File spoon-archives/marxism-international.archive/marxism-international_1997/97-01-27.123, message 40


Date: Sun, 26 Jan 1997 13:23:27 -0500 (EST)
From: Andrew Wayne Austin <aaustin-AT-utkux.utcc.utk.edu>
Subject: Re: M-I: Dialectics of Nature


Comrades and Viraj Fernando,

I thank you so much for your responses. They are thoughtful and
interesting. I also appreciate the civility of tone. I don't need to
problematize all of what is contained in these posts because we agree on
more that we disagree. But addressing a few points will make my position
clearer.

On Sun, 26 Jan 1997, Viraj Fernando wrote:
 
> Andrew wrongly describes Dialectical Materialism contends that the knowledge
> resides in the objects themselves. This is a misunderstanding (perhaps based
> on misrepresentations). I will address this matter below.

My point is more complicated than this regarding the externality of
dialectical logic under dialectical materialist assumptions. 

First, addressing your statement above, dialectical materialism, if what
is meant by the subjective being a reflection of the objective involves
the physical world, then it does hold that the knowledge of objects
resides in the objects themselves. My understanding of Lenin's change of
thought involves rejecting his uncritical empiricism which underpinned his
copy theory of knowledge. The copy theory of knowledge holds that we
reflect physical (and material and social) reality. In this view, ideology
would distort the naturally perfect reflection of reality. This mirror
metaphor in philosophical empiricism is very old, and it was most
popularly rendered by Francis Bacon, who attributed false sense impression
to a series of "idols" that smudged the human mirror. I think Richard
Rorty's critique fof the mirror metaphor is a fine antidote to
philosophical empiricism. For the record, because it was supposed of me
that I hold this view, I reject philosophical empiricism. 

But if dialectical materialism had stopped on this point of
epistemological naivete its faults would be much easier to see. But
dialectical materialism takes the next step (into obscurantism) and
asserts that not only is the thing reflected in the subjective, but that
the subjective is a direct reflection of the subject's objective physical
constitution. So we reflect both the thing we see and the thing that sees,
and both of these truths reside in the physical constitution of the things
themselves. This is what Engels is arguing in the passage I provided.
Needless to say, I reject this view, as well.

My position, and I believe this to be the position of Marx, is that this
is possible only regarding social and material reality. We do reflect the
objective, but the objective is material and social reality, not the
unworked physical substratum of nature. What is reflected is our social
being, which is bestowed, and our experience in practice, which is human
sensuous behavior. In working up nature we humanize the physical world and
in so doing reflect the human working up of it. The objective reality
reflected is the social product. This can be distorted by control over
information regarding this production process, and this is what produces
false consciousness. Moreover, we are alienated under certain arrangements
and the source of this alienation can only come when we cannot reflect
on what we produced, that is, when the reality we have produced becomes
alien to us. Thus the relational ontology and humanist epistemology of
Marxian thought permits the other concepts we accept (false
consciousness and alienation) to be actual possibilities. 

For example, as Feuerbach pointed out, God is a human production. Once
produced, God became reified, put out of the reach of man. God became
everything man thought he could not be, Good, All-Powerful, Eternal. Man
forgot this and came to be ruled by his own creation. Importantly, then,
man came to be ruled by those elements of himself that he denied: man is
good, he is all-powerful (since he constructs reality), and he is eternal
(since society continues beyond the individual). Marx extended this
critique to cover all of human production (Marx argued that the critique
of religion was the starting point for the critique of everything),
whether that was commodities that are appropriated or civil society
itself. This critiqe extends to science itself as a social production.
This was why, for Marx, our thought had to be more than science, but move
onto critique and praxis. Positivistic sciences are alienating because
they erect laws trans-societally. Dialectical materialism does precisely
this, and therefore is incommensurable with Marxian thought. 

[snip]

Marx and Engels wrote together and apart. Together their work appears much
more as Marx's work, however more accessible it might appear. Engels work
alone is inferior to Marx or their collective production. While I agree
with Engels' position in The Origin of the Family, Private Property and
the State, and although it was written in a rush, it was nevertheless
derived from extensive notes made by Marx, deriviative of Morgan, and is a
poor piece of scholarship. I can say the same for other of Engels work. My
opinion is that Engels was able to help Marx get his material in order for
publication, but that Engels' actual contribution to their collective work
was relatively minor (by Engles' own admission). I regard Engels as an
important historical figure, but I do not regard his work as being the
result of a division of labor among the Marx and Engels. Marx needed
Engels in many ways, and there may have been a tolerance of Engels'
philosophical and scientistic excesses, but Engels argument on the point
of our debate is incompatable with Marx. In the final analysis, they were
two different human beings, with their own understandings of the world. 

My sister is an excellent poet and short story writer. I have known her
for decades. We still disagree over the meaning of her work. I would never
think to censor her. I think this analogy is true in all its points
regarding Marx and Engels.

> It has become very fashionable for Marxists who are rediscovering the
> dialectic of subject-object as per Theses I & II, in Marx's later works, to
> attack Engels particularly on Dialectics of Nature. 

And I think that it is very important to criticize Engels in this regard. 
I would suggest that if Engels is so brilliant, and if he is the
originator of dialectical materialism, then people who fancy themselves
dialectical materialists call themselves "Engelsists" rather than
Marxists. For my own purposes, I have used Marxian opposed to Marxist when
I am talking about Marx's thought (I am not entirely consistent in this,
however). 
 
> Mark Jones has indicated in all Marxist attempts to tackle science we see on
> the lintel "IK was here". Thanks to Sohn-Rethel we can now understand why
> "IK is there". But that only helps Marxists to find some peace of mind, why
> undialectical science still holds sway. Tell that to a bourgeois scientist
> and see whether it would make any difference whatsoever. As a way out, to
> save Marxism from ridicule, one school of Marxists have capitulated to
> bourgeois science. They disclaim Dialectics of Nature and undialectical
> science in correct because it works. Unfortunately Andrew Austin is also in
> this school.

This is too simplistic. There a bourgeois scientists who use the ideology
of positivism. Then there are Marxists who seek to scientize the dialectic
in an effort to be accepted by bourgeois science. The dialectical process
is at work in the social production of science. Yet, the physical world
being studied and altered does not contain inherent in it the logic of the
dialectic. Therefore, nondialectical logic better reflects the nature of
the physical world. How do we know? Because the technologies based on
nondialectical science work. In other words, nondialectical science and
invention passes the test of praxis. It is exceedingly undialectical, in
my view, to suppose that the physical world operates dialectically, when
we know that the dialectic is a human produced logic and holds
consistently only for social relations and production. This is precisely
why I refuse to be bogged down over specific instances of physical
sciences and scientific revolutions. My point is at a meta-level, and it
concerns that which subsumes under it all sciences: the study of the
social production of knowledge (historical materialism). Natural science
models applied to human understanding are like pixie dust thrown in our
eyes: they blind us to the totality of social production in a humanized
world.

It is not imperative that the dialectic be extended to all things in order
for Marxism to be scientific. Why force a theory of social conflict onto
the natural world? Furthermore, it is not a political imperative to make
the dialectic cover all things. We can demonstrated the conflicted nature
of social relations. This is where the struggle occurs. I regard the
pseudoscientific endeavor of universalizing the dialectic as a major
stumbling block to increasing the acceptance of Marxism as a science. 
Where Marxism is important to a critique of science is at the point of the
social production of science and who appropriated the fruits of science. 
The rest, in my opinion, is a distraction to Marxists and detrimental to
our advancement.

> c) Dialectical-Materialism: This term was not used by Marx. But it does not
> change the fact that the contents within this formulation (Nature, Human
> History and Thought) were used by Engels with tacit approval of Marx.
> Lenin's formulation "Imperialism" was not used by Marx, but just because it
> was not used by Marx does it make any less valid? But in the case of
> Dialectical Materialism, the contents of this formulation were packaged by
> the co-founder of Marxism with Marx's approval, only the label was pasted on
> by Plekhanov. 

Okay, there is a couple of non sequiturs in here. First, I don't see how
Marx not censoring Engels is a tacit approval of Engels' work. How do we
know Marx even carefully read that work? Both statements, the one by
Ferndando, and the one by me are speculation; we can draw nothing from
that. For this same reason we observe that silence does not imply guilt.
Silence implies nothing at all. I regard this oft-used logic to be in
error. Second, the argument that although Marx did not use the term
"imperialism" Lenin's work can be valid anyway doesn't amount to an
argument. Marx did not use the analytical construct of core-periphery,
does this make Wallerstein's work less valid? This is another example of
what Fernando has here stated. But Lenin and Wallerstein's work stands on
its own, and it must be judged by its own arguments. Furthermore, if
Lenin's work is in conflict with Marx, then we question its validity (or
the validity of Marx's arguments), but we do not suppose that Marx's
silence is an approval of Lenin's work (Marx being dead at this time, of
course!). I question the validity of dialectical materialism, in part, 
because it is in conflict with Marx. But even if it were not, it does not
follow that Marx would have agreed with it.

> Now, in order to disclaim Dialectical Materialism, they bring the following
> arguments. 
> 
> i) Marx never used this formulation.

If the argument is that Marx advocated dialectical materialism, and it can
be demonstrated that he did not, or there is a failure to demonstrate that
he did, then the argument is over. 

> ii) Dialectical Materialism was a joke in the Soviet Union. Was not Marxism
> a joke as well?

The Soviet Union was no joke. Dialectical Materialism in the Soviet Union
was no Joke. However, I regard the Marxism of the Soviet Union incorrect.
I am, as somebody correctly identified me as in an earlier post, a Western
Marxist. I believe that Western Marxism is more true to Marx than Soviet
Marxism was. I believe that historical materialism is the method of
Western Marxists. Dialectical materialism is the philosophy of the Soviets
and adherents to their "communist world outlook." I only regard historical
materialism as a scientific.
 
> iii) That DM denies the subject-object dialectic of cogntion. This is
> entirely false. Here is a quote from "Theory of Relativity and Soviet
> Science" by K.K. Delkarov:
> 
> "In analysing the materialist content of the new theory of space, time and
> gravitation, Gessen relied on Marx's thesis of active character of
> *cognising subject*, criticising the contemplative approach of cognition.
> Proceeding from the first thesis of Marx on Feurbach, he proved the
> following proposition.
> 
> 'Recognition of the objective nature of the world in the sense of its existence
> independently from us is a materialist premise, but it must not be
> interpreted in the sense that genuine materialism consists in the
> elimination of the subject in principle. That is not so' for 'the difference
> of any other type of materialism from dialectical materialism is precisely
> this metaphysical raising of the objective to an absolute. That is why Marx
> in his first thesis on Feurbach points out that the active (subjective) side
> of cognition was developed by idealism. But it was developed in abstract
> fashion, too, which led to the elevating of the subject to an absolute"

Yes, and what is advocated here is not what I would consider to be
dialectical materialism, but rather the labeling of historical materialism
as dialectical materialism (as was the practice at the time). In following
Marx, the Soviets were bound to publish works that were consistent with
Marx. I don't see where this would harm my argument. 

> "Criticising the attempts to use relativist mechanics for developing
> idealism, Gessen remarks that 'the views of the dialectical materialism of
> the correlation between absolute and relative truths differ radically from
> the views of many adherents of the relativity theory who posit the
> relativity of our knowledge as a general principle of cognition and thereby
> negate the possibility of unlimited approximation of knowledge'.....Relying
> on the thesis that spatial and temporal characteristics depend on the state
> of the system in which the measurements are made, ...the question of whether
> this relativity of our knowledge is in principle insuperable or whether
> there is a possibility of eliminating the influence of the observer's state,
> thereby taking a step towards absolute cognition of nature..he solved this
> question in the framework of the dialectical materialist approach to the
> correlation of the absolute and the relative knowledge., showing that,
> although 'the form of perception of the objective reality undoubtedly
> depends not only on the state of the object of the external world but also
> on the structure and state of the perceiving subject', and although 'we
> arrive at the cognition of the object only through the subject' our
> knowledge does not purely for this reason become 'purely subjective
> cognition'.... The thesis that 'the subject is a necessary condition of
> cognition' does not entail the conclusion that 'the entire content of our
> knowledge is subjective. ....Our cognition, 'being expressed in the forms of
> the cognising subject, possess objective content which is a genuine
> reflection of the properties of external reality'
> 
> Andrew: I hope the position of "Dia-Mats" in regard to the cognizing subject
> is very clearly laid in the above. I request you to kindly take this matter
> into consideration and review your position. If Siddartha is taking a
> different view that is a matter for criticism at that level.

Not only have I considered what you have written above before this moment,
it is part of my argument. You have found text that sets forth my argument
but happens to label Marx's argument "dialectical materialism."  What I
have presented as dialectical materialism is what is differentiated from
Marxian thought. Therefore the elements of dialectical materialism that
are contrary to Marxian thought are not contained in the above passage and
the debate has not been advanced (at least not the opposing side). My
argument is that the dialectic is not inherent in nature. 

> Instead of denying the 3 laws of dialectics we must uphold them. Not only
> that, we must invoke the 4th law of dialects of Engels, which is the law of
> spiralic development of matter. This will solve the riddle between curved
> space and gravitation.

I regard this statement as the work of mystics.

Peace,
Andrew Austin





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