Re: [Marxism] O, Dialectics!

["www.leninology. blogspot.com" <leninology@xxxxxxxxxxx>]

I'm not surprised that I've astonished you so, although it reminds of St
Augustine's quip that "ignorance is the mother of amazement".

I doubt that you, or Trotksy, or anyone else has examined every corner of
the universe, at every atomic and subatomic level, and discovered incessant
change.  It was once believed that the proton was self-identical for at
least ten to the power of 38 years.  When Lenin wrote, it was widely
believed (and so he accepted) that there was such a thing as 'ether' -
actually that belief is becoming more fashionable.  But it is simply
unscientific a priori reasoning to insist as a matter of one's philosophical
foundation that all nature is in a perpetual state of change.  Societies
mutate, change and implode largely along the trends delineated by Marx.  But
that process does not require a notion of the 'dialectic', merely the
ordinary terms of language that we have to describe change.

On the more substantive point of identity being confused with equality,
which you don't engage with, I would say this:  In maths, when we write:
2x+1=7, we are saying that for x=3 this is true. Here we have equality. No
one supposes that x is identical to 3. If it were it could never be any
other number. In contrast, 1/2 is equal to and identical with 0.5. Earlier,
x was equal to 3 but not identical with it. Not all that difficult to grasp,
no?
However, when we write: cos3¥è + sin¥è ¨¬ 4sin¥ècos2¥è
we advert to the fact that these two functions are identical, and they yield
the true for all values of ¥è . Moreover, they are identical even though, in
linguistic form, they do not look typographically the same on the page. So
in that respect (typographically) they are unequal, even while they are
functionally identical. There are countless examples of this sort of thing
in maths (and hence in the sciences), and also in day to day language.  Now,
this ordinary bit of understanding causes a jarring sensation when one reads
Trotsky: "all bodies change uninterruptedly in size, weight, colour etc.
They are never equal to themselves... For concepts there also exists
¡®tolerance¡¯ which is established not by formal logic¡¦, but by the
dialectical logic issuing from the axiom that everything is always
changing...."


> From: "Carlos A. Rivera" <cerejota@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
> Reply-To: Activists and scholars in Marxist
> tradition<marxism@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
> To: Activists and scholars in Marxist tradition
> <marxism@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
> Subject: Re: [Marxism] O, Dialectics!
> Date: Wed, 11 May 2005 16:02:00 -0400
>
>
> ----- Original Message ----- From: "www.leninology. blogspot.com"
> <leninology@xxxxxxxxxxx>
>
>
> > Are all things in nature really in a state of perpetual change?
>
> WTF?
>
> Even matter becomes energy and vice versa.
>
> I am not knowlegeable enough in philosophy as academic pursuit, but I think
> that every single field of knowledge, from Theology to Engineering to
> Physics to Medicine have shown, unequivocally, that reality is constantly
> changing.
>
> I mean, if you can't see this simple, common sense, obvious thing, I do
> understand why dialectics are so hard for you to swallow.
>
> sks
>
>
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> Marxism@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
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