Thomas Sowell (author of *Marxism* audio book) points toward a tension
between Engel's and Marx, with Marx's dialectic style (argument itself
being a process of development). Engel's seeing Marx's Hegalian style
being counter productive, while Marx being strongly committed to that
style. What I took from this was Marx's perspective on the use of
dialectics was of the explicit nature. Sowell's references seemed to have
come from personal communication between Marx and Engels.
As many are aware I'm sure, Vygotsky himself has been criticized for his
dialectical approach. Personally, and I'm thinking of his text on
Defectology, I found that dialectical style very useful in understanding
the complexity of the issues involved and how he synthesized the
contradictions. But, a side effect being how his arguments-ideas are
applied to practice. In Russia, (I'm thinking of Harry Daniels paper)
those ideas were used for a segregationist approach to "special" education,
wheras, in the States the same work has been used for a neo-integrationist
approach to special education (note integration in sped has a different
meaning as in mainstreaming where students are put into regular classrooms
blindly without meeting their "special" needs). A dialectical reading of
Vygotsky's defectology text would point toward these two understandings as
the thesis and anti-thesis contradiction in which he was attempting to
resolve. My point being the dialectical approach in practice often has the
consequence of legitimizing the thesis or antithesis which were both being
argued against by Vygotsky. As Vygotsky himself said, ,
"educating students in regular classrooms is the thesis, special education
is the antithesis, but now we must dialectically find the best in both
systems".
Vygotsky later mentioned the synthesis is creating an education system in
which every teacher would be a special educator capable educating all
children. The danger of dialectics in both Vygotsky and Marx is not seeing
the text as a whole, as a process of development, and taking sections if it
is a volume of Capital or a part of Defectology as the whole itself. Maybe
Glick said it best in Collected Works V.4 : The History of the Development
of Higher Mental Processes,
"What others have taken to be disorganized and rambling and repeitive I
take to be the essential process of working through a profound theoretical
position".
Nate