Dear Reader,
Below is the opening exchange of a possible new internet dialogue.
Enjoy!
Regards,
Miguel
Blog-Entry Excerpt:
“...
Furthermore, there are instances
in Capital itself where Marx does not at all “coquet” with
Hegel’s distinct phraseology, but makes clear and emphatic statements regarding
the general validity of the old philosopher’s insights. And without a hint of
irony. Marx writes:
[T]he
possessor of money or commodities actually turns into a capitalist
only where the minimum sum advanced for production greatly
exceeds the known medieval maximum. Here, as in natural science,
is shown the correctness of the law discovered by Hegel, in his Logic, that at a certain point merely quantitative differences
pass over by a dialectical inversion into qualitative distinctions. (Capital,
pg. 423)
In the footnote attached to the end of
this sentence, Marx adds: “The molecular theory of modem chemistry, first
scientifically worked out by Laurent and Gerhardt, rests on no other law.”
As if this weren’t enough on its own, Marx
further explains what he meant by this in a letter to Engels dated June
22 1867:
Incidentally, you
will see from the conclusion to my Chapter III, where I outline the
transformation of the master of a trade into a capitalist — as a result of
purely quantitative changes — that in the text there
I quote Hegel’s discovery of the law of the transformation of a merely
quantitative change into a qualitative one as being attested by
history and natural science alike. In the note to the text (I
was as it happened attending Hofmann’s lectures at that time) I mention
the molecular theory, but not Hofmann, who has discovered nothing in
the matter except contributing general direction; instead I do
mention Laurent, Gerhardt, and Wurtz, the latter being the real
man.
What further proof is needed?”
Blog-entry URL:
http://thecharnelhouse.org/2014/06/25/pour-hegel-marxs-lifelong-debt-to-hegelian-dialectics/
Response:
Ross,
Since the lifetimes of Marx and Engels, their
“followers” have generally done little to reconstruct the “dialectical method”
that -- as you document so well in the blog entry above -- was of such central
and crucial importance to revolutionary theory and practice in the views of
both of them, and as Marx testified, again and again, e.g., in the passages
from his books, letters, and manuscripts, many of which you cite.
That is changing.
There is a research collective which, at an
accelerating rate, starting from 1999,
has made publicly available a series of results, rooted in their extraction, in
a Marxian, demystified manner, of the core mental operation, the ‘cognitive algorithm’,
of Marx’s and Hegel’s dialectic -- the “fundamental law of dialectical process”
-- and deployed that algorithm in the form of an intuitive, heuristic notation,
capable of encoding both the Marxian, dialectical method of inquiry, and, in
another interpretation, the Marxian, dialectical method of exposition, a
veritable ‘dialectical ideography’, or ‘dialectical algebra’ -- indeed, a
realization of viable aspects of Leibniz’s dream: a dialectical “characteristica universalis”.
Not surprisingly, the ‘dialectical arithmetic’
that undergirds this ‘mathematics of dialectics’ arises, via an immanent
critique of the Boolean algebra of formal logic, as a ‘contra-Boolean
arithmetic’, whose axioms imply a theorem that is a strong contrary of Boole’s
“fundamental law of thought”.
This dialectical arithmetic co-arises as the
fruition of an immanent critique of the foundational arithmetic of the
so-called “Natural” Numbers, as a “Non-Standard Model” of the first order
axioms of that “Standard Model”.
Such “Non-Standard” models of “Natural”
arithmetic are implied by three of the deepest theorems of modern mathematics,
but not constructively so.
This research collective -- Foundation
Encyclopedia Dialectica -- has axiomatically constructed their ‘arithmetic of
dialectics’ as a non-standard model of first-order “Natural” arithmetic.
Their ‘dialectical organon’ is, again,
interpretable in the mode of the presentation of a present totality, i.e., as a
categorial progression, with the symbols of the successive categories
generated, by their dialectical model, in systematic order [‘‘‘systematic
dialectic’’’].
It is also interpretable in the mode of a
categorial recapitulation / ‘pre-capitulation’, or reconstruction /
‘pre-construction’ [prediction], of a chronological, causal progression, in
chronological order [‘‘‘historical dialectic’’’].
They have recently applied this ‘dialectical
ideography’ to reconstruct the high-level [tables of] contents of the 6+ treatises planned by Marx for his
full “Critique of Political Economy”, of which only the first
treatise, Capital, volumes I
through IV, was even partly
completed by Marx.
The main site for the free of charge distribution
of these works is: www.dialectics.org.
Related sites include --
Applications of
the whole dialectical progression of dialectical ideographies that grows out of
their first dialectical ideography to the natural sciences are being explored
here --
Applications to
the critique of capital-based political-economics are being explored here --
Enjoy, and Profit [in a social-revolutionary
sense!].
Regards,
Miguel
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