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  • Comrade_Improving
    2·
    3 months ago

    Honestly, I’m very confused by your comment, you made 3 claims in it and subsequently proceeded to undermine them:

    You start with: “Perhaps Hegelian dialectics only deals with internal contradictions, but not materialist dialectics.” Therefore making both claims that: Hegelian Dialectics and Materialist Dialectics deal with contradictions differently and that at least one of those differences is the fact that the Materialist one also deals External contradictions.

    But then show a quote from Mao saying quite the opposite:

    Mao Zedong - On Contradiction

    “According to materialist dialectics, changes in nature are due chiefly to the development of the internal contradictions in nature (…) It holds that external causes are the condition of change and internal causes are the basis of change, and that external causes become operative through internal causes.”

    He is quite literally using the dialectical materialist concept of internal contradictions where they are the basis of the change and the external causes are the condition of those changes, you even understood that yourself: “The internal contradictions of a thing are the basis for change, but those contradictions are not unaffected by external forces”. But Mao also adds that at the same time the external causes are not able to change the contradictions in themselves or in their essence, saying “In a suitable temperature an egg changes into a chicken, but no temperature can change a stone into a chicken, because each has a different basis.”

    Mao also correctly applies the Hegelian concept of the dialectical interaction between the content and its form, and the process of “self-sublation” within a thing that I noted in my first comment and that Engels used in his explanation of the negation of the negation, which not only demonstrates similarities between how Hegelian Dialectics and Marxist Dialectics see contradictions but also shows that there even more similarities between methods, it is truly no coincidence that Engels said:

    F. Engels - Ludwig Feuerbach and the End of Classical German Philosophy

    Thereby the dialectic of concepts itself became merely the conscious reflex of the dialectical motion of the real world and thus the dialectic of Hegel was turned over; or rather, turned off its head, on which it was standing, and placed upon its feet. And this materialist dialectic, which for years has been our best working tool and our sharpest weapon, was, remarkably enough, discovered not only by us but also, independently of us and even of Hegel, by a German worker, Joseph Dietzgen. In this way, however, the revolutionary side of Hegelian philosophy was again taken up and at the same time freed from the idealist trimmings which with Hegel had prevented its consistent execution. The great basic thought that the world is not to be comprehended as a complex of readymade things, but as a complex of processes, in which the things apparently stable no less than their mind images in our heads, the concepts, go through an uninterrupted change of coming into being and passing away, in which, in spite of all seeming accidentally and of all temporary retrogression, a progressive development asserts itself in the end — this great fundamental thought has, especially since the time of Hegel, so thoroughly permeated ordinary consciousness that in this generality it is now scarcely ever contradicted.

    Lastly you said claimed: "I didn’t call it “subjective” but followed with: “it’s based on level of abstraction. It depends on the point of reference”. Which means that when a subject is analyzing an object, the difference between external and internal contradictions is given by the abstraction made by the subject themselves, and not by the object in itself, meaning that it is not defined by the object but by the subject, or in a word, it’s subjective. So what you basically said was that you didn’t call it “subjective”, you just said that it is subjective.

    So you understand the concept: “and if you view it as a part of the collective life on Earth rather than as two separate “things”, it’s an internal contradiction.” You understand that change comes through the struggle between opposites, but then deny the unity between them and say that their correlation “it’s based on level of abstraction. It depends on the point of reference.” Completely missing the concept of unity of opposites, and consequently falling into agnosticism/subjective idealism.

    V. Lenin - On the Question of Dialectics,

    The identity of opposites (it would be more correct, perhaps, to say their “unity,”—although the difference between the terms identity and unity is not particularly important here. In a certain sense both are correct) is the recognition (discovery) of the contradictory, mutually exclusive, opposite tendencies in all phenomena and processes of nature (including mind and society). The condition for the knowledge of all processes of the world in their “self-movement,” in their spontaneous development, in their real life, is the knowledge of them as a unity of opposites. Development is the “struggle” of opposites. 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).

    What is becoming clear to me is that this a problem revolving more around the term itself than a lack of of understanding of the logic. Dialectical contradiction has a meaning that goes beyond mere opposition, and reaches the “identity of opposites”, that’s why it is such a central term in Materialist Dialectics and precisely why I started my original comment defining this term as it is and how it came to be (as it should be with the Dialectical Materialist method), but you denied that definition without proper consideration, and consequently had no alternative but to lose the objectiveness of Dialectics and fall into agnosticism/subjective idealism.

    • ☭ 𝗚𝗿𝗮𝗶𝗻𝗘𝗮𝘁𝗲𝗿 ☭OPMA
      11·
      3 months ago

      You start with: “Perhaps Hegelian dialectics only deals with internal contradictions, but not materialist dialectics.” Therefore making both claims that: Hegelian Dialectics and Materialist Dialectics deal with contradictions differently and that at least one of those differences is the fact that the Materialist one also deals External contradictions.

      No, I said that perhaps Hegelian dialectics only deals with internal contradictions. I did say that materialist dialectics deal with external contradictions as well, and this is confirmed by the quote; you claim that it isn’t, but your own comment disproves that:

      He is quite literally using the dialectical materialist concept of internal contradictions where they are the basis of the change and the external causes are the condition of those changes, you even understood that yourself: “The internal contradictions of a thing are the basis for change, but those contradictions are not unaffected by external forces”. But Mao also adds that at the same time the external causes are not able to change the contradictions in themselves or in their essence, saying “In a suitable temperature an egg changes into a chicken, but no temperature can change a stone into a chicken, because each has a different basis.”

      In other words, internal contradictions are primary and external contradictions are secondary. Being secondary is not the same thing as being irrelevant or ignored.

      Lastly you said claimed: "I didn’t call it “subjective” but followed with: “it’s based on level of abstraction. It depends on the point of reference”. Which means that when a subject is analyzing an object, the difference between external and internal contradictions is given by the abstraction made by the subject themselves, and not by the object in itself, meaning that it is not defined by the object but by the subject, or in a word, it’s subjective. So what you basically said was that you didn’t call it “subjective”, you just said that it is subjective.

      If you want to categorize any kind of observation as “subjective”, sure. Objective reality exists but we can’t observe it objectively. If you choose to analyze a society as a whole, you’re going to use that society as a point of reference, not a single person and not the entire solar system.

      So you understand the concept: “and if you view it as a part of the collective life on Earth rather than as two separate “things”, it’s an internal contradiction.” You understand that change comes through the struggle between opposites, but then deny the unity between them and say that their correlation “it’s based on level of abstraction. It depends on the point of reference.” Completely missing the concept of unity of opposites, and consequently falling into agnosticism/subjective idealism.

      What is becoming clear to me is that this a problem revolving more around the term itself than a lack of of understanding of the logic. Dialectical contradiction has a meaning that goes beyond mere opposition, and reaches the “identity of opposites”, that’s why it is such a central term in Materialist Dialectics and precisely why I started my original comment defining this term as it is and how it came to be (as it should be with the Dialectical Materialist method), but you denied that definition without proper consideration, and consequently had no alternative but to lose the objectiveness of Dialectics and fall into agnosticism/subjective idealism.

      I haven’t denied the unity of opposites at any point in this thread. Your original comment made a “correction” based on the incorrect assumption that I believed only external contradictions were relevant, which I addressed in my reply. And you keep saying that I’m an idealist, but now you also claim that I’m just misusing terms? If you just want to argue about semantics, fine, but I’d appreciate if you’d stop misrepresenting what I say.

      This is clearly not going anywhere, so I will not reply further.

      • Comrade_Improving
        1·
        3 months ago

        Your original comment made a “correction” based on the incorrect assumption that I believed only external contradictions were relevant

        I didn’t make that “correction”, because I didn’t make that assumption, what I was assuming, and still am, is that you are trying use “contradiction” as simple opposition, or even just a mere factor, leading you to see “external contradictions” when that in itself is an philosophical absurdity. If you understand the identity of opposites how are you going to claim that they can be about things external to one another?

        If we follow your example that there is a contradiction between a deer and an egg, and follow the logic of unity of opposites with that contradiction, we would arrive at the conclusion that an egg can become a deer, or that the deer can become an egg. Which is only made worse by being “just a matter of perspective.” Which would mean that if look hard enough we could find contradictions between anything and therefore claim that everything can become anything. Unless you actually believe in those absurdities, you have been mistaking the use of “contradiction”, precisely because you are forgetting that it means the “unity of opposites” and not just mere opposition, or just a relevant factor.

        V. Lenin - On the Question of Dialectics

        In the first conception of motion, self - movement, its driving force, its source, its motive, remains in the shade (or this source is made external—God, subject, etc.). In the second conception the chief attention is directed precisely to knowledge of the source of “self” - movement.

        The first conception is lifeless, pale and dry. The second is living. The second alone furnishes the key to the “self-movement” of everything existing; it alone furnishes the key to “leaps,” to the “break in continuity,” to the “transformation into the opposite,” to the destruction of the old and the emergence of the new.

        Lenin is very clear in describing the metaphysical “conception of motion” as “lifeless, pale and dry” because “its source, its motive” is “made external—God, subject, etc.” Which is exactly what happens if the source of the motion are “not just the internal processes” as you claim.

        The contradictions are what guides the “content” internally, the “sources of the motion”, while external factors are what determine its “form” as it appears in reality, the “conditions of change”. It is because the source of the motion is internal that he denominates it “self-movement”.

        And you keep saying that I’m an idealist, but now you also claim that I’m just misusing terms

        You are also looking at this metaphysically and therefore also arriving at more mistakes, but this is actually a fresh example of the unity of opposites: It is a consequence of the misuse of terms that you are falling into Subjective idealism/agnosticism, it is your misunderstanding of contradictions that is “self-sublating” into defining the process of change as subjective, consequently leading you to subjective idealism/agnosticism. You are seeing them as two different things, but in fact they are one and the same, they are part of the same dialectical movement, two moments within the same thing, they are all part of the essence of your logic.

        V. Lenin - On the Question of Dialectics

        The distinction between subjectivism (scepticism, sophistry, etc.) and dialectics, incidentally, is that in (objective) dialectics the difference between the relative and the absolute is itself relative. For objective dialectics there is an absolute within the relative.

        • burlemarx
          2·
          3 months ago

          You are also looking at this metaphysically and therefore also arriving at more mistakes, but this is actually a fresh example of the unity of opposites: It is a consequence of the misuse of terms that you are falling into Subjective idealism/agnosticism, it is your misunderstanding of contradictions that is “self-sublating” into defining the process of change as subjective, consequently leading you to subjective idealism/agnosticism. You are seeing them as two different things, but in fact they are one and the same, they are part of the same dialectical movement, two moments within the same thing, they are all part of the essence of your logic.

          This is a clear misuse of the terms metaphysics, agnosticism, subjective, idealism, etc. You are trying to invalidate his arguments by just using a strawman argument.

          First of all, the objective does not deny the subjective, nor vice-versa. If you never studied physics and can’t comprehend the atoms it doesn’t mean the atoms don’t exist. At the same time, before the discovery of the atom, one could only understand matter through other models, which could only apprehend reality in another idealized form. Even with our current technological development, all our models of reality are in fact idealized, but by being idealized, it does not mean that reality isn’t in motion and exists independently of our ideas of it.

          And what Grain Eater said before makes total sense. Atoms are composed of particles, which are in contradiction to one another. But atoms interact together forming molecules, and molecules form more complex matter such as ore, proteins, cells and the like.

          However each system has its own dynamics. Subatomic particles interact with each other. Atoms interact with each other, both inside and outside of molecules. Molecules interact with each other, and cells interact with each other. However when cells interact, this has an effect in the interaction between molecules, which then have an effect on how atoms interact internally, and consequently; and this has an effect on how subatomic particles interact with each other.

          When we use dialectics to comprehend internal contradictions it does not mean that external contradictions ceased to exist. However we approach a problem using dialectics it does not mean we are immediately understanding the objective reality. On the contrary, the contradictions we are analyzing are particular to that system, and more specifically, are limited by our own subjective apprehension of that system, including our past knowledge, our experiences. To deny your own subjectivity is itself a form of idealism.

          Edit: argument by citation is in itself a fallacy. People cite Lenin, Mao, Marx, Trotsky, Althusser etc to claim someone is being a idealist, as if there was one true dialectics. They don’t stop to reflect that this is how Hegel itself apprehended dialectics, as if the ideas existed a priori, before reality. When you try to comprehend dialectical materialism, you need to understand that dialectics itself is in motion.

          • Comrade_Improving
            1·
            3 months ago

            It is very interesting tactic to start your comment saying that I’m “using a strawman argument” and then proceed into an attempt to invalidate my arguments by attacking the notion that the subjective denies the objective, or vice-versa. I’ve never said such a thing and not only that, but the quote I made from Lenin in my last comment claims the opposite.

            V. Lenin - On the Question of Dialectics

            The distinction between subjectivism (scepticism, sophistry, etc.) and dialectics, incidentally, is that in (objective) dialectics the difference between the relative and the absolute is itself relative. For objective dialectics there is an absolute within the relative.

            What I’ve actually been claiming since the beginning of this discussion is that our subjective knowledge does reach the objective, even if imperfectly, it contains part of it, so the difference between a Dialectical internal contradiction and a common external one isn’t “is just a matter of perspective”, it isn’t subjective, it is objective, because the internal contradiction belongs to the thing-in-itself, not to our perception of it. Our knowledge of them is “limited by our own subjective apprehension of that system” but they still exist beyond it and beyond us as well, which is why they are objective, as you said: “If you never studied physics and can’t comprehend the atoms it doesn’t mean the atoms don’t exist”

            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.

            Also by being a part of the object in itself, the search and understanding of those internal contradictions gets us closer to the truth that is the thing-in-itself. Even if our subjective will never fully reach it, and as such will always have something new to learn about it, saying that the difference between internal and external “is based on level of abstraction” is completely missing the point of the difference between subjective and objective knowledge and only running away from the search for “objective, absolute, eternal truths”. And that’s why it falls into subjective idealism/agnosticism.

            On your Edit:

            argument by citation is in itself a fallacy. People cite Lenin, Mao, Marx, Trotsky, Althusser etc to claim someone is being a idealist, as if there was one true dialectics

            Now that’s just absurd. I show the quotes to give the material basis from where I arrived at my logic, to show that it didn’t just pop into my head as I was in the shower, it is based on my understanding of these texts by these classic authors, while also giving the opportunity to anyone reading to reach their own understanding of those texts and giving a reference to whoever wants to dive deeper into the matter being discussed.

            The leap in logic in that only because I am showing the basis for my reasoning I therefore hold these basis as dogmas is as baseless as it is absurd.

            • burlemarx
              2·
              3 months ago

              It is very interesting tactic to start your comment saying that I’m “using a strawman argument” and then proceed into an attempt to invalidate my arguments by attacking the notion that the subjective denies the objective, or vice-versa. I’ve never said such a thing and not only that, but the quote I made from Lenin in my last comment claims the opposite.

              Let’s remind ourselves of the affirmation you have done:

              falling into Subjective idealism/agnosticism, it is your misunderstanding of contradictions that is “self-sublating” into defining the process of change as subjective, consequently leading you to subjective idealism/agnosticism

              You are attacking an argument implying the fall into “Subjective idealism/agnosticism” and then claiming things Grain Eater didn’t mention in his argument. This is a clear case of strawman fallacy.

              What I’ve actually been claiming since the beginning of this discussion is that our subjective knowledge does reach the objective, even if imperfectly, it contains part of it, so the difference between a Dialectical internal contradiction and a common external one isn’t “is just a matter of perspective”, it isn’t subjective, it is objective, because the internal contradiction belongs to the thing-in-itself, not to our perception of it. Our knowledge of them is “limited by our own subjective apprehension of that system” but they still exist beyond it and beyond us as well, which is why they are objective, as you said: “If you never studied physics and can’t comprehend the atoms it doesn’t mean the atoms don’t exist”

              It is ironic that when you try to explain objectivity, you will use an idealistic argument. Let me explain to you. When you are studying something, you are an external observer. The thing you want to observe is your object of study. You then examine the object’s properties and its relation with other things. When you use the dialectical method (let me re-emphasize this, it’s a method), you look for establishing identity and opposition between two objects based on your observation. However, when you are doing so, you are focusing on the relationship between those two objects, even if in reality there are many more external objects which interact with the objects you are observing. For example, when we study the relation of a capitalist and a worker, and how surplus is generated from the process of transforming commodity into money and money into commodity, you are not concerned with the movement of the earth around the sun. The earth moving around the sun produces changes that affect both the capitalist and the worker, but they aren’t your objects of your study at that moment, so you are not considering the relation between solar rays and the circuit of accumulation of capital, and any contradiction that arises externally from the object you are studying is “external”. If I don’t try to limit my observation, always seeking the eternal truth by observing the relations, and the relations between the relations and the relations between the relations of relations, I won’t arrive anywhere, because my cognitive capacity is objectively limited. I have a brain, not an immortal soul. So, the perspective matters, and by a lot.

              Also by being a part of the object in itself, the search and understanding of those internal contradictions gets us closer to the truth that is the thing-in-itself. Even if our subjective will never fully reach it, and as such will always have something new to learn about it, saying that the difference between internal and external “is based on level of abstraction” is completely missing the point of the difference between subjective and objective knowledge and only running away from the search for “objective, absolute, eternal truths”. And that’s why it falls into subjective idealism/agnosticism.

              Your statement is profoundly Hegelian. The idea that an absolute truth exists and by understanding the internal contradictions we get closer to this absolute truth is part of the essence of Hegelian dialectics. Note that Hegelian dialectics is profoundly idealist, because it assumes that an eternal truth exists and our knowledge, based on our observations, aims to arrive at these eternal truths.

              As a dialectical materialist, I don’t assume eternal truths exist, nor I am concerned in arriving at that point. What I do is to observe the world around me, try to reason about it so I can build my knowledge around it, and then I try to act on the world based on my knowledge and rinse and repeat. When I do this, I have to consider that my object of study can always change, so I need to situate my observation in a point in time, or in a specific point of human history, if I’m trying to understand society.

              Another point I need to make is that nature does not obey any laws. It’s not like there’s a law, an idea, that bounds matter in a determinate direction or relation. The laws and theories we come up with happen a posteriori, they are abstractions we create to understand reality, and are all imperfect models of it. Dialectical materialism and historical materialism are methods we use to understand reality and human history, they are a lens we use to understand reality. So nature does not give a damn about dialectics, and nature is not dialectical. Nature is nature, reality is reality, and they are totally external to us, and will keep existing regardless if we interact with or not. We use dialectics to try to comprehend nature, human relations and so on, so we can then use the knowldege gained to affect the world around us. If we really want to be materialists, then we need to drop the notion of wanting to achieve eternal truths.

              • Comrade_Improving
                1·
                3 months ago

                Now here is another advantage of basing my arguments in classical authors, I don’t run the risk of looking foolish giving statements that only demonstrate my ignorance on the matter discussed:

                Note that Hegelian dialectics is profoundly idealist, because it assumes that an eternal truth exists and our knowledge, based on our observations, aims to arrive at these eternal truths.

                As a dialectical materialist, I don’t assume eternal truths exist, nor I am concerned in arriving at that point.

                Lenin - Materialism and Empirio-Criticism - Chapter 2.1 - The Thing-in-Itself

                But for all materialists, including those of the seventeenth century whom Bishop Berkeley demolished, “phenomena” are “things-for-us” or copies of the “objects in themselves”

                For the professorial idealists, Humeans and Kantians every kind of materialism is “metaphysics”, because beyond the phenomenon (appearance, the thing-for-us) it discerns a reality outside us. (…) Marx’s opinion there corresponds to man’s “phenomenal activity” “an activity of things”, that is to say, human practice has not only a phenomenal (in the Humean and Kantian sense of the term), but an objectively real significance. (…) “Humanity partakes of the absolute” means that human knowledge reflects absolute truth; the practice of humanity, by verifying our ideas, corroborates what in those ideas corresponds to absolute truth.

                The essence of idealism is that the psychical is taken as the starting-point; from it external nature is deduced, and only then is the ordinary human consciousness deduced from nature. Hence, this primary “psychical” always turns out to be a lifeless abstraction concealing a diluted theology.

                Lenin - Materialism and Empirio-Criticism - Chapter 3.6 - Freedom and Necessity

                the complete identity between Engels’ argument on the knowability of the objective nature of things and on the transformation of “things-in-themselves” into “things-for-us”, on the one hand, and his argument on a blind, unknown necessity, on the other. The development of consciousness in each human individual and the development of the collective knowledge of humanity as a whole presents us at every step with examples of the transformation of the unknown “thing-in-itself” into the known “thing-for-us”

                Epistemologically, there is no difference whatsoever between these two transformations, for the basic point of view in both cases is the same, viz., materialistic, the recognition of the objective reality of the external world and of the laws of external nature, and of the fact that both this world and these laws are fully knowable to man but can never be known to him with finality. We do not know the necessity of nature in the phenomena of the weather, and to that extent we are inevitably slaves of the weather. But while we do not know this necessity, we know that it exists.

                For Engels all living human practice permeates the theory of knowledge itself and provides an objective criterion of truth. For until we know a law of nature, it, existing and acting independently of and outside our mind, makes us slaves of “blind necessity”. But once we come to know this law, which acts (as Marx repeated a thousand times) independently of our will and our mind, we become the masters of nature. The mastery of nature manifested in human practice is a result of an objectively correct reflection within the human head of the phenomena and processes of nature, and is proof of the fact that this reflection (within the limits of what is revealed by practice) is objective, absolute, eternal truth.

                What is the result? Every step in Engels’ argument, literally almost every phrase, every proposition, is constructed entirely and exclusively upon the epistemology of dialectical materialism (…) Without being in the least perturbed by this, the Machists abandon materialism and repeat threadbare banalities about dialectics, and at the same time welcome with open arms one of the applications of dialectical materialism! They have taken their philosophy from an eclectic pauper’s broth and are continuing to offer this hotchpotch to the reader. They take a bit of agnosticism and a morsel of idealism from Mach, add to it a bit of dialectical materialism from Marx, and call this hash a development of Marxism.

                Another point I need to make is that nature does not obey any laws.

                So nature does not give a damn about dialectics, and nature is not dialectical.

                Lenin - Materialism and Empirio-Criticism - Chapter 3.3 - Causality and Necessity in Nature

                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. If we find that the laws of thought correspond with the laws of nature, says Engels, this becomes quite conceivable when we take into account that reason and consciousness are “products of the human brain and that man himself is a product of nature.” Of course, “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”. There is no doubt that there exists a natural, objective interconnection between the phenomena of the world. Engels constantly speaks of the “laws of nature”, of the “necessities of nature”, without considering it necessary to explain the generally known propositions of materialism

                “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 distinction between the Humean and the Kantian theories of causality is only a secondary difference of opinion between agnostics who are basically at one, viz., in their denial of objective law in nature, and who thus inevitably condemn themselves to idealist conclusions of one kind or another.

                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.

                As if it hadn’t already become clear your ignorance of the differences between materialism and subjective idealism/agnosticism with your direct epistemological opposition to Lenin and Engels, we now reach the grand finale of this spectacle, with an act to rival Bogdanov’s, giving us a necessity of “Materialism”

                If we really want to be materialists, then we need to drop the notion of wanting to achieve eternal truths.

                Lenin - Materialism and Empirio-Criticism - 2.4 - Does Objective Truth Exist?

                Bogdanov declares: “As I understand it, Marxism contains a denial of the unconditional objectivity of any truth whatsoever, the denial of all eternal truths”

                Bogdanov’s denial of objective truth is agnosticism and subjectivism. The absurdity of this denial is evident even from the single example of a scientific truth quoted above. Natural science leaves no room for doubt that its assertion that the earth existed prior to man is a truth.

                For the first point of view, i.e., agnosticism, or, pushed a little further, subjective idealism, there can be no objective truth. For the second point of view, i.e., materialism, the recognition of objective truth is essential.

                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.

                To regard our sensations as images of the external world, to recognize objective truth, to hold the materialist theory of knowledge—these are all one and the same thing.

                If we really want to be materialists, then we need to drop “the materialist theory of knowledge”, truly astounding words.

                It has now become clear that the reason you don’t understand the correction that I have been making, or even the importance of it, is because you are not able to, because you have no clue on what the differences between Materialism and subjective idealism/agnosticism are in the first place.

                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. So I will repeat the recommendations I made in my original comment, that if one wants to go beyond the “Dialectical materialism” created in their own head and learn actual dialectical materialism they should read: Anti-Dühring by F. Engels and Materialism and Empirio-criticism by V.I. Lenin.

                • burlemarx
                  2·
                  3 months ago

                  The problem of argument by citation is that people often cite things without reflecting much about what they are reading. First of all, I don’t call people whose argument does not match mine as subjective idealist, agnostic, and now postmodern. If I don’t have proper knowledge in those schools of thought so I avoid using strawmen and pure repetition of what I read somewhere as some kind of clever criticism.

                  So, let’s discuss the things I have mentioned. And since you like citations, let’s work with them so they will probably make you very happy.

                  So there’s this book Marx co-wrote with Engels called “The Holy Family”:

                  If from real apples, pears, strawberries and almonds I form the general idea "Fruit”, if I go further and imagine that my abstract idea "Fruit”, derived from real fruit, is an entity existing outside me, is indeed the true essence of the pear, the apple, etc., then in the language of speculative philosophy — I am declaring that "Fruit” is the "Substance” of the pear, the apple, the almond, etc. I am saying, therefore, that to be a pear is not essential to the pear, that to be an apple is not essential to the apple; that what is essential to these things is not their real existence, perceptible to the senses, but the essence that I have abstracted from them and then foisted on them, the essence of my idea — "Fruit”. I therefore declare apples, pears, almonds, etc., to be mere forms of existence, modi, of "Fruit” My finite understanding supported by my senses does of course distinguish an apple from a pear and a pear from an almond, but my speculative reason declares these sensuous differences inessential and irrelevant. It sees in the apple the same as in the pear, and in the pear the same as in the almond, namely "Fruit”. Particular real fruits are no more than semblances whose true essence is “the substance” — "Fruit”.

                  Later he proceeds:

                  We see that if the Christian religion knows only one Incarnation of God, speculative philosophy has as many incarnations as there are things, just as it has here in every fruit an incarnation of the Substance, of the Absolute Fruit. The main interest for the speculative philosopher is therefore to produce the existence of the real ordinary fruits and to say in some mysterious way that there are apples, pears, almonds and raisins. But the apples, pears, almonds and raisins that we rediscover in the speculative world are nothing but semblances of apples, semblances of pears, semblances of almonds and semblances of raisins, for they are moments in the life of “the Fruit”, this abstract creation of the mind, and therefore themselves abstract creations of the mind. Hence what is delightful in this speculation is to rediscover all the real fruits there, but as fruits which have a higher mystical significance, which have grown out of the ether of your brain and not out of the material earth, which are incarnations of “the Fruit”, of the Absolute Subject. When you return from the abstraction, the supernatural creation of the mind, “the Fruit”, to real natural fruits, you give on the contrary the natural fruits a supernatural significance and transform them into sheer abstractions. Your main interest is then to point out the unity of “the Fruit” in all the manifestations of its life — the apple, the pear, the almond — that is, to show the mystical interconnection between these fruits, how in each one of them “the Fruit” realises itself by degrees and necessarily progresses, for instance, from its existence as a raisin to its existence as an almond. Hence the value of the ordinary fruits no longer consists in their natural qualities, but in their speculative quality, which gives each of them a definite place in the life-process of “the Absolute Fruit”

                  […]It goes without saying that the speculative philosopher accomplishes this continuous creation only by presenting universally known qualities of the apple, the pear, etc., which exist in reality, as determining features invented by him, by giving the names of the real things to what abstract reason alone can create, to abstract formulas of reason, finally, by declaring his own activity, by which he passes from the idea of an apple to the idea of a pear, to be the self-activity of the Absolute Subject, “the Fruit”

                  I will avoid posting the whole section here otherwise I’ll run out of space to comment. Marx here is ridiculing the idea of the absolute truth, in the form of the absolute fruit. We see all objects like apples, oranges, pears, almonds and raisings as natural manifestations of the idea of “the absolute fruit”. Note how silly that, in order for us to understand what a fruit is, we need to transform the real into the supernatural so we have the notion that all fruits are manifestation of the “absolute fruit”.

                  The problem of your whole confusion with objective and subjective is that you are mixing the idealist concept of absolute truth with objective reality. The idea of absolute truth is that an idea exists a priori of the objects, which are a manifestation of the idea. This is simply metaphysics and it’s exactly the criticism that Marx is doing to the young Hegelians. Another point that you also fail to understand is that objective reality, differently from the Hegelian concept of absolute truth, can also change as a the result of our practical activity, as well by other phenomena that produce changes in objective reality.

                  Now, since you like to citing texts without properly understanding them, let’s re-analyze the excerpt you cited from Lenin:

                  For Engels all living human practice permeates the theory of knowledge itself and provides an objective criterion of truth. For until we know a law of nature, it, existing and acting independently of and outside our mind, makes us slaves of “blind necessity”. But once we come to know this law, which acts (as Marx repeated a thousand times) independently of our will and our mind, we become the masters of nature. The mastery of nature manifested in human practice is a result of an objectively correct reflection within the human head of the phenomena and processes of nature, and is proof of the fact that this reflection (within the limits of what is revealed by practice) is objective, absolute, eternal truth.

                  What is the result? Every step in Engels’ argument, literally almost every phrase, every proposition, is constructed entirely and exclusively upon the epistemology of dialectical materialism (…) Without being in the least perturbed by this, the Machists abandon materialism and repeat threadbare banalities about dialectics, and at the same time welcome with open arms one of the applications of dialectical materialism! They have taken their philosophy from an eclectic pauper’s broth and are continuing to offer this hotchpotch to the reader. They take a bit of agnosticism and a morsel of idealism from Mach, add to it a bit of dialectical materialism from Marx, and call this hash a development of Marxism.

                  Lenin is saying that as the result of real activity our knowledge reflects the objective, the absolute, but within the limits of what is revealed by practice. I never denied the objective reality existed, but what I said was our knowledge of the real depends on our previous knowledge and our experience. Also in Lenin’s words, what we acquire as knowledge is a mere reflection of the objective reality, which is limited by our practice.

                  And again, as stated by Lenin, Engels argument related to the “dialectics of nature” is epistemological. What he is saying is the exact same thing I said. It’s not as if nature is dialectical, Engels is using the epistemology of dialectical materialism to understand nature. Again, as I said, dialectical materialism acts as a lens to understand natural phenomena. But dialectical materialism is not the truth in itself.

                  And then you cited Lenin again:

                  Bogdanov declares: “As I understand it, Marxism contains a denial of the unconditional objectivity of any truth whatsoever, the denial of all eternal truths” Bogdanov’s denial of objective truth is agnosticism and subjectivism. The absurdity of this denial is evident even from the single example of a scientific truth quoted above. Natural science leaves no room for doubt that its assertion that the earth existed prior to man is a truth. For the first point of view, i.e., agnosticism, or, pushed a little further, subjective idealism, there can be no objective truth. For the second point of view, i.e., materialism, the recognition of objective truth is essential. 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. To regard our sensations as images of the external world, to recognize objective truth, to hold the materialist theory of knowledge—these are all one and the same thing.

                  If we really want to be materialists, then we need to drop “the materialist theory of knowledge”, truly astounding words.

                  It has now become clear that the reason you don’t understand the correction that I have been making, or even the importance of it, is because you are not able to, because you have no clue on what the differences between Materialism and subjective idealism/agnosticism are in the first place.

                  No, you are the one who can’t understand what I said before. Again, I never denied the existence of the objective reality. What I simply said is that our knowledge is a product of our observations of the objective, together with our previous knowledge and experiences. But the objects themselves are completely independent of our ideas of it. And then you used the terms subjective idealism/agnosticism by just parroting a citation without even understanding what those terms mean. And again, you make a confusion by flipping dialectical materialism upside down, transforming it back into Hegel’s dialectics.

                  • burlemarx
                    2·
                    3 months ago

                    Continuing…

                    Another book I like very much is called “The German Ideology”, which unfortunately only got published after Lenin was dead or seriously ill. Let’s see what Marx says about materialism:

                    The production of ideas, of conceptions, of consciousness, is at first directly interwoven with the material activity and the material intercourse of men, the language of real life. Conceiving, thinking, the mental intercourse of men, appear at this stage as the direct efflux of their material behaviour. The same applies to mental production as expressed in the language of politics, laws, morality, religion, metaphysics, etc., of a people. Men are the producers of their conceptions, ideas, etc. – real, active men, as they are conditioned by a definite development of their productive forces and of the intercourse corresponding to these, up to its furthest forms. Consciousness can never be anything else than conscious existence, and the existence of men is their actual life-process. If in all ideology men and their circumstances appear upside-down as in a camera obscura, this phenomenon arises just as much from their historical life-process as the inversion of objects on the retina does from their physical life-process.

                    In direct contrast to German philosophy which descends from heaven to earth, here we ascend from earth to heaven. That is to say, we do not set out from what men say, imagine, conceive, nor from men as narrated, thought of, imagined, conceived, in order to arrive at men in the flesh. We set out from real, active men, and on the basis of their real life-process we demonstrate the development of the ideological reflexes and echoes of this life-process. The phantoms formed in the human brain are also, necessarily, sublimates of their material life-process, which is empirically verifiable and bound to material premises. Morality, religion, metaphysics, all the rest of ideology and their corresponding forms of consciousness, thus no longer retain the semblance of independence. They have no history, no development; but men, developing their material production and their material intercourse, alter, along with this their real existence, their thinking and the products of their thinking. Life is not determined by consciousness, but consciousness by life. In the first method of approach the starting-point is consciousness taken as the living individual; in the second method, which conforms to real life, it is the real living individuals themselves, and consciousness is considered solely as their consciousness.

                    This method of approach is not devoid of premises. It starts out from the real premises and does not abandon them for a moment. Its premises are men, not in any fantastic isolation and rigidity, but in their actual, empirically perceptible process of development under definite conditions. As soon as this active life-process is described, history ceases to be a collection of dead facts as it is with the empiricists (themselves still abstract), or an imagined activity of imagined subjects, as with the idealists.

                    Where speculation ends – in real life – there real, positive science begins: the representation of the practical activity, of the practical process of development of men. Empty talk about consciousness ceases, and real knowledge has to take its place. When reality is depicted, philosophy as an independent branch of knowledge loses its medium of existence. At the best its place can only be taken by a summing-up of the most general results, abstractions which arise from the observation of the historical development of men. Viewed apart from real history, these abstractions have in themselves no value whatsoever. They can only serve to facilitate the arrangement of historical material, to indicate the sequence of its separate strata. But they by no means afford a recipe or schema, as does philosophy, for neatly trimming the epochs of history. On the contrary, our difficulties begin only when we set about the observation and the arrangement – the real depiction – of our historical material, whether of a past epoch or of the present. The removal of these difficulties is governed by premises which it is quite impossible to state here, but which only the study of the actual life-process and the activity of the individuals of each epoch will make evident.

                    So, again, what Marx is saying is that our consciousness is a reflection of our practical activity. So, when we study nature, or human relations, or whatever it is our object of study, by practical activity we acquire knowledge of the real and validate this knowledge empirically. But again, the knowledge is not the real, they are “sublimates of our material life process”. Marx also emphasizes that knowledge is not isolated from history, it is a result of a historical process. Our knowledge is not timeless, it stands at a point in the human history, which also changes as a result of our practical activity and so does our knowledge.

                    The main problem with empiricists, as Marx states, is that they see history as a rigid collection of facts. So their understanding of phenomena tends to be metaphysical, just like it happens with idealists.

                    So, in summary, I stand by everything I said before. My position has absolutely nothing to do with postmodernism, subjective idealism, agnosticism or any of the loaded terms you cited. My statements are all inside the comprehension of dialectical and historical materialism.