RE: Re: Marxism-Socialism-Capitalism reading list (rev A) (historical laws? you gotta show me!)

["Charles Brown" <CharlesB@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

>>> MikalacNS@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx 12/01/00 01:51PM >>>



norm:  "no, but ...."

we're reasoning by analogy here and therefore we have to be careful.  when i
compare two supposedly identical, controlled scientific or social scientific
experiments that test a single and simple hypothesis, it is easy for me to
see whether or not the analogy between the two tests is valid and therefore
that they can be declared "identical" for supplying evidence for a
hypothesis.

in contrast, there are few historical analogies that i would accept as
analogous enough to submit as sufficidnt evidence for testing a hypothesis
about forecasting human behavior.  i'd have to be shown the specific ones
before giving my opinion, of course.  your extract of Marxian "dialectic"
does not do that, but i recognize that it is out of context and i have the
further disadvantage of being unfamiliar with the terminology as described
below.  maybe on further study i'll change my mind.  hence, my "short"
reading list.

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CB: Here's a reply from Karl M. to the epistemological issues you raise. Interestingly, with historical science, abstraction must substitute for artificial experimentation. But ultimately, Marx is famous for demanding that practice must be the test of theory ( will get the theses on Feuerbach for you).

Karl Marx
Capital Volume One


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1867
PREFACE TO THE
FIRST GERMAN EDITION

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Every beginning is difficult, holds in all sciences. To understand the first chapter, especially the section that contains the analysis of commodities, will, therefore, present the greatest difficulty. That which concerns more especially the analysis of the substance of value and the magnitude of value, I have, as much as it was possible, popularised. [1] The value-form, whose fully developed shape is the money-form, is very elementary and simple. Nevertheless, the human mind has for more than 2,000 years sought in vain to get to the bottom of it all, whilst on the other hand, to the successful analysis of much more composite and complex forms, there has been at least an approximation. Why? Because the body, as an organic whole, is more easy of study than are the cells of that body. In the analysis of economic forms, moreover, neither microscopes nor chemical reagents are of use. The force of abstraction must replace both. But in bourgeois society, the commodity-form of the pr!
oduct of labour ― or value-form of the commodity ― is the economic cell-form. To the superficial observer, the analysis of these forms seems to turn upon minutiae. It does in fact deal with minutiae, but they are of the same order as those dealt with in microscopic anatomy.

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my comments should not really be surprising.  think of all the spilled ink
over various "justifications" for social forecasting that failed.  why?
because the analogies weren't worth much.

another problem with "interpreting" historical events is that, unlike a
controlled scientific experiment, historical events have multiple causes.
that is what makes reading polemical writers (e.g., Chomsky) so frustrating
for me.  in the case of Chomsky, whose 5 books i have i'm now re-reading for
closer scrutiny, his facts are impeccable, but he chooses the causes among a
multitude of causes for historical events that suit his conclusions.  same
with Howard Zinn in his People's History, IMO.  that's standard practice for
ideologues, of course, but it's unsat for me in arriving at my beliefs.


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CB: When you say "too abstract for me", do you mean you don't use
abstractions or the terminology is unfamiliar to you ?

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norm: i mean the terminology is unfamiliar to me.

of course i use abstractions (and generalizations), but in accordance with
the logical rules of definitions: the writer/speaker and reader/listener
have to understand and agree on the definitions before further argument can
be fruitfully pursued.  (hence the useless arguments over "freedom",
"natural rights", "intelligence", etc.)

if i can't understand someone's abstract words (likewise, with them for my
definitions) after repeated requests for clarification and w/o being too
picky, then i just give up and move on.

((((((((((((

CB: Which of Lenin's terms don't you understand ? Let me say that the first thing you might want to focus in on with dialectics is that it is a way of logically conceiving of change or development. This is central.

Is the terminology on surplus value obscure too ?

____________




note 2: i will need a tutorial on marxian "dialectics", "surpus value", etc.
to understand the marxian positions.

((((((((((

Karl Marx (A Brief Biographical Sketch with an Exposition of Marxism)

by V.I. Lenin

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DIALECTICS
    Hegelian dialectics, as the most comprehensive, the most rich in
content, and the most profound doctrine of development, was regarded by Marx
and Engels as the greatest achievement of classical German philosophy. They
considered every other formulation of the principle of development, of
evolution, one-sided and poor in content, and distorting and mutilating the
real course of development (which often proceeds by leaps, catastrophes and
revolutions) in nature and in society. "Marx and I were pretty well the only
people to rescue conscious dialectics" (from the destruction of idealism,
including Hegelianism) "and apply it in tbe materialist conception of
nature. . . . Nature is the test of dialectics, and it must be said for
modern natural science that it has furnished extremely rich" (this was
written before the discovery of radium, electrons, the transmutation of
elements, etc.!) "and daily increasing materials for this test, and has thus
proved that in the last analysis !
!
nature's process is dialectical and not metaphysical."

    "The great basic thought," Engels writes, "that the world is not to be
comprehended as a complex of ready-made things, but as a complex of
processes, in which the things apparently stable no less than their mind
images in our heads, the concepts, go through an uninterrupted change of
coming into being and passing away . . . this great fundamental thought has,
especially since the time of Hegel, so thoroughly permeated ordinary
consciousness that in this generality it is now scarcely ever contradicted.
But to acknowledge this fundamental thought in words and to apply it in
reality in detail to each domain of investigation are two different things."
"For dialectical philosophy nothing is final, absolute,

page 12

sacred. It reveals the transitory character of everything and in everything;
nothing can endure before it except the uninterrupted process of becoming
and of passing away, of endless ascendency from the lower to the higher. And
dialectical philosophy itself is nothing more than the mere reflection of
this process in the thinking brain." Thus, according to Marx, dialectics is
"the science of the general laws of motion, both of the external world and
of human thought."

    This revolutionary side of Hegel's philosophy was adopted and developed
by Marx. Dialectical materialism "no longer needs any philosophy standing
above the other sciences." Of former philosophy there remains "the science
of thought and its laws -- formal logic and dialectics." And dialectics, as
understood by Marx, and in conformity with Hegel, includes what is now
called the theory of knowledge, or epistemology, which, too, must regard its
subject matter historically, studying and generalizing the origin and
development of knowledge, the transition from non-knowledge to knowledge.

    Nowadays, the idea of development, of evolution, has penetrated the
social consciousness almost in its entirety, but by different ways, not by
way of the Hegelian philosophy. But as formulated by Marx and Engels on the
basis of Hegel, this idea is far more comprehensive, far richer in content
than the current idea of evolution. A development that seemingly repeats the
stages already passed, but repeats them otherwise, on a higher basis
("negation of negation"), a development, so to speak, in spirals, not in a
straight line; -- a development by leaps, catastrophes, revolutions; --
"breaks in continuity"; the transformation of quantity into quality; -- the
inner impulses to development, imparted by the contradiction and conflict of
the various forces and tendencies

page 13

acting on a given body, or within a given phenomenon, or within a given
society; -- the interdependence and the closest, indissoluble connection of
all sides of every phenomenon (while history constantly discloses ever new
sides), a connection that provides a uniform, law-governed, universal
process of motion -- such are some of the features of dialectics as a richer
(than the ordinary) doctrine of development. (See Marx's letter to Engels of
January 8, 1868, in which he ridicules Stein's "wooden trichotomies" which
it would be absurd to confuse with materialist dialectics.)