Re: The 'formalising' of dialectics.

On Jul 19, 12:53=A0pm, Tom Cod <t...@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
> wrote:
> It bears pointing out also in regard to your point about Shactman and
> Burnham that their intellectual arguments needed to be taken with a
> grain of salt. =A0It's not so much that they didn't genuinely understand
> something, but that they were advancing arguments in bad faith,
> whatever they could come up with, to justify-particularly as to
> Burnham-their own capitulation to reaction, something Burnham did
> consciously, starting from what he viewed as his own personal
> interests as a rich bourgois. =A0

I don't know why you would think their arguments insincere. Merely
that they ened up on the right? Since Abern, Burnham, and Shactman
took 40% of the party with them, it looks like their arguments had
intellectual appeal. Trotsky would have been a fool to wage a whole
struggle against people who weren't even making real arguments. There
are Shactmanites today, and they aren't always complete idiots. Sounds
like you have a conspirativist view of class pressures on ideology.

The question no one seems to want to look at is whether Trotsky's
intervention concerning dialectics advanced the discussion. Was
Trotsky's intervention a helpful corrective to Shactman's
undialectical thinking or did it merely express truisms that didn't
require dialectics to reach or that weren't actually relevant to the
issue of the nature of Russia? Trotsky says dialectics isl a tool. If
so,  what work did it do in responding to Shactman that couldn't be
carried by other methods? It seems to me these would be the questions
asked by any Marxist serious about understanding the practical role of
dialectical thinking. But the dialecticians refuse to get specific,
and the anti-dialecticians refuse to address the points Trotsky
actually makes about how dialectics fits it.

srd