Good lord what have you gotten yourself into this time Anthony?
― Mr Noodles (Mr Noodles), Tuesday, 4 March 2003 04:54 (twenty-three years ago)
an essay on the social and poltical implications of marxist and soviet thought in the Strugatsky Bros. Hard To Be A God.
― anthony easton (anthony), Tuesday, 4 March 2003 04:56 (twenty-three years ago)
Wish I could but it would be like Grampa Simpson recounting the war to Bart.
― Mr Noodles (Mr Noodles), Tuesday, 4 March 2003 05:02 (twenty-three years ago)
oh noodles, now you never know what you can do til you put your mind to it. i never thought i could shoot down a german plane, but last summer i proved myself wrong
― jess (dubplatestyle), Tuesday, 4 March 2003 05:08 (twenty-three years ago)
wadda blast from a well-forgotten past: once upon a time i had to pass *exams* in historical and dialectical materialism... and more than once upon a time i've read the Strugatsky Brothers... liked the latter much better too, thank you. of the former, i mostly remember that i passed them damn exams...
― t\'\'t (t\'\'t), Tuesday, 4 March 2003 05:10 (twenty-three years ago)
The best thing Lenin ever wrote on it (very summarized & requires reading & rereading, poss in conjunction with Marx's Theses on Freurbach):
http://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1914/cons-logic/summary.htm
Fryer quotes exstensively from it in a piece called "Lenin as a Philosopher" which might be a bear to track down.
Lenin on materialism also = the supah-dense book "Materialism And Empiro-Criticism".
He never claimed to have "innovated" at all as far as dialectical materialism but only in the book to have defended it against a neo-Kantianism (verging on neo-Humeism) and in his notes to have embarked on a study of Hegel to better get a grasp of dialectics for himself. Gramsci sez of Lenin on dialectical materialism that Lenin's innovation as a philosopher was such:
"In these terms one could say that Iilich advanced philosophy as philosophy in so far as he advanced political doctrine and practice. The realisation of a hegemonic apparatus, in so far as it creates a new ideological terrain, determines a reform of consciousness and of methods of knowledge: it is a fact of knowledge, a philosophical fact. In Crocean terms: when one succeeds in introducing a new morality in conformity with a new conception of the world, one finishes by introducing the conception as well; in other words, one determines a reform of the whole of philosophy.
"Structures and superstructures from an "historical bloc". That is to say the complex, contradictory and discordant ensemble of the superstructures is the reflection of the ensemble of the social relationships of prpduction. From this, one can conclude: that only a totalized system of ideologies gives a rational reflection of the contradiction of the structure and represents the existence of the objective conditions for the revolutionizing of praxis."
― Sterling Clover (s_clover), Tuesday, 4 March 2003 05:12 (twenty-three years ago)
well done, Sterling. that does ring an ensemble of bells.
― t\'\'t (t\'\'t), Tuesday, 4 March 2003 05:21 (twenty-three years ago)
Also post-Lenin "dialectical materialism" was thrown out the window in essence in favor of a crass metaphyiscal materialism as an official state philosophy -- resulting in bad art and bad science.
― Sterling Clover (s_clover), Tuesday, 4 March 2003 05:39 (twenty-three years ago)
the marxist internet archive is a nice resource. have read some trotsky on there.
― Julio Desouza (jdesouza), Tuesday, 4 March 2003 09:29 (twenty-three years ago)