>Dear Russ,
>
> This was something I thought I would have to demonstrate after hours of
>painstaking argument, given the state of play here re Leninism. Maybe if i
>rephrased the question, to be absolutely clear: if you go along with Russ
>and myself, and assert that Marx never used the "dialectical materialism"
>concept, are people prepared to stick with Marx or deny him in favour of
>Lenin and Engels?
>
>Simon
>
>----------
>>
>>
>> >Towards this, I suggest a debate on the real issue behind all of this -
>> >historical materialism vs dialectical materialism.
>>
>> Only the former can be found in Marx's writings.
>>
>> Russ
Some people claim that Marx never used Hegel, either, in Capital. Like the
arrogant Stalinist intellectual strangler Althusser.
As it is, Marx is up in heaven striding over the clouds along with Engels
and Lenin and Trotsky all jabbering away about how much better they could
have done things if only they'd known then what they know now. While
Althusser and others of his kind are up to their nostrils in the foetid
cesspools of hell and wondering why such intelligent and wonderfully clever
blokes as themselves ended up in the shit. If Simon and Russ don't watch
out, they'll be plunging sewerwards when their bell tolls, too.
Now if any of you cleverclogs's can show me a single quote in which Engels
or Lenin or Trotsky claim that dialectical materialism is a finished body
of philosophical doctrine, or that their own contributions to its first
steps are more than just that, then we might have a discussion. In which
Marx's contributions as against Kantianism and dialectical idealism will
have to be considered alongside Engels and Lenin and Trotsky and not
against them.
Because the really sick thing about what Simon and Russ are saying is the
implication that they are totally against the spirit of Marx's thought.
This is just so much nonsense.
Just look at the eagerness with which Marx discussed developments in
science with Engels in the correspondence. Just look at the collaboration
with Engels not just in general but in the philosophical broadside against
all the established bourgeois and petty-bourgeois clever-clogs garbage that
Anti-Duehring constitutes. Just look at the common ground established
between the two of them in those intensive years of preparation, so much of
it philosophical, that preceded the Communist Manifesto.
What brought the term "dialectical materialism" into disrepute is the same
social and political force that brought Leninism and Communism and
Socialism itself into disrepute (not to mention the Dictatorship of the
Proletariat, vanguard party etc etc) -- namely the Stalinist
counter-revolution.
But now this force is historically spent, having eaten itself hollow after
having its head up its arse for such a long time. The pity of it is that
the collapse of Stalinism took with it the conquests of the October
revolution that still remained in the Soviet workers state, precisely
because the weakened international workers movement was unable to get its
act together as Trotsky said it would have to and carry out a political
revolution headed by a revolutionary Marxist internationalist vanguard
party. One of the main reasons for this is not the failings of the
Trotskyists, many as these may have been, but the vicious pusillanimity
(almost wrote "puce", must have been thinking of the French for flea!) of
those petty-bourgeois intellectuals who oscillated between
fellow-travelling Stalinism and gung-ho sectarian anti-party, anti-October
left observerism. These are the people who split the movement and
dissipated its forces more than any revolutionary militants ever did.
Bureaucratic careerist academic jobsworths. Conduits into the mass movement
of either Stalinist cynicism, narrow-minded dogmatism and vulgarity, or
petty-bourgeois fatalism, indifference and scepticism.
What a crew!
And always trying to dig Marx up again and tog him out as a latter-day
Bentham to be stuffed and exhibited in a glass cage for the improvement of
as yet unformed academic word-processors.
Anyhow, if any of you historical materialists can provide a decent
definition of Marx's version of historical materialism -- one that accounts
for the use he made of such concepts as contradictory development, the
repulsion of opposite poles united within a single contradiction (such as
bourgeoisie and working class, capital and labour, use value and exchange
value, etc etc etc) -- just another way of putting the identity of
opposites -- or the non-linear character of development -- then again
perhaps we might have a discussion.
Even more so if any of you can actually show us a latter-day guiding light
who uses Marx's real philosophical method to advance the science of
society, economics and politics. Or perhaps I missed the paeons to
Plekhanov, Martov and Kautsky??? (Or Henwood?? -- the mind boggles...)
In other words -- show us yer spit!
Cheers,
Hugh
PS "Show us yer spit" is a prole reference little known in Deli-land. The
brief snatch of dialogue goes:
"Where yer from?"
" 'Sea."
"Wot 'Sea?"
"Bat'sea."
"Show us yer spit!"
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