Ask Prof Wolff: Marxist Dialectics - Where Philosophy and Economics Meet

A Patron of Economic Update asks: "I stumbled upon your video about dialectics about a month ago and I was wondering if you could do more? I appreciate that you made the connection between economy and philosophy."

This is Professor Richard Wolff's video response.

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“Marxism always was the critical shadow of capitalism. Their interactions changed them both. Now Marxism is once again stepping into the light as capitalism shakes from its own excesses and confronts decline.”

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[democracyatwrk]

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Each week we answer 1-2 questions from our wonderful Patreon community.

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[Sapheiorus]

I've listened to a podcast that goes further in-depth to delineate what Marxist Dialectics are and mean in a podcast called Red Menace. The relevant episode was released on September 29, 2020, titled "The Fundamentals of Marxism: Dialectics, Historical Materialism, and Class Struggle". It gives itself more time to explain the concepts than Prof. Wolff has here.

[treefrog]

And that is why the Earth itself should be viewed as a living "organism" consisting of BILLIONS of life-forms ranging from microscopic organisms, to frogs, to trees, to whales and humans in all their diversity as ONE THING. We are all expressions of "life" and should all be equally respected as "brothers" as is expressed in Native American traditional wisdom. Our arrogant "human exceptionalism" is naive and self-destructive. The current precarious state of the Earth itself is a result of our foolishness. I would humbly ask everyone to imagine an Earth where humans never existed. All other factors remaining the same, the Earth today would resemble the proverbial and mythical "Garden of Eden". At the ripe age of 73 I cannot view humanity as other than a "pernicious invasive species". During my time on the planet I have only seen the situation get progressively worse, not better. Environmental decimation, egregious income disparities, hypocritical racial inequities, educational and intellectual degradation, are all HUMAN "contributions" to what was once a potential miracle. I am very aware that there ARE millions of wonderful individual human beings all over the Earth but, sadly, we have somehow managed to collectively kill the miracle that we are.

[scotteagles]

I cannot express enough my appreciation for Prof. Wolff. What a solid dude.

[publicdomain]

Timely and thought provoking words from RD Wolff. Thanx.

[JumpingJacks]

That was awesome. I just became a better human being.

[itzenormous]

That was an excellent explanation, Dr. Wolff. Especially the concise and definitive manner in which you conveyed the essence of "dialectics."
I often feel that this is a term, excessively used, but not quite understood.
Dialectical thought is all-encompassing, with a wide base of consideration, and ever evolving. It is a pattern of thought that seeks to consider the full picture, and thoroughly understand all sides of debate, before arriving at, an often belabored conclusion.

[manassardar]

Please Prof...let us have some more continuation of this...

[fxylady]

Marvellous short. Thank you so much Prof Wolff. X

[dr.pawankumararyan]

Dialectical is dialogue, it is the best way to define this philosophical pedagogy in scientific terms...

[progyandas]

Brilliant short explanation on dialectics by Prof Wolff .

[CaioPeixoto]

wow... just wow... thanks Prof. Wolff !

[parallax_review]

I applaud Prof. Wolff's continuous attempt to make Marxist thought accessible to a broader audience. This video, however, falls short of that and is a mystification of dialectics with quite a few distracting tangents on Lukacs and Althusser (whose the contributions are rather controversial) as well as Freud.

In my opinion, a proper short introduction on Marxist dialectics would not focus on the concept of overdetermination. And while for Marxists dialectics certainly is way of thinking about the world (epistemology), emphasizing how contradictions structure the way we think opens the door to an idealist interpretation. What sets Marxist dialectics apart, rather, is its underlying materialism, the ways in which the real (objective) world is propelled forward by contradictions, and how dialectical materialism conceives of the world as being constantly in motion rather than being a collection of separate entities (or “things”) that only change through outside influence. Only because the real world is constantly changing due to its internal contradictions, we adopt a way of thinking that reflects this.

Unfortunately, I cannot think of a good brief introduction in English, and the classical texts (Engel’s Anti-Dühring and Dialectics of Nature; Lenin’s Empirio-criticism) are rather demanding. For those willing to invest some time, Bertell Ollman’s work is worth a look, and of course the early chapters in Capital (commodity->capital) remain a good example of dialectics.

[thanosAIAS]

Was a very big question of mine, Thanx a million !!!

[tanujSE]

Professor Richard Wolff have good knowledge about marxism, dialectical materialism and deal other times with dieing souls

Wish him good times with struggle
Red salute

[georgefurman]

A perfect conclusion in the last statements you made to explain why the idea of the permanent revolution as proposed by Trotsky was the way to make socialism an alternative to Stalinism . But is already in the past and a failure we must comprehend for the future to improve when the opportunity is possible again.

[martinholsinger]

Prof. Wolff doesn't mention it, but this is the point where Buddhism and Marxism intersect. Thank you!

[jamesmorton]

The whole gestault. Marx argued that laborers satisfied only their physical needs in leisure; they were not occupied with actualizing their potentialities.

Bourgeois class was exempt from the necessity of labor but its leisure was not composed of philosophical activity.

not the kind of person i want making the rules and laws,

Thank you Dr. Wolff.
Thank you Carl Sagan, see 1994 last interview with

Charley Rose.

[josephcrespo]

God Exists. VIVA LA REVOLUCIÓN CUBANA !!!

[richdiana]

This is 5 days old, we're too busy dealing with the latest shocks.