Determinism and Marxism From: P.J.Wells at open.ac.uk
Thanks to Jim for the note on Plekhanov.
Jim added that
>Arguably, [Engels] was attempting to advance a kind of compatibilism,
>based on the Spinozan-Hegelian notion that freedom begins with
>the recognition of necessity, which can be interpreted as the
>thesis, that we are free to the extent that we are cognizant of
>the causal determinants of our existence, and to the extant
>that we possess the power to alter them, on the basis of
>our comprehension of them.
I agree with this. It's a pity that Engels spent so much of his time on keeping abreast of the physical sciences, rather than paying attention to the statistical literature.
There's a very interesting account of the statisticians' debate about free will in Ian Hacking's "The Taming of Chance" (1990, Cambridge UP), for those who are interested.
Julian
^^^^^^^^
CB: I don't know how much Engels was familiar with the statistical literature, but I think it is in _Anti-Duhring_ that he says in the dialectic of chance and necessity, laws assert themselves in the form of a vast number of chance events.