Re: dialectics and CHAT

=?iso-8859-1?Q?Yrj=F6?= =?iso-8859-1?Q?_?= (engestro who-is-at helsinki.fi)
Tue, 7 May 1996 22:18:00 +0200

At 20:13 5/6/96, Arne Raeithel wrote:
>Vera,
>
>there are many historical variants of "dialectics", before Hegel
>and after Marx, and of course Hegel's work. I regard these essentially
>as precursors of today's theories of evolution, history and development.
>It is not possible to "have" a cultural-historical theory without
>a conception of history and development, of course.
>
>I believe that today's students would profit much from reading the
>historical sources, but I am sure that studying specific developmental
>or historical problems is much more fruitful than those very general
>texts on dialectics as a meta-logical tool for understanding every-
>thing vaguely as everchanging because of internal contradictions.
>I am not saying that you would advocate using them, to be sure.
>They were quite widespread here in Germany in the early seventies,
>and I am glad they aren't available anymore. They caused a lot of
>unjustified superiority feelings ("we have the better theory"), but
>didn't help in any specific way those doing research, as far as I know.
>
>In any case, here, at present, there is no chance for Marx or Engels.
>
>Arne.

I and my Finnish colleagues could not have developed our empirical brand of
activity theory, namely developmental work research, without getting
seriously immersed in those vague and general texts on dialectics.
Ilyenkov's attempts at making dialectics more substantial and based on
analysis of concrete material (such as Marx's Capital) were particularly
important. The very concept of contradiction is practically missing or used
only as an everyday notion in much of the current sociohistorical and
situated literature. I find this gap a source of tremendous weaknesses in
analyses of empirical data.

Here, at present, there is a renewed need to study and appropriate
critically Marx and Engels.

Yrjo Engestrom