Dance of the Dialectic: Steps in Marx's MethodBertell Ollman has been hailed as "this country's leading authority on dialectics and Marx's method" by Paul Sweezy, the editor of Monthly Review and dean of America's Marx scholars. In this book Ollman offers a thorough analysis of Marx's use of dialectical method. Marx made extremely creative use of dialectical method to analyze the origins, operation, and direction of capitalism. Unfortunately, his promised book on method was never written, so that readers wishing to understand and evaluate Marx's theories, or to revise or use them, have had to proceed without a clear grasp of the dialectic in which the theories are framed. The result has been more disagreement over "what Marx really meant" than over the writings of any other major thinker. In putting Marx's philosophy of internal relations and his use of the process of abstraction--two little-studied aspects of dialectics--at the center of this account, Ollman provides a version of Marx's method that is at once systematic, scholarly, clear and eminently useful. Ollman not only sheds important new light on what Marx really meant in his varied theoretical pronouncements, but in carefully laying out the steps in Marx's method makes it possible for a reader to put the dialectic to work in his or her own research. He also convincingly argues the case for why social scientists and humanists as well as philosophers should want to do so. |
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abstractions of extension alienation analysis appear aspects become Bhaskar boundaries bourgeois bureaucrats capi capitalist capitalist mode capitalist society cetera change and interaction class society class struggle communism contradictions Critical Realism Dietzgen distinctive economic elements emperor epistemology example existence exposition F. H. Bradley factor focus forms functions future grasp Hegel human identity ideology important internal relations Japan Japanese labor major Marx and Engels Marx says Marx's abstractions Marx's concepts Marx's method Marx's writings Marxism matter Maximilien Rubel means of production metamorphosis mode of production movement nature occurs ontology organic particular philosophy of internal political possible preconditions and results present problem process of abstraction qualities reality refers relations of production role Roy Bhaskar ruling class sense simply social relations structure surplus-value Systematic Dialectics theory things thinkers thinking tion treat uncovered understanding units vantage point wage-labor whole workers Yakuza