Date: Mon, 27 Nov 1995 20:10:29 +0000
From: pad-AT-iol.ie (KARL CARLILE)
Subject: DIAMAT AND HISTORICAL MATERIALISM




Comrades:

I wish to intervene in the debate concerning the distinction between
dialectical materialism and the materialist conception of history.

Dialectical materialism is a neo-hegelian form of idealism. Basically it
claims that there obtain abstract dialectical laws which determine all
reality proceeding from nature to socio-historical phenomena. Consequently
there is no qualitative distinction between nature and history. Both are
subsumed under the same basic dialectical laws.Consequently reality
inevitably proceeds, so to speak, from the cell to socialism.

The materialist conception of history, on the other hand, is a conception of
history and not of the universe.Consequently it does not make the work of
scientific activity redundant.It recognizes a qualitative distinction
between nature and society.It does not claim that nature has no dialectical
properties.Instead,quite modestly,it acknowledges that natural phenomena are
the subject of science and not the legitimate subject of socio-historical
study.In short marxism is not a theology that claims the capicity to make
absolute judgements on the nature of the cosmos. Indeed one of the great
achievements of the Scientific Revolution was its  success in undermining
theology's ideological credibility as interpreter of both natural and
spiritual reality.Its success was based on a methodology unique to modern
scientific activity distinctly different from the schoalstic paradigm within
which Aristotelian science was logically located.

The methodology of Marxism is valid within the area of human history. But it
cannot claim for its methodology universality. Here I am returning to the
old question which people like Habermas and Bernstein have been so concerned
with: the debate over the nature of the "social sciences". One of the many
theoretical problems facing marxism is its inability to unambiguously
establish the relationship between scientific discourse and marxism.

                                               
                                       Yours etc.,
                                                  Karl Carlile






Yours etc.,
           Karl Carlile



     --- from list marxism-AT-lists.village.virginia.edu ---

     ------------------