#materialist dialectics

And although the thesis “Just as there is no thought without matter, so there is no matter without thought” may sound unexpected, it is precisely in this thesis that the single principal distinction separating dialectical materialism (the materialism of Spinoza, Engels, and Lenin) from mechanistic materialism (the materialism of Galilei, Newton, Hobbes, Holbach) can be found. This thesis is beyond the reach of the latter.

Substance is the cause of modes. Moduses, or individual transient forms, are the essence of the action of a substance. Thus, the relation of substantiality requires a relation of causality and, further, an interaction. Spinoza’s system outlines a fundamentally correct resolution of the problem of substance, causality, and interaction. “Interaction,” says Engels, “is the first thing that we observe when we begin to consider moving matter as a whole from the point of view of modern natural science. We observe a number of forms of motion: mechanical motion, light, heat, electricity, magnetism, chemical addition and decomposition, changes in the state of aggregation, organic life, which all — if we exclude organic life — transform into each other, condition each other, are the cause, the action there, and the cumulative sum of the movements with all changes of the form remains the same. Spinoza’s “substance is causa sui” expresses perfectly the interaction.”

"Religious" folk ain't the majority in the GOUSA anymore ...

Basically Bernstein called on the SPD to abandon its revolutionary rhetoric and begin to act like a reformist party that accepted the existing system. His position was backed by an elaborate reworking of the basis of Marxism in which a Kantian-derived ethic replaced the Hegelian based dialectical materialism of the original. In practical terms Bernstein emphasized that legal activities were preferred to illegal ones, that the stronger the movement grew the more its opponents would be forced into illegal acts, and that the major task confronting the party was democratic and economic reform. He also urged nonproletarian elements be embraced by the SPD to strengthen its membership and votes. Much of Kautsky’s party in the debate was devoted to refuting Bernstein’s objections to the fundamentals of Marxism — value theory, the dialectic, materialism, the class struggle — in fact, virtually everything that made it different from various forms of ethical socialism that were common in the nineteenth century… Eventually Kautsky developed a more comprehensive view of what revisionism was. Pointing to the right-wing socialists of France led by Jean Jaurés and to the new progressive party that was gradually replacing the Liberals in England, he concluded that all of Europe was underdoing a “renaissance of bourgeois radicalism”. He regarded revisionism as the theoretical expression of this renaissance, which he felt was a “historically necessary manifestation” of maturing capitalism. As their status declined, bourgeois and petty-bourgeois radical could no longer find comfort in the great liberal and conservative parties, but neither had they yet descended into the proletariat. Thus they found themselves in a theoretically untenable position, which they hoped to rectify by converting socialist parties according to their own confused image. Both privately and publicly Kautsky urged Bernstein to show the courage of his convictions by breaking with the SPD to form a new left-bourgeois oppositional party.

Don't admit you're an atheist if you're running for Congress

Awareness of thinking - awareness of dreaming

The mystification the dialectic suffered at Hegel's hands does not remove him from his place as the first to expose consciously and in depth its general forms of movement. With him it is standing on its head. It must be turned right side up again if you would discover the rational kernel within the mystical shell.