>
> > What is the dialectic? No problem with the rest of
> > this debate, but being irreligous I've always stayed
> > away from Marx.
> >
>=================
There's a lot of nonsense talked about in Marxism (not mych in Marx himself), and a lot of it is connected with empty blather about "the dialectic" or "dialectical method." Most of this is just idle backchat, but there's something to it, though it's not a "method." The rational core of "the dialectic" that I see in Marx is mainly this. He learned a pattern of explanation from Hegel, according to which complex dynamic systems--actually, some simple ones too--exhibit instabilities because of their nature. They cannot remain the same. These instabilities Marx, like Hegel, misleadingly calls "contradictions." To overcome these contradictions, these systems develop, often rather suddenly ("qualitative change") into other sorts of systems. The new system retains something of the old, but resolves its "contradiction," generally, hwoever, exhibiting some new ones of its own.
In Hegel, this is exemplified by changes in ideal form of consciousness. Thus simple demonstrative knowledge without concepts (I don't use the term concept in its technical Hegelian sense here) points at its object--"this." However, "this" can be anything. It's not knowledge of anything in particular. To get knowledge of particulars, you need concepts. Now we know the object as sets of concepts: this (the demonstrative is preserve) green round heavy whatsit. However, now we need something to tie the concepts together, a subsatnce of which they can be the accidents or properties, etc. (This is the first three chapters of the Phenomenology of Spirit in brief.)
Marx took over this idea of immanent development, stood it, as he put it, on its meet, and made it into the history of social systems. Feudalism enabled the accumulation of wealth and made possible the development of new technologies, but its laws and social relationships inhibited them from further development. Thus feudalism gave way to capitalsim, which promotes technological development, but creates a proletariat that it exploits, and which seeks to develop the productive forces without being exploited. Capitalism is transformed by revolution into communism, which resolves the contradicton created by exploitation. This puts it rather schematically.
In the hands of someone with a feel for this sort of pattern, "dialectical" thinking is very powerful and ties up a lot of loose threads while making sense of the whole. I think this inarticulable "feel" (which I don't have, although I can recognize it when I see it) is what's wrth preserving in "dialectics." It's not a religion or even a theory. It's a pattern of explanation.
Ian quoted:
In Marx's theory, known as
>Dialectical Materialism, dialectic describes the material process of
>reality in general and of society in particular.
Marx never used the term dialectical materialism, or historical materialism either.
jks
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