Date: Tue, 28 Nov 1995 11:58:17 -0500 (EST)
From: Jim Jaszewski <jjazz-AT-freenet.hamilton.on.ca>
Subject: Re: ON PHILOSOPHY, MARX, ENGELS, LENIN, C.L.R. JAMES



On Mon, 27 Nov 1995 ROSSERJB-AT-vax1.acs.jmu.edu wrote:

>      Historical materialism is one thing and dialectical
> materialism is another, and not Marxian.

	I totally disagree with your statement.


  Do you support
> the application of DM in the case of Lysenko and Vavilov?

	Let me make it clear here (if I didn't in what went B4 on this
List) that I am not certain that there aren't Lamarckian effects in
evolution, but making scientific fact (i.e. not seriously debatable)
secondary to political considerations is OBVIOUSLY a course to disaster. 

	Stalin and Lysenko (Vavilov?) ignored the wider work of bourgeois
scientists -- simply for them _being_ bourgeois -- and for this, science
in the USSR suffered for decades. 


> If you support DM, how do you stop it from being applied
> in such a case in such a way.

	Again, I'll point out that you are unfairly singling out communist
Thought as being somehow _inherently_ open to abuse. 

	This is a suspiciously bourgeois conceit AFAIC...


>      Dialectical materialism was an unnecessary Plekhanov/Lenin 
> addition to historical materialism, partly drawing on Engels,
> but without Marx.  It is not only repressive, it is plain wrong
> when applied to the natural sciences.

	I don't accept your definition of the term `Dialectical Materialism'. 

	As for `DiaMat' as a loaded word/phrase:  I, for one, would like
to `rehabilitate' it (it's shorter than typing out dialectical materialism
all the time...)


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