Subject: Re: Dialectics & Materialism Date: Fri, 29 Jul 1994 04:43:17 -0700 From: Michael Lichter <lichter-AT-nicco.sscnet.ucla.edu> This is a late reply to Chris Sciabarra's July 24 reply to my post and Dave Hull's related post of July 23. Chris says: Michael Lichter cites my discussion of dialectics and materialism, and states that method addresses the question, "how to," while a conceptual framework addresses the question, "in what way do we conceptualize social reality?" In my original posting, I tried to distinguish between "dialectics" and "dialectical materialism," claiming that the first was a formal method of social inquiry, while the latter wedded a certain CONTENT to that method. "Dialectical materialism" contains a dialectical METHOD and a materialist CONTENT. The approach is MATERIALIST because it emphasizes the primacy of material factors (roughly, the "economic base") in social production and development. The approach is DIALECTICAL because it refuses to "vulgarize" such materialism. It retains an emphasis on the organic unity of many factors within a social whole, the material and the non- material, the economic, the political, the cultural, the ideological, etc. As do Marx and Engels, you describe the *qualities* of the method, without describing the method itself. How does one *do* dialectical materialism? What you describe sounds more like a *mode of explanation* than a *mode of discovery* (or exploration or whatever the right word is). In CAPITAL, Marx brilliantly takes apart each little piece of the capitalist engine and shows us how it relates to each of the other parts to form an organic whole. But this is *exposition*. How did Marx dissect the inner workings of British (mainly) capitalism before he reconstructed it before our eyes? And how did he know which scraps to keep and which to toss? He doesn't say. What Marx in effect says, and what Chris seems to be saying is "when the results look like this, then it's dialectical materialism". How do you paint a painting? "Well, when it looks sort of like this, then you're doing it right." I don't find this especially satisfactory. Maybe I'm being silly and this is just the nature of social inquiry. Analyzing human history is not as simple as taking a geological core sample and pulling out a magnifying glass. You just gotta have whatever the Marxian equivalent of Weber's verstehen is, I guess. As to Rwanda, Dave Hull illustrated my point by (no offense intended) by pulling out a canned explanation about "haves" and "have-nots" and their cataclysmic collision. Cataclysm is what we've witnessed, beyond doubt, but even to a casual observer such a simple opposition seems far, far removed from the reality. If Marx method had any rules, one of them certainly must have been "be historical! Ahistorical inquiry is doomed to miss what is really happening." And so we must at least go back to the European colonization of Africa and its violation of "traditional" tribal/etnic boundaries (among many other violations) to understand contemporary politics anywhere in Africa. So, if "look to the past" is one rule of this method, what are the rest? And what do I look for in the past? Regarding Robert Harle's post this morning, yes, I *am* trying to be pragmatic, or at least practical. Conducting real empirical inquiry towards making real change *is* the point. Michael ------------------
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