Sheesh Poirot, your last link has a banner over the top of
it, making the website's agenda quite clear. Could you perhaps
try a little less biased sources for your information?

Try this one:

http://www.adb.org/Water/actions/ind/irrigation-reforms.asp

As to PVR on plants and seeds, the laws of PVR are similar
around the world. Indian farmers have a choice, as do
Australian farmers.

There is an actual real life experiment going on, which I
observe on my way to town. On one side of the road a Govt
bred canola crop, which had to be cut for hay, as it failed
in the drought like conditions. On the other side, a PVR
crop of canola, where the farmer bought the seed from a
company which has invested tens of millions in breeding
better varieties. That crop looks pretty good actually,
given the conditions and the farmer will harvest a crop.

Should I now condem the evils of companies investing in
plant breeding for a royalty payment?

Gilbert,m

My crude understanding of Marx's reference to the dialectic is that dynamically

(a) some problem arises, some hassle, as a messy consequence of some previous process or situation (i.e., thesis), and

(b) all sorts of reactions, oppositions, resistances are thrown up, devised, put into play (antithesis) to attempt to resolve the tensions generated by this hassle, so that

(c) after many failures, tragedies and disasters, across many different situations, a workable 'solution' prevails temporarily (synthesis) which seems to resolve the hassles, tensions and imperfections of the original thesis, but

(d) in turn becomes yet another thesis, never perfect, never finished, always open to objections, reactions, resistances, (i.e. antitheses) which compel the search for yet more syntheses.

i.e. Marx was exploring a never-ending process which leads ever 'higher', to more inclusive, comprehensive, sophisticated and embracing solutions to the inevitable imperfections of praxis, of the realities of social practice, praxis.

So, although Marx himself may have been unaware of it, he was trying to cope with the openness and uncertainty of post-Enlightenment knowledge and society, i.e. the permanent revolution, if you like, of an unending process of thesis-antithesis-synthesis.

But on the other hand, the common 19th century and ANTI-Enlightenment yearning for closure may have impelled him to proscribe yet another closure, a Utopia, the Final Solution to Class Struggle, the Communist Society, the Grand Synthesis posing the Grand Anti-thesis, Socialism, to the Grand Thesis, Capitalism, to produce a Synthesis purged of all flies in the ointment so that the Perfect Class, the Historic Proletariat, could attain the Perfect Society, purged of all those other classes and groups which have hitherto plagued REAL society. Ergo: end of thesis-antithesis-synthesis, and heaven on earth.

I'm sure that Marx and Engels were decent men, well-intentioned, but .....

after 160 years of wishing, I am beginning dimly to suspect that we were yet again led well and truly up the creek. After nearly two hundred years, there has to be a better way, one that does not rely on Saviours, but on real, actual human beings, us.

Joe

Hi Joe/Loudmouth,

Good comment!

I think your a,b,c,d points are a good description of the dialectic, though I would say more classically Hegelian than Marxist.

I think that while things do have a tendency to find positive balance between the opposing thesis and anti-thesis, life is not static. So a newly found 'balance' will tend to become unstable over time and subject to new dialectical tensions arizing from within it.

We are capable however, of establishing social institutions that are more rather than less balanced and stable, just as we are capable of cultivating our own personalities so that we are more balanced, stable and less likely to crack up.

But this is not utopian, just hopefull, and I think inspiring. As you say, and as Confucius would surely have said, it is up to us.

Marx seemed to think that the tension between the individual and the community, between competition and cooperation would somehow vanish within a communist society; but this can never be. The tension will remain. It will just be either more or less manifest, depending on how good we are at creating and maintaining a well balanced society.

>My crude understanding of Marx's reference to the dialectic
is that dynamically

>(a) some problem arises, some hassle, as a messy consequence
of some previous process or situation (i.e., thesis), and...

The thing to remember here, UltraGob, is that, for all sorts of human reasons, people start with the complicated, societal relations *first* -- rather than starting with a foundation in the necessary 'boring' stuff: i.e. dialectical-materialist relations of physical reality... Some types even go to the extreme of claiming that dialectics is only the 'method' itself (and not a few supposed marxists) -- and all the rest of it is nonsense. Which is itself, of course, utter nonsense of the first order.

So the people here should rather concentrate on the _simple_ stuff first, before going on to more complex relations; but of course, they don't want to *DO* that. They want to discuss *only* what interests THEM... And thus all the wasted verbiage here (and elsewhere).

> i.e. Marx was exploring a never-ending process which leads
ever 'higher', to more inclusive, comprehensive, sophisticated
and embracing solutions to the inevitable imperfections of
praxis, of the realities of social practice, praxis.

That's right, SuperBoca: the Universe is an open-ended process of processes -- with emergent properties developing out of the quantitative and qualitative changes occurring thereby. And I find it endlessly amazing that almost NO bourgeois "critics" of marxism care to even comprehend this -- let alone try to refute it, or claim it as their own, or whatever (except in bourgeois science recently, in the latter case).

> So, although Marx himself may have been unaware of it, he
was trying to cope with the openness and uncertainty of
post-Enlightenment knowledge and society, i.e. the permanent
revolution, if you like, of an unending process of thesis-
antithesis-synthesis.

Surely you jest, O cacophonous-piehole. Marx, if anyone, is STILL the World record-holder in understanding exactly that, AFAIK.

>the common 19th century and ANTI-
Enlightenment yearning for closure may have impelled him
to proscribe yet another closure, a Utopia, the Final
Solution to Class Struggle, the Communist Society, the
Grand Synthesis posing the Grand Anti-thesis, Socialism,
to the Grand Thesis, Capitalism, to produce a Synthesis
purged of all flies in the ointment so that the Perfect
Class, the Historic Proletariat, could attain the Perfect
Society, purged of all those other classes and groups which
have hitherto plagued REAL society. Ergo: end of thesis-
antithesis-synthesis, and heaven on earth.

A bogus claim against marxism. That's more Hegel's -- which Marx famously corrected, making the dialectic *materialist*, not _Idealist_.

Understand that Marx *very carefully* DIDN'T prescribe a detailed plan for communist society *because* he and Engels et al. had analyzed previous attempts at designing utopias -- and come to understand all of them were Idealized plans growing out of the heads of their creators, ready-formed: rather than necessarily, out of objective conditions of society. And a sure sign of not understanding Marx is the criticism Marx *didn't* give us a detailed plan for socialism!

Actually, Marx knew full well that communist society would develop according to its own higher laws -- but was wise enough not to second-guess that which none of us could know beforehand.

>I'm sure that Marx and Engels were decent men, well-intentioned,
but .....

>after 160 years of wishing, I am beginning dimly to suspect
that we were yet again led well and truly up the creek. After
nearly two hundred years, there has to be a better way, one
that does not rely on Saviours, but on real, actual human
beings, us.

You've allowed bourgeois propaganda (and our failures, of course) to cast doubt in your mind. Only the wage-laborers and allies can take power, democratically. That *is* socialism. And Marx figured it out. Don't give up yet. Understand what we still have to do.

And there have never been as many proletarians on the planet as there are today...

>I think that while things do have a tendency to find
positive balance between the opposing thesis and anti-
thesis, life is not static. So a newly found 'balance'
will tend to become unstable over time and subject to
new dialectical tensions arizing from within it.

>We are capable however, of establishing social institutions
that are more rather than less balanced and stable, just
as we are capable of cultivating our own personalities so
that we are more balanced, stable and less likely to crack up

I think you are somewhat confused about the functioning of the basic "dynamic equilibrium" of Reality; and so here you mix "balance" with "not static" and "dialectical tensions" all together in the same breath. What's more, you continue to draw inaccurate analogies between dialectical relations at very different levels of complexity. So of course for instance, class society, with its economic basis is nowhere to be found -- or implied -- in your Idealist schema for a [petit-bourgeois] utopian "small is beautiful" future (let alone in your theory of individual psychology).

But at least you get the gist of the dynamic-yet-in-equilibrium situation. However, as in the game of horseshoes: that is not nearly enough.