File spoon-archives/marxism-thaxis.archive/marxism-thaxis_1997/97-02-10.192, message 90


Date: Thu, 30 Jan 1997 22:07:27 -0800 (PST)
From: Ralph Dumain <rdumain-AT-igc.apc.org>
Subject: M-TH: MARX & ENGELS, DIALECTICS AND NATURE: THE WRAP-UP


Following all the threads of his unwieldy tapestry that
constitutes this ongoing debate on dialectics and science is so
singularly unrewarding because once again this debate never goes
anywhere; it is the same vicious circle all over again.  Why even
bother?  And once again it demonstrates what that worthless
assholes comprise what's left of the left.  Why don't you all die
off so the left can start afresh?  My willingness to pursue this
further is rather limited, but I will make a few points just to
demonstrate the dead-ends this discussion has gotten itself
into.

1.  Austin's argument against the "naturalistic fallacy" and the
possibility of dialectical materialism according to Marx (Jan. 25)
is confused nonsense, but there are a few comments of his that
require specific responses.

>I would argue that if the materialist conception of history was
>but dialectical materialism applied to the study of history,
>that Marx, even if not feeling the need to present a detailed
>exposition of his even more general theory (dialectical
>materialism), would have at least indicated that historical
>materialism was derivative and constituted a specific
>application of dialectical materialism. This is not the case....

>Indeed, for Marx, the more general and abstract a law becomes
>the less valid it is. For Marx, dialectical materialism
>represents an idealist philosophy, for it posits the *a priori*
>and external existence of a logic.

This is nonsense.  Marx's criticisms of this sort were never
applied to mathematics or to any natural science, but to the
Hegelian philosophy of history, utopian socialism, and bourgeois
political economy.

>Note here that Marx regards the flaw in Hegel that he takes
>dialectical logic ("the process of thinking"), and transforms it
>into an independent subject, one that becomes "the creator of
>the real world, and the real world is only the external
>appearance of the idea." This is precisely what dialectical
>materialism does. This, as Marx indicates, is the reverse of
>his argument.

This reminds me of the various tussles involving Juan Inigo on
other lists.  Inigo makes the same sort of argument against the
notion of a dialectical logic.  But let's take a look at what's
involved here. If dialectical materialism means an abstract
logical scheme arbitrarily superimposed on empirical phenomena to
make them conform to apriori dialectical laws, then Austin would
indeed be correct in his characterization.  But Engels was not as
stupid as most of his followers.  Engels made a lot of gaffes, but
he knew himself that this approach to dialectics was bankrupt.
However, the idea of extracting general principles from a myriad
of more specific phenomena and summing up the general patterns is
certainly not anathema to Marx.  Both Marx and Engels knew that
nothing specific could be deduced from any general logical
principles, and that logical generalizations could only be made
after the empirical phenomena were assembled and analyzed in
sufficient detail.  Though Marx and Engels followed somewhat
different intellectual trajectories, Marx planned to write up his
own statement of the dialectical method, which he never did.
Would this have been similar to Engels'?  I don't think so, but
maybe we can get into that later.  The important thing is that
there is nothing particularly wrong with philosophical
generalizations, so long as it is not an a priori metaphysical
construction imposed on reality.

Then there is the matter that Marx denies the eternality of social
laws, that each historical epoch has its own laws. Towards the end
of this disquisition Austin states:

>So Marx understands the dialectic, as he employs it, as
>incommensurable with the notion of a law-driven natural world.
>In fact, Marx points out that Kaufman observation that "The
>old economists misunderstood the nature of economic laws when
>they likened them to the laws of physics and chemistry," as
>being a statement of the distinction of the Marxian dialectic.

Austin does not prove what he intends by quoting Marx.  For while
Marx identifies the dialectic method in its application to
historical processes, and then he denies that economic laws are
like the laws of physical and chemistry, here he says nothing
whatever about physical and chemical laws themselves, their
(non)-eternal character or the non-applicability of dialectical
method to them.  Based on this one passage only, Marx's attitude
towards natural science remains a cipher.

2.  I cannot find the exact quote in my downloads, but somebody,
probably Austin, denied that Marx first developed dialectical
materialism and then applied it to historical process (historical
materialism).  Hence it is wrong to say that historical
materialism is an application of dialectical materialism.  Forgive
me if I mangled the original assertion somewhat, but you get the
idea, I hope.  Now this is an interesting if misleading assertion.
I think it is true to say that Marx did not formulate "dialectical
materialism" (even without the label) first and then apply it
yielding historical materialism.  Fact of the matter is, neither
did Engels.  And also: the specific evolution of Marx's thought
does not necessarily answer the philosophical questions involved.

It is impossible to disentangle the evolution of Marx's relation
to Hegel's dialectic from the evolution of historical materialism.
They were simultaneous and part of the same process.  It was
necessary to come to terms with the use and misuse of Hegel's
dialectic because Hegel's philosophy of history, which survived
without much alternation in the approach to history on the part of
the Young Hegelians, was an obstacle to the development of a
social-scientific understanding of the world.  Marx's critique of
Hegelian dialectic and his use of same was bound up with his
specific studies, first, in his struggles with Hegel's philosophy
of right and the Young Hegelians, later in his development of
historical materialism and the critique of bourgeois political
economy.

Historically, I think it is safe to say that, rather than a
person's thoughts being deduced from his presuppositions, actually
the presuppositions are only discovered at the very end of the
process, and are then extracted from the actual work one does.
Marx himself stated that he planned to write a methodological
treatise on the proper use of dialectic, which he never did.
Hence there is no problem with the extraction and formulation of
general principles, so long as they are not used a priori to force
our understanding of a yet dimly investigated empirical reality.

Now why did Marx so esteem Engels?  Engels's work on the
dialectics of nature came later in life.  Marx treated Engels as
an equal because of Engels' indispensable contribution to the
understanding of the capitalist system and for his elaboration of
socialist theory.  Engels at times took the lead in formulating
the principles of communism and in analyzing the capitalist
system.  Marx relied on Engels's expert knowledge and on his
sharpness and quick-wittedness, though Marx had a philosophical
subtlety and depth which Engels himself recognized to be beyond
his own.

So Engels did not develop dialectical materialism first and apply
it to historical materialism either.  Engels developed the
dialectical materialist side of Marxist theory later on precisely
at a time when natural science was being abused to falsify the
understanding of history and society.  It was after sorting out
these obfuscations that Engels formulated the abstract principles
of dialectics of nature precisely to be able to conceptualize a
unified but stratified, non-reductive understanding of the world.
Engels made a lot of goofs in his judgments, but his worst goofs
were in manuscript and published only three decades after his
death.  Engels may have blundered, he may have been
philosophically less adept than Marx, but whatever his
shortcomings, he was neither the positivist nor metaphysician he
is made out to be.

3.  I have yet to state my own thoughts on the relation of Marx to
Engels as far as dialectics and method are concerned.  I would say
that the statements of the two that have been compared in this
debate are not directly comparable, because they concern different
domains and different formulations of dialectic.  I have never
seen a convincing analysis of the Marx-Engels relation in this
matter anywhere. Both the Engels-as-infallible literature and the
Engels-betrayed-Marx literature is so unbelievably stereotypical
and incompetent none if it can be trusted.  Nor has anyone in the
anti-Engels camp _convincingly_ argued what is morally at stake in
criticizing Engels.

I am not a fence-straddler.  I am not seeking a compromise or
middle ground.  Rather, I find the arguments on both sides so
moronic I can only shake my head.  For me to positively define my
own views on Engels beyond what I have done in various posts over
the last few years would be a major enterprise, which I may commit
to paper some time but not now.  And why should I bother for this
audience?  For there is no real development of productive ideas,
just the same old same old.  There is no use bothering to untangle
the other arguments presented in this debate that I have not
touched so far.  Jay Miles and Viraj are just as bad crackpots as
Chatterjee.  Austin is a mess.  Carlile is an asshole.  So all I
can say to this pathetic menagerie of leftism is: why don't you
just die off?


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