Lenin’s Tomb
Berlimey Len, this don't arf make me feel old. You know who the last person I remember talking like you about Marcuse? Hitchens in 1968! Same critique...(Time for your Horlicks, Mr Rosen...)
Same critique, new generation baby.
Actually, Mike, I find this quite worrying. For one thing, I don't fancy ending up as an alcoholic mound of reactionary blubber spurting apology for imperialism. For another, I don't like the idea that there hordes of soixant-huitards out there drinking Horlicks.
I just assumed you got your Hitchensitis jab several years ago. It gives lifetime immunisation.
If Horlicks was all that soixante-huitards were on, we'd be well ahead of the game...
Speaking of Hitchensitis, I had a depressing realisation while reading Marcuse's piece, dedicated to his students at Brandeis: these days, those students would be taught by Kanan Makiya.
Thanks for that!
But, it just shows once again how dialectical thinking so easily excuses substitutionism, leading to more failure, and thus the need for another hit from this 'opiate'.
And, in the book in Question, 'One Dimensional Man', the comments he makes on Analytic Philosophy (and Wittgenstein in particular) are ill-informed in the extreme.
But these are ones that have been copied since by others, who have never bothered to check if they are accurate or not.
For example, that Wittgenstein was a conservative -- the exact opposite is the case.
I thought that was superb. And I don't think Marcuse's loss of faith in the working class had the slightest thing to do with his 'dialectical thinking'. If there were elements of idealism in his thought it rather acted as a spur to resistance even when he did not quite see the material basis for it.
And I think we forget or dismiss the 1960's too easily (so Mike Rosen and his Horlicks are welcome). Thats also a feature of right wing polemic: which is today rigerously opposed to any dalliance with the thought of those like Marcus let alone Hegel. Its very unclear to me, whatever one thinks of the philosophical issues, that one can make direct links between philosophical and political views. There is a connection but I don't think its a straightfoward one.
Well Wittgenstein was hostile to modernity. He said so. On one reading thats a conservative position. Famously a student got fed up with this and demanded to know whether he would really prefer to be a caveman. 'Don't ask me' he said, 'ask the caveman'.
But then there is a long tradition (aposite word) of conservatives being clearer eyed about the horrors of the modern world then some people in the liberal tradition (its why Marx rated Balzac). Recognising this doesn't make you a conservative.
I think its a great mistake to be reductive about these issues.
Its also true that interpretations of Wittgenstein's dictum that 'philosophy leaves everything as it is' could be equated with an atrophy of philosophies critical functions and this view has only recently come under challenge in Wittgenstein scholarship.
That was the dominant interpretation when Marcuse was writing (particularly in 'Ordinary language philosophy' at Oxford).
At a wider level Zizek rehearses in a recent interview the wider consensus on the change in philosophy that occurs in the late 19th century, often referred to as the linguistic turn, but also associated with the phenomenological tradition in Europe, that philosophy has to do with demonstrating that difficulties are merely problems with how we use words, and that as long as we're clear about how we use them all philosophical difficulties disapear.
For some people this marks the arrival of philosophy to a mature scientific self consiousness, away from metaphysical and theological problems associated with 'ontology' as well demarcating a properly modest sphere of operation for philosophy.
One response might be that when Philosophy took up this role it was perhaps unmindful that it came to represent the world view of a new class almost as dogmatically as it used to represent the view of another. Thinking philosophically about history from now on was an idle amusement and no longer serious philosophy.
Serious philosophy was from now on to be taken up with debates about how we use the word 'intention'. Not with enquiries perhaps into how we use the word intention relates to ideas we have about subjectivity: which might be wrong!
Hence, incidently, the obsession with demanding definitions the kind of 'what do you mean by mean?' approach, which is held to define what philosophy is all about for some people. Thinking is unneccessary. Just look in dictionaries and everything becomes clear. I think Marcuse was a little hostile to this trend. I'm not sure he was mistaken.
Well, I'd respond to you John, but you have shown time and again an incapacity to read replies with due care.
Here is what I have written on this at my site:
"Most revolutionaries seem to regard Analytic Philosophy as something of a conservative or ideological phenomenon, with Wittgenstein's work perhaps being seen as a particularly good example of this. That view has partly been motivated by the widely held opinion that Wittgenstein was a conservative....
"In fact, not only were many of Wittgenstein's friends and pupils prominent Marxists -- e.g., Pierro Sraffa, Maurice Dobb, Nicholas Bakhtin, George Thomson, Maurice Cornforth, David Hayden-Guest, and Roy Pascall (cf., Monk (1990), pp.343, 348; Rhees (1984), pp.x, 48; and Sheehan (1993), pp.303, 343) --, but one of his foremost 'disciples' (Rush Rhees) at one point contemplated joining the RCP, and asked Wittgenstein for advice on this. [Cf., Rhees (1984), pp.200-09.]
"Rhees and Monk record the many sympathetic remarks Wittgenstein made about Marxism, about workers and about revolutionary activity. While these are not in themselves models of 'orthodoxy', they reveal how close Wittgenstein came to adopting a very weak form of class politics in the 1930's -- certainly closer than any other major philosopher had done since Marx himself; cf., Rhees (1984), pp.205-09. [Cf., also Norman Malcolm's Introduction to Rhees's book, pp.xvii-xviii, and Monk (1990), pp.343-54.]
"In fact, Monk reports a comment made by George Thomson on Wittgenstein's attitude to Marxism: "He was opposed it in theory, but supported it in practice", and notes another friend who remembers Wittgenstein saying that he was "a communist, at heart" (Monk (1990), p.343). He concludes:
"There is no doubt that during the political upheavals of the mid-1930's Wittgenstein's sympathies were with the working class and the unemployed, and that his allegiance, broadly speaking, was with the left….
"'Despite the fact that Wittgenstein was never at any time a Marxist, he was perceived as a sympathetic figure by the students who formed the core of the Cambridge Communist Party, many of whom ([David] Hayden-Guest, [John] Cornford, Maurice Cornforth, etc.) attended his lectures.' [Monk (1990), pp.343, 348.]
"In Rhees's book, Fania Pascall -- who was another Marxist friend of Wittgenstein's, married to Communist Party intellectual Roy Pascall, translator of The German Ideology into English --, reports that Wittgenstein had actually read Marx (cf., Rhees (1984), p.44. But if, as we will see, he had read Lenin, and all his close friends were Marxists, it is a safe bet that he had also read Marx."
"Rhees and Monk also note that when Wittgenstein visited Russia he met Sophia Yanovskaya, who was Professor of Mathematical Logic at Moscow University and one of the co-editors of Marx's Mathematical Manuscripts. [Cf., Yanovskaya (1983), in Marx (1983).] She apparently advised him to "read more Hegel" (which suggests he had already read some). [Monk (1990), p.351, and Rhees (1984), p.209.] In fact, Yanovskaya even went as far as to recommend Wittgenstein for the chair at Kazan University (Lenin's old college) and for a teaching post at Moscow University (Monk (1990), p. 351). These were hardly posts one would have offered to just anyone in Stalin's Russia in the mid-1930's, least of all to one not sympathetic to Communism.
"Monk suggests that Yanovskaya formed the (false) impression that Wittgenstein was interested in Dialectical Materialism (ibid.), but Drury (another of Wittgenstein's pupils) informs us that Wittgenstein had a low opinion of Lenin's philosophical work (but, exactly which part this refers to we do not know; but this does indicate that Wittgenstein had at least read Lenin since he never passed comments on second-hand reports of other writers' work), but the opposite view of his practical endeavours:
"'Lenin's writings about philosophy are of course absurd, but at least he did want to get something done.' [Drury, quoting Wittgenstein from recollection, in Rhees (1984), p.126.]
"Fania Pascall also records Wittgenstein's friendship with Nicholas Bakhtin (ibid., p.14), and notes that at one time he expressed a desire to go and live in Russia, as we have seen (ibid., pp.26, 29, 44, 125-26, 198-200). In fact he actually visited Russia in September 1935 (cf., Monk (1990), pp. 347-53), when he met the above Professor Yanovskaya. Like many other Cambridge intellectuals at the time his desire to live in the USSR was motivated by his false belief that under Stalin it was a Workers' State. In this regard, of course, his intentions were more significant than his mistaken views. One only has to contrast Wittgenstein's opinion of Russia with that of, say, Bertrand Russell -- his former teacher -- to see how sympathetic in comparison Wittgenstein was to revolutionary Marxism, even if, like many others, he finally mistook the latter for Stalinism. [Cf., Drury's memoir in Rhees (1984), p.144, and Russell (1962).] John Maynard Keynes (another of Wittgenstein's friends) wrote the following in a letter to the Russian ambassador Maisky (who had in fact once been a Menshevik) about Wittgenstein's plans to live in Russia:
"'I must leave it to him to tell you his reasons for wanting to go to Russia. He is not a member of the Communist Party, but has strong sympathies with the way of life which he believes the new regime in Russia stands for.' [John Maynard Keynes to Maisky, quoted in Rhees (1984), p.199. Also quoted more fully in Monk (1990), p.349.]
"In his biography of Wittgenstein, Ray Monk plays down Wittgenstein's proposed move, and, relying on Fania Pascall's view of Wittgenstein's motives, interprets it as a reflection of his attachment to a Tolstoyian view of the Russian peasantry and the 'dignity of manual labour'. While this clearly was a factor, it cannot explain Wittgenstein's positive remarks about the gains he believed workers had made because of the revolution -- but, given what happened to the Russian peasantry in Stalin's Russia in the 1930's, this is surely the least likely explanation! On this, Rhees is clearly a more reliable guide; he knew Wittgenstein better than almost anyone else.
"[The full details of Wittgenstein's desire to live in Russia, and his visit, can be found in Monk (1990), pp.340-54.]
"His closest friend before he met Rhees was Francis Skinner, who had wanted to volunteer to fight in Spain as part of the International Brigade (he was finally rejected on health grounds). Wittgenstein thought that Alan Turing (who was also one of his 'part time' pupils for a brief period in the 1930's) believed that he (Wittgenstein) was trying to introduce "Bolshevism" into Mathematics, because of his criticisms of the irrational fear of contradictions among mathematicians. [Cf., Monk (1990), pp.419-20; see also Hodges (1983), pp.152-54.]
"As Wittgenstein himself said:
"'Turing does not object to anything I say. He agrees with every word. He objects to the idea he thinks underlies it. He thinks we're undermining mathematics, introducing Bolshevism into mathematics. But not at all.' [Wittgenstein (1976), p.76.]
"On this, and Wittgenstein's 'radical Bolshevism', see Ray Monk's on-line essay, here. [Link in th original.]
"'The changes Wittgenstein wished to see are...I believe, so radical that the name 'full-blooded Bolshevism' suggests itself as a natural way to describe the militant tendency of his remarks.'" [Monk (1995).]
"Finally, but perhaps most importantly, Wittgenstein himself declared that his later Philosophy had been inspired by his regular conversations with Pierro Sraffa (Gramsci's friend). The extent of Sraffa's influence is still unclear (however, see below), but Wittgenstein himself admitted to Rhees that it was from Sraffa that he had gained an "anthropological" view of philosophical problems. [Cf., Monk (1990), pp.260-61. Cf., also Malcolm (1958), p.69, von Wright (ND), pp.28, 213, and Wittgenstein (1998), p.16.]
"In the Preface to what was his most important and influential work, Wittgenstein had this to say:
"'Even more than this…criticism I am indebted to that which a teacher of this university, Mr P. Sraffa, for many years unceasingly practiced on my thoughts. I am indebted to this stimulus for the most consequential ideas of this book.' [Wittgenstein (1958), p.viii. Bold emphasis added.]
"This is quite remarkable: the author of what many believe to be the most original and innovative philosophical work of the 20th century -- and one that, if correct, brings to an end 2500 years of traditional Philosophy -- claims that his most "consequential" ideas were derived from a man who was an avowed Marxist!"
More details here:
http://homepage.ntlworld.com/
ros...ittgenstein.htm
I have left the active links out to other on-line essays, as well as the bibliographical references, but you can find them in the above Essay.
This is one kind of challenge to those like Rosa (a challenge, importantly, is not an insult or meant in any disparaging way. These are fundemental disagreements, in the proper sense of the word fundemental).
Written by MacIntyre he makes a 'disquieting suggestion' which goes to the heart of the discussion. Note his point that if we were indeed in the situation he describes, the conceptual resources of neither analytical philosophy, ordinary language school approaches, postmodernism, or indeed any of the approaches normally taught in universities would be of any use.
We could quite happily continue to play these language games without ever spotting the box we are trapped inside of. Marcuse, in a different way, was worried by this possibility. I happen to be similarly worried. But Rosa would have to demonstrate to me, that MacIntyre was wrong about the possibility that MacIntyre outlines (the possibility not the actuality of it) for me to be convinced by her wider arguments.
MacIntyre was at one point a Marxist (he was an important figure in the 'new left' in the 1960's Britain, aligned with the IS tradition) but later moved to a Conservative position (although a very odd "conservative" position). I like him mainly because of a point once made by Hacking.
That often (particularly amongst academics) people who disagree reveal by their disagreements that they really agree about almost everything. MacIntyre actually 'disagree's' in a way which I think is highly unusual. Therefore even if wholly wrong, I think disagreement in our current context is more useful then 'agreement'.
A certain Shy Stalinist Detective ought to have this book by now. I hope she is reading it. My problem with Rosa's method of arguing (and I hope even if she doesn't understand what I am saying she understands I don't mean this in a negative way, and indeed I respect her language game) is that it brooks no disagreement. Not fundemental disagreement. As a Marxist I find real disagreement interesting. I think Marcuse did as well. I happen to also believe that Marx was in fundemental disagreement. And I worry that people think a disagreement is the same thing as a 'mistake'. A worry deepened by MacIntyre's claim that those who think Marx was 'mistaken' about these issues (from ethics to Hegel) would not have the conceptual resources to know the difference:
http://libnt4.lib.tcu.edu/staff/...ue-
excerpts.htm
J:
"is that it brooks no disagreement"
Not so; but you need to provide sound reasons, as opposed to the usual blind adherence to dogma (Noel D is a classic example of that here, but there are others), nor rely merely on meaningless jargon, and the like.
And, you need to at least *try* to be relevant to the issues in hand, something that has before now been, shall we say, too much of a challenge for you to master.
Up to now, that is all that DM-fans have been able to serve up.
Of course any who bothers to read MacIntyres abstract (no reason why people should although I happen to think its very valuable and thought provoking) will realise that the link between MacIntyre, Marcuse and Hegel is rather tenuous.
MacIntyre despised Marcuse, and has been incensed by accusations that he is a Hegelian (although he invokes him). But what they all share is a deep historicism which poses terrible problems for any who treat contemporary philosophy and the forms it takes as an inescapable horizon (I might say, naturalises it).
These kinds of difficulties often lead to accusations that historicists of this peculiarly radical type are guilty of self contradiction or even 'performative contradiction'. MacIntyre's disquieting suggestion is that, in part, this might be simply an elementary howler.
That is if you are prepared to entertain the possibilty that much of what you say now is nonsense. For surely we often think that much of what people said in the past was nonsense. We don't for that reason think that they were unable to speak at all, or indeed that nothing that they said made any sense.
Historians in a practical sense (hence I think the importance of Collingwood) must understand this if they are to practice their craft at all. It is astonishing that the dominant philosophical ideas of our age (even if they claim not to be philosophical) would make such a thing as interpreting a text written several hundred years ago, impossible.
It is possible that a philosopher like Wittgenstein might allow us to re-evaluate past philosophy rather then simply dismissing it.
Rosa I fail to see what relevence any of what you posted has to do with my claims about Wittgenstein's 'conservatism'. I am well aware of his connections with the left. I am well aware that he was hostile to his contemporary society and was looking for alternatives.
I am well aware that he wanted to go to Russia. I am well aware of all these things. I am aware of two other things (which may just be cognitively difficult for a philosopher to understand). The first is that the intiatial impact of his philosophy was a deeply conservative one (and that no one discussed any of the things you have mentioned for the best part of forty years). The second is that none of this would rule out the possibility that he was 'philosophically' a conservative.
I made a distinction. You respond with questionbegging lists without responding to the distinction. I think all in all your response has rather proved my point about ordinary language philosophy and its practitioners.
And Rosa, I sometimes think you are simply incapable of reading and understanding people who disagree with you. But again, that rather backs up my point.
The theologians of modern analytical philosophy saying what is right and forbidding what is wrong.
As for the usual reference to Wittgenstein claiming that 'philosophy leaves everything a it is', this is manifestly about philosophy only, it does not refer to political activity, or science, or anything else.
And Philosophy leaves everything as it is in two senses:
(1) Traditional philosophy (according to Wittgenstein) is wall-to-wall nonsense, so it cannot actually have an effect on anything (except negatively).
Moreover, (2) Wittgenstein's new conception of philosophy is that it unravels the conceptual confusions bequeathed to us by traditional thought. So, in tnat it unravels nonsense, it leaves everything (i.e, in the real world, not the fantasy world of traditional thought) as it is.
I only mention this to defuse the usual reference made to this quotation to try to show that Wittgenstein did not advocate change, or was a conservative.
As the extact from my essay above shows, he was in favour of the results of the 1917 revolution! Hardly a conservative!!
Other members of the 'Oxford Ordinary Language' movement (which, apart from Ryle, had no links with Wittgenstein of any note) were socialists too, and were behind the radical changes introduced by the Labour government.
But Wittgestein was way to the left of them.
So, very few conservatives anong the lot of them.
johng, as it happens I had invited Alasdair MacIntyre round for tea tonight [quick Al, that muffin's burning!] and I've shown him your last comment [no, Al, not with bloody marmite, thank you very much], and he read over it with growing consternation [well you can just bloody eat it yourself now, Al, serves you right]. He has a question for you [over to you, Al, don't get crumbs on the keyboard]
WHAT IN THE NAME OF SWEET FUCKING BABY J ...
That's quite enough Al. But seriously johng, if you can't read over Rosa's posts, at least you could have the decency to read over your own.
I'm not a Wittgenstein scholar, but I would just like to emphasise a few points of 'Rosas'.
To begin with the view of language presupposed by this sentence: 'We could quite happily continue to play these language games without ever spotting the box we are trapped inside of. ' may be true or false or half true or whatever, but it is unquestionably not Wittgensteinian (although it probably is the view of 'Wittgenstein as seen by Lyotard'). Wittgenstein did not believe in the view of consciousness presupposed by this metaphor (in which there is a 'real' pre-social self, which is then socialised into a prisonhouse of language). Wittgenstein believed we were social beings to, literally, the core of our beings. And he almost certainly got this view from Marxism.
2: Wittgenstein simply must have been far more influenced by Marx than the 'conventional' positivistic interpretation states. Wittgenstein gained much of his knowledge of other philosopher not through reading but through conversation. In my opinion, the impact of Sraffa is much more important than the conventional account makes clear. Specifically:
a: The 'social' view of cognition (cf the links between Vygotsky and Wittgenstein).
b: The view that 'conventional' philosphical questions are, in fact, pseudo questions, coupled with
c: The view that we have to 'undercut' conventional Western dichotomies (materialism vs idealism, free will versus determinism, etc. etc.) and instead look at the presuppositions that underly both views.
See for example, marxist quotes like these: 'The question whether objective truth can be attributed to human thinking is not a question of theory but is a practical question.'
'All social life is essentially practical.'
Or the whole of paragraph one of the Thesis on Fuerbach in which (entirely clearly, although this point is rarely grasped) Marx rejects idealism AND materialism, in favour of his own views: he undercuts the binary dichotomy, he does not come down on 'one side or the other'. This is very Wittgensteinian.
Finally, the view that 'nowadays' (i.e. under capitalism) one sees things 'as they are' is very Wittgensteinian, although Wittgenstein would almost certainly reject the 'nowadays'.
Finally, there is the war against abstraction and the attempt to 'ground' things in real, practical action. There is also the idea that the discussions of philosophers are, really, beside the point (cf Wittgenstein's quote that the 'really important' part of the Tractatus was the bit that he left out, cf Marx: 'Philosophy and the study of the actual world have the same relation to one another as masturbation and sexual love.').
Finally, finally, there is the view that, to quote Wikipedia 'But having abandoned abstract philosophical speculation in his youth, Marx himself showed great reluctance during the rest of his life about offering any generalities or universal truths about human existence or human history.'. This echoes Wittgenstein's views against 'theories'. Like Wittgenstein's philosophy, the 'materialist conception of history' is NOT A THEORY, let alone a scientific one. It is instead a stance, or approach. It could not possibly be 'true' or 'false' (in the same sense that Wittgenstein's philosophy could not possibly be 'true' or 'false'). It is instead, pragmatic: an approach that is either useful in certain circumstances...or not. (Wittgenstein stated that the purpose of his 'anti-philosophy' was primarily therapeutic).
"There is no substitute for the organised power of the working class."
Indeed, and if you make a comparison of the student movements in 1968 Italy comes out by far the best; the students there not only didn't reject the working class as revolutionary subject, but precisely went out to it and joined with it. There were downsides, principally the fragmentation of Italian revolutionary groups, but there were factory councils being formed.
Once the unions finally swung behing the struggle they managed to extract significant concessions from the state (including workers being given 150 hours a year off for study) - although of course whether the unions actually stopped a potentially much more radical process is an interesting question. In all of this the PCI was activley hostile, despite the students and workers being overwhelmingly marxist.
(Paul Ginsborg's Contemporary History of Italy has a lot on this, Chapter 9 specifically).
"In his defense, capitalism did not look particularly crisis-prone at the time: rather, the threat appeared to be an all-encompassing administrative society with rising wealth underpinning a deeply conservative consensus, at least in the United States, with intolerable barbarism at the expansive margins of the system."
There are some interesting parallels here with Ulrike Meinhof's analysis of Germany in The Urban Guerilla Concept ; she cites Marcuse at one point I believe, although they looked to Third World insurgencies rather than students.
J:
"Rosa I fail to see what relevence any of what you posted has to do with my claims about Wittgenstein's 'conservatism'."
It shows he wasn't one.
So, you need to address what I have said, or withdraw this cliche.
You claim his influence was conservative, but you provide no proof.
I provide proof he was not, and you ignore it.
So, put your proof where your mouth is.
"The theologians of modern analytical philosophy saying what is right and forbidding what is wrong."
Eh?
Sorry I know multiple posting is frowned on but:
'All mysteries which lead theory to mysticism find their rational solution in human practice and in the comprehension of this practice.'
Since Wittgenstein believed that most (all?) Western philosophy was a form of 'mysticism' in which pseudo questions like the 'determinism versus free will' debate were endlessly 'debated', then it can be seen that his solution was to look at real human practices, in this case, how we actually use real words like 'free' 'will' and 'determined' in real sociallly structured situation. Again this is incredibly Marx-like.
I don't know a great deal about the subject matter of this dispute, but John McCumber's Time in the Ditch: American Philosophy and the McCarthy Era seems very relevant here. McCumber argues that Analytic Philosophy came to dominance in America primarily through the McCarthyite purge of philosophical leftists. His argument seems, to me at least, to support johng's point that the political opinions of the analytic philosophers (who were mostly leftists in the 50s) is not the important issue. The issue is where their philosophical trajectory leads. and in the American context, it seems hardly disputable that the hegemony of analytic philosophy has depoliticized philosophy (again, regardless of the political opinions of its practitioners). At my university at least, this is extremely obvious.
fact check: Nixon's phrase was "middle America," I believe. The "moral majority" was fundamentalist Christian Jerry Falwell's phrase.
Yes, but Pauly, Wittgenstein (i.e. the later Wittgenstein) was NOT an analytic philosopher!! On the contrary, he was, like Marx, and anti-philospher, profoundly opposed to the traditional aims and ambitions of Western philosophy.
One of the many problems with post-modernism, it seems to me, was the bizarre way (partly due to Lacan) they took the insights of de Saussure, the thoughts of Marxists such as Althusser and then the philosophy of Heidegger (which is all fair enough) and then tried to wield this to psychoanalysis! But psycho-analysis (which really is an inherently conservative philosophy/psychology) is inherently incompatible with Heidegger's philosophy (as Heidegger made clear) as well as being inherently opposed to post-structuralism (structuralism, maybe, if you buy Lacan's theories).
If the post-modernists had embraced Wittgenstein instead, then post-modernism would make much more sense, and it would be much easier to build bridges between the Anglo-American tradition and the French/German.
Also: despite Marcuse, Freudianism is self-evidently completely incompatible with Marxism.
Did somebody say "opiates"? I'm sick as hell, and need a fix bad.
Ah, I see the reinforcements have arrived at last.
Well said, Brendan. I liked your post yesterday about the ancient pedigree of sanctimonious pro-imperialist rhetoric, and I like today's even better. You know plenty for someone who always begins with a modest disclaimer.
If you're at Marxism 2007, I insist on getting you a Hoegaarden grand cru or two (if Lenin won't ban me for insults, maybe he'll ban me for product placement). "De ingrediënten van de Grand Cru zijn mout, tarwe, hop, en zoals bij elk Hoegaards bier gedroogde sinaasappelschil" - bet you can't wait.
Any other philistines been spinning their mouse-wheels at top speed through this comments box?
Mr Devine is correct that the Nixonian phrase wasn't "Moral Majority". It was "Silent Majority". Equally as unctuous, mind you.
Nice post Brendan; I agree with most of what you say.
Comrades who do not like my emphasis on the ordinary langauge of eveyday life should pick a fight with Marx (particularly with the last few sentences):
"For philosophers, one of the most difficult tasks is to descend from the world of thought to the actual world. Language is the immediate actuality of thought. Just as philosophers have given thought an independent existence, so they had to make language into an independent realm. This is the secret of philosophical language, in which thoughts in the form of words have their own content. The problem of descending from the world of thoughts to the actual world is turned into the problem of descending from language to life.
We have shown that thoughts and ideas acquire an independent existence in consequence of the personal circumstances and relations of individuals acquiring independent existence. We have shown that exclusive, systematic occupation with these thoughts on the part of ideologists and philosophers, and hence the systematisation of these thoughts, is a consequence of division of labour, and that, in particular, German philosophy is a consequence of German petty-bourgeois conditions. The philosophers would only have to dissolve their language into the ordinary language, from which it is abstracted, to recognise it as the distorted language of the actual world, and to realise that neither thoughts nor language in themselves form a realm of their own, that they are only manifestations of actual life." [German Ideology.]
http://www.english.ilstu.edu/Str...xts/
german.html
Interviewer: What do you mean, destructive uses?
Marcuse: Well, the entire military establishment ...
Interviewer (sternly interrupting): Uh, setting that aside ...
Jeez, Professor Marcuse, keep it clean. Viewers' wives, children and housemaids may be watching.
I haven't got to the bit where he chews the bollocks off Reagan. Hope it's good.
Brendan, I was congratulating you on your first post - I hadn't yet read the second. You say: If the post-modernists had embraced Wittgenstein instead, then post-modernism would make much more sense. Well, maybe, but then there wouldn't be any post-modernism to speak of - a little rigid-designator problem.
But, you know ... how much better again if they had embraced interior decorating or plumbing.
except that "Silent Majority" in ancient greece referred to the dead. was there some irony is nixon's use of the phrase?
Pauly:
"McCumber argues that Analytic Philosophy came to dominance in America primarily through the McCarthyite purge of philosophical leftists."
You have to recall that US analytic Philosophy was a millions miles away from the UK version.
And, I am not altogether sure McCumber is right here.
Some of the most influential US analytic Philosophers were socialists (Donald Davisdon being perhaps the best example).
UK analytic philosophy was dominated by socialists (Ryle, Russell, Ayer, Austin, etc.), and by Wittgenstein -- an almost Marxist.
As to the depoliticisation of Philosophy, that cannot be put down to analytic philosophy, but to the reaction in the US.
As soon as that was over, analytic philosophers got stuck in again, in the shape of Rawls, Nozick, et al.
Sure, these were not socialists, but they were analytic philosophers who repolticised it.
As for W, if you agree with him, as I do, if all philosophy is nonsense, the less of it that infects politics the better.
If you do not, then you are welcone to another 2500 years of going nowhere slowly -- with traditional philosophy to guide your way.
And then you'd deserve all you got, for you have been told.
Anonymous: correct!
Very well put.
Which brings us back to Nixon...
'Anonymous' was actually me: I just forgot to write my name (and forgot that 'socially' does not have three 'l's).
Incidentally, ' babeuf' I ain't a post-modernist by any stretch of the imagination, although some French post-war thinkers are interesting (IMHO). But the interest by some of these thinkers in Freudianism has always struck me as absolutely bizarre, which is what I was getting at.
cf, incidentally, 'Jacques Bouvresse: Wittgenstein reads Freud.'
[Note: 'and to realise that neither thoughts nor language in themselves form a realm of their own, that they are only manifestations of actual life.'...if you really believe and accept this (I do) you realise why Marxism and Freudianism simply cannot be compatible. Freud assumed that thoughts ARE a realm of their own (indeed, the whole of Freudianism is about this alleged realm), and so does Lacan (insofar as I understand him). Again (and I promise I will shut up about this now) as Rosa points out, this is incredibly Wittgensteinian)].
(It was the plumbing that got us back to Nixon. Can't get the hang of this time-delay business.)
Brendan, I am not sure you can classify W as a non-analytic Philosopher. Certainly in his early and middle phase he was, and it is arguable that he was too in his later period.
For sure, he'd have denied he was one (he did not like to be categorised), and would have agreed with you that he was an anti-philosopher like Marx, but one can be an analytic philosopher and be anti-philosophy all at once.
For example: Wittgenstein (I am also, by the way) -- there are others (Burton Dreben, Cora Diamond, Juliet Floyd, Rupert Read,...).
He shared enough with this tradition to be safely categorised as one; the generally accepted criteria are these:
1) Anti-metaphysics, and system building.
2) An emphasis on clarity and rigour.
3) The use of modern Fregean and post-Fregean logic.
4) An emphasis on language and the theory of meaning.
5) A further emphasis on ordinary language.
6) An orientation around modern science and mathematics.
Not all Analytic Philosphers adhered to all of these, or all the time, but all observed most, most of the time.
For example 3/4's of all W wrote was on mathematics (most of it unpublished and/or destroyed).
Finally, Brendan, W would have laid into postmodernism had he lived to see it.
He said of his work that he wanted to get rid of the imaginary idols (harking back to Bacon's phrase) philosophers had erected and were busy worshipping, not to replace them with other idols, or make a fetish of their being no idols left, and worhip that (a la PM-ers).
They made the mistake of taking the traditional account of truth (correspondence/'mirroring reality') to be the only account, and hence, once they had denied it, they had estblished truth was subjective (or the like).
W would have reminded them of the many different uses of the word 'truth' and left it at that -- no theory, and no-anti-theory, either.
So, all they (the PM-ers) have done is attack one idol, and put another (rampant subjectivity) in its place.
Anon = Brendan, that is why I posted the Marx quote.
There are others, but that is the best.
Aha, Rosa, that "anonymous" was Brendan, after all, as I suspected. Click on the homepage link and you'll get to the blog Killing Time, which I'll now start looking over, since Brendan has been talking much good sense.
As for Ulrike Meinhof, Marcuse adeptly negotiates the same territory ("prosperity buying off the workers" etc.) at the start of his interview in the video. He's asked why he thinks there should be so much discontent in the midst of so much prosperity (referring primarily to the San Diego student body). Marcuse says that it is precisely because of the prosperity and the fact that it is turned towards destructive rather than creative ends.
Not the full Marxist answer, but pretty good for a TV interview, and a long way from the pessimism and substitutionism of the Baader-Meinhof Gang.
In the formulation I remember from One Dimensional Man, Marcuse speaks of "repressive desublimation", as good a term as any I know for the m.o. of kapitalist kultur.
Looks like my shock revelation of anonymous's identity came a little late.
Dominic, that's right, and in fact this is one of the points Adorno teases him with regarding student activists and their beastly behaviour - can you really be comfortable with this kind of desublimation?
One-dimensional man:
http://www.marxists.org/referenc...l-man/
index.htm
One reason why we should defend Marxists.org against the renegade PRC scum.
Thanks for the link; this book is undoubtedly a classic -- but it would have been all the better if chapter 7 had never been written.
Calling it 'lamentably poor' would be to over-praise it.
[He even references that imfamous hatchet job, 'Words and Things', written by that well-known friend of Marxism: Gellner!]
Christ! I posted anonymously again! My bad.
Anyway Rosa I do completely agree with your point about post-modernism: ultimately it is just another theory, (indeed, in literary ,the whole field is sometimes called 'Theory') and Wittgenstein wanted to get rid of the theorising (or get beyond it).
The extent to which both Marxism and Wittgensteinian philosophy were meant to be USEFUL is usually ignored or downplayed in academic studies of both of them.
You might like to read this Essay at Rupert Read's site:
http://www.humboldt.edu/~essays/...ssays/
read.html
Rupert is a lecturer at the University of E Anglia, and a Green Party councillor in Norwich (he sometimes contributes to MediaLens); he is also one of the more interesting young Wittgensteinians.
http://www.uea.ac.uk/~j339/
Far more interesting is Guy Robinson; a Marxist and W expert. His Essays are excellent -- some are posted here:
http://www.guyrobinson.net/
He manages to say in ten sentences what I take 200 to struggle through.
The best book on Marx and W is this:
http://ndpr.nd.edu/review.cfm?id=1323
Since we are recommending books to each other, may I take this opportunity to recommend 'The Fiction of a Thinkable World: Body, Meaning and the Culture of Capitalism' (http://www.amazon.com/Fiction-Thinkable-World-
Meaning-Capitalism/dp/1583671161)
, which, despite its title is actually an extremely easy to read and fascinating book of ethical theory/philosophy/psychology.
(Steinberg isn't an academic he's a lawyer).
Steinberg notes that many of the Western dichotomies that Wittgenstein's and Marx's philosophies were an attempt to get over ('free will' 'determinism': 'materialism' 'idealism' etc.) simply do not exist in the East. He also traces Western individualism way back to the beginnings of the Western tradition and demonstrates that the Eastern tradition offers other alternatives. To quote from an Amazon reviewer: 'The Fiction of a Thinkable World shows how the Western conception of the human subject came to be formed historically, how it contrasts with that of Eastern thought, and how it provides the basic justification for the institutions of liberal capitalism. The fiction of a world separated from each of us as we are separated from each other, from which we make our choices in solitary thought, is enacted by the voter in the voting booth and the consumer at the supermarket shelf. The structure of daily experience in capitalist society reinforces the fictions of the Western intellectual tradition, stunt human creativity, and create the illusion that the capitalist order is natural and unsurpassable.'
Put like that this sounds appallingly pretentious, but actually this is one of the least pretentious of books, in that it demonstrates that Eastern insights are actually closer to our native 'common sense' than the (from outside) deeply weird Western view. (Note: it does not make the most vulgar of assumptions, that the East is somehow more 'spiritual' or 'metaphysical' than the West: the viewpoint is thoroughly materialist throughout).
Anyway, it has often struck me that the war against abstraction that W. and M. amongst other fought is actually more easily fought in the Eastern than the Western tradition.
If Rupert Read has seen Rosa's last posting then Read read "read Read".
Rosa has a theses (despite the fact that she denies she has theses) which suggests that the history of philosophy is a history of attempts to mystify ordinary language, either a conspiracy or a cumulative set of confusions.
One fine morning someone (Wittgenstein? Or Hume? Or Marx?) has a Eureka moment and see's everything as it is. Perhaps this has something to do with Capitalism, or perhaps it doesn't. Exactly how someone whose major philosophical influence was Schopenhaur (was he a conservative? Or perhaps via Wittgenstein he was a Marxist?) comes to see this is not a problem because presumably at the Eureka moment such pre-conceptions are put to one side (also of course Wittgenstein like truth has no history: he just appears. Such appearences one might say gather momentum through history).
This philosophy can't be 'conservative' because politically a lot of the analytical philosophers were Socialists (although Wittgenstein was more radical) and arguments suggesting that Witgenstein's attitude to Russia was motivated by romanticism about peasents and the simple life are 'partly true' (!), (perhaps someone recalls his sojourn in Norway) but not wholly true because of course Stalin's Russia was not a good place for peasents.
Presumably Wittgenstein having achieved clarity couldn't have shared illusions with the rest of his generation. But in any case discussions about the conservatism of analytical philosophy are irrelevent (although it isn't true because many supported a radical Labour government) because Wittgenstein was not an analytical philosopher but something called an 'anti-philosopher'.
Wittgenstein was an 'anti-philosopher' either in the sense that he believed that science would replace philosophy (one of the dominant ideologies of our age) or in some other hitherto undisclosed manner.
I think all this demonstrates that 'clarity' and 'eureka moments' are compatible with the most incredible intellectual and philosophical confusion, and perhaps most importantly, with standard, rather dull prejudices about the history of ideas masquerading as staggering novelty.
But I don't think the network of ideas put about above can have the slightest clue why this is, or even see the monumental crassness and irrelevence of most of what they say to any question of any philosophical or political importance whatsoever.
I have read some of Rupert's work and enjoy it. I don't think that Rupert's work has very much connection with what your saying. One distinction made by him in terms of studies of Wittgenstein is between those who use him to treat the history of ideas as irrelevent, and those who use him to re-examine the history of ideas. I think you belong in the former camp (despite the reproduction of a rationalist just-so story about the whole history of philosophy being a ruling class conspiracy or simply a set of confusions) whilst he belongs in the latter camp. I'm not entirely sure if I agree with him, but think there is a damn sight more substance in what he says then in what you say.
Being a bit familiar with "eastern philosophy" I have to say that Brendan's point seems like a reproduction of orientalist fantasies which see the east and west as opposed formations which may lead to a 'new philosophy' when combined. In terms of the remarks about 'western philosophy' (whose history is wrongly contrasted with something called 'eastern philosophy') its clear that for a Marxist, there is no such thing as a continuous 'western philosophy' anymore then there is a continuous 'eastern' one.
It seems that the 'anti-philosophers' collapse into 'abstraction' and 'metaphysics' (a metaphysics of the 'west' versus the 'east') rather quicker then some of us who are prepared to take both abstraction and metaphysics more seriously. I would recommened Halbfass's book on the 'west and the east' as an introduction to these debates.
On Marcuse
http://www.marxists.org.uk/archi.../09/
marcuse.htm
http://www.marxists.org.uk/archi.../xx/
marcuse.htm
Just re-read Rupert Read's very interesting discussion of Marx and Wittgenstein. I'm not sure I buy entirely into his argument, but for sure, in the sections where he discusses the way in which Wittgenstein meant his work to be taken, I would suggest that Rosa ought to be very concerned indeed.
More concretely though I think there is enourmous confusion about 'anti-philosophy' in Wittegenstein. A standard reading is the idea of science replacing philosophy (or some other "reductionist" schemae, logic perhaps). But of course the standard 'scientistic' philosophers of this kind (Russell etc) were the very people Wittgenstein was aiming at in his later work, and indeed, PI can be read as a sustained attack on this particular idea, as opposed to philosophy in general.
In that sense Wittgenstein is not like either the mainstream of logical positivism, or on the other hand the mainstream of 'ordinary language'. Indeed Wittgenstein can come to be seen by some as reopening the questions of the continental philosophers. In other words Wittgenstein's work can be read as belonging to the very tradition which those who see him as an analytical philosopher imagine he is attacking.
Rosa will scream and shout about mistakes, and perhaps she's right.
But there is a real paradox here and it is not resolved by talking about 'mistakes'. One problem here is that many of these debates about language and philosophy are by no means novel, and I remain suspicious that when people find continuity between Marx and Wittgenstein's isolated comments, they may be confusing general beliefs about the relationship between philosophy and language which have been in the air since the late 18th century with what was genuinely original in either's thought.
Its very easy to bend the ideas of genuinely original thinkers to their standard and conservative meanings, the very meanings they were trying to break from. This has been the fate of both Marx and Wittgenstein, and I'm entirely unsure that those whom Justin aptly describes as 'the philistines' (being Amish I just call them 'the English') are not doing precisely that. Rosa's strange belief that Wittgenstein can be understood as mainly targetting the kind of philosophy written by Hegel (why on earth would he have done this?) is an indication that such mistakes usually occur by paying no attention to the history of ideas, itself the signal failing of the tradition Rosa refuses to recognise she comes from.
wonderfully relevent pair of contradictory articles, synthesised with political commitment and good writing, posted in contradiction with Ian's New Years Resolution. We praise Ian for being in contradiction with himself in this case.
I remember a cute little interview with Malcolm Rifkind - oh Jesus, sorry, it's SIR Malcolm Rifkind - in the Independent a while back, in which he said that he had been opposed to the invasion of Iraq. I'm sure it set a few liberal hearts a-fluttering.
But it read rather differently to anyone aware of the fact that Rifkind, as he spoke, was making a fortune out of the murdering thugs he sends to Iraq in his capacity as director of ArmorGroup.
SIMILARLY :) (OK, in some respects), Sir johng can have a very cute little discussion about Marx and Wittgenstein, which may look fine on the surface but reads rather differently when you remember that he adheres to a bunch of rationally indefensible religious doctrines that seek to mystify the material world that we live and work in - like all religious doctrines.
But that this particular religion, unlike others, unfortunately demands that revolutionaries - the very people who need a hard-nosed materialist view of the world if they're ever going to get anywhere - immerse themselves in the same clouds of mysticism because its supposedly essential to Marxism.
Well, Sir Malcolm, after you've given up your ArmorGroup directorship and donated your ill-gotten gains to the Iraqi resistance, I'll be happy to discuss Iraq with you.
And Sir johng, after you've abandoned your religion (or at least admitted it's a religion) and stopped trying to convert comrades to your mysticism, I'll be happy to discuss the relationship between Marx and Wittgenstein. In the meantime, it only serves as a smokescreen.
I have no idea what Johng's comments are supposed to mean, but I feel that I should respond to his statement: 'Brendan's point seems like a reproduction of orientalist fantasies which see the east and west as opposed formations which may lead to a 'new philosophy' when combined.' my response being that that's not how I see things at all.
Incidentally, Ray Monk's biography of Wittgenstein contains a throwaway remark by Wittgenstein that he (i.e. Wittgenstein) was the 'anti-Hegel' or words to that effect.
Nice one Brendan.
And in that vein, here's Marx on Hegel in a letter to Engels (16 Jan 1858):
If ever the time comes when such work is again possible, I should very much like to write 2 or 3 sheets making accessible to the common reader the rational aspect of the method which Hegel not only discovered but also mystified.
"2 or 3 sheets". "Mystified". Oh dear. Clearly Marx didn't have much grasp of doctrines that are essential to Marxism. Any publications on DM that I've seen run well beyond the confines of a leaflet or pamphlet.
Well I have no idea what Babeuf means by 'adhering to a mystical religous doctrine'. I presume this is some throwaway remark about 'DM' which I've never claimed to be an adherent of. I merely don't think its possible to dismiss either all philosophical traditions, or indeed Hegel's work as either 'nonsense' or 'religion'.
The religous fanatics and witch-hunters of analytical philosophy strike again.
Brendan's remarks are equally baffling. He states that Orientalism is 'not his view at all'. And yet he offers a contrast between 'western philosophy' and 'eastern philosophy' (are there such entities?) seeing the one as providing a solution to the other (Brendan rejecting both presumably see's himself as hovering above the two in some undefined manner).
We are told that Wittgenstein once made a remark that he was the 'anti-hegel', but we are not told what the context was of that statement. Certainly there is no evidence that he studied or was immersed in either Hegelian writing, or the various schools, German or English which saw themselves as in some sense Hegelian.
Hardly surprising because as Dummet points out, by the 1880's, Hegel was not regarded as a serious philosophical figure by either those engaged in the kind of metaphilosophy Wittgenstein was critiquing (ie the project of inventing new langauges to improve on existing ones: not at all the same project as opposing confusing philosophical terminology), or the phenomenological tradition. The lingusitic turn in English speaking philosophy was also rapidly developing at the time.
Very crudely there seem to be three theses about Wittgenstein. One is that he was a logical positivist, part of the Vienna Circle, who went mad and started writing strange stuff about language games and the like.
The other is that in fact both projects can be reconciled on a scientistic basis.
The other is that properly read, the tractatus (his first book) is not logical positivist at all, and that indeed his view of non-sense was not dismissive (he remained deeply interested in theological questions all his life, as well, of course, in other things). This view reflects the belief that he was heavily influenced by Schopenhaur (and that rather like Hegel's Logic and Capital, its not possible to understand anything he wrote without understanding Schopenhaur: who was indeed regarded as an 'anti-hegel').
Much of this discussion revolves around technical debates about showing and telling, ladders, and the like, as well as interpreting his later work as an attempt to repudiate logical positivist readings of his earlier work. I do think that there was a bit of a break though. In general I agree with formulations which suggest that he believed that 'leaving everything as it is' and the notion that language can 'take care of itself' was indeed a critique of Russell et al and aspects (only aspects) of his earlier endeavers.
The difficulty with discussions about 'continuity' and 'breaks' is that, as with history, it very much depends which questions your interested in. I find the work of people like Julian and others fascinating but am constantly worried that the novelty of Wittgenstein's positions may be overstated precisely because the tradition he was rebelling against is still suffecatingly present in the English speaking philosophical world.
As much of this discussion demonstrates. I would very much recommend taking up my recommendation on Halbfass. I know something of which I speak. For those with access to JSTORE there is a fascinating article by him on the possibility of Comparative Philosophy, which should in itself reveal the difficulties Brendan gets himself into.
Babeuf,
Yes, which suggests that philosophy has a rather powerful afterlife. What I find fascinating about Julians sensitive attempt to use Marx's discussion of commodities to illuminate Wittgenstein's critique of philosophy, is that it reveals quite how complicated and indeed, philosophical a business it is trying to read and interpret what Wittgenstein meant.
Rupert is aware of the paradox involved. You two seem mightily obtuse about it. At least Rosa makes the attempt. But yet again the whole thing turns into a mammoth philosophical project.
But it was not only Marx who failed to show much enthusiasm for mystical doctrines. Perhaps the Entered Apprentices of Dialectical Materialism could answer these questions?
Why do IS/SWP publications show next to no interest in Dialectical Materialism before the late 80s?
Why was Alex Callinicos able to write knock-down refutations of DM through to the mid-80s without any serious objections from other leading comrades? (The DM cultists of the Workers Revolutionary Party certainly took him to task for it.)
Why was there no endorsement of DM before the late 80s? (Starting with Chris Harman in 1988)
Why does Socialist Worker remain free of DM doctrines or vocabulary? It attempts to explain concepts like class, profit and exploitation in non-technical language, so why not DM too?
Why do Tony Cliff's books and articles show something in the region of zero interest in DM?
How much space do you think Tony Cliff devoted to the Hegelian turn Lenin took during his Swiss exile period? Several chapters? Several pages? Several paragraphs? A few sentences? None of the above? (Mystics won't like the answer.)
And how much space do you think Tony Cliff devoted to the Hegelian turn Trotsky took after he was banished from the Soviet Union? Several chapters? Several pages? Several paragraphs? A few sentences? None of the above? (Mystics won't like the answer.)
One notes as well the utter inability to respond to the suggestion that Wittgenstein may have been tilting against the very tradition the analytical fundementalists adhere to, rather then to 'traditional metaphysics' (surely by this time a thouroughly dead dog in the circles Wittgenstein was moving in).
Its this utter inability to sensibly discuss the broader picture that really hits you between the eyes.
Instead we get a wierd attempt to compare me to Malcolm Rifkind and a theological forbidding of any discussion before one agreed to the wierd set of unspoken dogmas of the true mystics of the present. The mystics of the past are fairly easy to attack. The mystics of the present should be the main target. Which is why people like this can't even understand someone like Marcuse let alone discuss him sensibly.
We're all 'witches' to these people.
I also love the repeated pompous claims that people cannot 'understand' what I'm talking about. "I have no idea..etc, etc". I know in the analytical tradition this is supposed to demonstrate 'hard headedness' of one kind or another. In other philosophical traditions its not something you boast about.
JohnG:
"One fine morning someone (Wittgenstein? Or Hume? Or Marx?) has a Eureka moment and see's everything as it is. Perhaps this has something to do with Capitalism, or perhaps it doesn't. Exactly how someone whose major philosophical influence was Schopenhaur (was he a conservative? Or perhaps via Wittgenstein he was a Marxist?) comes to see this is not a problem because presumably at the Eureka moment such pre-conceptions are put to one side (also of course Wittgenstein like truth has no history: he just appears. Such appearences one might say gather momentum through history)."
Why do you persist in fabricating stuff I do not believe, could not reasonably be expected to believe, not can be inferred from anything I have? And why do you compound this wilful nescience by ignoring my arguments?
If you cannot answer them, leave the field -- and to those who do know some philosophy and logic, unlike you.
The last time we 'debated' this topoc, I had to end it because of your persistent habit of dredging uip irrelevances, and attributing to me things I did not belive,
Looks like you are determined to do the same.
I suggest you read what I have to say more carefully, or get your head fixed, or both.
Again, as I said last time, I will not bandy fabrications with you until you approach this subject with far more honesty than you have hithertoo shown you are capable of displaying.
Babeuf, I think Ian will confirm much of what you say.
He was indeed the standard-bearer of the opposition inside the SWP to the mystical turn that Harman introduced in 1988. Indeed, he inspired me to take up this anti-mystical cause inside the SWP.
And the timing of its return was interesting: just after the defeat of the miners, and after 10 years of the 'downturn' -- in other words like other comrades (e.g., Lenin, Trotsky, Engels, Plekhanov), this mystical creed serves as consolation for the fact that materially-orientated workers ignore Dialectical Marxism in their droves.
In facxt, the bigger the class, the more they ignore it.
But, with their heads well and truly lodged in the sand, our mystical friends cannot see this.
It also screws with their abilty to think: JohnG being exhibit A for the prosecution here.
A waffle-meister extrordinaire.
I hope he says the same for good; as a warning to others....
Why do you persist in fabricating stuff I do not believe, could not reasonably be expected to believe, not can be inferred from anything I have?
Sorry, Rosa, but it's a completely reasonable inference. (Much more reasonable, for example, than babeuf's Rifkind comparison.) After tracking through the discussion here I find your inability to describe the mechanism by which Marx (or indeed Wittgenstein or Hume or whoever) arrived at their non-dialectical thinking a little peculiar. Why do analytical philosophers have such problems with history?
My response to JohnG, minus the serious errors and typos, should have been:
JohnG:
"One fine morning someone (Wittgenstein? Or Hume? Or Marx?) has a Eureka moment and sees everything as it is. Perhaps this has something to do with Capitalism, or perhaps it doesn't. Exactly how someone whose major philosophical influence was Schopenhauer (was he a conservative? Or perhaps via Wittgenstein he was a Marxist?) comes to see this is not a problem because presumably at the Eureka moment such pre-conceptions are put to one side (also of course Wittgenstein like truth has no history: he just appears. Such appearances one might say gather momentum through history)."
Why do you persist in fabricating stuff I do not believe, could not reasonably be expected to believe, nor could be inferred from anything I have said anywhere at any time?
And why do you compound this wilful nescience by ignoring my actual arguments?
If you cannot answer them, leave the field -- leave it to those who do know some philosophy and logic, unlike you.
The last time we 'debated' this topic, I had to end it because of your persistent habit of dredging up irrelevances, and attributing to me things I did not believe.
Looks like you are determined to do the same.
I suggest you read what I have to say more carefully, or get your head fixed, or both.
Again, as I said last time, I will not bandy fabrications with you until you approach this subject with far more honesty than you have hitherto shown you are capable of displaying.
I've already asked some simple questions about IS/SWP history johng, which don't require any conclusions about Wittgenstein or Marcuse.
So why was the SR group/IS/SWP able to manage so well from the 40s to the 80s without Dialectical Materialism?
Would you like to dismiss those decades and start the clock at 1988 with Chris Harman's sudden endorsement of DM in the Socialist Review?
Were Cliff and Hallas only toy Marxists? Because they certainly showed an obstinate disregard for DM in their writings, and yet DM is supposed to be essential to Marxism. Do you think they were never able to grasp change?
There's plenty of change analyzed and demanded in millions of words in the IS/SWP literature, but without reference to DM categories, even after the late 80s (never mind fundamentally depending on DM). Even where DM has appeared, in a few ISJ articles, the discussion revolves around DM itself - it is not used to assist our understanding of change or our ability to effect change.
So without even touching on its incoherence and mysticism, Dialectical Materialism hardly sounds like an essential tool for revolutionaries, does it? Not in the IS/SWP tradition anyway - did you have anything else in mind?
Related, I don't know if anyone has this article:
From Language to "Forms of Life": Theory and Practice in Wittgenstein, by Steven Shaviro
Social Text 1986 Duke University Press
It maybe of interest.
A quote -
"Wittgenstein's insistence on relationality and on social context parallels that of Marx; his destructive analysis of classical philosophical problems allow us to focus more clearly on the concrete social processes of concern to Marxism. But at the same time, Wittgenstein's methodology throws into question, and proposes a radical alternative to, the dialectical and totalizing presuppositions of most 20th century marxist theory"
going back a bit, this statement:
"Freud assumed that thoughts ARE a realm of their own (indeed, the whole of Freudianism is about this alleged realm), and so does Lacan"
is entirely misconceived.
Freud radically opposes Cartesian mind/body dualism (the idea that our thoughts and our physical bodies are essentially disconnected realms) and instead insists that mind and body form a single connected system.
Moreover he was led to this conclusion precisely because of treating patients for psychosomatic disorders - physical symptoms that were triggered by mental events.
Lacan is if anything even more insistent on this point.
Thank you, unclejimbo, a fine quote.
For that, you've just become my favourite uncle. I'll be coming round on Saturday afternoon for some sweets, a story, and a game of football in the yard.
Meaders:
"After tracking through the discussion here I find your inability to describe the mechanism by which Marx (or indeed Wittgenstein or Hume or whoever) arrived at their non-dialectical thinking a little peculiar."
But how is this:
1) Relevant to anything I have argued above?
2) A criticism of my ideas?
As to my alleged inability, where have I denied the historic specificity of a theorist's ideas?
Indeed, had you bothered to check, you will find the opposite at my site.
Not fair, I hear you say: I should explain all here. All???
In these threads? A PhD equivalent thesis compressed into these haloscan cells??
Could even you do this?
Hence, I can only refer you back to the above two points.
Had it been relevant, I'd have gone into this; but it isn't.
JohnG just pulls this topic out of the blue, and expects me to answer him. He never even so much as attempts to respond to what I say (except to wander off along yet another tangent). Look how he has ignored the proof that Wittgenstein was very close to Marxism for the second half of his lfe. Right over his head, since it does not fit with his pre-conceived ideas.
I have in the past spent hours and hours with him, going over this and similar stuff; he ignores most of it (as he has done here), and then waffles on about other things that seem randomly to come into his head.
However, to answer you briefly (since I have no beef with you): when you ask for the specific mechanisms, what have you in mind?
The exact psychological motivations? Brain processes? Class position, ideology and/or concrete historical circumstances? What?
As it stands, your query is far too vague to do too much with.
'Freud radically opposes Cartesian mind/body dualism (the idea that our thoughts and our physical bodies are essentially disconnected realms) and instead insists that mind and body form a single connected system.
Moreover he was led to this conclusion precisely because of treating patients for psychosomatic disorders - physical symptoms that were triggered by mental events.
Lacan is if anything even more insistent on this point.'
I would deny this in both cases, although i wouldn't deny that both Freud and Lacan CLAIMED to have overcome Cartesian dualism.
In any case it's an irrelevance, because what Marx was talking about was the fact that human beings are social beings, and that 'explanations' of human behaviour will inevitably lead 'outwards' to the socially structured world in which people live and act and work. Freudians, on the other hand, tend to look for explanations 'inside' or 'deep in the (individual's) unconscious'. This is reproduced in the Freudian 'method' in which an individual faces another individual ('on the couch'). But for Marx the real problems of social life and social thought (and all thought, for Marx, was inherently social) could only be 'solved' via a social method or methodology. 'It is not the consciousness of men that determines their being, but, on the contrary, their SOCIAL being that determines their consciousness....' the key word being 'social'. But for Freud it was not one's social being that determines one's consciousness but the individual's unconscious. And this is part of a very old tradition in the West that goes back (unsurprisingly) to Plato (cf 'The Myth of Irrationality' by John McCrone).
Freudianism and Marxism are incompatible.
Brendan, you and I agree on yet another major point.
Quite apart from the fact that Freud was a charlatan, a liar and a plagiarist.
Other than that, he was hoplessly confused.
The "Freud" you're talking about has very little to do with what Freud actually wrote, Brendan.
For starters Freud too insists that humans have to be understood socially - he argues that from the moment we are born we are radically dependent on other human beings, and that ours desires and psyches are constructed through relationships with others, ie socially. Lacan put it even more starkly: the unconscious is structured as a language, ie it has to be understood socially.
Your description of "an individal facing another individual" is more accurate as a description of the "ego psychology" school of Freudianism that took root in the US in the 1950s.
But Lacan was vehemently opposed to this school - in particular, he tears into precisely the notion that analysis is about one individual facing another and insists that analysis takes place in a structured societal context (aka "the big Other").
Were Cliff and Hallas only toy Marxists? Because they certainly showed an obstinate disregard for DM in their writings,
Okay. I must have hallucinated all that stuff that Cliff wrote about the dialectic. Of course, all the examples that come to mind are from his autobiography or later works, so maybe the machiavellian Chris Harman had "gotten" to him by that stage?
Well, Meaders, since you've chosen to weigh in on the side of Dialectical Materialism, and since you think I was being unreasonable earlier, would you care to answer any of my questions? I don't think you can call them unreasonable, but they certainly need to be considered by anyone who advocates DM to comrades because of its supposed indispensability to revolutionary socialists for understanding and effecting change. If it is indispensible, then:
1. Why do IS/SWP publications show next to no interest in Dialectical Materialism before the late 80s?
2. Why was Alex Callinicos able to write knock-down refutations of DM through to the mid-80s without any serious objections from other leading comrades? (The DM cultists of the Workers Revolutionary Party certainly took him to task for it.)
3. Why was there no endorsement of DM before the late 80s? (Starting with Chris Harman in 1988)
4. Why does Socialist Worker remain free of DM doctrines or vocabulary? It attempts to explain concepts like class, profit and exploitation in non-technical language, so why not DM too?
5. Why do Tony Cliff's books and articles show ignore DM? Or even avoid it, as in the Lenin and Trotsky biographies?
Please don't try the old goal-post shifting trick (performed in these comments boxes several times already) of pretending that discussing DM is just an innocent romp through the history of ideas when it has a murky, semi-official status within the SWP, although it has never been put before conference to be adopted as official doctrine.
Callinicos wouldn't have been slapped down in ISJ 113 for insufficient commitment to Freudianism, Lacanianism or Wittgensteinianism or any other -ism. But he can be slapped down for insufficient commitment to DM.
VC:
"Okay. I must have hallucinated all that stuff that Cliff wrote about the dialectic."
VC, I have been looking for this stuff for 20+ years. Please tell me where it is. I cannot find it in his autoB, or 'later works'; which pages???
"For that, you've just become my favourite uncle. I'll be coming round on Saturday afternoon for some sweets, a story, and a game of football in the yard."
Why thank you! Such flattery! :)
Just a note, the quote came from the article itself and I strongly recommend it. I personally thought it was written in a very clear way.
It's available at JSTOR if you have a subscription, or if you wish I can look for a temporary place to host it if anyone wants a copy.
For example, I am looking at his 'Lecture Notes on Marxist Theory' from 1961 (Volume 3 of his Selected Writings, pp.295-310), and apart from saying that capitalism should be considered as a whole system, with everything in it connected (which I, and I think Babeuf, accept - you do not have to read a word of Hegel to know this), he mentions it not once.
In the section on 'Philosophy' (an ideal place to go into this 'essential' aspect of Marxism, you'd think), he mentions it zero times (p.304).
The index of his 3 volume Selected Writings lists the dialectic zero times too, and there is no reference to it in his Essay on Engels (as far as I can see) in Volume 1.
So, unless you *have* been hallucinating, as you suppose, he does not seem to think much of this 'theory'.
In fact, I can recall him mentioning it only once in my hearing, in a rally at Skegness 1989 (note the date), and then just in passing. In a late speech on Russia, he mentioned Heraclitus the once, too.
Hardly a ringing endorsement.
Of course, if I am wrong, you will find it very easy to show me where....
I'm reluctant to venture into this, but I read with interest. Rosa, Cliff repeatedly invokes the dialectic in his writings, and takes it more or less for granted. This can be established with a google search for 'tony cliff, dialectic'.
capitalism should be considered as a whole system, with everything in it connected (which I, and I think Babeuf, accept - you do not have to read a word of Hegel to know this)
Would you take this further? For instance, would you accept either a strong claim that everything is a totality with everything interconnected in some way, or a weaker claim that living systems are like that?
Lenin, thanks for that; I'll check it out.
"For instance, would you accept either a strong claim that everything is a totality with everything interconnected in some way, or a weaker claim that living systems are like that?"
If you are going to try to refer to 'everything' in a scientific way, then you fall into Russell's paradox pretty quickly, as I show in Essay Eleven Part One, where I spend 45000 words on this very topic.
But that is the least of one's worries; more details here:
http://homepage.ntlworld.com/ros...age%
2011_01.htm
The idea that everything is interconnected, is, of course, a good old Hermetic idea.
Ok, Google shows that in 'Trotskyism after Trotsky', ch 6, he uses this word *once*.
Same in 'Engels'.
In 'Class Struggle and Women’s Liberation' it appears 4 times, but then only in the title of someone else's work (S Firestone).
Others use it in connection with their own ideas, and they also mention Cliff (hence Google lumps these together).
I can find no other direct use by him of this word.
Even then, he does very little with it in the above passages.
And they both come from the post downturn phase, when Marxists in general turn to consolation.
But, hard-headed realist that he was, he keeps clear of Hegel; he mentions the word (and only the word) about as many ttimes as there are fingers on a severely mutilated hand -- ie., only slighly more times than does George W Bush....
Unless you all know differently, of course....
Rosa, as I write I'm watching BBCnews24, and we're seeing footage just in of a press conference called by an ashen-faced Donny Gluckstein, in dressing gown and slippers, clutching a manuscript discovered earlier today, we haven't got any details on how it was found yet. The manuscript is alleged to be a book-length essay in Levantine Arabic by Mr Gluckstein's late father entitled "The Love that Dare Not Speak its Name: My Secret Lifelong Affair with Dialectical Materialism". Mr Gluckstein receives frequent whispered advice from "L", his shadowy minder, an overweight, leather-clad Ulsterman.
I don't know what to make of it Rosa, I really don't. Like the rest of the nation, I'm shocked. Over to you John.
Deafening silence....
Why does that not surprise me?
Rosa, you pulled deep mathematics on me, what do you expect? And what's next? A bunch of flowers?
Rosa
interested to see you talking about hermetic ideas. Are you aware of the writings of Cyril Smith (no not THAT Cyril Smith, the other one).
http://www.marxists.org/referenc...cyril/
index.htm
He talks about the influence of hermetic thinkers on Hegel. He also talks about a view of Marxism that is, I think, very close to your own (actually I am wary of using words like 'Marxism' as that word has been so misused: it implies that Marxism is a 'theory' or, even worse, an attempt at creating a 'science of society' which, I think we would both agree, is to misread Marx badly). Although he doesn't talk about Wittgenstein, I think his views are quite close to the ones discussed on your website. For example, he writes: 'Marx is not responsible for a ‘doctrine’ of any kind, neither a teaching about what the world ought to be, nor an explanation of the way the world worked. His conception of humanity as socially self-creating clashes with anything which purports to be such a ‘doctrine’ or ‘theory’.' I don't think I have to stress the Wittgensteinian parallels in this.
Babeuf: "Sir johng can have a very cute little discussion about Marx and Wittgenstein, which may look fine on the surface but reads rather differently when you remember that he adheres to a bunch of rationally indefensible religious doctrines that seek to mystify the material world that we live and work in - like all religious doctrines"
Ignore what the 'comrade' says, he is objectivley a social fascist..um, mystic.
"So without even touching on its incoherence and mysticism, Dialectical Materialism hardly sounds like an essential tool for revolutionaries, does it? "
Unless you can identify a specific deleterious effect on revolutionary praxis caused by DM (correlation is not causation, so don't say 'when its used we have failed') then I don't see whats better or worse in a comrade holding to it than in being an existentialist, or christian, or muslim etc.
This is not to say don't bother challenging it, but I don't see why its necessary to go about it with the intolerance - no attempts at persuasion, a deliberate pillorying of 'mystics' rather than engaging to persuade - that some kind of serious political deviation would require. This is essentially a philosophical discussion - there is no need for a combatant stance.
Len:
"Rosa, you pulled deep mathematics on me, what do you expect? And what's next? A bunch of flowers?"
Well, I could not really make out where you were coming from in that query of yours; but my expereince of arguing this with comrades over the years is that they have not really thought about this 'concept' (i.e., 'The Totality') very much --, that is, beyond the usual arm waving.
So, my real objections to this notion are that no one (not Engels, Lenin, Trotsky, Rees, ...) has actually spelt out what it is, and I allege that this is so because it has replaced Hegel's Absolute, and thus God.
So, there is nothimg that could be said about it, as I show in Essay Eleven Part One.
So, forgive me for mentioning Russsell's Paradox (which is not very deep, as I am sure you know), but it highlights a serious technical problem DM-fans seem not to be aware of.
Howvere, this aside, as I note above, this insoluble problem (Russell's Paradox) is the least of the difficulties this Hermetic 'concept' faces.
By the way, do you now agree that Cliff mentions this word in print(i.e., 'dialectic') only twice in 60 years as a revolutionary, as far as we can tell?
I met Tony on many occasions; he always struck me as far too down-to-earth to fall for Hegelian mysticism -- indeed, in Essay Nine Part Two, to be published soon, I speculate that his loose adherence to DM allowed him to break with Trostky over the nature of the former USSR. The latter based his own analysis of the Deformed/Degenerated Workers' State explicitly on dialectics -- and accused those who did not accept this line of not being 'dialectical' -- as Orthodox Trotskyists have done since. Mandel used to pull this one all the time. So did Ted Grant. Check this out:
http://easyweb.easynet.co.uk/~so...ssia/
part4.html
So, I allege that our tradition was founded on a lack of respect for this Hermetic theory (and that is why so few mentioned it until 1988); I merely wish to complete its surgical removal.
Brendan, yes I am aware of this, and at my site I have published the Intoduction to Glenn Magee's 'Hegel and the Hermetic Tradition', upon which Smith based his own essay:
http://homepage.ntlworld.com/
ros...glenn_magee.htm
I outline the angle I am going to take on this here:
http://homepage.ntlworld.com/
ros...ummaryofEssay14
R:
"Unless you can identify a specific deleterious effect on revolutionary praxis caused by DM (correlation is not causation, so don't say 'when its used we have failed') then I don't see whats better or worse in a comrade holding to it than in being an existentialist, or christian, or muslim etc."
I outline these here:
http://homepage.ntlworld.com/
ros...DM.htm#Practice
More details will be published in Essay Nine Part Two in the next few weeks.
A summary of the background theory to all this can be found here:
http://homepage.ntlworld.com/ros...age%20016-
9.htm
And, it is little use claiming that truth is tested in practice, if when it is, you ignore the results -- continual failure.
At some point you have to start asking questions about that theory, or abandon the idea that practice is any guide at all.
Hey, Babeuf, lay off Ilya, or I'll smack yer one....
"This dialectical view prevents us from taking a fatalistic attitude to social reality and impels us to undertake 'revolutionary practical critical activity'."
Cliff writing as Y Tsur on James Burnham in c 1944.
I'm amazed by Rosa's accusations that I have not read or engaged with her text. The opposite seems to be the case. Apparently the fact that Wittgenstein dedicated philosophical investigations to a marxist, and on the other hand was friendly with progressives, and on the other hand stressed the social aspects of language proves that he was 'close to marxism'. A strange notion of proof for a logician I would say.
A simple question raised by me which Rosa refuses to answer (despite it being a central question in much Wittgenstein scholarship including in scholarship which she has kindly linked to)
Is it possible that Wittgenstein was hostile mainly to the project of scientism in philosophy and not to the old grand philosophers Rosa blames for most of what has gone wrong in history? If this was the case would it make a difference to how we read Wittgenstein? Since the Enlightenment all philosophy has in one way or another been obsessed with its own status in relationship to other forms of knowledge and embraced one form of endism or another (including Hegel, who when demystified really fits quite nicely into post-linguistic turn philosophy of the Wittgensteinian type).
How did this happen? Why are all contemporary philosophers obsessed with this question (which does not seem to be related only to questions about science)? One would have thought that Marxists of all people would make room for questions like this.
The second point relates to wild accusations about my religious and 'mystical' beliefs. I happen to think that Marx drew fairly deeply on a combination of German idealism and French materialism. I think he was dissatisfied with both, but that both approaches were important in defining a new approach to materialism. I think people have clumsily called this new approach 'dialectical materialism'. Some dogmatists wrongly attempt to turn this into a set of 'laws'. Others (such as myself) think this lays out the groundwork for methodological enquiry in Marxism.
For this I am accused even by quite bright people of being 'religous' 'superstitious' etc. Apparently I'm supposed to be satisfied with a story of philosophy which revolves around cunning priests and ruling class figures keeping everyone baffled with long words. Until Rosa, or Wittgenstein, or Hume or someone came along.
No thanks. Back to reading a bit of Stanely Cavell who seems a sensible scholar of Wittgenstein.
What I find strange about Rosa's dogmatism is that it is most...unwittgenstienian.
As the sensible Ian Birchall has joined the fray a few points. Rosa asks about the debates on Dialectics in the 1980's.
Well for an earlier generation the main person whom they drew on to oppose what they saw as 'diabolical and hysterical materialism' was Lukacs (funny that eh?). This immediatly raises the question of whether what Rosa calls 'DM' is actually 'one thing' ('DM fans' and all the other rubbish) or whether what it is, is contested.
Lukacs in particular despite being practically the founder of Hegelian Marxism was very hostile to the 'dialectic of nature'. Lukacs was however the sounding board for a new left hostile to what they saw as Stalinism. Hence those who saw Lukacs as a way out were extremely hostile to Althusser, whom they saw as mounting a desperate defence of Stalinism against the new left who invoked Lukacs. This battle revolved around the term 'humanism'.
By the late 1970's many suspected that both sides in this debate may have overstated their case. One Alex Callinicos wanted to re-assess Althusser, but also stressed the limitations of Lukacs. He believed that at the philosophical level anyway, Althusser had in fact made some telling points.
This obviously started a furious debate in the SWP (given the fact that veterans had cut their teeth on the humanist anti-stalinist reading of Lukacs). Part of the reason why such a debate could happen at all related to the downturn in struggle which meant both that comrades had time for philosophical questions, and that they were regarded as more important (being clear about the world etc).
Going through this debate those like Chris Harman came to the conclusion that both sides (Callinicos vs Binn's) were making a mistake. Partly I believe this had to do with Chris's reading of Gramsci, who argued with Lukacs about 'the dialectic of nature' in a way very different from that 'diabolical and hysterical materialism' which Ian Birchall had once wittily described as useful for a chicken breeder but not for a revolutionary.
These debates opened up a range of questions which are still not resolved. That tends to be the way with debates which probably won't be resolved this side of the revolution. But one reason why revolutions happen is because human beings are not simply drones content with things as they are, but are interested in larger questions as well.
I think this is a good thing.
I've just read one of rosa's pieces on 'traditional thought'. Nice idea but the barest aquaintance with historical accounts of many of these ideas (in many different kinds of society) would reveal this for the ironically philosophical as opposed to historical theses it is.
In some cases scepticism for example was hostile to an order. In others it was defensive of that order. Similarly with different kinds of idealism, different kinds of materialism.
The idea of someone with these kinds of views trying to make sense of 'eastern philosophy' scares the life out of me I have to admit.
Rosa, Brendan - not all of us can spend several hours pursuing a blog discussion.
However, Rosa appears to have answered here own question: "when you ask for the specific mechanisms [about how Marxist thought develops], what have you in mind?" - like this:
And they both come from the post downturn phase, when Marxists in general turn to consolation...
So the dialectic - upon which RL at least is spending a vast amount of timing in criticism - is simply a psychological prop? And that's your theory of history? That's how Marxism develops and changes? Good grief.
Ian Birchall, quoting a lesser-known page in the Cliff canon: "This dialectical view prevents us from taking a fatalistic attitude to social reality and impels us to undertake 'revolutionary practical critical activity'." (Cliff writing as Y Tsur on James Burnham in c 1944
I'm not sure it's fair that the omniscient IB should be allowed to play this game, but in any case that now brings us to a total of three mentions in 60 years.
The excitement mounts as the swingometer edges away from "studiously ignored" to "blithely ignored".
Meaders, please take your putrescent red herring elsewhere - you're not going to sell it here.
So, forgive me for mentioning Russsell's Paradox (which is not very deep, as I am sure you know), but it highlights a serious technical problem DM-fans seem not to be aware of.
*giggles uncontrollably*
I remember a nice little article about dialectics by Ian Birchall, illustrated with a drawing of dragon, I think, in SR, sometime in the 80's. Fairly orthodox, if my wine-soaked memory is OK.
Also a talk to IST groups in 1984, called something like "Building small groups", and making clear the difference between the crucial questions and things like Harman v Calico Knickers on philosophy, and Harman v Harris on...can't remember.
Cool it, comrades.
Well, Dominic, your "uncontrollable giggling" is enough for me. I'll assume from it that your unsurpassable intellect can refute Rosa's every point. No need to see any actual arguments from you.
Still, I can't see that it's so very amusing that some DM followers have heard of Russell's Paradox and some haven't. Personally, I had fits of uncontrollable giggling recently when an institution notorious for sheltering child rapists, and using its vast wealth to frustrate prosecutions brought by its victims considers itself to be a proper judge of who might pose a risk to children in its ... um, care (it's dem homosexualists, innit). Oh yes, and continue receiving public money for exercising their judgement. Oh yes, and expecting to have their claims examined seriously by the media and politicians without so much as a murmer about that institution's actual record on child care.
Now that's what made me giggle uncontrollably. Ah, here's an item on the subject on Dominic Fox's website. I wonder what he'll have to say. Bet he'll pull no punches.
Meaders, please take your putrescent red herring elsewhere - you're not going to sell it here.
Largely because you and RL seem incapable of grasping the problems you establish for yourselves. Still, your loss.
Cliff used to do a lecture on dialectics in which he explained the transition from quantity to quality by the fact that he used to be known as Cliff the Hairy, but then his hairs fell our one by one until one day he was known as Cliff the Bald.
It's true, I have somewhat of a reputation in these parts for my excessive toleration of religious homophobes.
Although, as you have divined, this is merely a symptom of my slavish dedication to Hegelian metaphysics.
After all, no-one with an interest in left currents in contemporary philosophy will have had the slightest motivation to find out anything about set theory in the past couple of years.
johng, glad to see you've made some substantial points about the controversy within the Party in the 80s. Indeed I remember reading some of the furious Callinicos/Binns exchanges (years after the act - too young to have been around). But on to this point:
johng: Going through this debate those like Chris Harman came to the conclusion that both sides (Callinicos vs Binn's) were making a mistake.
And maybe they were, although that doesn't mean that Harman's position was the only option left - far from it. But more interestingly, did his position establish itself through public engagement with this debate or through diktat? I wasn't around in Skegness, or at Conference back then, John, but you and Rosa were; I only have the ISJ to go by.
johng: Partly I believe this had to do with Chris's reading of Gramsci, who argued with Lukacs about 'the dialectic of nature'
I think this gets to the heart of the problem. Here's Gramsci on the issue:
The standpoint of Professor Lukács regarding Marxism needs to be examined. It seems that Lukács asserts that one can only speak of the dialectic for the history of man but not for nature. He may be right and he may be wrong. If his assertion presupposes a dualism between nature and man he is wrong, because he falls into a view of nature proper to religion and Greco-Christian philosophy and also into idealism, which in reality does not manage to unite men and nature and relate them together other than verbally. But if human history should be conceived also as the history of nature (also through the history of science), how can the dialectic be separated from nature? (The Modern Prince, London 1957, p.109).
This is the problem confronting those who imagine they can restrict the vocabulary and scope of Dialectical Materialism to the social sphere: how can this dualism be defended on Marxist grounds? It can't, so something has to give.
The choice was between accepting the universal applicability of DM, or ditching DM altogether. Unfortunately, the wrong choice was made, given the indefensibility of DM doctrines on Marxist or any rational grounds.
Meaders,
They are incredible philistines actually. Its surely not that hard to understand that from about the 18th century philosophy has been in crisis. One symptom of this crisis has been the proliferation of textbooks with the title 'What is Philosophy?'. These continue to be written.
Wittgenstein was at the heart of one expression of this crisis in the 1920's and 30's. That crisis largely revolved around the problem of the project of developing a metalanguage to explain the problems of ordinary language. Wittgenstein's belief that these languages were, in Rupert's phrase, 'flat' was a response to the idea that, for example, logic, towered above ordinary language, or indeed that any theory of language could perform this function.
Its therefore odd to find Rosa suggesting that unless one is a student of logic one should not even take part in these discussions. Its hard to think of a more unwittgensteinian stance.
My own diagnosis of this 'crisis' is that the solutions of the Enlightenment turned out not to be solutions, ie reason, science, etc, in the sense that their adoption proved compatible with an exploitative society. The conservative response to this was an account of the limitations of reason and science, in favour of tradition and religion.
Large currents of social theory followed suit (Toqueville, Weber, Durkheim, Phenomenology etc). This was conservatism with a difference in that it was quite hostile to an existing order (though never irredemably so).
Marxists took a different approach and saw the limitations of the Enlightenment philosophes differently. Wittgenstein as well had an odd, lateral, take on these questions (the interpretation industry on Wittgenstein seems to me related not just to questions of obscurity but to the way in which the questions he asked where hard to situate within conventional frameworks).
How one places Wittgenstein in relationship to these rival currents is by no means straightfoward. Nor is how you would situate Hegel to them. Nor indeed Marx.
But to understand that you need to have some sense of relating ideas to their context (and the neccessity for this). Rosa et al, are just spinning a new version of scientism and rationalism, the triumph of light over darkness etc. And hence can't even see that its a question.
In other words how on earth can it be that ideas that sought to change the world ended up keeping it the same.
Its sad.
Ian for goodness sake. This is pure mysticism. Although Wittgenstein's discussion of the same problem in terms of heaps of sand, is for some reason not.
And incidently, I'm not sure that Wittgenstein was right about flatness. I think Ian Birchall's tower is considerably higher then most of those here. Given that this is someone whose written a book on Sartre I imagine that, quite rightly, he's not prepared to get into the hole in the ground in which Babeuf, Rosa, and the others are busy digging themselves into.
The rest of us just stand puzzled round the edge peering down. Its a long way down.
johng said: These debates opened up a range of questions which are still not resolved. ... I think this is a good thing.
And if this was how things stood, it would be a good thing, John, or at least better than the actual state of affairs.
After Chris Harman's 1988 endorsement of Dialectical Materialism in Socialist Review, how many SR articles were allowed to voice an opposing view? And how many ISJ articles? And how many Marxism talks? And was there any book to counterbalance The Algebra of Revolution?
Would the answer to all these be ... none?
Ha, I got the link to your comment to work. Haloscan has some virtues after all. The secret is in the hash mark (that's concrete advice, not a mystical incantation).
I disagree with Sergio. Babeuf, Rosa et al have to be attacked with very hot needles. Its a question of vital significance for the international proletariat.
Seriously is it just me, or is there not a deep connection between people who imagine they're still fighting the battles of the Enlightenment rather then the present, and Rosa et al. And is this not the connection between certain prominant analytical philosophers and their wrong position on the war on terror.
Thats what concerns me. Of course individually they may be good eggs (Rosa personally is fine on these questions I know). But I don't think their philosophy offers them the tiniest of handles on these questions.
"However, to answer you briefly (since I have no beef with you): when you ask for the specific mechanisms, what have you in mind?
The exact psychological motivations? Brain processes? Class position, ideology and/or concrete historical circumstances? What?"
This was very funny. What should be THE question for a Marxist approaching philosophy, is something about which Rosa has no fixed position.
Dominic,
You are surely not referring to Badieu.
China Mieville's well into his dialectics, I gather.
I'm unaware that there is a 'line' on these questions. If there was I would have been in trouble a long time ago.
I mean Mieville's into his-e.g.-Mieville's dialectics, not Badiou's.
Well just as you think that there might be other alternatives to the Callinicos Binns and Harman alternatives, I also reject the idea that one has to go all either/or about the Lukacs/Gramsci argument. I think both explore different aspects of a very large problem.
Ian B:
""This dialectical view prevents us from taking a fatalistic attitude to social reality and impels us to undertake 'revolutionary practical critical activity'.""
Thanks for that, so only 3 mentions in 60 years.
My understanding is that The Algebra of Revolution was not published by the SWP. Correct me if I'm wrong on this. A somewhat critically inclined review appeared by Alex Callinicos in the IS.
In the end though the debate on these questions has moved on substantially. I'm not too worried by what Callinicos says about the dialectic of nature. I'm rather more worried by his softness on liberal philosophy. But there is a debate about that going on as well if you check out IS.
JohnG:
"What I find strange about Rosa's dogmatism is that it is most...unwittgenstienian."
As I said earlier, until you can show the slightest attempt to engage with my ideas, instead of fabricating them, I can only refer you to my earlier reply.
But, since you began this 'exchange' criticising W, a philosopher you know nothing about (except the cliche that he was a 'conservative' -- a notion I have well and truly batted out of the park), this latest u-turn of yours is no surprise.
It's OK, I understand, you couldn't help it.
But your mirthful convulsions, alas, prevented you from noting Rosa's next words: But that is the least of one's worries; more details here.
Let's say, for the sake of avoiding a long discussion over Cantor, Russell, Boolos, Scott and Potter etc., that Russell's Paradox isn't a problem for DM's doctrine of totality. That still leaves the other debilitating problems Rosa discusses, not to mention the dismally long list of problems that bring down the rest of the house of cards.
As for the subject of your lamentable genuflections, I'll let you off the hook just now, because I've now had the happy thought that someone should interview Ian Paisley on the Catholic adoption agencies. Should he condemn sodomy? - an abomination in the eyes of the Lord. Or should he condemn the Catholic Church? - the Whore of Babylon writhing in her blasphemies. I think he'd just have to summon down a fiery chariot and ascend to heaven. That would be worth watching.
Meaders:
"So the dialectic - upon which RL at least is spending a vast amount of timing in criticism - is simply a psychological prop? And that's your theory of history? That's how Marxism develops and changes? Good grief."
Meaders, please do not catch a dose of the JohnG's! One in the SWP is far too many.
This was not an explanation of these ideas, merley an observation of the timing of their acceptance -- this lays the foundation for an account of the turn to mysticism, one that Lenin noted in Materialism and Empirio-Criticism -- alluded to by Babeuf --, that in times of stress, revolutionaries can turn to mystical ideas.
The Marxist explanation kicks in from this fact, and tries to account for it; that will involve a consideration of the de-classe/petty-bourgeois background of the vast majority if DM-fans, SWP members included.
Why do they see the world this way? Well, you will need to read my Essays to find out. As I said, there is no way I can compress a PhD's worth of theory into this small space.
Sure you do not *have* to read my materialist explanation as to why comrades repeatedly fall for these bogus concepts, and tend to do so increasingly in periods of 'downturn', but please do not attribute to me ideas I do not hold.
I would hate to think you had become as nescient/purblind as JohnG.
Dominic:
"giggles uncontrollably"
Yes that is about the level of debate among most DM-fans, Dominic.
But, you still cannot defend your ideas, can you?
Nor can anyone else....
Sergio:
"I remember a nice little article about dialectics by Ian Birchall, illustrated with a drawing of dragon, I think, in SR, sometime in the 80's. Fairly orthodox, if my wine-soaked memory is OK."
Yes, I reference it in my Essays; in it Ian denies it applies to nature.
So, unorthodox in the extreme.
I go the next logical step.
Ian B:
"Cliff used to do a lecture on dialectics in which he explained the transition from quantity to quality by the fact that he used to be known as Cliff the Hairy, but then his hairs fell our one by one until one day he was known as Cliff the Bald."
Thanks for that information; I have been asking comrades to provide me with such details now since I joined the SWP in the mid 1980's; this is the first positive response I have had. I do not want to include falsehoods in my essays.
It counts aginst my theory, I have to admit, but not by much.
Quantity into quality is the most defensible DM-doctrine (even though I thoroughly trash it in Essay Seven), and one that Alex Callinicos has also swallowed. So I can imagine Cliff going for it.
But, what about the Negation of the Negation, and the odd idea that water negates ice, and -2 negates 2? I suspect he failed to mention those LuLu's.
And the even odder idea that everything in reality is a unity of opposites (a card-carrying Hermetic idea if ever there was one).
However, he studiously refrained from actually using this 'theory' in print.
3 mentions in 60 years.
Sort of makes my point for me.
Dominic, sinking faster than Enron shares:
"After all, no-one with an interest in left currents in contemporary philosophy will have had the slightest motivation to find out anything about set theory in the past couple of years."
Or about post-Fregean Logic, which helps explain why they have fallen for ideas that are sub-Aristotelian.
I suspect the same might be true of you.
Indeed; it's not like anyone's been taking an interest in topos theory, or anything...
Dominic, now taking refuge behind the enigmatic:
"Indeed; it's not like anyone's been taking an interest in topos theory, or anything..."
Is it time for you next tablet?
I think it's time for you to switch on your irony detector before you embarrass yourself further, Rosa.
I am really beginning to wonder whether Rosa knows anything about Wittgenstein at all. Her utter inability to engage with any ideas of any kind make me wonder why she is interested in any of them at all.
Ian will be pleased to know that I've just bought a copy of critique of dialectical reason by Sartre. Rosa always makes me come over all Hegelian. There is perhaps SOME truth to the doctrine of 'my enemies enemy' etc. In this case the utter hostility to thought or reflection of any kind whatsoever. And an inabilty to answer really quite simple questions about really quite basic stuff, choosing to waffle on in utter ignorence of recent developments in left critical thinking on for example....set theory.
BAT:
"I think it's time for you to switch on your irony detector before you embarrass yourself further, Rosa."
I will do just that, just as soon as you switch off your gullibilty module.
Oh and Rosa. Please define the word 'conservative'. Since I can find no place in which you refute the idea of conservative strands in Wittgenstein's thought (perhaps your confusing this usage with discussions about whether or not 'leaving language as it is' has 'conservative implications' a very different discussion), something that would surely require some interrogation of W's Culture and Value as well as his writings on theology, perhaps an enquiry into those who see an affinity between W and Heidegger etc, I can only presume that you have nothing but a cliched view of conservative thought is (ironically derived from accounts of bourgoise culture developed by Hegelian Marxists perhaps).
I refer the honourable waffler to my previous reply.
[By the way, your insecure grasp of W's thought was probably responsible for this misquotation:
'leaving language as it is'
Why do you have to make stuff up?
As you would know, if you actually bothered to check, these are not his words.]
Oh gosh. The quote isn't exact. And once again nothing you said demonstrated anything at all.
Does it ever occur to you Rosa that for someone who claims to be an 'anti-elitist' you are perhaps the biggest (and probably most insecure) elitist on this blog?
When challenged you retreat either to insults or claims that your so terribly sophisticated that you can't be bothered to reply.
Its quite sickening what the bourgoise academy does to people. The disarming slick hypocrisy of analytical and ordinary language egalitarianism being no different to that famous law that forbids both the rich and the poor from sleeping under a bridge.
'Lenin's writings about philosophy are of course absurd, but at least he did want to get something done.' [Drury, quoting Wittgenstein from recollection, in Rhees (1984), p.126.]
I thought this quite interesting as evidence for the prosecution rather then the defence. But of course outside of Rosa's strange fantasies no one is prosecuting or defending anything.
Its pretty rich that Rosa complains about people attributing views to her that she does not hold. Reading through the bilge she writes one comes to the conclusion that this is about all she does. Which is why any sensible person stops pretty quickly. Still I'm sure it will go down well with the right (this kind of thing is the stock in trade of academic 'demolitions' of Marxism, Rosa's approach not being that far removed from Karl Popper's right wing view of the role of philosophy in history. Liberals and Conservatives will just think, eccentric that she's still a Marxist, but she has exposed Marxism. Well done.
I refer the honourable waffler to my previous reply; here it is in case you missed it:
"Again, as I said last time, I will not bandy fabrications with you until you approach this subject with far more honesty than you have hitherto shown you are capable of displaying."
And so another controversial series of Tomb Brother comes to a close.
The crowd cheers as a radiant Shilpa Lichtenstein emerges onto Red Square. In answer to Lenina's first question, she smiles enigmatically, the crowd falls silent, and then with a confident flounce of her raven tresses, she pleads with the public to forgive John Goody and his bullying accomplices. The crowd roars its approval. "They are young", she says, "but not dialectical".
Goody had stunned viewers last week when he referred to Lichtenstein as "Shilpa Shittgenstein" and told her to "fuck off back home", leading to protests in Shilpa's homeland that threatened to mar Chancellor Gordon Brown's visit to the tiny Alpine Principality.
At the other side of the Square, a contrite Goody, still shedding the occasional tear, was assisting police with their enquiries into alleged dialectics on the show.
Goody's grandmother, Jacqueline, 69, said: "What he said to Shilpa was unforgivable. His dad was half rational and his grandfather was a logician. They’d be ashamed." Columnist and TV Presenter Lorraine Kelly said she hoped Goody would "now disappear into obscurity. There really has to be an end to the celebration of stupidity and ignorance."
The Perfume Shop announced they had withdrawn Goody's fragrance, Interpenetration..., from their stores. Pharmacy chain Boots and Debenhams department stores have followed suit.
Suggestion: when talking about DM for more than thirty seconds, illustrate what you're saying by examples from processes of thought, action or the material world. Birchall to be awarded the DM Cup for concrete illustration for the Cliff analysis on 'Hairy' to 'Bald' (My father taught me the same bit of DM when we used to try and light a fire on CP inspired camping holidays in the fifties...)
Suggestion: take any set of 'difficult' processes, actions, developments etc and see how or if DM illuminates, mystifies, explains etc. eg consider the argument over Behaviourism and stimulus-response theory in pyschology and beyond. This achieved high status acceptance across psychology and beyond through the sixties and since. It remains as a piece of dominant 'common sense' (Gramsci) thinking. But it's crap because it omits the participant's active participation in the process. Some eople who don't talk DM talk about biofeedback, reciprocation, reflexivity etc in the processes of thought, action, social psychology etc. What are these terms (biofeedback etc)? Aren't they attempts to escape the prison of cause-effect, stim-response, deterministic lines of process? If DM does NOT provide a possible way out of determinism, logical-postivism etc, then what does?
I note a sighting of Pete Binns in the above. I got a further sighting of him at Limoges airport six months ago. He recognised me before I recognised him. But as he recognised me and said that he recognised me I started to recognise him. So, as Marx said in the Faeces on Feuerbach, we should never forget that the recogniser will become recognised by the recognised.
I was working on a piece of theatre yesterday and out of a group discussion between people nominated loosely as director, writer, actor and puppeteer, we created a moment where a puppet lamented that its puppetmaster had died and so this puppet set about recruiting/luring a new puppetmaster to come and take control/power of the puppet's strings. To do this recruiting/luring required that the puppetmaster-to-be be disempowered temporarily. But of course a puppet doesn't have the power to recruit or lure or disempower others - it's really another puppeteer doing that...
Michael, have you come across Los Titiriteros de Binéfar? I think they may do that sort of stuff.
Had to have a big row about Shilpa Shetty last night in a pub. This wierd concoction for the defence of the Big Brother corperation was being presented as a recognition of 'class' and recognition of 'caste oppression' in India, hence also a critique of multi-cultural liberals and their naivity.
I stated firstly that Shetty's are essentially traders, and not particularly high, as far as I can work out, in any caste hierarchy (but quickly stated that was hardly the point: one point being where on earth this obsession with caste amongst British liberals who clearly don't even know what it is, is coming from).
Secondly given that the 'victims' of 'political correctness' were stating that Indians were 'skinny' because they ate with their dirty brown hands and didn't cook their food properly, one reason why they should 'fuck off home' I was wondering what the relationship was between this and a critique of caste and poverty.
On questions of 'class' I was wondering first of all why it was assumed that this kind of vicious racism was the only ideological strand in the working class (and wondering about the connections between this and wider arguments suggesting that we need to be tough on minorities in the name of an entity called 'the white working class' who might otherwise misbehave), an assumption of most liberals, and also wondering, given the very real connection between communalism in India and the social experiance of much more oppressed groups, whether this made the Shiv Sena and the BJP, and indeed castist politics, something we should 'listen to' and 'understand'.
Following Rosen's advice I think its true that racism is always mediated through other forms of racism and oppression but that does'nt mean its not racism (the word 'mediated' would of course be banned by our non-dialectical friends. I would give concrete examples from historiography, but unfortunately the historiography I'm familiar with where these arguments have been most interesting are not familiar arguments to most people).
I don't see those same people arguing this (that Hindu Nationalism for example is a kind of earthy class consiousness) and I wonder why, at the centre of this discussion, is concern for a mythical Sun reading definition of a white working class, and if its possible that this whole discourse has NOTHING whatsoever to do with the interests of either 'the poor' in India or indeed 'the working class' in Britain. Also interesting were arguments suggesting that because similar racism wasn't expressed towards afro-carribean members of the house there could not be racism.
That this might be part of an emerging discourse of racism and culture in which you have the integrated and the unintegrated (marked off from the rest by how they speak, or what sort of food they eat, what they wear, whether they look BRITISH or whathaveyou) does not seem to occur.
A friend was concerned about a new language in which black is not defined politically but different 'cultural communities' are pitted against each other. But that is EXACTLY what was being done on Big Brother (the whole debate being a reflection of this).
I have also been desperately trying to arrange a meeting with Shilpa about this to have a long chat but unfortunately it didn't work out.
J.
Reading my Sartre (which contains a massive critique of the idea of a dialectic of nature as fundementally undialectical in its opening sections) I come across the central problem for Hegelian Marxists of understanding human beings as both determined by their enviroment and acting on it. This drama resolved by Hegel by treating consiousness and the enviroment as reducible to each other, and challenged by Marxists on the basis of consiousness being simply a part of that 'enviroment', exists in discussions of Indian historiography between those who study particular villages on the basis of cultural rankings (like for instance caste) and those who study them on the basis of political economy. As one historian put it sometimes you can read different texts about the same village that look as if they were written about different places.
The endless debate about the relationship between caste and class in the historical process expresses these tensions. How do we relate economic relations to cultural relations and produce a picture of social stratification which includes both (given that both are important in the functioning of both exploitation and oppression).
These arguments bear a relationship to discussions about the nature of political authority in pre-colonial India and its relationship to social stratification. One old orientalist model assumes that in India there is a paradoxical relationship between social stratification and political authority, an untouched village vs. evolving state formations.
Its been suggested that this whole picture (which provided the basis for notions of Asiatic despotism) is false not simply empirically, but also relates to these problems of understanding the relationship between culture and the reproduction of material life. The questions raised and the methodological solutions proposed seem to me to involve considerations not far removed from discussion of 'dialectics'.
But as I said the problem here is that no one is familiar with these arguments. It seems to me that there is a broader problem in terms of a refusal to address any concrete historiographical questions anyway. Any discussion of problems in social sciences, or historiography, are likely to be greeted with accusations that they're all 'confused' and 'muddled' combined with disengenuous claims that, in any case, one is really just a humble philosopher (or rather anti-philosopher) who knows nothing about such questions.
dialectics Rosa style:
"but one can be an analytic philosopher and be anti-philosophy all at once"
In the absence of a theory of the totality of philosophical developments in the 20th century it is unfortunately, just gibberish.
Michael Rosen said: take any set of 'difficult' processes, actions, developments etc and see how or if DM illuminates, mystifies, explains etc. ... But [behaviourism is] crap because it omits the participant's active participation in the process. Some eople who don't talk DM talk about biofeedback, reciprocation, reflexivity etc in the processes of thought, action, social psychology etc. What are these terms (biofeedback etc)? Aren't they attempts to escape the prison of cause-effect, stim-response, deterministic lines of process?
Michael, you helped persuade me on the issue of Mr Atzmon (thanks again), but Dialectical Materialism is another matter. DM did not alert the world to the existence of mutual interaction in various systems (your "biofeedback, reciprocation, reflexivity"). Quite the reverse: Marxists have noticed existing discussion of these processes, both in everyday language and in the sciences. Marxists who feel obliged to make pious DM observances then attempt to redescribe the same processes using DM language, or simply claim everyday and scientic language about mutual interaction as a part of DM.
Hence the myth of a "mechanistic" scientific monolith that was waiting to be rescued by DM. Certainly the ruling class can push scientists in directions that suit their needs to control and exploit (not least the DM-adhering ruling class of the Soviet Union in the 30s and 40s). The reason they don't screw up all scientific endeavour all of the time is that they desperately need it to work for them in generating new technologies.
But where a science (or pseudo-science) is useful for social control rather than generating technology, the ruling class is free to have its way. Hence the reductionism and often the simple lies found in fields such as sociobiology, behaviourism or the measurement of intelligence.
Of course these distortions need to be exposed by Marxists, but to the extent that they make serious use of DM, their efforts will be frustrated - an incoherent and mystificatory theory cannot but help introducing its own incoherence and mystifications to the discussion. At the least harmful end of the spectrum, when terms drawn from everyday or scientific language are simply attributed to DM, the criticism itself may succeed, but the prestige of DM is undeservedly raised, increasing the probability that its mystifications will appear on future occasions.
And now for a commercial break: Another drag on the advance of Marxism is the inexplicable absence of Michael's recently published Mustard, Custard, Grumble Belly and Gravy from Bookmarks (according to their website. Comrades with children (and indeed comrade children) shouldn't have to resort to the dark lords of amazon.co.uk.
Michael Rosen said:Suggestion: when talking about DM for more than thirty seconds, illustrate what you're saying by examples from processes of thought, action or the material world. Birchall to be awarded the DM Cup for concrete illustration for the Cliff analysis on 'Hairy' to 'Bald' (My father taught me the same bit of DM when we used to try and light a fire on CP inspired camping holidays in the fifties...)
This "full head-of-hair to bald head" story dates back to Greek discussion of the "sorites paradox" from the 4th-century BC onwards. The "problem" hinges on the vagueness of the term: at precisely what number of remaining hairs does the term "baldness" apply. The "problem" of course, doesn't arise in the everyday usage of the term "baldness" among the unleisured producing classes, not because they're too congenitally stupid to see it, but because their use of the word required no more than vague boundaries. The "problem" only emerged when leisured philosophers (living directly or indirectly off the profits from slave labour) removed the word from its everyday usage and placed it within an artificial context of their own devising.
Still, there's some academic interest to be found in the sorites paradox - and to pre-empt the usual insinuations from some quarters, I've no desire to prevent anyone from examining this; there's been quite a lot of literature on it over the last century or so by logicians and philosophers (not of the DM persuasion). This page is a good enough starting point.
The question you need to ask about this is whether Dialectical Materialism or Dialectical "logic" can ever shed any light on baldness or any other kind of change (including the changes revolutionary socialists are most interested in). Labelling something with a term from an arbitrary philosophical category, such as "the transformation of quantity into quality" doesn't explain - as I've said, it's a pious genuflection on the part of DM-adhering Marxists.
Thankfully, this doesn't happen in historical writing in Socialist Worker or the Socialist Review (and rarely in the ISJ); from memory, its most frequent occurrence is in historical talks at Marxism, when some series of events within a class struggle (whether simple causation, feedback loops or whatever) have already been covered, we here a redundant invocations of DM: "and that, comrades, illustrates the principle of the negation of the negation", followed by a brief attempt at an exposition of that formula.
If the concrete events (progressive baldness, revolution) are already explained, the DM label adds nothing; if the events are not yet explained, the DM label will not bring an explanation any closer.
We should ask ourselves what we are doing when it is the concrete example that is pressed into serving the abstract theory, DM, when the reverse is supposed to happen: abstract theories should help to explain concrete events. This is what Marxist economic theory does with some success. Where it clearly fails to account for evidence, it can be corrected - hence the IS/SWP theory of the Permanent Arms Economy. And this, in turn, can be modified or discarded through rational debate.
But this is where DM comes in: not only is it immune to correction ("correction" is not even an applicable concept here), but is admirably suited to the stifling of debate, replacing this with appeals to authority, dismissing dissenting comrades as "undialectical", and browbeating rank-and-file comrades into assent by the use of language that is opaque to them. This is what happened within the Orthodox Trotskyist parties - leaderships that had persisted with theories and predictions that failed to match reality used DM as their favoured tool for silencing dissent and for "explaining" why reality was falling short of theory.
We all owe a debt of gratitude to Cliff that he managed to swim against the current. It's a pity that his Marxism talk on Dialectics in later years (mentioned by Ian Birchall) wasn't restricted to his characteristic "blaady rrrrabbish", but in his actions, as in his writings, DM was virtually nowhere to be seen, and this weighs far, far more in the balance.
I think the boot is on the other foot. Is someone can demonstrate how post-Fregean logic can help resolve genuine difficulties associated with scholarship on historical change I'd be agog.
An old favourite crops up again:
johng: I think the boot is on the other foot. Is someone can demonstrate how post-Fregean logic can help resolve genuine difficulties associated with scholarship on historical change I'd be agog.
So would I, John, so would I. Rosa too. "Post-Fregean logic" has no relevance at all for explaining historical change, neither for workers studying the history of class struggle, nor for professional historians, Marxist or otherwise.
This statement implies no praise or denigration of modern logic - it only says that the explanation of historical change lies outside its scope.
You, Meaders and others have kept demanding what ontology, or epistemology or methodology our alternative metaphysical system provides. The answer is none, because we are not proposing any such system to replace Dialectical Materialism, and we have repeately argued why it would be mistaken to do so.
Marxist historical writing, from Marx onwards, has managed perfectly well with everyday language, supplemented with technical concepts such as "class" and "exploitation" from historical materialism or Marxist economics (both of which, according to Marx are sciences, not metaphysical systems - I agree).
We are pointing to this existing practice, which we think is in no more need of metaphysical props than farming or civil engineering. If you take DM seriously, both these latter practices are also inexplicable without DM. I'm sure I'd be "agog" at your DM explanation of how three-field crop rotation or steel-frame structures emerged.
Oh dear, Mr G is working himself into such a tizzy.
However, since us materialists know al about religious alienation, we fully understand why our devastating attack on his simple faith is so upsetting.
Born again DM-fans do not like to be contradicted (which is rather odd, since, you'd think they would).
Nevertheless, this might cheer him up a bit:
1) I get e-mails all the time from around the world, from comrades (inside and outside the IST, and from UK-SWP-ers, too) thanking me for the long-overdue stand I am making against the anti-materialist mysticsm some have allowed into the workers' movement, the deleterious effects of which Mr G has so gamely demonstrated to us once again.
2) Since my Essays are here to stay, and will long outlast Mr G, his childish fuming and sub-logical 'arguments', I have immortalised this latest tantrum here (bottom of the page -- I do not want him to think he is in any way more important than the other unreasonable mystics with who I have listed him; indeed, compared to other stars of this genre, he is rather run-of-the-mill):
http://homepage.ntlworld.com/ros...a.l/
RevLeft.htm
So, he can serve us materialists as a sort of reverse Duhring.
In case he is tempted to spin another idea around in his head, until its angular velocity overcomes the forces of good sense, and out it pops, I trust other, wiser heads in the SWP will stop him dragging the good name of our excellent party any further into this mystical mud.
After all, if Hegel was good enough for Cliff to ignore, he should be for him.
Mike, thnaks for those comments; whatever you have to say is always worthy of close attention.
However, I think Babeuf has answered your main points effectively.
On this topic, this is what I say in Essay Seven:
"As far as balding heads are concerned, it is difficult to believe that someone with, say, n hairs on his or her head is hirsute, when the same person with n-1 hairs is *objectively* bald -- even if at some point or other we all might *subjectively* change the words we use to depict either.
Now, if it could be shown that anyone with n-1 hairs (for some n) is always objectively bald, and that this is an essential defining quality of baldness, or of bald people (in the Aristotelian/Hegelian sense just mentioned -- see below), so that a change from n to n-1 hairs, for some n, always results in baldness, and is true for all hirsute human beings, then this 'Law' might have some life left in it, in just this one instance. It could then be a dialectical 'Law' that applies on to balding parts of nature, but to nothing else.
Nevertheless, this is not so; with respect to baldness, human anatomists (or even hairdressers) have as yet to define hair loss in such Aristotelian terms. Unfortunately for DM-fans, they have so far failed to categorise all follically-challenged individuals this precisely, declaring that anyone with n-1 hairs, for some n, is essentially bald, whereas anyone with n hairs is still non-coot. Until they do, there are no nodal points here, just as there seem to be no particular (Aristotelian/Hegelian) qualities definitive of bald human beings for dialecticians to latch onto. So, in this case it is impossible to see how an 'objective' example of this dialectical 'Law' could apply, merely a 'subjective' impression, and one that has to rely on a quirky application of the already vague Hegelian 'definition' of a 'quality'.
So it seems that the change in quality occurs, not in the person going bald, but in the one describing him/her/it as bald. Hence, with reference to human balding, change in the quantity of hair on one person's head changes the quality of someone else's opinion of him/her, and it does so subjectively and non-nodally.
There isn't much here to base a dialectical 'Law' on, not at least anything that would fail to brand this part of DM as a fringe science, at best."
"The other hackneyed examples DM-theorists regularly dredge up to illustrate this 'Law' (i.e., boiling water, balding heads, Mendeleyev's table, the alleged fighting qualities of Mamelukes, and, of late, Chaos Theory), also only seem to work because of the way that the word "quality" has been defined (but then oddly ignored) by dialecticians.
For example, in the case of boiling water, the increase in quantity of one item (i.e., heat) is reputed to alter the quality of the second (i.e., water). As noted above, "quality" in DM-circles is defined in Aristotelian terms (i.e., as that property which is essential to a substance/process, without which it must change into some other --, or as "determinate being", to use the Hegelian jargon; on this, see Inwood (1992), pp.238-41). And yet, by no stretch of the imagination is liquidity an essential property of water (except, perhaps in an everyday or pre-scientific sort of sense). And even if it were, increased amounts of water do not seem to change that particular quality (i.e., its liquidity) into anything else; it takes an increase in something other than water to alter its state (namely heat). So, this 'Law' should perhaps be re-written in the following way:
E1: An increase in the quantity of one item leads to a change in what is perhaps not one of the essential qualities of another.
With that, much of the 'metaphysical bite' of this 'Law' disappears; in fact it becomes rather toothless.
Nevertheless, until we are told exactly how long a 'dialectical node' is supposed to last, the first 'Law' cannot be considered as anything other than hopelessly vague. If nodal points are several seconds long, then many DM-examples would cease to be nodal. On the other hand, if they last, say, several hours, none at all would survive. A case of survival of the fastest, one presumes.
However, you can search DM-texts till the cows evolve for a hint of clarity on this score; indeed, DM has been so amateurishly constructed that this point will not even have occurred to most DM-fans. And even now (after reading this) they will hand wave it aside as a pedantic irrelevance -- so sloppy have their thought processes become.
It's a good job scientists are not so careless; can you image a Physicist waving aside as irrelevant the timing, say, of a certain nuclear reaction?
In that case, it is to be hoped that DM-fans like this never run a train service -- and are allowed nowhere near a demolition site."
More details here:
http://homepage.ntlworld.com/ros...l/page%
2007.htm
Which 'theory' do you think I'm defending Rosa? If there is such a thing as Dialectical Materialism its unlikely to be best understood as a 'theory'. Again, you've said absolutely nothing in a single post here relevent to anything I've said, and seem quite incapable of the usual rational proceedures associated with argument.
I'll ask you again. Which 'theory' are you attacking (is it Engels? Or Lukacs? Or anyone who uses the word dialectic?). And what relevence does 'post-Fregean logic' have to the analyses of historical processes?
A time waster.
I refer the honourable born again comrade to my earlier replies to him.
[But thanks for prolonging that tantrum of yours; it has resulted in a marked increase in visitors to my site.
You are a real pal!
More please....]
The comments on Sraffa and Cantor are out of date. I suggest you read A. Garciadiego, BERTRAND RUSSELL AND THE OIRGINS OF THE SET-THEORETIC 'PARADOXES.'
We are in the midst of a renaissance in the historiography of set theory, and the influence of constructivism (the response to set theory) on twentieth-century ideas. It will cause a revolution in everything we think. Here is an introduction to it:
Ryskamp, John Henry, "Paradox, Natural Mathematics, Relativity and Twentieth-Century Ideas" (June 17, 2008). Available at SSRN: http://ssrn.com/abstract=897085
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