"In its mystified form, the dialectic became the fashion in Germany because it seemed to transfigure and glorify what exists. In its rational form it is a scandal and abomination to he boug. and their doctrinaire spokesmen, because it includes in its understanding of what exists a simultaneous recognition of its negative, its inevitable destruction; because it regards every developed form as being in a fluid state in motion, and therefore grasps its transient aspect as well, and because it does let itself be impressed by anything, being in its very essence critical and revolutionary." KM
A little illuminating here and there? Trying understanding change, emergence, identity, difference, possibility, contradiction, negation, development, etc. without dialectics. It's not only impossible, it's boring. (pick up most any academic journal) Anyway, the dialectic is just a way we humans make sense of the above, not some hallowed philosophical knowledge. Dialectics permeates what we know as 'common sense:' "there are two sides to every story," "half-truth," etc.
Do we just need a simple, non-dialectical, empirical understanding of the world despite the (fact?) that, "all science would be superfluous if the outward appearances and essences of things directly coincided."
I've really never understood how/why people try to de-Hegelize Marx. But you guys are going one step further: you want to take the dialectic away from Marx. Good luck. Despite the fact that much of what went under the rubric of dialectics in Western Marxism veered in an idealist direction, that's no grounds for us to throw away the baby.
JL
At 11:18 PM 12/3/2003, you wrote:
>On Wednesday, December 3, 2003, at 12:22 PM, Michael Dawson -PSU wrote:
>
>>In my view, Marx's expose of where profit comes from via the explanation of
>>the working day is, in fact, probably the best illustration of Chomsky's
>>point you could come up with. Somebody intoxicated on Big Theory would
>>ramble all over the place about the contextuality and structural
>>over-determination of the hegemonic discourse-enshrouded intersection of
>>structure and action at the locus of the productive process. Marx simply
>>showed what happen behind the scenes.
>>
>>I was trained to think Marx needed Hegel to do what he did. I now think
>>that's untrue. Marx needed Engels, who was the one who showed the power of
>>looking behind the scenes.
>
>I would agree. Marx developed intellectually in an atmosphere in which
>Hegel was the Big Cheese, philosophically, and everyone had to speak
>Hegel-speak to be taken seriously (much as every English-speaking
>philosopher had to use positivism/linguistic-analysis-speak for a few
>decades to be taken seriously). But as he matured in his thought, I think
>he tended to drop all the dialectical fancy footwork. It was the
>20th-century French (or French-writing) intellectual types who brought
>back all that Hegelian stuff.
>
>Mind you, a little dialectic can be illuminating here and there, but there
>is no use making a fetish of it, the way many Marx commentators tended to do.
>
>
>Jon Johanning // jjohanning at igc.org
>__________________________________
>A gentleman haranguing on the perfection of our law, and that it was
>equally open to the poor and the rich, was answered by another, 'So is the
>London Tavern.' -- "Tom Paine's Jests..." (1794); also attr. to John Horne
>Tooke (1736-1812) by Hazlitt
>
>___________________________________
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