Wednesday, September 2, 2015

Necessity, Need, Revolution

Practical Necessity, i. e. Need, can be distinguished from Theoretical Necessity, i. e. the Modal category, and can still be conceived as evincing a Dialectical pattern, i. e. with an organic deficiency conceived as a Contradiction, and the satisfaction of it as a Synthesis. Now, in at least some passages in the German Ideology, the 'Necessity' that Marx-Engels attribute to Revolution is Practical, e. g. when it is motivated by the suffering of members of a society. However, the 'Necessity' that they attribute to a Revolution as a response to contradictions in the status quo is Theoretical. Likewise, while overthrowing those who are the source of suffering is a Practical Revolution, it is not equivalent to more radically abolishing the system that might be perpetuated in such an upheaval. Furthermore, the Necessity of responding to suffering is not equivalent to the Necessity of the success of the response, which, in Dialectical Theory, it is. So, some of their pivotal arguments in defense of the revolutionary means to Socialism are afflicted by a significant equivocation.

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