Gary
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1. The Marxian process of change through the conflict of opposing forces, whereby a given contradiction is characterized by a primary and a secondary aspect, the secondary succumbing to the primary, which is then transformed into an aspect of a new contradiction. Often used in the plural with a singular or plural verb.
2. The Marxian critique of this process.
http://dictionary.reference.com/search?q=dialectic
Charles Brown wrote:
>
>
> When it comes to the topic of dialectics, I tend to agree with Noam Chomsky:
>
> "Dialectics is one that I've never understood, actually - I've just
> never understood what the word means. Marx doesn't use it,
> incidentally,it's used by Engels.|...| I haven't the foggiest idea what it
> is. It seems to mean something about complexity, or alternative positions,
> or change, or
> something. I don't know." [p228 "Understanding Power"]
>
> ^^^^
>
>>From the below it seems Marx used "dialectics" and had a dialectic method.
>
> Charles
>
> ^^^^
>
>
>
> <<block quote>>Whilst the writer pictures what he takes to be actually my
> method, in this striking and [as far as concerns my own application of it]
> generous way, what else is he picturing but the dialectic method?
>
> Of course the method of presentation must differ in form from that of
> inquiry. The latter has to appropriate the material in detail, to analyse
> its different forms of development, to trace out their inner connexion. Only
> after this work is done, can the actual movement be adequately described. If
> this is done successfully, if the life of the subject-matter is ideally
> reflected as in a mirror, then it may appear as if we had before us a mere a
> priori construction.
>
> My dialectic method is not only different from the Hegelian, but is its
> direct opposite. To Hegel, the life-process of the human brain, i.e., the
> process of thinking, which, under the name of "the Idea," he even transforms
> into an independent subject, is the demiurgos of the real world, and the
> real world is only the external, phenomenal form of "the Idea." With me, on
> the contrary, the ideal is nothing else than the material world reflected by
> the human mind, and translated into forms of thought.
>
> The mystifying side of Hegelian dialectic I criticised nearly thirty years
> ago, at a time when it was still the fashion. But just as I was working at
> the first volume of "Das Kapital," it was the good pleasure of the peevish,
> arrogant, mediocre 'Epigonoi who now talk large in cultured Germany, to
> treat Hegel in same way as the brave Moses Mendelssohn in Lessing's time
> treated Spinoza, i.e., as a "dead dog." I therefore openly avowed myself the
> pupil of that mighty thinker, and even here and there, in the chapter on the
> theory of value, coquetted with the modes of expression peculiar to him. The
> mystification which dialectic suffers in Hegel's hands, by no means prevents
> him from being the first to present its general form of working in a
> comprehensive and conscious manner. With him it is standing on its head. It
> must be turned right side up again, if you would discover the rational
> kernel within the mystical shell.
>
> In its mystified form, dialectic became the fashion in Germany, because it
> seemed to transfigure and to glorify the existing state of things. In its
> rational form it is a scandal and abomination to bourgeoisdom and its
> doctrinaire professors, because it includes in its comprehension and
> affirmative recognition of the existing state of things, at the same time
> also, the recognition of the negation of that state, of its inevitable
> breaking up; because it regards every historically developed social form as
> in fluid movement, and therefore takes into account its transient nature not
> less than its momentary existence; because it lets nothing impose upon it,
> and is in its essence critical and revolutionary.
>
> The contradictions inherent in the movement of capitalist society impress
> themselves upon the practical bourgeois most strikingly in the changes of
> the periodic cycle, through which modern industry runs, and whose crowning
> point is the universal crisis. That crisis is once again approaching,
> although as yet but in its preliminary stage; and by the universality of its
> theatre and the intensity of its action it will drum dialectics even into
> the heads of the mushroom-upstarts of the new, holy Prusso-German empire.
>
> Karl Marx
> London
> January 24, 1873
>
> http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1867-c1/p3.htm
>
>
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>
>
--
Gary Williams
Prohibition Funds Terrorism ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
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