I have been working in Tasmania for the week Bruce. I have been following
the discussion from internet cafes and read Carol Lee's article, but have
not had the time to participate.
Briefly, if you think that "at a philosophical level the content of what is
being argued about has changed all that much" since 1908, then it is a sad
comment indeed, but it is a comment on your own intellectual development,
not that of history.
My point about the origins of diamat was not really one which can be
resolved by word play and comparison of texts, but rather that for Marx the
struggle to understand and intervene in the workers movement is not the
application of a ready made box of tricks or a formula - and that is
exactly what is communicated with the use of words like "dialectical
materialism" - but rather the critique of existing (now) social conditions,
particularly the critique of the ideological forms which sustain and
express existing social conditions.
I'm unclear what you're saying about scientific laws too. Are you a 'social
>constructionist', like the majority of the 'sociologists of science' or
>saying that nature has been almost totally 'socialised' like Lukacs or that
>some of what pass for scientific laws today are not based on experiential
>knowledge but are more speculative?
As I said to Steve, I'll go with Theses on Feuerbach. I couldn't say it
better. There is an element of truth in both the approaches you mention, as
there is in the naive materialist view that laws exist in Nature and a
ingested by people along with their food and drink. Tell me Bruce, does
phlogiston exist?
Andy
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