Mike, please elaborate on the connection to dialectics and Hegel. I
wouldn't have thought one needed Hegel to make the point you are making.
In fact, I have undestood Engels as more, not less, Hegelian (how high a
quality I don't know) than Marx. Thanks, Paul
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Paul Zarembka, supporting the RESEARCH IN POLITICAL ECONOMY Web site at
http://ourworld.compuserve.com/homepages/PZarembka, and using OS/2 Warp.
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On Tue, 4 Mar 1997, Michael_A._Lebowitz wrote:
> Frankly, I don't think this is separate, though, from the criterion of
> logical coherence and theoretical elegance. On these questions at least, I
> do view Engels as lower than Marx. A good example is Engels' article on
> Marx's Contribution where Engels argues with respect to the logical and
> historical methods that the logical is "nothing else but the historical
> method, only divested of its historical form and disturbing fortuities. The
> chain of thought must begin with the same thing with which this history
> begins and its further course will be nothing else but the reflection of the
> historical course in abstract and theoretically consistent form." Compare
> that to Marx's Introduction to the Grundrisse (and for that matter to his
> criticism of Proudhon and his "historical order" in the Poverty of
> Philosophy. What is clear is that Engels did not understand the concept of
> an organic system and how one grasps that (which Marx insists is not the
> historical order), which suggests further that he didn't understand
> dialectics and Hegel--- or at least, that his understanding of these was
> lower than Marx's, far lower. Incidentally, this is one of those very areas
> where the Soviet editors obfuscate the differences between Engels and Marx--
> probably not understanding dialectics and Hegel either.