When I was first apprised of this web site, I read a few chapters, but did
not make it to the text quoted  My initial impression was that the author
was a victim of an extremely sectarian milieu and had to go through quite
an ordeal digging herself out of it.  The marks of this sectarianism are
all over the web site including its statement of purpose.

Furthermore, the problem in Marxism can't be the heritage of Hegel, as in
fact the propagandists of diamat knew little of Hegel.  Presumably here we
are talking about the dialectics of nature lifted from Hegel's
naturphilosophie, and specifically the concept of contradiction as applied
to nature.  As I've argued for well over a decade, there's a lot of sloppy
thinking in this department.

I was curious as to how one would handle the wave-particle duality, but
Rosa's treatment of the problem is not 100% clear to me, though I
understand the paradox she presents.  In classical dialectical terms, the
issue would be the relation between subjective and objective dialectics.

From Engels on, their immediate unity has been assumed in most standard
presentations.  Soviet philosophers debated these issues among themselves
starting in the 1950s and divided into opposing schools.  These debates
were not incorporated into popular textbooks, but some of the embarrassing
arguments of the Stalin era disappeared.  (You can get a flavor of the
latter from John Somerville's horrid book on the subject.)  By the '60s,
whatever their differences, most Soviet philosophers would agree that
contradictions must be removed from scientific theories.

The Trotskyist movement was just as bad, perhaps even worse, and in party
contexts, never improved at all, though various Trotskyist intellectuals
functioning in academia were in a position to develop more intelligent
ideas.  But there is a submerged tendency of criticism as well.  In an
obscure document written by CLR James at the time of the 1940 split, James
stated that Trotsky did more damage to the dialectic in 10 weeks than
Eastman et al had done in 10 years.  Circa 1943, Jean van Heijenoort argued
pseudonymously with Novack and others about the conflation of subjective
and objective dialectics.

There is of course a huge segment of the Marxist tradition that is Hegelian
while abjuring the dialectics of nature, i.e. standard diamat.  And there
are many who have used the term 'dialectical materialism', e.g. James and
Horkheimer, who meant nothing at all related to standard diamat.

It is not clear from the following passage how physicists have actually
removed the contradictions in quantum mechanics, or for that matter,
between quantum theory and relativity.  And how has the principle of
complementarity been resolved?

At 01:27 PM 3/1/2006 +0000, Rosa Lichtenstein wrote:
>For example, DM-theorists generally argue that the wave-particle duality
>of light confirms the thesis that nature is fundamentally dialectical; in
>this case, light is supposed to be a UO of wave and particle. Precisely
>how they are a unity (i.e., how it could be true that matter is
>fundamentally particulate and fundamentally non-particulate all at once)
>is of course left eminently obscure -- and how this helps account for the
>material world is even less perspicuous. This alleged UO does nothing to
>explain change --
>unless we are supposed to accept the idea that light being a particle
>changes it into a wave, and vice versa. But what is the point of that?
>What role does this particular 'contradiction' play in either DM or
>Physics? At best it seems to be merely ornamental.
>
>[UO = Unity of Opposites.]
>
>Now, if we put to one side the 'solution' to this puzzle offered by, say,
>Superstring Theory, there are still Physicists -- with, it seems, a more
>robust commitment to scientific realism than the average dialectician
>displays -- who believe that this 'paradox' can be resolved within a
>realist picture of nature. Whether they are correct or not need not detain
>us since DM-theorists (if consistent) ought to advise these rather rash
>realists not to bother trying to solve this riddle. This is because
>dialectics provides an a priori solution to it: since nature is
>fundamentally contradictory there is in fact no solution --, which
>paradoxical state of affairs should, of course, simply be "grasped".
>
>Unfortunately, in that case, if physicists took this advice, Physics could
>not advance to a superior view of nature (if one exists) by eliminating
>this alleged contradiction. At best this a priori approach to knowledge
>would close available options down, forcing scientists to adopt a view of
>reality that might not be correct. Fortunately, there is little evidence
>so far that Physicists have taken heed of this aspect of dialectics, even
>if they have ever heard of it.
>
>Now, only those who disagree with Lenin about the incomplete nature of
>science (or, alternatively, who have a rather poor knowledge of the
>History of Physics) would risk concluding that contemporary science has a
>final and complete picture of reality, at least in this particular case.
>If so, Physics could only advance by eliminating this paradox (and hence
>removing one of the best examples DM-theorists have that supposedly
>illustrates the fundamentally contradictory nature of reality). Only those
>who want to foist their ideas on nature will object at this point.


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