File spoon-archives/marxism-international.archive/marxism-international_1997/97-01-23.012, message 61


Date: Wed, 22 Jan 1997 12:32:10 -0500 (EST)
From: Siddharth Chatterjee <siddhart-AT-mailbox.syr.edu>
Subject: Re: M-I: Dialectics



Hello Andrew,

This is a brief reply to your latest post on Dialectics. You continue
to assert without citing any evidence of your claim that dialectical
materialism is a distortion of Marx's  historical materialsm and you
imply that there was a split between Marx and his later followers, again
without citing any evidence (other than your own interpretation) to
back up your claim. Not only this, you also crudely categorize dialectical
materialism as a "bastard child of historical materialism" - what is
this if not a vulgar classification although you claim that you oppose
vulgarization!

This is the method of the religious dogmatist and not in the least
scientific. Also it is strange to witness your irrational hatred of
this subject - you almost react viscerally. One suggestion: do not
be misled by bourgeois tautologies which often comes from the scientific
community itself. From experience, I can tell you that scientists (since
they are also human with all the baggage) can be fiercely dogmatic and
behave irrationally when it comes to defending their turf. Imagine a
situation where you have been developing a theory and also have
experimental "data" to back up your claims - when someone comes along
and reveals a few holes in your grand schema. All those years of hard
work and ensuing publications in the famous journals along with loss
of prestige - what will be the "natural" reaction? 

There is also something else that is disturbing about your post. You
appear to build rigid walls between Marx's thinking on  socio-
historical processes and his views on the natural world. That is,
you imply, that his world view on political economy and history cannot
be applied to the natural world. Now from what I have read, Marx was
a highly orginal and consistent thinker. He would not have made use
of the dialectic of Hegel only in the sphere of political economy
unless he thought that it was something deeper, i.e., more fundamental.
>From what I know, Hegel, in his writings, provided numerous examples
showing how the the dialectical laws were reflected in natural phenomena.
Hegel was also interested in mathematics.

Now it is well known that Marx lifted the veil of secrecy and mysticism
>from the field of political economy to reveal the essential funtioning
of the system. This discussion has forced me to go back to Marx's
Mathematical Manuscripts on the back cover and the preface of which 
is his own quotation that the veil of secrecy and mysticism has to be 
lifted in the field of science also. And this is exactly what he does
when he examines the concept of the derivative of a function and refers
to Newton's and Leibnitz's formulation of it as being mystical. This is
highly interesting material; I simply do not have the time at present to
go into the details of this rare book. And when you turn to the first
page of the manuscripts where Marx starts the discussion of the
derivative, what do you see but the words "negation of negation" which is
the third law of dialectics! When you turn the pages of the manuscripts,
it quickly becomes evident that Marx took the very same approach to
analyzing Calculus that he had used earlier in studying Capital. This
points to a consistent world-view.

It best to stop this discussion here since it will most likely go
nowhere. In that, I concur with you.

S. Chatterjee 






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