What's New?

If you are using Internet Explorer 10 (or later), you might find some of the links I have used won't work properly unless you switch to 'Compatibility View' (in the Tools Menu); for IE11 select 'Compatibility View Settings' and then add this site (anti-dialectics.co.uk). Microsoft's new browser, Edge, automatically renders these links compatible; Windows 10 also automatically makes IE11 compatible with this site.

However, if you are using Windows 10, Microsoft's browsers, IE11 and Edge, unfortunately appear to colour these links somewhat erratically. They are meant to be dark blue, but those two browsers render them intermittently mid-blue, light blue, yellow, purple and red!

Firefox and Chrome reproduce them correctly.

As should seem obvious, this page is badly out-of-date! It will be updated over the next few months. Unfortunately, several of the sites to which I have linked below (for example, RevLeft) are now dead, those sites having closed down. The titles of many of my Essays have also been changed since the material below was originally published.

~~~~~~oOo~~~~~~

January 2014

20/01/14: I have just begun work on a new addition to this site: Essay Twelve Part Four -- Dialectical Materialism And Linguistic Idealism. Is Nature 'Rational'?

This Essay continues from where Essays Three Part One and Twelve Part One left off and examines the 'world-view' DM-theorists inherited from Mystical Christianity and Hermetic Philosophy, via Hegel (upside down or 'the right way up') -- i.e., that 'reality' not only has a 'rational' structure, humans beings (in the shape of DM-theorists) can comprehend it.

It should be ready to publish by Easter.

18/01/14: A supporter of this site has just started a new thread over at RevLeft -- A Beginners Guide To Anti-Dialectics.

17/01/14: I have just re-written Essay One -- Why I Began This Project -- to take account of the recent implosion of the UK-SWP.

I have corrected several errors and typos, and clarified the argument. The Essay is now just over 2000 words (or approximately 10%) longer.

02/01/14: I have now finished the Essay mentioned below -- Essay Seven Part Three: Why Dialectical Materialism Can't Explain Change.

December 2013

28/12/13: I am at the moment putting the final touches to a new Essay (which is in fact a complete re-write of material drawn from several other Essays): Essay Seven Part Three -- Why Dialectical Materialism Can't Explain Change.

I am posting the updates as they are being written, but I hope to have the Essay finished before the end of next week.

October 2013

28/10:13: The North Star magazine has just published an Interview with me, and an article of mine: Wittgenstein -- Radical Or Conservative Mystic? [Unfortunately, The North Star has since closed. I have reproduced that article here.]

However, if you are using Internet Explorer 10, you might find some of the links I have used in both of the above won't work properly unless you switch to 'Compatibility View' (in the Tools Menu). [This comment is now redundant.]

These two items unfortunately also contain a few rather annoying typos (and bad links); these will be corrected and the final versions will appear here at a later date.

September 2013

27/09/13: I have just re-written Essay Ten Part One -- Practice And History Refute Dialectics.

Approximately 1,500 words of new material has been added (thus making the Essay just over 3% longer). I have also corrected several errors and typos, and clarified the argument.

17/09/13: I have just re-written Essay Nine Part One -- Why Workers Will Always Ignore 'Materialist Dialectics'.

Approximately 3,000 words of new material have been added (thus making the Essay just over 6% longer). I have also corrected several errors and typos, and clarified the argument.

12/09/13: I have just re-written Essay Five -- Motion Isn't Contradictory.

I have added approximately 3,500 words of new material (thus making the Essay nearly 6% longer), corrected several errors and typos. I have also clarified the argument.

09/09/13: I have just written a reply to a comrade who criticised my Essay on Wittgenstein -- Hit The Bottle.

04/09/13: I have also republished John Moran's path-breaking New Left Review article -- Wittgenstein And Russia -- originally published in May-June 1972.

03/09/13: I have just finished and posted my new Essay -- Was Wittgenstein A Leftist?

This Essay contains original research into the links between Hegel, Marx, Engels, and Wittgenstein's work not spotted before by anyone, including myself.

In the Introduction and Conclusion I also explain my motivation for writing this Essay and why this isn't just an academic exercise.

August 2013

08/08/13: I am putting the finishing touches to a new Essay -- Was Wittgenstein A Leftist?

It should be ready to post a few weeks.

June 2013

01/06/13: I have just finished the re-write of two more Introductory Essays: the Summary of Essay Twelve Part One -- Why All Philosophical Theories, Including Dialectical Materialism, Are Nonsensical; and the Summary of Essay Thirteen Part One -- Lenin's Disappearing Definition Of Matter.

May 2013

28/05/13: At the request of one or two comrades who are interested in my ideas, I have responded to a new batch of critics of my ideas over at RevLeft.

This new Essay is called Dialectical Confusion 2.

20/05/13: I have just re-written Essay Two -- Dialectics -- Imposed On Reality, Not Read From It.

I have added about 4,500 words of new material, clarified the argument and corrected several typos and errors.

I have also re-written the Introductory Essay -- Why All Philosophical Theories Are Non-Sensical -- correcting a few errors and, I hope, making the argument much clearer.

This Essay shouldn't be confused with the one mentioned below. In fact, it's a summary of the Essay below! A summary of a summary!

13/05/13: I am in the process of re-writing each of the Summary Essays.

As of this week, I have finished all of them up to and including the Summary Of Essay Twelve Part One -- Why All Philosophical Theories, Including Dialectical Materialism, Are Non-sensical.

April 2013

25/04/13: At the request of one or two comrades who are interested in my ideas, I am in the process of responding to several critics of my ideas over at RevLeft.

This new Essay is called Dialectical Confusion.

16/04/13: I have completely re-written and re-formatted The Dialectical Materialism Exam, adding several new questions.

09/04/13: For some reason I can't work out, the web editor I have been using for the past seven or more years decided to scramble Essay Nine Part Two -- The Damage Petty-Bourgeois Theorists And Dialectical Materialism Have Inflicted On Marxism --, rendering much of it unreadable and to such an extent that it has taken me the best part of a month to reconstruct it from an earlier saved copy.

That is one reason why there has been nothing new to announce at this site for five or six weeks.

Anyway, I took this opportunity to re-write that Essay to take account of the crisis that has been brewing in the UK-SWP since the turn of the year.

February 2013

23/02/13: I have just finished re-writing Essay Nine Part Two -- The Damage Petty-Bourgeois Theorists And Dialectical Materialism Have Inflicted On Marxism -- to take account of the on-going crisis in the UK-SWP.

I have added approximately 35,000 words of new material (thus making the Essay 25% longer), corrected several errors and typos; I have also clarified the argument.

05/02/13: As noted below, because of the on-going crisis in the UK-SWP, I am re-writing Essay Nine Parts One and Two, posting the changes as they are being made.

January 2013

25/01/13: The re-write of Essay Thirteen Part Three -- Mind, Language, And Cognition -- has just been finished.

I have added just over 21,000 words of new material (making the Essay about 12% longer), and have corrected several errors and typos, and clarified the argument considerably.

15/01/13: The re-write of Essay Thirteen Part Three has had to be shelved for a week because of the looming crisis in the UK-SWP. [On that, see here.]

I have had to re-write large sections of Essay Nine Part Two -- The Damage Petty-Bourgeois Theorists And Dialectical Materialism Have Inflicted On Marxism --, which deals with such matters, in the light of these developments.

08/01/13: Here's a new book out this January that is well worth checking out:

This is from the publisher's website:

03/01/13: I am in the process of re-writing Essay Thirteen Part Three -- Mind, Language, And Cognition -- posting the changes as they are being made.

It should be finished within the next week or so.

December 2012

02/12/12: I have just finished the re-write of Essay Thirteen Part One -- Lenin's Disappearing Definition Of Matter.

I have added about 7,000 words of new material (making it approximately 12% longer), clarified the argument, and corrected several errors and typos.

November 2012

23/11/12: I have just posted Chapter Eight of Guy Robinson's unpublished book, Philosophy and Demystification -- Philosophy In The Service Of History. This is the last chapter of the above book.

October 2012

31/10/12: I have just posted Chapter Seven of Guy Robinson's unpublished book, Philosophy and Demystification -- Newton, Marx and Wittgenstein.

08/10/12: A supporter of this site has sent a couple of letters to the editors of Socialist Review and Socialist Worker in response to two articles about John Molyneux's new book, The Point Is To Change It: Introduction To Marxist Philosophy.

They chose not to publish either of them (no surprise there!). They can both be accessed here.

05/10/12: I have just finished the re-write of Essay Twelve Part One -- Why All Philosophical Theories, Including Dialectical Materialism, Are Non-Sensical.

I have added about 26,000 words of new material (making it approximately 30% longer), clarified the argument, and corrected several errors and typos.

September 2012

08/09/12:  I have just posted Chapter Five of Guy Robinson's unpublished book, Philosophy and Demystification -- Creating Creativity.

I am in the process of completely re-writing Essay Twelve Part One, which is taking an inordinate amount of time, hence the dearth of material posted of late.

I am publishing the changes as they are being made, but I should have this finished in the next few weeks.

August 2012

02/08/12: A few weeks ago (mid July 2012) a supporter of this site sent a letter to Socialist Worker, which they chose not to publish. You can read it here, and then try to guess why...

In addition, I have just found out that John Molyneux's latest book, The Point Is To Change It, has now been published. I have ordered a copy, and will post a few comments about it in a week or so.

However, I have seen advanced copies of this book, and the sections that deal with dialectics make all the usual mistakes.

No surprise there then.

July 2012

23/07/12: Just a reminder that the Second Edition of The Liberal Defence of Murder is now out in paperback, with a new Afterword.

"Following the collapse of the Soviet Union, a number of prominent thinkers on the Left found themselves increasingly aligned with their ideological opposites. Over the last decade, many of these thinkers have become close to Washington; forceful supporters of the War on Terror, they help frame arguments for policymakers and provide the moral and intellectual justification for Western military intervention across the globe. From Kanan Makiya, one of the chief architects of the US invasion and occupation of Iraq, to Bernard Henri-Levy’s advocacy of 'humanitarian' intervention, The Liberal Defense of Murder traces the journey of these figures from left to right and explores their critical role in the creation of the new American empire. With wide-ranging testimony from many key figures on the left, this is a crucial account of the emergence of the 'pro-war left,' and its shaping of our post-9/11 world."

Critical comments about the first edition:

11/07/12: A character from Finland, or so I assume, is re-publishing large chunks of my Essays at an obscure Finnish site, [the posts have now been taken down -- September 2012] only then to add offensive (often scatological), superficial, and misleading comments about them.

I can't read Finnish, the language in which these impertinent remarks have been written, but from the imperfect translation Google supplies, it is clear that this character hasn't read my work with any care at all.

This is typical of Dialectical Mystics -- as I have pointed out at the foot of this page. 'He' certainly hasn't the courage to take me on directly (here, for example), so 'he' simply snipes away at me, posting little other than abuse, irrelevant comments and lies.

Which is, of course, further confirmation I'm on the right track...   

10/07/12: I have just posted Chapter Four of Guy Robinson's unpublished book, Philosophy and Demystification -- The Material and the External.

June 2012

24/06/12: I have just posted the next chapter of Guy Robinson's unpublished book, Philosophy and Demystification -- 'Forms of Life and the Construction of Reality'.

15/06/12 -- Back in the 1990s, I came across an odd article in a collection of essays about Hegel, called 'The Formalisation of Hegel's Dialectical Logic', by Michael Kosok. When I first read it I concluded it was either a joke or a hoax since it was written by someone who either didn't know what a formalisation even looked like, or who was writing for those who didn't know and who would thus swallow any old rubbish.

Even so, that didn't stop dialectically distracted comrades from referring me to this odd piece of work, perhaps in the mistaken view it would 'sort me out'.

Well, I have now published what is, I believe, the very first detailed demolition of this 'formalisation'. Visitors can access it here.

In addition, Essay Eight Part Three -- Dialectical 'Contradictions' and Dialectical 'Logic' -- where the above takedown appears, has been completely re-written.

I have added about 32,000 words of new material, clarified the argument and corrected several typos and errors, making it approximately twice its previous length.

Incidentally, the on-line version of Kosok's essay is riddled with typos -- many minor, several major. In the above takedown, I have quoted Kosok extensively, and corrected these errors.

07/06/12: Although I was aware of this book several years ago, I have just received a copy of Radical Currents in Contemporary Philosophy (Warren Green Inc, 1971), edited by David DeGrood, Dale Riepe and John Somerville.

This book contains what is easily the best analysis of an obscure dialectical doctrine, The Unity of Opposites (by V J McGill and W T Parry) that I have encountered in over 25 years researching this 'theory'.

Having said that, these authors have simply ignored the numerous serious philosophical problems this theory faces, many of which I have levelled against this doctrine in Essay Seven Part One, problems which  should have been obvious to anyone who approached this mystical 'theory' with a healthy dose of materialist-inspired scepticism.

Even so, I will add several comments on this article in a later re-write of Essays Four Part One, Seven Part One and Eight Part Three.

I am in the process of completely re-writing the last of the above Essays -- Dialectical 'Contradictions' and Dialectical 'Logic', uploading the new material as it is being written.

In addition to adding this material, I will include a long-overdue criticism of Michael Kosok's misguided and confused attempt to formalise 'Hegel's Dialectical Logic'.

It should be ready to post in the next week or so.

May 2012

28/05/12: I have re-written and re-organised the Essay on Wittgenstein, adding 2000 words of new material (making it about 10% longer). I have also corrected a few errors and typos.

21/05/12: I have now posted another chapter from Guy Robinson's unpublished book Philosophy and Demystification: 'Historical and Ahistorical Views of the World'.

13/05/12: Essay Nine Part Two -- The Damage Petty-Bourgeois Theorists And Dialectical Materialism Have Inflicted On Marxism -- has just been completely re-written.

I have corrected several errors and typos, clarified the argument, and added about 15,000 words of new material -- which makes this Essay about 12% longer.

08/05/12: American Insurgents: A Brief History of American Anti-Imperialism, by Richard Seymour is a new book well worth checking out, available in the UK next month.

From the publishers website:

"American Insurgents is a revealing, often surprising history of anti-imperialism in the United States since the American Revolution. It charts the movements against empire from the Indian Wars and the expansionism of the slave South, to the Anti-Imperialist League of Mark Twain and Jane Addams; from the internationalists opposing World War I to the Vietnam War and beyond. It shows that there is a surprising, often ignored tradition of radical anti-imperialism in the US. Far from being 'isolationist' in the fashion of Ron Paul and Pat Buchanan, the book contends, these traditions were often the most internationalist and cosmopolitan currents in US political history. The most ambitious movements formed direct relationships with the victims of US expansionism, from the abolitionists uniting with Native Americans to stop colonial genocide to the solidarity movements in central America and the 'human shields' in Palestine and Iraq. Far from being the privilege of the rich and educated, antiwar activism has been most evident among the poor and oppressed. It has been most militant when visibly connected to domestic struggles and interests, such as slavery, civil rights, women’s oppression and class. Above all, the book contextualizes each anti-imperialist movement in the evolving structure of US expansionism and dominance, and explains how some movements succeeded while others failed. In so doing, it offers a vital perspective for those organizing antiwar resistance today."

Excerpt available here.

Also worth mentioning: Richard's earlier book, The Liberal Defense of Murder, will be re-issued in paperback, 04/07/2012, with a new chapter added bringing the story up-to-date:

"Following the collapse of the Soviet Union, a number of prominent thinkers on the Left found themselves increasingly aligned with their ideological opposites. Over the last decade, many of these thinkers have become close to Washington; forceful supporters of the War on Terror, they help frame arguments for policymakers and provide the moral and intellectual justification for Western military intervention across the globe. From Kanan Makiya, one of the chief architects of the US invasion and occupation of Iraq, to Bernard Henri-Levy’s advocacy of 'humanitarian' intervention, The Liberal Defense of Murder traces the journey of these figures from left to right and explores their critical role in the creation of the new American empire. With wide-ranging testimony from many key figures on the left, this is a crucial account of the emergence of the 'pro-war left,' and its shaping of our post-9/11 world."

Critical comments about the first edition:

April 2012

07/04/12: I have just finished a re-write of Essay Three Part Two: Abstract Ideas -- Science On The Cheap.

I have added about 4,000 words of new material -- making it about 6% longer. I have also corrected several errors and typos, and have updated and made the argument clearer.

02/04/12: The rate at which I am re-writing the main Essays at this site has been greatly slowed by several time consuming debates I have been engaged in over the last few weeks: here, here, here, here and here.

I have also written and posted a much shorter summary of the core argument of Essay Twelve Part One -- entitled Why All Philosophical Theories Are Non-sensical.

Since I am endeavouring to make a very complex argument as clear and straight-forward as possible, it will require several more re-writes before I am happy with it.

March 2012

12/03/12: I have now completely re-written Essay Eleven Part Two: Dialectical Wholism, Full Of Holes.

I have added about 8,000 words of new material -- making it about 16% longer. I have also corrected several errors and typos, and have updated and made the argument clearer.

February 2012

17/02/12: Essay Ten Part One -- Dialectics, Refuted By Practice And History -- has just been re-written.

I have added about 3,000 words of new material -- making it about 8% longer --, corrected a few errors and typos, updated and made the argument clearer.

12/02/12: I have now re-written Essay Nine Part One -- Why Workers Will Always Ignore Dialectics.

I have added about 5,000 words of new material -- making it about 10% longer --, corrected a few errors and typos, and made the argument clearer.

03/02/12: Ok, I have now completed that major re-write of Essay Eight Part Two -- Why Opposing Forces Aren't Contradictions.

I have added about 12,000 words of new material -- making it just over 20% longer. In addition, I have corrected a few errors and typos, and made the argument much clearer.

02/02/12: I have just re-written Essay Two -- Dialectics, Imposed On Reality, Not Read From It.

I have added about 4,000 words of new material -- making it just under 10% longer --, corrected a few errors and typos, and made the argument clearer.

In the next few days I'll be posting a major re-write of Essay Eight Part Two -- Why Opposing Forces Aren't Contradictions.

It has taken a little longer than I had expected to finish this Essay.

In addition, I have also re-written the Basic Introductory Essay -- Why I Oppose Dialectical Materialism.

I have added over 2000 words of new material, corrected a few errors and typos, and made the argument clearer.

01/02/12: A few years ago, I obtained a copy of Ian Hunt's Analytic and Dialectical Marxism. I posted a few remarks on this book here, but I have now started to add more considered comments, aimed at showing that despite Hunt's commitment to "clarity and rigour" in defence of dialectics, he fails miserably to live up to both those aims.

January 2012

15/01/12: I have just re-written Essay One -- Why I Began This Project.

I haven't added much material (only about 500 words in all), but I have corrected a few mistakes and typos and I've made the argument clearer.

12/01/12: Essay Nine Part Two -- The Damage Petty-Bourgeois Theorists And Dialectical Materialism Have Inflicted On Marxism -- has just been completely re-written.

I have corrected several errors and typos, clarified the argument, and added about 20,000 words of new material -- which makes this Essay about 20% longer.

December 2011

09/12/11: I have just finished a complete re-write of Essay Eight Part One -- Change Through 'Internal Contradiction'.

I have corrected several errors and typos, clarified the argument, and added about 7000 words of new material -- which makes this Essay about 20% longer.

November 2011

27/11/11:  I have now finished re-writing Essay Seven Part One -- Engels's Three 'Laws'. I have added just under 25,000 words of new material, strengthening the argument and clarifying it extensively.

23/11/11: I am about half of the way through re-writing Essay Seven Part One -- Engels's Three 'Laws'.

This is in fact a major re-write of this Essay which has up to now taken me the best part of a month to do.

So far this Essay about 25% longer -- at approximately 128,000 words.

I am posting the changes as they are being made.

19/11/11: I have just finished re-writing Essay Eight Part Three -- What Are 'Dialectical Contradictions'? -- correcting several errors and typos, and making the argument clearer. I have added about 1000 words of new material.

I have also just re-written the Basic Introductory Essay -- Anti-Dialectics For Dummies -- hopefully making the argument even clearer.

October 2011

27/10/11: I have just finished re-writing the Summary Of The Rest Of Essay Twelve.

Even though Essay Twelve Part One itself appeared several years ago, last year I decided to post this Summary of the rest of Essay Twelve (which forms the core of my case against metaphysics, and the forms-of-thought one finds in Hegel and 'materialist dialectics') since Sections Two to Seven of Essay Twelve will not be published for many years. This delay has created a gaping hole in my argument. This Summary partially fills it.

26/10/11: I have just finished a complete re-write of Essay Four Part One -- Formal Logic Can Handle Change.

I have added about 10,000 words of new material (so the Essay is now approximately 20% longer), corrected a few mistakes and typos, and made the argument clearer and more comprehensive.

September 2011

27/09/11: Essay Six -- The Law Of identity Does Not Preclude Change -- has just been completely re-written. I have added approximately 7000 words of new material (which makes it about 15% longer), corrected several errors and typos and made the argument clearer.

13/09/11: I have just finished a complete re-write of Essay Five -- Motion Is Not Contradictory.

As with Essay Three Part Two, I have added approximately 10,000 words of new material (which makes it about 20% longer), corrected several errors and typos, and have made the argument clearer.

August 2011

29/08/11: I have just finished a complete re-write of Essay Three Part Two -- Abstract Ideas 2: Science On The Cheap.

I have added about 10,000 words of new material (which makes it nearly 20% longer), corrected several errors and typos, and have made the argument clearer.

13/08/11: Because it is central to some of the main ideas presented at this site, Essay Three Part One -- Abstract Ideas 1, The Heart Of The Beast -- has just been completely re-written. I have added about 12,000 words of new material (which makes it about 20% longer), corrected several errors and typos, and have made the argument much clearer.

July 2011

27/07/11: I have just finished a complete re-write of Essay Twelve Part One: Dialectics And Metaphysics -- Or, Lenin Thinks The Unthinkable.

I have added about 13,000 words of new material (so the Essay is approximately 15% longer), made the argument considerably clearer and more comprehensive, and corrected several errors and typos.

20/07/11: I wasn't able to post much in June since I was away for a couple of weeks and then my old computer finally gave up the ghost and died on me.

The first posting therefore from my new computer is a complete re-write of Essay Eleven Part One -- The 'Totality': WTF Is It?

I have corrected several errors and stylistic infelicities, clarified the argument somewhat and added 4000 words of new material.

Incidentally, the Dialectical Mystics over at RevLeft, who have recently gained a majority hold over the Admin department, banned me from posting any more of my 'awkward' posts at their site. They have done this since they certainly can't win an argument with me.

A supporter of my site, 'LJJW', who helped me write some of my Essays, has agreed to post there in my stead, although he will not be able to do so quite as often as I used to.

May 2011

14/05/11: I have just re-written the Basic Introductory Essay -- Why I Oppose Dialectical Materialism -- correcting a few errors and typos, making the argument clearer and adding 1000 words of new material.

08/05/11: A character at RevLeft has tried to respond to some of my arguments against Engels's so-called "First Law" -- The Transformation of Quantity into Quality. I have responded to his criticisms here.

05/05/11: The central sections of Essay Thirteen Part Three (i.e., (3) to (5) inclusive) have just been re-written. These deal largely with Voloshinov's confused ideas about language and cognition. I have made the argument much clearer, corrected a few errors and typos and have added over 1000 words of new material.

April 2011

17/04/11: I have just re-written Essay Eight Part Two -- Opposing Forces Aren't Contradictions -- correcting several errors and typos, and making the argument clearer. I have also added approximately 2000 words of new material.

March 2011

16/03/11: The Summary of Essay Thirteen Part One -- Lenin's Disappearing Definition Of Matter --- has just been published. This is an entirely new Summary which hasn't appeared here before.

13/03/11: The Summary of Essay Twelve Part One -- Dialectics And Metaphysics -- has just been completely re-written.

I have made the argument considerably clearer and easier to follow. Since it encapsulates many of the core ideas presented at this site, readers might find helps them see where I am coming from.

05/03/11: The Summary of Essay Eleven Part Two -- Dialectical Wholism Full of Holes -- has just been re-written.

04/03/11: I have just completely re-written the Summary of Essay Eleven Part One -- The 'Totality', WTF Is It?

February 2011

18/02/11: The Summary of Essay Ten Part One -- Practice And History Refute Dialectics -- has just been re-written.

11/02/11: I have just finished re-writing Essay Nine Part Two -- The Damage Petty-Bourgeois Theorists And Dialectical Materialism Have Inflicted On Marxism.

January 2011

28/01/11: I have just finished re-writing Essay Nine Part One -- Why Workers Will Always Reject Materialist Dialectics.

27/01/11: The Summary of Essay Eight Part Two -- Forces And Contradictions -- has now been fully re-written.

24/01/11: I have just re-written the Summary of Essay Eight Part One -- Change Through 'Internal Contradictions', Refuted.

22/01/11: The Summaries of all three Parts of Essay Seven have now been completely re-written: Part One -- Quantity And Quality, Demolished; Part Two -- Dialectics Can't Explain Change; Part Three -- The Negation Of The Negation Implodes.

12/01/11: The Summaries of Essays Five and Six -- Motion Is Not Contradictory, and Identity Is No Enemy Of Change -- have been completely re-written.

08/01/11: I have just completed the re-write of the Summary of Essay Four Part One -- Formal Logic Can Handle Change.

06/01/11:  The Summary of Essay Three Part Two -- Abstraction: Science On The Cheap -- has now been completely re-written, too.

03/01/11: I have now completely re-written the Summary of Essay Three Part One -- Abstraction: The Heart of the Beast.

I have endeavoured to make the argument clearer and less repetitive.

December 2010

29/12/10: Having finished re-writing all the main Essays at this site, I am now in the process of doing likewise with the summaries. To that end, I have now completely re-written the Summary of Essay Two -- DM: Imposed on Nature.

23/12/10: I have just published another essay by Guy Robinson -- On Misunderstanding Science --, an exposition of Thomas Kuhn's work. Until Guy sends me some more material, this is the last of the his essays I will be publish.

I am now working on Essay Thirteen Part Two -- Dialectical Materialism And Science. All being well, it should be ready to publish in the summer of 2012.

October 2010

23/10/10: I have just finished re-writing Essay Thirteen Part Three -- Mind, Language And Cognition; Voloshinov (And Others) Debunked.

I have corrected several errors and typos, made the argument clearer, and added about 9000 words of new material. That Essay is now over 150,000 words long.

August 2010

26/08/10: I have just finished re-writing Essay Thirteen Part One -- Lenin and the Disappearing Definition of Matter.

I have corrected several errors and typos, made the argument clearer, and added about 3000 words of new material.

15/08/10: I have just finished re-writing Essay Twelve Part One -- Dialectics And Metaphysics, Or Lenin Thinks The Unthinkable.

I have corrected several errors and typos, made the argument clearer, removed about 3000 words (that now appear in other Essays), and added about 10,000 words of new material.

July 2010

27/07/10: I have just re-written Essay Eleven Part Two -- Dialectical Wholism, Full Of Holes.

I have corrected several errors and typos, made the argument clearer and added over 2000 words of new material.

10/07/10: Essay Eleven Part One -- The Mysterious "Totality" -- has just been re-written.

I have added approximately 5,000 words of new material, corrected several errors and typos and have made the argument clearer.

June 2010

28/06/10: I have just finished re-writing Essay Ten Part One -- Practice Refutes Dialectics.

I have added approximately 2000 words of new material, clarified the argument and corrected several errors and typos.

May 2010

21/05/10: I have just finished re-writing Essay Nine Part Two -- The Damage Petty-Bourgeois Theorists And Dialectical Materialism Have Inflicted On Marxism.

I have added about 4500 words of new material, clarified the argument considerably, and corrected several errors and typos.

I'd like to bring to visitors' attention to the publication (at the end of May) of a Marxist analysis of modern Toryism, The Meaning of David Cameron, by Richard Seymour:

"Richard Seymour, blogger of Lenin's Tomb fame, and author of The Liberal Defence of Murder will be in store discussing his latest publication, The Meaning of David Cameron.

Date and Time: Wednesday, May 26, 2010, 7:00pm - 9:00pm.

Location: Housmans Bookshop, 5 Caledonian Road, Kings Cross, London.

"The Tories are posing as a 'progressive' and 'radical' alternative to New Labour. Drawing from George W Bush's 'compassionate conservatism', they maintain that the 'Big Society' can do what 'Big Government' can't -- produce a cohesive, mutually supportive, happy society. Cameron's court intellectual, Philip Blond, maintains that this is a viable alternative to the failures of the egalitarian left and the excessively pro-market right. But is this more than campaign mood music? And are the conservative traditions that they draw on -- from the bucolic, pseudo-medievalism of G K Chesterton to the anti-statism of Friedrich Hayek -- really a bulwark of progress and radicalism?

"Richard Seymour argues that such ideas can only seem 'progressive' in light of New Labour's acquiescence to Thatcherism. To understand the Cameronites, it is necessary to understand how the social landscape and corresponding political language was transformed by the collapse of post-war social democracy and its more radical competitors. To resist the Cameronites, he argues, it is necessary to attack the neoliberal consensus on which all major parties found their programme." [Links added.]

April 2010

08/04/10: I have now published another of Guy Robinson's essays, Chapter Two of his unpublished book Philosophy and Demystification -- "The Concept of Nature, its Mystification and Demystification".

February 2010

18/02/10: I have now published another of Guy Robinson's essays, the Introduction to his second book, Philosophy and Demystification, which has yet to find a publisher.

I have also published a reply to a comrade, who, when he is not trying to be normal, doubles-up as the in-house Fool of the Far Left -- our old friend, Mr G.

January 2010

31/01/10: Over the next few weeks I will be publishing several of Guy Robinson's Essays. These had until recently been posted at Guy's site, which no longer seems to exist.

The first Essay -- Making Materialism Historical -- has been posted here.

In my opinion, Guy is one of the few Marxist Philosophers whose work is genuinely worth reading. Indeed, I'd go much further: I can't praise his book, Philosophy and Mystification (Fordham University Press, 2003), too highly; it seems to me that this is how Marxist Philosophy should be done.

I only encountered Guy's work in 2005, but I soon saw that he had anticipated several of my own ideas -- except he manages to express in two paragraphs what it takes me several pages to say! Unlike the vast majority of work that claims to be Marxist, Guy's work is a model of clarity. It is no accident, therefore, to see Guy writing in the Wittgensteinian tradition.

I am posting these essays here with his permission, but no one should assume that he agrees with any of the views expressed at this site -- other than those already contained in his essays.

20/01/10: I have re-written Essay Eight Part Three -- What Are Dialectical Contradictions? --  correcting several errors and typos, and adding approximately 3000 words of new material. The Essay is now just over 10% longer.

13/01/10: I have just re-written Essay Eight Part Two -- Forces Aren't 'Contradictions'. I have corrected several errors and typos, made the argument clearer and added about 4000 words of new material.

I have also deleted a 25,000 word section entitled "What are Dialectical Contradictions?", which was reposted as Essay Eight Part Three a year or so ago. It made no sense to leave it in Part Two, therefore.

December 2009

19/12/09: I have just finished re-writing Essay Eight Part One -- Change Through 'Internal Contradictions'. I have corrected several errors, clarified the argument, and deleted a long passage that now appears in Essay Ten Part One.

In have added about 2000 words of new material, but because of the deletion, the Essay is about 5% shorter.

07/12/09: Essay Seven Part One -- Engels's Three Laws -- has just been re-written. I have made the argument clearer, corrected several errors and typos, and added 5000 words of new material.

November 2009

10/11/09: Essay Six -- Identity Is No Threat To Change; Trotsky On Identity -- has just been re-written. I have cut a long passage that is now to be found in Essay Four, corrected several errors and typos, and added about 2500 words of new material.

02/11/09: Essay Five -- Motion is Not Contradictory -- has just been re-written. I have corrected several errors and typos and added over 6000 words of new material.

October 2009

28/10/09: I have just finished re-writing the Summary of the rest of Essay Twelve. Even though Essay Twelve Part One itself appeared several years ago, last year I decided to post this Summary of the rest of Essay Twelve (which forms the core of my case against metaphysics, and the forms-of-thought one finds in Hegel and 'materialist dialectics') since sections Two to Seven of Essay Twelve will not be published for many years. This delay has created a gaping hole in my argument. This Summary partially fills it.

Anyway, I thought this Summary was badly written and somewhat repetitive, so I decided it needed a make-over. I have also added about 2000 words of new material.

12/10/09: I have just finished re-writing Essay Four: Formal Logic Can Handle Change, correcting several errors and typos. I have added about 5% of new material, or 2500 words.

10/10/09: An old enemy of this site has once again put himself in the crosshairs, here.

06/10/09: The debate mentioned below has continued here, here, here and here.

04/10/09: In the debate below, a rather irascible Dialectical Mystic has tried to reply to me; I have responded here.

Links at the above page.

03/10/09: Several comrades have attempted to reply to one or two things I have said in the response mentioned below. I have now replied to them here.

02/10/09: Yet another obnoxious dialectician has tried to take me on. Anyone interested in seeing him receive a good materialist slapping should read this.

September 2009

27/09/09: I have jut re-written Essay Three Part Two: Abstract Ideas -- Science On The Cheap. Again, I have clarified the argument, corrected a few errors and typos, and added about 4000 words of new material, making it just under 10% longer.

15/09/09: Essay Three Part One: (Abstract Ideas -- The Heart Of The Beast) has just be re-written. I have clarified the argument, corrected a few errors and typos, and added about 5000 words of new material, making it just under 10% longer.

A debate took place recently at the Marxist Humanist Initiative site over the nature of 'dialectical contradictions'.

The discussion was reasonably comradely until I thought to question a few of the things one of these dialecticians (one "Jurriaan") had to say. Upon that, he soon descended into the by-now-to-be-expected dialectical abuse, vituperation, use of scatological language and resort to lying. My reply to him has not yet been published (it is awaiting moderation, which might take some time since I am told the site is being re-designed), but it can be read here in the meantime.

August 2009

28/08/09: Essay Two (Dialectics: Imposed On Nature) has just been re-written. I have corrected a few errors and typos, clarified the argument and added about 3000 words of new material.

18/08/09: I have completely re-written the Summary of Essay Twelve Parts Two to Seven; when the rest of Essay Twelve has been published, I will split it up into more manageable sections, since it is far too long as it is.

I have only posted it so that visitors can see where my argument will go in the future.

~~~~~oOo~~~~~

Ok, I have moved the entire site to this new address.

Most of the links below now work.

In the intervening months I have completely re-written the Basic Introductory Essay to make it clearer and strengthen the arguments.

June 2009

19/06/09: I have just re-written Essay Thirteen Part One: Lenin's Disappearing Definition of Matter. I have corrected several errors and typos, clarified the argument and added about 5% of new material.

Incidentally, I have to move home at the end of June, so there will be very few new updates published here over the next three months or so.

May 2009

15/05/09: I have just re-written the Basic Introductory Essay. I have added approximately 1000 words of new material, corrected a few errors and re-worked the argument in places to make it clearer.

April 2009

23/04/09: I have just finished a long re-write of Essay Nine Part Two -- The Damage Petty-Bourgeois Theorists And Dialectical Materialism Have Inflicted On Marxism --, correcting several errors and typos, and making the argument clearer. I have also added about 14,000 words of new material.

March 2009

17/03/09: I have just received a copy of Science & Society, volume 72, October 2008. In this number, noted Marxist economist Guglielmo Carchedi tries in vain to make sense of Marx's ideas on the calculus. Alas, his arguments have already been neutralised in Essay Seven Part One (here).

This is doubly unfortunate, since the latest edition of International Socialism contains a review by Chris Harman which recommends the above article.

In view of the recent split in UK-Respect, the depressingly poor results chalked up by the Left List, and the internal wrangling in the UK-SWP, it looks like my prediction that comrades will openly return to this mystical 'theory' in times of defeat and set-back has once again proved to be correct.

February 2009

23/02/09: Ok, at last Essay Thirteen Part Three, Mind. Language and Cognition, has been published!

It is by far the longest Essay at this site (at over 141,000 words), hence the repeated delays.

17/02/09: I will be posting Essay Thirteen Part Three in the next few days; yet more delays I'm afraid. Anyway, it is now about 99% complete.

01/02/09: Essay Thirteen Part Three (on 'Mind', Language and Cognition) is almost finished -- illness and the fact that it is easily the longest Essay I have so far written (it is fast approaching 120,000 words) have delayed it by another week to ten days.

January 2009

11/01/09: A couple of months ago, a supporter of this site sent a letter to the editor of Socialist Review in response to an article on dialectics by John Rees. The editors did not publish that letter, but you can read it here.

04/01/09: Visitors can view here the pictures I took of the demonstration in London yesterday protesting the Zionist slaughter in Gaza.

There were at least 50,000 on the march, which was amazing really, in view of the fact that it had only been called three days earlier.

December 2008

12/12/08: I have just re-written Essay Three Part One -- Abstraction: The Heart of the Beast.

I have added about 5000 words of new material, corrected several errors and typos, and made the argument clearer.

02/12/08: Another dialectical punch-up has developed at Liam Macuaid's excellent blog. Anyone who checks it out will see the same hackneyed examples wheeled out for the thousandth time, the same evasive and abusive tactics, the same scatological language.

These erstwhile apostles of universal change are living proof that Heraclitus got it all wrong -- they never change.

Incidentally, Essay Thirteen Part Three (on 'Mind', Language and Cognition) is on course to be published before the end of January. The long delay is down to the fact that this is easily the longest Essay so far published.

November 2008

20/11/08: More Socialist Unity mayhem here. Visitors will once again notice the same bluster, prevarication and abuse from our dialectically-compromised comrades.

10/11/08: The argument at Socialist Unity of the 7th (see below) has kicked-off again, but I am not allowed to post any replies there. However, comrades can read my response here.

A few months ago I mentioned a book that was soon to be published, The Liberal Defence of Murder (Verso Books, 2008). Well it has now appeared, and I can whole-heartedly recommend it.

This is from the publishers web site:

"Following the collapse of the Soviet Union, a number of prominent thinkers on the Left found themselves increasingly aligned with their ideological opposites. Over the last decade, many of these thinkers have become close to Washington; forceful supporters of the War on Terror, they help frame arguments for policymakers and provide the moral and intellectual justification for Western military intervention across the globe. From Kanan Makiya, one of the chief architects of the US invasion and occupation of Iraq, to Bernard Henri-Levy’s advocacy of 'humanitarian' intervention, The Liberal Defense of Murder traces the journey of these figures from left to right and explores their critical role in the creation of the new American empire. With wide-ranging testimony from many key figures on the left, this is a crucial account of the emergence of the 'pro-war left,' and its shaping of our post-9/11 world.

"Richard Seymour lives and writes in London. His website Lenin's Tomb comments on issues such as imperialism, Zionism, Islamophobia and anti-capitalism, and covers strikes and protests with footage, images and reportage. It has been cited in, among others, Private Eye, the Guardian and Slate. This is Richard Seymour's first book."

07/11/08: Over the last few days an argument over dialectics has broken out at the Socialist Unity blog. Several comrades there were content merely to abuse me (for no good reason) and post 'fibs' about me and my beliefs.

[Par for the course, or what?]

However, before I could respond to the latest allegations about my work, the owner of the site closed the thread!

No worries; I have now written that response, and you can read it here.

03/11/08: I have just re-written Essay One, which is an Introduction to this site, and which explains why I began this project.

I am still on course to finish Essay Thirteen Part Three ('Mind', Language and Cognition) before Xmas.

October 2008

21/10/08: In the light of a few criticisms I have received from certain comrades, I have completely re-written Essay Seven Part One. It is now approximately 15% longer at just under 91,000 words.

I am still working on Essay Thirteen Part Three ('Mind', Language and Cognition); it should be ready to publish before the end of December.

September 2008

28/09/08: I regularly search the internet for comments on my work. Some is supportive, some not; but some is quite poor. Here is the latest example of the latter. I have straightened these comrades out here.

24/09/08: I have now completely re-written the response to comrade Jones I posted at RevLeft, mentioned below. I have entitled it "Engels and Mickey Mouse Science".

12/09/08: I have just been informed that the International Socialist Review has in fact published the letter I sent them, in the September/October issue, contrary to what I asserted below (entry for August 18th).

Comrade Jones (the author of the article that was the subject of my letter) has responded with a surprisingly trite rebuttal.

I have already posted a long reply to him here; a more considered response will appear at this site in the next few weeks.

However, anyone who accesses my reply will need to note that it was based on a typed-out copy of the original response (by comrade Jones) posted at RevLeft by yet another comrade (who made a few typos). I used that version of comrade Jones's rebuttal since the link to the letters page at the International Socialist website was not working (until I informed them of that fact!), so I could not cut and paste his response.

That will be rectified in the version I will be posting here.

11/09/08: In August 2008, a supporter of this site sent a letter to Socialist Review. The editor decided not to publish it. You can read it here.

10/09/08: A week or so ago I received a copy of Ellen Meiksins Wood's latest book Citizens To Lords. A Social History Of Western Political Thought From Antiquity To The Middle Ages (Verso, 2008). I was pleasantly surprised to find that several of her main theses amply confirm a number of my own. One of these is summarised by Neil Faulkner in the latest issue of Socialist Review:

"Greek democracy was traumatic for the ancient ruling class. Ellen Wood is right to root her analysis of western political thought in the context of this extraordinary historical experiment. For around 200 years, in the 5th and 4th centuries BC, Athens and many other Greek city-states were ruled by ordinary citizens. Major decisions -- like whether to go to war -- were made at mass meetings of thousands. The poorest hill farmer had the same rights as the richest landowner. While it lasted, it was impossible for rulers to screw their own people. Instead the rich faced wealth taxes and corruption trials.

"The Greek ruling class never forgot or forgave. They later combined with Macedonian kings and Roman viceroys to smash democracy. This ancient class war between landowners and peasants is the starting point for western political thought. Other civilizations -- based on brutally enforced obedience -- had no need for political theory: there was a king, he was backed by god, his authority was beyond question, and that was that. But the city-state was a community of free citizens, all doing military service, all having political rights. Anything could happen -- like cancellation of debts and redistribution of land (the two great demands of the ancient left) -- and right wing intellectuals spent much time concocting theories to justify inequality. This is the origin of Greek philosophy." [Emphasis added.]

The main thrust of the last sentence above forms one of the main themes to Essays Two, Nine Part One, Twelve Parts One to Seven, and Fourteen Part One: that philosophy has always expressed the most abstract forms of ruling-class ideology.

Hence, the importation of Hegel's philosophical ideas into Marxism (upside down, or the 'right way up') has meant that "ruling ideas" now dominate revolutionary socialism in the form of 'Materialist Dialectics'.

August 2008

18/08/08: A few weeks back I sent a letter to the editors of the International Socialist Review about an article they published on Engels's Anti-Dühring. They chose not to publish that letter.

A copy of ir can be found here.

The next Essay to be published will be 13-03, Mind, Language and Cognition. It will be ready before the end of September.

July 2008

29/07/08: The Summary of Essay Eleven Part Two (Dialectical Wholism -- Full of Holes) has just been posted.

13/07/08: I have just re-written Essay Two -- Dialectics Imposed On Nature, Not Read From It -- taking the opportunity to correct several errors and typos, and to make the argument clearer. I have also added 10,000 words of new material, so the Essay is now well over 30% longer.

11/07/08: Levins and Lewontin's Biology Under The Influence (Monthly Review Press, 2007) has just landed on my desk. This book was given a glowing review by Phil Webster in the latest issue of Socialist Review.

However, where this book touches on dialectics, it makes all the usual mistakes, which Webster either does not know about, or missed. I will be adding a few comments on this book in a later re-write of Essay Seven Part One, and Essay Eleven Part Two.

A supporter of this site will be sending a letter about the review to the editor; we will see if she publishes it.

10/07/08: I have just re-written Essay Eleven Part Two -- Dialectical Holism, Full of Holes -- correcting several errors and typos, making the argument clearer, and adding over 2500 words of new material.

June 2008

29/06/08: I have just re-written Essay Twelve Part One -- Dialectics And Metaphysics. I have corrected several errors, clarified the argument and added some new material. It is now about 5% longer.

23/06/08: The Summary of Essay Twelve Part One -- The Metaphysical Status Of Dialectics -- has just been published.

16/06/08: I have just re-written Essay Nine Part Two -- The Damage Petty-Bourgeois Theorists And Dialectical Materialism Have Inflicted On Marxism --, correcting several mistakes and typos; I have also added about 3500 words of new material.

06/06/08: I have just re-written Essay Eight Part Three "What Are 'Dialectical Contradictions'", correcting several errors and infelicities, adding new material. It is now just over 10% longer.

May 2008

30/05/08: I have just added 1500 words of comment and argument to Note 4 of Essay Seven Part One, in view of the fact that my original argument had a few gaping holes in it.

I have also added new links to this page, which records the many 'debates' I have had on the Internet with dialecticians (mostly at RevLeft).

25/05/08: I have re-posted, as a separate Essay (i.e., as 08-03 -- "What are 'Dialectical Contradictions'"), a long footnote that appeared in Essay Eight Part Two.

Because of its length, this footnote has in fact taken on a life of its own. Buried as it was in 08-02, it was not easy to access.

25/05/08: I have now published the Summary of Essay Eleven Part One: "The 'Totality' -- WTF Is It?"

~~~~~oOo~~~~~

I have been away for over three weeks, hence the lack of activity at this site of late.

The next work to be published will be a summary of Essay Eleven Part One; that will be followed sometime in July by Essay Thirteen Part Three: "Dialectics, Language, 'Mind' and 'Cognition'".

April 2008

26/04/08: I am progressively re-writing Essay Sixteen, which is an extended summary of my ideas. Because of its length, it has been broken up into manageable sections, each corresponding more-or-less to one of the main Essays.

To that end, I have just finished the summary of Essay Ten Part One: Dialectics -- Refuted By History.

24/04/08: Because of the interest it is receiving (in fact it is currently the most visited page at this site), I have just re-written Essay Ten Part One, making numerous small changes and correcting a few errors and typos.

23/04/08: Essay One has just be re-written. This Essay explains the background to my work, and serves as an Introduction.

21/04/08: The re-write of Essay Thirteen Part One (on Lenin's Materialism and Empirio-criticism) has just been completed.

I have corrected several errors and typos and added about 3500 words of new material.

17/04/08: I have just re-written Essay Five, since it is still attracting much interest.

I have corrected a few errors and typos, made the argument clearer and added small amounts of new material.

It is now just short of 5% longer.

I am also in the process of re-writing Essay Thirteen Part One, posting the changes as they are being made.

March 2008

31/03/08: The summary of Essay Nine Part Two has just been published -- 'Militants on Methadone'.

This outlines the reasons why I think dialecticians have swallowed this ruling-class theory, and the consequent damage this has done to Marxism.

27/03/08: I have now written and posted a summary of Essay Nine Part One: 'Dialectics -- A Ruling-Class Theory'.

24/03/08: I have just written the Summary of Essay Eight Part Two -- Why 'Dialectical Contradictions' can't be equated with opposing forces.

20/03/08: Over the last few months I have been completely re-writing Essay Sixteen (which is an extended introduction to and summary of my work), breaking it up into manageable parts.

Well, as part of that, I have now written the Summary to Essay Eight Part One.

18/03/08: I have just re-written Essay Twelve Part One, correcting several errors, and adding new material. I have also tried to make the argument even clearer.

That Essay is now approx 3,500 words longer.

17/03/08: Visitors can find my pictures of the recent anti-war demonstration in London, here.

07/03/08: I have just finished re-writing Essay Five -- 'Motion is not Contradictory' -- making numerous small changes, correcting several errors and typos, and adding some new material. It is now about 1000 words longer.

05/03/08: A few weeks ago, a sympathetic reader of my Essays added a comment about my work to the article on DM at Wikipedia.

Unfortunately, a rather miffed Maoist and a thin-skinned Trotskyist deleted it (the latter after it had been restored).

Apparently, such 'scientific' comrades can't tolerate the idea that their theory has been systematically demolished, and think that censoring me will make me or my ideas go away.

However, the original poster has restored it again. You can read it here (if it is still there!).

[It can be accessed in the History section of that article anyway.]

04/03/08: The seminar in Oxford went well. I filmed the talk and subsequent discussion, but the lighting was poor. If I can improve the quality of the video on edit, I'll post it on YouTube.

I'll also post a transcript of the talk, and discussion at a later date.

February 2008

28/02/08: Essay Nine Part Two has just been re-written; I have corrected a few errors, clarified the argument somewhat and added new material. It is now just under 2000 words longer.

Essay Five is still being re-written

Also, I have just received the second edition of Reason In Revolt by Woods and Grant.

The chapter on logic is still among the worst I have ever seen in a book about dialectics, even though, at my suggestion, Alan Woods has removed the syntactic mess that used to appear on page 98.

The book still makes grossly erroneous remarks about Wittgenstein (among others), and it repeats all the old errors (debunked at this site) as if they were eternal truths.

On page 101, the authors still manage to get George Boole's name wrong (they call him 'George Boyle') even though I pointed this error out to Woods in 2004 -- just as they mis-spell Gottlob Frege's name on the same page.

These might seem small errors, but they reveal how sloppy dialecticians are when it comes to logic -- even after such things have been pointed out to them!

[There are plenty more examples of this sort of thing here.]

25/02/08: I have just received a copy of Science, Marxism and the Big Bang, by Peter Mason. While this book is a short critique of Woods and Grant's Reason in Revolt, it is by far and away the most measured and reasonable defence I have ever seen of Dialectical Materialism. I will add a few comments about this book to Essay Seven at a later date.

Added later:  I wrote the above after reading only half of the said book. However, much of the second half is highly repetitive, the author becoming fixated on infinity, saying more or less the same thing over and over again for the next 60 pages!

I am also in the process of re-writing Essay Five in view of the fact that it is attracting quite a few visitors right now.

21/02/08: I have just re-written Essay One, correcting several errors, and adding new material. It is now about 5% longer.

14/02/08: A few months ago, I wrote a very basic outline of the egregious logical errors Hegel committed, which launched the 'dialectic', and which subsequent prominent Marxists accepted uncritically.

I have now re-written it to make the argument even clearer.

It was originally designed for those who found the extended argument here, here, here and here a little too daunting.

That being so, the dialectic has no foundation in logic, or in fact.

It is no surprise therefore to find it has presided over 150 years of almost total failure.

12/02/08: After a long delay, I have finally published Essay Thirteen Part One: Lenin's Disappearing Definition Of Matter.

This Essay took me far longer to complete than I had imagined!

01/02/08: The next Essay to be published will be ready to post in the next week or so. It is Essay Thirteen Part One, which will demolish what is easily Lenin's worst published work: the lamentable Materialism and Empirio-Criticism.

Apologies for the delay, but it has been far harder to finalise than I had anticipated.

A supporter of this site will be addressing a conference on the renewal of the left, to be held at Oxford University at the end of February.

More details here.

January 2008

18/01/08: A day or so ago, I received a copy Of Hartley Slater's excellent book, The De-Mathematisation Of Logic (Polimetrica, 2007).

This work is relevant to aims of this site in so far as its last chapter, 'Dialetheias Are Mental Confusions' puts paid to large sections of 'Dialetheism' (which some might think gives support to 'Materialist Dialectics', even though this is not the case; the 'contradictions' of 'Dialetheic Logic' are not 'dialectical contradictions').

I must add however that Hartley is in no way connected with the political or philosophical views expressed at this site.

17/01/08: Visitors to this site are warmly encouraged to pre-order a copy of Richard Seymour's book: The Liberal Defence Of Murder, to be published in July.

Here is the synopsis:

"Following the collapse of the Soviet Union, a number of prominent thinkers on the Left found themselves increasingly aligned with their ideological opposites. Over the last decade, many of these thinkers have become close to Washington; forceful supporters of the War on Terror, they help frame arguments for policymakers and provide the moral and intellectual justification for Western military intervention across the globe. From Kanan Makiya, one of the chief architects of the US invasion and occupation of Iraq, to Bernard Henri-Levy's advocacy of "humanitarian" intervention, "The Liberal Defense of Murder" traces the journey of these figures from left to right and explores their critical role in the creation of the new American empire. With wide-ranging testimony from many key figures on the left, this is a crucial account of the emergence of the "pro-war left," and its shaping of our post-9/11 world."

15/01/08: I have just completed a re-write of Essay Eight Part Two, correcting a few errors, and adding new material. I have also endeavoured to make the argument much clearer.

It is now just short of 10% longer, at 83,000 words.

08/01/08: I have just received a copy of  A Marxist Philosophy of Language by Jean-Jacques Lecercle (Brill, 2006 -- published in the Historical Materialism Book Series), which I had hoped would be the first significant Marxist contribution in this area. [Voloshinov's study is, despite the undeserved praise it receives from comrades, worse than poor.]

Initial reading suggests that we still await such a work --, for, as seems to be the case with 20th Century French Philosophy, parochialism appears to be more important than relevance, vague generalisation preferred over detailed work.

I will be publishing an Essay on the Philosophy of Language (in relation to Marxism) later this year, so I will say more about this book then; but any study that devotes far more space to the ideas of Stalin than to those of Wittgenstein or Frege in this area (as this book does) should not have been allowed to see the light of day.

What were the editors of Historical Materialism thinking about!

06/01/08: A representative of this site has been invited to give a talk about my ideas at a conference on the renewal of the left at Oxford University, on Saturday March 1st.

More details as when they become known.

The next Essay to be published will be Thirteen Part One (which is largely about Lenin's Materialism and Empirio-criticism). It should be up by the end of January.

[The long delay was caused by illness and the holidays.]

December 2007

22/12/07: Access to the new summaries of all three sections of Essay Seven can be found here.

21/12/07: I have just posted a 4000 word summary of Essay Seven Part One C (which demolishes Engels's third 'Law', the mythical 'Negation of the Negation'), here.

This is the final part of the summary of Essay Seven Part One.

20/12/07: I have just published a 5000 word summary of Essay Seven Part One B (which demolishes Engels's second 'Law', the mythical 'Interpenetration of Opposites'), here.

18/12/07: I have just posted a 5000 word summary of Essay Seven Part One A (which demolishes Engels's first 'Law', the alleged change of quantity into quality), here.

18/12/07: In a recent re-write of Essay Seven, I included a reasonably clear explanation of why dialectics cannot explain change.

However, several comrades have reacted with incredulity at the unmitigated confusion I have exposed at the heart of their theory, to such an extend that they have expressed doubts as to whether the dialectical classicists I quoted (1) really meant what they said, or that they had even said what I had alleged they had said, (2) were representative of the whole tradition, (3) were mistaken in some way --, and really desperate comrades accused me of (4) "pedantry", or of merely bandying "semantics".

Of course, it's Ok for Marx to be precise in Das Kapital (over, say, the distinction between the relative and equivalent forms of value), but if I indulge in similar flights of precision, that is just "pedantry", or "semantics"!

 Anyway, the last of these allegations is neutralised here.

However, I have now re-written the 'offending' sections to respond to the first three of the above 'excuses' (they can be found here, and here).

To that end, I have posted a 4000 word block of quotations from the dialectical classics (and lesser dialectical clones) -- here -- to show that my allegations were indeed correct: dialectics cannot explain change!

Small wonder then that it has presided over 150 years of almost total failure.

11/12/07: I have just written and posted a 2000 word Summary of a key criticism I make of 'Dialectical Logic'. It can be accessed here.

10/12/07: A 4000 word Summary of Essay Six has now been published. This Essay demolishes Trotsky's (and indirectly Hegel's) criticisms of the 'Law of identity'.

07/12/07: I have added an on-line exam in dialectics, designed for fans of that 'theory', but especially for those 'fair-minded' comrades who reject my ideas without bothering to read a single Essay of mine.

05/12/07: A 4000 word Summary of Essay Five has been posted: 'Engels Was Wrong -- Motion Is Not Contradictory'.

03/12/07: I have just posted the Summary of Essay Four Part One: 'Formal Logic Can Handle Change'.

01/12/07: The Summary of Essay Three Part Two has now been written and posted: 'Abstraction -- Science On The Cheap'.

November 2007

29/11/07: I have just written a 5000 word Summary of Essay Three Part One: 'Abstraction -- The Heart Of The Beast'.

This is part of the extensive re-write of Essay Sixteen I am under-taking.

27/11/07: I have just written a rather caustic response to a particularly brainless dialectician, here.

27/11/07: I am in the process of completely re-writing Essay Sixteen, which is a detailed summary of the main ideas presented at this site. Essay 16-02 has just been competed: "Dialectics: Imposed On Nature, Not Read From It".

26/11/07: How Not To Argue 101 has just been updated with several more links to discussion forums where I have 'debated' this mystical creed with comrades, mostly from the USA.

However, the underhand argumentative tactics dialecticians use in response to my demolition of their 'theory' are not confined to comrades in the USA; UK-dialecticians make exactly the same sort of mistakes, descend into just as much abuse, and make stuff up about my ideas with the best of them. For example, check out the irrational responses made to me here.

25/11/07: I have now added a 6000 word section to Essay Three Part Two on Bertell Ollman's attempt to explain abstraction. This can be accessed directly here.

Anyone wanting to read this will need to remember that in this critique I take many things for granted that had been argued for in Part One of Essay Three, and in earlier sections of Part Two.

23/11/07: I have just realised that I did not add a critique of Bertell Ollman's discussion of the 'process of abstraction' found in Dance of the Dialectic to Essay Three Part Two as promised.

I am now rectifying that omission, and will be adding comments over the next few days, posting them as they are ready. These can be accessed here.

22/11/07: The re-write of Essay Three Part Two is now complete; it is just short of 10% longer, and, I hope, much clearer.

I  have also added new material and corrected several errors.

I have also added detailed 'Quick Links' to all the main Essays.

15/11/07: I am in the process of re-writing Essay Three Part Two, posting the changes as they are made.

The next Essay to be published (before Xmas) will be Thirteen Part One, which will destructively analyse parts of Lenin's Materialism and Empirio-Criticism.

I have had to abandon Essay Three Part Four for now -- it is not in a fit state to publish.

12/11/07: I have added a 'Quick Links' section to nearly all of the Essays already published, in order to assist readers find their way about more easily.

11/11/07: I have just finished a major re-write of Essay Three Part One in order to make the argument clearer, remove several errors and post new material.

It is now just over 10% longer.

06/11/07: The re-write of Essay Four has now been completed. I have added some new material, corrected several errors and made the argument clearer. It is now over 5% longer.

05/11/07: I am about 3/4s of the way through re-writing Essay Four, posting the changes as they are being made.

01/11/07: I have just finished the re-write of Essay Nine Part Two. I have added some new material and corrected a few errors. It is now about 5% longer.

Comrades are wondering why crises (like that in UK-Respect) are a constant feature of revolutionary politics, but few are asking the sort of questions I raise in this Essay.

Indeed, far too many comrades will, it seems, go to any length to avoid even so much as consider whether or not their core theory (dialectics) has anything to do with this long-term 'problem'. It doesn't even make the reserve list!

I also explain just why they do this in that Essay!

Essays Nine Part One and Ten Part One also attempt to account for this feature of Dialectical Marxism.

October 2007

29/10/07: In view of the renewed interest there is in Essay Nine Part Two, prompted by the current crisis in Respect, I am now re-writing it.

29/10/07: The re-write of Essay Five (which challenges the idea that motion is 'contradictory') has just been finished.

I have corrected a few errors, clarified the many complex arguments it contains and added some new material. It is now approximately 5% longer.

27/10/07: I have added a quick links section to Essay Nine Part Two, in view of the renewed interest being shown in it (which is largely a result of the crisis in Respect).

This Essay, too, raises issues no one (literally no one!) talks about on the left. Which is, of course, why we keep screwing up, year on year.

26/10/2007: I have just re-written Essay Ten Part One; it is now just short of 10% longer.

I am also about half-way through re-writing Essay Five, posting the changes as they are being made.

20/10/2007: The re-write of Essay Eight Part Two is now complete; it is approximately 20% longer, and is now the longest Essay at this site.

This Essay contains some of my most original ideas, and raises issues that no one has ever even so much as considered before (no exaggeration).

18/10/2007: I have nearly completed an extensive re-write of Essay Eight Part Two; the changes made have already been posted. More to follow.

10/10/2007: I have just finished re-writing Essay Six. I have added new material, clarified the argument and corrected several errors. It is now just over 10% longer.

06/10/2007: The re-write of Essay Nine Part One is now complete. I have corrected a few errors, added some new material, and endeavoured to make the argument clearer. It is now just over 5% longer.

05/10/2007: I am in the process of re-writing Essay Nine Part One, posting the changes as they are being made.

03/10/2007: The Wittgenstein Essay has just been re-formatted to make it easier to read.

September 2007

29/09/2007: I have just completed a minor re-write of Essay Ten Part One, to correct few errors and make a few points clearer.

28/09/2007: The latest re-write of Essay Eight Part One has now been completed.

I have corrected several errors, and made my argument both clearer and, I hope, more convincing. I have also added some new material; the Essay is now a couple of thousand words longer.

24/09/2007: I am re-writing Essay Eight Part One, posting the changes as they are being made.

The next Essay to be published (Essay Three Part Five) will not now appear until late October.

23/09/2007: The major re-write of Essay Seven has just been finished. I have substantially strengthened my arguments, corrected several errors and added much new material.

This Essay in now well over 30% longer -- at 67,000 words.

[A much shorter summary of it can be found here.]

22/09/2007: A couple of weeks ago, an article of mine was published in Weekly Worker --, which I then disowned because of a scurrilous attack on the UK-SWP, and John Rees (among others) published in the same issue.

However, two comrades have attempted a reply. The original article can be read here; the letters and my response to them, here.

21/09/2007: I am still in the process or re-writing Essay Seven, posting the changes as they are being made. The reason it is taking so long is because I am adding so much new material: at approximately 3/4s of the way through, and it is already 15,000 words longer.

13/09/2007: Visitors might like to read an article of mine that has just been published.

However, I distance myself from the comments made (about Respect, the UK-SWP, and John Rees) in the paper in which my article appears.

Had I known it would mount such a scurrilous attack on comrades I respect, I would never have written it.

10/09/2007: I have just added some new material to Essay Two, and I am in the process of re-writing Essay Seven, posting the changes as they are being made.

07/09/2007: I have just received a copy of Peter Hacker's Human Nature: The Categorial Framework (Blackwell, 2007). Comrades might look askance at the title, but they shouldn't. It in no way challenges Marx on this.

I can heartily recommend this book, since it gives detailed background to the philosophical anthropology underpinning my work.

In addition, I have just finished re-writing Essay One -- Why I Began This Project --, making numerous large and small changes.

05/09/2007: Yet more fun with the Leprechaun of Logic, here.

03/09/2007: A serial numpty has had another go at my ideas; read my response here.

I have also just finished the re-write of Essay Eleven Part One. Numerous large and small changes have been made; in addition I have corrected several errors and infelicities, and included new material. The Essay is now just over 5% longer, and much clearer --, I hope.

August 2007

24/08/2007: I have just re-written most of the 'Anti-Dialectics For Dummies' Essay in order to make a few points clearer, and correct a handful of errors.

I have also up-dated the Basic Introductory Essay.

Essay Eleven Part One is still being re-written; I am about one third of the way through.

21/08/2007: I am re-writing Essay Eleven Part One, posting the changes as they are being made.

20/08/2007: Essay Twelve Part One has now been completely re-written.

I have corrected numerous errors and infelicities, added another 10,000 words of material, and made my argument much clearer (I hope!). It is now approximately 20% longer.

15/08/2007: A week or so ago I sent another letter to Socialist Worker, but this time not about DM! It was in response to this article on Turing, Gödel and Cantor, and was controversial in that it questioned the validity of Gödel's famous theorem.

Those interested can read that letter here.

I have added to it a heavily slanted reading list of books and articles that have influenced my ideas in this area.

15/08/2007: I have just posted a short Essay taking the Mickey out of a few characters who like to snipe at this site from a lofty position of ignorance.

The next Essay to be published will be Three Part Four, which should be ready by the end of September.

10/08/2007: Essay Ten Part One has now been posted. It addresses what many comrades take to be the best proof of dialectics: practice.

Hence, it is provocatively titled: Practice Refutes Dialectics.

I am still re-writing Essay Twelve Part One, posting the changes as they are being made.

02/08/2007: Two books have just arrived: Lenin Reloaded, edited by Sebastian Budgen, among others, and The Opening Of Hegel's Logic, by Stephen Houlgate.

The first contains, among other things, several Essays that try to convince us that the incoherent and disjointed thoughts on Philosophy that Lenin scribbled in notebooks make any kind of sense.

Nevertheless, one thing these essayists seem to share is an uncritical acceptance of a 'theory' that is based on demonstrably cracked 'logic'. This suggests that these comrades are in fact defending a faith, not advancing science. More on this later.

The second book contains an extended defence of the indefensible. I have made a few initial comments here, and will add more later.

Essay Ten Part One should be ready by the middle of next week.

July 2007

31/07/07: I have just corrected a serious confusion in Essay Seven between phases and states of matter. A clearer distinction here in fact ends up assisting my case against DM. The main changes have been made to Notes One and Nine.

25/07/07: Essay Ten Part One should be ready for publication in about a week or so.

I am also re-writing Essay Twelve Part One, to correct several errors and add new material. I will post the changes as they are being made.

24/07/07: About this time last year I published a Basic Introduction to Anti-Dialectics, aimed at those who found my longer Essays either too difficult or too long.

However, it soon became apparent that several comrades found that Essay itself too difficult.

Hence, today I aim to put that right, for I am publishing an "Anti-Dialectics For Dummies" Essay. This is no put-down, but is, like other "XYZ For Dummies" books, geared toward those who find such rarefied topics none-too-easy.

It is less than 5000 words long, and is confined to very basic, down-to-earth ideas.

18/07/07: Right, the re-formatting of the Basic Introductory Essay has now been completed, so it should be easier to read.

I have also added some extra material, and corrected a few mistakes.

16/07/07: I have just posted Essay Twelve Part One. This Essay (which will be in Seven Parts when it is complete) forms the central core of my case against this mystical theory.

Part One sets out to show why Lenin's ideas on matter and motion fall apart so readily.

[Answer: they are just as flaky as any other thesis drawn from Traditional Philosophy is.]

The rest of Part One then shows why this will always happen when theorists like Lenin try to concoct a priori metaphysical theses.

Now, it was precisely the difficulty of explaining that adequately and clearly that delayed this Essay by many weeks.

It will, however, need several re-writes before I am happy with it.

15/07/07: I should have Essay Twelve Part One ready to post by the end of tomorrow. Further delays have been caused by the complexity of the subject matter in hand, and the fact that this Essay is already approaching 60,000 words long!

I have also re-written sections of Essay Nine Part Two, and added new material -- which has become available now that I have access to by books.

11/07/07: A supporter of this site has contributed an Essay outlining an excellent intervention that was made at Marxism 2007; you can read it here.

In view of that, I have added approximately 1300 words of extra detail (here) to Essay Four, which deals with some of the issues raised by John Rees at the above venue.

09/07/07: I am still on course to publish Essay Twelve Part One by the end of this week. I am also re-formatting the Basic Introductory Essay, to make it easier to read.

03/07/07: I should have Essay Twelve Part One ready to publish by the end of next week.

The extra delay has been caused by the nature of the material it contains. A fuller explanation will be given at the beginning of that Essay, when it is posted.

June 2007

17/06/07: The Essay on Wittgenstein has just been updated with added material drawn from Marx's work, which oddly enough anticipated some of Wittgenstein's most distinctive ideas.

I have also discovered this excellent Essay, which blows apart the superficial criticisms some on the 'left' have made of Wittgenstein, based on the ideas of that charlatan, Ernest Gellner.

16/06/07: I have just received the latest copy of The British Journal for the Philosophy of Science. There Jessica Wilson defends the existence of classical Newtonian forces (Volume 53, June 2007, pp.173-205), the nature of which I have questioned in several Essays.

I will post a response when I have had time to study its content. Nevertheless, even if she is correct, this does not affect the main thrust of Essay Eight Part Two, which questions the DM-equation of such forces with 'contradictions'.

13/06/07: The re-write of Essay Eight Part One is now complete; it is just short of 5% longer.

10/06/07: I am in the process of re-writing Essay Eight Part One, since it seems to be among the most visited at this site. The changes are being posted as they are made.

I have also introduced numerous large and small changes to the Basic Introductory Essay, and have corrected a few errors, adding some new material.

I have also announced there that over the summer I will be writing an "Anti-Dialectics For Dummies" Essay for those comrades who still find that Basic guide too difficult, or too long!

It will be a précis of that Essay, but mercifully far shorter and expressed in nothing but down-to-earth language!

03/06/07: The re-write of Essay Nine Part Two is now complete; I have added new material, corrected a few errors, mended several links and made the argument a little clearer. It is now over 10% longer.

02/06/07: I am in the process of re-writing Essay Nine Part Two, correcting a few errors, clarifying the argument and adding new material. The changes are being posted as they are made.

May 2007

30/05/07: Because of its importance to my whole case against this 'theory', I have re-written large sections of Note 67 of Essay Eight Part Two, which Note is itself already over 20,000 words long.

I have also re-jigged the parts I have planned to include in Essay Twelve. Part One should be ready before the end of June.

27/05/07: I have re-written Essay Eleven Part Two, again (twice this month!) to correct a few errors, add new material and make the argument clearer. It is now about 5% longer.

24/05/07: The re-write of Essay Two is now complete; I have corrected a few errors, made numerous large and  small changes, added new material, and have made the argument clearer. It is now well over 10% longer.

23/05/07: A few days ago I published an extra Essay that refutes several wild claims made about me here. Today, I add these comments to round up the results of the blood bath at LibCom.

20/05/07: In view of the fact that Essay Two is now the most popular Essay published at this site (judging by the number of hits it is receiving), I am in the process of re-writing it, adding new material.

The changes are being posted as they are made.

17/05/07: I am publishing an extra Essay that refutes several wild claims made about me here.

16/05/07: Essay One has just be re-written to make its argument clearer, and to add new material; it is now about 10% longer.

07/05/07: I have just completed a minor re-write of Essay Eleven Part Two, correcting several errors and making numerous small changes. I have also added some new material; it is now about 5% longer.

04/05/07: The re-write of Essay Four has been completed; it is now about 10% longer. Most of the changes have been made to the endnotes.

01/05/07: I am in the process of re-writing large sections of Essay Four, adding new material, removing errors and clarifying the argument. The changes are being posted as they are made.

The next Essay to be published will be Essay Twelve Part One. This Essay constitutes the central hub around which all my ideas revolve. It should be ready sometime in June.

A summary of its main arguments can be found here.

Yesterday, I received an important book: Neuroscience And Philosophy, by Maxwell Bennett, Daniel Dennett, Peter Hacker and John Searle (Columbia University Press, 2007). It contains Dennett and Searle's criticisms of Bennett and Hacker's equally important book Philosophical Foundations Of Neuroscience (Blackwell, 2003 -- reviewed here), and their responses.

Anyone who wants a sneak preview of the line I will be taking (in a later Essay), when I criticise the theory of mind put about by dialecticians, should read both books, especially pages 127-62 of the former.

A recording of the debate that forms the content much of this book can be downloaded as a .wav file here.

A copy of parts of the second of these two books can be found on-line, at Google Books; I'd post a link but the link is too long! It can easily be found by Googling the title: Philosophical Foundations Of Neuroscience -- it's the first item in the list.

I also received a copy of The Philosophy Of Dialectical Materialism (Progress Publishers 1984) by I Yurkovets (one of the very few books in English on this 'theory' that I have not yet consulted!).

The reason I mention this is that this book is the only one I have so far read that actually tries to say what a "quality" is (as this term features in Engels's First 'Law').

Needless to say that attempt is unsuccessful (for reasons I will outline in Essay Seven at a later date); but Yurkovets is to be congratulated for at least trying to say what this obscure term means (when, to my knowledge, no other dialectician has even tried to do so -- which omission then allows them to see changes in quantity leading to changes in quality anywhere they please, and to ignore the many cases where this 'Law' does not work).

April 2007

22/04/07: I have just finished a re-write of Essay Nine Part Two to correct several minor errors and add new material. It is now nearly 10% longer.

15/04/07: At last I have now published Essay Nine Part Two!

All 51,500 words of it!

This addresses concerns expressed even by those who agree with my criticism of DM: that I partly blame this theory for the long-term failure of Dialectical Marxism.

Anyone who reads this Essay, but who still disagrees with me, will see that I have at least mounted a pretty solid case for the prosecution. It contains some of my most original ideas, and, I think, tackles a highly neglected area of our tradition.

11/04/07: In view of the fact that Essay Two has suddenly become very popular (judging by the hits it is receiving), I have re-written it to eliminate its few remaining errors.

I am well on the way to finishing Essay Nine Part Two; with luck I should have it posted before the end of April.

09/04/07: The latest re-write of Essay Five has just been completed; it is now about 5% longer.

05/04/07: I have just received a copy of Ira Gollobin's book Dialectical Materialism, Its Laws, Categories, And Practice (Petras Press, 1986). I have been trying to obtain a copy for years, since I was told it was the best book available on this 'theory'.

My initial response can be found here.

04/04/07: I am in the process of re-writing Essay Five (posting the changes as they are being made), since it appears to be one of the most popular Essays at this site.

Essay Nine Part Two will be published in the next week or so, certainly before the end of April.

March 2007

28/03/07: I have just finished re-writing Essay Three Part Two. It is now about 10% longer.

24/03/07: Essay Six has just been re-written; I have made numerous small changes, and added some new material. It is now about 5% longer, and, I hope, a little clearer.

19/03/07: I have just re-written Essay Eight Part One, making numerous minor changes to remove errors and improve the clarity of the argument.

17/03/07: I have just published a reply to an article John Molyneux has posted at his blog, here.

17/03/07: A new section has just been added -- Anti-Dialectical Dialogues.

15/03/07: Right, I am back in action, having moved successfully. In the meantime I have completely re-written Essay Three Part One, and Essay Seven, to correct a several errors, make the argument clearer and add new material. They are both about 10% longer.

Essay Nine Part Two should be ready in the next month or so.

February 2007

13/02/07: The re-write of Essay Eleven Part One has just been finished. It is now about 10% longer, and, I hope, much clearer.

This will probably be the last up-date I will be able to post for the next month or so, since I have to leave the temporary accommodation I am presently in, and move to a new flat.

11/02/07: I have updated and corrected the bibliographies of all the Essays so far published, and have re-written large parts of the Basic Introductory Guide.

Because of serious but temporary personal problems, there will be very few updates posted here over the next month or so.

In fact, the publication of Essay Nine Part Two, already heavily delayed, will have to be postponed until late April at the earliest.

08/02/07: An ally of this site has just posted an entertaining anti-dialectical dialogue (aimed at exposing just how useless DM is when applied to the class struggle), which I have copied to here. Apparently, there are more of these to follow.

05/02/07: More fun and games with this dialectical motor-mouth, here.

04/02/07: I have written another couple of caustic responses to an ill-informed critic of my ideas, here and here.

I am also in the process of re-writing Essay Eleven Part One, posting the changes as they are being made.

January 2007

30/01/07: I am now working flat out on Essay Nine Part Two, which should be ready to publish in about 3 weeks.

27/01/07: I have just finished the re-write of Essay Five (on the alleged contradictory nature of motion); it is about 5% longer, and is, I hope, a little clearer

Also, check out the discussion of my ideas at Lenin's Tomb -- but particularly this. Note the common element with other irrational responses to my Essays noted here: a crippling incapacity to produce a single sound argument.

21/01/07: The re-write of Essay Eight Part Two is now complete; it is about 5% longer.

19/01/07: I am in the process of re-writing Essay Eight Part Two, clarifying and strengthening the argument, smoothing a few rough edges over, and correcting a handful of errors. I am posting the changes as they are being made.

17/01/07I have just re-designed and re-written the Basic Introductory Essay, adding new material mostly to the section on Practice.

15/01/07: I am now working on Essay Nine Part Two, which should be ready to post in the next three to four weeks.

I will explain the reason for the long delay when it is published.

12/01/07: As you can see, I have completely re-designed the opening page.  Let me know what you think....

09/01/07: The re-write of Essay Eight Part One has just been completed; with the new material added, it is now about 5% longer.

07/01/07: I am in the process of re-writing Essay Eight Part One, posting the changes as they are being made.

The re-write of Essay Eleven Part One has just been completed; with the new material added, it is now also about 5% longer.

03/01/07 I have just received Norman Levine's book "Divergent Paths. Hegel In Marxism And Engelsism. Volume One: The Hegelian Foundations Of Marx's Method" (Lexington Books, 2006), a work that confirms some of the conclusions I drew in Essay Nine Part One. However, it is too early to say if this book underlines or conflicts with any of the other points I made. More on this later.

03/01/07: I attempted to advertise my site at the (US) Communist League's Forum, which is an avowedly 'working class' party (??), but one leather-necked comrade ("Miles") soon booted me out. Visitors to my site should check; this is the very same comrade (at RevLeft) who took a brief glance at the first Essay I posted (all 20,000+ words of it), and within minutes of it being published, decided he was not "impressed" (and has refused to read any more since -- but he still pontificates about my ideas).

He also alleged I was a Union "Bureaucrat" (or, indeed, a 'Kapo for the bosses'), even though he knew absolutely nothing about me. A truly fine comrade.

[I am in fact a union rep, unpaid.]

Since then he has retreated into a familiar sectarian sulk, and has now banned me from this avowedly 'working class' Forum, clearly because I (a working class Marxist) am attacking a theory invented by non-workers!

What are DM-fans like him afraid of?

Nevertheless, I have now told this 'lover of mysticism' that since my Essays will long outlast him, I will do him the very great honour of immortalising his crass unreasonableness at my site, precisely here.

[I probably receive more hits in a week than this 'party' of the international proletariat has total members: i.e., about 100.

I'd post a link to that site, but my IP address has been banned, so I can't even find out if they have deleted the few posts I managed to sneak in before this example of non-proletarian freedom of expression was actioned, and I became verboten.]

In a subsequent e-mail exchange, this comrade used a surfeit of scatological terms to malign my good self, but was still unable to defend his mystical beliefs.

So, he is a bog-standard DM-clone (excuse the pun).

01/01/07:  In the new section, I have re-published part of an article that debunks the myth that Hegel's method can be summed-up by the neat triad: 'Thesis, Antithesis, Synthesis'. The original article is, would you believe, nearly fifty years old, but the 'news' it contains has yet to reach most dialectical eyes.

I have also re-written the last 2/3rds of Essay Sixteen Part Nine, and am in the process of re-writing Essay Eleven Part One, posting the changes as they are being made.

December 2006

31/12/06: I have re-written most of the Basic Introduction Essay, adding new material, as well as Essay One.

26/12/06: I have added a new section where I plan to post other material relevant to the aims of this site. The first item published is the Introduction to Glenn Magee's book Hegel and the Hermetic Tradition (Cornell University Press, 2001), copied from here under the Creative Commons Licence.

[This copy unfortunately omits all the footnotes from the original; I will try to add these at a later date.]

The thesis of Magee's book is central to the aims of Essay Fourteen (summary here), where I show that dialecticians have imported into Marxism a set of ancient mystical ideas, which can be found throughout history in the thought of countless ruling-class thinkers from across the globe, in all known Modes of Production.

24/12/06: I have just finished re-writing large parts of Essay Four. I have corrected several errors, mended broken links, and added new material.

22/12/06: Another Dialectical Mystic has made a pig's ear of an attempt to take on the ideas advanced at this site. Read my response here.

21/12/06: I have now finished the partial re-write of Essay Seven (the changes are mainly here and here); it is now about 5% longer.

I have also altered the projected Essays list below.

19/12/06: I am in the process of re-writing several sections of Essay Seven to remove errors and add new material.

17/12/06: The re-write of Essay Sixteen has now been completed; the last part to be re-cast was Essay Sixteen Parts Seven and Fourteen, here.

Essay Sixteen is a summary of all the main ideas presented at this site; it has taken so long to re-write since it is now over 70,000 words in length. It has thus been broken down into more manageable sections here.

16/12/06: I have just re-written an important sub-section of Essay Three Part One, here.

16/12/06: I have now finished the re-write of Essay Eleven Part Two, correcting several errors and clarifying the argument. It is now nearly 25% longer.

09/12/06: I have just re-written Essay Sixteen Part Nine again, in order to add new material, remove errors, and make the argument more perspicuous.

01/12/06: I am in the process of re-writing Essay Eleven Part Two, posting the changes as they are being made.

November 2006

29/11/06: The next Essay to be posted will be Nine Part Two, sometime in January 2007.

26/11/06: Essay Sixteen Part Twelve has just be re-written; it is posted here.

25/11/06: Essay Sixteen Parts Four, Five and Six, Essay Sixteen Part Eleven, and Essay Sixteen Part Eight, have just been re-written, here, here, and here.

22/11/06: I am in the process of re-writing Essay Sixteen, which is a Summary of the main ideas presented at this site -- it is in fact the Essay new-comers might want to read after finishing the Absolute Beginners Essay --, posting the revisions as they are being made. Today, I completed the re-write of the Summary to Essays Two, Three and Ten.

[I have broken Essay Sixteen up into smaller sections since it is now over 63,000 words long!]

21/11/06: Essay One has just been re-written.

20/11/06: I have managed to resolve the serious difficulties I encountered over making the argument of Essay Eleven Part Two comprehensible; hence, it has now been published here.

15/11/06: I have just re-written Essay Nine Part One, making numerous small changes, correcting minor errors and adding some new material. It is now about 5% longer.

14/11/06: Essay Sixteen Part Nine has been re-written -- this is itself a summary of both halves of Essay Nine, and intended for those who want a much shorter guide to my ideas.

13/11/06: I have now finished re-writing Essay Eleven Part One, to remove several minor errors, make its argument clearer and add new material. It is now approximately 10% longer.

11/11/06: I have just re-written Essay Sixteen Part 12, which is itself a summary of Essay Twelve. This is because Essay Twelve contains ideas around which everything I argue here revolves, and until it is published next year sometime this is the only access there is to those key ideas.

I have thus made the argument clearer, and removed some material that has now been transferred to Essay Ten Part Two.

Finally, I am having difficulty making sections of Essay Eleven Part Two clear enough to publish. This means that this Essay will not be posted until well into December.

07/11/06: I am re-writing large sections of Essay Eleven Part One in order to make its argument clearer, posting the changes as they are being made.

06/11/06: Just installed a new card, so Essay Eleven Part Two is back on track, if slightly delayed. Should be posted in the next week or so.

05/11/06: The Graphics card on my computer is playing up again, and needs replacing. This will delay the publication of Essay Eleven Part Two a few weeks.

01/11/06: I have just updated the projected Essay list, below, and made small changes to the Absolute Beginners' Guide.

October 2006

29/10/06: I hope to publish Essay Eleven Part Two in the next week or so.

28/10/06: I have just posted an article by Jean van Heijenoort (a former leading Trotskyist, and one of Trotsky's bodyguards) in the new section of essays by other anti-dialecticians, entitled: 'Friedrich Engels And Mathematics'.

28/10/06: Ok, I have just posted Essay Eleven Part One.

This now brings the work posted here close to the three quarters of a million word mark.

27/10/06: I have managed to stabilise the card, so I should be able to post this Essay by Saturday 28/10/06, possibly earlier.

25/10/06: The graphics card on my computer is playing up, so the next Essay (Eleven Part One) will be delayed another week or so.

22/10/06: Anyone interested in finding ready confirmation of my claim that this theory nukes the brain cells of anyone it colonises, rendering them incapable of defending this Dialectical Disease, all the while making them one and all studiously unreasonable, should check out these links, but especially this one.

21/10/06: I have added a new section where I plan to post on-line articles written by other anti-dialecticians. Max Eastman's 1935 article 'Marxism: Science or Philosophy?' is the first to appear.

Readers should not assume I agree with everything these Essays contain

20/10/06: Essay Eleven Part One will be posted in the next week or so, followed by Part Two a month later. Essay Nine Part Two will be published sometime around Xmas or the New Year.

The Absolute Beginners' Essay has been partially re-written again (!).

16/10/06: I have again re-written large sections of Note 67 of Essay Eight since I was not happy with its wording.

13/10/06: I have just received a copy of 'Analytical And Dialectical Marxism' by Ian Hunt, a major contribution to this topic, and in my opinion easily the best book on this subject to appear to date. My initial thoughts can be found here. A more detailed critique will follow later.

11/10/06: The 'Absolute Beginners' Essay has just been re-written to make its argument clearer, and to add new material. It is now about 25% longer.

11/10/06: I have now re-written Note 67 of Essay Eight Part Two (which deals with an article on 'dialectical contradictions' written by James Lawler) -- to make its argument clearer, and to remove several mistakes.

This might not seem worth mentioning except for the fact that this Note is fast approaching 20,000 words in length! I might repost it as a separate Essay, alongside this.

06/10/06: Essay Three Part Two has now been completely re-written to make the argument clearer, and to rid it of a few of its stylistic monstrosities. It is approximately 20% longer.

September 2006

30/09/06: I have added a page full of links to a couple of discussion boards where I have tried to 'debate' with dialectical mystics.

Anyone who wants an object lesson in how unreasonable this Hermetic theory has rendered these comrades should check them out.

27/09/06: I am now re-writing Essay Three Part Two, and posting the changes as they are being made.

27/09/06: The re-write of Essay Two is now complete; it is now about 10% longer. I have added a criticism of and article on dialectics authored a few years ago by Sean Sayers.

22/09/06: I have made significant additions to Essay Eight Part Two, Note 67, partly in response to the ramblings of yet another lost dialectical soul.

16/09/06: I have just finished re-writing Essay Six; it is now approximately 20% longer.

07/09/06: I have just finished re-writing Essay Seven (it is now about 15% longer).

I am presently re-formatting Essay Eleven Part Two (which is about DM-Wholism); it should be available in the early Autumn, all being well.

I shelved my attempt to post Essay Eleven Part One, since it is not yet in a fit state to publish.

August 2006

August Latest -- 29/08/06: As promised, I have just published (here) a highly simplified Essay, briefly outlining some of my main objections to this Hermetic 'theory'.

12/08/06: I have just published an Additional Essay on Wittgenstein and Marxism, here. This is not meant to be an in-depth study, it is just aimed at countering the idea that Wittgenstein was a 'conservative', and a thoroughly 'bourgeois' Philosopher.

25/08/06: I have just posted a corrected version of this Essay.

26/08/06: A few months ago, I posted a rather caustic response to an 'Autodidact'. This individual has deigned to criticise the above Essay -- or, more accurately, simply bad-mouthed me in his usual fashion.

Anyone interested can find my caustic reply here, along with a belated response to one of his 'logically-challenged' side-kicks.

07/06/08/: The introductory Essay has just been re-written. I will be posting an additional Essay on Wittgenstein and the left in a day or so.

01/08/06: I have just published Essay Nine Part One.

July 2006

27/07/06: I have just learnt of the death of Ted Grant. Although I had many political differences with him, he was a genuine revolutionary and an implacable enemy of the ruling-class. Not that he needs my praise!

His death and that of Tony Cliff a few years earlier are serious blows to our movement. They will both be sorely missed.

24/07/06: I have just finished re-writing Essay Five, adding new material -- it is now nearly 20% longer. I have also added new material to Essays Three Part One and Eight Part Two.

Essay Nine Part One will be posted in a few days time; I am just putting the finishing touches to it.

15/07/06: I have just completed a thorough re-write of Essay Three Part One to make the argument much clearer, as well as add some new material. It is now about 10% longer.

05/07/06: The next addition (Essay Nine Part One) will be published in fortnight or so.

01/07/06: I have now posted the second half of my comments on James Lawler's Essay, here. This addition to Essay Eight Part Two is itself over 17,000 words long, which I hope will explain the delay!

June 2006

26/06/06: I have now published the first half of my comments on James Lawler's Essay, here. The second half will appear later this week.

25/06/06: As noted below, I am working on a response to Lawler (1982), but in the meantime, I have added a few extra comments on his article here.

24/06/06: I have just re-written Essay Four, adding about 15% new material.

19/06/06: I am in the process of writing an additional section to Essay Eight Part Two, in response to the best defence I have read of the idea that there are such things as 'dialectical contradictions' (i.e., James Lawler's 'Hegel on Logical and Dialectical Contradictions' in Marquit et al (1982)), which will in fact take the line I adopted here, that James's arguments are so full of logical errors as to make them worthless. This will be published sometime in the next two weeks, here.

I have also finished re-writing Essay Three Part One; it seemed to me to be rather unclear, and since it is a key Essay in setting up the main argument in Essay Twelve, it needed a complete re-write.

07/06/06: Essay Eight Part Two has just been posted. It rounds-off my critique of the mystical idea that 'dialectical contradictions' can be modelled by forces in nature and society.

However, visitors might like to check-out this discussion board to see just how desperate some dialecticians have become in their failed bid to reply to my ideas.

I have also come across this sad attempt to respond to an additional Essay of mine (about a self-styled 'autodidact'), so I have re-written it with a suitably caustic ending.

Essay Nine Part One will be posted in late June or early July, all being well.

May 2006

25/06/06: Several readers new to Marxism and/or Philosophy have found some of my Essays rather difficult. I intend to publish absolute beginners guides to all my ideas over the next few months.

12/05/06: I have just received a copy of Bukharin's 'Philosophical Arabesques' (Monthly Review Press, 2005). Based on initial reading, it is easily the best summary of Dialectical Marxism yet produced by a genuine revolutionary (other than that written by John Rees, the main target of this site -- even if both still fail to make their case, and by a wide margin).

Several of the Essays posted here will need to be updated because of Bukharin's book; indeed, I might have to devote an entire Essay to it.

However, in view of the circumstances surrounding its writing, and the fate of its author, criticism of this remarkable work will not be at all easy; indeed, it will leave a bitter taste in my mouth.

Essay Four has been re-written with much new material added, in response to this.

I am in the process of re-writing Essay Three, Part Two, since I am not happy with its barbaric style. Regular updates to it have been posted recently; more to follow.

April 2006

Essay Eight Part One has just been posted. It can be accessed here.

I have also up-dated the list of projected Essays I intend to publish over the next year or so.

March 25 2006

A short Essay in response to an "Autodidact"

February 2006

A summary of my ideas so far has been posted as Essay Sixteen, which includes a précis of material not yet published.

Comrades will find an outline of the new material in Essay Sixteen itself, here: Eight, Nine, Ten, Eleven, Twelve, Thirteen and Fourteen.

Because of its length, Essay Sixteen has been broken up into more manageable sections here.

Visitors need to remember that in these summaries much of the supporting detail has been omitted; full substantiation can be found in the relevant Essays, when they are published.

Essay Sixteen is not just a cut-and-paste job; it contains new material.

Comrades who merely want an overview of my objections to this pernicious doctrine are therefore encouraged to read it, too. Shortcuts to relevant parts of Essay Sixteen have been added below each Essay link at the main site.

In addition, all of the previous Essays have been re-written to eliminate errors, add new material, and make my arguments clearer. This process will continue indefinitely.