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"All the writings of Marx and Engels are based on a definite philosophical method and cannot be understood without it, the method of dialectical materialism. The same is true of the works of Lenin and Trotsky, the most outstanding representatives of Marxist thought in the twentieth century."
"It was recently pointed out to me that a new (and highly praised) translation of Hegel contains a gross mistranslation from the German, which places the postmodernist terminology in the mouth of that great dialectical thinker. The prestigious new Cambridge University English translation of Hegel’s Science of Logic, which is becoming canonised in universities across the world, consistently translates the German words Denken and Denkend (which in English plainly mean “thought” and “thinking”) as “discourse” and “discursive”.
This is a blatant falsification of Hegel’s ideas and a transgression of all the ethical norms of translation. It is a criminal act of trying to sneak postmodernist subjectivism into Hegel. In defending this choice, the translator George di Giovanni casually asserts without any proof that: “The subject matter of the Logic is not the ‘thing-in-itself’ or its phenomenal manifestations, whether one conceives its ‘in itself’ as a substance or as freedom, but is discourse itself.”
This is nothing short of a scandal. Yet it has passed unnoticed by the ‘critics’, who are all delighted by the new ‘narrative’. It is an act of vandalism, more or less the equivalent of painting a moustache on the face of the Mona Lisa."
"The Babylonians believed that the god Marduk created ‘Order out of Chaos’, separating the land from the water, heaven from earth. The biblical Creation myth was taken from the Babylonians by the Jews."
"Western philosophy was born under the clear blue skies of the early Aegean period. The eighth and seventh centuries BC were a period of rapid economic expansion in the eastern Mediterranean. These were stirring times. The Greeks of the Ionian islands, which lie off the coast of present-day Turkey, conducted a thriving trade with Egypt, Babylon and Lydia. The Lydian invention of money was introduced into Europe via Aegina at about 625 BC, greatly stimulating trade, bringing in its wake great riches for some and indebtedness and slavery for others.
The earliest Greek philosophy represents the true starting point of philosophy. It is an attempt to struggle free from the age-old bounds of superstition and myth, to dispense with gods and goddesses, so that, for the first time, human beings could stand face to face with nature and with real men and women. The economic revolution gave rise to new social contradictions. The breakdown of the old patriarchal society provoked a clash between rich and poor. The old aristocracy was faced with the discontent of the masses and the opposition of the ‘tyrants’ – frequently dissident nobles themselves – who were always willing to put themselves at the head of popular risings. A period of instability opened up, in which men and women began to question the old beliefs. [...]
The turbulent sixth century BC was a period of decline of the Greek Ionian republics of Asia Minor, characterised by social crisis and ferocious class struggle between rich and poor, masters and slaves. Rostovtsev writes: “At Miletus [in Asia Minor] the people were at first victorious and murdered the wives and children of the aristocrats ; then the aristocrats prevailed and burned their opponents alive, lighting up the open spaces of the city with live torches”.
These conditions were typical of most other Greek cities of Asia Minor at the time. The heroes of this age had nothing in common with the later idea of the philosopher, isolated from the rest of humanity in his ivory tower. These ‘wise men’ were not only thinkers, but doers, not only theoreticians, but practical men of the world. Of the first of them, Thales of Miletus (c. 640-546 BC), we know next to nothing, but it is expressly stated that it was only late in life that he took to philosophy. He was also involved in commerce, engineering, geometry and astronomy (he is said to have predicted an eclipse, which must have occurred in 585 BC).
What is indisputable is that all the early Greek philosophers were materialists. Turning their backs on mythology, they sought to find a general principle for the workings of nature from an observation of nature itself. The later Greeks refer to them as hylozoists, which can be translated as “those who think that matter is alive”. This conception of matter as self-moving is strikingly modern, and far superior to the mechanical physics of the eighteenth century. Given the absence of modern scientific instruments, their theories frequently had the character of inspired guesswork. But, taking into account the lack of resources, the amazing thing is how close they came to a real understanding of the workings of nature. Thus the philosopher Anaximander (c. 610-545 BC) worked out that man and all other animals had developed from a fish, which
abandoned water for the land.
It is misleading to suppose that these philosophers were religious just because they used the word ‘god’ (theos) in relation to primary substance. J. Burnet states that this meant no more than the old Homeric epithets like ‘ageless’, ‘deathless’, etc. Even in Homer, the word is used in several different senses. From Hesiod’s Theogony it is clear that many of the ‘gods’ were never worshipped, but were merely convenient personifications of natural phenomena or even human passions. Primitive religions looked on the heavens as divine and set apart from the earth. The Ionian philosophers radically broke with this standpoint. While basing themselves on the many discoveries of Babylonian and Egyptian cosmology, they rejected the mythical element, which confused astronomy with astrology. [...]
for the first time, nature is explained in purely materialist terms, that is, in terms of nature itself."
-Alan Woods, The History of Philosophy. A Marxist Perspective, Wellred Books, 2021.
"What are called the mechanical arts, carry a social stigma and are rightly dishonoured in our cities, for these arts damage the bodies of those who work in them or who act as overseers, by compelling them to a sedentary life and to an indoor life, and, in some cases, to spend the whole day by the fire. This physical degeneration results also in deterioration of the soul. Furthermore, the workers at these trades simply have not got the time to perform the offices of friendship or citizenship. Consequently they are looked upon as bad friends and bad patriots, and in some cities, especially the warlike ones, it is not legal for a citizen to ply a mechanical trade."
-Xénophon, cité dans Benjamin Farrington, Greek science.
