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  13. Socialism: Utopian and Scientific
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  • Comrade_Improving
    1·
    24 days ago

    To answer the second question let’s first look at some quotes from Engels and Lenin:

    F. Engels - Socialism: Utopian and Scientific

    But then come the Neo-Kantian agnostics and say: We may correctly perceive the qualities of a thing, but we cannot by any sensible or mental process grasp the thing-in-itself. This “thing-in-itself” is beyond our ken. To this Hegel, long since, has replied: If you know all the qualities of a thing, you know the thing itself; nothing remains but the fact that the said thing exists without us; and, when your senses have taught you that fact, you have grasped the last remnant of the thing-in-itself, Kant’s celebrated unknowable Ding an sich. To which it may be added that in Kant’s time our knowledge of natural objects was indeed so fragmentary that he might well suspect, behind the little we knew about each of them, a mysterious “thing-in-itself”. But one after another these ungraspable things have been grasped, analyzed, and, what is more, reproduced by the giant progress of science; and what we can produce we certainly cannot consider as unknowable.

    F. Engels - Anti-Duhring - Chapter 1.9 - Eternal Truths

    In this sense human thought is just as much sovereign as not sovereign, and its capacity for knowledge just as much unlimited as limited. It is sovereign and unlimited in its disposition, its vocation, its possibilities and its historical ultimate goal; it is not sovereign and it is limited in its individual realisation and in reality at any particular moment.

    It is just the same with eternal truths. If mankind ever reached the stage at which it should work only with eternal truths, with results of thought which possess sovereign validity and an unconditional claim to truth, it would then have reached the point where the infinity of the intellectual world both in its actuality and in its potentiality had been exhausted, and thus the famous miracle of the counted uncountable would have been performed.

    Are there then nevertheless eternal truths, final and ultimate truths? Certainly there are. We can divide the whole realm of knowledge in the traditional way into three great departments. The first includes all sciences that deal with inanimate nature and are to a greater or lesser degree susceptible of mathematical treatment: mathematics, astronomy, mechanics, physics, chemistry. If it gives anyone any pleasure to use mighty words for very simple things, it can be asserted that certain results obtained by these sciences are eternal truths, final and ultimate truths; for which reason these sciences are known as the exact sciences. But very far from all their results have this validity.

    V. Lenin – Materialism and Empirio-Criticism – Chapters 2.5 and 2.6

    To be a materialist is to acknowledge objective truth, which is revealed to us by our sense-organs. To acknowledge objective truth, i.e., truth not dependent upon man and mankind, is, in one way or another, to recognise absolute truth. And it is this “one way or another” which distinguishes the metaphysical materialist Dühring from the dialectical materialist Engels

    For Bogdanov (as for all the Machists) recognition of the relativity of our knowledge excludes even the least admission of absolute truth. For Engels absolute truth is compounded from relative truths. Bogdanov is a relativist; Engels is a dialectician.

    Human thought then by its nature is capable of giving, and does give, absolute truth, which is compounded of a sum-total of relative truths. Each step in the development of science adds new grains to the sum of absolute truth, but the limits of the truth of each scientific proposition are relative, now expanding, now shrinking with the growth of knowledge.

    From the standpoint of modern materialism, i.e., Marxism, the limits of approximation of our knowledge to objective, absolute truth are historically conditional, but the existence of such truth is unconditional, and the fact that we are approaching nearer to it is also unconditional.

    Dialectics—as Hegel in his time explained—contains an element of relativism, of negation, of scepticism, but is not reducible to relativism. The materialist dialectics of Marx and Engels certainly does contain relativism, but is not reducible to relativism, that is, it recognises the relativity of all our knowledge, not in the sense of denying objective truth, but in the sense that the limits of approximation of our knowledge to this truth are historically conditional

    For the materialist the “success” of human practice proves the correspondence between our ideas and the objective nature of the things we perceive. For the solipsist “success” is everything needed by me in practice, which can be regarded separately from the theory of knowledge.

    “The fundamental defect of idealism is precisely that it asks and answers the question of objectivity and subjectivity, of the reality or unreality of the world, only from the standpoint of theory” (ibid., 189). Feuerbach makes the sum-total of human practice the basis of the theory of knowledge. He says that idealists of course also recognise the reality of the I and the Thou in practical life. For the idealists “this point of view is valid only for practical life and not for speculation."

    The sole conclusion to be drawn from the opinion held by Marxists that Marx’s theory is an objective truth is that by following the path of Marxian theory we shall draw closer and closer to objective truth (without ever exhausting it); but by following any other path we shall arrive at nothing but confusion and lies.

    Engels, Marx and Lenin are in agreement when both Engels and Lenin mention not only the existence, but the capacity for human knowledge to reach those eternal truths, what they differ from the young hegelians, and other idealists, is the understanding that we arrive at those objective truths from our interaction, abstraction and practice, upon the thing-in-itself. And consequently, that those truths, even if they are “objective, absolute, eternal”, are only part of the object itself and as such have not exhausted the knowledge we can attain from it, which means we have not achieved a complete comprehension of the object we are studying, and dialectically, also means we have more to learn about it.

    The understanding that our abstractions of real objects, the things-for-us of the thing-in-themselves, contain part, even if imperfect and limited by the historical conditions, of the object in reality, and that this knowledge, trough praxis, can pass the “test of nature” and consequently confirm that we objectively comprehend part of the thing, is the central logic of Dialectical Materialism.

    Absolute idealism claims that our perception is equal or even the source of the object-in-itself, agnosticism/subjective idealism says that our perception cannot reach the object-in-itself, materialism understands that our perception creates an imperfect image, an imperfect copy, of the object, a thing-for-us of the thing-in-itself.

    • Comrade_Improving
      1·
      24 days ago

      And for the last question, we shall look at Lenin quoting both Engels and Feuerbach:

      V. Lenin – Materialism and Empirio-Criticism – Chapter 3.3:

      Order, purpose, law are words used by man to translate the acts of nature into his own language in order that he may understand them. These words are not devoid of meaning or of objective content; nevertheless, a distinction must be made between the original and the translation.

      The reason of the theists … is reason contradictory to nature, reason absolutely devoid of understanding of the essence of nature. The reason of the theists splits nature into two beings—one material, and the other formal or spiritual”

      Feuerbach’s views are consistently materialist. All other views, or rather, any other philosophical line on the question of causality, the denial of objective law, causality and necessity in nature, are justly regarded by Feuerbach as belonging to the fideist trend. For it is, indeed, clear that the subjectivist line on the question of causality, the deduction of the order and necessity of nature not from the external objective world, but from consciousness, reason, logic, and so forth, not only cuts human reason off from nature, not only opposes the former to the latter, but makes nature a part of reason, instead of regarding reason as a part of nature. The subjectivist line on the question of causality is philosophical idealism (varieties of which are the theories of causality of both Hume and Kant), i.e., fideism, more or less weakened and diluted. The recognition of objective law in nature and the recognition that this law is reflected with approximate fidelity in the mind of man is materialism.

      to anyone who has read his philosophical works at all attentively it must be clear that Engels does not admit even a shadow of doubt as to the existence of objective law, causality and necessity in nature.

      the human conception of cause and effect always somewhat simplifies the objective connection of the phenomena of nature, reflecting it only approximately, artificially isolating one or another aspect of a single world process

      “the products of the human brain, being in the last analysis also products of nature, do not contradict the rest of nature’s interconnections but are in correspondence with them”

      “the general laws of motion—both of the external world and of human thought—[are] two sets of laws which are identical in substance but differ in their expression insofar as the human mind can apply them consciously, while in nature and also up to now for the most part in human history, these laws assert themselves unconsciously in the form of external necessity in the midst of an endless series of seeming accidents”. And Engels reproaches the old natural philosophy for having replaced “the real but as yet unknown interconnections” (of the phenomena of nature) by “ideal and imaginary ones”. Engels’ recognition of objective law, causality and necessity in nature is absolutely clear, as is his emphasis on the relative character of our, i.e., man’s, approximate reflections of this law in various concepts.

      The really important epistemological question that divides the philosophical trends is not the degree of precision attained by our descriptions of causal connections, or whether these descriptions can be expressed in exact mathematical formulas, but whether the source of our knowledge of these connections is objective natural law or properties of our mind, its innate faculty of apprehending certain a priori truths, and so forth. This is what irrevocably divides the materialists Feuerbach, Marx and Engels from the agnostics (Humeans) Avenarius and Mach.

      The idea that knowledge can “create” universal forms, replace the primeval chaos by order, etc., is the idea of idealist philosophy. The world is matter moving in conformity to law, and our knowledge, being the highest product of nature, is in a position only to reflect this conformity to law.

      You claimed that “nature does not obey any laws”, that those laws “are abstractions we create to understand reality.” because “Nature is nature, reality is reality, and they are totally external to us.” Focusing on the relationship between nature and man, we understand that according to your logic, man for being external to nature, created out of its own ingenuity laws to understand nature, laws that somehow appeared in peoples mind, but that don’t actually come from nature, because even if they work to explain nature, nature doesn’t actually follows them, and as such couldn’t help us reach them, and consequently we can’t also really explain why or how it works, it just somehow appeared and someway it works. And that’s what we call Dialectics.

      However, dialectics are not a pure creation of the human mind, but the human mind’s understanding of the laws of nature, nature doesn’t follow dialectical laws because we thought so, neither are we able to think things outside nature, we are only able to understand the dialectical laws of nature, which we are a small part of, because it follows those dialectical laws in the first place.

      If we then go back to the beginning of the discussion, we can understand why I was bringing attention to the objectiveness of contradictions and why its wrong usage lead to agnosticism/subjective idealism, because to think that their are based on point of reference, or are pure abstractions made by our mind with no relationship with actual reality or nature, and therefore are subjective, is agnosticism/subjective idealism. To understand that contradictions are given by nature itself, and that our knowledge is and will always be based on the laws of nature is Dialectical Materialism.

      To hold the human thought above nature is absolute idealism, to hold human thought as separated from nature, following laws different than those of nature, is agnosticism/subjective idealism, to understand that our thoughts are part of nature, and as such the dialectical movement is the thing-for-us of the movement of nature itself, following the very same laws as the rest of nature, that’s actual Dialectical Materialism.

      Having answered those 3 questions, we are now left with 2 new ones, two “whys?”, consequences of the answers of the first three.

      • Comrade_Improving
        1·
        24 days ago

        The first one is: If you actually had already studied Dialectical Materialism, already had read at least some of those books I quoted, why did you still fall into subjectivism/agnosticism? Or in another form: Why did I bring up Post-Modernism in the first place?

        While I don’t know you well enough in order to concretely answer this question, considering the angle you are taking when defining materialism and considering the impact that focaunian and post-modern thought has had among leftists over the last 50 years, I can make a very sensible guess that it is a consequence of the spread of post-modern thought that you are claiming materialism while uttering empiricism.

        To give a more cohesive answer to this question it would easily take more than double of what I’ve already written, so I will focus on the main parts to keep it short.

        For Post-modernism there is no scientific objective knowledge, there is no possibility to share knowledge, only the subjective knowledge of each individual, only personal experience, which is why for Foucault any attempt at integrating struggles, like seeing most of humanity as working class, to increase the power of the oppressed, leads to a metadiscourse where that unity becomes as bad as what they are fighting against, and as such we can only fight for our own individual freedom, reducing the fight against capitalism from a class struggle to a micro-level individual struggle for better conditions.

        Now this post-modern denial of scientific objective knowledge and the primacy of each individual experiences/insticts over objective knowledge has lead to the common contemporaneous mistake of thinking that materialism also only deals with experiences and practices, forgetting or even denying the capacity or the validity of abstractions or scientific objective knowledge, concluding so that all that we know, and can know, is based purely on our own experiences, being as a consequence merely subjective.

        Lenin – Materialism and Empirio-Criticism – Chapter 2.4

        In this connection it seems to me not uninteresting to note that Hegel, declaring materialism to be “a consistent system of empiricism”, wrote: “For empiricism the external in general is the truth, and if then a supersensible too be admitted, nevertheless knowledge of it cannot occur and one must keep exclusively to what belongs to perception. However, this principle in its realisation produced what was subsequently termed materialism. This materialism regards matter, as such, as the truly objective.

        All knowledge comes from experience, from sensation, from perception. That is true. But the question arises, does objective reality “belong to perception”, i.e., is it the source of perception? If you answer yes, you are a materialist. If you answer no, you are inconsistent and will inevitably arrive at subjectivism, or agnosticism, irrespective of whether you deny the knowability of the thing-in-itself, or the objectivity of time, space and causality (with Kant), or whether you do not even permit the thought of a thing-in-itself (with Hume). The inconsistency of your empiricism, of your philosophy of experience, will in that case lie in the fact that you deny the objective content of experience, the objective truth of knowledge through experience.

        Considering that this whole discussion has been around the fact that I, like all the great Dialectical Materialists that I quoted, understand that our knowledge reaches beyond our own personal experiences and contains part of the thing-in-itself, while you have been claiming that it doesn’t, that it doesn’t go beyond our own practices and experiences, that our laws have don’t even have any relation whatsoever with nature. I’ve come to the conclusion that you follow that logic because you are mistaking actual materialism with the post-modern view of it, to Empiricism.

        As such, we finally reach the essence of this discussion and it becomes clear that, in its truth, it has been about post-modernism thought/empiricism masquerading itself as ignorant dialectical materialism all this time, which is why it keeps falling into subjective idealism/agnosticism, because that’s the consequence of that line of thought.

        It should be noted that what I wrote before is not just a disagreement, it is not just a subjective difference of point of views, I’m not writing those words to sound mean or try to hurt your feelings, I’m writing them because they are the consequence of a line of thought that strays away from materialism, just as Lenin says in the quoted passage, the empiricist’s denial of objective knowledge, “the objective content of experience, the objective truth of knowledge through experience” inevitably leads to subjectivism/agnosticism. As I already mentioned before, those categories are not at odds with each other, but are consequences of one another, I’m not calling you names, I am bringing attention to your own line of logic.

        V. Lenin – Philosophical Notebook

        Essentially, Hegel is completely right as opposed to Kant. Thought proceeding from the concrete to the abstract—provided it is Correct (and Kant, like all philosophers, speaks of correct thought) does not get away from the truth but comes closer to it. The abstraction of matter, of a value, etc., in short all scientific (correct, serious, not absurd) abstractions reflect nature more deeply, truly and completely. From living perception to abstract thought, and from this to practice—such is the dialectical path of objective reality. Kant disparages knowledge in order to make way for faith: Hegel exalts knowledge, asserting that knowledge is knowledge of God. The materialist exalts the knowledge of matter, of nature, consigning God, and the philosophical rabble that defends God, to the rubbish heap.

        Materialism is action based on abstractions based on reality, “From living perception to abstract thought, and from this to practice—such is the dialectical path of objective reality.” Empiricism, masqueraded by post-modern thought as Materialism, is practice based on pure experience, there is no object, there is only the subject, there is no objective scientific truth, only lies told by those in power, which is why there is no end to our struggle, only small wins in personal individual conditions.

        Finally our last question, our second “why?”: Why does it even matter if you hold empiricism and not actual materialism, and therefore hold dialectical materialism in a subjective way? if it at the end it only was only reduced to a difference between external and internal contradictions, does it even make any difference in practice?

        To answer that we again return to Lenin:

        V. Lenin – Materialism and Empirio-Criticism – Chapter 6.4

        Either materialism consistent to the end, or the falsehood and confusion of philosophical idealism—such is the formulation of the question given in every paragraph of Anti-Dühring;

        The task of Marxists in both cases is to be able to master and refashion the achievements of these “salesmen” (for instance, you will not make the slightest progress in the investigation of new economic phenomena without making use of the works of these salesmen) and to be able to lop off their reactionary tendency, to pursue our own line and to combat the whole line of the forces and classes hostile to us.

        The infatuation for empirio-criticist and “physical” idealism passes as rapidly as the infatuation for neo-Kantianism and “physiological” idealism; but fideism takes advantage of every such infatuation and modifies its devices in a thousand ways for the benefit of philosophical idealism.

        Once you deny objective reality, given us in sensation, you have already lost every weapon against fideism, for you have slipped into agnosticism or subjectivism—and that is all that fideism requires.

        If you factor into what Lenin is saying the logic of Post-modernism (something that sadly we can’t quote him on) with their denial of a unified struggle, and its view of power and oppression as inevitable in human society, Lenin’s words gain an even stronger meaning: “Either materialism consistent to the end, or the falsehood and confusion of philosophical idealism”, “Once you deny objective reality, given us in sensation, you have already lost every weapon against fideism, for you have slipped into agnosticism or subjectivism”, Lenin’s explanation on the importance of the correct application of Dialectical Materialism is as clear as possible.