From: Jurriaan Bendien (adsl675281@TISCALI.NL)
Date: Fri Jan 18 2008 - 02:03:03 EST
I can understand it if Marxists do not want to discuss this. As I have said, my experience with them is that if their theory gets into difficulty, they either start talking about "levels of abstraction" or they start talking about someting completely different. You can always find a "level of abstraction" where your theorem is valid, because in logic it is possible for almost all propositions to identify some conditions under which they will be true propositions. Hegel already knew this - he mentions "You can find a reason for anything". An exception is self-referential paradoxes where a statement is false if it is true, or true if it is false. But obviously all this is not the same thing as theorising a object in such a way that that the theory can explain the object without inconsistency. Marxist doctrine proceeds on the basis that we already know the doctrine is true, and the only thing we need to do is to explain why it is true. But that is a rationalisation procedure which I do not accept. You have to explain why a proposition is true, in order to support belief in its truth, and if you cannot do so, there is no reason for believing it is true at all. The argument about unproductive labour contain flagrant contradictions so big you could a truck through them. I have pointed out a few. It may be possible to solve them, but they are not solved by talking about something else, rather than acknowledge the problems with the argument. Jurriaan
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