Re: The 'formalising' of dialectics.

On 22 Jul, 19:48, stephen <srdiam...@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
> wrote:
> On Jul 20, 7:25 am, 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,  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'.
>
> 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

I'll reply later on the main points here but just as a matter of
interest do you think that Wohlforth was better on questions of theory
than David North?  Also I understand that Wohlforth and Fields had
already done a lot of damage to the WL branches before the
intervention of the IC, do you think that this could have been better
handled?

Roger