Bertell Ollman Interview: Dialectics, Abstraction, Internal Relations

This is an hour-long interview with dialectical scholar and Marxist philosopher Bertell Ollman. Ollman is a professor of politics at New York University and author of “Dance of the Dialectic: Steps in Marx’s Method” and “Alienation: Marx’s Conception of Man in Capitalist Society”. Both books are great reads (and available for free download at the above links), very accessible, and quite helpful in getting one’s head wrapped around the dialectical method. Fans of left trivia might also recognize Ollman as the creator of the board game “Class Struggle”.

The topic of Abstraction (also the topic of my next video in the Law of Value series) is an easy one for Ollman to talk about as he has devoted a lot of his intellectual activity to an understanding of what it means to make abstractions. I barely had to ask him any questions over the course of the interview in which he explains many of the key concepts in his book Dance of the Dialectic.

Advertisement