Re: The 'formalising' of dialectics.

On Jul 6, 8:19=A0am, stephen <srdiam...@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
> wrote:
> On Jul 1, 7:13=A0pm, "Jim F." <m...@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
> wrote:
>
> > So what's peoples opinion here concerning Rosa Lichtenstein's
> > Anti-dialectics website at:
=A0http://homepage.ntlworld.com/rosa.l/inde=
x.htm
>
> The length is daunting, and it really should be read--if at all--
> consecutively, as the author points out. How lengthy is this anti-
> dialectical analysis-***-tirade? We get the following admission by
> Lichtenstein:
>
> "This week sees a 'devastating' reply to the 1.3 million words
> published at my site in just over 3000, from Jack Conrad, resident
> Dialectical Magus of the CPGB." (http://homepage.ntlworld.com/rosa.l/
> Conrad_Heart_Of_Darkness.htm)
>
> I haven't read it yet, but I'm hoping the Conrad/Lichtenstein exchange
> provides an entry point to understanding Lichtenstein's claims, if not
> the implied one that her words are sufficiently valuable that someone
> would wish to read 1.3 million of them.
>
> srd

I thought the same myself. Yes she's irritating. And taking a cursory
look at the "entry level" debate she writes this:

"Engels asserted the following:

[Q]ualitative changes can only occur by the quantitative addition or
subtraction of matter or motion (so-called energy)=85. Hence it is
impossible to alter the quality of a body without addition or
subtraction of matter or motion, i.e. without quantitative alteration
of the body concerned.1

Such changes are neither smooth nor gradual:

=2E..[Q]uantitative changes, ac***ulating gradually, lead in the end to
changes of quality, and that these changes of quality represent leaps,
interruptions in gradualness=85. That is how all Nature acts=85.2

And yet, there are many things in nature that undergo smooth
qualitative change -- for example, melting metal, glass, plastic,
butter, toffee and chocolate. Sure, some things change "nodally", but
many do not. So, the "nodal" aspect of this Law is defective.

Unfortunately, this implies that it cannot be used to argue that the
transformation from capitalism to socialism must be nodal too, for we
have no idea whether this transformation is one of these exceptions.
Plainly, we could only use this Law if it had no exceptions
whatsoever.

This means that the whole point of adopting this Law in the first
place has now vanished."

=2E........................................................................=
..............................................................

Her remarks are so inaccurate and trite that they make one wonder at
her hide in writing millions (!) of words presumably in the same vein
- as this is the simplest stuff to deal with - it could be called
"entry level dialectics", sort of sub-Hegelian.

In spite of what she says, all these things "metal, glass, plastic,
butter, toffee and chocolate" do at some point undergo "nodal" changes
at a certain point. Metal (unless an alloy, an element) va****ises,
glass (a compound) if it is cooled undergoes an apparent
solidification, butter (a mixture) caramelises, toffee (a mixture)
carbonizes, chocolate (a mixture) undergoes complex degradation. We
might as well add say ...a tree, a horse.... And even if there were an
exception - an infinite range of melting without an qualitative change
this would prove NOTHING at all against Engels=92 point. He doesn't
claim a one-to-one analogy between any two dialectical processes - let
alone a revolutionary (or for that matter gradualist) process and
simple natural processes - does she think Engels is as ignorant as she
is?

Conrad, though some of what he writes has a satisfying historical
sweep, doesn't pick up these errors. But he does go on - rather in the
manner of a dilettante.

Is this the amateur hour?

A Marxist philosopher of the calibre of John Hoffman (Marxism and the
Theory of Praxis) gives a comprehensive and worthy Marxist answer to
those like RL who deny the dialectic in nature.