Re: The 'formalising' of dialectics.

On Jul 7, 6:36=A0pm, Tom Cod <t...@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
> wrote:
> Yeah, while we're at it, isn't a lot of this "dialectics" so much
> mumbo-jumbo or bunkum
> espoused by theologians, most of whom don't know what they're talking
> about except to say that things
> can get reaallly complicated or that there is this mechanical process
> of conflict between opposites, but if things
> don't really turn out the way we thought or we can't explain something
> then it's "dialectical", see, like so much mysticism like the Holy
> Trinity or Transubstantiation or some other obscure doctrine we common
> folk need priests to safeguard and explain to us.
>
> What is this doctrine anyway and where do you see it recognized in any
> sphere outside the realm of a certain milieu of the Marxist Left.
> Surely, if one is to say that formal logic has its limits to
> the point of ossification one is to speak an aphorism, as would the
> observation that all phenomena
> need to be looked at their full context, in all their aspects,
> particularly tem****arily.
>
> A Workers League guy once told me years ago that dialectics is summed
> by the critique of formal logic's "A=3DA" =A0OK, but A does equal A-at
an=
y
> particular point in time. =A0When I see this doctrine generally accepted
> in the scientific community or a significant section thereof, then
> maybe I'll take it seriously. =A0 It was refre****ng after listening to
> all this tedium from Wohlforth and the like to peruse Maurice
> Cornforth's (of the British CP) 1940s philosophy pamphlet which is
> sociologically oriented with the first sentence talking about cl*****
> and class struggle. =A0OK maybe he was a Stalinist, but hey if Stalin
> said the world wasn't flat would he be wrong just because he's Stalin.

I don't understand why you--who always shows great deference to
"revolutionary leaders"--refuses to show it on dialectics. Lenin,
Trotsky--and you'll like this one, Mao--said dialectics was
indispensible to revolutionary practice.

srd