Re: [Marxism] O, Dialectics!

[Jim Farmelant <farmelantj@xxxxxxxx>]

It looks like that we are getting on Marxmail, reprisals of some of
the great debates concerning Marxist philosophy. In this
case, debates over the nature and scope of dialectics
and whether or not there is such a thing as the dialectics
of nature.  Certainly, we have seen from both sides, arguments
more than a little reminiscent  of the ones featured in
the debates of the German Social Democrats of the late
19th century, when Engels and Duhring were duking it out,
as well as later on when Lenin and Bogdanov fought over
the compatibility of Marxism with Machism, and later when
the Mechanists and the Dialecticians fought it out in the
Soviet Union during the 1920s
(http://www.mail-archive.com/marxism-thaxis@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx/msg00529.
html).

It is interesting to note that the logical empiricist
physicist/philosopher,
Philipp Frank  proposed a rapproachment between Machism
and dialectical materialism in his 1940s book, *Modern Science
and Its Philosophy.*  He was certainly critical of diamat as a
philosophy of science, regarding it as inferior to his own logical
empiricism.  On the other hand, like Otto Neurath before him, he was not
unsympathetic towards Marxism, at least in its
Austro-Marxist form.  In  *Modern Science
and Its Philosophy*, he had a chapter, "Logical
empiricism and the philosophy of the Soviet
Union," in which he presented a surprisingly
sympathetic account of diamat; basically treating
it as an allied philosophy with logical empiricism.
Indeed, he seemed to think that dialectical materialists
had always overstated their differences with Machism
and that: "In reality, Lenin took issue with Machism
because it is in many respects related to diamat, and
he considered it especially suitable for him to
bring out his own teachings very sharply by
means of a polemic against it."

In Frank's view, the two-sided war that the
dialectical materialists were carrying out
against both idealism and mechanistic
materialism was the very same one that
the logical empiricists were engaged in
at the same time.  In his view, the dialectical
materialists were hampered in this
war by their embracing of Engels'
three laws of dialectics, which in
Frank's view carried the "germ of
idealism," and which led necessitated,
even within the Soviet Union, a perpetual
struggle against "idealistic deviations."

In Frank's opinion a rapproachment between
diamat and logical empiricism was possible
to the extent that dialectical materialists
would be willing to deemphasize the
three laws of dialectics and to the extent
that they would be willing to avoid describing
matter as something that exists objectively,
as opposed to instead of speaking in terms
of intersubjective propositions.  Likewise,
logical empiricists, in Frank's view ought to be willing to
admit the usefulness of dialectical thinking.
Both dialectical materialists and logical
empiricists should, for Frank, be willing
to endorse what he called the "doctrine
of concrete truth," in which the truth of
propositions is judged in terms of the
practical conclusions that follow from them,
with their validity being assessed in terms
of their consequences for practical life.
Frank noted the similarities of the "doctrine of
concrete truth" to the doctrines of the
American pragmatists, and so he suggested
that logical empiricism, pragmatism, and
dialectical materialism ought to be regarded
as allied philosophies.

Of course it should be noted that there was
a history between Frank and Lenin.  When
Frank was only about 24 years old, Lenin singled
him out for criticism in his *Materialism
and Empiriocriticism*, when he attacked
him as a Kantian, for having embraced Poincare's
conventionalism.
http://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1908/mec/three3.htm

(There is a story, that decades later during the McCarthy
period, when Frank came under investigation by the FBI
for his support for progressive causes, Frank pointed
out this passage to the special agents who were assigned
to speak with him, and that seemed to leave them satisfied).
-----------------------------------------------------------

On the other hand, it seems to me that the dialectical
materialist tradition addressed certain issues that
were not necessarily dealt with in the most satisfactory
manner in the logical empiricist and analytical philosophy
traditions: for example the issue of emergentism versus
reductionism.  I remember Ralph Dumain pointing out
on his marxistphilosophy list, that most of the anglophone
literature on this issue neglects the contributions of
Hegel, Engels and indeed of the Soviets, while focusing
most of its attention to the British emergentists.


Jim F.


On Fri, 13 May 2005 07:30:35 +0000 "www.leninology. blogspot.com"
<leninology@xxxxxxxxxxx> writes:
>
> >To my understanding, the central category of dialectics isn't
> change but
> >becoming.  There is a difference. Cars change speeds.  Seeds become
> plant.
> >Both can be represented as objects to a knowing subject.  But
> historical
> >experience implies a subject that is also its own object.   Formal
>

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