Eubulides <[email protected]> wrote: > So why shouldn't we doubt Lukacs as much as we doubt Morishima or > Roemer, or Luxemburg herself?
Sure. Luxemburg was wrong on stuff (e.g., crisis theory), just like everyone else. It's great to doubt Lukacs too, since critical thinking is part of the dialectical thinking he recommended. (If you reject critical thinking, what are you left with??) I really don't know if I agree with Luckacs' vision of what dialectical method is (since it's been literally decades since I read him), but at least I see the dialectic (as I interpret that word) as the closest to defining an "orthodox" method in Marxian political. A method refers to a set of questions, while a theory such as the "falling rate of profit" refers to specific answers (conclusions). As I see it, dialectical method involves avoiding _conscious omission_ of relevant aspects of the question at hand. It's about the need for completeness of one's empirical analysis. For example, to understand capitalism, one should not leave out a holistic perspective and the likelihood that the system is always changing due to conflicts and tensions that are inherent to the system. NC economics, for example, fall for this, thinking of capitalism in totally individualistic and static terms (perhaps unified only by an imaginary Walrasian market system with a god-like Auctioneer steering it), with the whole reduced to the parts and dynamics being a form of static equilibrium (cf. growth theory). Also, I'd emphasize the "materialist" side of dialectics, where the word "materialism" does not refer to "matter in motion" but instead to the importance of human practice in the historical process. People make history, but not exactly as they please. -- Jim Devine / "Reality is that which, when you stop believing in it, doesn't go away." -- Philip K. Dick _______________________________________________ pen-l mailing list [email protected] https://lists.csuchico.edu/mailman/listinfo/pen-l
