AUT: Dialectics: sources and questions

[Scott Hamilton <s_h_hamilton@xxxxxxxxx>]

A couple of comments on sources I've found useful on
dialectics. I'd be interested in comments from others
who have read this stuff.

Lately I've been reading an interesting book called
'Dialectical Investigations' by Bertell Ollman. Ollman
seems to be a US professor and long-time
revolutionary. According to the blurb on the back of
his book, his publications include a boardgame called
'Class Struggle is the Name of the Game'.

Ollman argues that the procedure of 'abstraction' has
been undervalued by users of the dialectical method.
By abstraction he means the picking out of one aspect
of a phenomenon for examination, in order to get a
better handle on the phenomenon as a whole. Listening
to a piece of music, for instance, someone might
choose to focus on the bass player, and 'get to' the
rest of the players and the song as a whole through
the bassline.

Ollman argues that all of us use abstraction, but that
most of us just abstract 'unconsciously', using the
categories 'handed down' to us by bourgeois ideology,
the media, etc So, for instance, a lot of New
Zealanders look at the situation in the Middle East
and think about it by abstracting ethnic or religious
categories like 'Muslim, Jew' or 'Arab, American'.
They never abstract the category 'class', so never
think about Middle Eastern conflicts in class terms.

Ollman argues that Marx's abstractions are notable for
the fact that they are consciously made, and for the
fact that they are not abstractions of static states
but abstractions that contain conflict and movement.
But the really interesting part of Ollman's argument
is his insistence that it is not necessary to hold to
a single definition of, for instance, 'capitalist
class'. He argues that this concept can have a
different extension (content) according to the
purposes for which it is being abstracted.

So, for instance, in a 'long range' sketch of the
overall development of capitalism it might be
appropriate to talk of a simple, unified capitalist
class appearing with the breakdown of feudalism. In a
more detailed study of capitalism in a particular time
and place, it might be better to talk about capitalist
classes. Ollman says that arguments about how Marx
defined one or another class are somewhat misguided,
because Marx in his own writings used the concept in
different ways to suit different situations. To grasp
the meaning of the concept we have to look at its use
in its particular situation, Ollman says.

(There are similarities here with the later philosophy
of Ludwig Wittgenstein, who argued that 'meaning is
use', and thought that philosophers were forever
getting their knickers in a twist trying to work out
defintions that suited every situation, instead of
looking at specific situations. You could also maybe
do a Kantian semi-idealist thing with Ollman by making
abstractions into approximations of an
not-finally-knowable ultimate reality.)

Ollman argues that Marx was himself mistaken to try to
work out his own hard and fast definition of class in
the unfinished part of Capital.

I haven't worked out whether I agree with Ollman yet,
but I think he puts forward an interesting alternative
to what often become very protracted and painful
attempts at definition. One of the best things about
Dialectical Investigations is the way that Ollman
gives the reader a number of concrete case stdies of
dialectics in action - he analyses issues like
academic freedom/repression and the decline of the
USSR using the technique, and explains what he is
doing as he goes.

Another interesting one is Marx's desire to define, or
at least very clearly outline, the dialectical method.
I think there is a letter to Engels where he says 'if
I ever have the time I'm going to explain on three or
four sheets of paper what dialectics is', or words to
that effect. But he never did produce those three or
four pieces of paper, and many Marxists ever since
have tried to do it for him. But EP Thompson, who is
really the loose cannon in the Marxist canon, actually
argues that the dialectical method is indescribable -
that it is something you 'pick up' in practice.
Thompson, then, thinks that Marx never wrote out the
rules of dialectics because he couldn't, because there
are no rules. In the title essay of his book 'the
Poverty of Theory' Thompson irritates all of the
continental Marxists by claiming that William Blake's
'The Marriage of Heaven and Hell' is a better work of
dialectics than anything by Hegel!

A really interesting book on the relationship of Marx
to earlier dialecticians is Howard Williams' 'Hegel,
Heraclitus, and Marx's Dialectics'. Williams, who also
has a really disappointing book on ideology (he does
Marx on ideology without once mentioning commodity
fetishism), gives a very clear introduction to Kant's
dialectic, especially. I recommend Heraclitus'
fragments 'in the flesh' (well, in English
translation) to those interested in dialectics - apart
from all their other virtues, they are much much
shorter than Hegel's books! Lenin's writing on
Heraclitus - marginal notes made during the study of
dialectics he undertook in a bid to understand the
collapse of the Second International and the First
World War - is also interesting, and similarly brief.

Question: have any Marxists looked at Kant seriously,
apart from Lucio Colletti, who seems to just use him
as an excuse for a semi-positivist approach over the
Hegelianism of Western Marxists like Gramsci?

Cheers
Scott








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