Introduction : Mechanical vs Dialectical Materialism

This is the first of at least 3 videos I will be doing on dialectical materialism.

[HxHDRA]

When it comes to the "big picture" there's been no greater teacher for me than Cockshott. From thermodynamics/the progress of history to understanding the origins of mathematics his videos are required viewing for everybody imho

[sherbertherman]

I think of one of the main problems I run into when observing these debates over dialectics is that hardly anyone shares a common understanding of what dialectics even is. What *is* dialectics? An ancient Greek form of analysis? Mere systems analysis? A study of contradictions?

[LongshanMusic]

This is excellent. Such an important topic, but idealism infiltrates the thinking of so many Marxists. Thank you.

[wenkeadam]

Thank you so much for starting this series. I have been waiting for something like this for a long time. You never disappoint me!

[Malonmalon]

another extremely enlightening video about a very important topic. i just hope you remember to finish them all, so many good ideas, the money series is important too, and others! thanks for al the work you do

[discogodfather]

Very interesting Paul. I grew up under in a "Dialectician" household, so our history is a little different (take it as biased towards Stalin's era):

Lenin wrote Materialism and Empirio-criticism in 1909, and it's the defining work in terms of the early years of this Bolshevik philosophy battle. The two competing groups were the "subjective idealists / Machists" who were headed by people like Bogdanov, and the "Mechanists" who gradually became associated with Bukharin. Lenin had a specific existential crisis with Bogdanov early on in terms of leadership "power" in the Bolshevik party.

Stalinist philosophy people like my father would say the "subjective idealist Machists" perceived a universe in which the observing consciousness subjectively determined reality, with the empirical simply an interactive bond between subject and object, with the object being determined by the subject.

Mechanists were largely objective, and simply saw the object as real and external and the empirical senses simply representations of it that the subject (human mind) perceived. They were positivists, in the old European scientific tradition, and were criticized for not taking the "mind" as anything other than a series of physical connections, and ideas no more than synaptic structures. They confused the empirical as being "the real" and ignored the object in and of itself, and the mind was also a separate entity. It was not uncommon for Mechanists to be called "Dualists".

Dialecticians believed in a physical monism, represented by the concept of an external objective universe with the mind as the "highest form of matter", with the thought as a reflection of reality, not reality in and of itself. But the ideal was "real" in that this reflection was in a material reality ultimately itself, and this external as well.

Stalin in 1933 declared Dialecticians to be the state philosophy but Deborin was considered "weak" and too closely associated with Lenin and many of the more left deviated policies in 1920's USSR, so Stalin brought in Mark Mitin. Mitin basically wrote Stalin's works on philosophy as it's widely known. The contribution of Mitin was to systematize and make into a heuristic the process of dialectics, which was based on Engels three laws.

According to the latest Chinese scholarship, Mao had a reading group of 9 hand selected philosophers in the early and mid 30's that avidly accepted and read anything that came in from the Soviets. Mao was reference to "Menshevizing Idealism" was Stalin and Mitin's new language to represent the beginning of the "New Philosophy" and it's differentiation from the older Leninist Deborin line. Roland Boer's new book on SWCC mentions this process. Obviously, despite basing the entirety of MZT on Stalin and Mitin's contributions, the USSR failed to even remotely acknowledge Mao's contribution.

[seancain]

Look at everything closely when you apply
Maintenance Technician III (Current Employee) - Austin, TX - February 1, 2020
If you like working two jobs. The pay scale doesn’t reflect the cost of living. Even if you boss fights for raises for the section most times the don’t give them. Co workers are great.

[Ajente]

This series of videos will be of high interest and importance for most current Marxists, specially young ones like me, as this thesis of yours is entirely new to us and contradicts basically everythting we've known and learned about dialectics as a fundamental core aspect of Marxist thought (and as a direct opposition, not just to mechanicist thought, but also to metaphysical thought) from basically any source from both Classical and Orthodox Marxism.

There are of course lots of evidence on the side of dialectic materialism (from Marx's own writtings about dialectics and materialism −even if never as an unified concept, as you mentioned− or Engels' _"Dialectics of Nature"_ and _"Anti-Dühring", _ to the most developed Marxist thinkers and revolutionaries after them, like Plekhanov, Lenin, Stalin, Trotsky, and Mao like you also mentioned, but also Ho Chi Minh, Gramsci, or even Althusser), but I'd want to wait to watch the full series in order to make a comprehensive and holistic response to it (though I'd expect to at least get an answer about Marx's and Engels' evident support of dialectic thought on their writtings, even if not directly though the name of "dialectical materialism", but as a method of interpetation of the contradictory nature of reality in natural, social, and thought processes from which historical materialism arises as a concrete application for the social sciences).

[zacoolm]

Dr. Paul, how about Engels’ Dialectics of Nature?

[LibertarianLeninistRants]

and all of these debates between socialists just because Marx didn't write a book on his method...

[seancain]

Its a frustrating company to work for.
Tech 2 (Current Employee) - Keene, TX - January 7, 2020
Was incredibly excited when I got this job and soon found out there is no training until after the fact on deadlines of certifications, people are miserable here, you start to feel stuck especially if you dont have formal training. Management is very wishy washy, you cant trust what your being told because it changes so quickly, I guess you can get your own experience working for the
state

[Ash-sosr]

Friedrich Engels, then living in Manchester. Three weeks later, he wrote to Karl Marx:

"Darwin, by the way, whom I’m reading just now, is absolutely splendid. There was one aspect of teleology that had yet to be demolished, and that has now been done. Never before has so grandiose an attempt been made to demonstrate historical evolution in Nature, and certainly never to such good effect.1"

Here Engels Clearly says "historical evolution in nature" as a way of saying the laws of both history and nature are the same I. E. Their process is dialectical.

When Marx read Origin a year later, he was just as enthusiastic, calling it “the book which contains the basis in natural history for our view.”2 In a letter to the German socialist Ferdinand Lasalle, he wrote:

"Darwin’s work is most important and suits my purpose in that it provides a basis in natural science for the historical class struggle… Despite all shortcomings, it is here that, for the first time, “teleology” in natural science is not only dealt a mortal blow but its rational meaning is empirically explained.3"

Here again Marx says Darwin proves the basis of class struggle (development through tension of opposing forces) exists in nature too as a law of development!!!, they share a common logic again a common logic of development in human history and in the natural world is absolutely referring a dialectical view of both human society and nature as sharing the same logic of development !!!!

[theunknowncorps]

I dont know all the history of DM but I cant help but notice that Engels influence is cut of the typical trajectory particularly his critique of Fuerbach and laws of dialectical materialism which Stalin references (in relation to law of qauntitative into qaulitative change) and certainly in the work of Marx and Engels generally where there is the basic "inversion" of Hegel taking a materialist centered view first and keeping dialectical reasoning (contradictions of society etc as an example and driver of development, what Lenin and Mao would later call "unity of opposites"). After all obviously Lenin's thinking did not develop seperately from and was largely based on Marx and Engels foundational innovations as a continual influence.

[seancain]

Great place to work if your on the in crowd with Management or you have came from a certain background.
Ferry Boat Deckhand 1 (Former Employee) - Galveston, TX - February 3, 2020
Employees are over worked and underpaid, Managers push the employees to exhaustion, and require them to be treated as if they are a slave not a valued employee.

[seancain]

Low pay
Lead Sign Technician (Former Employee) - Beaumont, TX - February 27, 2020
Low pay work was slow no one wanted to work it was like slow moving there all wanted played but wanted to do as little as possible not a good place to work

[michaelsandfordcomics]

what's the difference between being a dialectical materialist and being a materialist using a dialectical method? Would you agree that Marx was a materialist who was using a dialectical method?

[redoktopus]

I think many of us would love if you had a reading list! (I know I would)

[panxagamba]

Good video as always. I have a question for you professor, some say that General System Theory is a good replacement for Dialectical Materialism because it is, they say, closer to modern science and doesn't depend on hegeliam philosophy. What are your thoughts about it? Thanks for your time.

[nguyenquangminh]

I thought Marx promoted Hegel's dialectics and enhanced Feuerbach's materialism and combined them to form the philosophical basis for Marxism? thus dialectical materialism. Why is some obscure fellow suddenly the "inventor" of diamat??

[thegoldensealion]

The conception that Marx and Engels never support dialectical materialism is oblivious to the fact that they commonly put both dialectics and materialism together, even if never in the name itself “dialectical materialism”.

Take, for instance, Engels writing in Dialectics of Nature. He often refuted the “French materialists of the 18th century”, as well as the English empiricists.

“ At the end of the last (18th) century, *after the French materialists, who were predominantly mechanical*, the need became evident for an encyclopedic summing up of the entire natural science of the *old Newton-Linnaeus school, and two men of the greatest genius undertook this, Saint-Simon (uncompleted) and Hegel* . Today, when the new outlook on nature is complete in its basic features, the same need makes itself felt, and attempts are being made in this direction. But since the general evolutionary connection in nature has now been demonstrated, an external side by side arrangement is as inadequate as Hegel’s artificially constructed dialectical transitions. The transitions must make themselves, they must be natural. Just as one form of motion develops out of another, so their reflections, the various sciences, must arise necessarily out of one another.“

“ The most comical part about it is that *to make “materialist” equivalent to “mechanical” derives from Hegel*, who wanted to throw contempt on materialism by the addition “mechanical.” *Now the materialism criticised by Hegel – the French materialism of the eighteenth century was in fact exclusively mechanical*, and indeed for the very natural reason that at that time physics, chemistry, and biology were still in their infancy, and were very far from being able to offer the basis for a general outlook on nature… we know from experience and from theory that both matter and its mode of existence, motion, are uncreatable and are, therefore, their own final cause”

Furthermore:
“ The fact that our subjective thought and the objective world are subject to the same laws, and that consequently too in the final analysis they cannot be in contradiction to one another in their results, but must coincide, governs absolutely our whole theoretical thought. It is the unconscious and unconditional premise for theoretical thought. *Eighteenth century materialism, owing to its essentially metaphysical character, investigated this premise only as regards content. It restricted itself to the proof that the content of all thought and knowledge must derive from sensuous experience*, and revived the principle: nihil est in intellectu, quod non fuerit in sensu.“

Therefore Lenin and Plekhanov’s continuation of criticising mechanical materialism was rational, it was a continuation of Engels’ criticisms. Engels was also all for imbuing natural science with dialectics, as science can never be totally free from philosophy.