Russ writes:
>It's a question of engagement with the material world not its reflection.
Yes, but if mental processes are dialectical, are they at the same time
part of the material world and material as well? And doesn't the material
world in that case follow dialectical laws? And where does the boundary
between mental and physical go? Consciousness? Semi-consciousness?
Unconscious but in the bits of the brain used for conscious thought
otherwise? Unconscious but in the bits of the brain not used for conscious
thought? Unconscious but not in the brain but in the spinal cord?
Deliberate but not human? Not deliberate, but instinctive, but nevertheless
constituting an active orientation aimed at consuming and reproducing the
environment in an orgy of contradictory transformations? Not animal, but
vegetable doing the same thing?? And isn't the long and the short of it
that all this biological activity in the end boils down to metabolistic
physics and chemistry?
Seems to me Russ and his mates just don't want to call a spade a spade.
If a map isn't a reflection in a mirror, who cares? It's a reflection on
paper etc of a state of geographical reality. Call it reproduction if you
like, the word is less important than the idea. But reflection is a useful
word, just like dear old Aristotle's mimesis in the theory of aesthetics.
If only what happens in the mind is good enough to be called dialectics by
some people, cos they're afraid of projecting human characteristics on to
the world around us, let them just say so and keep it simple. We disagree,
that's all. The trouble is that Marx agreed with us, as Charles so clearly
points out, and not with the princess-on-a-pea semantic word-mincers. These
have a dualistic view of the difference between mind and matter. Marx
didn't.
As I asked before, give us a definition of Marx's actual use of historical
materialism that takes into account all his debts to Hegel, and we'll have
a discussion. Otherwise you might as well spit against the wind.
And isn't it symptomatically dialectical that Russ uses the words
"engagement with the material world" as an excuse for quietism? As if
Lenin, say, didn't engage more with the material world in a day than most
people do in a lifetime.
Cheers,
Hugh
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