Squeers said:
> While you're at it, PH, let's deconstruct this precious trope
> "collectivism" you and your ignorant ilk love to invoke? Marx's
> philosophy was actually predicated on genuine individualism! As
> opposed to the alienated, delusionary egotism you and Lao-Tse
> love to fetishise.

They can't really wrap their minds around this one, can they? Whether in hegelian form or the superior, materialist marxist variety. Bourgeois empiricist thinking is so one-dimensional, stick-figurish and schematic, isn't it..? No wonder some of the people here turn so easily to more primitive forms of flowing, interpenetrating dialectical thought, such as what came out of the East, centuries ago. Of course, the main reason all such people are simply so wilfully blind is that they all, empiricist and Idealist, continue to credulously accept the hegemonic bourgeois propaganda 'trope' that 'stalinism == communism == socialism', etc. QED. Ipso Facto. Slam dunk. And so of course they then choose not to inform themselves about the real facts of the matter -- leaving it to the bourgeoisie's hired 'experts' (i.e. paid liars) to keep them 'informed' about political reality... Right. Suckers all.

But of course, socialism remains the human society of the future; and so it's still a preposterous 'unicorn' to these 'practical-minded' and hard-headed Idealists... instead of being understood for what it truly is: an entirely realistic, practical -- and highly- and desperately-needed and desired, frankly -- blueprint which transcends the brutal, crushing, impersonal logic of the capitalist market system.

Dear Poirit, thanks for a nice precis on the differences between Hegel's and Marx's ideas.

Marx was not a "right Hegelian". He rejected Hegel's spiritism/idealism out of hand in favour of dialectical materialism, though he never used that phrase (nor "historical materialism"). Nor was history simplistically dialectical for Marx; each period is its own dynamic in terms of the means of production, but the transitions were more problematic to plot.
Gh, why don't you just admit the reason you favour Hegel is because he neatly fits your Christian schema, whereas Marx rejected it. Hegel's historical dialectic was ultimately derivitive, tendentious and nationalistic. Marx's was not; nor was it dogmatic.

Dear david f,
I can only surmise that your thinking on this topic is utterly compromised by your experience and ideological orientation. Marx is not responsible for the horrors of Stalinism etc., nor are the concepts of socialism/communism forever worthless because they were abused. Nor is capitalism defensible because it prevails. It is more indeffensable than ever.
BTW, how many corpses has your saviour, the US, been responsible for since?

"Marx insisted that his method by itself offered no guarantees. In "The German Ideology" he was at pains to point out the limitations of his theory of history and to emphasise that it was no more than a guide to indicate fruitful areas of careful and exhaustive research. He derided Proudhon's attempt to apply the dialectical method to political economy, because it evaded major problems rather than resolved them". He warned against following Hegel in trying to apply "an abstract, ready-made system of logic". "Marx did not regard the adoption of dialectical logic as a magical solution for problems without having recourse to the thoroughness and rigour that he displayed in his own work. But in that work the dialectic became 'a scandal and abomination to the bourgeoisie' because it denied all claims that the capitalist system was in equilibrium and postulated instead its ultimate demise" (Lawrence Wilde).

Congratulations Gilbert on a rare article making this very important topic accessible to ordinary people.

Hegel may have made the word dialectic popular in European discourse but it is arguably a conceptual thread in through all human literature and even as you suggest a phenomenon of nature.

To: The critics; this article is obviously not intended to be an academically exhaustive critique. I am disappointed but unsurprised by the poverty of spirit, narrowness and the egotistical intellectualism of your interpretation and response.In the same vein, you misuse your rhetorical skills to attempt to demolish another. It may help you to read and internalise Eckhart Tolle.

Gilbert don't worry to much about these poor souls, that is the sad territory of intellectualism and academia. Keep writing and make these important concepts accessible to the people who matter, ordinary people.

cheers
Duncan

duncan mills,

Gilbert Holmes said, "Marx and friends essentially told us that the way we think is determined by the structure of society. In other words, we will be selfish and greedy is we live in a capitalist society, and kind-hearted and benevolent is we live in a communist society."
His "other words" are purposely misleading, creating a false premise - and from that premise he constructs the third part of his article, ignorantly equating Marx's theory with "bath water". He then goes on to grope about for some positive examples of "synthesis" to mitigate the dehumanising impact that capitalism has on society.

Some of us "ordinary people" come to OLO to learn...Why shouldn't the academics criticise an article on their terms if they deem it unworthy of serious debate?

Dear Duncan Mills,
I'm all in favour of making complex ideas as accessible as possible, but that is a far cry from the dumbing-down and distortions Gilbert Holmes has served up. And before you condemn GH's critics---for their "poverty of spirit, narrowness and the egotistical intellectualism of your interpretation and response.In the same vein, you misuse your rhetorical skills to attempt to demolish another"---you might ponder that GH's article was itself highly rhetorical (even its title, no doubt to ensure it attracted attention) and inflammatory in its uncompromising stance. A position it fails completely to validate. There is nothing wrong with stating a position emphatically if it is unambiguous, but the author on this occasion is quite simply 'wrong' on all counts.

GH seems here and elsewhere genuinely motivated to offer solutions to our modern problems, though his intellectual "missions" are naive and just as idealistically derivative as Hegel's (though nowhere near as considered). That is, they suppose an anthropocentric bias that places humanity within a rather flattering grand-historical/spiritual narrative under God. Marx, on the other hand, was completely down to earth. As I've said elsewhere, religion works symbiotically with (that other great abstraction) capitalism to maintain the status quo (and, ergo itself) But that doesn't alter the fact that capitalism is unsustainable and unconscionable.

Marx considered himself first and foremost an economist, but in academe it was the economics departments who were first to reject his theory. His influence lived on in the other corridors of the humanities like philosophy and sociology which almost pride themselves on their economic illiteracy – the only bulwark of his support.

According to Marx’s theory:
• If you take an hour, and I take two hours, to produce a certain product, my work is worth twice as much as yours;
• one’s thoughts are determined by one’s economic class, each of which has its own different logic which is determined by one’s relation to the means of production. That’s right: tools and machinery determine your thoughts.

And as Marx was not a member of the working class, but of the sponging-off-your-hypocritical-capitalist-mates class, therefore he had no way, by his own theory, of knowing nor speaking for the interests of the working class.

Grok’s laughable presumption is to look on the world of theory and practice as if Marx’s jumble of errors and fallacies has been right all along. He ignores the last 120 years of refutations of Marx, and takes the standard socialist position that all the disastrous consequences of attempts to implement socialism were just some strange coincidence, nothing to do with any defect in socialist theory.

But this is invincible ignorance. Mises has never been refuted: economic calculation is impossible under socialism. It’s impossible in theory, and that’s why it doesn’t work in practice. As he said, the socialists will always be on the road to socialism, because they can never arrive.

Grok
I challenge you to defend any tenet of Marx’s theory on condition that you lose immediately if you have recourse to any of the following forms of argument:
• Assuming what is in issue
• Appeal to absent authority
• Ad hominem
I challenge you to refute the argument from economic calculation: http://mises.org/econcalc.asp

GH
I was quoting Lao Tze.