Dance of the Dialectic: STEPS IN MARX'S METHOD

If one wants to understand the Marxian application of the dialectic, look no further. Within the book is a through explanation of the philosophy of internal relationships and the process of abstraction. They are the linchpins for correct dialectical thinking from a Marxian perspective, and most probably from any dialectical prespective.I personally do not agree with the application of the dialectic for I do not fully accept the process of change the dialectic demands in order to achieve its goals. But if one does not understand the dialectic, you are not alone, but this book will go a long to way to help explain it. Another useful book is "Total Freedom" by Chris Sciabarra. In that book, the author has a slightly different take and application of the dialectic, but the two will paint a very large picture of the dialectic.

When I first bought this book I was ready to break the authors teeth by the time I got to the end of the first chapter and gave up reading it midway of the second. One part of the problem was that Ollman didn't always write too clearly and the other part was that what he was saying just didn't make any sense. I'm no Marxian newbie , I'd read most of the great man's works including volumes 1 , 2 and 3 of Capital as well as most of Engels works so it wasn't that I was unfamiliar with the Marxian dialectic, it's just that trying to identify exactly what he was writing about Marx' approach was like trying to nail jello to a wall. I'd also read other works on the dialectic by a number of authors including Evald Ilyenkov and Henri Lefebvre and found them intelligible enough, unlike Ollman. However I came across the books of a student/disciple of Ollman's named Paul Paolucci. Paolucci has written two fairly comprehensible books largely based on Ollman's work;('Marx's Scientific Dialectics' and 'Marx and the Politics of Abstraction'). Because of this background reading I was able to return to Ollman and continue where I'd left off.The book itself isn't really five easy steps to understanding Marx's dialecitical approach as it's made out to be. It is in fact composed of a number of essays on Marx's approach,each with a different focus but still fairly independent and stand alone from the others. The most important chapter of the book is chapter five where Ollman gives an overview of his theory of 'internal relations' and the main three types (and their subtypes or categories) of abstraction. Unlike some of the other chapters this one is reasonably clear and I believe it should have been the first chapter of the book. I certainly recommend it to be read first.I have to say that Ollman's book is interesting , but it's not an accurate representation of Marx's dialectic. I believe that Marx would object that Ollman doesn't sufficiently distinguish between a unity of opposites and an identity of opposites, i.e. The working class and the capitalist class form a unity of opposites but they are not an identity of opposites, workers aren't capitalists and capitalists aren't workers ,and most importantly social being and essence are a unity but definitely not an identity,at least not for the Marx and Engels I read. I think that it's because of this lack of distinction between unity and identity that at times Ollman's book reads more like Freud's 'Interpretation of Dreams' , where everything is everything else, a jumble of condensed and displaced images. Carol C Gould has written a book on 'internal relations' that I believe is much closer to Marx's approach ('Marx's Social Ontology'). Unlike Ollman Gould doesn't reduce individuals to 'relations' but , like Marx , makes the point that real individuals make history although not in conditions of their own choosing. And yes these real individuals are internally related to the creation and recreation of capitalism, and are changed as they themselves change these relations, but they are still real individuals and cannot be reduced to relations.Ollman gives the impression that he's describing Marx as using or choosing abstractions on the basis of their pragmatic utility as descriptions of the historical and systemic nature of capitalism's movement. That in effect Marx was using them as social constructs that existed in his head rather than being reflections and approximations of reality. That Marx was practicing some form of social constructivism and wasn't actually dealing with things that were solid and had edges but only similarities and differences.There is another school of 'internal relations' that argues that individuals are only relations of identity and difference known as Structuralism. It is ironic that Ollman claims to disagree with Althusser but end up supporting his argument that individuals are signs or relations of identity and difference. If it is the case that individuals are relations and nothing else then how can they ever know and control that which they are only ever a part ?. Althusser would argue that only a small section of humanity,the communist party leadership, armed with Marx's insights into historical and dialectical materialism would be able to truly understand society. If one follows Ollman's internal relations theory to its conclusion then surely we end up with a structuralism and a denial of the possibility of humanity being able to understand and decide upon it's society.My recommendation to anyone unfamiliar with Marx's dialectic is to read Engels works 'The Dialectics of Nature' or better still 'Anti- Duhring' before reading Ollman's book. Marx read the whole of Anti-Duhring and even contributed a chapter to it so it does represent his understanding of his materialist dialectic.Is Ollman worth reading ?.....the reader is likely to go away with a very hazy and confused understanding of Marx's dialectical method. For example after reading this book would the reader be able to appreciate and understand Marx's logic of 'Capital'. Would they have an understanding of the 'ascent from the abstract to the concrete' as Marx demonstrates from his discussions starting with the commodity form and leading through areas like value and exchange etc. And how did Marx come to identify the commodity as the basic cell of Capital ?. Does Ollman make any of this clear ?. Absolutely not. Instead he repeats a mantra about 3 main types abstractions which Marx would have had to carry out as a matter of course if dealing with a historically developing social whole with qualitively distinct levels and stages. I'm sure Marx would agree he uses these abstractions but didn't he use them as a method.Marx would only have used them in an implicit way as a matter of course. In short what Ollman is describing at most is a byproduct of Marx's approach but not his method. What Ollman fails to do is to get to the essential story behind these abstractions. He doesn't bring them together because he can't. And he can't because Marx, despite Ollman's claim, simply didn't believe that every part of the capitalist mode of production or any organically developing whole contains every other part. This is a very Hegelian approach (which may indeed be correct given what we know about modern Quantum physics)but not the dialectical view of Marx and Engels . For Hegel everything was implicit in everything because the development that he described was teleological. It's end was implicit within it. But this isn't Marx's dialect. Marx nor Engels didn't accept the absolute idea or that the dialectic could be thought of as having an end. In fact Engels takes Hegel to tas for this in Anti Duhring and in 'Socialism: Utopian and Scientific'.What Ollman has provided isn't a method or even an approach but a list of abstractions that Marx would have used. So to answer the question I asked about whether Ollman is wrth reading I would say it depends on what you're looking for. I was looking for the 'logic of Capital' and didn't find it in Ollman. So not for me. Instead I found it in Evald Ilyenkov's books to some extent but his books are so badly translated that at times he seems impossible to understand. Still we always have Engels to fall back on.

I enjoyed Dance of the Dialectic and did a presentation on it in my Marxism class. It goes in-depth into how Marx thinks, how he uses terminalogy, how he comes up with his different terms, and explains the basis behind how Marx comes up with his theories using the dialectic. I was asked a question during my presentation of whether this was Ollman's interpretation of Marx dialectic or basically Ollman's own dialectic. The terminalogy and phrases Ollman uses to define the different characteristics of Marx's dialectic (such as 'thought concrete') I have not found in Marx's writing, leading me to believe Ollman invented some of these terms that Marx would have never used. Although it is what these terms represent that is important, it can, I suppose, also be argued that the meaning behind these terms he uses are not really what Marx conciously meant to use. These could be Ollman's understandings and assumptions of how Marx used the dialectic. Perhaps he is putting words into Marx's mouth by categorizing all the different steps of Marx's dialectic (there are 7 steps of 'level of generality' alone), which Marx may have never consciously known he was doing. I claim to be no expert on Marx, but I do have some knowledge of his writings and the history of him. I have not found much literature on Marx's dialectic compared to all the other stuff written about Marx, and this book is a great way to see inside Marx and Marx's thought process. Ollman offers an organized and very interesting analysis of Marx's thought process. I would encourage those interested in reading about Marx's method of using the Dialectic to buy this book.

Prolegomenon to a Marxist Theory of the Japanese StateBy Bertell OllmanI.On June 5, l999, a Junior High School principal in Osaka was stabbed and seriously injured by a member of the Yakuza (Japan's Mafia), because of his refusal to have the Hinomaru (Rising Sun flag) raised and the Kimigayo ("Let the Emperor Rule Forever" anthem) sung at a graduation ceremony. In February of the same year, another principal of a high school near Hiroshima committed suicide under conflicting pressures from the Ministry of Education, which ordered him to use the flag and the song at graduation, and his own teachers, who urged him not to. Showing such respect for the flag and the anthem was made mandatory in schools in l989, but only seriously enforced by various administrative penalties in the last couple years. What is going on here? And why has what seems like a minor cultural dispute become a major political controversy, with such dire consequences for some of the participants?It is an odd controversy, for while those who oppose the compulsory use of the flag and anthem have shown no hesitation in giving their reasons—chief of which is these symbols' close association with Japan's imperialistic and militaristic practises before l945—the Government, though responding to most criticisms, has been strangely silent about what has led them to precipitate this crisis in the first place. What did they hope to achieve? Why is it so important to them? And why have they acted now?