Re: The 'formalising' of dialectics.

On Jul 17, 9:51=A0am, tom.2...@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
 wrote:
> On Jul 15, 11:48 am, Tom Cod <t...@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
> wrote:
>
>
>
>
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> > No, that's not how politics and political conciousness work and the
> > idea that a vanguard party of petty bourgois
> > intellectuals is needed to lead the working class is both a dogmatic
> > ****bboleth and petty bourgois elitism. =A0In actuality what it leads
to
> > more often than not is the working class being contrained by petty
> > bourgois class interests and bureacratism. =A0Rather, intellectuals,
> > marxists or not, need to learn from the workers about their lives and
> > issues. =A0This focus on "philosophy" is fundamentally an idealist
> > position focused on obscure abstract ideas, not reality and in no way
> > represents the sine quo non of revolutionary marxism; that workers
> > need to study obscure and abstruse ideas like philospohy grad students
> > is silly and a waste of time. =A0Where do correct ideas come from
> > anyway? =A0from PRACTICE.
>
> > I has the privilege of meeting Healy once. =A0A very nice guy, a
> > militant worker, but someone who struck me as being of limited
> > literacy. =A0Thus the idea that he was some kind of philosophe is
> > laughable; he should have known better. =A0Nonetheless, as stated
> > earlier, revolutionary struggle is not about philosophes and their
> > ideas, it wasn't about that in the 18th Century and it isn't about
> > that now. =A0It is both pretentious and politically inept.
>
> > No, workers need to become more politically and socially "class
> > conscious" which is something different than a being conversant in
> > obscure academic issues of philosophy. =A0This focus on a "turn to
> > philosophy" (turn to the peasants, turn to industry, but a turn to
> > philosophy?) is alien to that, representing the petty bourgois ethos
> > of small groups of intellectuals and experts studying complex stuff
> > and then patronizingly doleing it out to the stupid m*****. =A0As the
> > Maoist slogan from the Cultural Revolution went: =A0Better Red than
> > "Expert"! =A0We want no condescending saviors!
>
> Leon Trotsky in =A0"In Defense of Marxism": A Petty-Bourgeois Opposition
> in the Socalist Workers Party: Theoetical Skepticism and Exlecticism
>
> "The authors of the article did not show, could not and did not care
> to show, this internal connection between philosophy and the material
> development of society, and they frankly explained why.
>
> =93The two authors of the present article,=94 they wrote of themselves,
> =93differ thoroughly on their estimate of the general theory of
> dialectical materialism, one of them accepting it and the other
> rejecting it ... There is nothing anomalous in such a situation.
> Though theory is doubtless always in one way or another related to
> practice, the relation is not invariably direct or immediate; and as
> we have before had occasion to remark, human beings often act
> inconsistently. From the point of view of each of the authors there is
> in the other a certain such inconsistency between =91philosophical
> theory=92 and political practice, which might on some occasion lead to
> decisive concrete political disagreement. But it does not now, nor has
> anyone yet demonstrated that agreement or disagreement on the more
> abstract doctrines of dialectical materialism necessarily affects
> today=92s and tomorrow=92s concrete political issues-and political
> parties, programs and struggles are based on such concrete issues. We
> all may hope that as we go along or when there is more leisure,
> agreement may also be reached on the more abstract questions.
> Meanwhile there is fascism and war and unemployment.=94
>
> What is the meaning of this thoroughly astoni****ng reasoning? Inasmuch
> as some people through a bad method sometimes reach correct
> conclusions, and inasmuch as some people through a correct method not
> infrequently reach incorrect conclusions, therefore ... the method is
> not of great im****tance. We shall meditate upon methods sometime when
> we have more leisure, but now we have other things to do. Imagine how
> a worker would react upon complaining to his foreman that his tools
> were bad and receiving the reply: With bad tools it is possible to
> turn out a good job, and with good tools many people only waste
> material. I am afraid that such a worker, particularly if he is on
> piece-work, would respond to the foreman with an unacademic phrase. A
> worker is faced with refractory materials which show resistance and
> which because of that compel him to appreciate fine tool=92s, whereas a
> petty-bourgeois intellectual =96 alas! =96 utilizes as his =93tools=94
> fugitive observations and superficial generalizations =96 until major
> events club him on the head.
>
> To demand that every party member occupy himself with the philosophy
> of dialectics naturally would be lifeless pedantry. But a worker who
> has gone through the school of the class struggle gains from his own
> experience an inclination toward dialectical thinking. Even if unaware
> of this term, he readily accepts the method itself and its
> conclusions. With a petty bourgeois it is worse. There are of course
> petty-bourgeois elements organically linked with the workers, who go
> over to the proletarian point of view without an internal revolution.
> But these constitute an insignificant minority. The matter is quite
> different with the academically trained petty bourgeoisie. Their
> theoretical prejudices have already been given finished form at the
> school bench. Inasmuch as they succeeded in gaining a great deal of
> knowledge both useful and useless without the aid of the dialectic,
> they believe that they can continue excellently through life without
> it. In reality they dispense with the dialectic only to the extent
> they fail to check, to polish, and to sharpen theoretically their
> tools of thought, and to the extent that they fail to break
> practically from the narrow circle of their daily relation****ps. When
> thrown against great events they are easily lost and relapse again
> into petty-bourgeois ways of thinking."
>
> The entire article is at:
>
> http://www.marxists.org/archive/trotsky/idom/dm/09-pbopp.htm-
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