Date: Mon, 27 Nov 1995 20:22:04 -0800
From: Ralph Dumain <rdumain-AT-igc.apc.org>
Subject: WHAT IS DIAMAT, ANYWAY?


Karl Carlile opines:

>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.

Why is it that in all these years I never learned to view diamat
in this way?  What have I missed?  What does it mean for
dialectical laws to _determine_ reality?  Who said there is no
qualitative distinction between nature and history?  What does it
mean to be _subsumed_ under the same dialectical laws?  If 2
apples + 2 apples = 4 apples, and if 2 concert tickets + 2 concert
tickets = 4 concert tickets, should one conclude that nature and
culture are conflated and subsumed under the identical laws of
arithmetic?

>The materialist conception of history, on the other hand, is a
>conception of history and not of the universe.

By definition.

>It recognizes a qualitative distinction between nature and
>society.

As does diamat.

>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.

So where's the problem?

>One of the many theoretical problems facing marxism is its
>inability to unambiguously establish the relationship between
>scientific discourse and marxism.

Could you please formulate the problem more precisely?

I'm quite disappointed in this hackwork.  Somehow all this
discussion seems familar to me.  Note that I am not trying to
defend a particular orthodixy, as should be clear from my
condemnation of Sean Sayers.  Rather, I am disappointed at the
careless thinking that has gone into arguments like these.  I have
never thought of diamat ontology as anything more than a general
set of guidelines, not a defintive blueprint of the universe.
Perhaps you werre subjected to some sort of dogmatic
indoctrination I missed out on?  I wouldn't mind your taking some
stabs at diamat if you would at lest take the trouble to formulate
he issues properly.

I am just as distubred by some of the people who back me up on
this list.  Many people who have absorbed diamat from standard
texts have not really thought out these issues at all.  The soviet
textbooks tend to avoid embarrassing themselves by steering clear
of all the thorny issues of subjective dialectics (logic).  When
they just stick to basic ontological categories of the natural
world they are not so bad.  It's the junction of "nature, society,
and thought" that's the problem, particularly the latter two.
There are other books that do confuse the rerader with real
nonsense, such as the horrid works of John Sommerville and George
Novack on dialectics, which fall on their face when atemting to
explain subjective dialectics.  There is a lot of slipshod
thinking going on in this area, but let's not demonize Engels, OK?
An personally, if I had the time, I'd rather discuss dialectics
and mathematical logic than this hackneyed old stuff.


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