the dialectic movement is reduced to the simple process of opposing good to bad, and of administering one category as an antidote to another, the categories are deprived of all spontaneity; the idea “ceases to function"; there is no life left in it. It is no longer posed or decomposed into categories. The sequence of categories has become a sort of scaffolding. Dialectics has ceased to be the movement of absolute reason. There is no longer any dialectics but only, at the most, absolutely pure morality.

When M. Proudhon spoke of the serial relation in understanding, of the logical sequence of categories, he declared positively that he did not want to give history according to the order in time, that is, in M. Proudhon's view, the historical sequence in which the categories have manifested themselves. Thus for him everything happened in the pure ether of reason. Everything was to be derived from this ether by means of dialectics. Now that he has to put this dialectics into practice, his reason is in default. M. Proudhon's dialectics runs counter to Hegel's dialectics, and now we have M. Proudhon reduced to saying that the order in which he gives the economic categories is no longer the order in which they engender one another. Economic evolutions are no longer the evolutions of reason itself.

What then does M. Proudhon give us? Real history, which is, according to M. Proudhon's understanding, the sequence in which the categories have manifested themselves in order of time? No! History as it takes place in the idea itself? Still less! That is, neither the profane history of categories, nor their sacred history! What history does he give us then? The history of his own contradictions. Let us see how they go, and how they drag M. Proudhon in their train.

Before entering upon this examination, which gives rise to the sixth important observation, we have yet another, less important observation to make.

Let us admit with M. Proudhon that real history, history according to the order in time, is the historical sequence in which ideas, categories and principles have manifested themselves.

Each principle has had its own century in which to manifest itself. The principle of authority, for example, had the 11th century, just as the principle of individualism had the 18th century. In logical sequence, it was the century that belonged to the principle, and not the principle which belonged to the century. When, consequently, in order to save principles as much as to save history, we ask ourselves why a particular principle was manifested in the 11th century or in the 18th century rather than in any other, we are necessarily forced to examine minutely what men were like in the 11th century, what they were like in the 18th, what were their respective needs, their productive forces, their mode of production, the raw materials of their production – in short, what were the relations between man and man which resulted from all these conditions of existence. To get to the bottom of all these questions – what is this but to draw up the real, profane history of men in every century and to present these men as both the authors and the actors of their own drama? But the moment you present men as the actors and authors of their own history, you arrive – by detour – at the real starting point, because you have abandoned those eternal principles of which you spoke at the outset.

M. Proudhon has not even gone far enough along the crossroad which an ideologist takes to reach the main road of history.



Sixth Observation

Let us take the crossroad with M. Proudhon.

We shall concede that economic relations, viewed as immutable laws, eternal principles, ideal categories, existed before active and energetic men did; we shall concede further that these laws, principles and categories had, since the beginning of time, slumbered “in the impersonal reason of humanity.” We have already seen that, with all these changeless and motionless eternities, there is no history left; there is at most history in the idea, that is, history reflected in the dialectic movement of pure reason. M. Proudhon, by saying that, in the dialectic movement ideas are no longer “differentiated,” has done away with both the shadow of movement and the movement of shadows, by means of which one could still have created at least a semblance of history. Instead of that, he imputes to history his own impotence. He lays the blame on everything, even the French language.

“It is not correct then,” says M. Proudhon, the philosopher, “to say that something appears, that something is produced: in civilization as in the universe, everything has existed, has acted, from eternity. This applies to the whole of social economy.”

(Vol. II, p. 102)

So great is the productive force of the contradictions which function and which made M. Proudhon function, that, in trying to explain history, he is forced to deny it; in trying to explain the successive appearance of social relations, he denies that anything can appear: in trying to explain production, with all its phases, he questions whether anything can be produced!

Thus, for M. Proudhon, there is no longer any history: no longer any sequence of ideas. And yet his book still exists; and it is precisely that book which is, to use his own expression, “history according to the sequence of ideas.” How shall we find a formula, for M. Proudhon is a man of formulas, to help him to clear all these contradictions in one leap?

To this end he has invented a new reason, which is neither the pure and virgin absolute reason, nor the common reason of men living and acting in different periods, but a reason quite apart – the reason of the person, Society – of the subject, Humanity – which under the pen of M. Proudhon figures at times also as “social genius,” “general reason,” or finally as “human reason.” This reason, decked out under so many names, betrays itself nevertheless, at every moment, as the individual reason of M. Proudhon, with its good and its bad side, its antidotes and its problems.

“Human reason does not create truth,” hidden in the depths of absolute, eternal reason. It can only unveil it. But such truths as it has unveiled up to now are incomplete, insufficient, and consequently contradictory. Hence, economic categories, being themselves truths discovered, revealed by human reason, by social genius, are equally incomplete and contain within themselves the germ of contradictions. Before M. Proudhon, social genius saw only the antagonistic elements, and not the synthetic formula, both hidden simultaneously in absolute reason. Economic relations, which merely realize on earth these insufficient truths, these incomplete ideas, are consequently contradictory in themselves, and present two sides, one good, the other bad.

To find complete truth, the idea, in all its fullness, the synthetic formula that is to annihilate the contradiction, this is the problem of social genius. This again is why, in M. Proudhon's illusion, this same social genius has been harried from one category to another without ever having been able, despite all its battery of categories, to snatch from God or from absolute reason, a synthetic formula.

“At first, society (social genius) states a primary fact, puts forward a hypothesis... a veritable antinomy, whose antagonistic results develop in the social economy in the same way as its consequences could have been deduced in the mind; so that industrial movement, following in all things the deduction of ideas, splits up into two currents, one of useful effects, the other of subversive results. To bring harmony into the constitution of this two-side principle, and to solve this antinomy, society gives rise to a second, which will soon be followed by a third; and progress of social genius will take place in this manner, until, having exhausted all its contradictions – I suppose, but it is not proved that there is a limit to human contradictions – it returns in one leap to all its former positions and with a single formula solves all its problems.”

(Vol. I p. 133)

Just as the antithesis was before turned into an antidote, so now the thesis becomes a hypothesis. This change of terms, coming from M. Proudhon, has no longer anything surprising for us! Human reason, which is anything but pure, having only incomplete vision, encounters at every step new problems to be solved. Every new thesis which it discovers in absolute reason and which is the negation of the first thesis, becomes for it a synthesis, which it accepts rather naively as the solution of the problem in question. It is thus that this reason frets and fumes in ever renewing contradictions until, coming to the end of the contradictions, it perceives that all its theses and syntheses are merely contradictory hypotheses. In its perplexity, “human reason, social genius, returns in one leap to all its former positions, and in a single formula, solves all its problems.” This unique formula, by the way, constitutes M. Proudhon's true discovery. It is constituted value.

Hypotheses are made only in view of a certain aim. The aim that social genius, speaking through the mouth of M. Proudhon, set itself in the first place, was to eliminate the bad in every economic category, in order to have nothing left but the good. For it, the good, the supreme well-being, the real practical aim, is equality. And why did the social genius aim at equality rather than inequality, fraternity, Catholicism, or any other principle? Because “humanity has successively realized so many separate hypotheses only in view of a superior hypothesis,” which precisely is equality. In other words: because equality is M. Proudhon's ideal. He imagines that the division of labour, credit, the workshop – all economic relations – were invented merely for the benefit of equality, and yet they always ended up by turning against it. Since history and the fiction of M. Proudhon contradict each other at every step, the latter concludes that there is a contradiction. If there is a contradiction, it exists only between his fixed idea and real movement.

Henceforth, the good side of an economic relation is that which affirms equality; the bad side, that which negates it and affirms inequality. Every new category is a hypothesis of the social genius to eliminate the inequality engendered by the preceding hypothesis. In short, equality is the primordial intention, the mystical tendency, the providential aim that the social genius has constantly before its eyes as it whirls in the circle of economic contradictions. Thus, Providence is the locomotive which makes the whole of M. Proudhon's economic baggage move better than his pure and volatized reason. He has devoted to Providence a whole chapter, which follows the one on taxes.

Providence, providential aim, this is the great word used today to explain the movement of history. In fact, this word explains nothing. It is at most a rhetorical form, one of the various ways of paraphrasing facts.

It is a fact that in Scotland landed property acquired a new value by the development of English industry. This industry opened up new outlets for wool. In order to produce wool on a large scale, arable land had to be transformed into pasturage. To effect this transformation, the estates had to be concentrated. To concentrate the estates, small holdings had first to be abolished, thousands of tenants had to be driven from their native soil and a few shepherds in charge of millions of sheep to be installed in their place. Thus, by successive transformations, landed property in Scotland has resulted in the driving out of men by sheep. Now say that the providential aim of the institution of landed property in Scotland was to have men driven out by sheep, and you will have made providential history.

Of course, the tendency towards equality belongs to our century. To say now that all former centuries, with entirely different needs, means of production, etc., worked providentially for the realization of equality is, firstly, to substitute the means and the men of our century for the men and the means of earlier centuries and to misunderstand the historical movement by which the successive generations transformed the results acquired by the generations that preceded them. Economists know very well that the very thing that was for the one a finished product was for the other but the raw material for new production.

Suppose, as M. Proudhon does, that social genius produced, or rather improvised, the feudal lords with the providential aim of transforming the settlers into responsible and equally-placed workers: and you will have effected a substitution of aims and of persons worthy of the Providence that instituted landed property in Scotland, in order to give itself the malicious pleasure of driving out men by sheep.

But since M. Proudhon takes such a tender interest in Providence, we refer him to the Histoire de l’économie politique of M. de Villeneuve-Bargemont, who likewise goes in pursuit of a providential aim. This aim, however, is not equality, but Catholicism.



Seventh and Last Observation

Economists have a singular method of procedure. There are only two kinds of institutions for them, artificial and natural. The institutions of feudalism are artificial institutions, those of the bourgeoisie are natural institutions. In this, they resemble the theologians, who likewise establish two kinds of religion. Every religion which is not theirs is an invention of men, while their own is an emanation from God. When the economists say that present-day relations – the relations of bourgeois production – are natural, they imply that these are the relations in which wealth is created and productive forces developed in conformity with the laws of nature. These relations therefore are themselves natural laws independent of the influence of time. They are eternal laws which must always govern society. Thus, there has been history, but there is no longer any. There has been history, since there were the institutions of feudalism, and in these institutions of feudalism we find quite different relations of production from those of bourgeois society, which the economists try to pass off as natural and as such, eternal.

Feudalism also had its proletariat – serfdom, which contained all the germs of the bourgeoisie. Feudal production also had two antagonistic elements which are likewise designated by the name of the good side and the bad side of feudalism, irrespective of the fact that it is always the bad side that in the end triumphs over the good side. It is the bad side that produces the movement which makes history, by providing a struggle. If, during the epoch of the domination of feudalism, the economists, enthusiastic over the knightly virtues, the beautiful harmony between rights and duties, the patriarchal life of the towns, the prosperous condition of domestic industry in the countryside, the development of industry organized into corporations, guilds and fraternities, in short, everything that constitutes the good side of feudalism, had set themselves the problem of eliminating everything that cast a shadow on the picture – serfdom, privileges, anarchy – what would have happened? All the elements which called forth the struggle would have been destroyed, and the development of the bourgeoisie nipped in the bud. One would have set oneself the absurd problem of eliminating history.

After the triumph of the bourgeoisie, there was no longer any question of the good or the bad side of feudalism. The bourgeoisie took possession of the productive forces it had developed under feudalism. All the old economic forms, the corresponding civil relations, the political state which was the official expression of the old civil society, were smashed.

Thus, feudal production, to be judged properly, must be considered as a mode of production founded on antagonism. It must be shown how wealth was produced within this antagonism, how the productive forces were developed at the same time as class antagonisms, how one of the classes, the bad side, the drawback of society, went on growing until the material conditions for its emancipation had attained full maturity. Is not this as good as saying that the mode of production, the relations in which productive forces are developed, are anything but eternal laws, but that they correspond to a definite development of men and of their productive forces, and that a change in men's productive forces necessarily brings about a change in their relations of production? As the main thing is not to be deprived of the fruits of civilization, of the acquired productive forces, the traditional forms in which they were produced must be smashed. From this moment, the revolutionary class becomes conservative.

The bourgeoisie begins with a proletariat which is itself a relic of the proletariat of feudal times. In the course of its historical development, the bourgeoisie necessarily develops its antagonistic character, which at first is more or less disguised, existing only in a latent state. As the bourgeoisie develops, there develops in its bosom a new proletariat, a modern proletariat; there develops a struggle between the proletarian class and the bourgeoisie class, a struggle which, before being felt, perceived, appreciated, understood, avowed, and proclaimed aloud by both sides, expresses itself, to start with, merely in partial and momentary conflicts, in subversive acts. On the other hand, if all the members of the modern bourgeoisie have the same interests inasmuch as they form a class as against another class, they have opposite, antagonistic interests inasmuch as they stand face-to-face with one another. This opposition of interests results from the economic conditions of their bourgeois life. From day to day it thus becomes clearer that the production relations in which the bourgeoisie moves have not a simple, uniform character, but a dual character; that in the selfsame relations in which wealth is produced, poverty is also produced; that in the selfsame relations in which there is a development of the productive forces, there is also a force producing repression; that these relations produce bourgeois wealth – i.e., the wealth of the bourgeois class – only by continually annihilating the wealth of the individual members of this class and by producing an ever-growing proletariat.

The more the antagonistic character comes to light, the more the economists, the scientific representatives of bourgeois production, find themselves in conflict with their own theory; and different schools arise.

We have the fatalist economists, who in their theory are as indifferent to what they call the drawbacks of bourgeois production as the bourgeois themselves are in practice to the sufferings of the proletarians who help them to acquire wealth. In this fatalist school, there are Classics and Romantics. The Classics, like Adam Smith and Ricardo, represent a bourgeoisie which, while still struggling with the relics of feudal society, works only to purge economic relations of feudal taints, to increase the productive forces and to give a new upsurge to industry and commerce. The proletariat that takes part in this struggle and is absorbed in this feverish labour experiences only passing, accidental sufferings, and itself regards them as such. Economists like Adam Smith and Ricardo, who are the historians of this epoch, have no other mission than that of showing how wealth is acquired in bourgeois production relations, of formulating these relations into categories, into laws, and of showing how superior these laws, these categories, are for the production of wealth to the laws and categories of feudal society. Poverty is in their eyes merely the pang which accompanies every childbirth, in nature as in industry.

The romantics belong to our own age, in which the bourgeoisie is in direct opposition to the proletariat; in which poverty is engendered in as great abundance as wealth. The economists now pose as blasé fatalists, who, from their elevated position, cast a proudly disdainful glance at the human machines who manufacture wealth. They copy all the developments given by their predecessors, and the indifference which in the latter was merely naïveté becomes in them coquetry.

Next comes the humanitarian school, which sympathizes with the bad side of present-day production relations. It seeks, by way of easing its conscience, to palliate even if slightly the real contrasts; it sincerely deplores the distress of the proletariat, the unbridled competition of the bourgeois among themselves; it counsels the workers to be sober, to work hard and to have few children; it advises the bourgeois to put a reasoned ardor into production. The whole theory of this school rests on interminable distinctions between theory and practice, between principles and results, between ideas and application, between form and content, between essence and reality, between right and fact, between the good side and the bad side.

The philanthropic school is the humanitarian school carried to perfection. It denies the necessity of antagonism; it wants to turn all men into bourgeois; it wants to realize theory in so far as it is distinguished from practice and contains no antagonism. It goes without saying that, in theory, it is easy to make an abstraction of the contradictions that are met with at every moment in actual reality. This theory would therefore become idealized reality. The philanthropists, then, want to retain the categories which express bourgeois relations, without the antagonism which constitutes them and is inseparable from them. They think they are seriously fighting bourgeois practice, and they are more bourgeois than the others.

Just as the economists are the scientific representatives of the bourgeois class, so the Socialists and Communists are the theoreticians of the proletarian class. So long as the proletariat is not yet sufficiently developed to constitute itself as a class, and consequently so long as the struggle itself of the proletariat with the bourgeoisie has not yet assumed a political character, and the productive forces are not yet sufficiently developed in the bosom of the bourgeoisie itself to enable us to catch a glimpse of the material conditions necessary for the emancipation of the proletariat and for the formation of a new society, these theoreticians are merely utopians who, to meet the wants of the oppressed classes, improvise systems and go in search of a regenerating science. But in the measure that history moves forward, and with it the struggle of the proletariat assumes clearer outlines, they no longer need to seek science in their minds; they have only to take note of what is happening before their eyes and to become its mouthpiece. So long as they look for science and merely make systems, so long as they are at the beginning of the struggle, they see in poverty nothing but poverty, without seeing in it the revolutionary, subversive side, which will overthrow the old society. From this moment, science, which is a product of the historical movement, has associated itself consciously with it, has ceased to be doctrinaire and has become revolutionary.

Let us return to M. Proudhon.

Every economic relation has a good and a bad side; it is the one point on which M. Proudhon does not give himself the lie. He sees the good side expounded by the economists; the bad side he sees denounced by the Socialists. He borrows from the economists the necessity of eternal relations; he borrows from the Socialists the illusion of seeing in poverty nothing but poverty. He is in agreement with both in wanting to fall back upon the authority of science. Science for him reduces itself to the slender proportions of a scientific formula; he is the man in search of formulas. Thus it is that M. Proudhon flatters himself on having given a criticism of both political economy and communism: he is beneath them both. Beneath the economists, since, as a philosopher who has at his elbow a magic formula, he thought he could dispense with going into purely economic details; beneath the socialists, because he has neither courage enough nor insight enough to rise, be it even speculatively, above the bourgeois horizon.

He wants to be the synthesis – he is a composite error.

He wants to soar as the man of science above the bourgeois and proletarians; he is merely the petty bourgeois, continually tossed back and forth between capital and labour, political economy and communism.

https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1847/poverty-philosophy/ch02.htm

Paging Dr KOBH, paging Dr KOBH......

No need to page a doctor, one is already in the house..quack quack (slight allusion to the chapter of Poverty of Philosophy you posted):



Lastly I’d just like to touch on differentiating Marxism as applied to ideological critique and Marxism as applied as a science. Ideological critique, though valuable for shifting opinions and perspectives, cannot be understood as something that gives solid ground to stand on, that offers objectivity. You can critique ideology all day, but you won’t reach any kind of truth. Ideology is made up of multivalent symbols with extremely complex interrelationships. An individual’s ideology is never constant and even changes in the topic being spoken on during the process of speech, even during the process of expressing a single word. And social ideology is no less slippery. While ideological forms and ideal objects certainly need to be critiqued, this cannot be thought of as formative of Marxism-Leninism as a science nor as essential to revolution, though Marxism-Leninism as a science should be used to help determine methods and strategies for ideological critique.

Marx often called himself a (ruthless) critic.

Here is an excerpt from Critique of Hegel's Philosophy of Right:


“The foundation of irreligious criticism is: Man makes religion, religion does not make man. Religion is, indeed, the self-consciousness and self-esteem of man who has either not yet won through to himself, or has already lost himself again. But man is no abstract being squatting outside the world. Man is the world of man – state, society. This state and this society produce religion, which is an inverted consciousness of the world, because they are an inverted world...

"Let Philosophy be Transformed into a Sharp Weapon in the Hands of the Masses"

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/CzNvGwqUcAAD0d2.jpg

Aw man, really?

))

"Let Philosophy be Transformed into a Sharp Weapon in the Hands of the Masses"

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/CzNvGwqUcAAD0d2.jpg

Aw man, really?

))

Hell yeah, man, really! The Chairman was talking about transformation, from dry, difficult philosophy to a razor-sharp knife to slit appropriate ... well, to the appropriate cuts. ;)

Speaking of Hegel's death....

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/C4aKyl3WQAE7L-i.jpg:large

Of course Zizek is far worse than that.

Lenin came to Hegel slightly late (career wise) but it made sense. It was the only recourse to understanding how and why Kautsky went renegade (and perhaps ameliorate a bit of self doubt given that he considered Kautsky to be an exemplar of Marxist orthodoxy). Others were perhaps more perceptive/prescient in this regard, but none proved as trenchant as Lenin.

In particular Lenin's takeaway was that no Marxist in 50 years had mastered Hegel (Kautsky chief amongst that group) which meant that no one had truly understood Marx. This is alternately seen as self-serving or self-aggrandizing by Lenin's critics while the same "Hegelian turn" is celebrated by those who gravitate towards mystifying Marx.