From: Michael Hoover <hoov-AT-freenet.tlh.fl.us>
Subject: M-I: Re: Marx was not an economic determinist
Date: Wed, 26 Mar 97 10:16:47 18000


 I sent a message to the list that must be floating around as cyberspace
 junk...I made a few comments on klo_mckinsey's post that Marx's theory 
 was not "dialectical economism" (a term I am not familiar with)...klo was 
 criticizing my view - to simplify because I deleted both my initial
 post and klo's response - that Marx was & was not an economic 
 determinist (dialectial economism?)...my position was - worded 
 differently, I'm sure - that M's "general theory" employed the concept 
 of a mode of production - a social system of producing carried on within, 
 and as a result of, a certain set of ownership relations...and that 
 politics is largely - not exclusively - about a struggle to control the 
 mode of production. ..which does not mean that everything can be reduced 
 to a "single-factor"...
 
 klo proceeded to assert the appropriateness of the term and philosophy
 "dialetical materialism"...several listers responded with historical 
 materialism"...while I agree (for different reasons perhaps) with Antonio 
 M - I think it was him - who wrote that such disagreements cannot be 
 resolved (evidenced by the personal rancor arising from only on a few 
 posts on this subject), I'm going to throw in my 2 cents  anyway...folks 
 are, no doubt, waiting with bated breath...

 and the answer is: I generally agree with those who hold that Marx
 was an HM - not a DM - if that means that he elaborated a dialectical
 analysis of class forces and their changing forms rather than seeking
 evidence for the operation of the dialectic in the natural/physical
 world...an exception appears to occur in a 6/22/1867 letter that
 M wrote to Engels: 

"I refer to the law Hegel discovered, of purely quantitative changes
turning into qualitative changes, as holding good alike in history
and natural science (M&E, "Selected Correspondence", p223)...Michael

I am aware of only a few other instances of correspondence between the
two on the subject of a "dialectics of nature"..M encourages E but
offers no consent or agreement...

beyond this, we enter into the "blame game": Engels for vulgarizing Marx 
by asserting that all matter is dialectically constructed...Plekhanov 
for coining the term "dialectial materialism"...Lenin for accepting
the premise that all phenomena are dialectically constructed and
comform to its laws (see L's "Philosophic Notebooks" for a more
cautious assessment of the priority of the material world)...Stalin
for everything else...Michael



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