Re: The 'formalising' of dialectics.

On 15 Jul, 00:32, Tom Cod <t...@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
> wrote:
> Fine, then you need to show what that outlook is and back it up with
> some evidence, otherwise reasonable folks will continue to view this
> as psuedo-religious obscurantism backed up with tautological arguments
> by people who might not know what they're talking about.  If you can't
> explain it, then there's got to be a problem like adhering to some
> sacrosanct medieval doctrine emotionally in the manner of a religious
> belief.
>
> Workers will back revolution when they not only see the need for it
> but also view as a practically credible option.  The idea that
> pragmatism is bad because its "bourgois ideology" will not do,
> moreover it is also an diversion from more pressing ideas like
> economics and the mortgage meltdown.  Basically this dialectics stuff
> is a philistine ****bboleth of petty bourgois intellectuals who think
> the workers movement needs them to interpret hidden mystical ideas and
> laws.  seems to me like bull****, what Lenin called all the sophisms
> by which privileged cl***** try to obscure their interests.  No, we
> don't need dialectics and we don't need them, rather we need to look
> out for OUR OWN interests, not those of political cults.  Wohlforth
> got into that and became the laughingstock of the Left.

I don't know which section of the US Labor movement that you represent
but it seems to me that the ideology that Trotsky fought in 1939-40 is
not only alive and well in the US Labor movement but has gone somewhat
backwards to more crass forms of pragmatism.

Logic is not im****tant to you, well all fine and good, certainly not
im****tant enough for a serious study but for the working class to take
power and not remain as an oppressed class it has to go beyond the
intellectual outlook of the bourgeoisie and not accept the primitive
thinking that the bourgeoisie prescribes for the working class.

You are confusing the limited practical reformist outlook of the
working class with a revolutionary outlook which of necessity has to
study all the im****tant developments in philosophy especially
dialectics.  You invoke Lenin in your comments but Lenin made a
serious study of Hegel and dialectics and emphasised in 'What is to be
done' that revolutionary consciousness does not develop through the
efforts of the working class alone but is brought to it from outside
(first by Marx and Engels and later by revolutionary parties).

I will be very disappointed if all those who post here from the US
basically agree with your position, but your very clear opposition to
dialectics does show the overwhelming influence still in the US Labor
movement of the US ruling class and goes some way to explain David
North's hostility to Gerry Healy's writings on dialectical materialism
in the early 1980s.  Of course, North is not a crass pragmatist but
his hostility was towards the development of dialectical materialism
which he would leave in an 'ossified' form in the writings of earlier
Marxists.  When Healy dared to produce original work in the
development of dialectical materialism all the world's revisionists
'jumped down his throat' and did everything in their power to ridicule
and ostracise him and they still do even after his death in 1989.

Now Healy's work is not enough in the present day and dialectical
materialism has to be further developed in the light of new scientific
discoveries and the changes in the world that have taken place since
the 1980s but it seems the 'old codgers' that post to this newsgroup
will have no part in this.

Roger