Like how the do you “do” historical materialism? Or dialectical materialism? How the fuck do I look at a problem and then apply this method? What are the steps? Why is it so difficult to learn left theory? I feel like I have to fight people to learn because the first thing anyone will do is throw jargon at me. Like imagine you're trying to learn physics and everyone says you start by reading Einstein as if a beginner would even be able to understand what Einstein is saying, who he is responding to, what the concepts in his work are.
At some point once you think you understand a concept you actually try your hand at it. If you're studying calculus you'll do a bunch of problem sets and that actually helps you understand what it is that you're doing, how mistakes happen, and how to get better. How do I practice this skill? Every suggestion I see basically amounts to: read lots of stuff. And I don't see how this is different than just being a lib and reading a bunch of stuff and popping off with hot takes
Edit: kind of confused that there are lots of responses but no answer.
Historical materialism at a basic a level is just realizing history is only driven by material conditions. Don't overthink that. You look at historical events and try to discern the material factors at play. What's happening with the food? Who is being killed? Who gains the most from whatever outcome? Who benefits from being involved? Try to be critical and not be swayed by stuff like WWII was a war about fighting evil.
Dialectical materialism is more to do with logic. That's more abstract and if you don't already have a grasp of formal logic and philosophy-speak, it will be difficult to understand.
Also go on youtube for a few hours and watch all the various stuff explaining this. You don't have to read theory as much as people want you to. You can listen to other people explain it very simply. Just don't assume that it's the same thing as reading theory. Obviously people will get stuff wrong so don't take everything as gospel. Just give yourself an idea of what this stuff means. Then use it as a jumping off point to investigate further.
If you don't "overthink" that and you just watch youtube videos you end up with the really terrible analysis and predictions that we see all the time. What you outlined in the first paragraph of your post usually leads to crude economism, marxist analysis is not so easy.
No, not EVERYONE has to read tons of theory, but everyone who wants to make serious marxist analysis really has to. This is one of the reasons organizing is important, not everyone will be able to produce good analysis. so some people will do that and then other people will read it and learn about it and try to use it.
Just don’t assume that it’s the same thing as reading theory. Obviously people will get stuff wrong so don’t take everything as gospel. Just give yourself an idea of what this stuff means. Then use it as a jumping off point to investigate further.
How do you move past the reading and into producing an analysis? How do you practice that skill
I mean, it's not something with a few clear steps you can just follow, it's hard. And I don't really do it a lot.
Generally having serious discussions with other people who actually know their shit preferably in the context of a leftist organization is really good. Beyond that, you have to be well informed about the issue you are studying because you can't study something without having all the relevant information, and you have to pay attention to how that thing connects to the rest of society. The most important thing is finding the primary contradiction in something, or the most important element of the issue. What is the conflict that creates the issue and what are the forces at play? Where do these forces come from? Which one is more powerful?
Also, it is useful to not just read the really old classics, but also more recent stuff to get a better picture about the developments people have made, as well as see people employing marxist tools to analyze a problem. So you find an issue that interests you that a marxist theorist has already produced an analysis for, and you read that and you see how they approached it and how they used the methods. For instance, let's say fascism, where it comes from, how it manifests, what the classes involved are etc. On that subject you can read say Gramsci or Poulantzas (they're both super hard to read though, especially Poulantzas). Now Gramsci was writing as the phenomenon first emerged, which means a lot of what he said is obsolete but that way you can 1) see what communists thought about it as it first started appearing and how they tried using the tools they had to approach a new phenomenon they didn't understand well yet, 2) think about where his predictions and analysis maybe went wrong and why, but also get important insights because a lot of it is spot on and not obsolete at all. Poulantzas wrote Fascism and Dictatorship in 1974 so it was much better informed. Poulantzas is very good at delineating categories and making you understand the common elements as well as differences between things. So you read that and get a much better understanding and class analysis of the phenomenon, and he also cites the classics of marxism a lot so you can see what theoretical tool he is using at each moment. So, after you do that, you try to see how it applies to a modern wave of fascism, or think about how the conditions for fascism might arise. You think what KIND of fascism it is that you are seeing, IF what you are seeing is really fascism and not something else (is it fascism or is it more akin to an exceptional state?), and if it is, where does it come from? You also think about what is different from the old phenomenon described in the books and the newer phenomenon you are seeing, and you consider why that might be based on the different material conditions. You talk with other leftists about it and you read articles that modern leftists maybe wrote about it. And that way, you develop a good understanding of the phenomenon, what should be done about it, when it becomes a serious threat, etc.
When I first began to engage with this stuff, my frame of reference was being completely determined by the lists of rules I was given to live by. As I began to read this stuff I was feeling like, how could I have been so wrong about everything? If all I ever wanted to do was help people and I still believed so many harmful things, how can I trust myself to be right in the future? If everything I know is just another cherry in the basket then I won't trust myself until my basket is full. I can't start laying out the puzzle until I had all the pieces--that at some point I would learn enough "truths" to see the picture for myself.
The problem was I was still writing lists except now they didn't say "Violence is wrong", "listen to minorities", and "Vote blue no matter who" but "Obama is bad for drone strikes", "Guns are okay actually", and "idpol is bad". I would do the work to pick apart a liberal opinion and walk right into another--why? When will I finally know enough to know the difference? The rabble of disagreement and ping ponging between macro and micro issues becomes overwhelming. Where to focus? Where to try? Being the only person in my immediate life to vocalize these concepts, whenever a liberal idea would come up I would challenge it. Not aggressively, just saying things like "you know what I read an article recently that said..." in a way that's asking them to verify, not telling them it's true. Since no one thought of me as a leftist, it's amazing the amount of good faith I was met with. As the weeks wore on and my vocabulary got bigger, I started hearing things like "what are you a socialist now" and I was really confused. I still hadn't read a word of Marx, I was just being informed of better ways to accomplish our goals and was confused when the ideas were dismissed and not challenged.
As this tension came to a head I would get flustered when the conversation turned back on me, feeling so fragile in my new ideology and waiting for some liberal fact to drop on my head an destroy it. But it didn't happen. As soon as I stopped centering myself I was able to take a step towards battling my ego and say the words out loud "I don't know, teach me". "Obama is good" "I heard he's not" "that's ridiculous" "Oh okay, teach me why". This has shut down more conversation than anything else. Become baby. If I felt that anxious panic that usually precedes yelling declarative statements, I would take a deep breath and just start asking questions. Feeling ill prepared to say I "knew" something, I just started asking people what they knew. And it was very, very little. It wasn't that I had learned enough true fax to own them, they were owning themselves because no one ever digs in past the declarative to see the deeper contradictions. It's not about the things we know, but how we argue. Understanding what logic really is was very helpful--it's not the things we believe but the methods we use to believe them.
Eventually as people became more annoyed with me they started doing the whole "well if you're so smart convince me that nothing bad will ever happen under socialism" which is of course ridiculous. At first I would sputter out scattershot defenses I would see online, later I would ask "why would something need to be perfect to be worth doing?" Don't get stuck on the facts, they're just used to justify feelings. Ask people what they feel. I had to "rip the wires out" on what I thought I knew. Trying to find where I put the wrong number in the sudoku was driving me nuts so I eventually I just started over. You're probably still believing things you don't realize you do and those won't change with facts but understanding what you want.
I am no better or worse, less deserving or more deserving of anything than any other animal growing like mold on this slo mo roiling ball of liquid minerals. If I started a new save file and tried to forget anything socialized I'm returned to by basic instinct--to not feel pain. This may just pertain to me, but I don't believe in God, I don't believe in a soul or the afterlife. I didn't ask to be born, but I don't want to die and almost every single human on this planet is in the same boat (starting therapy really helped to put this in perspective--if you have access I recommend it). Even Donald Trump is just an animal drawing on his trauma to decide what to do. Human brains, human ideas, human needs, they're all nonsense. Life is an absurd accident, not built to do or be anything. All that is "true" is what exists, how we decide to feel and take action is determined by what we each value. Most people couldn't tell you their ideology because they probably don't really have one, just a list of rules to live by backed up by the Trojan biases we call "opinions".
My liberal view made the world feel as if it was too scattered and disparate to understand. I thought I was looking at a puzzle full of holes of things I didn't know, that I was unable to see the picture because I didn't have enough pieces. But it was never a puzzle, it just looked flat because I'd been standing in the same place for so long. All the important pieces were there, I just had to reorient my position to see it. The point at which I'm standing now is the very base of my ideology--I hate pain and don't want to feel it and as such would not want other to feel it either. I don't need to know a fact to know that what someone is saying or presenting isn't going to meet that goal and if I don't' have the information I need to make that determination, then I ask for more. Stop thinking of things as good and bad and think of them as things that help your goal or don't.
Capitalism and socialism became nearly meaningless terms for me for a long time and I think it was helpful. Language has a funny way of delivering ideas when we're not paying attention and most people don't use them in good faith. By taking the talk away from labels and definitions, we can actually begin to see where our paths are better aided together. When you're not sure where to start, look for the helpers. When people tell you to organize it's because when all the dialectics are past, people will still be hungry and in pain. Talking about macro helps define the micro, but the core of what we want is just better lives and "organizing" is the act of reconnection with your human community. It's not about a paternal need for "peace", it's about acting for mutual benefit in a common cause.
I still have not read Marx.
I intend to (though I'm not unfamiliar with the ideas) and would encourage people to engage with these materials as well. The meaning of that last line is to address the overall idea that you can't have a position until you meet X criteria (often self-imposed)--specifically addressing common criticisms related to "reading". I'm very new to these ideas still and want to emphasize the partially ignorant individual's ability to have the correct position before knowing everything. It, for me at least, makes the learning easier when I have a intuitive ideological picture to fit it into.
I liked Lenin's statistical columns about people. But honestly there are a few points where Marxist principles of understanding shine through. I non ironically suggest watching the Kapital anime, but more important read the statistics (or the one I found, but not the one I meant here ) and then look at a point in history you like. E.g. South African history.
There you can see how economic forces shape society, shape policy and how stuff intersects. The gold mines of Gauteng (think Johannesburg / Pretroi) and the demand for labour it produced. Look at how the government introduced legislation that was benefiting which class / racialized group. Then you see that there were also conflicts within the capitalist classes, but there was more class solidarity. You can see how the state and military and police was used to further economic interests. You can see how Pinkerton equivalents used force and no liberal was to hear criticizing them materially for over a century. You can see how some of the brightest people of the last millennium who were academically thought with christian humanist values were ignored in South Africa, in the UK and alike and that such idealist thought doesn't hold against the forces of history - which often stem in the dominant amount from economics or at least the material conditions to be found. Look how solidarity of the working class was important to organize and formulate protest and how a wide mix furthered with a good amount of Marxist understanding, of Black Consciousness, of militant action was able to crush the Apartheid state.
Like really, the so called imperial periphery got so many people who looked at material conditions and wrote their thoughts - while being involved in practices. They are a good way to further your understanding.
Historical materialism at a basic a level is just
realizingasserting history is only driven by material conditions.Dialectical materialism is more to do with logic. That’s more abstract and if you don’t already have a grasp of formal logic and philosophy-speak, it will be difficult to understand.
No no no no. I teach formal logic. Chomsky tried to formalize linguistics in an analytical logical framework. There is 0 relationship between those and dialectics and if anything I'd say a strong grasp of formal logic is a bar to understanding dialectical materialism they are two totally incommesurate strains of thought incredibly at odds with each other. Not that either is better or 'right', they're just different entirely.
Two main types of logic have arisen out of the two main stages in the development of the science of logic: formal logic and dialectics. These are the most highly developed forms of mental motion. They have as their function the conscious understanding of all forms of motion, including their own.
Although we are primarily interested in materialist dialectics, we shall not proceed at once to consider the dialectical method of reasoning. We shall approach dialectics indirectly by first examining the fundamental ideas ofanother kind of reasoning: the method of formal logic. As a method of thought, formal logic is the polar opposite of materialist dialectics.
Why, then, do we begin our study of the dialectical method by studying itsopposite in logical science?
There are excellent reasons for such a procedure. First of all, dialectics ha grown out of formal logic in the course of historical development. Formal logic was the first great system of the scientific knowledge of the thought processes. It was the consummation of the philosophical work of the ancient Greeks, the crowning glory of Greek thought. The early Greek thinkers made many important discoveries about the nature of the thought process and its products. The synthesiser of Greek thought, Aristotle, collected, classified, criticised and systematised these positive results ofthinking about thought and thereby created formal logic. Euclid did the same for elementary geometry; Archimedes for elementary mechanics; Ptolemy of Alexandria later for astronomy and geography; Galen for anatomy.
Aristotle‘s logic held sovereign sway in the realm of thought for over two thousand years. It had no rival until it was challenged, overthrown and superseded by dialectics, the second great system of logical science. Dialectics was likewise the outcome of a revolutionary scientific movement covering centuries of intellectual labor. It came as the consummation of the brainwork of the outstanding philosophers of the bourgeois-democratic revolution in Western Europe from the sixteenth to the nineteenth centuries. Hegel, the titan of the revolutionary German bourgeois school of idealist philosophy, was the mastermind who transformed the science of logic by being the first, as Marx pointed out, to ―expound the general forms of movement (of the dialectic) in a comprehensive and fully conscious way.‖ Marx and Engels were Hegel‘s disciples in the field of logic. They in turn effected a revolution in the Hegelian revolution of logical science by purging his dialectics of its mystical elements and placing his idealist dialectics on a consistent materialist foundation. If, therefore, we approach materialist dialectics by way of formal logic, we shall be retracing the steps of the actual historical progress of the science of logic which developed through formal logic to dialectics.
Novack - Introduction to the Logic of (Marxist) Dialectics.
Two main types of logic have arisen out of the two main stages in the development of the science of logic: formal logic and dialectics.
Yeah, and they're so fundamentally different that pretending that the former will help with the latter comes across as a Continental trying to steal Analytic valor in a ham-handed and humorous way. Look at what happened to the Analytic Marxist movement.
There's an analytic marxist movement? Who are the heads of that?
No one anymore, all the dialectical types basically bullied them out of existence, which is funny.
I can only relate this to physics and read you as saying learning Newtonian physics will only harm your understanding of General Relativity. It's a moot point anyways since the OP is asking about applying it more so than what to read/watch. Since you're a teacher, go teach and tell them how to apply continental or analytic or whatever you please.
I can only relate this to physics and read you as saying learning Newtonian physics will only harm your understanding of General Relativity.
That's great but that's something completely different. Dialectical logic and modern formal logic share essentially no terminology (and the ones they do share mean entirely different things, see 'contradiction'), no metaphysical foundations, and no methodologies.
The notion of writing a formal proof in a dialectical fashion is patentedly absurd, but those are the bread and butter of modern logics.
Since you’re a teacher, go teach and tell them how to apply continental or analytic
No one applies logic, dialectic or otherwise, in their daily lives. I don't write a formal proof about what I should have for breakfast.
You keep talking past me. You keep replying like I'm saying that formal logic is part of dialectics. Or that they're two sides of the same coin. Or that dialectics is a spin on formal logic. I know you're a teacher, I got you. I don't know where you teach or what class but there is no way that in the US you're skipping all of philosophical history and context to teach dialectical materialism. Unless it's a high level or special elective that only focuses on a single topic. The only reason I said anything about formal logic is that it's a gateway into philosophy. Having someone with little to know experience with philosophy jump straight into dialectical materialism by reading Marx sounds like it would turn off the average person. But if they're someone who's has dabbled in logic and other philosophy, then the prose of technical philosophical works might go down easier. It's not that I'm saying formal logic is the foundation to DM.
Even the passage I quoted doesn't say such a thing. It's simply acknowledging formal logic in a historical context to DM. While your personal opinion might be that it's counterintuitive, clearly that's not the only valid way to engage with the subject.
No one applies logic, dialectic or otherwise, in their daily lives. I don’t write a formal proof about what I should have for breakfast.
So? Nobody applies a lot of academic stuff to their daily lives. I'm just saying that OP was asking a different question than I thought and this whole chain is pedantry about something that's no longer relevant to the discussion. And I honestly do respect your opinion as an educator and someone more informed on the matter than me, which is why I suggested you reply to the OP more than me. But replying that nobody uses it in their daily lives is a weird turn. Most people who do this for a living can't wait to trap someone into a conversation about it.
The only reason I said anything about formal logic is that it’s a gateway into philosophy. Having someone with little to know experience with philosophy jump straight into dialectical materialism by reading Marx sounds like it would turn off the average person. But if they’re someone who’s has dabbled in logic and other philosophy, then the prose of technical philosophical works might go down easier. It’s not that I’m saying formal logic is the foundation to DM.
It's a gateway into a specific type of philosophy, namely logic. Someone who takes Formal Logic I and II would probably have a harder time with dialectical materialism that someone who hasn't taken any philosophy courses, because of all the stuff they would have to unlearn. They'd be much better off reading about German idealism.
I've watched a bunch of theory vids but I want to actually "practice" the analysis part in the way I'd "practice" logic. This is going to sound like really stupid but are there "problem sets" where a lecturer takes you through a problem and shows the steps they took to identity the dialectic, what's going on, how the process is playing out. All of the analyses I've seem to be retrospective "just so" stories
Yea I guess my question boils down to: How do you move past the reading and into producing an analysis? How do you practice that skill? Are there "exercises" you can do to hone the skill? I'm trying to relate learning about this to other things I've learned and I've never ever gotten good at something by simply reading about it. You have to do it to really understand it.
The fundamental thing about "dialectical" thinking that separates it from more "analytical" schools is the idea that objects and events don't have an "essence" or a "true nature" that can be abstracted away. Objects and events are always in a process of being what they are and becoming something new, and they only have meaning in terms of their relations with other real world objects, which are also always in a state of being and becoming.
You can't practice it like a problem set of logical proofs because there is no right answer like a logic problem set. The problems you're analyzing don't have the same neat answers.
"Dialectical" methods have been used pretty extensively in scientific discovery, though. Engels wrote a lot about this on the "Dialectics of Nature"
How can I "do" it if I can't practice it? How can I tell if someone's analysis makes sense or if it's just an ad hoc explanation? How do I judge good analysis from bad?
Start with Engels' 3 rules
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The law of the unity and conflict of opposites
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The law of the passage of quantitative changes into qualitative changes
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The law of the negation of the negation
"Good" dialectical analysis is based on the conflict of opposites as opposed to using formal logical rules like the transitive property or the law of identity.
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try writing it out or summarizing it to a friend. re-read sections that gave you difficulty. read outside the box - try to find tangentially related stuff that gives you context on the issue from a different perspective
This is because On Contradiction is a pile of meaningless ad hoc jibberjabber.
No I've checked it is there's an old thread in /c/philosophy where I go through why.
You find your local capitalist. Look them in the eye and say "Marx my word, this won't be the last you see of me!" and then run away.
Easy: talk about a problem, offer a solution from your ass, and use the word "dialectics"
Well I already do the first two all the time so it sounds like I'm set
Honestly Marx's methods were well over 150 years old. Well not at the time, of course, back then they were bleeding edge brand spanking new. Well, I don't know if they were that hot off the plate, actually, Hegel had been around the block quite a bit by the time Marx got to him. Anyway, the point I'm trying to make is that we've made tons of advances in what would come to be called Systems Theory, which Marx and Engels are often actually recognized as being the forebearing grandfathers of. We've also greatly fleshed out social scienes past "something that might exist". So use modern techniques to try to make sense of the modern world. Or well, any time period of the world, or really any world in general. Familarize yourself with Systems Theory and especially Chaos Theory because the sum whole of social human interaction in the political and economic realms is quite complex, which lends to it characteristics similar of all complex systems like the weather or the interaction of neurons in a brain, esp a human brain.
Check out Theory as History: Essays on Modes of Production and Exploitation by Jairus Banaji or origins of capitalism by Ellen meiksons wood, or passages from Antiquity to Feudalism by perry anderson or for more modern problems any of Mike Davis' books. All are sustained exercises and really good examples of doing historical materialist analysis.
Don't overthink it, the point is to look at history as the product of material conditions. Now this does not mean ignoring ideology, far from it, but it means we look at history not as series of spontaneous events in the minds of people, but as a product of physical and social forces influencing people.
Now no particular history doing historical materialism means it is right, many are wrong lol. It just describes a position one takes on how history happens, and that informs what should be studied. There can still be gigantic rifts and arguments between historical materialist historians and political theorists on important issues like the origins of capitalism, the nature of the state, politics, imperialism etc. There's especially disagreements over political theory. For example someone in here recommended Poulantzas. Poulantzas, who is a great writer, started as a leninist but then came in his own analysis to reject it. He also wrote a lot about the state and had a series of heated debates with Ralph Miliband about it. Both he and Miliband were historical materialists, but had very different ideas about what the specific material things they were arguing about were. The debate between Poulantzas readers and people like the late Leo Panitch who was influenced a lot by Miliband continued to this day (rip Leo, he died last month).
Dialectical materialism to some people just means historical materialism. To others, it means a wider application of dialectical thinking, things like Engels laws of dialectics he cribbed from Hegel, to physical forces in nature (to me, doing this is kind of useless though, it's just ad-hoc labeling of things as contradictions and that's not really useful for learning new information than not doing that and using some other system to label things).
Here's a short explanation of one perspective on Marx's historical materialism Eric Fromm wrote in the early 60s: https://www.marxists.org/archive/fromm/works/1961/man/ch02.htm
A dialectic is a process of change driven by two contradictory forces. For instance, you could say heat and cold have a dialectical relationship. If you were to drop an ice cube in a hot bowl of soup, a dialectical process would play out with the heat from the soup and the cold from the ice interacting with each other, causing each other to change.
Dialectical Materialism is what we get when we apply this framework of change driven by contradictory forces to the empirical realm. Things which can be observed and measured. A thesis could be formed that some phenomenon is driven by a dialectical process, and experiments could be performed to shore up or dispell that hypothesis.
Historical Materialism is what we get when we apply dialectical materialism to history.
Luna Oi's video was really good at explaining what dialectical materialism is to my big dumb lib brain: https://youtu.be/neI-ol2AowM
simply start with a conclusion and think of ways that materical conditions can be used to get there
Simplification time. Ok let's look at diamat, first the dialectical part. In life things fundamentally change as time progresses, you could think of it as evolution of sorts, and like evolution it isn't such an easy to box into category change neither with just one single point. Hegel used an unfurling leaf and the process of a caterpillar becoming a butterfly as examples in his work iirc.
To add materialism in how this is in the real world outside of the realm of idealism and perfection. What are the conditions simply. In the case of the caterpillar only once its reached a certain point of development with all the biological conditions met will it become a cocoon.
Historic - the past of something, path tends to be linear and roughly applied everywhere, idealist in the fact it considers history neat and no time considerations are truly considered.
Historic materialism - looking at the past critically, with what conditions were going on at that time and how that influenced development. May look at stages, categories are a lot more 'blended' since evolution of even our history phrases aren't neat but do have hallmarks unique to them.
Feudalism was its own precapitalist stage of society, peasantry had some sort of small means which got phased out, this was fought tooth and nail by kings against the bourgeois and peasants alike once conditions were met. We're not going to have feudalism just like 10th century ever again outside a time machine.
Hype word 'neofeudalism' simply because monopoly capital owns everything, we're not under the same technological nor class conditions, this is just further evolution of imperialist capitalism where the masses have nothing. So neofeudalism you can almost always dismiss when looking through a Marxist lens, but not under say many of the capitalist schools.
A really good example of unintentional diamat (usually) is the sciences especially anything with a big ol formula. Scientists by nature of their career do diamat on the bench, that's how it is when you look at something objectively with conditional consideration.
