Re: The 'formalising' of dialectics.

Oh, I don't pretend to "represent" anything in the labor movemet.
Presently I'm a criminal defense attorney, but prior to that I spent
20 years as a blue collar worker belonging on occasions to unions: the
ILWU, the Sailors Union of the Pacific and the Inland Boatman's Union
(cannery workers) on a rank and file basis.  Your connection with the
labor movement?  not that that is required here, but you brought it
up.

> > is a philistine ****bboleth of petty bourgois intellectuals who think
> > the workers movement needs them to interpret hidden mystical ideas and
> > laws. =A0seems to me like bull****, what Lenin called all the sophisms
> > by which privileged cl***** try to obscure their interests. =A0No, 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. =A0Wohlforth
> > 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. =A0You 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. =A0Of 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. =A0When 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- Hide quoted text -
>
> - Show quoted text -