Dialectics

This collection brings together leading dialectical theorists from North America, Europe and Asia from a variety of disciplines. A number of contributors contrast dialectical approaches with opposing methodological frameworks, ranging from scientific reductionism to systems theory and postmodernism. Others stress the central importance of dialectical methodology in Marx's critique of political economy. Yet others employ dialectical approaches to comprehend essential features of our capitalist society, or to examine the prospects for a qualitatively superior way of life and the forms of social agency that would help to bring it about. The anthology reveals that dialectics cannot be reduced to a set of rules or principles, and that theorists operating within the dialectical tradition do not agree on all issues. But this book also establishes that there is hardly an area of theoretical or practical importance today in which a dialectical approach - looking for interconnections where things appear separate, and for progress and change where things appear stable - is not required.