In a message dated 7/5/02 5:30:11 PM Pacific Daylight Time, [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes:
> Nancy writes: >I guess my question is, "What *is* a dialectical approach?< > > In their THE DIALECTICAL BIOLOGIST, Levins & Lewontin have a useful > description of the dialectical approach, though it's hardly the only one. > They see the "dialectic" as a set of questions for trying to understand > empirical reality rather than as a set of pre-digested answers. Applying > their description to society, the approach tells us to > > (1) look at how the whole -- or totality -- of society shapes and limits the > individual parts of society, e.g., how we are constrained and trained to see > the world in a certain way, to act in certain ways, etc. For example, in a > capitalist society, most of us are encouraged to look at the world in an > individualistic way, while we have little choice but to "look out for number > one" (including our immediate families) and hope that we can do better. > > (2) look how the parts add up to and create the whole. This is the > methodological individualist "take" of orthodox economics, which the > dialectical analysis indicates is woefully one-sided and incomplete. > > (3) look how the interaction between the whole making the parts and teh > parts making the whole causes dynamic change over time. > > What this lacks for me is that there's insufficient emphasis on the > structure of society (perhaps arising from L & L's focus on the "dialectics > of nature"). I would add that, specifically to add the institutions of > class, male domination, white domination, etc. > > >Why is a dialectical approach better (more revealing of the truth) than a > non-dialectical approach?)< > > It's better because it avoids _leaving things out_, trying to avoid a > one-sided analysis. It tries to not only "tell the truth" and "nothing but > the truth" but "tell the whole truth." The various theories that > neoclassical (i.e., orthodox) economists or other methodological > individualists spin are often not "wrong" as much as radically incomplete, > so that the conclusions are biased in a bourgeois way. The "law of supply & > demand" and other micro-ideas, for example, aren't "wrong" as much as it > misses class relations and the like. Sorry that I don't have time for a more > specific example... > JD > I haven't read "The Dialectical Biologist", but if these three points fairly represent Levins & Lewontin's views, then they have left out the single most important thing about dialectics and the dialectical method (although perhaps point (3) hints at it). Since the 3 points they do raise are also valid and set the basis for what is left out, this additional point should perhaps be numbered "(4)". It goes something like this: (4) Everything in the world (and also in human society and in human thought) is composed of dialectical contradictions. (These are not logical contradictions, the assertion and denial of the exact same proposition, but rather "oppositions", or the unity of opposing forces within the thing. We are stuck with the misleading name "contradictions" here for historical reasons. Blame Hegel.) Development or change of any kind is in essence the result of struggle between these internal opposing forces (which are, however, often triggered by outside factors). Thus an acorn develops into an oak tree primarily because of its own internal nature, and the opposing forces pent-up within it--though it also requires soil, rain and sunshine from the outside. To seek to understand HOW an acorn develops into an oak, that is, to use the dialectical method here, is therefore mostly to seek out and try to understand these internal contradictions within the acorn. In geophysics we have a dialectical contradiction whose two aspects serve to create and then destroy mountains. The forces of plate tectonics (caused by internal convection currents within the earth's mantle) serve to raise up mountains, and we have the opposing forces of erosion from wind, rain and ice, which serve to wear them down again. In this contradiction the mountain-raising forces are for a time dominant, but in the end erosion wins out and the mountain disappears again. Marx applied this method in his political economy. How are we to come to understand the cause of capitalist economic crises for example? Here is what Marx had to say about that: "The apologetic phrases used to deny crises are important in so far as they always prove the opposite of what they are meant to prove. In order to deny crises, they assert unity where there is conflict and contradiction. They are therefore important in so far as one can say they prove that there would be no crises if the contradictions which they have erased in their imagination, did not exist in fact. But in reality crises exist because these contradictions exist. Every reason which they put forward against crisis is an exorcised contradiction, and, therefore, a real contradiction, which can cause crises. The desire to convince oneself of the nonexistence of contradictions, is at the same time the expression of a pious wish that the contradictions, which are really present, should not exist." [From "Theories of Surplus Value", Vol. 2, (Moscow: Progress Publishers, 1968), p. 519.] And therefore, to come to understand the nature and causes of capitalist economic crises is primarily to come to recognize and understand the nature of the (relevant) dialectical contradictions within the capitalist economy. To seek to understand economic crises in this way is thus an important part of what it means to apply the dialectical method to the problem. It is true that many people have used the term "dialectical method" in vastly different ways. (Plato and Socrates, for example!) But this is the essence of the method as understood and utilized by Marx, Engels, Lenin and Mao. By the way, I once wrote a little ditty about dialectical contradictions, which (naturally!) I cannot refrain from sharing with you: A dialectical contradiction Is basically just an opposition-- A pair of wrestlers in a tuggle Locked together while they struggle. You can't separate them with two wild horses, These two entwined, opposing forces. Yet usually from this convolution There comes eventual resolution. One force defeats, subsumes, the other The struggling thing becomes another; The conflict leads to elevation-- A qualitative transformation. --Scott Harrison
