“There is no dialectic logic. There are no higher thought forms. There is merely reflection which is wise enough to take account of the fluidity of its subject matter, reflection which understands that terms are not things, nor copies of things, and keeps coming back to things and making new judgements in proportion as the change requires it.”
~Max Eastman
Marxism: Is it Science? Trotsky Defends the Faith
No Dialectic Logic Read More »
“A demonstration that Marxism has all the defining attributes of a religion would be incomplete without a warning against its own peculiar brand of scholasticism.”
~Max Eastman
Marxism: Is it Science? Trotsky Defends the Faith
Religious Scholasticism Read More »
“Our civilization is in peril because so many eager and uncritical minds, beguiled by the communist ideal, instead of being trained in virtue, are trained to renounce all moral standards in the service of their ideal. Those consecrating themselves to communism must not only cast out truth, mercy, justice, and personal honor, but undergo a sickening discipline in lies, cruelty, crime and self abasement.”
~Max Eastman
Foreward to The Whole of Their Lives by Benjamin Gitlow
Sickening Discipline Read More »
“Marx is concerned to defend the concept of society as a single ‘object, reality, sensibility,’ having the character which all objects have–namely, that of self-active practicality.”
~Max Eastman
Marxism, is it Science?
“Dialectic Materialism, examined at its point of origin, turns out to be the rather naïve, cloudy, unsuccessful and half-minded attempt of a matter-of-fact mind to escape from German metaphysics.”
~Max Eastman
Marxism, Is it Science?, Part 5, Marx’s Effort to be Scientific, The Seed of the Marxian Philosophy
“If Marx had understood the art of practical thinking, Das Kapital might have been as great a book as the Hegelian Marxists think it is.”
~Max Eastman
Marxism, Is it Science?, Part 4, The Marxian System, Religion in “Das Kapital”
Practical Thinking Read More »
“The dialectic philosophy, as we have seen, was a bold maneuver in the defense of animism against science. Science has always occupied itself with changes, and animism has survived for the most part as an assertion of the Changeless which lies behind and beyond them.”
~Max Eastman
Marxism, Is it Science?, Part 4, The Marxian System, The “Dialectic Method”
“It was Marx, and not History, that was determined to produce a social revolution, and his investigation of history was an attempt to find out the method by which it could be done. When that simple truth–as obvious to a child as it is inaccessible to a Marxist–has once been acknowledged, the whole discussion loses its mystifying character at once.”
~Max Eastman
Marxism, Is it Science?, Part 4, The Marxian System, The Theory of History
“The German state patronized modern capitalism, perverting it to the support of feudal political institutions; and the German philosophers patronized modern science, perverting it to the support of animistic superstition.”
~Max Eastman
Marxism, Is it Science?, Part 4, The Marxian System, The Theory of History
Institutions and Superstitions Read More »
“Marxism was a step from utopian socialism to a socialist religion–a scheme for convincing the believer that the universe itself is producing a better society, and that he has only to fall in properly with the general movement of this universe.”
~Max Eastman
Marxism, Is it Science?, Part 4, The Marxian System, The Belief in Dialectic Materialism
Socialist Religion Read More »
