Marxism-Thaxis] OudeyisHegel, Marx, and, for that matter, Jay Gould (he and Dan Dennett - the American reductionist philosopher - fought over this issue) did not regard development to be incremental or continuous. The dialectic, the successive emergence of negations of previous conditions suggests that development hops and jumps rather than grows by inches. The principle of Quantity is also not a case of incremental change. You can think of it as a teapot on the burner or the apparent lull before a sudden popular rising; the conditions conducive to a boiling pot or a popular uprising cook slowly without any apparent sign of dramatic change until a critical state is reached and then, things happen very suddenly indeed. The concept of Quantity for Engels and Marx as for Hegel refers to the sudden change of state rather than to the accumulation of conditions that engenders it. The issue really is the essentialism that Marx and Engels adopted from Hegel. The significant fact of the sudden boil of the teapot and the popular uprising is the end product of the process that generates them and not the conditions. After all, a teapot on a low fire is just a teapot on a low fire and a long, hot Summer is just a long, hot, Summer; they both only become interesting when they result respectively in a pot of boiling water and an uprising of an angry community. Victor
^^^^^ CB: My understanding of this is that there is a long period of exactly continuous or incremental change that is suddenly altered by the leap, the quantum leap or qualitative change. Dialectics doesn't deny continous or incremental change, rather it relates the two types of change, quantitative and qualitative. The temperature of the water is continously increasing, but the surface is not bubbling. At 212 degrees farenheit , continuous, gradual change leaps into bubbles burst on the surface, a qualitative change in the surface of the water. This is quantitative change turning into qualititive change or continuous change turning into discontinuous change. Quantity turning into quality is a change in the type of change; it is quantitative _change_ turning into qualitative _change_. Evolution punctuated by revolution is another way of saying quantitative change turns into qualitative change. Socially, the ebb and flow of reform is evolutionary. It is change without changing the mode of production out of capitalism. Socialist revolution is a leap in which the mode of production changes. Darwin was an evolutionist, precisely speaking. He thought all change was gradual. He didn't posit revolutions. Lenin predicted that Darwin's gradualist model would be replaced by one with leaps. Punctuated equilibrium is exactly that replacement. Speciation occurs in the leaps after long periods of "circular" motion in the , equilibrium, in the forms _within_ a species. "Equilibrium" doesn't mean no change, just changes that stay within the species. Gradual, quantitative or circular changes last for a longer period of time than the leaps. Leaps are relatively rare compared to gradual changes. In other words, the "suddenness" of the leap or hop you mention is _relative_ to the slowness of the continous change. The leap change and continous change have to be related ( as a unity and struggle of opposites). The dialectic of quantity and quality impinges in that essentially "quantitative" process , counting. To count counting or whole numbers seems inherently gradual and continuous at first. But when we establish the real numbers, then counting the counting numbers involves leaps over an infinite number of numbers just to go from one (1) to two (2). And then there is transformation (back) from qualitative change to quantitative change, as the leaps become regular, and 1,2,3,4, 5, 6... can be considered a continous series of numbers. Charles _______________________________________________ Marxism-Thaxis mailing list Marxism-Thaxis@lists.econ.utah.edu To change your options or unsubscribe go to: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/listinfo/marxism-thaxis
