Re: [Marxism] O, Dialectics!

["Carlos A. Rivera" <cerejota@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

----- Original Message -----
From: "www.leninology. blogspot.com" <leninology@xxxxxxxxxxx>

> On the more substantive point of identity being confused with equality,
> which you don't engage with, I would say this:  [...] Not all that
> difficult to grasp, no?
> [...]. 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.

Again, I am no expert in philosophy and logic, yet even by formal logic, you
argument against dialectics is wrong, and if we use diamat on it, it becomes
ludicrous.

Math is in itself an abstraction used to quantify, not qualify, reality. In
other words, it is completely and absolutely divorced from any subjective
value. "1" is not "1 banana" or "1 genetically engineered banana" or "1
organic, fair trade banana". "1" is *just* a single quantity of *anything*,
and hence of *everything*. Math and mathematical logic are wholly unuseful
to study things qualitatively. It is indeed useful to perform functions that
allow for what engineers title "black boxing", that is, to study things
whose subjective content is irrelevant to the task or exercise at hand.

Your error, and this is a profound but common one among critics of
dialectics and diamat, is to see a contradition between "identity" and
"equality" as mathematical logic concepts and the dialectical (that is,
social) logic. Mathematical logic exist *within* dialectical logic, not in
direct counterposition of it. When dealing with abstract, quantifying,
tasks, mathemtical logic is quite useful, when dealing with subjective,
qualitative things, such as love, biology or class struggle, it proves
insufficient.

The interesting is that mathematical logic itself is continually changing:
at one point in *history* (that is, in human society) "x=3" as explained in
your example, was simply NOT possible. It resulted from an specific social
need, at an specific point in human history, and was the reuslt of previous
social developments. As Goedel starts to point out, but refuses to follow
through with the obvious conclusion, math itself cannot be proven by math.
Yet, dialectical materialism does indeed seem to prove math in that it is a
social product to satisfy a particular historical need. The scientific
method establishes that if something can't prove itself, it must be proven
from without. Diamat proves math but not by mathematical logic.

When you say that you have a problem with diamat because "the claims for it
almost always involve dreadful a
priori reasoning that does not survive the slightest scrutiny". Ironically,
math suffers from the same thing (re Godel) yet you fail to find this same
fault in math. Which tells me, dialectically, that your opposition to diamat
is rooted not in intellectual curiosity and inquiry, but rather some sort of
idealist fetish with, possibly, the Engelian/Trotskyite connection with
diamat.

Got news: diamat itself predicts and *stuggles against*  that tendency for
"a priori reasoning", this is what is termed in classic Marx as "old
materialism". It is true that errors of falling into this "old materialism"
have plagued diamatists.

Your counter-position of Historical Materialism and Dialectical Materialism
is the mother of all false dichotmies. Historical Materialism is nothing but
the application of Diamat to the class struggle, in other words, to human
history. That our efforts at that have not been successful is function of
the falibility of humanity than a problem of philosophy.

Diamat is a *social* logic, and hence, cannot be divorced, abstracted,
beyond the social. A dialectical mathematics will indeed fail, because math
is by definition abstract. But a dialectical teaching of mathematics, that
is, a social math, will not.

I know it is harder to understand that you simple "x=3" example, yet it
would be an incredible error, even in formal logic, to establish that diamat
is not true simply because it is complex.

Since my knowledge of this is at best rudimentary, I'll let others correct
me. Yet I think your knowledge is even more rudimentary than mine...

Needless to say, diamat is a theory, and as such, it is subject to being
disproven, and you can actually be a useful scientist without subscribing to
it. The whole "Aether" fiasco shows that incredible scientific leaps can be
done even under erroneous assumptions about nature (after all, Einstein
brought upon General *and* Special Relativity without *directly* questioning
"aether", not to mention Newtonian physics were completely built upon the
belief in the existense of Aether, and the bulk of thos elaws remain true to
this day).

Your example of Lenin believing in "aether" (something that is buried deep
in "Empirocriticism") actually helps prove diamat: Lenin was a child of his
time, and adopted what was the higher stage of scientific knowledge of that
time. Yet, in a matter of a few years, Aether was abandoned for "better"
theories. Science behaved dialectically.

sks


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