Re: The 'formalising' of dialectics.

On Jul 20, 7:25=A0am, rab <rogeralanblackw...@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
> wrote, first
quoting me:

<Deletion>
> > 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, =A0what 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. =A0I think he would have done more work on the
> subject over a period of time. =A0What 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. =A0And
> of course Lenin went on to study Hegel again during World War I to
> sharpen his understanding of dialectics. =A0He didn't do this because he
> was 'into mysticism'.
>
You can use Lenin as the example, if you wish, but my Trotsky example
is probably easier to handle for immediate discussion, because
Trotsky's discussion focused on a particular issue. But your comment
does not seem to me a scientific approach to the use of dialectics.
Lenin studies Hegel, but we should not merely take Lenin's opinion,
without independent study, as whether this study was useful
politically. He undertook a study of Hegel during World War I, but the
question is, how did the understanding he extracted from Hegel
actually help him solve specific political problems?

I have to admit, I don't understand Trotsky's remark about dialectics
being like finger exercises for a musician. This comment could be
taken to imply that dialectics is helpful because its study tones
mental processes, a position that seems like yours. I gather you think
that by studying Hegel, you become better equipped to deal with
political crises, even if you never make use of dialectical premises.
Although I can't offer a counter-interpretation of Trotsky's remark, I
really don't think that's what he was recommending, since, after all,
he _directly_ applied dialectical thinking to the Russian question.
(Also, Lenin said chess--not dialectics--was the "gymnasium of the
mind." <g>))

In my view, the average political issue requires little of express
dialectical thinking. It isn't that dialectical processes aren't
involved, but that once the underlying issues are understood, they
become incor****ated into formalized theory. Those who remark on a
commonplace political conclusion being "dialectical" --Holmes is a
major offender--seem not to understand the role of dialectical
thinking. The class nature of Russia was such a question, one breaking
new ground, where habitual and purely formal approaches are
inadequate.

I think Trotsky's discussion contains the answer to my question and to
Tom Cod's objections. I think posters are unable to explicate the
actual role of dialectics in arriving at Trotsky's conclusions on
Russia because they don't understand them and make the same
undialectical error in considering the class nature of various regimes
today. I think the explanation I offer agrees with and descends from
Wohlforth's explication of Trotsky's discussion, if I recall, in the
WL pamphlet "Marxism and American Pragmatism," which I recall being
impressed with.

"Vulgar thought" says of a specified social system that its current
functioning is what matters. "Common sense" tells us that it doesn't
matter how a system got the way it is; only its current functioning
matters. How often have you heard this informally from people
espousing an exploiting class analysis of Stalinist Russia? Whether
because of the dominance of a metaphysical bourgeois ideology or a
natively static nature to the first phase of cognition--bothi, in my
view--it seems at first sight _absurd_ that anything but the present
characterization of a system should be involved in predicting its
future evolution. But, dialectically speaking, there is no "present"
characterization, because there are no infinitesimal points in time, a
notion useful as an abstraction in physics but disastrous for
sociology.

Trotsky is saying you can only appraise the nature of Russia
historically, by looking at the process of the state's formation.
Marxism is a historical science, in the sense that when it deals with
the nature of social institutions, the first criterion is the manner
of their formation. This historical conceptualization of institutions
issues from dialectics. Relying on vulgar thought or ordinary common
sense, one would never arrive at a historical characterization of the
Russian state. On the surface, it is just too "obvious" that the
nature of a state must be contained in its present nature and cannot
be inferred from its history.

The point continues to be lost today by those who *****s Russia and
China--or in the other direction, those who wrongly *****sed Cuba in
1961. The existence of billionaires or the expliotation of labor in
today's China, for example, has no direct bearing on the nature of the
Chinese state. Trotsky would say to those taking a metaphysical
approach, "when did the counter-revolution occur." For China to be
capitalist, a qualitative change had to occur, and if we can find no
event where quantity was transformed into quality, we must reject the
*****sment that the nature of the state has been reversed. The same
goes for Russia, theoretically, although empirically better candidates
exist for a transformative event. (I think the problem some of us have
with *****sing Russia is that we just don't know enough of the _right_
kind of facts to *****s the nature of Yeltsin's ascension. But the
absence of an apparent social revolution must be the starting point of
analysis.)

If dialectics is a "tool," it makes specific contributions to
political discussions. Those contributions are part of what must be
understood. It isn't enough to speak in general laudatory terms about
dialectics.

srd