![]() Positive and negative absolutely exclude one another cause and effect stand in a rigid antithesis, one to the other.” For him, a thing either exists or does not exist a thing cannot at the same time be itself and something else. “To the metaphysician, things and their mental reflexes, ideas, are isolated, are to be considered one after the other and apart from each other, are objects of investigation fixed, rigid, given once for all. ![]() But what Marxists counterpose dialectics against metaphysics they mean specifically Western metaphysics, and in particular the mode of thought dominant in post-Enlightenment Europe. Metaphysics is to the modern mind merely the philosophical study of the fundamental nature of reality so dialectical materialism is simply a branch of metaphysics. Marxists use several pieces of terminology in ways alien to modern philosophers the most important of these is ‘metaphysics’. I always find the third approach the most useful, and its where I’ll focus my efforts later, but we’ll start in true dialectical fashion with its negation. There are several methods by which one might approach large topics: to define a thing by what it is not to put it in the context of its intellectual history and finally, to outline what a thing is and what it does. ![]() My case is simply that beneath a century of mystification, there’s still some things worth knowing. But it is true that Lenin, Stalin and Mao each contributed in some way. It is wrong to claim, as Vaush did, that ‘dialectical materialism’ exists only to justify the behaviour of autocrats. These scholars themselves often laboured under tyrannical regimes. So what we have is mostly snippets, dutifully assembled and given coherence by later scholars. Unhelpfully, their framework was so foundational to their thinking that they never bothered to write it all down in one place. The two founders of modern anti-capitalism are best known as political economists, historians and sociologists, but were first and foremost philosophers. So this will be a blog about dialectical materialism - the philosophical framework in which Marx and Engels operated. Simple awareness of the existence and operation of alternative ontological, metaphysical, epistemological and metaethical assumptions can help us overcome much of the social and interpersonal conflict that those assumptions generate. Nevertheless, as I’ve grown and matured as a writer I’ve found there’s valuable insights in the old texts. Classical Marxism is almost, but not quite, crank philosophy. It’s often incomprehensible, and so removed from conventional Western modes of thought that the left can appear mad, divorced from commonsense notions or isolated in its ivory tower. I have to admit, when someone truly knowledgeable and enmeshed in this way of thought (such as EJ) tries to explain it, I cringe. Academic philosophy is always obtuse and much of Marx’s and Engel’s insight has become ossified and calcified with a century of additions, explanations and assumed knowledge. ![]() But thinkers on the left often do themselves few favours. I may have also subjected myself to a ‘debate’ on Marxist philosophy between leftish YouTuber Vaush and ML-adjacent anarchist Emerican Johnson (‘EJ’), I’ve been struck how both professional historians such as Hunt and amateurs such as Vaush both deploy a vulgar understanding of Marxist terminology and concepts - a language of modes of production, fixed stages of development, class contradiction and the inevitability of revolution that reflects a good-quality liberal education during which Marx was taught - but never applied. I recently read Tristan Hunt’s biography of Friedrich Engels on vacation. ![]()
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