tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-28755195.post7945453984243792034..comments2023-09-25T04:26:51.568-06:00Comments on The Barefoot Bum: Dialectical Materialism, part 1Larry Hamelinhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08788697573946266404noreply@blogger.comBlogger2125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-28755195.post-9954864146220422202009-11-17T04:10:49.679-07:002009-11-17T04:10:49.679-07:00I'm not sure in what sense the linked article ...I'm not sure in what sense the linked article adequately defines the "other trend" of French materialism or show that it or anything else is particularly "unscientific". In particular, the notion that "If everything is due to the flow of matter and time is like the succession of frames in a motion picture then at every instant reality is a frozen three dimensional pattern, like a single frame in a movie," does not seem to adequately define materialism, at least in the modern sense.<br /><br /><i>I would suggest that the nineteenth century ideas of Marx and Engels must stand on their own merits...</i><br /><br />Why? <i>The Origin of Species</i> does not stand on its own merits, at least not <i>all</i> its merits (Darwin's mechanics of inheritance are almost, but not quite, entirely unlike reality).<br /><br />There is a tendency in philosophy to take every work as scripture, to be accepted or (usually) rejected <i>in toto</i>, rather than a base from which to work from.<br /><br />I'm not at all concerned that Marx and Engels (and Lenin, and Mao) got some particular ideas wrong... preceding quantum mechanics, and contemporaneous with Darwin, how could they not?<br /><br />The modern philosophy of dialectical materialism no more entails a commitment to Marx and Engels' work as scripture or absolute truth than the modern practice of biology or physics entails a commitment to Darwin's or Schrödinger's work as divinely revealed wisdom.Larry Hamelinhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/08788697573946266404noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-28755195.post-37470348582129129362009-11-17T02:43:35.166-07:002009-11-17T02:43:35.166-07:00Yes, Marxism is derived from materialist philosoph...Yes, Marxism is derived from materialist philosophy and we should be clear about this. As Marx and Engels (1845) put it "Just as Cartesian materialism passes into natural science proper, the other trend of French materialism leads directly to socialism and communism."<br /><br />The only problem is that, as Marx and Engels seem to have spotted, "the other trend" is unscientific. See <a href="http://newempiricism.blogspot.com/2009/03/materialist-should-read-this-first.html" rel="nofollow">Materialists should read this first</a>.<br /><br />I would suggest that the nineteenth century ideas of Marx and Engels must stand on their own merits, not in dialectical opposition to other, equally problematical philosophies. These ideas were conditioned by nineteenth century cosmology and it is this root that is now known to be incorrect. I suspect that if Marx, a widely read philopher, were alive today he would know that the ideas of such as La Mettrie are irreconcilable with modern physics and so Marx would be opposed to Marxism.Thoughtshttps://www.blogger.com/profile/17866896441731516034noreply@blogger.com