"What is the dialectic? No problem with the rest of this debate, but being irreligous I've always stayed away from Marx."
I have just read Ian Murray's reply to you in this thread, and it is substantially correct and far better formal explanation then I could give. I have another which concentrates the answer.
The Dialectic is Hegel's Science of Logic.
It sounds absurd, but as Hegel said in the preface, the work stands as a whole and cannot be further defined. What the Logic presents is the fundemental categories of Logic and how they relate to one another. I slog hopelessly on with it (over years and bits at a time) - there is a lot of Hegelianisms which hopefully some day someone will be able to expunge from the text and give a clearer exposition.
What the Logic is, is no more than a statement of the necessary categories of thought used in thinking - in this sense all humans are use the Dialectic but are unconscious of it. The reason it has movement within it, the reason it is said to move, is that thought without this facility could never apprehend reality, indeed thought which did not work through contradictions could not move or apprehend much at all.
Knowing Hegel's Dialectic does not in itself improve thinking, but being aware of the categories of thought and their definite relations has a general usefulness.
I have found the first part of CLR James "Notes on Dialectics" a bit of an inspiration especially his concentration on just one phrase of Hegel's: That all error derives from holding onto a category of thought which should be dissolved.
Creating and dissolving thoughts is the means by which we think, Hegel does not present an abstract system which he hopes his followers to employ, like Kant he presents a distilled concept of what we actually do when we think.
Marx in writing Capital, and the reason it took him so long, was that in making his exposition on the workings of capital he cast the work in terms of Hegel's Logic (Tony Smith's work on this is exceptionally important).
I suggest that his reason for this included a) the attempt to ensure that what he said about capital was complete, b) would demonstrate a practical application in a theoretical matter of pure science as an ontological conception, c) provide readers with Hegel's logic in a palatable form d) ensure that the work remained useful for whatever unforseen changes emerged.
His notebooks on Capital (the Grundrisse) are useful because there is no attempt to so cast his works, rather he is exploring the subject matter, sometimes slipping into odd hegelianisms, but also throwing ideas about - in some instances you can see him take an observation and literally turn it inside out, dissolving its orginal conceptions and deriving some essential point or another.
It is easy enough to see this concern for these long dead thinkers as a religious operation. The arcane language, the difficult expressions and the emotional excesses, but behind it there is something important that just won't let go - somewhere in the midst of all this there is a key to clear understanding, unfortunately there is no short-cuts, no ready in 60 second recipe.
Greg Schofield Perth Australia g_schofield at dingoblue.net.au _______________________________________________ _______________________________________________
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