So our dialectics is not quite anymore Engels', nor Hegel's, nor
in some ways Marx's, however much we may admire their
developments of dialectics and dialectical 'models' (the idea of
a 'model' is really too static for dialectics, isn't it? even 'a
theory' is not what a dialectics ought to give us ... a 'living
praxis' maybe? a dynamic simulation? hmmm ...)
Arne is not so charitable to Vera and Ellen's Engels, but he also
seems to me to be smiling a bit even as he criticizes the old
propositions, probably because he knows that our smug modern
superiority largely rises from just such 19th century breaks with
prior philosophy and social theory.
I think we can give a bit more credit, even in contemporary
terms, to the notion that "apparently stable objects ... are
undergoing incessant changes" for there are still many such
objects that have not yet been generally rethought in dynamic
much less dialectical terms, for example notions of Universal
Grammar, of necessary principles of logic and reason, Arne's own
example of mathematical truths, dialectics itself perhaps, most
classical theses about cognition, the principle of democracy, the
notion of 'truth' itself, and really quite a lot of things that,
say, postmodernism has tried lately to deconstruct (with a very
dialectical set of subverting strategies). How about our notions
of what a theory ought to be? Don't we still imagine that
theories ought to be sets of stable propositions, when dialectics
tell us this cannot be, for how could stable propositions model
social realities all aspects of which are subject to 'incessant
changes'?
Dialectics is as freshly radical today as ever in Engel's time.
Engels includes our concepts in the flux of dialectic change, and
I will charitably assume his 'mirror' view of them is merely
poetic. I am not sure our theoretical praxis, however, even yet
fully takes into account that it should be natural that our most
basic concepts (culture, history, learning, mind, ...) should and
must be changing and are not 'absolute or sacred'. This does
_not_ mean, dialectically, that we simply modify these concepts,
as if there were a definite and unchanging referent for them, but
that we abandon and replace them with totally different concepts
in the dynamics of cultural history. The time scale for such
changes is clearly _not_ longer than a human lifetime today.
'Inevitable decline' is an interesting phrase, evocative for me,
and I think for people of that day, of the upsetting
implications, as then understood, of the Second Law of
Thermodynamics, invoked here, I assume as a rhetoric against the
bourgeois view of Progress as the natural form of change in its
view of society. What rises, falls. Western cultural and
political hegemony, for instance. Fashionable theories (i.e.
well-established and accepted truths), for instance. Philosophy
as a discipline, say. Or physics. Are we really quite comfortable
today with such a notion as a commonplace? I don't think so.
'Formation and destruction' is another shorthand for dialectic. I
agree with Arne that Brahma the Creator and Shiva, Lord of
Destruction, are lonely without Vishnu the Preserver, and that
Western masculinism may be implicated in marginalizing the
supportive, sustaining, nurturing, helping dimensions of human
activity as boring, or feminine, while usurping creativity (which
females have long had prior claim on, much to our male womb-envy)
and glorifying Destruction (instead of understanding it as part
of ecological balance and harmony, and not an excuse for personal
glory, cruelty, aggrandizement, or domination). But this is still
a matter I think we are not so clear on: that sustaining is not
the contradictory of change, but a part and aspect of change, and
change of sustaining. Some serious dialectical thought about this
might have much to say about the social aspects of human
development, or about forces of fundamental social change that
are not mainly about 'breaking eggs'.
'The unending ascent from lower to higher' was of course the
evolutionary thesis of the time, and we have had some long and
interesting discussion in this group about the relationship
between developmental-dynamical-dialectical models in general,
and various notions of Progress and 'progression'. What seemed
clear in Engel's day, and is much more confusing for us, is in
what sense, if any, higher is also better. If 'higher' means what
the dialectics of change in complex dynamical systems leads
towards, then it is at most 'more complex, more differentiated,
more integrated, requiring more information for its description
in any adequate frame' and even that only for some possible
histories and for some portions of the whole. There are always a
lot of broken eggs lying around and behind any complex whole
(failed mutants/variants, degraded environments, etc.) Today I
think it is easier to see that this process does not necessarily
lead to anything 'better' (by which criteria? from what stage of
evolution?), and is not necessarily something we should actively
seek for ... but then we have rather little choice except to
participate in it one way or another.
So I think we can also read Engels as still very much challenging
our praxis today, as I suppose Vera and Ellen wished him to do.
JAY.
------------
JAY LEMKE.
City University of New York.
BITNET: JLLBC who-is-at CUNYVM
INTERNET: JLLBC who-is-at CUNYVM.CUNY.EDU