Andy, I just came across the below. Interjections below. Another dialectical concept is sublation or supersecession or to preserve and overcome ( a contradiction ). Marx, Engels and Lenin use this from Hegel too. It occurs as a variation of some of the more elementary concepts of dialectics. I will get to it in the text below, but I would say there is a paradox or irony in Marx and Engels career of philosophical publishing. You see I think in Hegel's heyday, for Young Hegelians and all philosophers in Germany , it was unthinkable that Hegel would fall into such oblivion as he did. So, Marx and Engels got off in their start with a big emphasis on fighting too much philosophizing (The German Ideology, etc.). When Marx looked up at the time of the Afterword to the Second German edition of Capital he had sort of realized some of what I am getting at here. The bottom line for the moment is that Marx didn't feel the need to write out elementary dialectics because Hegel already had. Marx's dialectic is not just "different than Hegel's but it's direct opposite". It's the whole Hegel flipped around with the center pulled out and used. Being the direct opposite in a dialectical conception is closer than being different. It is an indication of relation or dialectical opposition between the two. Interjections below. >>> Andrew Wayne Austin <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> 12/17 10:09 PM >>> On Wed, 16 Dec 1998, Charles Brown wrote: >The generalization, or transhistorical category of class struggle doesn't >mean it is historically universal. Struggle or contradiction or unity and >struggle of opposites is the more general category which would apply to >all human history. Okay, so you say you do not think that class struggle is a universal category. ______ Charles: Class struggle is not universal in human history. We all agree on that, don't we ? The first sentence of the Manifesto, modern anthropology and archeology, the old stone age , the new stone age, most of human history was not a class society. Classes arose about 7,000 years ago. The Origin of the Family, Private, Property and the State. ____________ But isn't it your position is that the universal dialectic manifests in concrete reality, of which class struggle is one example? _____ Charles: Universal dialectic is like universal non-universal. I guess you should think of how change means difference. If the dialectic is universal , that means change or becoming different is universal. But difference is the opposite of universal. Universal means the same everywhere. A universal dialect means difference everywhere. >But CLASS struggle arises with classes. So the dialectic of class struggle in history is a process that inheres in the social system itself, and is not the manifestation of a universal dialectic? This seems at odds with the position of the universal dialectic. ______ Charles: The class struggle is a particular change going on. It is not the same as all changes everywhere. It is like them in that it is a changing. >I treat [class struggle] as a limited generalization just like the first >sentence. So now you are arguing that the dialectic does not really exist outside of some social dynamics (such as class struggle)? Are you abandoning you previous position? __________ Charles: The dialectic exists in social dynamics and in physical dynamics. My position is (ironically) not changing in this thread. You are thinking wishfully when you say that or refer to back peddling. You wish. _________ >Charles: You asserted that, but you didn't demonstrate it. Natural >selection is dialectical. The struggle for existence involves the >unity and struggle of opposites. Explain this, please. How does the process of random variation and natural selection in populations involve the "unity and contradiction of opposites"? ________ Charles: I responded to this before. Since this comment this discussion has extended. I would recommend Levins and Lewontin's _The Dialectical Biologist_ And I have posted the quote from Stepehn Jay Gould quoting Engels on species evolution as cooperation and struggle, or unity and struggle. However, I would reiterate the model I gave before. The species unit does change as a unity and struggle of opposites, as the genotypical range is both a unity ,as they are all exclusively fertile (definition of a species) and a struggle as some will be selected against that is not pass on their genes to a viable next generation. >Charles: The dialectic of human history is not the same dialectic as that >of natural history. Darwin's theory is not fully dialectical, but it is >dialectical relative to creationism and the prevailing theories of nature >of his day. So now you are saying that whereas natural selection involves the unity and contradiction of opposites - one of the three laws of dialectics - class struggle does not involve the unity and contradiction of opposites? _______ Charles: Andy, you try your best NOT to understand everything. I think that's the unversal negation of the negation operating in your thought. Both class struggle and struggle for existence involve the unity and struggle of opposites. They are different complexes of contradictions. ______ If they are not the same dialectic then what is different about them? _______ Charles: The class struggle is a Lamarckian dialectic. Natural selection is not. Interestingly, I reread the section of the Afterword to the Second German Edition of Capital where the Russian reviewer comments. The amazing thing that has been revived in my mind is that Marx considers himself to be literally doing natural history in writing Capital. We are all familiar, in part because of the fancy Marxists and post modernists, that Marx emphasized that capitalism is not the eternal or "natural" form of production. It is historically specific, as the Russian sketches. But just because Marx doesn't think capitalism is the permanent natural form of political economy doesn't mean he doesn't think it derives through natural processes. Marx considers human history to be a dialectical continuation or sublation of natural history. Human history preserves and overcomes natural history. It is Marx's materialism that he starts with the preservation or the continuity between natural and human history (See The German Ideology). Is it because the dialectic is universal that it can be anything? _________ Charles: Any and everything changes. Nothing stays the same. A rock is such an easy example, I am surprised you ask. A rock dissolves in friction (contradiction) when a river runs over it. A rock is not stable. It is teeming mountain of molecules and atoms all constantly moving. Literally, with positive and negative elements struggling with each other in the structure of the atoms. _________ What do you mean when you say it is dialectical relative to creationism? Do you mean that it subsumes religion within its logic and rises to a new synthesis? ________ Charles: Creationism posits a single act of creation,with no changes in the species since. It is a fixed, eternally unchanging system. Darwin makes a fundamental dialectical change in this by saying new forms arise out of the old. What does it mean to say something is not fully dialectical? Does that mean that it only meets one or two of the three laws of dialectics, such as unity and contradiction of opposites, but does not meet one or both of the other two criteria (quantity into quality and the negation of the negation)? ______ Charles: Lenin in _The Teachings of Karl Marx speaks directly to this issue. He points out that Marx's theory of evolution has more to it than the "current" theory, meaning Darwin's. Darwin's has gradual change ,which is part of Hegel's. Gradual change is more dialectical than creationism with no change. Revolution/evolution is even more Hegelian. So in a way Darwin's lacks the idea that new quality arises from quantitative leaps or discontinuities. >Darwin's theory changed naturalism radically in a dialectical direction >by it being evolutionary. Evolutionism is more dialectical than statics >or whatever. Lamarck had a theory of evolution. Was Lamarck's theory dialectical? (Actually, Lamarck's theory is more dialectical than Darwin's theory, since Lamarck sees forms incorporating change into the organism and rising to new levels of synthesis with each successive generation, what Hegel calls "sublation" or Aufhebung.) What is so special about the dialectic if it is evolutionary theory? What makes it a special theory of evolution? _______ Charles: Darwin's evolutionary theory, especially supplemented by Stephen Jay Gould's punctuated equilibrium, is an example of dialectics in an important science. _______ >But Stephen Jay Gould's punctuated equilibrium adds revolutionary leaps >to Darwin's gradual evolutionism, thereby rendering it even more >dialectica. Perhaps. But we weren't talking about Stephen Jay Gould. _______ Charles: I have been talking about him. Anyway, so what if we have not been talking about him. We are talking about him now that I brought him up. More later, gotta see what you wrote today. Charles Brown Revolutionism is the apotheosis of change.
Andy, I just came across the below. Interjections below. Another dialectical concept is sublation or supersecession or to preserve and overcome ( a contradiction ). Marx, Engels and Lenin use this from Hegel too. It occurs as a variation of some of the more elementary concepts of dialectics. I will get to it in the text below, but I would say there is a paradox or irony in Marx and Engels career of philosophical publishing. You see I think in Hegel's heyday, for Young Hegelians and all philosophers in Germany , it was unthinkable that Hegel would fall into such oblivion as he did. So, Marx and Engels got off in their start with a big emphasis on fighting too much philosophizing (The German Ideology, etc.). When Marx looked up at the time of the Afterword to the Second German edition of Capital he had sort of realized some of what I am getting at here. The bottom line for the moment is that Marx didn't feel the need to write out elementary dialectics because Hegel already had. Marx's dialectic is not just "different than Hegel's but it's direct opposite". It's the whole Hegel flipped around with the center pulled out and used. Being the direct opposite in a dialectical conception is closer than being different. It is an indication of relation or dialectical opposition between the two. Interjections below. >>> Andrew Wayne Austin <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> 12/17 10:09 PM >>> On Wed, 16 Dec 1998, Charles Brown wrote: >The generalization, or transhistorical category of class struggle doesn't >mean it is historically universal. Struggle or contradiction or unity and >struggle of opposites is the more general category which would apply to >all human history. Okay, so you say you do not think that class struggle is a universal category. ______ Charles: Class struggle is not universal in human history. We all agree on that, don't we ? The first sentence of the Manifesto, modern anthropology and archeology, the old stone age , the new stone age, most of human history was not a class society. Classes arose about 7,000 years ago. The Origin of the Family, Private, Property and the State. ____________ But isn't it your position is that the universal dialectic manifests in concrete reality, of which class struggle is one example? _____ Charles: Universal dialectic is like universal non-universal. I guess you should think of how change means difference. If the dialectic is universal , that means change or becoming different is universal. But difference is the opposite of universal. Universal means the same everywhere. A universal dialect means difference everywhere. >But CLASS struggle arises with classes. So the dialectic of class struggle in history is a process that inheres in the social system itself, and is not the manifestation of a universal dialectic? This seems at odds with the position of the universal dialectic. ______ Charles: The class struggle is a particular change going on. It is not the same as all changes everywhere. It is like them in that it is a changing. >I treat [class struggle] as a limited generalization just like the first >sentence. So now you are arguing that the dialectic does not really exist outside of some social dynamics (such as class struggle)? Are you abandoning you previous position? __________ Charles: The dialectic exists in social dynamics and in physical dynamics. My position is (ironically) not changing in this thread. You are thinking wishfully when you say that or refer to back peddling. You wish. _________ >Charles: You asserted that, but you didn't demonstrate it. Natural >selection is dialectical. The struggle for existence involves the >unity and struggle of opposites. Explain this, please. How does the process of random variation and natural selection in populations involve the "unity and contradiction of opposites"? ________ Charles: I responded to this before. Since this comment this discussion has extended. I would recommend Levins and Lewontin's _The Dialectical Biologist_ And I have posted the quote from Stepehn Jay Gould quoting Engels on species evolution as cooperation and struggle, or unity and struggle. However, I would reiterate the model I gave before. The species unit does change as a unity and struggle of opposites, as the genotypical range is both a unity ,as they are all exclusively fertile (definition of a species) and a struggle as some will be selected against that is not pass on their genes to a viable next generation. >Charles: The dialectic of human history is not the same dialectic as that >of natural history. Darwin's theory is not fully dialectical, but it is >dialectical relative to creationism and the prevailing theories of nature >of his day. So now you are saying that whereas natural selection involves the unity and contradiction of opposites - one of the three laws of dialectics - class struggle does not involve the unity and contradiction of opposites? _______ Charles: Andy, you try your best NOT to understand everything. I think that's the unversal negation of the negation operating in your thought. Both class struggle and struggle for existence involve the unity and struggle of opposites. They are different complexes of contradictions. ______ If they are not the same dialectic then what is different about them? _______ Charles: The class struggle is a Lamarckian dialectic. Natural selection is not. Interestingly, I reread the section of the Afterword to the Second German Edition of Capital where the Russian reviewer comments. The amazing thing that has been revived in my mind is that Marx considers himself to be literally doing natural history in writing Capital. We are all familiar, in part because of the fancy Marxists and post modernists, that Marx emphasized that capitalism is not the eternal or "natural" form of production. It is historically specific, as the Russian sketches. But just because Marx doesn't think capitalism is the permanent natural form of political economy doesn't mean he doesn't think it derives through natural processes. Marx considers human history to be a dialectical continuation or sublation of natural history. Human history preserves and overcomes natural history. It is Marx's materialism that he starts with the preservation or the continuity between natural and human history (See The German Ideology). Is it because the dialectic is universal that it can be anything? _________ Charles: Any and everything changes. Nothing stays the same. A rock is such an easy example, I am surprised you ask. A rock dissolves in friction (contradiction) when a river runs over it. A rock is not stable. It is teeming mountain of molecules and atoms all constantly moving. Literally, with positive and negative elements struggling with each other in the structure of the atoms. _________ What do you mean when you say it is dialectical relative to creationism? Do you mean that it subsumes religion within its logic and rises to a new synthesis? ________ Charles: Creationism posits a single act of creation,with no changes in the species since. It is a fixed, eternally unchanging system. Darwin makes a fundamental dialectical change in this by saying new forms arise out of the old. What does it mean to say something is not fully dialectical? Does that mean that it only meets one or two of the three laws of dialectics, such as unity and contradiction of opposites, but does not meet one or both of the other two criteria (quantity into quality and the negation of the negation)? ______ Charles: Lenin in _The Teachings of Karl Marx speaks directly to this issue. He points out that Marx's theory of evolution has more to it than the "current" theory, meaning Darwin's. Darwin's has gradual change ,which is part of Hegel's. Gradual change is more dialectical than creationism with no change. Revolution/evolution is even more Hegelian. So in a way Darwin's lacks the idea that new quality arises from quantitative leaps or discontinuities. >Darwin's theory changed naturalism radically in a dialectical direction >by it being evolutionary. Evolutionism is more dialectical than statics >or whatever. Lamarck had a theory of evolution. Was Lamarck's theory dialectical? (Actually, Lamarck's theory is more dialectical than Darwin's theory, since Lamarck sees forms incorporating change into the organism and rising to new levels of synthesis with each successive generation, what Hegel calls "sublation" or Aufhebung.) What is so special about the dialectic if it is evolutionary theory? What makes it a special theory of evolution? _______ Charles: Darwin's evolutionary theory, especially supplemented by Stephen Jay Gould's punctuated equilibrium, is an example of dialectics in an important science. _______ >But Stephen Jay Gould's punctuated equilibrium adds revolutionary leaps >to Darwin's gradual evolutionism, thereby rendering it even more >dialectica. Perhaps. But we weren't talking about Stephen Jay Gould. _______ Charles: I have been talking about him. Anyway, so what if we have not been talking about him. We are talking about him now that I brought him up. More later, gotta see what you wrote today. Charles Brown Revolutionism is the apotheosis of change. --- from list [EMAIL PROTECTED] ---
