Dance of the Dialectic: Steps in Marx's Method

Overall, I felt that the book was informative. It provides a good perspective on how Marx derived many of his ideas and beliefs. However, the one downside I would have to say is that it provides a lot of difficult information. The author bombards you with a great deal of terms and ideas that at times are hard to grasp.

I enjoyed Dance of the Dialectic and did a presentation on it in my Marxism class. It goes in-depth into how Marx thinks, how he uses terminalogy, how he comes up with his different terms, and explains the basis behind how Marx comes up with his theories using the dialectic. I was asked a question during my presentation of whether this was Ollman's interpretation of Marx dialectic or basically Ollman's own dialectic. The terminalogy and phrases Ollman uses to define the different characteristics of Marx's dialectic (such as 'thought concrete') I have not found in Marx's writing, leading me to believe Ollman invented some of these terms that Marx would have never used. Although it is what these terms represent that is important, it can, I suppose, also be argued that the meaning behind these terms he uses are not really what Marx conciously meant to use. These could be Ollman's understandings and assumptions of how Marx used the dialectic. Perhaps he is putting words into Marx's mouth by categorizing all the different steps of Marx's dialectic (there are 7 steps of 'level of generality' alone), which Marx may have never consciously known he was doing. However, I claim to be no expert on Marx, but I do have some knowledge of his writings and the history of him. I have not found much literature on Marx's dialectic compared to all the other stuff written about Marx, and this book is a great way to see inside Marx and Marx's thought process. Ollman offers an organized and very interesting analysis of Marx's thought process. I would encourage those interested in reading about Marx's method of using the Dialectic to buy this book.