Does Pat C understand dialectical materialism

by Bookworm Tue Nov 26, 2002 19:24

"all phenomenon (everthing) in the world is based on the material reality of nature."

This sounds more like vulgar materialism to me.
Marx never wrote anything like that.

by yb Tue Nov 26, 2002 19:28

would any of the marxists have links to those letters?

by iosaf = O as if Tue Nov 26, 2002 21:06

now folks I had forgotten the exact order of ideas in the Marx Engels letters.
but by devilish conicidence it was in
1869 on the 26th of November that they discussed
land valuation.
Now as anarchists know well Marixism falls down a bit on property.
especially when property is taken to include genetics, ideas, and such.
which is why we are much more clever than Marxists.

by aunty party Tue Nov 26, 2002 22:03

For you dumb thicks out there that means Filthy Fenian Knacker.

by honey trap Tue Nov 26, 2002 23:26

have you noticed Ian Paisley jnr lately, due to years of ballymena inbreeding he's going cross eyed.

by john torney Tue Nov 26, 2002 23:29

and FOAD UILSS, means fuk off and die you incest loving squaddie HUN scum, youse fuk your own brute ugly brit grannies. we know all about your interrogational training methods. youse also like to practise your interrogational skills on your wives and children.

by binky old boy Wed Nov 27, 2002 00:36

Ian paisley jnr went to the top public school in belfast, only the best for daddy's lickle boy, the top fee paying school for snooty snobs and establishment old boys, METHODIST COLLEGE on the malone rd yoo nooo.

by ilive in carrydufff yoo noo Wed Nov 27, 2002 00:40

many many peelers, little lord fauntelroy sons and darrlingg daughters and chums of top buisness executives and horsy faced plums went to this prime schooling establishment for toffs and proffesional people yoo noo

by penny pipps truffing Wed Nov 27, 2002 00:43

i leave in bangurr yoo noo, many of my chums and neighbourrs are judges, peelers, screws lovely lovely peoople yooo nooo

by dave Wed Nov 27, 2002 12:45

"and FOAD UILSS, means fuk off and die you incest loving squaddie HUN scum, youse fuk your own brute ugly brit grannies. we know all about your interrogational training methods. youse also like to practise your interrogational skills on your wives and children."

is the person who wrote this being serious cause if they are why not post tht shit up some where else.it's just bigotry and though indymedia was for progeressive news??!!!???

by cier dunlop Wed Nov 27, 2002 15:48

Its a fact, not bigotry, dont see you complaining about the FFk, you're obviously the bigot. cant take a slagging back eh?

by andy mcknob Wed Nov 27, 2002 15:51

my daddies a judge, he'll have you arrested, my dadddies a peeler, he'll have you arrested, my daddies a judge, he'll make sure you fail in all your endervours, my daddies a peeler he'll give you a criminal record, brand you a criminal, you'll struggle forever.

by pat c Wed Nov 27, 2002 16:47

It is a very strange application of the marxist method to the irish question which requires one to ignore all of the marxist texts relating to ireland.

DLR has made it quite clear that he is the one who is ignorant & as Peadar O'Donnell would have put it is not "Wurred into the Dialoctic".

Trotsky etc believed that nationalism can have a revolutionary potential and recognised that potential in Republicanism.

That is why:

1. Lenin & Trotsky supported the IRA during the War of Independence.

2. The Communist International supported the Republican Side during the Irish Civil War. The Comintern saw the Treaty as a betrayal , they supported the taking of the six Counties by military means. The Comintern saw no revolutionary role for the Protestant working class as long as they were tied to loyalism.

3. In 1936, Trotsky reaffirmed his support for the Irish National Liberation struggle.

It is DLR who lacks understanding of the dialectic. Otherwise he will have to explain why Lenin, Trotsky & the cOmintern supported the IRA in action & saw Republicanism as a revolutionary force.

AS for Aunty Party, hes just an irrelevant fool.

by green & red Thu Nov 28, 2002 00:03

Pat C you usually make more sense than your detractors and come across as being a bit more genuine but what is this stuff about Trotsky? The SWP parrot his gospel to bolster up every crazy new departure such as justifying sucking up to Des Geraghty in order to be allowed to use Liberty Hall for ESF and Globalise Resistance stuff. The SP uses Trotsky's dogma also to justify their bullshit position on the national question. I suppose Paddy Healy was not too bad, but dont forget Gerry Healy of the WRP, perhaps an extreme deciple of Trotsky, but his 'mistakes' sprang from Trotskyism just as does, those of the SWP and the SP.

by pat c Thu Nov 28, 2002 14:34

ok red & green

i do know better. i admit it! i am not a trotskyist.

but these people are, so i am just pointing out the contradictions in their theories.

i have to admit i found it quite amusing that DLR felt the need to create a new posting just about my grasp of Dialectical Materialism!

These people take themselves so seriously!

however, trotskys military writings are worth a read , as are his writings on "literature & art" and "literature & revolution"

and i do like his writings on ireland!

at least the swp are anti imperialist when it comes to ireland. they dont support the "right" of the orange order to march down the garvaghy road.

by OK - SP Thu Nov 28, 2002 16:48

You obviously have a problem with the SP. What is it? where does it come from? You are a nationalist, so you dont like the socialist answer to the national question. So get over it!

You accuse us of being pro-imperialist. Where do you get this? is it because we dont want to drive irish protestents and Israelis into the sea? I make no apologies for being on the side of the oppressed. The oppressed are also Irish protestents and Israeli workers.

You also seem to have some personal difficulties with SP. You accuse us of being "tots 'n trots". Are you envious of the great successes of SY and our work among the youth?

by pat c Thu Nov 28, 2002 17:33

"You obviously have a problem with the SP. What is it? where does it come from? You are a nationalist, so you dont like the socialist answer to the national question. So get over it!"

i have no problem with the sp. i have a problem with the sp members here who use every republican & socialist reublican posting as an opportunity to attack with vitriolic hatred.

i am not a nationalist; i am a republican socialist. you are using stalinist slander methods here.
it would make just as much sense for me to call you a loyalist because you support the orange orders "right" to march down the garvaghy road.

"You accuse us of being pro-imperialist. Where do you get this? is it because we dont want to drive irish protestents and Israelis into the sea?"

no its because you call british & israeli soldiers "workers in uniform". yet you call the ira & inla terrorists

you get annoyed at namecalling? yet you call me a nationalist. one of your members called me a fascist last week, because i disagreed with him on the national question.

"I make no apologies for being on the side of the oppressed. The oppressed are also Irish protestents and Israeli workers."

you guys turn reality on its head. israeli workers oppressed? compared to palestinians?

catholics have always suffered far worse oppression than protestants.
the protestant working class are like the "white thrash" in the US south. attacking the taigs rather than their masters.

but i'm sure your slogan in the civil rights days in the uS was a call for blacks to unite with the "white thrash" ku klux klan members.

"You also seem to have some personal difficulties with SP."

i have political differences with the SP

"You accuse us of being "tots 'n trots". Are you envious of the great successes of SY and our work among the youth?"

the sp members here carry on like children high on caffeine.

your grandoise claims re SY are laughable. you carry on as if YOU ARE THE ONE TRUE CHURCH.

I have great respect for some SP members. But you fools are beneath contempt.

grow up.

you can rant on here if you like. i wont be revisiting this thread.

just remember, any further attacks on republicans will be met with sets of awkward questions for the sp.

by DLR Thu Nov 28, 2002 17:51

Pat you are obviously well read in marxist literature. You are fond of pointing to it in relation to the national question, which indicates you have read different points of view on the question. That is good.

The reason I put up the posting was simply that you use the writings of Marx, Engels, Lenin and Trotsky to justify your sectarian nationalist viewpoint. As a Marxist I feel this needs to be countered. The Marxists in the past supported the national liberation movement in Ireland, but also very clearly stated that socialism was the only real form of freedom for the Irish people. Republicanism can be progressive in certain given circumstances, historical periods etc. However as I pointed out conditions are constantly changing and the very nature of republicanism in Ireland has changed quite dramatically (even in the past 15 years). With a realisation of the failure of the past strategy of the IRA, they with SF, have taken another route. Those who opposed this strategy are often on the right of the political spectrum and involved in quite dodgy activity. Does Pat support this kind of republicanism? Is republicanism by vertue of its name always progressive?

Simply to read and not understand the process of how these conclusions are reached is not accidental, as lenin might say. It illustrates something else.

A theory and an understanding of theory is vital in any struggle, especially in struggle to change the economic basis of society. Otherwise you are fumbling in the dark. What was once correct and progressive can become its opposite. An understanding of dialectics is vital in understanding the realm of politics.

by Mags Thu Nov 28, 2002 18:03

Of course the SP's views and practise in relation to what used to be called the 'National Question' are totally contrary to any application of Marxist principles. They claim to be Leninist but ignore his views.
Also since Connolly was Ireland's only prominent Marxist thinker and activist, and actually worked as a trade union organiser in Belfast, his views are relevant to this debate.
---------------
Lenin on the 1916 Rising
"The centuries old Irish national movement expressed itself in street fighting conducted by a section of the workers after a long period of mass agitation, demonstrations, suppression of the press, etc. Whoever calls such a uprising a ‘putsch’ is either a hardened reactionary, or a doctrinaire hopelessly incapable of picturing a social revolution as a living thing - very likely one army will line up in one place and say ‘We are for socialism’, whilst another will do so in another place and say, ‘We are for imperialism’ and that will be the social revolution! Only from such a ridiculously pedantic angle could one label the Irish revolution a ‘putsch’: Whoever expects a ‘pure’ social revolution will never live to see it. Such a person pays lip service to the revolution without understanding what Revolution really is."

Connolly on the North.

"The north east corner of Ireland is the home of a people whose minds are saturated with conceptions of political activity fit only for the atmosphere of the 17th century. The fault lies not with the present generation of toilers, but with those pastors and masters who have deceived it and enslaved it in the past - and deceived it in order that they might enslave it. But as no good can come of blaming it, so also no good, but infinite evil, can come of truckling to it. Here, the Orange working class are slaves in spirit because they have been reared up among a people whose conditions of servitude were more slavish than their own. In catholic Ireland the working class are rebels in spirit and democratic in feeling because for hundreds of years they have found no class as lowly paid or hardly treated as themselves."

"[Against partition] Labour should give the bitterest opposition, against it labour in Ulster should fight even to the death, if necessary, as our fathers fought before us."

" It is felt that the proposal to leave the Home Rule minority at the mercy of an ignorant majority with the evil record of the Orange party is a proposal that should never have been made, and that the establishment of such a scheme should be resisted with armed force if necessary. Personally I entirely agree with those who think so. ... such a scheme would destroy the Labour movement by disrupting it. It would perpetuate in a form aggravated in evil the discords now prevalent, and help the Home Rule and Orange capitalists and clerics to keep their rallying cries before the public as the political watchwords of the day. In short, it would make division more intense and confusion of ideas and parties more confounded."

"Remember that the whole history of Ireland is a record of betrayal by politicians and statesmen, and remembering this, spurn their lying promises and stand up for a United Ireland - an Ireland based on the unity of Labour and Nationality"
(Connolly Irish Worker April 1914)

Connolly described the leaders of Unionism as
"the sworn enemies of democracy, of labour and of nationality"

and he condemned the betrayal of the nationalist Home Rule leaders for
‘consenting to make the unity of the Irish nation a subject to be decided by the votes of the bigoted and passion-blinded reactionaries in these four counties where such reactionaries are in a majority."

by little chomsky helper Thu Nov 28, 2002 20:21

Karl and Freddie on property valuation 133 years ago this week:
www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1869/letters/69_11_26.htm

by OK - SP Thu Nov 28, 2002 22:00

"you guys turn reality on its head. israeli workers oppressed? compared to palestinians?"

Yes Israeli workers are oppressed. They are workers, workers are oppressed in capitalism- dont you agree? Do you not think Israeli workers have bad pay and conditions like any other working class? Or do you really think that Israeli workers are somehow all rich!
At not time did I say that Palestininan people are not oppressed. They are denied the basic right of self-detemination, they are deprived of economic essentials. They are oppressed!

"catholics have always suffered far worse oppression than protestants."

Catholics have suffered oppression, and still do! But do you deny that Protestents are also suffering from oppression! Protestants are workers too, they are subject to the oppession of their boss just as much as Catholic workers.

Pat C you are playing the capitalists game. You are dividing the working class along national and religious lines. Is that not un-marxist?. What did Marx, Engels, Lenin and Trotsky say on dividing the working class? Would they not support class unity?

The SP advocate Class unity as a solution in Israel/Palestine and in Ireland. We believe that the nation-state is essentially a capitalist creation. The only way to change the nature of the nation-state and nationalism is to bring about socialism.

by uncle Joe Fri Nov 29, 2002 01:01

1) Marxist Dialectical Method
The principal features of the Marxist dialectical method are as follows:

a) Nature Connected and Determined

Contrary to metaphysics, dialectics does not regard nature as an accidental agglomeration of things, of phenomena, unconnected with, isolated from, and independent of, each other, but as a connected and integral whole, in which things, phenomena are organically connected with, dependent on, and determined by, each other.

The dialectical method therefore holds that no phenomenon in nature can be understood if taken by itself, isolated from surrounding phenomena, inasmuch as any phenomenon in any realm of nature may become meaningless to us if it is not considered in connection with the surrounding conditions, but divorced from them; and that, vice versa, any phenomenon can be understood and explained if considered in its inseparable connection with surrounding phenomena, as one conditioned by surrounding phenomena.

b) Nature is a State of Continuous Motion and Change

Contrary to metaphysics, dialectics holds that nature is not a state of rest and immobility, stagnation and immutability, but a state of continuous movement and change, of continuous renewal and development, where something is always arising and developing, and something always disintegrating and dying away.

The dialectical method therefore requires that phenomena should be considered not only from the standpoint of their interconnection and interdependence, but also from the standpoint of their movement, their change, their development, their coming into being and going out of being.

The dialectical method regards as important primarily not that which at the given moment seems to be durable and yet is already beginning to die away, but that which is arising and developing, even though at the given moment it may appear to be not durable, for the dialectical method considers invincible only that which is arising and developing.

"All nature," says Engels, "from the smallest thing to the biggest. from grains of sand to suns, from protista (the primary living cells -- J. St.) to man, has its existence in eternal coming into being and going out of being, in a ceaseless flux, in unresting motion and change (Ibid., p. 484.)

Therefore, dialectics, Engels says, "takes things and their perceptual images essentially in their interconnection, in their concatenation, in their movement, in their rise and disappearance." (Marx and Engels, Vol. XIV,' p. 23.)

c) Natural Quantitative Change Leads to Qualitative Change

Contrary to metaphysics, dialectics does not regard the process of development as a simple process of growth, where quantitative changes do not lead to qualitative changes, but as a development which passes from insignificant and imperceptible quantitative changes to open' fundamental changes' to qualitative changes; a development in which the qualitative changes occur not gradually, but rapidly and abruptly, taking the form of a leap from one state to another; they occur not accidentally but as the natural result of an accumulation of imperceptible and gradual quantitative changes.

The dialectical method therefore holds that the process of development should be understood not as movement in a circle, not as a simple repetition of what has already occurred, but as an onward and upward movement, as a transition from an old qualitative state to a new qualitative state, as a development from the simple to the complex, from the lower to the higher:

"Nature," says Engels, "is the test of dialectics. and it must be said for modern natural science that it has furnished extremely rich and daily increasing materials for this test, and has thus proved that in the last analysis nature's process is dialectical and not metaphysical, that it does not move in an eternally uniform and constantly repeated circle. but passes through a real history. Here prime mention should be made of Darwin, who dealt a severe blow to the metaphysical conception of nature by proving that the organic world of today, plants and animals, and consequently man too, is all a product of a process of development that has been in progress for millions of years." (Ibid., p. 23.)

Describing dialectical development as a transition from quantitative changes to qualitative changes, Engels says:

"In physics ... every change is a passing of quantity into quality, as a result of a quantitative change of some form of movement either inherent in a body or imparted to it. For example, the temperature of water has at first no effect on its liquid state; but as the temperature of liquid water rises or falls, a moment arrives when this state of cohesion changes and the water is converted in one case into steam and in the other into ice.... A definite minimum current is required to make a platinum wire glow; every metal has its melting temperature; every liquid has a definite freezing point and boiling point at a given pressure, as far as we are able with the means at our disposal to attain the required temperatures; finally, every gas has its critical point at which, by proper pressure and cooling, it can be converted into a liquid state.... What are known as the constants of physics (the point at which one state passes into another -- J. St.) are in most cases nothing but designations for the nodal points at which a quantitative (change) increase or decrease of movement causes a qualitative change in the state of the given body, and at which, consequently, quantity is transformed into quality." (Ibid., pp. 527-28.)

Passing to chemistry, Engels continues:

"Chemistry may be called the science of the qualitative changes which take place in bodies as the effect of changes of quantitative composition. his was already known to Hegel.... Take oxygen: if the molecule contains three atoms instead of the customary two, we get ozone, a body definitely distinct in odor and reaction from ordinary oxygen. And what shall we say of the different proportions in which oxygen combines with nitrogen or sulphur, and each of which produces a body qualitatively different from all other bodies !" (Ibid., p. 528.)

Finally, criticizing Dühring, who scolded Hegel for all he was worth, but surreptitiously borrowed from him the well-known thesis that the transition from the insentient world to the sentient world, from the kingdom of inorganic matter to the kingdom of organic life, is a leap to a new state, Engels says:

"This is precisely the Hegelian nodal line of measure relations in which at certain definite nodal points, the purely quantitative increase or decrease gives rise to a qualitative leap, for example, in the case of water which is heated or cooled, where boiling point and freezing point are the nodes at which -- under normal pressure -- the leap to a new aggregate state takes place, and where consequently quantity is transformed into quality." (Ibid., pp. 45-46.)
d) Contradictions Inherent in Nature

Contrary to metaphysics, dialectics holds that internal contradictions are inherent in all things and phenomena of nature, for they all have their negative and positive sides, a past and a future, something dying away and something developing; and that the struggle between these opposites, the struggle between the old and the new, between that which is dying away and that which is being born, between that which is disappearing and that which is developing, constitutes the internal content of the process of development, the internal content of the transformation of quantitative changes into qualitative changes.

The dialectical method therefore holds that the process of development from the lower to the higher takes place not as a harmonious unfolding of phenomena, but as a disclosure of the contradictions inherent in things and phenomena, as a "struggle" of opposite tendencies which operate on the basis of these contradictions.

"In its proper meaning," Lenin says, "dialectics is the study of the contradiction within the very essence of things." (Lenin, Philosophical Notebooks, p. 265.)

And further:

"Development is the 'struggle' of opposites." (Lenin, Vol. XIII, p. 301.)

Such, in brief, are the principal features of the Marxist dialectical method.