User talk:Pazouzou

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1 Operation Corporate
2 Image:Wilhelm Reich 0.jpg
3 Image:Wilhelm Reich 0.jpg
4 Good comment about the article on the PCI
5 Two snarling animals circling each other in the forest...
6 Wounded trumpeting gompotheres
7 Wallowing warthog wonderment
8 Porcine pulchritudinous palavering
9 Pig in a Poke

[edit] Operation Corporate

I certainly do not see anything that is not NPOV, but if you would like to correct it, please feel free. Also welcome! [[PaulinSaudi 11:26, 16 Nov 2004 (UTC)]]

[edit] Image:Wilhelm Reich 0.jpg

Would you mind explaining why you claim copyright on this photo? Thuresson 29 June 2005 01:11 (UTC)

I don't. You have a point (besides being officious and bureaucratic)..?

Pazouzou 16:06, 15 October 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Image:Wilhelm Reich 0.jpg

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Thuresson 8 July 2005 17:52

[edit] Good comment about the article on the PCI

Hi Pazouzou !

Thank you very much for comment about the terrible article on the PCI. I have written another comment on it today:

Complete revision urgently necessary !!!

Would somebody PLEASE go and change this site ?!?

Besides its unbearably anti-communist stance it contains a host of factual errors that definitely should be corrected.

A few examples:

1. There has never been a "definite break" with Moscow (i.e. the CPSU and the Soviet Union) - neither in 1979 nor later (until the dissolution of the original PCI in 1991). The PCI was partly critical of the Soviet Union and the other socialist countries and maintained some special ideological positions but nevertheless remained part of the international communist movement and upheld its friendship (in a form of "critical solidarity") with the CPSU and the other ruling communist parties.

2. Eurocommunism is a very ambiguous term covering the quite distinct, controversial and internally conflicting policies of some Western European communist parties in the 70s and 80s, especially in Spain, France and Italy. Those parties NEVER had a common program accepted by all and were constantly at odds with each other. For example, the PCI never went only half as far in dismissing traditional communist principles as the CP of Spain. The term "Eurocommunism" (originating in the beginning from anti-communist corcles) should therefore at best be totally avoided. And most importantly: Eurocommunism despite all its special traits is absolutely NOT identical to Social Democracy. Therefore the assertion made in the article about the PCI "definitely embracing social-democracy and the Socialist International" is ridiculous. The PCI (again: for all its differing views in detail) did NEVER become a social-democratic party or even a member of the Socialist International.

3. The strange gossip about the Czechoslovak secret service supporting and financing the Red Brigades should either be verified beyond doubt (which will be impossible) or - even better - be deleted. The Italian version does not contain this nonsense. The same holds true for the rumors about the "Stasi", the KGB and training in clandestine warfare. Even if this would have been the case it must be related to the political situation in Italy at that time.

In fact the Brigate Rosse were controlled by the NATO fascist P2 Lodge under the Operation Gladio "Strategy of Tension". The above is just libel, misdirection and disinformation.

Our opponents here are nothing if not shameless liars and frauds.

So what else is new?

Pazouzou 14:38, 15 October 2006 (UTC)

4. Pazouzou has in his or her comment (see above) already mentioned the overall prejudices about bourgeois democracy, the role of the CIA and so on. All this should also be considered in a total revision of the article on the PCI.

End of pasted text

It's very nice for me to see that there are other communist users on Wikipedia, too. But I am afraid that we will not be able to change the extreme one-sidedness and anti-communist prejudices of Wikipedia... A "Marxist Wikipedia" would be a good idea...

It'll be an uphill battle because these vicious loons are quite dedicated to their own brand of "stalinist" hysterical revisionism. But in the end, what matters is that objectivity prevail. And objectivity will prevail -- or this project will ultimately be discredited. And I don't mean like lately, with those nasty little kerfuffles in the bourgeois gutter press... That's all more about controlling Wikipedia for hegemonic ends -- not about its dialectical nature of sublime self-correction-over-time.

In fact, I can see us being more organized about fighting this dreck. And most people would prefer that, I think: I'd bet, when they discover the discrepancies, that they'll want "just the facts, Ma'am" -- not simply the same old crap they've been fed since 'ducking and covering' under the desk in their old McCarthyite classroom...

Pazouzou 14:38, 15 October 2006 (UTC)

I would be glad if you could answer me (on this page since I am not a registered user of Wikipedia).

PS: I have just looked a bit deeper into the matter. The most horrible anti-communist nonsense in the PCI article (and literally hundreds of other articles !) comes from a user named TDC, an extreme anti-communist and an avowed "defender of Western civilization and capitalism against the neo-coms". Look at his user page and you will know what I mean !

Yours,

Markus B.

That's good to know, Markus. Thanx for finding that out. However, these vigilantes aren't out on the street anymore here: here, they actually have to justify themselves up front. Eventually, anyway.

And what does it take to join this club, huh? Sign on so there can be proper feedback to you, Markus!

Pazouzou 14:38, 15 October 2006 (UTC)

Pazouzou wrote on another page:

"No, I think you've made it pretty clear you're not a reasonable opponent. I was hoping for someone who isn't stuck in full-throttle attack mode at every moment. Debating you would be thankless -- however enlightening; but at least I know more about your type of demoralizing influence: and how to go about countering it...."

Rosa Lichtenstein replied:

Once again: you are the one who blundered in, making baseless assertions, inventing ideas to put in my mouth, accusing me of things that are demonstrably untrue.

So it is you who is the unreasonable one.

Whatever. Lady -- or man -- (I dunno anymore; you have this male-female persona thing going): we're speaking different languages here, really. We shouldn't be -- and the onus has really been on you all this time to stick to marxoid terminology, at least somewhat. I've been trying to play fair. And hey -- at least you called back.

It seems very much to me that you have been seduced by the blocky, square-headed wiles of bourgeois empirical, analytical logic -- which I dismissed long ago, even with my personal liking of the theoretical and political work of Bertrand Russell.

Hegel warned us about people like you.

I set out my arguments, and you cannot answer them. It's as simple as that.

We never even got to first base, you and I. How have you won anything here?

The fact that the above is all you have to offer confirms my judgement that you are out of your depth in this area; all the rest is just a smokescreen.

You say you know how to deal with opponents like me; clearly not.

Look: it's very clear that there is something missing in your intellectual toolkit. I've always been willing to understand the things you are trying to put across. I understand a lot of that, reject much of it -- but I haven't been too worked up about learning the lingo either. I've more concentrated on other things.

I've offered to work thru this stuff with you; but you seem intent on continually attacking, out of some misplaced sense that you are simply right -- and that the rest of us have "missed that boat" and are trying to "cover" for it with lies and prevarications... So what that you know and insist on things many of us have chosen not to study (as we likely should have)? This is still all a dialectical process here, understand, in spite of it all -- in spite of your nay-saying. But it's not advancing very much if at all at this point either, is it? For one thing, you seem to demand "pat" answers from only your POV. However -- as I have stated a few times: I'm prepared to let things fall apart here, rather than give up my own method of successive approximations and swear fealty to whatever it is you are demanding of us "dialecticians". But really: much good can come of your standing down from attack-mode, Rosa. Please get past the fact that you've apparently mastered some corner of knowledge the rest of us have passed thru to somewhere more important. I'm sure we'd still like to actually master this stuff too, at that; but don't make it like this is the main stop -- and you're the discoverer/guardian of it: it ain't and you isn't.

Dialectical-Materialism is still safe, because -- for one thing -- it actually includes what you are on about, as a subset. I'm not sure you actually realize this fact at all. I've tried broaching the subject with you a few times; but it doesn't seem to register.

Like every other DM-fan I have encountered over the last 20 years, you cannot defend a single one of your mystical beliefs.

Rosa Lichtenstein 27/09/06

http://anti-dialectics.org

This is untrue. You've clearly never stuck around long enuff to actually understand what the score actually is, obviously. Or not.

And I'm not here to feed your ego or material to your site.

Ball in your court.

Pazouzou 16:03, 15 October 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Two snarling animals circling each other in the forest...

Rosa responded:

Unfortunately Pazz has interpolated his response with my original post, so it is not easy to tell which comment is mine, and which is his.

Anyway, here goes:

"It seems very much to me that you have been seduced by the blocky, square-headed wiles of bourgeois empirical, analytical logic -- which I dismissed long ago, even with my personal liking of the theoretical and political work of Bertrand Russell.

Hegel warned us about people like you."

If you knew any logic, I'd be impressed, but as you do not, not.

And Russell too warned us about confused souls like you: the worse a thinker's logic the more 'interesting' the results one can derive from it.

Hegel easily takes first prize here.

Too bad neither Hegel nor Russell are around to speak for themselves. And there's nothing else in this section to talk about -- so on to the next part...

"Look: it's very clear that there is something missing in your intellectual toolkit. I've always been willing to understand the things you are trying to put across. I understand a lot of that, reject much of it -- but I haven't been too worked up about learning the lingo either. I've more concentrated on other things."

I admit that in my 'toolkit' there is something missing, which is present in yours: a fondness for mystical hermetic thought.

I rather think I am better off without it, and so would you be.

"mystical hermetic thought"... Hmmm...

Tell me Rosa: is say, Hegel (or Marx even) responsible for the development of Thought -- or subsequent political expediency -- in the period after their deaths?

"I've offered to work thru this stuff with you; but you seem intent on continually attacking, out of some misplaced sense that you are simply right -- and that the rest of us have "missed that boat" and are trying to "cover" for it with lies and prevarications... So what that you know and insist on things many of us have chosen not to study (as we likely should have)?"

Where did you offer this? You have presented no arguments, just slurs and an attempt to pronounce guilt by association.

That is the extent of your 'offer' so far.

I have faced over twenty years of this sort of stuff from you DM-fans; why are you all the same? Are you intent on becoming living proof that the law of identity is correct?

20 years, and you still exhibit such impatience. Man, there has to be a point of entry somewhere here...

"This is still all a dialectical process here, understand, in spite of it all -- in spite of your nay-saying."

How could I 'nay say' this? We can find it in Plato. But what has this got to do with a dialectic that supposedly works in nature?

Nothing at all.

So what is your point (if you have one)?

Huh?

Let me just cut to some chase here. A dialectical relationship: differentiation in relation to integration in calculus (one of my favorites so far).

"But really: much good can come of your standing down from attack-mode, Rosa. Please get past the fact that you've apparently mastered some corner of knowledge the rest of us have passed thru to somewhere more important. I'm sure we'd still like to actually master this stuff too, at that; but don't make it like this is the main stop -- and you're the discoverer/guardian of it: it ain't and you isn't."

Not so, I will maintain this 'attack mode' until one of two things happens: I die or this theory does. If it upets you, I careth not. I gave up years ago trying to change a single dialectically-distracted mind. Now, I just attack.

Get used to it; you Mystical Marxists have been rumbled. You have screwed with the workers' movement for far too long.

Well at least we have a nice, solid target to aim at. You have your definite uses. And you do not -- NOT -- speak for the workers' movement.

"Dialectical-Materialism is still safe, because -- for one thing -- it actually includes what you are on about, as a subset. I'm not sure you actually realize this fact at all. I've tried broaching the subject with you a few times; but it doesn't seem to register."

So you say, but you know no logic, and it seems little philosophy.

So say you too. What do you consider "logic", then? Mastery of truth tables?

And you can 'broach' this with me till the cows evolve, it will do you no good; unless you can prove what you say, as opposed to merely asserting it, my case stands, and DM is a dead duck.

Prove otherwise (I have established my case, at my site).

Likewise. You haven't proven dick yourself, lady. Mexican standoff, AFAIC. If you want to reference the work on your website, you can bloody well provide linx to the relevant sections right here, and/or the relevant quotes from your prior work. For now, I ain't biting. You're too off-putting.

"This is untrue. You've clearly never stuck around long enuff to actually understand what the score actually is, obviously. Or not. And I'm not here to feed your ego or material to your site. Ball in your court."

The above was in response to my claim that Dialectical Mystics like you cannot defend a single doctrine; P you have very helpfully confirmed this with yet more prevarication.

As to not sticking around, I invited you to debate this with me at RevLeft (where I have been trashing this 'theory' of yours for over six months, so much for not 'sticking around').

So, I think we can take your failure to accept this challenge as an example of yet another mystic whimping out.

Shredded 'theory' back in your court.

Rosa Lichtenstein 17/10/06

I dunno. I don't really feel like going to that place to deal with you yet. And not like others hadn't encouraged me to deal with your tendency long before I actually "crossed swords" -- or rackets -- with you...

Let's see what happens here first.

Pazouzou 20:01, 18 October 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Wounded trumpeting gompotheres

Rosa replied:

Once more, Pazz has interpolated his comments with mine, making it hard to follow this non-discusssion.

Bite me.

Pazz:

"Too bad neither Hegel nor Russell are around to speak for themselves. And there's nothing else in this section to talk about -- so on to the next part.."

Rosa:

Since you were the one who brought these two up, I wonder why you now make this point?

What is to discuss? You're being difficult and I take a pass.

Pazz:

""mystical hermetic thought"... Hmmm...

Tell me Rosa: is say, Hegel (or Marx even) responsible for the development of Thought -- or subsequent political expediency -- in the period after their deaths?"

Rosa:

What has that got to do with anything?

I ask this question because you seem to conflate the ability of these people to deal with intellectual challenges during their lives with what others have decided about them after their deaths. It's not fair for instance to go on about Hegel's terminology so much, when it was entirely possible, if he hadn't become effectively almost proscribed by a nervous political establishment after his death, that his way of thinking -- and his terminology -- might have become the norm we would all be working with today. Or at least some variant descended from that terminology. Why should Hegel be blamed for how many 19th & 20th century thinkers studiously or ignorantly ignored him and his modus operandi -- all the more because of his association with marxist thought?

This goes all the more for Marx, et al.

Pazz:

"20 years, and you still exhibit such impatience. Man, there has to be a point of entry somewhere here..."

Rosa:

In fact, after 20 years of the same refusal to argue by you mystics, you wonder why I am so 'impatient'. Recall, you were the one who barged in on the earlier calm debate with wild accusations and baseless assertions. And then you took exception to my unwelcoming response to your insensitivity.

Bite me. Again.

Pazz:

"Huh?

Let me just cut to some chase here. A dialectical relationship: differentiation in relation to integration in calculus (one of my favorites so far)."

Rosa:

Well, I suggest you look up the meaning of the word 'relevant', since I fail to see what this has to do with anything we have discussed so far. [Recall once more that my comment was in response to you asking if I could 'nay say' the alleged 'dialectical' process already going on here. No mention of calculus. I recommend you stick to the point.]

But even if it were relevant, the differential and integral calculus have nothing to do with the wooly notions you find in Hegel, or Engels (or even in Marx's odd comments on this topic). As with many other wild claims like this, I have already neutralised such assertions at my site.

Look at this: I'm getting to something concrete -- and Brunhilda here suddenly decides to get all vague on me.

Rosa: Calculus exhibits dialectical properties (as all things do, of course). Deal with it.

Pazz:

"Well at least we have a nice, solid target to aim at. You have your definite uses. And you do not -- NOT -- speak for the workers' movement."

Rosa:

A target you have yet to aim at accurately, let alone make even so much as an indirect hit upon.

But you are good at dancing around the subject. I will give you that.

And of course I do not speak for workers, but they do speak for themselves: the larger the working class the less attention they pay to you dialectical mystics.

The present state of working-class consciousness is nothing to write home about. It's precisely because they don't study marxism -- and dialectical-materialism -- that you and I are having this idiot "conversation" in the first place. They do not pay attention to dialectix or marxism the same way they do not pay attention to the ruling-class' hand in their pockets. At their peril. Eventually.

And I happen to think they are right. You mystics have messed around with their interests far too much as it is, and led them badly for far too long.

Dialectics? Refuted by history.

I'm sorry -- but you will have to prove that.

Pazz:

"So say you too. What do you consider "logic", then? Mastery of truth tables?"

Rosa:

Where do I even so much as suggest this? But, the bowdlerised sub-Aristotelian stone age logic you find in Hegel you prefer.

Hence, my claim that you know no logic, so are in no position to judge.

What? Talk about evasion.

Pazz:

"Likewise. You haven't proven dick yourself, lady. Mexican standoff, AFAIC. If you want to reference the work on your website, you can bloody well provide linx to the relevant sections right here, and/or the relevant quotes from your prior work. For now, I ain't biting. You're too off-putting."

Rosa:

Not so; until you can show where what I have to say is incorrect, or where my arguments are wrong -- in the original posts in the discussion page for dialectical materialism at this site, at RevLeft, or at my site -- this is merely whistling in the dark on your part.

Or better: yet more prevarication.

You can't defend your ideas, so you just moan, and indulge in more avoiding tactics.

Not so much a Mexican stand-off as a wimp-out by you.

But now you want me to do all the work for you: recall, once more, you were the one who barged in making all sorts of wild claims, which even now you cannot substantiate, and it now emerges you did this without researching your material. Now you want me to do it for you.

No, it is you who barged-onto the Dialectical-Materialism Wikipedia page and started spouting this anti-dialectical-materialism nonsense. You came with an agenda to subvert it -- without cause, I may add. I simply came to the defence of Marx, Hegel, et al.: this long, noble tradition, which fights in the name of the working-class and its interests.

Quite reasonable, IMO.

Do it yourself. You are the interloper here. You are the one who needs to back up the baseless assertions you made.

As I show above, it is yourself who is the interloper.

For my part, I do not care if you stay ignorant all your life, or refuse to engage with me, or continue to whimper and prevaricate; but stop making assertions about me based on no evidence at all.

Pazz:

"I dunno. I don't really feel like going to that place to deal with you yet. And not like others hadn't encouraged me to deal with your tendency long before I actually "crossed swords" -- or rackets -- with you...

Let's see what happens here first."

Rosa:

Ducking yet another challenge, eh?

I suspect those 'others' you refer to are sorely disappointed in you as the paper tiger and champion of dialectics at Wiki.

No wonder you won't venture forth to RevLeft to face an even greater mauling.

Rosa Lichtenstein 18/10/06

Pfft! I'm so scared. Frankly, you're starting to bore me. Can we, like, end this thing now, maybe?

Pazouzou 00:28, 21 October 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Wallowing warthog wonderment

Once more, Pazz has interpolated his 'reply' with my comments.

And I'm gonna keep doing it too. Get used to it.

Pazz:

"Bite me."

Rosa:

So, whimping out again, are we?

Pazz:

"What is to discuss? You're being difficult and I take a pass."

Rosa:

Once more: you were the one who blundered into an earlier discusssion making all kind of wild accusations. If you cannot defend them, then withdraw with your tail between your legs.

Pazz:

"I ask this question because you seem to conflate the ability of these people to deal with intellectual challenges during their lives with what others have decided about them after their deaths. It's not fair for instance to go on about Hegel's terminology so much, when it was entirely possible, if he hadn't become effectively almost proscribed by a nervous political establishment after his death, that his way of thinking -- and his terminology -- might have become the norm we would all be working with today. Or at least some variant descended from that terminology. Why should Hegel be blamed for how many 19th & 20th century thinkers studiously or ignorantly ignored him and his modus operandi -- all the more because of his association with marxist thought?"

Rosa:

Whatever is done with Hegel's terminology, it is demonstrably unsound, and ill-informed. As I show in Essay Eight Part Two, Note 67 (a 20,000 words long note which will later be published as a separate Essay -- directed against the crazy idea that there are such things as 'dialectical contradictions' in nature and/or society).

Oh. I see. That's gonna be some humdinger of an earth-shattering refutation, that is. Can't wait for the sequel.

Of course there are fucking contradictions. Where to even start with someone who aggressively declares completely false a version of reality which is obvious to myself and tens of millions of others (I'd say hundreds of millions; but many socialists aren't very good at theory. Or observation, for that matter).

And Hegel was a Hermetic mystic -- expounding a ruling-class view of reality.

Life's a mystery, fella/lady.

Two good reasons for consigning his books to the flames, as Hume suggested of all such works.

Yes, it's very clear you are an empiricist. Talk about expounding ruling-class hegemony. Hume indeed... For what it's worth, I hope you at least understand that marxists are not "hegelians", per se, but marxists: practitioners of scientific socialism. Which is based on Marx' materialist correction of Hegel's dialectical method and observations of how reality actually functions.

The study of Hegel is important for getting the method and the understanding down pat (not that I have). It's always understood here that the whole thing has to be "flipped around" as was more-or-less stated by Marx, in order to actually have the work of the human mind mesh with the actual workings of Reality inside and out of it. Gotta get rid of that residual Idealism, you know.

But then, you wouldn't, would you? Know, that is.

Pazz:

"Bite me. Again"

Rosa:

Once more: whimping out, are we?

Pazz:

"Look at this: I'm getting to something concrete -- and Brunhilda here suddenly decides to get all vague on me.

Rosa: Calculus exhibits dialectical properties (as all things do, of course). Deal with it."

Rosa:

You are merely grandstanding. I challenge you to show how the calculus is dialectical. It is your wild claim that is it, and, as I noted, I have demolished similar such claims about the calculus, made by those who could defend their beliefs, at my site.

Oh now we're dealing with it, are we?

In all likelihood these stalwarts of the Struggle simply took a walk, out of sheer frustration with you and your pit-bull ways. You "win" like the stalinists used to "win control" of meetings in the early days: by simply outlasting everyone else into the wee hours and gaining full control of the podium and the agenda in an empty room.

Merely stamping your little feet, and repeating an empty claim, is not proof,

Although to you logically-challenged Hegel fans, it probably looks like a proof.

I'm making a claim about calulus being exquisitely dialectical, certainly. Which needs to be proved, obviously. But since everything needs to be proved here, Rosa, we're still at Square One, isn't we?

And this is the first you've said you've actually touched on the subject of calculus in your work. Your 'refutation' should be, ah... interesting.

Pazz:

"The present state of working-class consciousness is nothing to write home about. It's precisely because they don't study marxism -- and dialectical-materialism -- that you and I are having this idiot "conversation" in the first place. They do not pay attention to dialectix or marxism the same way they do not pay attention to the ruling-class' hand in their pockets. At their peril. Eventually."

Rosa:

Sure, let's blame it on workers.

Somehow your retort was entirely predictable. But actually the workers do bear some blame for being so easily hoodwinked and bought off, historically and presently. When do people start taking responsibility for themselves, eh?

And hidden right there, in what I said above, is one of the most profound, fundamental problems in all marxism and dialectical-materialism. In all human thought, in fact. I wonder if you could ever find it. Not likely. (Clue: the failure of stalinist "DiaMat" as the one, true marxism. And please note that I'm referring here to a Wikipedia article. Caveat lector and all that.)

The holy dialectic must be defended at all costs, since, apparently, Lenin was wrong, and there is one branch of 'science' which has already arrived at absolute truth: dialectics.

Except: if truth is tested in practice, practice has delivered its verdict: dialectical Marxism is an abject failure.

Huh? You know, you keep asserting, but not stating any proof yourself, lady. The eventual failure of the Oktober Revolution and the CCCP is no proof of the failure of either Lenin's praxis specifically or dialectical-materialism generally. Keep trying, tho'. I need the workout.

Pazz:

"I'm sorry -- but you will have to prove that."

Rosa:

I see, you can make all sorts of baseless assertions (and ignore all my requests for proof), and I state the obvious, and you require proof.

You will be asking for proof that grass is green next.

I'm getting dizzy.

Pazz:

"What? Talk about evasion."

Rosa:

Yes, I learnt that trick from the master: you.

Be patient with me, I am still an amateur in this reagard. You experts need to to post some tips to help us novices out.

Pazz:

"No, it is you who barged-onto the Dialectical-Materialism Wikipedia page and started spouting this anti-dialectical-materialism nonsense. You came with an agenda to subvert it -- without cause, I may add. I simply came to the defence of Marx, Hegel, et al.: this long, noble tradition, which fights in the name of the working-class and its interests.

Quite reasonable, IMO."

Rosa:

I offered arguments, and proof.

You just mouthed off.

So far that's just an assertion. Backed up by, apparently, a crank website. I've asked for at least some tidbits of your "proof", in what's so far turned into a largely useless and irrelevant dialog, in hopes of getting us going; to orient us somewhere, somehow in this thing. But instead it is you who is doing pretty much all the mouthing-off here and beating around the bush. Apparently you want surrender up front, just like the imperialists. No-can-do. Sorry. We fight. Or we part ways.

You might think they are the same, but then you know no logic.

We still have to find out what you actually know.

And you have yet to provide one solid reason why anything I have said is incorrect.

AFAIC everything you've said so far is, at most, only partly correct. Which in this context is just plain wrong.

Sure you bluster, moan, and stamp your little feet, but your posts are almost exemplary in being argument-free zones.

Finally: when it says at the top of the page: 'discussion' I suppose you understand that to mean: 'toadying agreement only please'.

Is that it?

Can I come up for air now? Are you finished beating me/us over the head, incessantly?

Pazz:

"As I show above, it is yourself who is the interloper."

Rosa:

I refer the honourable Mystic to my previous reply.

And so we turn in tighter, more furious circles.

You, obviously, will only crack, not bend.

Pazz:

"Pfft! I'm so scared. Frankly, you're starting to bore me."

Rosa:

Then, may I suggest that in future if you cannot defend your superficailly held beliefs (and get bored so easily), you stay out of the discussion?

What discussion? Before me and now, it loox pretty much like a monolog.

Once again, you barged into a calm debate, and now cannot handle my agressive response to your tantrums, sonny.

Now that's just a lie. (Maybe not a damned one.)

Pazz:

"Can we, like, end this thing now, maybe?"

Rosa:

I accept your surrender.

Rosa Lichtenstein 21/10/06

Is there a camera hidden somewhere? Are we on a TV gag show? Is that it??

Sheesh. Take a Valium, child. I'm going to go read that 20.000-word load of hooey right now. Damn, the things I do for the Cause.

Pazouzou 15:53, 21 October 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Porcine pulchritudinous palavering

Rosa replied:

Once again, Pazz interpolated his 'reply' with my comments.

Pazz:

"And I'm gonna keep doing it too. Get used to it."

Rosa:

Never doubted your capacity to whimp out. I suspect that will continue for some time.

Pazz:

"Oh. I see. That's gonna be some humdinger of an earth-shattering refutation, that is. Can't wait for the sequel."

Rosa:

Since you cannot even reply to the edited highlights of a few of my ideas posted at Wiki, I think we can draw the right conclusion, and, indeed, recognise whistling in the dark on your part when we see it.

And now we get to the only argument Pazz has, the use of swear words:

Pazz:

"Of course there are fucking contradictions. Where to even start with someone who aggressively declares completely false a version of reality which is obvious to myself and tens of millions of others (I'd say hundreds of millions; but many socialists aren't very good at theory. Or observation, for that matter)."

Rosa:

Assertion is not proof.

That wasn't intended as a proof. That was just a garden-variety assertion. We have to state our intentions first, first of all, dontcha know; so that each of us (either of us) knows where the other is coming from. This helps immensely in avoiding those head-on collisions which otherwise invariably occur. Like with you, always.

Only if nature can argue with itself could there be contradictions in nature, and only if the forces of production could argue with the relations of production (or use values with exchange values) could there be any contradictions in class society.

So you can only make dialectics work if you are prepared to anthropomorphise nature, and the forces that power capitalism.

This is just loopy. In a sense, Nature very much does "argue with itself". Which I suppose sounds just as loopy to you.

But refer to my section below about Russell and "logical typing".

If you think nature is Mind, like Hegel, then this might work, but us genuine materialists have seen through that mystical con.

You apparently have no idea what Hegel meant by this. Even trying to grasp what he was on about there would go a long ways to overcoming your mental handicap.

And, you do not know enough philosophy or logic to gain say any of this (except, perhaps, by deflecting attention once more by the use of more swear words and baseless assertions).

Whatever. You shall score no knockout punches Inquisitor. I am only sorry I cannot so easily in return -- as I know is damned possible.

Pazz:

"Life's a mystery, fella/lady."

Rosa:

Only to you mystics it is.

Pazz:

"Yes, it's very clear you are an empiricist."

Rosa:

Marx quoted Hume, so did Hegel, does that make them empiricists?

In a good sense, yes. In your sense? Nope.

And Hegel, of course, was a working-class thinker, wasn't he?

No, he was a bourgeois. What's your point?

You like to use guilt by association, it's one of your few 'arguments'.

Guilty-as-charged.

Pazz, getting more desperate by the post:

"but marxists: practitioners of scientific socialism. Which is based on Marx' materialist correction of Hegel's dialectical method and observations of how reality actually functions."

Rosa:

I deny this and can prove it.

You cannot; and I can the obverse. However, this above is just another damned assertion. To be proved, anon.

But, you very helpfully saved me the need to do so; your earlier anthropomorphisation of nature confirms you are an idealist. Contradictions can only 'exist' in nature if nature can artgue with itself, that is, if it is Mind.

What I have stated proves nothing of the sort. But it's indeed something else than what you believe, that's for sure. But please: viz. the logical typing jazz below. That's not the proof itself -- yet. But it's a start on it.

So the bogus flip you dialectical mystics said you inflicted on Hegel was just that: bogus.

Pazz:

"The study of Hegel is important for getting the method and the understanding down pat (not that I have). It's always understood here that the whole thing has to be "flipped around" as was more-or-less stated by Marx, in order to actually have the work of the human mind mesh with the actual workings of Reality inside and out of it. Gotta get rid of that residual Idealism, you know. But then, you wouldn't, would you? Know, that is."

Rosa:

Well Marx himself said that the only use Hegel was to him in Das Kapital was to provide him with a few bits of terminology with which he merely 'coquetted' (again, his word), and then only in one chapter of that great book. So, Marx and Rosa see eye to eye -- even he abandoned Hegel.

A lie and a slander. A grotesque misrepresentation.

In this (famous) example, Marx made a point of explicitly stating his "allegiance" to Hegel and his method, only because a bunch of pompous dumbasses had to be led by the nose to not bad-mouth Hegel for being so "passé", or whatever. In fact, Marx was aiming his quill squarely and exactly at naysayers like you.

In fact, Capital is a dialectical-/historical-materialist tour de force. A fucking masterpiece. And you don't get it. Very sad.

Hence, the fact that you have not studied Hegel in detail (whereas I have -- odd that isn't it? You are a rabid Hegelian, but of the two of us, only I have studied him carefully!) is all to the good, since Marx in his mature work turned away from that mystic. In that case, in order for you to think like Marx, I suggest you throw Hegel's works onto Hume's bonfire.

How do you know what I have studied? For that matter, your vaunted education hasn't produced very much of anything masterful at all, based on what you've demonstrated so far. I was right to drop out of university, by the looks of it (in fact I did several times), including that so-called "philosophy major" one time... However, as I've stated elsewhere: my dialectics is more "organically"-grown and more integrated into my life and my personality. And I think you would very much like to know what I know, Inquisitor (as would quite a few people, actually...)

Frankly, I'm always quite pleased to get out of the Hegel I do know, how much I'm on the right path; and how easily the theory meshes with the praxis. And so I see this "dialog" here as a (possible) opportunity to advance further along that line of enquiry. But that's only a potential so far. (And not a promising one, to be brutally frank; but aren't we both, all the time, huh?)

Again: You have proved nothing, Inquisitor: only asserted some "argument-by-authority" crap above. Prove what you do know by proving it. Or else get off the pot. So far you have profoundly underwhelmed me.

Pazz:

"Oh now we're dealing with it, are we?

Rosa:

Well this might have had a grain of truth in it if you (or they) had actually produced an argument (just one would do!) in support of your loopy mystical ideology, but as none of you (and especially you) has ever done so, then I do not need to stay up till the early hours to watch your theory melt before your rationally-challenged eyes; it melted-down years ago when you all began to listen to that Hermetic whacko called Hegel.

Bad move.

So you say. Words are cheap. We shall find out the truth, anon.

So, it seems rather fitting that the only thing in reality that changes as a result of its own internal contradictions is dialectical materialism. I did not need to lift a finger to help it self-destruct: history did that for me and for humanity.

You have profoundly misunderstood the Lesson of History, Inquisitor.

Dialectics -- refuted by the class struggle.

Now that is a 'dialectical inversion' I can live with.

Pazz:

"I'm making a claim about calulus being exquisitely dialectical, certainly. Which needs to be proved, obviously. But since everything needs to be proved here, Rosa, we're still at Square One, isn't we?

And this is the first you've said you've actually touched on the subject of calculus in your work. Your 'refutation' should be, ah... interesting."

Rosa:

I hope you repeat that baseless assertion about the calculus again, since I need to see it at least four times before I consider it a proof.

And not just myself, but one of Trotsky's own bodyguards, Jean van Heijenoort, did an earlier hatchet job on Engels and Hegel's confused ideas on mathematics over firty years ago:

http://www.marxists.org/history/etol/writers/heijen/works/math.htm

I have merely pushed these much further.

Now I'm starting to see you pedigree... And "hatchet-job" just about covers it. For both of you. This guy is very much along your lines I see. Let me just quote this section from the article whose URL you so kindly provided me:

Let us consider the complex numbers, whose theory was completed in the nineteenth century. It is an easy and, it seems, interesting subject for a man like Engels, without training in mathematics. Three brief remarks are all we can find in his writings. They show that, although Engels knows of the existence of the complex numbers, he has never grasped their significance. In his book against Dühring he sets complex numbers, 'the free creations and imaginations of the mind' (1935, page 43), apart from other mathematical notions, which are abstracted from the 'real world'. The same book contains a few sentences on the square root of minus one, which is, according to Engels,

not only a contradiction, but even an absurd contradiction, a real absurdity [1935, page 125].

Did you get that? From this "expert" author/researcher you rely on? What this man has done here is completely take Engels out of context. Remarkably so. In fact, this van Heijenoort guy is either a complete fool -- or he's doing a hatchet-job, for Marx-knows what reason. If you actually read that section of Anti-Dühring, it's incredibly obvious that Freddie Engels is mocking Herr Dühring's relentless use of an idiot idea of contradictions being "absurd". In fact, Engels is toying with this guy here. He's "coquetting" with Dühring's own pompous style, so-to-speak. Marx and many, many others have been so right to laud this work. Why, pray tell, are you so different and above them all..?

And I note that I found this out by only a cursory look-up on the Internet too. Isn't modern technology grand? (Beats getting out the deadwood and flipping pages, that's for sure). And note this well, anti-dialectician Inquisitor: no matter how much Engels wasn't the expert he wanted to be either, on this, that, or the other subject -- it's usually the case that the "experts" who go gunning for him and Marx, et al., are truly the 'gang that couldn't shoot straight'. This is pathetic stuff you directed me to.

Pazz:

"Somehow your retort was entirely predictable. But actually the workers do bear some blame for being so easily hoodwinked and bought off, historically and presently. When do people start taking responsibility for themselves, eh?"

Rosa:

So, still blaming the working class for their refusal to swallow mystical ideas dredged up from Hegel's logic, eh?

Yup. Still.

You still do not get it: dialectics is a petty-bourgeois fixation (a means of consolation you have all latched onto since it convinces you all that whatever happens, no matter how much workers ignore you, the revolution is guaranteed by the logic of reality -- it's a religion with you, hence your overly emotional response to mmy attacks).

(WTF...) Sure. Whatever.

It will never seize the masses, since they are natural materialists, like me. [I am working class, and an unpaid trade union organiser.]

And I'm chopped liver.

Pazz:

"And hidden right there, in what I said above, is one of the most profound, fundamental problems in all marxism and dialectical-materialism. In all human thought, in fact. I wonder if you could ever find it. Not likely. (Clue: the failure of stalinist "DiaMat" as the one, true marxism. And please note that I'm referring here to a Wikipedia article. Caveat lector and all that.)"

Rosa:

Non-Stlainist mystical Marxismn is even less successful. So, if anything, history refutes non-Stalinist dialectics even more.

Pazz:

"Huh? You know, you keep asserting, but not stating any proof yourself, lady. The eventual failure of the Oktober Revolution and the CCCP is no proof of the failure of either Lenin's praxis specifically or dialectical-materialism generally. Keep trying, tho'. I need the workout."

Rosa:

So, truth is not tested in practice then?

Did I say that? Or are you putting words in my mouth? Again?

But if it is, then practice tells us that Dialectcal Marxism is one of the most unsuccesful 'theories' in human history (given its claim to represent the interests of the overwhelming majority -- who to this day have given it the thumbs down).

You have a profoundly myopic vision of reality, Inquisitor. Marxism has been very successful, actually. However, the enemy is powerful and ruthless; and has had "incumbent" status and control of a world of resources to boot; and so our mistakes have been very costly to us and to the world. But we shall prevail, however. Even if there's a nuclear war. But it won't be by following the dead hand of the bourgeois empirical ideology you are pushing here.

You have to have your head buried deep in the sand not to notice this; so I do not wonder you need a work-out.

In fact, you need to work your head out of the sand.

Out of my ass, you mean.

Pazz:

"I'm getting dizzy."

Rosa:

It's probably all that mysticism you have swallowed.

Pazz:

"So far that's just an assertion. Backed up by, apparently, a crank website. I've asked for at least some tidbits of your "proof", in what's so far turned into a largely useless and irrelevant dialog, in hopes of getting us going; to orient us somewhere, somehow in this thing. But instead it is you who is doing pretty much all the mouthing-off here and beating around the bush. Apparently you want surrender up front, just like the imperialists. No-can-do. Sorry. We fight. Or we part ways."

Rosa:

But you have not even replied to the summary of a few of my ideas posted at Wiki; that is no doubt why you will not read my extended Essays: you have no answer. Just more flannel.

Until you do either or both, all this is just prevarication on your part.

Pazz:

"We still have to find out what you actually know."

Rosa:

Read my Essays, you will see how much Logic and Philosophy I know.

Oh, I think I'm getting the measure of you.

Or do not; but then stop making baseless assertions about stuff you have not even bothered to check.

Pazz:

"AFAIC everything you've said so far is, at most, only partly correct. Which in this context is just plain wrong."

Rosa:

Eh?

So, you still cannot say where or why what I say is incorrect.

Pazz:

"Can I come up for air now? Are you finished beating me/us over the head, incessantly?"

Rosa:

No, keep your head in the sand; you are less danger to workers that way.

Pazz:

"And so we turn in tighter, more furious circles.

You, obviously, will only crack, not bend"

Rosa:

Whatever I will or will not do, will be done non-dialectically.

Obviously.

Pazz;

"What discussion? Before me and now, it loox pretty much like a monolog."

Rosa:

If you cannot defend your ideas, sonny, that is your problem.

Pazz:

"Now that's just a lie. (Maybe not a damned one.)"

Rosa:

I think you make stuff up so much, even you are finding it hard to tell fact from fiction.

The debate was calm until you stuck your nose in.

Pazz:

"Is there a camera hidden somewhere? Are we on a TV gag show? Is that it?? Sheesh. Take a Valium, child. I'm going to go read that 20.000-word load of hooey right now. Damn, the things I do for the Cause."

Rosa:

You try to stir things up, and then cannot handle it when I respond with more aggression than you bargained for.

And I rather think your prejudical comment on something you have not yet read says more about you that I think I ever could.

Rosa Lichtenstein 21/10/06.

Yes, I think we are just about done, you and I.

Pazouzou 02:38, 22 October 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Pig in a Poke

You've sure been a busy, uh... person.

Seeing how dogged this Inquisitor has been in their pursuit of this holy grail (understandable, given the generally and widely pathetic nature of marxist theory today, and the immensely frustrating lack of a meaningful Movement or competent leadership) I can see there's little point in sticking to footnote 67 [fix this section link]; even though I could as well 'take a stand' from that POV, defending Trotsky, et al. However this whole exercise in frustration compels me, rather, logically, to find entry somewhere simpler and more fundamental.

And right at the beginning, lo and behold, of "Why I Oppose Dialectical Materialism" (good!) The Inquisitor writes:

Dialecticians are fond of saying things like the following:

"Formal logic regards things as fixed and motionless." [Rob Sewell.]

However, I have yet to see a single quotation from a logic text that supports such claims -- certainly dialecticians have yet to offer one. And no wonder: it is completely incorrect.

Formal Logic [FL] uses variables, that is letters to stand for named objects, designated expressions (some of these are called "predicates"), and the like -- all of which can and do change.

This device was introduced by the very first logician in the West, Aristotle, and he did so approximately 1500 years before this tactic was used in mathematics by Muslim Algebraists -- who employed variables in mathematics several centuries before Descartes experimented with the same device.

Of the latter Engels said the following:

"The turning point in mathematics was Descartes' variable magnitude. With that came motion and hence dialectics in mathematics, and at once, too, of necessity the differential and integral calculus...." [Engels (1954), p.258.]

In line with Engels, no one doubts that modern mathematics can handle change, so why dialecticians deny it of FL is a mystery.

And the problem (so far) is shown to be that The Inquisitor here is mixing up very different matters into one steaming-hot pile of... potpourri -- very much against the very practice, may I add, counseled by the likes of Bertrand Russell: a great bourgeois thinker (but sadly, a die-hard opponent and competitor [short story] of marxism and dialectical-materialism), the life's-work of whom The Inquisitor apparently bases so much of their intransigent stance on.

It is a demonstrable fact (yet to be proven to this naysayer, I would suppose) that much of the de facto use of western "Logic" (consciously or otherwise, but more the former is what is cogent here), in both daily discourse as well as professional work, consists of the use of exactly such fixed entities/concepts etc. as described by our fellow DM marxists; a usage which by its very nature is proudly and insistently intended to be fixed and immutable, and by main force if need be forced upon us to remain fixed and immutable. In fact, the "stability" -- the fate! -- of "Western Civilization" (if not our very souls) depends on this rigidity! But mixed-in with this praxis here is another incontrovertable fact of our daily, lived reality: that "Logic" also includes a more advanced -- i.e. more dialectical -- practice of doing logic-work with variables which change over time -- i.e. Science and Mathematics, etc.; and the slipping-in of this higher-order Logic behind the lower-order one is a sleight of hand I would have thought beneath the high moral dudgeon of my interlocutor here.

This Inquisitor tries to make much of apparently not being able to find examples of explicit statements of the former practice in logic texts; but I would assert that this would be because what we have there is rather one of the very unspoken assumptions of bourgeois Science which is the very basis of our problem here in the first place. I'm certain a rather long, complete list of exactly such implied axioms/statements, etc. could be compiled, without too, too much effort if one is actually looking. But the real issue here remains the mixing up together of logical types -- a real no-no in the world of Logical Thought.

As for any possible relationship between formal, axiomatic, syllogistic Logic and the Logic of the Scientific Method -- we haven't even touched on any of that yet.

Pazouzou 23:36, 21 October 2006 (UTC)

Rosa replied:

At last, an 'attempt' at an argument.

Or so it might at first seem -- but even before battle is joined, the wrong target it selected (or, as seems more likely, our paper tiger has whimped out again):

Pazz:

"I can see there's little point in sticking to footnote 67 [fix this section link]; even though I could as well 'take a stand' from that POV, defending Trotsky, et al. However this whole exercise in frustration compels me, rather, logically, to find entry somewhere simpler and more fundamental." [Bold emphasis added.]

Rosa:

So, you are a paper tiger.

Now Pazz switches to an introductory essay, which specifically says, and very clearly right at the beginning:

My Essay:

"It is important to add that this Essay deals with very basic issues -- even at the risk of serious distortion.

It has only been ventured upon because a handful of comrades (who were not well-versed in Philosophy) wanted a very simple guide to my principle arguments against DM.

Hence, it is not aimed at experts!

Anyone who objects to the superficial nature of the analysis/claims made below must take these caveats into account or navigate away from this page. It is not intended for them.

Those wanting more details should consult the relevant Essays published at the main site." [Bold emphasis added.]

In other words, it is not aimed at alleged 'experts' like Pazz.

http://homepage.ntlworld.com/rosa.l/Why%20I%20Oppose%20DM.htm

But let us see what our 'expert' says:

Pazz:

"And the problem (so far) is shown to be that The Inquisitor here is mixing up very different matters into one steaming-hot pile of... potpourri -- very much against the very practice, may I add, counseled by the likes of Bertrand Russell: a great bourgeois thinker (but sadly, a die-hard opponent and competitor [short story] of marxism and dialectical-materialism), the life's-work of whom The Inquisitor apparently bases so much of their intransigent stance on."

Rosa:

Mixing what up?

Pazz:

"It is a demonstrable fact (yet to be proven to this naysayer, I would suppose) that much of the de facto use of western "Logic" (consciously or otherwise, but more the former is what is cogent here), in both daily discourse as well as professional work, consists of the use of exactly such fixed entities/concepts etc. as described by our fellow DM marxists; a usage which by its very nature is proudly and insistently intended to be fixed and immutable, and by main force if need be forced upon us to remain fixed and immutable. In fact, the "stability" -- the fate! -- of "Western Civilization" (if not our very souls) depends on this rigidity!"

Rosa:

But, as the facts show, Aristotle used variables, and he did so 1500 years before Descartes.

Modern logic uses variables, too.

So, modern logic, and ancient logic do not use 'fixed terms'.

You seem to think merely repeating the error made by others is enough to win an argument.

Now, if some un-named ideologues of the ruling-class used fixed terms to defend the status quo (but I'd like to see an example or two), that is not the fault of logic, any more that it is the fault of mathematics that it can be used in the same way.

And daily discourse uses countless terms that depict change in ways that the diabolical logic found in Hegel cannot even begin to match. As I note in Essay Four (beginning with the words of another comrade who makes the same baseless claims as you (why do you mystics all think and talk the same? Are you really trying to prove the Law of Identity is correct, at least as it applies to what you all say?):

'"Ordinary language assumes that things and ideas are stable, that they are either 'this' or 'that'. And, within strict limits, these are perfectly reasonable assumptions. Yet the fundamental discovery of Hegel's dialectic was that things and ideas do change…. And they change because they embody conflicts which make them unstable…. It is to this end that Hegel deliberately chooses words that can embody dynamic processes." [Rees (1998), p.45.]

The problem with this passage is that it gets things completely the wrong way round. It is in fact our use of ordinary language that enables us to refer to change. Technical and philosophical jargon (and especially that which was invented by Hegel) is practically useless in this regard since it is wooden, static and of indeterminate meaning, despite what Rees asserts.

As is well-known by Marxists, human society developed because of its constant interaction with nature and as a result of the struggle between classes. In which case, ordinary language could not fail to have developed the logical multiplicity to record changes of limitless complexity.

This is no mere dogma; it is easily confirmed. Here is a greatly shortened list of ordinary words (restricted to modern English) that allow speakers to refer to changes of unbounded complexity:

Vary, alter, adjust, amend, mutate, transmute, modify, develop, expand, swell, flow, differentiate, fast, slow, rapid, hasty, melt, harden, drip, cascade, fade, is, was, will be, will have been, had, will have had, went, go, going, gone, lost, age, flood, crumble, disintegrate, erode, corrode, flake, tumble, cut, crush, grind, shred, fall, rise, spin, oscillate, rotate, wave, quickly, slowly, instantaneous, suddenly, gradually, rapidly, sell, buy, lose, win, ripen, rot, perish, grow, decay, more, less, fewer, steady, steadily, jerkily, slowly, quickly, very, extremely, exceedingly, intermittent, continuous, continual, push, pull, jump, break, charge, assault, dismantle, replace, undo, reverse, repeal, quash, hour, minute, second, instant, destroy, annihilate, boil, freeze, thaw, liquefy, evaporate, solidify, condense, protest, challenge, expel, eject, remove, overthrow, expropriate, defeat, strike, revolt, riot, march, demonstrate, rebel, campaign, agitate and organise….

Naturally, it would not be difficult to extend this list until it contained literally tens of thousands of words all capable of depicting countless changes in limitless detail. It is only a myth put about by Hegel and DM-theorists (unwisely echoed by Rees) that ordinary language cannot express change. On the contrary, it performs this task far better than the incomprehensible and impenetrably obscure jargon Hegel invented in order to fix something that was not broken.

Dialecticians, it seems, would have us believe that because of the alleged shortcomings of the vernacular, only the most recondite and abstruse terminology invented by Hegel (the meaning of much of which is unclear even to Hegel scholars) is capable of telling us what we already know -- and have known for tens of thousands of years -- that things change!'

You can find this here:

http://homepage.ntlworld.com/rosa.l/page%2004.htm

In Note 17a.

Pazz:

"In fact, the "stability" -- the fate! -- of "Western Civilization" (if not our very souls) depends on this rigidity! But mixed-in with this praxis here is another incontrovertable fact of our daily, lived reality: that "Logic" also includes a more advanced -- i.e. more dialectical -- practice of doing logic-work with variables which change over time -- i.e. Science and Mathematics, etc.; and the slipping-in of this higher-order Logic behind the lower-order one is a sleight of hand I would have thought beneath the high moral dudgeon of my interlocutor here."

Rosa:

This is odd, the stability of Western civilisation depends on not treating the variables Aristotle invented as variables.

Is that your profound contribution to thought, Pazz?

If so, calling you a paper tiger might be to praise you too highly.

And I am not sure what the last part of the above quotation from your words of wisdom is supposed to mean. But here goes: I refer to Aristotle's Logic, which uses varaibles (which you would have known too if you had checked), and he employed these 1500 years before 'Higher' mathematicians began to do the same, and nearly 2300 years before modern logicians extended this into mathematical logic.

So, no sleight-of-hand on my part; more a refusal/failure to examine the evidence (in Aristotle's work, not mine) on your part before you began to pontificate on the subject (like other dialecticians, who all do the same).

Pazz:

"This Inquisitor tries to make much of apparently not being able to find examples of explicit statements of the former practice in logic texts; but I would assert that this would be because what we have there is rather one of the very unspoken assumptions of bourgeois Science which is the very basis of our problem here in the first place. I'm certain a rather long, complete list of exactly such implied axioms/statements, etc. could be compiled, without too, too much effort if one is actually looking. But the real issue here remains the mixing up together of logical types -- a real no-no in the world of Logical Thought."

Rosa:

So you have no evidence to back up what you say (just an uncanny ability to see things the rest of humanity cannot); indeed, what you say flies in the face of the fact that not only could Aristotle's Logic handle change, he himself spilt much ink explaining how it occurs (he traced five different causes of change). Check that out at Wiki.

And modern logic and science can handle change even more efficiently: for example Temporal Logic, and Modal Logic (look these up at Wiki, too) handle change better than does Aristotle's Logic.

The real problem is that, as I show in that note you chickened out of reading, Hegel's Logic cannot account for anything, let alone change.

So, you lot have bought a pig in a poke, or rather: no pig and no poke.

Paz:

"As for any possible relationship between formal, axiomatic, syllogistic Logic and the Logic of the Scientific Method -- we haven't even touched on any of that yet."

Syllogistic Logic died out in 1879, when Frege revolutionised modern logic. [Check that out at Wiki, too.]

You need to keep up; after all that was all of 125 years ago.

As I noted above, you know so little logic, you have no conception of how wide of the mark you are.

You are rather like someone who has done one hour of economic theory trying to rubbish Das Kapital.

Rosa Lichtenstein 22/10/06.

I attempted to answer Pazz's latest additional comments, but they were somehow lost in the ether.

I will try again tomorrow.

Rosa replied:

And once more, Pazz has decided to interpolate, thus making this ‘debate’ even less clear.

Pazz:

“That wasn't intended as a proof. That was just a garden-variety assertion. We have to state our intentions first, first of all, dontcha know; so that each of us (either of us) knows where the other is coming from. This helps immensely in avoiding those head-on collisions which otherwise invariably occur. Like with you, always.”

Rosa:

But all you ever do is make assertions. I doubt that, in your present logically-challenged state, you know how to construct an argument.

Pazz:

“This is just loopy. In a sense, Nature very much does "argue with itself". Which I suppose sounds just as loopy to you.

But refer to my section below about Russell and "logical typing".”

Rosa:

I am glad we are now clear: you are an Idealist in that you think nature is mind. The Russell stuff you refer to has been neutralised above (not that that was difficult).

Paz:

“You apparently have no idea what Hegel meant by this. Even trying to grasp what he was on about there would go a long ways to overcoming your mental handicap.”

Rosa:

Well, I am in good company: no one knows what Hegel meant by the vast majority of things he said. And I note you cannot help out here.

In fact, in that long note at my site you chickened out of reading, I demonstrate that whatever is done to a set of core ideas found in Hegel’s ‘Logic’, no sense can be made of it.

[By the way the link you used was not given to you by me. If you try and cut and paste it from my site, it does not work, for reasos I am not sure. The best way to access that part of Essay Eight Part Two, is to follow the link on the opening page. I merely add this here, not for your benefit, since you are safer if you remain ignorant. It is for the benefit of anyone who reads this so that they can make their mind up either way.]

Pazz:

“Whatever. You shall score no knockout punches Inquisitor. I am only sorry I cannot so easily in return -- as I know is damned possible.”

Rosa:

This is no doubt due to the fact that you will not even enter the ring, but are keen only to shadow box from the ringside. In your benighted state, I think I’d do the same.

Pazz (with regard to Hegel):

“No, he was a bourgeois. What's your point?”

Rosa:

So was Hume, that’s the point; but Hume was no mystic.

Now I reject 99.9% of what Hume said, but you are quite happy to accept the mystical garbage you find in Hegel, stuff even now you cannot explain to a living soul.

As for me I reject all of Hegel, and the only bit of Hume I take heed of is his very good advice to burn the works of mystics.

So the point, my inconsistent friend, is that you pick which borgeois you listen to, and then fling accusations around at anyone who seems to do likewise, but who does not choose to listen to your favoured mystic.

Pazz (with respect to my claim that he relied merely on ‘guilt-by-association’):

“Guilty-as-charged.”

Rosa:

Since this is your only ‘argument’ I do not wonder you cling to it.

In that case, what is sauce for the goose is for the gander: you are a mystic by associating your ideas with Hegel.

Now, if you reject that (which I think you will attempt to do), then you cannot complain if I do the same over your baseless accusations that I am an empiricist, and a bourgeois theorist by mentioning Hume’s excellent idea.

Pazz (with reference to being able to prove one’s claims):

“You cannot; and I can the obverse. However, this above is just another damned assertion. To be proved, anon.”

Rosa:

Done it, at my site. Where’s your proof, then?

Pazz (in relation to his anthropomorphisation of nature):

“What I have stated proves nothing of the sort. But it's indeed something else than what you believe, that's for sure. But please: viz. the logical typing jazz below. That's not the proof itself -- yet. But it's a start on it.”

Rosa:

As is apparent to anyone with eyes, you earlier admitted nature could argue with itself, and your comments on logic were as ill-informed as we have come to expect from you, as I showed.

So, you do have to anthropomorphise nature to make this Hermetic Theory work (in fact, this was done thousands of years ago, and by generations of ruling-class mystics, who thought nature was mind, or an organism with a mind). So, your ideas are part of an eminently impressive ruling-class tradition

Pazz, now getting rattled (about my claim, backed up by Marx’s own words, that he abandoned Hegel as he wrote Kapital):

“A lie and a slander. A grotesque misrepresentation.

In this (famous) example, Marx made a point of explicitly stating his "allegiance" to Hegel and his method, only because a bunch of pompous dumbasses had to be led by the nose to not bad-mouth Hegel for being so "passé", or whatever. In fact, Marx was aiming his quill squarely and exactly at naysayers like you.

In fact, Capital is a dialectical-/historical-materialist tour de force. A fucking masterpiece. And you don't get it.”

Rosa:

But, Marx says this is the case (that he merely found Hegel’s terminology of use, with which he simply ‘coquetted’, and only in a few places of his great work -- his words, not mine); here is how I expand on this in Essay Nine Part One (links to other documents, sites and Essays of mine are ommited):

‘In fact, upon learning of the aims of my site, rarely does a dialectically-distracted comrade (mainly those drawn from the HCD-tendency) fail to quote this passage of Lenin's at me, so influential has it become.

[HCD = High Church Dialectician.]

"It is impossible to understand Marx's Capital, and especially its first chapter, without having thoroughly studied and understood the whole of Hegel's Logic. Consequently, half a century later none of the Marxists understood Marx!!" [Lenin (1961), p.180. Bold emphases added.]

Nevertheless, Marx certainly laid down no such preconditions for understanding his work. In fact, if anything he tended to play down Hegel's influence. However, so deep has Lenin's myth sunk into the collective Dialectical Mind that that particular comment will elicit immediate disbelief. But it is nonetheless true for all that. And this is why:

Marx himself pointed out that the relevance of Hegel's Philosophy could be summarised in a few printers' sheets:

"What was of great use to me as regards method of treatment was Hegel's Logic at which I had taken another look by mere accident, Freiligrath having found and made me a present of several volumes of Hegel, originally the property of Bakunin. If ever the time comes when such work is again possible, I should very much like to write 2 or 3 sheets making accessible to the common reader the rational aspect of the method which Hegel not only discovered but also mystified." [Marx to Engels, 16/01/1858; MECW, Volume 40, p.248; copy here.]

Needless to say, Marx never supplied his readers with such a précis. From this we may perhaps draw the conclusion that in the end Marx did not really think Hegel's method was all that significant. So, despite all the millions of words he committed to paper, he did not consider it important enough to write out these relatively few pages. Meanwhile, and in contrast, Marx spent a whole year of his life banging on about Karl Vogt, but still he could not be bothered with this 'vitally important' summary. [This obscure work of Marx's has so far been deemed unfit to publish on the Marx Internet Archive, so poor is it.]

Even had Marx done so, it would still have meant that only a tiny fraction of Hegel's work is relevant to understanding Capital: a few pages!

Attentive readers too will have noticed that Marx says he encountered Hegel's Logic by "accident"; this hardly suggests he was a constant or avid reader of that work. Indeed, he did not even possess his own copy of Hegel's Logic and had to be given one as a present by Freiligrath!

Much has been made of certain references to Hegel in Marx's later work. However, a close reading of these reveals a picture that is different from the standard one retailed by DM-apologists. The scattered remarks about Hegelian Philosophy (outside his analysis of Hegel's political ideas) found in Marx's published works are inconclusive. Cf., Carver's remarks noted above, in Note 6, above.

Marx himself declared:

"...I therefore openly avowed myself the pupil of that mighty thinker" and even, here and there in the chapter on the theory of value, coquetted with the mode of expression peculiar to him." [Marx (1976), p.103. Bold emphasis added.]

His use of the word "coquetted" also suggests Hegel's Logic had only a superficial influence, merely confined to certain "modes of expression", and limited to just a few sections of his great work. And as far as Marx "openly" avowing himself a pupil of Hegel, he pointedly put this in the past tense:

"I criticised the mystificatory side of the Hegelian dialectic nearly thirty years ago, at a time when is was still the fashion. But just when I was working on the first volume of Capital, the ill-humoured, arrogant and mediocre epigones who now talk large in educated German circles began to take pleasure in treating Hegel in the same way as the good Moses Mendelssohn treated Spinoza in Lessing's time, namely as a 'dead dog'. I therefore openly avowed myself the pupil of that mighty thinker" and even, here and there in the chapter on the theory of value, coquetted with the mode of expression peculiar to him." [Ibid., pp.102-03. Bold emphases added.]

This is hardly a ringing endorsement, and is equivocal at best; Marx does not say he is now a pupil of Hegel, but that he once was. Of course, it might still have been the case that he was such when the above was written, but there is nothing here to suggest that Marx viewed the link between his own and Hegel's work as Lenin did.

Now, John Rees attempts to neutralise this devastating admission (that the extent of the influence on Marx of Hegel's Logic was no more than a few bits of jargon, used only in isolated places, and with which Marx "coquetted"), arguing as follows:

"Remarkably, this last quotation is sometimes cited as evidence that Marx was not serious about his debt to Hegel and that he only or merely 'coquetted' with Hegel's phraseology, and that he really did not make any further use of the dialectic. That this interpretation is false should be obvious from this sentence alone. The meaning is clearly that Marx was so keen to identify with Hegel that he 'even' went so far as to use the same terms as 'that mighty thinker' not that he 'only' used those terms." [Rees (1998), p.100.]

Well, if this is so, why did Marx put his praise of Hegel in the past tense, and why did he say that:

"...even, here and there in the chapter on the theory of value, coquetted with the mode of expression peculiar to him." [Marx (1976, p.103. Bold emphasis added.]

This is quite clear, Marx himself (not me, not Peter Struve, not James Burnham, not Max Eastman...), Marx himself says that he "coquetted" (hardly a serious use of the Logic!) with Hegelian phraseology, and only in places ("here and there"), confined to "the chapter on the theory of value". This is the extent of the rational kernel in this mystic theory: the non-serious use of bits of Hegelian jargon, here and there, and only in one chapter of his most important work!

DM-fans might not like this, but they should pick a fight with Marx for destroying their illusions, not me.

Indeed they do not like this, witness the reception an earlier version of this part of the present Essay received here, and here. Reality is one thing dialectically-distracted comrades are not used to confronting.

Woods and Grant note that Lenin argued that Marx did leave behind a his own version of Hegel's Logic, namely Das Kapital [Woods and Grant (1995), p.76.] but Marx's own words (that he merely "coquetted" with Hegelian terminology) shows that this is more than an "exaggeration" on Lenin's part, it's a fabrication.

However Terrell Carver, a noted critic of the 'orthodox' view (that Engels and Marx saw eye-to-eye on everything, and that Hegel exerted a profound influence on Marx), has back-tracked a little, as far as I can see (in Carver (2000)). But, his reasoning is uncharacteristically obscure. Fortunately, John Rosenthal has neutralised this argument; for more details, see Rosenthal (1998).

Finally, it could be argued that the Grundrisse (i.e., Marx (1973)) is living disproof of much of the above. Well, it would have been had Marx seen fit to publish it, but he didn't, and so it isn't.

But he did publish this:

"...I therefore openly avowed myself the pupil of that mighty thinker" and even, here and there in the chapter on the theory of value, coquetted with the mode of expression peculiar to him." [Marx (1976), p.103. Bold emphasis added.]

So, whatever it was that happened to Marx's thinking between the writing of the Grundrisse and Das Kapital, it clearly changed his view of Hegel's Logic -- to such an extent that its phraseology became something with which he merely wished to "coquette". In that case, Lenin should have said:

"It is possible to understand Marx's Capital, and especially its first chapter, merely by coquetting with the phraseology of Hegel's Logic. Consequently, half a century later anyone who is capable of coquetting will understand Marx!!" [Edited misquotation of Lenin (1961), p.180.]’

This can be found here:

http://homepage.ntlworld.com/rosa.l/page%2009_01.htm

Note 16.

So, unfortunately for you Pazz, Marx agrees with me: the ‘rational kernel’ in this mystical nut is merely a bit of jargon, and then used sparingly (‘coquetted with’) in only a few places in Kapital.

Pick a fight with Marx, not me.

Pazz:

“How do you know what I have studied? For that matter, your vaunted education hasn't produced very much of anything masterful at all, based on what you've demonstrated so far. I was right to drop out of university, by the looks of it (in fact I did several times), including that so-called "philosophy major" one time... However, as I've stated elsewhere: my dialectics is more "organically"-grown and more integrated into my life and my personality. And I think you would very much like to know what I know, Inquisitor (as would quite a few people, actually...)”

Rosa:

You are quite right I only know what I see here. Based on the latter: if you ever learnt any logic, it obviously sailed over your head, and if you were taught any philosophy, it has not noticeably affected your critical faculties, or helped you know how to argue in defence of your beliefs.

So you are the best evidence I have that you are a big-mouthed know-nothing in these areas.

I’d shut up if I were you, since the case for your defence gets weaker with each post you inflict on humanity.

Pazz:

“Again: You have proved nothing, Inquisitor: only asserted some "argument-by-authority" crap above. Prove what you do know by proving it. Or else get off the pot. So far you have profoundly underwhelmed me.”

Rosa:

Once again, you have struggled with even the basic summaries of a few of my ideas, posted at Wiki, and in that Introductory Essay you tried to snipe at (and from a toweringly ignorant vantage point).

So I am not surprised you are ‘underwhelmed’; I’d say the same to anyone who caught me pontificating in an area I knew nothing about.

As to the argument from authority (not that I ever appealed to it); fair enough, do not accept it, but at least come up with a half-way decent argument of your own, and we can then see how much of what you say is hot air, or is based on substantive thought.

As for proof, you will find it all at my site; but I beg you not to look for it. In your present state of ignorance, you are only a threat to yourself, and not to the workers' movement.

Promise me you will not change....

In contrast to my devastating case, so far your ‘arguments’ have proved to be thinner than an anorexic flatworm.

Pazz:

“So you say. Words are cheap. We shall find out the truth, anon.”

Rosa:

But, we will not find the truth from you, since you just bluster, moan and distract attention.

Pazz:

“You have profoundly misunderstood the Lesson of History, Inquisitor.”

Rosa:

Well, you would not know; your head is still in the sand.

Pazz:

“Now I'm starting to see your pedigree... And "hatchet-job" just about covers it. For both of you. This guy is very much along your lines I see. Let me just quote this section from the article whose URL you so kindly provided me…”

Rosa:

Heijenoort was a highly accomplished mathematician, and a top logician. Look him up at Wiki.

But at least he knew what he was talking about, unlike Engels, who was a rank amateur who relied on books on mathematics that were sixty or so years out of date when he wrote what he did (as Heijenoort shows), and ones he clearly did not understand (as he also shows).

Pazz, getting desperate once more, but failing to answer the allegations:

“Did you get that? From this "expert" author/researcher you rely on? What this man has done here is completely take Engels out of context. Remarkably so. In fact, this van Heijenoort guy is either a complete fool -- or he's doing a hatchet-job, for Marx-knows what reason. If you actually read that section of Anti-Dühring, it's incredibly obvious that Freddie Engels is mocking Herr Dühring's relentless use of an idiot idea of contradictions being "absurd". In fact, Engels is toying with this guy here. He's "coquetting" with Dühring's own pompous style, so-to-speak. Marx and many, many others have been so right to laud this work. Why, pray tell, are you so different and above them all..?

Rosa:

I note in return that you picked on the one point you probably understood to make a largely irrlevant claim about what Engels might or might not have had in mind.

But, I do not rely on this theorist as you assert; I merely posted it to show that Engels was as incompetent in mathematics as you are in logic (and philosophy).

In fact, I only discovered this article about 4 years ago (so you are wrong, I did not find it in the way you said -- I was aware of it through this guy’s ‘Selected Essays’), and I have been researching this topic since the late 1970’s. So, most of my ideas pre-dated my knowledge of his work in this area.

And, far from merely having read that execrable book by Engels, I have taken it apart at my site (and demolished his ‘Dialectics of Nature’, too).

In the original post that was lost in the ether last night I posted sections from my work to prove this, but I will merely now refer you to one such:

http://homepage.ntlworld.com/rosa.l/page%2007.htm

This Essay (over 40,000 words long) is devoted to the above demoltion; my comments on Engels and mathematics can be found about half-way down, followed by my demolition of Marx’s claims about the calculus.

I note once more you are merely happy to bad mouth an author, as opposed to answering any of his substantive points.

We can see a pattern here I think: You cannot respond, so you merely resort to hand-waving.

But, I wonder what you’d think of someone who superficially read, say, Das Kapital, and then merely said : “I am underwhelmed”, but refused to say much more?

I think we know what you’d say. So, I suggest you say that to yourself.

Pazz (in response to my claim that he blamed workers):

“Yup. Still.”

Rosa:

Well, at least we know what side of the class war you are on. You swallow a crock of mystical rubbish from Hegel, and then blame the working class for not aping your folly.

So, I rather think you are the elitist here.

And I did not expect you to accept the fact that I am a trade unionist, but it is true nonetheless.

Us working-class materialists are not as naïve as you elitist mystics are.

Pazz (in response to my claim that dialectics is a source of consolation to non-working class elitists like him):

“(WTF...) Sure. Whatever”

Rosa:

And you wonder why I do not take you seriously?

Pazz:

“Did I say that? Or are you putting words in my mouth? Again?”

Rosa:

I am sorry, I must have learnt that tactic from you, the master.

Pazz:

“You have a profoundly myopic vision of reality, Inquisitor. Marxism has been very successful, actually. However, the enemy is powerful and ruthless; and has had "incumbent" status and control of a world of resources to boot; and so our mistakes have been very costly to us and to the world. But we shall prevail, however. Even if there's a nuclear war. But it won't be by following the dead hand of the bourgeois empirical ideology you are pushing here.”

Rosa:

Successful? Where?

All four internationals have gone down the pan, and every one of the myriad trotskisyt groplets on the planet is small, ineffectual, and prone to continual splits; 3 billion workers consistently ignore your mystical theory, and even the few states left on the planet that claim to be socialist are rapidly abandoning Marxism (if they ever really accepted it). Communist parties the world over are openly reformist; the 1917 revolution has now been reversed, and the vast majority of the original leadership of the Bolshevik revolution was murdered by their party; and Marxism is now a by-word for failure, splits, internecine warfare, genocide and sectarianism.

Where is the success? On the outer fringes of the Galaxy?

I asserted earlier that your head was in the sand; thanks for proving it.

And, I am not pushing anything bourgeois, or anything empiricist; I defy you to prove otherwise.

But even if I were, with paper tigers like you to defend the faith, I’d advise immediate capitulation.

Pazz:

“Out of my ass, you mean.”

Rosa:

Your head is fine where it is; if we need to move it, I will let you know.

Pazz:

“Oh, I think I'm getting the measure of you.”

Rosa:

I doubt it, you cannot even reply to my most basic and over-simplified introductory remarks.

Pazz:

“Yes, I think we are just about done, you and I.”

Rosa:

I agree; I think you should limp away before you make an even bigger fool of yourself in public.

Rosa Lichtenstein 22/10/06

Rosa:

Since my Essays will long out-live Pazz, I have immortalised his unreasonableness here:

http://homepage.ntlworld.com/rosa.l/RevLeft.htm

Bottom of the page.

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User talk:Pazouzou

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[edit] Good comment about the article on the PCI

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