Re: The 'formalising' of dialectics.

On 20 Jul, 09:16, stephen <srdiam...@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
> wrote:
> On Jul 19, 12:53 pm, 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.  It'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.
>
> 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

Trotsky's murder cut short the struggle for theoretical clarity
regarding the US SWP.  I think he would have done more work on the
subject over a period of time.  What we do know, however, is that
Lenin's work on philosophy that culminated in his work 'Materialism
and Empirio-criticism' played an im****tant role in clarifying the
issues for the Bolsheviks during a difficult time for the party.  And
of course Lenin went on to study Hegel again during World War I to
sharpen his understanding of dialectics.  He didn't do this because he
was 'into mysticism'.

Roger