Marxism and "Science" (Was: Comic Book Marxism)

Ian Murray seamus2001 at attbi.com
Thu Dec 27 23:11:13 PST 2001


----- Original Message ----- From: "Greg Schofield" <g_schofield at dingoblue.net.au>
>
> An Ontological system such as Hegel's Logic is self-supporting and
complete, yet has room enough to endlessly develop itself. Obviously most sciences have such room, are self-supporting (in reference to their subject matter) even if some are not yet complete there is no doubt they strive to complete concept (not the same thing as complete knowledge of a subject area). =============

Sorry, the question is whether Hegel's Logic is consistent. See Bertrand Russell and the Brit rejection of Hegelianism on that one. Completeness is out for any system of logic that incorporates simple arithmetic.


> As for HIstorical Materialism being a science, well that depends on
what is meant by science - it is certainly not the science as most scientists would have it - which is what our heritage of Marxism tries so superficially to imitate, but then again there is science and there is "science".

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The above does not help.


>
> MY point about this is that there is a complete conception of
Historical Materialism despite the fact that most of us disagree as to what that is and hence hanker after imaginary flavours. It exists for the most part dorminant within a body of works so glossed over and superficially understood that the ontological conception is lost. In most sciences this does not matter so much, but most scientisits are not faced with the complexities of our subject matter, which makes simply having a whole lot of unrealted theories bussed under the title of Hiostorical Materialism makes fertile ground for ideological fanatsies.

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The appeal to the gods eye view immanent in your first sentence above being the most fervent case of the last 11 words in the paragraph.

I have a CD of a 'single' by Brian Eno titled "Ali Click." It has 8 tunes, all with the same title and all different from one another. I haven't figured out which one is the *real* version and which are merely variations on the *real* one. No one else has figured it out and Eno isn't talking as he's a big fan of Wittgenstein and Francisco Varela. I think we're in the same boat with regards to the *real* version of HM.


>
> My point is that we need to address Historical Materialism seriously
and with rigor, we need to aim to understand the complete system, understand the role that different parts play and from this pose real questions and seek real answers. Less than this is juvenile coimic-book stuff and society as a whole has out-grown such nonsense though our movement wallows in such purile past-times.
>

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What complete system?

Pluralistically,

Ian



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