I've been reading a bunch into dialectics, and started "Dance of the Dialectic" by Bertell Ollman which i'm finding very interesting.
I want to write a few things, some articles that will generally be about historical research, analysis and critique of an event, or a text, or ideology. A lot of what i'm interested in gravitates around literary/media critique.
So are there still marxist, specifically dialectical methods, models or schools of thoughts that are still used? Modernised versions, evolutions (that don't fall into anti-communism, or some vague "post-marxism"), etc? Are there methods that bridge the gap like Marx's dialectic and can be used as much in science, in critique, in philosophy and in strategy and action?
Another thing I'm interested in: escaping the uselessless of media and literary critique. I don't just want to dissect a text and talk about what's inside or about the ideology, although that's a necessary step, but I want to see if that can be projected forward, to derive not only a critique but a positive method, a strategy for change. For example, a method that allows you to critique fiction writing and also gives you workable tactics for better writing, for revolutionary writing. Not simply pointing out the ideological content of something, but tactics for fighting it, for writing something better, for counter-acting. Feels like simply analysing and being critical isn't enough because it doesn't bring change, and can even bring a sense of powerlessness when all you're doing is in knowing rather than doing. In this example, how do we convert the analysis into something that motivates and guides new writing? I'm still unsure if this is really possible, it feels like media critique can only ever be subsumed into capital and can never really be used in revolutionary ways, but I'm wondering.
Sorry if some of this is rambly.
In science, the dialectic is a rarely used tool. Remember, science is not an attempt to describe the True. It is a method of empirical observations that are tied to our human experiences of a broader world and our local universe. As such, we can simply observe different controlled experiments carefully and use statistics to define what is and is not consistent with some model, some story that works to add intuition to our empiral data. These stories are not True. The atom is no more True than the aether; but the atom is a means of reasoning about objects in the very small that is consistent with all our known observations. The use of dialectic occurs in finding observations that are not consistent with the given set of models, and resolving the contradictions by way of a new model that can sustain all observations consistently. The dialectic, essentially in science, is the means by which a Kuhnian paradigm shift can be brought about. But it is also limited more broadly by the limitations of human social formations. Most people today, even scientists, ascribe the atom as the real and the perception of the world as not. But the atom is inherently a less real thing than synthesized human experience of phenomena and materia because it is a description of reality that is known to be inconsistent with other descriptions like relativity.
For a contrary opinion to the first one, yes. It's a method that acknowledges the dialectical relationship of human ideas and material reality. When human ideas don't make sense with material reality, we adjust our ideas and try again. This is the same method applied by revolutionaries in political practice.
At first, knowledge is perceptual. The leap to conceptual knowledge, i.e., to ideas, occurs when sufficient perceptual knowledge is accumulated. This is one process in cognition. It is the first stage in the whole process of cognition, the stage leading from objective matter to subjective consciousness from existence to ideas. Whether or not one’s consciousness or ideas (including theories, policies, plans or measures) do correctly reflect the laws of the objective external world is not yet proved at this stage, in which it is not yet possible to ascertain whether they are correct or not. Then comes the second stage in the process of cognition, the stage leading from consciousness back to matter, from ideas back to existence, in which the knowledge gained in the first stage is applied in social practice to ascertain whether the theories, policies, plans or measures meet with the anticipated success. Generally speaking, those that succeed are correct and those that fail are incorrect, and this is especially true of man’s struggle with nature.
-"Where do correct ideas come from?", Mao Zedong
Thank you! The excerpt you posted is actually some of the very little Mao I've read. He's refering to dialectics in it right? It reminded me of the scientific method, probably because its some of the only critical theory(?) taught in American public schools. I can read Mao, Marx, and Engels, but I dont feel very confident explaining it to other people to see if I actually understand it. But using the scientific method as an example might be practical in cracking through western brainworms
Thank you! The excerpt you posted is actually some of the very little Mao I've read. He's referring to dialectics in it right?
No problem! Yeah, he's talking about the dialectical relationship between a person's knowledge and the material world. If you wanna learn more about this relationship and the Marxist theory of knowledge more generally I highly recommend Mao's short essay "On Practice"
I can read Mao, Marx, and Engels, but I dont feel very confident explaining it to other people to see if I actually understand it.
Yeahh, it can be difficult especially under the pressure of a social situation. Sometimes I can't do it either. It takes a lot of study and practice to internalize it fully. But I believe in you!
But using the scientific method as an example might be practical in cracking through western brainworms
Yeah! Especially if the person you're trying to reach is a more scientific-minded person.
Interesting exchanges! I recently finished reading a collection Mao's stuff and his contributions to the concepts of contradiction, and the theory/practice dialectic, was very interesting.
I posted a big-ass comment on the post that goes further in what I was trying to get at.
I don't think so. It's a method for testing if the model produced by your current theory is statistically consistent. When it's not, large shifts in our thought require a dialectic turn. So for developing quantum mechanics that turn looked like resolving a contradiction by introducing a notion of quantized angular momentum, and at first, just with that and classical mechanics, you can actually solve a lot of early quantum mechanics issues without fully dialectically breaking from the extant theory fully. So called semiclassical physics. Or Einstein doing thought experiments to resolve a logical inconsistency introduced by a very well verified and consistent theory of electromagnetism.
What do you mean by "the True"? Even if the atom is inconsistent with some aspects of relativity how is it as true as the aether (a human idea that has no reflection in material reality)?
Our current model of subatomic phenomena is just that, a model, a story that fits the data and motivates the equations in a manner that is self-consistent. For that model to be True it would have to encapsulate all that can be known about something. But we know that our model of subatomic phenomena is definitively and inexorably incompatible with our model of cosmological phenomena. In our language, we have a habit of hierarchalizing scientific theory where the most "true" understanding of reality is that given to you by modern physics because it is in some ways a theory of the lowest level material phenomena we've been able to observe and make sense of. If tomorrow we discover axions or leptons, there would need to be a paradigmatic shift in our view of what is most foundational to accommodate, and all the moreso in order to reconcile quantum theory and gravity. In this way, the atom is not the final word on the composition of our phenomenal experience of matter, and is therefore a known stepping stone on a path to a more consistent and broader empirically consistent understanding of reality. The aether, in its time, was a consistent way to explain what was known in a way that makes sense. Similarly, there are still people (who are not taken very seriously) that are attempting to forego relativity entirely in favor of a notion of modified Newtonian gravity to further explain dark matter. There will always be people that foolishly look back or foolishly cling to what is current.
Can you elaborate more on the True? After comparing notes between you and @PaX@hexbear.net it sounds like the idea of the True is like a type of ideal.
All I mean by that is the I think unreachable aspiration of some fully "correct" and consistent description of reality that is external to it. So say you had a theory of physics with internally consistent logic that was capable of providing a priori an empirically accurate model of our reality at every measurable scale, and could explain perhaps some of the odd details of the standard model of particle physics. That would represent some sort fully complete knowledge of all that could be, and the nature of chemistry, biology, human psychology, and all of reality could in theory if not in practice be calculated out mathematically, given a theory that describes a complete set of laws that do not need to be extended. The question of what is True and if it is reachable is whether such a theory actually exists, or if our reality is something that we in fact can be certain of little because of the necessary limitations of only knowing to ask questions that can be, these days entirely via technological perceptual extensions, which is what a telescope or a particle accelerator really are as far as human society is concerned, be inferred by our bodies of flesh and juices.
I would argue that this kind of approach to science philosophy is very common, usually unexamined and implicit, and a sort of identification of the ultimate goal of science as a whole to be the project of carving out Hegel's Absolute Idea from the bedrock of human sense experience. I think such a theory is impossible, and much of our rumblings about what we might be able to do with the majority of scientific research, particularly in physics, to find new contradictions to explore is guided by the same sort of impotent death drive as Silicon Valley startup cults or any other late capitalist social enclave. And I would argue this chiefly because we are not particularly rational about pointing science at the alleviation of human labor and suffering because unprofitable scientists are only good for being pointed at exciting and flashy PR and news to get people to focus on something else than the crushing weight of capitalist society even here in the imperial core. That isn't to say that the science these people do is wrong, it's that they could be helping people, and instead they're running exploitative little startups in the pursuit of knowledge that is not useful for people's lives. We don't even get to see how much human labor and suffering could be alleviated by increased development and production if we had a system of globalized central planning and an intensive project of feeding and housing people to build efficient and automated production pipelines for the majority of necessary commodities. We're basically there, technologically speaking, to completely revolutionize human society into communism. We have the brainpower. But right now, the brainpower available is doing the atheist scientist equivalent of seeking to meet God in person in this life.
Very interesting, thank you for your comments. It's tough to formulate my thoughts because I'm trying to shift a lot of the concepts into the "humanities" side of the sciences more, and into art and literature. But I've personally always disliked how arbitrarily split the sciences have been in the bourgeois world. Not that there aren't differences, but I don't know. Something about the strange split between "hard" and "soft" sciences, and the inability of those fields, or even in between fields of the humanities themselves, to communicate, to collaborate on theory, on ideas, models and practice, is bothering me.
I've posted a big-ass comment on this post that goes further into what I wanted to get at.
I don't think we are disagreeing entirely. Of course, I am not saying our model of the atom is a perfect reflection of the underlying reality it represents or the final model that humans will develop to explain these phenomena. I'm not familiar enough with physics to speak too much more on this. But our methods have developed significantly since theories of the aether and to say that model is as true as the atom is rejecting all models that aren't a hypothetical perfect model of physics. There is no "True" model out there waiting for us to discover it, just scientists trying to describe the real objects and relationships this field of science is concerned with to increasing success.
But our methods have developed significantly since theories of the aether
I would argue that our methods have not evolved significantly: our technology has. The point I'm trying to convey is to encourage people to not confuse the theory or methods of science with what is real or unassailable. The thinking that the atom is in some way more true than say the value form is a mistake commonly made and encourage in our society, predicated on separating the theory out as a truth to be reasoned about on its own. I'm not really trying to agree or disagree, just explain what it means to be doing science without overdetermining the terrain or fetishizing it as a substitute for other explorations of reality
I would argue that our methods have not evolved significantly: our technology has.
By methods, I meant experimental techniques for testing theories. For example, pre-modern physicists didn't have particle accelerators and couldn't even conceive of a particle accelerator because they didn't have any concept or the same concept of a particle.
The point I'm trying to convey is to encourage people to not confuse the theory or methods of science with what is real or unassailable.
That wasn't my intent, just to be clear. I just thought it was wrong to claim the atom is as true as the aether. The former is better at describing our empirical observations than the latter.
are there still marxist, specifically dialectical methods, models or schools of thoughts that are still used?
The Return of the Dialectics of Nature: The Struggle for Freedom as Necessity by John Bellamy Foster (Dec 01, 2022) https://monthlyreview.org/2022/12/01/the-return-of-the-dialectics-of-nature/
media critique can only ever be subsumed into capital and can never really be used in revolutionary ways
What is 'revolutionary' writing? The first step is to practice historical materialism to understand what sort of political economy has resulted in our current society under its material condition which constrain it.
Thank you for that link, I'll read that when I've got some time. I also recently subscribed to MR and Science & Society as i'm increasingly interested in what they publish and I want to engage with it more.
[I copied my ridiculously long response into a comment on the Post because I think it's more a continuation of the post itself]
Hi there. I'll try to answer some of your questions but I'm not very good at writing like this.
So are there still marxist, specifically dialectical methods, models or schools of thoughts that are still used? Modernised versions, evolutions (that don't fall into anti-communism, or some vague "post-marxism"), etc?
It's important to remember that dialectical materialism and materialist dialectics are a synthesis and development of many ideas that have been present throughout history, science, and human thought more generally. All analysis of the world and human ideas reflect dialectics and materialism in some way or they reflect the opposite tendencies (metaphysics and idealism). The scientific method, for example, in which a scientist attempts to create an ideal model of a material process requires that that ideal model be tested against reality and adjusted accordingly. This is the exact same method that dialectical materialism prescribes to resolve incorrect human knowledge more generally. It's rare, however, to find dialectical thinking in use named explicitly at this point. Especially in the west. That could change, though.
Are there methods that bridge the gap like Marx's dialectic and can be used as much in science, in critique, in philosophy and in strategy and action?
While materialist dialectics may represent an abstract and general fact about reality the actual way it manifests in specific fields and the application of its method depends on the problems you're trying to solve. Marxists have generally been more concerned with its application to political economy for practical reasons of revolution and a revolution's survival. But there's good stuff out there if you look hard enough.
I haven't heard of an application of the dialectical method like that to writing. But I think it's a good idea and definitely worth pursuing! I hope this helps a bit.
Thank you everyone for the answers, I'm going to copy a wall-of-text response I gave because I think it goes deeper into what I wanted to go into, and I want to know if it makes any sense and what people think of it :
Sorry for the vague "revolutionary writing" term, I'm not sure myself.
Basically, I have been reading a lot and writing a little, and slowly my interests and hobbies have been transformed by my reading and my political learning. What I, and basically everyone around me, engage with the most on a regular basis are various forms of entertainment, media, and more broadly art and literature. This is a fairly narrow domain, very western and middle-class centric, but there are things that I think are worth pursuing politically as in this domain they appear to have power. Those things are literary and media critique, but I want to go further than critique and into a method and a strategy that would allow (beyond the analysis and critique) for better writing, a positive/productive outcome of critique, constructive critique rather than deconstructive, if that makes sense.
This is the kind of thing I'm interested in. Because specifically in this narrow domain of media in the western world, it seems like media is utilized broadly to co-opt, numb and kill political any revolutionary energy. Media is heavily commodified and almost entirely filled with ideological bias and propaganda, directly or indirectly. Counter-culture is co-opted too, if it even exists beyond the aesthetic of one. And even analysis and critique, at least the one I see and hear around me, the one people seem to engage in generally, feels mostly deconstructive and pointless. The methods of analysis and critique are all still thoroughly in the world of bourgeois science, and more importantly because of this the conclusions or those critique never seems to produce anything positive. As with most things that are of the bourgeois scientific tradition, the direction of the critique is projected towards nihilism, or an individualistic escapism.
So even the better forms of literature and art, even the better critiques of literature and art, seem to at worst fuel the reaction and at best to diverge the potential energy into a black hole of impotence.
It's hard to feel like these things are "important" and "serious" a lot of the time because media critique is.. well, media critique. Engaging with media in general, in this western capitalist individualistic world, is increasingly feeling like it can't be anything other than escapism to me. There's a part of me that wonders if I'm not just looking at these things because I don't have anything else I feel like I can do, so I'm trying to have my escapism and theory at the same time. Obviously there are much more important things to be doing, but I think this could also be worth doing at the same time. After all art, literature, media, etc.. is something everyone engages with and creates all the time, art is an essential part of human lives and cultures. Capitalism turns this into commodities, and turns the engagement with it into an escape, especially for the category of people in the west who, while still exploited, still benefit enough from the exploitation of the rest of the world, and still have enough "treats", that they fall into complacency and nihilism. The reason why basically all the western left, even in its best moments, seems unable to escape individualism, unable to look beyond its national borders and national interests.
I'm getting lost. Basically I'm torn because there are things I know about and I'm interested about personally, and I want to bring theory and method to them. I want to believe that there is worth in that, although I'm unsure of the form it would take, or the goal it would have. It is hard to maintain motivation when those things can, at the same time, motivate me yet make me feel like they are only escapism.
So "revolutionary" art/literature/media in this context would be a method for analysis, critique, projecting a vision and providing tools for better writing. The vision being a more positive and potent vision of the future (I don't mean utopian/happy necessarily) that drives collectivism rather than individualism, that carries with it a different understanding of the world, a different ideology and feeds a different "narrative" in our minds to counter the reactionary narrative (the brainworms if you will) that we all have. The tools for better writing would be, without being dogmatic or prescriptivist, a way of collaborating, adjusting, writing and rewriting things for that visionary goal, as with Marx's dialectic method where the revolutionary strategy emerges as a way to go from A to B: the analysis of the past allows a critique of the present, the critique of the present allows a judgement of how things are but also how they COULD be, the judgement of how things are and how they could be allows for a positive vision of how things can be in the future, and the vision of how things can be allows for a strategy to be developed in order to get there.
This is a lot, but that's basically it for what I was trying to get at. Almost everything I find about art/literature/media never really seems to get to this. It's either insufficient analysis, or useless critique, or nihilistic vision, and no attempts or clear ways of trying to make it better, of projecting all that mental energy and theory into any kind of practice.
