Thanks, Bruce. The fault was not in the search engine or the "find on this
page" feature I was using - it was just my own carelessness. The passage
from Engels you quote came right to me this time around, and it is a good
one: "this materialist dialectic, which for years has
been our best working tool and our sharpest weapon ..." Having not found
"dialectical" materialism I guess I got sloppy double checking for the
materialist "dialectic" a little too quickly. This technology makes
scholarship - that would once take many hours - possible in a few
minutes. It also makes it easy to commit blunders!
The marxists.org archives carry a couple articles by Joseph Dietzgen. In
the passage quoted below, he apparently wrote the phrase
"dialectic-materialist conception and method" in 1875.
Joseph Dietzgen:
"And now I should like to explain to you, dear comrades, in words as
concise as possible in what the real essence of morality consists. Guided
by our dialectic-materialist conception and method, we look first, as usual
in all our researches, for the material, also in this case for the ethical
material, making use hereby of the terminology of every-day language."
Ethics of Social-Democracy: Two Sermons
Source: Philosophical Essays by Joseph Dietzgen, published by Charles H.
Kerr 1917, Edited by Eugene Dietzgen and Joseph Dietzgen Jr., translated by
M. Beer and Th. Rothstein;
First Published: Volksstaat, 1875
http://www.marxists.org/archive/dietzgen/works/1870s/ethics.htm
Thanks again for your correction!
- Steve
At 11:27 AM 11/7/03 +0000, you wrote:
>Steve,
>
>Put not your trust in search engines ;).
>
> From Ludwig Feuerbach: "And this materialist dialectic, which for years has
>been our best working tool and our sharpest weapon, was, remarkably enough,
>discovered not only by us but also, independently of us and even of Hegel,
>by a German worker, Joseph Dietzgen." The German is identical: "Und diese
>materialistische Dialektik, die seit Jahren unser bestes Arbeitsmittel und
>unsere schärfste Waffe war, wurde merkwürdigerweise nicht nur von uns,
>sondern außerdem noch, unabhängig von uns und selbst von Hegel, wieder
>entdeckt von einem deutschen Arbeiter, Josef Dietzgen."
>
>OK - 'materialist dialectic' rather than dialectical materialism, but
>certainly one of its variants. But even if you dismiss Engels, Dietzgen
>definitely did refer to himself and Marxists as dialectical materialists as
>far back as 1886. (He also used the term 'scientific socialism' as far back
>as 1874.)
>
>Engels refers to Dietzgen's 1869 work 'The Nature of Human Brain Work'
>(which does not use the term). Engels is wrong on two counts here. Firstly,
>Dietzgen's original work was published after he had read the Communist
>Manifesto, the Critique of Political Economy and Capital and after he had
>written to Marx indicating that he had understood that 'Capital' was based
>on a particular philosophical viewpoint. Secondly, Dietzgen was not exactly
>a worker, but a master craftsman owning small (and constantly failing)
>workshops. He described himself as 'a pure petit bourgeois'. All of which is
>by the way...
>
>As far as codifying 'DM' as equivalent to Marxist philosophy, I doubt
>Kautsky would have put much effort into including that as part of his
>'Marxist orthodoxy' as he held that philosophy was not a 'party matter'. I
>wonder if Mehring, who was responsible for publishing some of Marx's work
>after his death, had a hand in it.
>
>Bruce
----- Original Message -----
From: Steve Gabosch
To: xmca@weber.ucsd.edu
Sent: Thursday, November 06, 2003 8:41 AM
Subject: Re: Dialectical materialism / Nature
Hi Bruce,
On this question of the etymology of the term dialectical materialism: you
and Tony Burns may very well be correct that Engels used the term - I
actually hope you are, it makes things simpler - but so far I haven't found
a single instance (using the internet) where either Marx or Engels actually
used it, or one of its common variants. Engels comes so close that it
renders this an academic question. But it does have my curiosity. Who
"first used it" and from whence did its common usage arise?
Using Google and the marxists.org archives, I found no instance of the
precise term "dialectical materialism" in Engels "Ludwig Feuerbach and the
Outcome of Classical German Philosophy." In fact, Google's search of the
marxists.org website does not turn up any instances anywhere of Marx or
Engels using this term or its common variants (dialectic materialism,
materialist dialectics, etc.) - but of course this is not exhaustive. For
one, I'm not sure every single volume of the MECW is yet scanned in and
online on that site (most are). As a Google search reveals, lots and lots
of writers attribute the term to them, however - and if that was all we had
to work with, there would be no doubt! Of course I may have missed
something. And then there is always that vexing problem of translations,
where something may have gotten confused. But it is seeming more likely
than not that neither Marx nor Engels ever actually used the phrase
"dialectical materialism" or one of it variants. Please correct me if this
is wrong. Did Tony Burns provide a citation?
Below are some quotes I came up with that shed some light. I've starred
some phrases.
Where I got the idea it was Kautsky:
****'Dialectical Materialism' was coined by Karl Kautsky and popularised in
the Second International after the death of Marx and Engels.
Marxist Glossary, marxists.org
http://www.marxists.org/glossary/terms/d/i.htm
A suggestion it was Plekhanov.
The first tendency is the Engelsian dialectic, or ****dialectical
materialism, an expression not used by Marx or Engels but popularised by the
Russian philosopher G. V Plekhanov.
Lawrence Wilde, Logic: Dialectic and contradiction
Source: The Cambridge Companion to Marx, ed. Terrell Carver, 1991;
http://www.marxists.org/reference/subject/philosophy/works/en/wilde1.htm
On marxists.org, Plekhanov does seem to precede Kautsky:
Hegel finally solved the antinomy between freedom and necessity. He proved
that we are free only insofar as we know the laws of nature and
sociohistorical development and insofar as we, submitting to them, rely upon
them. This was a tremendous gain in the field of philosophy and also in that
of social science - again which, however, only modern, ****dialectical
materialism has exploited to the full.
G.V. Plekhanov, For the Sixtieth Anniversary of Hegel's Death (1891)
http://www.marxists.org/archive/plekhanov/1891/11/hegel.htm
First instance by Kautsky I found on the site:
The first appearance of this new ****dialectical materialism was in a work
entitled "The Holy Family; or, a Review of the Critical Critique Against
Bruno Bauer and His Followers." This was written in Paris in 1844 and
appeared in Frankfort a year later. The greater part was written by Marx,
and is a reflection of the historical and philosophical studies they had
carried on together.
Karl Kautsky, Frederick Engels: His Life, His Work and His Writings, Kerr,
Library of Progress No. 32, August 15, 1899
http://www.marxists.org/archive/kautsky/works/1890s/engels.htm
Dietzgen goes back to at least 1875:
And now I should like to explain to you, dear comrades, in words as concise
as possible in what the real essence of morality consists. Guided by our
****dialectic-materialist conception and method****, we look first, as usual
in all our researches, for the material, also in this case for the ethical
material, making use hereby of the terminology of every-day language.
Ethics of Social-Democracy: Two Sermons
Source: Philosophical Essays by Joseph Dietzgen, published by Charles H.
Kerr 1917, Edited by Eugene Dietzgen and Joseph Dietzgen Jr., translated by
M. Beer and Th. Rothstein;
First Published: Volksstaat, 1875
http://www.marxists.org/archive/dietzgen/works/1870s/ethics.htm
And now two passages from Engels, who comes SO close.
The perception of the the fundamental contradiction in German idealism led
necessarily back to materialism, but nota bene not to the simply
metaphysical, exclusively mechanical materialism of the 18th century. Old
materialism looked upon all previous history as a crude heap of
irrationality and violence; modern materialism sees in it the process of
evolution of humanity, and aims at discovering the laws thereof. With the
French of the 18th century, and even with Hegel, the conception obtained of
Nature as a whole moving in narrow circles, and forever immutable, with
its eternal celestial bodies, as Newton, and unalterable organic species, as
Linnaeus, taught. Modern materialism embraces the more recent discoveries of
natural science, according to which Nature also has its history in time, the
celestial bodies, like the organic species that, under favorable conditions,
people them, being born and perishing. And even if Nature, as a whole, must
still be said to move in recurrent cycles, these cycles assume infinitely
larger dimensions. In both aspects, ****modern materialism is essentially
dialectic****, and no longer requires the assistance of that sort of
philosophy which, queen-like, pretended to rule the remaining mob of
sciences. As soon as each special science is bound to make clear its
position in the great totality of things and of our knowledge of things, a
special science dealing with this totality is superfluous or unnecessary.
That which still survives of all earlier philosophy is the science of
thought and its law formal logic and dialectics. Everything else is
subsumed in the positive science of Nature and history.
Frederick Engels
Socialism: Utopian and Scientific, 1880
http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1880/soc-utop/ch02.htm
Marx and I were pretty well the only people to rescue conscious dialectics
from German idealist philosophy and apply it in the materialist conception
of nature and history. But a knowledge of mathematics and natural science is
essential to ****a conception of nature which is dialectical and at the same
time materialist****. Marx was well versed in mathematics, but we could keep
up with natural science only piecemeal, intermittently and sporadically. For
this reason, when I retired from business and transferred my home to London,
[15] thus enabling myself to give the necessary time to it, I went through
as complete as possible a "moulting", as Liebig calls it, [16] in
mathematics and the natural sciences, and spent the best part of eight years
on it. I was right in the middle of this "moulting" process when it happened
that I had to occupy myself with Herr Dühring's so-called natural
philosophy.
Frederick Engels, 1885 Preface to Anti-Durhing
http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1877/anti-duhring/preface.htm
- Steve
<end>
This archive was generated by hypermail 2b29 : Mon Dec 01 2003 - 01:00:11 PST