Wednesday, December 9, 2015

Socialism, Emergent Evolution, Dialectical Revolution

One interpretation of Techne is that it is the product of what Alexander calls 'Emergent Evolution', which, as a pervasive primitive pattern, is less an explanation than a general description.  The main features of the pattern are a specifically configured multiplicity from which a novel unity emerges, important Philosophical examples of which are a color, from an underlying photoelectric configuration, and Consciousness, from an underlying cerebral configuration.  So, one potential further application of the concept is to Socialism, which can be interpreted as emerging from a specific social configuration.  Now, Emergence seems analogous to the Sublation that constitutes the Synthesis moment of Dialectics.  However, the translation into Marxism is otherwise problematic.  For, Emergence is essentially fortuitous, and so its Evolution cannot be the product of deliberate Revolution.  Furthermore, when Marxists do seem to entertain the possibility of the former, under the rubric the transformation of Quantity into Quality, the Quality is the Negation of, not the Sublation of, Quantity.  Likewise, by implication, what in Emergent Evolution is the emergence of Socialism from a social configuration, is, in Dialectical Materialism, the Negation of a Revolutionary process.  So, despite the structural similarity of Emergence and Sublation, Emergent Evolution is not only not instructive for Dialectical Materialism, it conflicts with it in crucial respects.

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