Date: Tue, 3 Sep 1996 20:26:30 +0200
From: m-14970-AT-mailbox.swipnet.se (Hugh Rodwell)
Subject: Re: Jesus , Engels and Herr Karl Duhring


Adolfo, defending dialectical materialism against Karl C's charges of
idealism and religion with some good quotes, finishes off by dragging Mao
into the arena:

>And trying to set Marx against Engels, or Lenin, or Mao on this account will
>not work either:
>
>"The material, sensously perceptible world to which we ourselves belong IS
>THE ONLY REALITY......  Our consciousness and thinking, however
>supra-sensous they may seem, are the product OF A MATERIAL, bodily organ,
>the brain.  Matter is not a product of mind, but mind itself is merely the
>highest product of nature" - Frederic Engels (Karl Marx, Selected Works,
>Eng. ed., Vol I pp 430-31).
>
>And Karl Marx himself:
>"It is impossible to separate thought from matter that thinks" (Ibid, p. 435).
>
>And Lenin:
>
>"Materialism in general recognises OBJECTIVELY REAL BEING (MATTER) as
>independent of consciousness, sensation, experience...... Consciousness is
>only the reflection of being, at best, an approximately true (adequate,
>ideally exact) reflection of it".  (Lenin, Selected Works, Eng ed., Vol XI,
>p. 377).

Why mention Mao when you only quote the other three?

Why leave out Trotsky? His last great battle before Stalinism ice-picked
him was a no-holds-barred struggle against philosophically unprincipled
petty-bourgeois sceptics over the two fundamental questions of a) the
character of the Soviet Union and b) dialectical materialism as the basis
of revolutionary Marxist thought and action. This struggle is documented in
In Defence of Marxism, 1940.

Cheers,

Hugh

PS Is your failure to mention Stalin or Guzman significant?




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