Rob, Here are some comments: >>> Rob Schaap <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> 01/13 9:34 AM >>> G'day Thaxists, Just wondering if I got any of the following wrong. The possibility of real historical change in the world comes with the introduction of philosophy into it, no? Human beings, and nothing else, can author real historical change - change by and for humanity. ______ Charles: I'm not sure what you mean by "real" history. Philosophy starts with the Greeks 2500 years ago ( I won't do my Afrocentered thing on how there is a lot of philosophy in Egypt before that; See _Stolen Legacy_ for example). There was a lot of human history before that. Also, there is natural history. Marx says in the first Preface to Capital that for him political economy is an extension of natural history. Nature has a history. That is a dialectical understanding of it. Darwin supplies a big jolt to get beyond creationism, i.e. every species created at one time and not having history. Kant demonstrated that the solar system has a history. _________ Without conscious human reproduction/transformation, there is only pre-history. History therefore begins only when humanity has its hands on the wheel and knows it has it there. ______ Charles: Only humans can make things-in-themselves into things-for-us. ______ The application of correct philosophical method to the real stuff of the world is the prerequisite for real change. In other words, applying the dialectic to the material, (the notion of thesis, antithesis and synthesis applied to society, whose reproduction has ever been based upon internal - and dynamically stressful, and therefore immanently changeable - allocations of control over its economic order) is the first step into history. _______ Charles: Oh I see. You are talking about Marx's comment that we have been in pre-history while class struggle unconsciously determined changes. However, in this case it is the working class overthrowing the bourgeoisie and ALL class society that begins real history. Marx and Engels seemed to phrase it that their discovery of materialist dialectics was a reflection of the rise of the capitalism and the proletariat,not that their applying philosophy to the world makes the change. _______ Comradely, Charles I may not have put it as uncontentiously well as it could be put, but it is my suspicion my bits of clumsy paraphrasing come close to describing the guts of the politics shared by most assembled here. And if that's right, we gotta ask why we're getting so hot under the collar on the relationship between the dialectic and materialism, don't we? And if I'm wrong, I'm about to blush prettily and mebbe learn something of significance ... for a change. Cheers, Rob.
Rob, Here are some comments: >>> Rob Schaap <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> 01/13 9:34 AM >>> G'day Thaxists, Just wondering if I got any of the following wrong. The possibility of real historical change in the world comes with the introduction of philosophy into it, no? Human beings, and nothing else, can author real historical change - change by and for humanity. ______ Charles: I'm not sure what you mean by "real" history. Philosophy starts with the Greeks 2500 years ago ( I won't do my Afrocentered thing on how there is a lot of philosophy in Egypt before that; See _Stolen Legacy_ for example). There was a lot of human history before that. Also, there is natural history. Marx says in the first Preface to Capital that for him political economy is an extension of natural history. Nature has a history. That is a dialectical understanding of it. Darwin supplies a big jolt to get beyond creationism, i.e. every species created at one time and not having history. Kant demonstrated that the solar system has a history. _________ Without conscious human reproduction/transformation, there is only pre-history. History therefore begins only when humanity has its hands on the wheel and knows it has it there. ______ Charles: Only humans can make things-in-themselves into things-for-us. ______ The application of correct philosophical method to the real stuff of the world is the prerequisite for real change. In other words, applying the dialectic to the material, (the notion of thesis, antithesis and synthesis applied to society, whose reproduction has ever been based upon internal - and dynamically stressful, and therefore immanently changeable - allocations of control over its economic order) is the first step into history. _______ Charles: Oh I see. You are talking about Marx's comment that we have been in pre-history while class struggle unconsciously determined changes. However, in this case it is the working class overthrowing the bourgeoisie and ALL class society that begins real history. Marx and Engels seemed to phrase it that their discovery of materialist dialectics was a reflection of the rise of the capitalism and the proletariat,not that their applying philosophy to the world makes the change. _______ Comradely, Charles I may not have put it as uncontentiously well as it could be put, but it is my suspicion my bits of clumsy paraphrasing come close to describing the guts of the politics shared by most assembled here. And if that's right, we gotta ask why we're getting so hot under the collar on the relationship between the dialectic and materialism, don't we? And if I'm wrong, I'm about to blush prettily and mebbe learn something of significance ... for a change. Cheers, Rob. --- from list [EMAIL PROTECTED] --- --- from list [EMAIL PROTECTED] ---
