7 Feb 2024 6:44 am
(PART I OF III)
LowIQTrash: "Marxism is based on Hegelian dialectics, which is more of a pseudoscience than anything else. It's a framework (heuristic) applied to political economy that may or may not be true depending on one's interpretation of Marxist dogma."
Marxism, or scientific socialism, is a social science. A social science is any academic endeavor that examines society's divergent characteristics. The five major social science disciplines are political science, economics, anthropology, psychology, and sociology. One can disagree with Maxrism's social scientific findings, just as one can disagree with the conclusions of any other social science. But it's childish and a sign of desperation to deny Marxism's social scientific basis. Per Marxism being "based on Hegelian dialectics," that's true only in the most rudimentary ways. Although Marx and Engles accepted Hegel's broad understanding of dialectics, they thought Hegel's dialectic method was too abstract. It's true that, in his youth, Marx admired Hegel. Marx was one of those known at the time as Young Hegelians. However, he didn't share Hegel's worship of the state. Marx encapsulated his attitude toward Hegel when he said he had turned Hegel "upside down and the right way up." Therefore, Marx's early writings are a response to Hegel, German idealism, and a break from the rest of the Young Hegelians. Marx stood Hegel on his head in his view of his role by turning the idealistic dialectic into a materialistic one and proposing that material circumstances shape ideas instead of the converse, as Hegel proposed.
Indeed, Dr. Marx disagreed with almost every point Hegel made, except for the three-valued dialectic. Also, Marx only cared about the three-valued dialectic in one case, namely, the bourgeoisie (thesis), the proletariat (antithesis), and the dictatorship of the proletariat (synthesis).Hegel was one of many sources of Marx's ideas. The primary sources were Ludwig Feuerbach, Adam Smith, David Ricardo, Jacques Rousseau, Charles Fourier, Henri de Saint-Simon, and Pierre-Joseph Proudhon.There is no way to reconcile Hegel with Marx because Hegel was an avid advocate of private property as an institution and as the foundation of Family Law, Civil Law, Criminal Law, Constitutional Law, and International Law.Also, for Hegel, a proper synthesis is a harmonious adaptation of the thesis to the antithesis, not an obliteration of the thesis. So, Hegel would have rejected Marx's political economy theory as vigorously as Feuerbach's atheism. So, the statement, "Marxism is based on Hegelian dialectics," is, at best, based on a cursory understanding of Marxism, one not gained through a study of original sources of Marxist literature.
As for Marxism being dogmatic, it's interesting that, although LowIQTrash holds at least a precipitous understanding of Marxism's dialectical nature, he doesn't seem to comprehend that for Marx, dialectic implies a method for a critical analysis, thinking about the world in terms of evolution and change, processes rather than things, and interrelated flows rather than isolated objects; a general mental tendency to view and interpret reality in terms of the interplay of the conflicting forces. Reality itself is a totality composed of the world's interacting events, processes, and conditions involving the structural interdependence of all its parts! Therefore, Marxism isn't dogmatic! Too, I've shown repeatedly throughout this thread that Marxism isn't dogmatic, yet LowIQTrash has yet to counter any of it.
http://www.slp.org/pdf/statements/siu_chart.pdf
(END OF PART I)