I’m reading through some of our literature (namely Socialism, Utopian and Scientific) and I really get the sense that many of our intellectual forebears think that everything important in philosophy happened in Europe. Granted, European philosophy is necessarily of primary relevance in a critique of early capitalism, but when Engels traces the history of these strains of thought (materialism, dialectics, etc.), they all go back to ancient Greece. I find this suspicious.

Is this a consequence of lopsided education, either of the target audience or of Engels himself? Have non-western Marxists grafted dialectical materialism onto Asian or African philosophy? Are there analogous movements within these cultures that dovetail nicely with Dialectical Materialism? Or do they more or less take Engels at his word here? Maybe I’m misinterpreting something.

  • @afellowkid
    link
    92 years ago

    Have non-western Marxists grafted dialectical materialism onto Asian or African philosophy? Are there analogous movements within these cultures that dovetail nicely with Dialectical Materialism?

    Some parts of Mao’s On Contradiction come to mind here. In the opening section of this essay, “The Two World Outlooks”, Mao starts off with a Lenin quote: “The two basic (or two possible? or two historically observable?) conceptions of development (evolution) are: development as decrease and increase, as repetition, and development as a unity of opposites (the division of a unity into mutually exclusive opposites and their reciprocal relation).”

    Then Mao explains that what Lenin is describing here are the metaphysical way of thinking and the dialectical way of thinking. He says:

    In China another name for metaphysics is hsuan-hsueh. For a long period in history whether in China or in Europe, this way of thinking, which is part and parcel of the idealist world outlook, occupied a dominant position in human thought. […] In China, there was the metaphysical thinking exemplified in the saying “Heaven changeth not, likewise the Tao changeth not”, and it was supported by the decadent feudal ruling classes for a long time. Mechanical materialism and vulgar evolutionism, which were imported from Europe in the last hundred years, are supported by the bourgeoisie.

    On dialectical thinking, he says this:

    The dialectical world outlook emerged in ancient times both in China and in Europe. Ancient dialectics, however, had a somewhat spontaneous and naive character; in the social and historical conditions then prevailing, it was not yet able to form a theoretical system, hence it could not fully explain the world and was supplanted by metaphysics. The famous German philosopher Hegel, who lived in the late 18th and early 19th centuries, made most important contributions to dialectics, but his dialectics was idealist. It was not until Marx and Engels, the great protagonists of the proletarian movement, had synthesized the positive achievements in the history of human knowledge and, in particular, critically absorbed the rational elements of Hegelian dialectics and created the great theory of dialectical and historical materialism that an unprecedented revolution occurred in the history of human knowledge. This theory was further developed by Lenin and Stalin. As soon as it spread to China, it wrought tremendous changes in the world of Chinese thought.

    Later, in a section of the essay that deals with avoiding one-sidedness when analyzing a contradiction, Mao draws on various Chinese works of writing in which he sees the underlying ideas of materialist dialectics being applied:

    When Sun Wu Tzu said in discussing military science, “Know the enemy and know yourself, and you can fight a hundred battles with no danger of defeat”, he was referring to the two sides in a battle. Wei Chengi of the Tang Dynasty also understood the error of one- sidedness when he said, “Listen to both sides and you will be enlightened, heed only one side and you will be benighted.” But our comrades often look at problems one-sidedly, and so they often run into snags. In the novel Shui Hu Chuan, Sung Chiang thrice attacked Chu Village. Twice he was defeated because he was ignorant of the local conditions and used the wrong method. Later he changed his method; first he investigated the situation, and he familiarized himself with the maze of roads, then he broke up the alliance between the Li, Hu and Chu Villages and sent his men in disguise into the enemy camp to lie in wait, using a stratagem similar to that of the Trojan Horse in the foreign story. And on the third occasion he won. There are many examples of materialist dialectics in Shui Hu Chuan, of which the episode of the three attacks on Chu Village is one of the best.

    In these passages from Mao, we can see that Mao easily points to Chinese philosophy and literature for examples of dialectical and dialectical materialist thinking that originated on their own in China.

    Dialectical materialism can basically be thought of/discovered by anybody, and so it can be found in various forms all over the world in various periods, with varying levels of similarity to Marx’s observations. Marx’s contribution did come from his historical place and time in Europe and therefore carries certain aspects of its European origin with it, and while it’s absolutely worthwhile to examine and consider the effects of that and of the historical influence of Europe at the time (and now), the European aspects are also not essential to the overall utility of dialectical materialism as a concept, and even if Marx never existed, we would still have what we could call a form of dialectical materialism develop somewhere, and it would carry influences of its place and time with it as well. I would appreciate any corrections on my description here, but that’s how I understand it.

    • @NikkiBOP
      link
      22 years ago

      This is super interesting and exactly what I was looking for, no offense to the other valid points made. I’ve also recently learned about Lao Tzu, who was a contemporary of Heraclitus, the “Father of Dialectics.”

    • @bucks
      link
      22 years ago

      awesome writeup, great read