@Nti-Dialectics For Beginners -- Or, Why I Oppose Dialectical Materialism

Preliminaries

Nothing said here is aimed at undermining Historical Materialism [HM] -- a theory I fully accept -- or, for that matter, revolutionary socialism. My aim is simply to assist in the scientific development of Marxism by helping destroy a dogma that has in my opinion seriously damaged our movement from its inception: Dialectical Materialism [DM].

Naturally, this is a highly controversial allegation; the justification for advancing it is outlined below, and in far more detail in my other Essays.

Some may wonder how I can claim to be a Leninist and a Trotskyist given the highly critical things I say about philosophical ideas that have been an integral part of these two traditions. However, to give an analogy: we can surely be highly critical of Newton's mystical ideas even while accepting the scientific nature of his other work. The same applies here.

I count myself as a Marxist, a Leninist and a Trotskyist since I fully accept, not just HM (providing Hegel's influence has been fully excised), but the political ideas associated with the life and work of Marx, Lenin and Trotsky.

Again, some might wonder why so much effort has been devoted to what many consider to be a peripheral issue, something that is not really of central importance to building revolutionary socialism.

Nevertheless, it is my contention that dialectics is one of the reasons why Marxist -- and particularly Trotskyist -- parties tend to be small, divisive and thoroughly sectarian. Indeed, it is my belief (supported by evidence and argument) that this theory helps ensure that such parties stay small, waste valuable time on internecine warfare and petty bickering, thus leaving the ruling-class free to laugh all the way to their next attack on our side.

In addition, I also contend that this theory helps insulate militant minds from accepting the fact that Dialectical Marxism has been a long-term failure, thus preventing the scientific development of revolutionary socialism.

[Note the use of the word "Dialectical" here before the word "Marxism". What I am not claiming is that Marxism itself has been a failure; we just haven't road-tested the non-contaminated version yet.]

All this is quite apart from the impression that has been created in the minds of working people the world over that revolutionaries are little more than a political joke, an impression that has gone so deep into ordinary consciousness that it is now a widely accepted cliché. I believe -- and can show -- that dialectics is indirectly implicated in this. Of course, all this is in addition to the familiar stereotyping of revolutionaries by the capitalist media, some of which is based on these self-inflicted wounds.

Naturally, this means that it is difficult for our movement to be taken seriously by friend or foe alike.

Once again, these are highly contentious allegations, but in view of the fact that Dialectical Marxism has been such an abject and long-term failure, we have no option but to think things afresh like the radicals we claim to be.

This Essay is targeted at that end. May I suggest then of those who find the above charges far too controversial to accept (or who think them patently false, and thus who might be tempted to reject them out of hand) that they shelve such qualms until they have examined the arguments I have constructed (outlined briefly below, but in much more detail in my other Essays).

Even in what follows, readers will no doubt come to see that I have at least constructed a prima facie case against the philosophical theory early Marxists imported into the workers' movement --, a case that is being advanced, it is worth reminding ourselves, with the sole purpose of making revolutionary socialism more relevant, less sectarian, and far more successful.

[The arguments summarised here are further expanded upon in Essay Sixteen, which is a much longer précis of my ideas. Readers are therefore directed toward that Essay after they have read through the material presented here.]

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Please note that this Essay deals with very basic issues, even at the risk of over-simplification.

It has only been ventured upon because a handful of comrades (who were not well-versed in Philosophy) wanted a very simple guide to my principle arguments against DM.

In that case, it is not aimed at experts!

Anyone who objects to the apparently superficial nature of the material below must take these caveats into account or navigate away from this page. It is not intended for them.

It is worth underlining this last point since I still encounter comrades on internet discussion boards who, despite the above warning, still think this Essay is a definitive statement of my ideas.

As noted above, those who want more details should consult Essay Sixteen or the relevant Essays published at the main site.

Those who find this Essay either too long or too difficult can read two much shorter and simpler summaries of my ideas, here and here.

Finally, I have had to assume that readers already possess a rudimentary grasp of DM.

Anyone unfamiliar with this doctrine should read this, or this. A much more comprehensive account can be found here. [Or they can consult the many books and articles I have listed at RevLeft.]

My Main Objections

Formal Logic And Change

Dialectical Fairy-Tales

Dialecticians tell fibs about Formal Logic [FL]; indeed, they regularly say things like the following:

"Formal logic regards things as fixed and motionless." [Rob Sewell.]

"Formal categories, putting things in labelled boxes, will always be an inadequate way of looking at change and development…because a static definition cannot cope with the way in which a new content emerges from old conditions." [Rees (1998), p.59.]

"There are three fundamental laws of formal logic. First and most important is the law of identity....

"…If a thing is always and under all conditions equal or identical with itself, it can never be unequal or different from itself." [Novack (1971), p.20.]

However, I have yet to see a single quotation from a logic text (ancient or modern) that supports such allegations -- certainly dialecticians have so far failed to produce even one.

And no wonder: it's completely incorrect.

FL uses variables -- that is, it employs letters to stand for objects, processes and the like, all of which can and do change.

This handy device was invented by the very first logician we know of (in the 'West'): Aristotle (384-322BC). Aristotle experimented with the use of variables approximately 1500 years before the same tactic was extended into mathematics by Muslim Algebraists, who in turn employed them several centuries before French mathematician and philosopher, René Descartes (1596-1650) introduced them in the 'west'.

Engels himself said the following about that particular innovation:

"The turning point in mathematics was Descartes' variable magnitude. With that came motion and hence dialectics in mathematics, and at once, too, of necessity the differential and integral calculus…." [Engels (1954), p.258.]

Now, no one doubts that modern mathematics can handle change, so why dialecticians deny this of FL -- when it has always used variables -- is therefore something of a mystery.

The 'Three Laws' Of FL

Unfortunately, with very little variation, dialecticians like to assert things like the following:

"The basic laws of formal logic are:

"1) The law of identity ('A' = 'A').

"2) The law of contradiction ('A' does not equal 'not-A').

"3) The law of the excluded middle ('A' does not equal 'B')." [Woods and Grant (1995), p.91. In the above, quotation marks have been altered to conform to the conventions adopted here.]

Even a cursory examination of a handful of logic texts will reveal that not only are the above claims incorrect, not even Aristotle's logic was based on these so-called 'laws'!

Sure, dialecticians regularly claim that Aristotle founded his logic on such principles, but they have yet to produce the evidence substantiating that particular allegation. In fact, Aristotle knew nothing of the 'Law of Identity' [LOI], which was a much later, medieval invention. [More on that here.]

The LOI will be examined presently, but the 'Law of Contradiction' [LOC] merely says that if one proposition is true then its contradictory is false, and vice versa -- or, in some versions found in mathematical logic, it says that no contradiction can be true, but must be false. The LOC says nothing about "equality", or the lack of it, as Woods and Grant (and other dialecticians) assert.

Nor is there any connection between the so-called "negative" form of the LOI and the LOC. The former concerns the allege identity/non-identity of an object with itself, while the latter expresses the true/false connection between a proposition and its own negation; it is not about the relation between objects.

Likewise, the 'Law of Excluded Middle' [LEM] says nothing about objects being identical, or otherwise, merely that any proposition has to be either true or false; there is no third option.

[Plekhanov partly gets this right, but in doing so he confuses predicate negation with predicate term negation. More on that here.]

Some claim that Quantum Mechanics [QM] has, among other things, refuted this 'law', but QM has merely forced us to reconsider what we should count as a scientific proposition. The LEM thus remains unaffected by all this.

And, contrary to what dialecticians often tell us, these 'laws' do not deny change, nor are they unable to handle it. Indeed, we are only capable of studying change if we are clear about what is or is not true about whatever is changing.

In fact, as we will soon see, it is dialectics that cannot cope with change!

The LOI is equally badly handled in DM-texts; this is because dialecticians unwisely copied their ideas on this from Hegel's Logic. [On this, see below, and here.]

The basic idea behind this misguided criticism of the LOI seems to be this:

"There are three fundamental laws of formal logic. First and most important is the law of identity. This law can be stated in various ways such as: A thing is always equal to or identical with itself. In algebraic terms: A equals A.

"...If a thing is always and under all conditions equal to or identical with itself, it can never be unequal to or different from itself. This conclusion follows logically and inevitably from the law of identity. If A equals A, it can never equal non-A." [Novack (1971), p.20.]

Unfortunately, this is incorrect. The LOI does not preclude change, for if an object changes, then anything identical to it will change equally quickly. Moreover, if something changes, it will no longer be identical with its former self. So, far from denying change, this 'law' allows us to determine if and when it has occurred. [More on this here.]

Hegel's Howlers

The criticisms of FL advanced by most dialecticians were in fact copied from Hegel (1770-1831), who alas committed a series of logical blunders which, even to this day, dialecticians have failed to notice. In fact, these blunders were the only way that Hegel could make his 'system' even seem to work.

[Many of his core 'logical' ideas are destructively analysed here; I have omitted this material from this Introductory Essay because of its technical nature. However, a basic outline of this material can be found here.]

Plainly, these criticisms completely undermine the legitimacy of Dialectical Logic. Hegel's system is based on a series of logical blunders, and hence so is 'Materialist Dialectics'.

It is no surprise therefore to discover that when DM has been tested in practice, practice has refuted it.

Motion -- Not Contradictory

According to Hegel, motion is 'contradictory'. Unfortunately, dialecticians have bought into this rather odd idea, too. Almost as if they were singing from the same hymn sheet, they all tend to argue alongside Engels as follows:

"...[A]s soon as we consider things in their motion, their change, their life, their reciprocal influence on one another[,] [t]hen we immediately become involved in contradictions. Motion itself is a contradiction: even simple mechanical change of place can only come about through a body at one and the same moment of time being both in one place and in another place, being in one and the same place and also not in it. And the continuous assertion and simultaneous solution of this contradiction is precisely what motion is." [Engels (1976), p.152.]

This is an age-old confusion derived from a paradox invented by an Ancient Greek mystic called Zeno (490?-430?BC).

In fact, as should seem obvious, all objects (which are not mathematical points) occupy several places at once. So, for example, while you are sat reading this Essay, your body is not compressed into a tiny point! Unless you have suffered an horrific accident, your head will not be in the exact same location as your feet, even though both of these body parts occupy the same place -- i.e., where you are sat.

[Note the ambiguity here, connected with words like "place" and "location"; more on that presently.]

Hence, a material object can be in several places at once (in one sense of "place"), in one place and in another at the same time. And it can be in the first but not wholly in the second, at the same time, and stationary all the while.

For example, a car could be parked half in, half out of a garage. Here the car is in one and the same place and not in it, and it is in two places at once (in the garage and in the yard), even while it is at rest relative to a suitable frame of reference.

In that case, this alleged 'contradiction' does not distinguish moving from stationary bodies. So, this alleged 'contradiction' has more to do with ambiguity than it has with anything allegedly paradoxical in material reality.

Of course, exception could be taken to the above use of phrases like "not wholly in" one place or another, on the grounds that Engels was quite clear about what he meant: motion plainly involves a body being in one place and in another at the same time, being in and not in that place at one and the same moment.

But, this objection depends on what Engels actually meant by the following words:

"even simple mechanical change of place can only come about through a body at one and the same moment of time being both in one place and in another place, being in one and the same place and also not in it." [Ibid.]

For example, a cake in tin on a shelf in a supermarket can be in one place and in another at the same time (in the tin and in the supermarket), and stationary for all that. Moreover, a cat could fall asleep in the doorway of a room, and could thus be in the room and not in it at the same time. Once again, ambiguities built into language allow for these eventualities. Engels failed to notice this.

In Essay Five I make several attempts to disambiguate Engels's words to try to make sense of what he was attempting to say -- alas, to no avail. As things turns out, there is in fact nothing comprehensible that Engels could have meant by what he said.

Any attempt to circumvent such objections with the counter-claim that moving objects occupy regions of space equal to their own volumes (hence a moving object will occupy two of these regions at the same time, occupying and not occupying each at the same time) cannot work either. This is because such a re-description would clearly depict a moving body occupying a region greater than its own volume at the same moment -- and that would plainly mean that such objects would not so much move as expand!

Worse still, Engels's account depicts objects moving between successive locations outside of time -- that is, they move between locations while time has advanced not one instant --, otherwise the said objects could not be in two places at the same moment. This is impossible to reconcile with a materialist (or even with a comprehensible) view of nature. Here, motion/change would take place outside of time!

Finally, as noted above, this 'contradiction' was created by notorious ambiguities in Zeno's (and thus in Hegel's and Engels's) use of certain words (like "moment", "move", and "place"), which means that when these have been resolved, these alleged 'contradictions' simply disappear.

[Once again, this disambiguation has been carried out here.]

DM: Imposed On Nature

Has dialectics been read from nature, or simply imposed on it? 

The former option must it seems be correct since we regularly encounter such apparently modest disclaimers in the writings of dialecticians:

"Finally, for me there could be no question of superimposing the laws of dialectics on nature but of discovering them in it and developing them from it." [Engels (1976), p.13. However, the on-line translation uses "building...into" in place of "superimposing".]

Why is this important? Well, as dialecticians themselves admit, the reading of certain doctrines into reality is a hallmark of both Idealism and dogmatism. So, if DM is to live up to its materialist credentials, its theorists must take care to avoid doing this.

As, George Novack pointed out:

"A consistent materialism cannot proceed from principles which are validated by appeal to abstract reason, intuition, self-evidence or some other subjective or purely theoretical source. Idealisms may do this. But the materialist philosophy has to be based upon evidence taken from objective material sources and verified by demonstration in practice...." [Novack (1965), p.17. Bold emphasis added.]

Here, too, are the thoughts of Communist Party theoretician, Maurice Cornforth:

"Marxism, therefore, seeks to base our ideas of things on nothing but the actual investigation of them, arising from and tested by experience and practice. It does not invent a 'system' as previous philosophers have done, and then try to make everything fit into it…." [Cornforth (1976), p.15. Bold emphasis added.]

However, when we examine what dialecticians actually do, as opposed to what they say they do, we find that the exact opposite is the case. For example, Engels himself went on to claim the following about motion:

"Motion is the mode of existence of matter. Never anywhere has there been matter without motion, nor can there be…. Matter without motion is just as inconceivable as motion without matter. Motion is therefore as uncreatable and indestructible as matter itself; as the older philosophy (Descartes) expressed it, the quantity of motion existing in the world is always the same. Motion therefore cannot be created; it can only be transmitted…." [Engels (1976), p.74. Bold emphasis alone added.]

Had this observation been derived from the facts available even in Engels's day (a policy to which he had just sworn allegiance), he would have expressed himself perhaps as follows:

"Evidence so far suggests that motion is what we call "the mode of existence of matter". Never anywhere has matter without motion been observed, but it is too early to say if this must always be the case…. Matter without motion is not in fact inconceivable, nor indeed is motion without matter, we just haven't witnessed either yet…." [Re-vamped version of Engels (1976), p.74.]

[It is worth noting that matter without motion is not in fact inconceivable; that very idea had been a fundamental precept of Aristotelian Physics.]

As is easy to demonstrate, all dialecticians do the same (the evidence substantiating this allegation can be found here). First, they disarm the reader with the modest sorts of claims we saw rehearsed above; then, sometimes on the same page, or even in the very next sentence, they proceed to do the exact opposite, imposing dialectics on nature.

Why they do this (and what significance it has) will be examined below.

Traditional Thought

In the 'West' since Ancient Greek times traditional thinkers have been imposing their theories on nature (as Cornforth noted). In fact, this practice is so widespread and has penetrated into traditional thought so deeply that few notice it, even after it has been pointed out to them. Or, rather, they fail to see its significance.

Now, if you belong to, benefit from or help run a society which is based on gross inequality, oppression and exploitation, you can keep order in several ways.

The first and most obvious way is through violence. This will work for a time, but it is not only fraught with danger, it is costly and it stifles innovation (among other things).

Another way is to persuade the majority (or, rather, a significant section of "opinion formers", minor officials and administrators) that the present order either works for their benefit, is ordained of the 'gods', or that it is 'natural' and thus cannot be fought. As is well-known, this tactic has been used for millennia; hence we have Theology and other assorted ruling-class ideologies.

All of these were imposed on reality by those who invented them -- plainly, since they cannot be read from it.

Indeed, this is how Marx depicted things:

"The ideas of the ruling class are in every epoch the ruling ideas, i.e. the class which is the ruling material force of society, is at the same time its ruling intellectual force. The class which has the means of material production at its disposal, has control at the same time over the means of mental production, so that thereby, generally speaking, the ideas of those who lack the means of mental production are subject to it. The ruling ideas are nothing more than the ideal expression of the dominant material relationships, the dominant material relationships grasped as ideas; hence of the relationships which make the one class the ruling one, therefore, the ideas of its dominance. The individuals composing the ruling class possess among other things consciousness, and therefore think. Insofar, therefore, as they rule as a class and determine the extent and compass of an epoch, it is self-evident that they do this in its whole range, hence among other things rule also as thinkers, as producers of ideas, and regulate the production and distribution of the ideas of their age: thus their ideas are the ruling ideas of the epoch. For instance, in an age and in a country where royal power, aristocracy, and bourgeoisie are contending for mastery and where, therefore, mastery is shared, the doctrine of the separation of powers proves to be the dominant idea and is expressed as an 'eternal law.'" [Marx and Engels (1970), pp.64-65, quoted from here.]

As Marx notes, members of the ruling-class often rely on other layers in society to concoct the ideas they use to try to con the rest of us into accepting their system as 'rational', 'natural', or 'god-ordained'.

In Ancient Greece, with the demise of the rule of Kings and Queens, the old myths and Theogonies were no longer relevant. So, in the newly emerging republics and quasi-democracies of the Sixth Century BC, far more abstract, de-personalised ideas were needed.

Enter Philosophy.

From its inception, philosophers constructed increasingly baroque and abstract systems of thought. These were invariably based on arcane terminology, impossible to translate into the material language of everyday life -- which theories their inventors then happily imposed on nature.

As Marx also pointed out:

Philosophers felt they could read their doctrines into nature, since, for them, nature was Mind (or, indeed, the product of Mind). In that case, the human mind could safely project its thoughts onto a world created by Mind. True thoughts were a "reflection" of underlying reality, anyway. "As above, so below", went the old Hermetic saying. The microcosm of the mind "reflected" the macrocosm of the universe. The doctrine of Correspondences thus came to dominate all ancient and modern theories of knowledge -- on this view, 'philosophical' truth corresponded with hidden 'essences' which supposedly underpinned the world of 'appearances'. These 'essences' were impossible to detect by any material means, hence they were accessible by thought alone. As Novack pointed out, this made all such theories Idealist.

Again, as Marx noted, these systems were based on the idea that language somehow contained a secret code that 'enabled' traditional theorists to represent to themselves the rational order underlying "appearances", the hidden "secrets of nature", and in any cases the "Mind of God".

Language was thus viewed primarily as a means of representation and not as a means of communication -- as Marx and Engels had claimed.

[More on this here.]

This ancient theoretical tradition has changed many times throughout history as different Modes of Production rose and fell, but its main features have remained basically the same: the dogmatic promulgation of abstract theories that were supposed to reveal the underlying rational structure of reality, conveniently hidden from the disconfirming gaze of ordinary working people (which is why such dogmas were and still are inexpressible in ordinary language --, again, as Marx pointed out).

So, like Theology, but in this case in a far more abstract and increasingly secularised form, subsequent philosophies came to reflect the 'essential' structure of reality that supposedly underpinned and rationalised alienated class society, mystified now by the use of increasingly obscure terminology and technical jargon. [How this is connected with attempts to legitimate class power is outlined here.]

'Materialist Dialectics' emerged from this tradition, as Lenin himself admitted:

"The history of philosophy and the history of social science show with perfect clarity that there is nothing resembling 'sectarianism' in Marxism, in the sense of its being a hidebound, petrified doctrine, a doctrine which arose away from the high road of the development of world civilisation. On the contrary, the genius of Marx consists precisely in his having furnished answers to questions already raised by the foremost minds of mankind. His doctrine emerged as the direct and immediate continuation of the teachings of the greatest representatives of philosophy, political economy and socialism.

"The Marxist doctrine is omnipotent because it is true. It is comprehensive and harmonious, and provides men with an integral world outlook irreconcilable with any form of superstition, reaction, or defence of bourgeois oppression. It is the legitimate successor to the best that man produced in the nineteenth century, as represented by German philosophy, English political economy and French socialism." [Lenin, Three Sources and Component Parts of Marxism. Bold emphases alone added.]

In its modern form, this doctrine was invented by a quintessentially Idealist Philosopher (Hegel) working in the mystical Hermetic tradition. It was appropriated by Marxist classicists before the working class could provide a materialist counter-weight. DM was thus born out of Idealism, and, as we will see, it has never really escaped from its clutches -- despite the materialist flip dialecticians claim to have inflicted upon it.

And that is why dialecticians happily impose their ideas on nature; it is quite traditional for them to do so, as Novack noted. Indeed, since their theory is based on ancient and idealised abstractions, it plainly cannot be derived from the material world, but must be read into it.

Unfortunately, in doing this  dialecticians are (unwittingly) identifying themselves with a tradition that was not built by working people and which does not serve their interests.

Furthermore, since dialectics is not based on material reality it cannot be used to help change it.

Small wonder then that it has failed for so long.

[Some might think that if the above were correct, it would mean that science is equally flawed, but that is not so. Science has always been dominated by individuals who do not just theorise about nature, they interact with it, and they learn from experience, modifying their ideas accordingly. Scientific theory is tested by its complex relation to material reality; traditional Philosophy not only isn't, it cannot be. However, further discussion of this particular topic would take us way beyond the scope of this Basic Introductory Essay; it will however be dealt with in detail in an Additional Essay to be published at the main site in 2010/11.]

Hence, for all their claim to be radical, DM-theorists are thoroughly conservative when they try to 'philosophise'.

Indeed, despite the fact that DM-theorists appear to be challenging traditional ideas, their theoretical practice reveals they are part of a tradition that is quite happy to derive fundamental truths about nature from thought alone, something ruling-class theorists have always done.

The 'Laws' of Dialectics

Engels's Mickey Mouse Science

This age-old tactic of imposing theses on nature can be seen in practice if we examine the use made of Engels's so-called 'Three Laws of Dialectics':

"Dialectics as the science of universal inter-connection. Main laws: transformation of quantity into quality -- mutual penetration of polar opposites and transformation into each other when carried to extremes -- development through contradiction or negation of the negation -- spiral form of development." [Engels (1954), p.17.]

All dialecticians who accept these 'Laws' impose them on nature (as did Hegel, from whom Engels pinched them). [Again, the evidence for this can be found here and here.] What little data dialecticians supply in order to substantiate these 'Laws' is not only woefully insufficient, it is highly contentious -- to say the least.

Anyone who has studied and practiced genuine science will know the lengths to which researchers have to go to alter even minor aspects of current theory, let alone justify major changes in the way we view nature.

In stark contrast, and totally without exception, dialecticians offer their readers a few paragraphs of superficial, trite and constantly re-used examples in support of these 'Laws'. Hence, what we find are hackneyed references to boiling/freezing water, balding heads, plants that 'negate' seeds, Mamelukes fighting the French, a character from Molière who suddenly discovers that he speaks prose, and the like, all neurotically retailed, year in year out.

From such banalities, dialecticians suddenly derive universal laws, applicable throughout all of space and for all of time.

Even at its best (for example, in Woods and Grant (1995), which is one of the most comprehensive attempts to defend classical, hard-core DM there is, and in Gollobin (1986), which is in many ways an up-market version of Woods and Grant), all we find are a few dozen pages of secondary and tertiary information, extensively padded out with repetition and bluster (much of which is taken apart here). Contrary evidence (of which there is plenty) is simply ignored. This is indeed Mickey Mouse Science.

In many ways this weak and superficial endeavour to substantiate Engels's 'Laws' resembles Creationist attempts to show that the Book of Genesis is scientific! It is heavily slanted, trite, repetitive, highly selective and deeply contentious.

'Law' One -- Quantity And Quality

The First 'Law' -- the alleged change of quantity into quality -- ignores the many instances in nature where change is not "nodal":

"Hegel invented the nodal line of measure relations, in which small quantitative changes at a certain point give rise to a qualitative leap. The example is often given of water, which boils at 100^oC at normal atmospheric pressure. As the temperature nears boiling point, the increase in heat does not immediately cause the water molecules to fly apart. Until it reaches boiling point, the water keeps its volume. It remains water, because of the attraction of the molecules for each other. However, the steady change in temperature has the effect of increasing the motion of the molecules. The volume between the atoms is gradually increased, to the point where the force of attraction is insufficient to hold the molecules together. At precisely 100^oC, any increase in heat energy will cause the molecules to fly apart, producing steam." [Woods and Grant (1995), p.49.]

But, not everything in nature changes in this way; consider melting glass, metal, butter, toffee, and plastic. No nodal points anywhere in sight, here. Do Woods and Grant (or indeed any other DM-theorists) consider these counter-examples? Are you kidding?

[More details, including answers to objections, can be found here.]

And not every change in quality is produced by quantitative differences (again, contrary to what Engels said):

"...the transformation of quantity into quality and vice versa. For our purpose, we could express this by saying that in nature, in a manner exactly fixed for each individual case, qualitative changes can only occur by the quantitative addition or subtraction of matter or motion (so-called energy)…. Hence it is impossible to alter the quality of a body without addition or subtraction of matter or motion, i.e. without quantitative alteration of the body concerned." [Engels (1954), p.63. Bold emphases added.]

There are in fact countless changes in "quality" that are not produced in this way. For example, molecules called 'Stereoisomers' share exactly the number and type of atoms, and yet they are "qualitatively" dissimilar because of the different spatial arrangement of these atoms.

So, here we have "qualitative" change produced solely by a change in geometry. And this is just as important a material constraint as any that Engels himself considered.

Other qualitative changes in nature and society can be produced by different timing or by a different ordering of the relevant events (for the same amount of matter and/or energy involved) -- or even by altering the context. [More examples here.]

Moreover, this 'Law' only appears to work because of the vague way that "quantity", "quality" and "node" (or even "leap") have been defined by DM-theorists -- that is, if they ever bother to do so. Indeed, after 25 years of searching, I have been able to find only three DM-texts (out of the scores I have studied) that attempt even superficially to do this: Kuusinen (1961), Yurkovets (1984), and Gollobin (1986)! [Once more, their arguments have been taken apart in Essay Seven.] And, in nearly 200 years (if we include Hegel here) not one single DM-theorist has even thought to tell us how long a "node" is supposed to last!

In fact, Hegel defined "quality" in the following way:

"Quality is, in the first place, the character identical with being: so identical that a thing ceases to be what it is, if it loses its quality. Quantity, on the contrary, is the character external to being, and does not affect the being at all. Thus, e.g. a house remains what it is, whether it be greater or smaller; and red remains red, whether it be brighter or darker." [Hegel (1975), p.124, §85.]

Hegel copied this characterisation from Aristotle. Similarly, the Marxist Internet Archive defines "quality" as follows:

"Quality is an aspect of something by which it is what it is and not something else and reflects that which is stable amidst variation. Quantity is an aspect of something which may change (become more or less) without the thing thereby becoming something else.

"Thus, if something changes to an extent that it is no longer the same kind of thing, this is a 'qualitative change', whereas a change in something by which it still the same thing, though more or less, bigger or smaller, is a 'quantitative change'.

"In Hegel's Logic, Quality is the first division of Being, when the world is just one thing after another, so to speak, while Quantity is the second division, where perception has progressed to the point of recognising what is stable within the ups and downs of things. The third and final stage, Measure, the unity of quality and quantity, denotes the knowledge of just when quantitative change becomes qualitative change." [Quoted from here.]

But, given the above definition, many of the examples dialecticians themselves use to illustrate this 'Law' would fail to be examples of qualitative change. For instance, water (as solid, liquid or gas) is H₂O. Quantitative addition or subtraction of energy does not result in a qualitative change of the required sort; nothing substantially new emerges. This substance stays H₂O throughout.

In fact, the lack of precision mentioned above 'allows' DM-theorists to see changes in "quality" produced by changes in quantity whenever and wherever they please, just as it 'permits' them to ignore the many instances where this does not happen. That. perhaps, explains why this 'Law' has been left so vague for so long.

Indeed, this 'Law' is so vaguely worded that dialecticians can use it in whatever way they please. If this is difficult to believe, then ask the very next dialectician you meet precisely how long a "node/leap", for example, is supposed to last. You will receive no answer -- except one perhaps dismissing your query. But, if no one knows, then anything from a Geological Age to an instantaneous quantum leap could be "nodal"! Plainly, this introduces a fundamental element of arbitrariness into what dialecticians claim is an objective scientific law.

And, it really isn't good enough for dialecticians to dismiss this as mere "pedantry". Can you imagine a genuine scientist refusing to say how long a crucially important time period in her theory is supposed to be, and accusing you of "pedantry" for daring to ask?

The Other Two 'Laws'

The other 'Laws' fare no better. The Second 'Law' -- the Interpenetration of Opposites and change though "Internal Contradiction" -- will be examined in the next sub-section. Moreover, since the "Negation of the Negation" [NON] is really an extension of this 'Law', its credibility depends upon it. Hence, the next sub-section in effect deals with both 'Laws'. [More details here.]

'Internal Contradictions'

Dialectical Vs Mechanical Materialism

Mechanical materialism holds that all things are set in motion by an external 'push' of some sort. In contrast, dialecticians claim that because of their 'internal contradictions', objects and processes in nature and society are in fact "self-moving".

Lenin expressed this idea as follows:

"The identity of opposites…is the recognition…of the contradictory, mutually exclusive, opposite tendencies in all phenomena and processes of nature…. The condition for the knowledge of all processes of the world in their 'self-movement', in their spontaneous development, in their real life, is the knowledge of them as a unity of opposites. Development is the 'struggle' of opposites. The two basic (or two possible? or two historically observable?) conceptions of development (evolution) are: development as decrease and increase, as repetition, and development as a unity of opposites (the division of a unity into mutually exclusive opposites and their reciprocal relation).

"In the first conception of motion, self-movement, its driving force, its source, its motive, remains in the shade (or this source is made external -- God, subject, etc.). In the second conception the chief attention is directed precisely to knowledge of the source of 'self-movement'.

"The first conception is lifeless, pale and dry. The second is living. The second alone furnishes the key to the 'self-movement' of everything existing; it alone furnishes the key to the 'leaps,' to the 'break in continuity,' to the 'transformation into the opposite,' to the destruction of the old and the emergence of the new." [Lenin (1961), pp.357-58. Italic emphasis in the original; bold emphases added.]

However, there are a number of serious problems with this passage, not the least of which is that it clearly suggests that things are self-moving. In fact, Lenin did more than just suggest this, he insisted upon it:

"Dialectical logic demands that we go further…. [It] requires that an object should be taken in development, in 'self-movement' (as Hegel sometimes puts it)…." [Lenin (1921), p.90. Bold emphases added.]

Other Marxists say the same sorts of things. Here are comrades Woods and Grant (and readers will no doubt note how these two are quite happy to impose this doctrine on nature, so that it applies throughout all of space and time):

"Dialectics explains that change and motion involve contradiction and can only take place through contradictions.... Dialectics is the logic of contradiction....

"So fundamental is this idea to dialectics that Marx and Engels considered motion to be the most basic characteristic of matter.... [Referring to a quote from Aristotle] [t]his is not the mechanical conception of motion as something imparted to an inert mass by an external 'force' but an entirely different notion of matter as self-moving....

"The essential point of dialectical thought is not that it is based on the idea of change and motion but that it views motion and change as phenomena based on contradiction.... Contradiction is an essential feature of all being. It lies at the heart of matter itself. It is the source of all motion, change, life and development. The dialectical law which expresses this idea is the unity and interpenetration of opposites....

"The universal phenomena of the unity of opposites is, in reality, the motor-force of all motion and development in nature. It is the reason why it is not necessary to introduce the concept of external impulse to explain movement and change -- the fundamental weakness of all mechanistic theories. Movement, which itself involves a contradiction, is only possible as a result of the conflicting tendencies and inner tensions which lie at the heart of all forms of matter....

"...Matter is self-moving and self-organising." [Woods and Grant (1995), pp.43-45, 47, 68, 72. Bold emphases added.]

But, if this were so, nothing in nature would or could have any effect on anything else. Hence, while you might think that it is your kick that moves a ball, according to the above, the ball moves itself!

Now, in order to avoid such absurd consequences, some dialecticians have had to allow for the existence of "external contradictions" (or impulses, contrary to what Woods and Grant assert), which are somehow also involved in such changes. [More details can be found here.]

But, as seems obvious, this makes a mockery of the idea that all change is internally-generated, just as it undermines the contrast drawn above between mechanical and 'dialectical' theories of motion. Indeed, what becomes of Lenin's "demand" if there are countless changes that violate this "demand"?

In addition, DM-theorists appeal to these "internal contradictions" in order to undercut theism (there was a flavour of this, too, in the Woods and Grant quotation above); here, for example, is Cornforth:

"The second dogmatic assumption of mechanism is the assumption that no change can ever happen except by the action of some external cause.

"Just as no part of a machine moves unless another part acts on it and makes it move, so mechanism sees matter as being inert -- without motion, or rather without self-motion. For mechanism, nothing ever moves unless something else pushes or pulls is, it never changes unless something else interferes with it.

"No wonder that, regarding matter in this way, the mechanists had to believe in a Supreme Being to give the "initial push"....

"No, the world was not created by a Supreme Being. Any particular organisation of matter,  any particular process of matter in motion, has an origin and a beginning.... But matter in motion had no origin, no beginning....

"So in studying the causes of change, we should not merely seek for external causes of change, but should above all seek for the source of change within the process itself, in its own self-movement, in the inner impulses to development contained in things themselves." [Cornforth (1976), pp.40-43. Bold emphasis added.]

But, if external causes are now permitted in order to stop this theory becoming absurd (as we saw above), then that will simply allow 'god' to sneak back in through a side door.

Of course, all this is independent of whether or not it makes sense to say that anything in nature or society can be described as a "contradiction". Dialecticians, following Hegel, certainly believe they can be so depicted, but up to now they have merely been content to assert this for a fact, neglecting the proof. Apparently, Hegel's mystical authority is sufficient. And it is worth recalling that Hegel's own employment of this term was based on a crass use of sub-Aristotelian logic.

Dialectics Cannot In Fact Explain Change!

But, even if all objects and processes did in fact possess "internal contradictions", exactly as DM-theorists suppose, this would still not explain why anything actually moved or changed.

In fact, as is easy to confirm, dialecticians have been hopelessly unclear as to whether objects and processes:

(1) Change because of a "struggle" between their "internal contradictions" and/or "opposites", or they

(2) Change into these opposites, or, indeed they

(3) Create such opposites when they change.

"However reluctant Understanding may be to admit the action of Dialectic, we must not suppose that the recognition of its existence is peculiarly confined to the philosopher. It would be truer to say that Dialectic gives expression to a law which is felt in all other grades of consciousness, and in general experience. Everything that surrounds us may be viewed as an instance of Dialectic. We are aware that everything finite, instead of being stable and ultimate, is rather changeable and transient; and this is exactly what we mean by that Dialectic of the finite, by which the finite, as implicitly other than what it is, is forced beyond its own immediate or natural being to turn suddenly into its opposite." [Hegel (1975), pp.117-18.]

"Dialectics, so-called objective dialectics, prevails throughout nature, and so-called subjective dialectics, dialectical thought, is only the reflection of the motion through opposites which asserts itself everywhere in nature, and which by the continual conflict of the opposites and their final passage into one another, or into higher forms, determines the life of nature." [Engels  (1954), p.211.]

"And so every phenomenon, by the action of those same forces which condition its existence, sooner or later, but inevitably, is transformed into its own opposite…." [Plekhanov (1956), p.77.]

"[Among the elements of dialectics are the following:] [I]nternally contradictory tendencies…in [a thing]…as the sum and unity of opposites…. [This involves] not only the unity of opposites, but the transitions of every determination, quality, feature, side, property into every other [into its opposite?]….

"In brief, dialectics can be defined as the doctrine of the unity of opposites. This embodies the essence of dialectics….

"The splitting of the whole and the cognition of its contradictory parts…is the essence (one of the 'essentials', one of the principal, if not the principal, characteristic features) of dialectics…. 

"The identity of opposites…is the recognition…of the contradictory, mutually exclusive, opposite tendencies in all phenomena and processes of nature…. The condition for the knowledge of all processes of the world in their 'self-movement', in their spontaneous development, in their real life, is the knowledge of them as a unity of opposites. Development is the 'struggle' of opposites…. [This] alone furnishes the key to the self-movement of everything existing…. 

"The unity…of opposites is conditional, temporary, transitory, relative. The struggle of mutually exclusive opposites is absolute, just as development and motion are absolute…." [Lenin (1961), pp.221-22, 357-58.]

"Why is it that '...the human mind should take these opposites not as dead, rigid, but as living, conditional, mobile, transforming themselves into one another'? Because that is just how things are in objective reality. The fact is that the unity or identity of opposites in objective things is not dead or rigid, but is living, conditional, mobile, temporary and relative; in given conditions, every contradictory aspect transforms itself into its opposite....

"In speaking of the identity of opposites in given conditions, what we are referring to is real and concrete opposites and the real and concrete transformations of opposites into one another....

"All processes have a beginning and an end, all processes transform themselves into their opposites. The constancy of all processes is relative, but the mutability manifested in the transformation of one process into another is absolute."  [Mao (1961b), pp.340-42.]

[Many more quotations from classical and modern day dialecticians supporting the above allegations can be found here.]

Of course, if the third option were the case, the alleged opposites could not cause change, since they would be produced by it, not the other way round. Moreover, they could hardly be "internal opposites" if they were produced by change.

If the second alternative were correct, then we would see things like males naturally turning into females, the working class into the capitalist class, electrons into protons, left hands into right hands, and vice versa, and a host of other oddities. [On that, see here.]

And as far as the first and second options are concerned, it is worth making the following points:

[A] If an object and/or process changes because of a struggle with an already existing internal opposite, and it changes into this opposite, then plainly this couldn't happen. That is because that opposite already exists!

No object or process can change into something that is already there!

Hence, if object/process A is already composed of a dialectical union of A and not-A, and it 'changes' into not-A, this can't happen if not-A already exists. In fact, all that would seem to happen here is that A must disappear. [And do not ask where it disappears to!] So, given this 'theory', A does not in fact change into not-A, it is just replaced by an already existing not-A.

At the very least, this account of change leaves it entirely mysterious how not-A itself originally came about. It seems to have popped into existence from nowhere.

It cannot have come from A, since A can only change because of a struggle with not-A, which does not yet exist! And pushing this process into the past will merely reduplicate the problem.

[B] On the other hand, if not-A does not yet exist, it can hardly "struggle" with A. In that case, A would not be able to change.

Of course, this does not deny change occurs, only that dialectics cannot explain it.

If this is regarded as far too 'abstract, then consider a more concrete example: a live cat that changes into a dead cat.

Consider cat C. According to the dialectical classicists, cat C can only change because of a "struggle" with its internal opposite, because of its "internal contradictions". Let us call the opposite of cat C, cat C*. DM-theorists also tell us that cat C will change into that opposite; so the opposite that it changes into must be cat C*. But C changes into a dead cat, so that dead cat must be this opposite, it must be C*.

But if C is to "struggle" with C*, then C* must already exist. In other words, in order to die, live cat C must struggle with dead cat C*!

Have you ever witnessed a live cat struggling with its future dead self so that it can die?

On the other hand, if dead cat C* already exists so that C can struggle with it, then C cannot change into C*, since it is already there! In that case, according to this 'theory', cat C cannot die!

Incidentally, the same result emerges if we consider intermediate stages in the life and death of cat C.

Let us assume that cat C goes through successive stages C(1), C(2), C(3)..., C(n), until at stage C(n+1) it finally pops its clogs.

[Moreover, if we introduce the NON into the mix, and each of the above stages was the "sublated" result of a previous stage, the result would be no different.]

So, according to the dialectical classics, C(1) can only change into C(2) because of a "struggle" of opposites. They also tell us that C(1) "inevitably" changes into that opposite.

Hence, C(1) must not only "struggle" with C(2) it must change into it.

However, the same problems simply re-emerge, for C(1) can't change into C(2) since C(2) already exists! If it didn't, C(1) could not "struggle" with it.

By n applications of the above argument, this 'theory' implies that all the stages of a cat's life must co-exist if it is to change, including the final 'dead stage'. But, if this were so, no cat could change, or even die, since every stage of that cat's life would co-exist!

"Sublated" dialectical cats, therefore, not only have more than nine lives, they cannot in fact die!
 

Of course, this does not deny change occurs, only that dialectics can explain it.

[This argument is worked out in considerable detail here, where several obvious objections are neutralised.]

Forces And 'Contradictions'

Now, in order to translate Hegel's theory into its allegedly materialist form, some dialecticians have appealed to forces of attraction and repulsion to explain how these obscure 'contradictions' are capable of actually moving bits of matter about the place.

Unfortunately, the nature of forces is a mystery even to this day; this is one reason why scientists have abandoned them, preferring to talk about exchange of energy and momentum instead.

Of course, in popular and school physics, people still talk about forces, but since there is no way of giving them any sort of physical sense (other than as part of a vector field, etc., which is anyway impossible to interpret in physical terms), advanced physics translates forces in the way indicated in the previous paragraph. Indeed, in Relativity Theory, the 'force' of gravity has been replaced by the movement of objects along "geodesics".

Even Woods and Grant concede this point:

"Gravity is not a 'force,' but a relation between real objects. To a man falling off a high building, it seems that the ground is 'rushing towards him.' From the standpoint of relativity, that observation is not wrong. Only if we adopt the mechanistic and one-sided concept of 'force' do we view this process as the earth's gravity pulling the man downwards, instead of seeing that it is precisely the interaction of two bodies upon each other." [Woods and Grant (1995), p.156.]

However, Woods and Grant failed to tell us how such a "relation" can make anything move; still less do they reveal how the items they mention are 'opposites', let alone 'internal opposites'.

Max Jammer notes this about forces:

"[The eliminability of force]...is not confined to the force of gravitation. The question of whether forces of any kind do exist, or do not and are only conventions, ha[s] become the subject of heated debates....

"In quantum chromodynamics, gauge theories, and the so-called Standard Model the notion of 'force' is treated only as an exchange of momentum and therefore replaced by the ontologically less demanding concept of 'interaction' between particles, which manifests itself by the exchange of different particles that mediate this interaction...." [Jammer (1999), p.v.]

This is re-iterated by Nobel Laureate, Professor Wilczek (of MIT):

"The paradox deepens when we consider force from the perspective of modern physics. In fact, the concept of force is conspicuously absent from our most advanced formulations of the basic laws. It doesn't appear in Schrödinger's equation, or in any reasonable formulation of quantum field theory, or in the foundations of general relativity. Astute observers commented on this trend to eliminate force even before the emergence of relativity and quantum mechanics.

"In his 1895 Dynamics, the prominent physicist Peter G. Tait, who was a close friend and collaborator of Lord Kelvin and James Clerk Maxwell, wrote

"'In all methods and systems which involve the idea of force there is a leaven of artificiality...there is no necessity for the introduction of the word 'force' nor of the sense-suggested ideas on which it was originally based.'"

[The above used to be on-line, but it now appears in Wilczek (2006), pp.37-38.]

This is probably why Engels himself said the following:

"When two bodies act on each other…they either attract each other or they repel each other…in short, the old polar opposites of attraction and repulsion…. It is expressly to be noted that attraction and repulsion are not regarded here as so-called 'forces', but as simple forms of motion." [Engels (1954), p.71. Bold emphasis added. A copy of this can be found here.]

But, if there are no classical forces, then there can't be any 'dialectical contradictions' in nature --, 'external' or 'internal' (or, at least, none that could make anything happen) -- if opposing forces were used to model them.

Hence, even if there were such 'contradictions' in nature, they would do no work, and DM, the erstwhile philosophy of change, would not be able to account for it!

Faced with this, some DM-apologists have tried to argue that modern science is either dominated by 'positivism', or is 'reactionary'. In other words, to save their theory, they are prepared to cling on to an animistic view of nature, one that even Engels was ready to abandon.

Of course, dialecticians might be using the word "contradiction" here in a new and as yet unexplained sense; but what is it? We have yet to be told.

It could be that the word is being used metaphorically here, but then we would have to take into account the fact that changes in nature are produced by resultant forces -- that is, by forces that are the result of other forces combining, not struggling. In that case, if any metaphor were applicable here it would be 'dialectical tautology', not 'dialectical contradiction'.

[However, this is a complex issue; for more details I can only refer the reader to my extensive discussion here, and especially here.]

The Mysterious "Totality"

Dialecticians tell us that everything is interconnected in a cosmic "Totality":

"Dialectics is the science of universal interconnection." [Engels (1954), p.17.]

"The whole of nature accessible to us forms a system, an interconnected totality of bodies, and by bodies we understand here all material existences extending from stars to atoms, indeed right to ether particles, in so far as one grants the existence of the last named. In the fact that these bodies are interconnected is already included that they react on one another, and it is precisely this mutual reaction that constitutes motion." [Ibid., p.70.]

"Nothing exists or can exist in splendid isolation, separate from its conditions of existence, independent from its relationships with other things…. When things enter into such relationships that they become parts of a whole, the whole cannot be regarded as nothing more than the sum total of the parts…. [W]hile it may be said that the whole is determined by the parts it may equally be said that the parts are determined by the whole….

"Dialectical materialism understands the world, not as a complex of ready-made things, but as a complex of processes, in which all things go through an uninterrupted change of coming into being and passing away....

"Dialectical materialism considers that…things come into being, change and pass out of being, not as separate individual units, but in essential relation and interconnection, so that they cannot be understood each separately and by itself but only in their relation and interconnection….

"The dialectical method demands first, that we should consider things, not each by itself, but always in their interconnections with other things…." [Cornforth (1976), pp.46-48, 72.]

"Here the key is to see all the different aspects of society and nature as interconnected. They are not separate, discrete processes which develop in isolation from each other. Mainstream sociological and scientific thought 'has bequeathed us the habit of observing natural objects and processes in isolation, detached from the general context'. Much of our schooling today still follows this pattern -- the development of the arts is separated from that of the sciences, and 'technical' subjects are separated from languages, history and geography. Our newspapers and TV news programmes divide the world up in the same artificial way -- poverty levels and stock exchange news, wars and company profit figures, strikes and government policy, suicide statistics and the unemployment rate are all reported in their own little compartments as if they are only distantly related, if at all. A dialectical analysis tries to re-establish the real connections between these elements, 'to show internal connections'. It tries, in the jargon of dialectics, to see the world as 'a totality', 'a unity'." [John Rees.]

Once more: notice how these ideas have been foisted on nature and society.

Despite this, readers are invited to check the writings of the above comrades, or those of other dialecticians I haven't quoted: we are never told what this "Totality" actually is! This is rather odd if the "Totality" is a important as we are given to believe, and about as odd as if Darwin had forgotten to tell us what natural selection amounted to. [More details here.]

Belief in a "Totality" is, of course, something that dialecticians share with all known mystical systems of thought (see, for example, here and here). As Glenn Magee points out:

"Another parallel between Hermeticism and Hegel is the doctrine of internal relations. For the Hermeticists, the cosmos is not a loosely connected, or to use Hegelian language, externally related set of particulars. Rather, everything in the cosmos is internally related, bound up with everything else.... This principle is most clearly expressed in the so-called Emerald Tablet of Hermes Trismegistus, which begins with the famous lines "As above, so below." This maxim became the central tenet of Western occultism, for it laid the basis for a doctrine of the unity of the cosmos through sympathies and correspondences between its various levels. The most important implication of this doctrine is the idea that man is the microcosm, in which the whole of the macrocosm is reflected.

"...The universe is an internally related whole pervaded by cosmic energies." [Magee (2001), p.13.]

[Compare this with the quotations from Engels, Rees and Cornforth given above.]

John Rees (in a continuation of the passage quoted earlier) tries to argue that his brand of dialectical mysticism can be distinguished from these other, non-dialectical mysticisms in that the latter fail explain change as a result of "internal contradictions". [These are of course my words, not his!]

However, contrary to what Rees asserts, we find that the vast majority of mystical systems (ancient and modern) do in fact try to account for change and stability by an appeal to the unity and interpenetration of opposites. Consider these examples:

"The Taoists saw all changes in nature as manifestations of the dynamic interplay between the polar opposites yin and yang, and thus they came to believe that any pair of opposites constitutes a polar relationship where each of the two poles is dynamically linked to the other. For the Western mind, this idea of the implicit unity of all opposites is extremely difficult to accept. It seems most paradoxical to us that experiences and values which we had always believed to be contrary should be, after all, aspects of the same thing. In the East, however, it has always been considered as essential for attaining enlightenment to go 'beyond earthly opposites,' and in China the polar relationship of all opposites lies at the very basis of Taoist thought. Thus Chuang Tzu says:

The 'this' is also 'that.' The 'that' is also 'this.'...
That the 'that' and the 'this' cease to be opposites 
is the very essence of Tao. 
Only this essence, an axis as it were, 
is the centre of the circle
responding to the endless changes." [Fritjof Capra.]

"Buddhist enlightenment consists simply in knowing the secret of the unity of opposites -- the unity of the inner and outer worlds....

"The principle is that all dualities and opposites are not disjoined but polar; they do not encounter and confront one another from afar; they exfoliate from a common centre. Ordinary thinking conceals polarity and relativity because it employs terms, the terminals or ends, the poles, neglecting what lies between them. The difference of front and back, to be and not to be, hides their unity and mutuality." [Alan Watts, quoted from here.]

"The three major gods of Hinduism are Brahma (the creator; paradoxically of minor importance in actual practice -- possibly, since his work is completed), Vishnu (the preserver), and Shiva (the destroyer), each with a wife, to symbolize the androgyny of ultimate reality. By theologians and educated Hindus in general, these gods and their innumerable manifestations are viewed as pointing toward one transcendent reality beyond existence and non-existence, the impersonal world-spirit Brahman, the absolute unity of all opposites....

"Hindus envision the cosmic process as the growth of one mighty organism, the self-actualization of divinity which contains within itself all opposites." [This has been taken from here.]

[More of this sort of material can be found in Note 1.]¹

It would not be difficult to extend this list indefinitely until it became plain that practically every mystic who has walked the earth thought/thinks 'dialectically'.

Once again we see here that the ruling ideas are always those of the ruling-class.

The only obvious difference between such overt mystics and the covert Dialectical-Marxist tendency lies in the extent to which the former employ openly religious language. Even so, both are quite happy to borrow obscure jargon lifted from traditional Philosophy, and then impose the results on nature.

Independently of all this, it is worth asking exactly how Dialectical Marxists know that everything in the entire universe is interconnected.

It is no use dialecticians appealing to modern Physics to support this idea; the latter merely hypothesises that everything was once connected (in the alleged Big Bang), not that everything is now interconnected. Indeed, certain theoretical considerations suggest that most things cannot now be connected, let alone interconnected.

[BBT = Big Bang Theory.]

Moreover, BBT is associated with the 'Block View' of time (wherein everything is regarded as part of a four-dimensional manifold); in such a set-up nothing changes. Or, rather, change amounts to no more than our subjective view of how things appear to us to alter. So, if BBT is true, objective reality is changeless. In which case, this aspect of modern Physics is no friend of DM. [More on this here and here.]

A similar appeal to "Quantum Entanglement" cannot help either. At best, experimental evidence shows that certain states of matter are interlinked locally, not across billions of light years -- nor indeed are they interconnected with the past (unless we believe in backwards causation!). This is quite apart from the fact that there are Scientific Realists who question the validity of this anti-realist aspect of modern Physics.

But, even if DM-theorists were correct, the thesis of universal interconnection is incompatible with change through "internal contradiction", for if all change is internally-driven, then no object or process could be interconnected with any other. Naturally, this idea would lead to the rather odd result that the Sun, for example, does not ripen fruit, it ripens itself! Alternatively, if everything were interlinked, then interconnection could play no causal role in change (otherwise change would not be the sole result of "internal contradictions", once more). Of course, if the Sun actually does ripen fruit, then this change, at least, would not be the result of the alleged "internal contradictions" in fruit, even of there were any.

We have already seen that DM-theorists try to get around this fatal consequence of their theory by appealing to both alternatives (i.e., on the one hand claiming/insisting that everything is a sealed unit --, and is thus "self-moving" --, while on the other, "demanding" that everything is interconnected, and is therefore full of holes' for external causes to sneak in), which is a rather fitting contradiction in itself.

Nevertheless, dialecticians are fond of pointing to the alleged contradictions that bedevil other, rival and thus supposedly defective systems of thought as a reason for their rejection, but they conveniently ignore, for example, this glaring contradiction in their own theory. [The evidence substantiating this latest allegation can be found in Essay Eleven Part One, here.]

However, this contradiction is of such prodigious proportions that it dwarfs any that have so far been found in rival non-dialectical theories. Indeed, this contradiction is bizarre enough to make the usual pronouncements of "peace, freedom and democracy" --, which so easily slip off the forked tongues of US imperialists just before they invade the next 'Third World' country to steal their wealth and install 'business-friendly' regimes --, look honest, straight-forward and true in comparison.

Just think about it: how can everything be maximally-interconnected and totally causally isolated from everything else at the same time? And, how is it possible for all change to be internally-driven yet externally-motivated (or "mediated", to use the jargon) as part of a unified Totality?

[These 'problems', and others, are explored at length in Essay Eight Parts One and Two, and in Essay Eleven Parts One and Two, along with every conceivable objection to the above claims.]

Practice Refutes DM

Or Does It?

If Marxism is true, how can we tell? Dialecticians have a novel answer: the validity of revolutionary socialism must be tested in practice.

But, what if it turns out that in practice dialecticians themselves reject or ignore their own criterion?

Indeed, and far worse: what if it should turn out that practice has actually refuted Dialectical Marxism?

Should we abandon the criterion of practice as a test of truth, or bury our heads in the sand and hope that no one notices?

Up to now dialecticians have opted for the latter strategy.

But, is this impertinent allegation quite as hasty as it is unfair?

As we will see, it is neither.

In order to substantiate this latest batch of accusations, we need to back-track a little.

According to Lenin, truth can only be confirmed in the following way:

"From living perception to abstract thought, and from this to practice, -- such is the dialectical path of the cognition of truth, of the cognition of objective reality." [Lenin (1961), p.171.]

He was, of course, merely underlining ideas that all dialecticians accept. Hence, in their view it is not enough for Marxists to try to develop the right sort of theory to explain the world, their ideas must be tested and refined in practice if they are to succeed in helping change society. Indeed, no theory could be correct, or "objective", without an intimate, long-term and "dialectical" connection with political activity -- or, at the very least, with some form of material practice.

As Rob Sewell argues:

"Marxists have always stressed the unity of theory and practice. 'Philosophers have only interpreted the world, in various ways; the point, however, is to change it', as Marx pointed to in his thesis on Feuerbach. 'If the truth is abstract it must be untrue,' states Hegel. All truth is concrete. We have to look at things as they exist, with a view to understanding their underlying contradictory development. This has very important conclusions, especially for those fighting to change society....

"The idealist view of the world grew out of the division of labour between physical and mental labour. This division constituted an enormous advance as it freed a section of society from physical work and allowed them the time to develop science and technology. However, the further removed from physical labour, the more abstract became their ideas. And when thinkers separate their ideas from the real world, they become increasingly consumed by abstract 'pure thought' and end up with all types of fantasies." [Quoted from here.]

Woods and Grant concur:

"The ability to think in abstractions marks a colossal conquest of the human intellect. Not only 'pure' science, but also engineering would be impossible without abstract thought, which lifts us above the immediate, finite reality of the concrete example, and gives thought a universal character. The unthinking rejection of abstract thought and theory indicates the kind of narrow, Philistine mentality, which imagines itself to be 'practical,' but, in reality, is impotent. Ultimately, great advances in theory lead to great advances in practice. Nevertheless, all ideas are derived one way or another from the physical world, and, ultimately, must be applied back to it. The validity of any theory must be demonstrated, sooner or later, in practice." [Woods and Grant (1995), pp.84-85.]

Unfortunately, the results of "practice" have not been too kind to Marxists of every stripe. Indeed, they have been even less kind to Trotskyists like Woods, Grant and Sewell, comrades not known for their mass following.

And they are not alone in this; practice has not looked at all favourably on Dialectical Marxism in general for close on a hundred years. All Four Internationals have gone down the pan and the 1917 revolution has been reversed. Indeed, we are no nearer, and arguably much further away from, a workers' state now than Lenin was in 1918. Practically all of the former 'socialist' societies have collapsed (and not a single worker raised his or her hand in their defence -- indeed, many joined in the attack). Even where avowedly Marxist parties can claim some sort of mass following, this support is passive or at best merely electoral. Moreover, those parties themselves have openly adopted reformist policies (despite the contrary-sounding rhetoric).

So, if truth is tested in practice, practice has delivered a rather clear verdict: "materialist dialectics" does not work; so it cannot be true.

Excuses, Excuses...

However, when confronted with such disconcerting facts, dialecticians tend to respond in one or more of the following ways:

1) They flatly deny that Dialectical Marxism has been an abject failure.

2) Even they admit to failure, they invariably blame it on "objective factors" --, or, perhaps, on other Marxist parties and their failure of "revolutionary leadership".

3) They simply ignore the problem.

4) They say it's too early to tell.

Now, there doesn't seem to be much point in dialecticians claiming that "materialist dialectics" guides all they do, avowing that truth is tested in practice, if when the latter reveals its long-term verdict, that verdict is denied, disregarded or explained away.

In that event, it might well be wondered what sort of practice could possibly constitute a genuine test of dialectics if, whatever the results, dialectics is always either excused or exonerated. What exactly is being tested if the outcome of every test cannot be deemed other than a success?

Indeed, what (permanent) successes can we claim in the last 80 years or so?

Hence, it is not so much that DM has never been tested in practice as it is that dialecticians are practiced refusing to test it.

In that case, why not just declare that Dialectical Marxism is and always has been a success, with or without any need for a practical test, thus abandoning Lenin's criterion?

This would seem to be a much more honest and appropriate response, based as it is on the sort of practice that continually ignores the results of practice!

If we know beforehand that dialectics can never fail, no matter what happens, why waste time and effort telling the world that we can only decide if DM is true if we test it in practice?

Faced with this challenge, DM-fans invariably respond with the counter-claim that the "incorrect" use of dialectics can and does lead to failure, and since everyone else misuses the dialectic, it is no surprise that they have been and are unsuccessful.

Anyone who doubts this allegation can test it in a small experiment: the very next Orthodox Trotskyist [henceforth, OT], for example, that you meet, try telling him/her that Stalinists and Maoists also use the dialectic. Then, the very next Stalinist/Maoist you meet, try telling her/him that OTs use the dialectic, too. Try the same of the Maoists/Stalinists in relation to the Stalinists/Maoists. Extend this impromptu survey and permute the name of every group you can think of and tell each of them that their opponents also use the dialectic. Unless you are incredibly unlucky, you will be told the same thing over and over: "Those other guys misuse/distort/ignore the dialectical method; they are all wedded to formulaic abstractions...".

In fact, there is no objective way of deciding if or how the dialectic has been, or can be employed 'correctly'. Indeed, as we will soon see, it can, and has been used to defend any theory you like and its opposite, sometimes in the very next breath!

However, taking each of the above excuses one at a time:

1) Those who think Dialectical Marxism is a ringing success have so far failed to reveal where and how it enjoys this blessed condition.

Presumably there is a Workers' State on the outer fringes of the Galaxy?

Systematic denial of reality of this order of magnitude clearly requires professional help; argument and evidence are useless.

In fact, there is no debating with hardcore Idealism of this sort -- that is, with an attitude that re-interprets the material world to suit the comforting idea that Dialectical Marxism is a success despite clear evidence to the contrary, and which then encourages its adepts to bury their heads in their own idea of sand.

Anyone who can look at the international situation and fail to see that our movement is not only riven with deep divisions, it is in long-term decline, is probably a more of danger to him/herself than they are to the ruling-class. Not only have the overwhelming majority of workers never been "seized" by dialectics, the larger the working class grows, the less influence Dialectical Marxism has upon it.

[This should not be taken to mean that I think that things cannot change! Indeed, this site was set up to help reverse this trend!]

Hence, in future dialecticians would be well advised to avoid using practice as a test of the correctness of their theory.

This is because, if a list is drawn up of all the 'successes' our side has 'enjoyed' over the last 150 years or so it would soon becomes obvious that it is depressingly short. Worse: our 'successes' are easily out-numbered by our 'failures'. A shortened list of both is given in Figure One, below:

Figure One: The Dialectically-Depressing List

In response, it could be argued that this list is highly prejudicial since it is padded out with dozens of failures that pre-date revolutionary Marxism and/or with those that have nothing to do with 'Materialist Dialectics'.

But, if these are filtered out -- along with the corresponding successes enjoyed by non-Marxist forces -- the list would be even more depressing!

Also worthy of note is the relatively massive scale of the 'defeats' our side has suffered compared to the modest and temporary gains made over the last 150 years. For example, the catastrophic blow delivered to our side by the failure of just two revolutions (e.g., those in Germany and Spain between 1918 and 1939) far outweighs all our successes put together, and by several orders of magnitude.

More on this here (along with replies to obvious objections).

2) It is undeniable that "objective factors" have seriously hindered the revolutionary movement. These include a relatively well-organised, rich, powerful and focussed ruling-class, the effects of imperialism and growth in the economy -- all of which have been compounded by racism, sexism, nationalism and sectionalism among workers --, and so on.

But, dialecticians are quite clear: the veracity of a theory can only be tested in practice. Now, since that requires the subjective input of active revolutionaries, this aspect of practice has plainly not worked. [Or, if it has worked, then the meaning of the word "success" must have changed.]

So, the only conclusions possible are that either (a) "materialist dialectics" has never actually been employed by revolutionaries, or (b) dialecticians have in fact been using a different theory all along, or (c) their core theory has been a monumental failure.

Since (a) and (b) are manifestly absurd, we are forced to conclude that (c) is the case.

However, as we have seen, whenever revolutionaries have reluctantly brought themselves to acknowledge the subjective side of failure, they almost invariably blame it on a lack of "revolutionary leadership" and/or an 'incorrect' use of dialectics. But this is then blamed on other parties, never their own!

To repeat: if dialectics is as central to Marxism as its supporters would have us believe, then it cannot be unrelated to the long-term lack of success of Dialectical Marxism.

Indeed, those who reject any connection at all between "materialist dialectics" and the long-term failure of Dialectical Marxism cannot claim in one breath that all things are inter-related, but in the very next deny these clear links.

Unless, of course, we are to suppose that in a world where everything is interconnected, the only two things in the entire universe that are not inter-related are the long-term failure of Dialectical Marxism and its core theory!

So, whether or not there have been "objective factors", practice itself has refuted the subjective side of Marxism: "materialist dialectics".

Moreover, since the Essays posted at the main site show that DM is not so much false as far too confused even to be assessed for its truth or falsity, the long-term failure of Dialectical Marxism is no big surprise. And because this theory originated in the speculations of card-carrying ruling-class hacks and mystics (like Hegel), this is doubly no surprise.

Indeed, under such circumstances, had Dialectical Marxism been a success, that would have been the surprise!

Case Studies

The remarks above are partly theoretical. What is needed now are concrete examples of the deleterious effect dialectical concepts have had on revolutionaries. In Essay Nine Part Two I will be presenting evidence to show that the following monumental blunders are attributable in whole or part to this 'theory'.

[It is also important to note that in Essay Nine Part Two I will be advancing materialist reasons why this theory works in the way it does, and why it has colonised the brains of generations of comrades. These reasons are outlined below, too.]

Stalinism

DM was used by the Stalinised Bolshevik Party (after Lenin's death) to justify the imposition of an undemocratic (if not an openly anti-democratic and terror-based) structure on both the Communist Party and the population of the former USSR (and later elsewhere).

This new and vicious form of the 'dictatorship of the proletariat' was actually justified by Stalin on the grounds that, since Marxist theory sees everything as 'contradictory', intensified central control was compatible with greater democratic freedom. The "withering-away of the state" was in fact confirmed by moves in the opposite direction: ever-increasing centralised power. So, paradoxically, less democracy was in fact more democracy!

Indeed, Stalin claimed that that very contradiction illustrated the truth of dialectics!

"It may be said that such a presentation of the question is 'contradictory.' But is there not the same 'contradictoriness' in our presentation of the question of the state? We stand for the withering away of the state. At the same time we stand for the strengthening of the dictatorship of the proletariat, which is the mightiest and strongest state power that has ever existed. The highest development of state power with the object of preparing the conditions for the withering away of state power -- such is the Marxist formula. Is this 'contradictory'? Yes, it is 'contradictory.' But this contradiction us bound up with life, and it fully reflects Marx's dialectics." [Political Report of the Central Committee to the Sixteenth Congress of the CPSU(B), June 27,1930. Bold emphasis added; quotation marks altered to conform to the conventions adopted here.]

Moreover, the idea that socialism could be created in a single country was justified, among other things, by the dubious invention of 'internal' versus 'external' contradictions, later bolstered by an appeal to 'principal' and 'secondary' contradictions, along with the highly convenient idea that some contradictions were not 'antagonistic'. Hence, the obvious class differences that soon emerged in the former USSR were re-labelled 'harmonious', or even declared non-existent; the real enemies (i.e., the source of all those nasty 'principal', 'external contradictions') were the imperialist powers.

Under 'socialism' strikes were clearly unnecessary, so they were suppressed --, and with a level of violence rarely seen anywhere outside of openly fascist regimes. Any attempt made by workers to rebel (e.g., Hungary 1956) were blamed on "external forces" (a familiar excuse used by ruling-classes the world over to account for and thus ignore the significance of strikes and riots -- all caused, of course, by the ubiquitous "external agitator"), i.e., in this case, the "imperialist powers", once again.

[Notice the appeal only to 'external contradictions' here? How very convenient. How very 'dialectical'.]

So, for several decades we were treated to the absurd spectacle where the alleged ruling-class (the proletariat) was in fact oppressed by the 'Bolshevik' Party! A ruling class that never actually seemed to rule! Soviet Russia without genuine soviets.

All so eminently contradictory.

More practice, more oppressed, exploited and dead workers.

And with hindsight we can see for ourselves the effect that all this 'applied dialectics' had on the former USSR and its satellites in Eastern Europe. Only those who still have their dialectical blinders on will disagree with the judgment that these failed states were not ringing endorsements of the practical implications of Dialectical Marxism.

And when these states fell between 1989 and 1991, the fact that not a single proletarian hand was raised in their defence simply confirms this negative assessment. Indeed, many workers assisted in their overthrow.

Furthermore, the dire political consequences of the idea that socialism could be built in one country can be seen in the subsequent use to which dialectics was put to defend and rationalise this counter-revolutionary idea. And no less so in the way it was also put to use in trying to limit and/or deny the catastrophic damage all this inflicted on revolutionary socialism, and then blame errors on others:

"Lenin and Stalin showed that this scheme [of Trotsky's]…was false. For if the revolution did not take place in the advanced capitalist countries, the alliance of workers and peasants in the Soviet Union had still the forces to build socialism….

"In [this example]…it will be seen that the acceptance of some ready-made scheme, some abstract formula, means passivity, support for capitalism, betrayal of the working class and of socialism. But the dialectical approach which understands things in their concrete interconnection and movement shows us how to forge ahead -- how to fight, what allies to draw in. This is the inestimable value of the Marxist dialectical method to the working class movement." [Cornforth (1976), pp.79-80. Bold emphases added.]

Anyone who thinks the above is prejudicial to Stalinism only needs to reflect on the fact that the contrary idea --, that is, that socialism could be built in one country --, has also been refuted by history, despite the 'dialectical proof' to the contrary.

And this is where DM came into its own: lunatic policies -- many changed overnight -- sold to party cadres (world-wide) by the use of this theory. This is because, as noted above, dialectics can be used to defend anything and its opposite.

Stalinism and Trotskyism (rightly or wrongly) parted company largely because of their differing views on international revolution. Of course, this rift wasn't just about ideas. Hard-headed decisions were taken for political reasons, but in order to rationalise each turn of events and sell them to the international communist movement, they were liberally coated with dialectical jargon. Those who know the history of Bolshevism will also know the incalculable damage this split has inflicted on Marxism world-wide ever since.

Later, dialectical arguments were used to justify the catastrophic and reckless class-collaborationist tactics imposed on both the Chinese and Spanish revolutions, just as they were employed to rationalise the ultra-left, "social fascist" post-1929 about-turn. This fatally crippled the fight against the Nazis by suicidally splitting the left in Germany, pitting communist against socialist, while Hitler laughed all the way to the Reichstag.

This 'theory' then helped 'justify' the rotation of Communist Party tactics through another 180 degrees in the next, class-collaborationist phase, the "Popular Front", and then through another 180 (in order to rationalise the unforgivable Hitler-Stalin pact) -- as part of the newly re-discovered 'revolutionary defeatist' stage --, and through yet another 180 two years later in the shape of 'The Great Patriotic War', following upon Hitler's predictable invasion of the 'Mother Land', 'Holy Russia'.

Post-1945, one more flip saw the invention of "peace-loving/progressive" nations versus the evil US Empire. History was now a struggle between these "progressive/peace-loving" nations and reactionary regimes, the class war lost in all the dust kicked up by so much dialectical spinning.

[Indeed, Marx would by now be doing much more than a mere 180 degrees in his grave!]

Every single one of these somersaults had a catastrophic impact on the international workers' movement. Collectively, they cast a dark shadow across the entire Communist Movement, reducing it to the sad, reformist excuse that we see among us today.

However, far, far worse, as noted above: these 'contradictory' about-turns helped pave the way for fascist aggression and the Third Reich. In that case, this 'theory' has played its own small, shameful, but indirect part in the deaths of millions of workers and countless millions of Jews, Gypsies, Russians and Slavs -- alongside the many hundreds of thousands of mentally-ill and handicapped victims abandoned to the Nazis.

Because of their continual, dialectically-inspired twists and turns, STDs in effect all but invited the Nazi tiger to rip European humanity to shreds.

Naturally, it was only too happy to oblige.

[STD = Stalinist Dialectician.]

The negative effect of all this on the reputation of Marxism among the great mass of workers cannot be over-estimated, howsoever hard one tries. Talk to anyone about Marxism (and not just Communism), and you will be regaled with much of the above. Everyone 'knows' Marxism "does not work". We can only put all this hostility down to "capitalist propaganda" if we are keen to see yet more of it.

Of course, not all of this is the sole fault of this mystical 'theory'; but it is undeniable that it was a major ideological factor in helping to rationalise these political gyrations (for whatever other reasons they might in fact have been taken), and thus in selling them to party cadres. Over the years, this has had an inevitable and seriously demoralising effect.

Moreover, no other theory could have excused with such ease the adoption of continual, almost overnight, changes in strategy and tactics --, or have rationalised so effectively the pathetic reasons that were given for the criminally unacceptable political about-turns imposed on the Communist Party internationally by post-1925 Stalinism.

Nor, indeed, could any other theory have so effortlessly licensed the grinding to dust of the core of the old Bolshevik Party in the 1930s, as scores of leading comrades were put on 'trial' on trumped-up charges, and then executed -- along with countless thousands of others.

Millions dead, Bolshevism in tatters and Marxism a foul stench in the nostrils of workers everywhere.

DM: tested in practice?

A resounding success?

Absolutely!

But, only for the ruling-class.

[UO = Unity of Opposites.]

Maoism

Nevertheless, such ill-advised dialectical devotion meant that the anti-democratic and class collaborationist tactics adopted by the CPSU were copied by the CCP under Mao (even if this was for different reasons). For example, the use of 'principal' and 'secondary' contradictions to justify suicidal alliances with the Guomindang, the use of UOs to rationalise one-party, autocratic rule, and the reference to 'leaps' to excuse the murderous and lunatic "Great Leap Forward".

Consider the first of these: class-collaboration. Familiar 'dialectical' arguments were deployed in the mid-1930s rationalising the abrupt change from outright opposition to the Guomindang to the formation of a united front with them. To be sure, this might look contradictory to non-dialectical observers trapped in 'formal thinking', but to the trained dialectician, all this makes eminent good sense.

Consider next the second: the 'contradiction' between centralised state power and greater social accountability. Dialectical dodges, similar to those employed by Stalin, were deployed by Mao and his acolytes to rationalise this 'paradox' by an appeal to the alleged 'contradictory' nature of socialist democracy.

DM: tested in practice?

Once again: indeed so. And we can see the results today in that model 'socialist' state: China.

Of course, at the very least, this means that approximately one fifth of humanity cannot now (and might not in the foreseeable future ever) be won to any credible form of Marxism, since the vast majority have been repelled by the dialectically mutant strain that dominates the CCP. They can see for themselves the dire consequences of this contradictory theory, whose acolytes preach 'proletarian democracy', but won't actually trust real live workers with any -- alongside the "mass-line" ironically coupled with mass oppression --, these dialectical 'contradictions' rationalised along sound Stalinist lines.

Chinese workers and peasants need no one to inform them of the results of 'practice'; the vast majority can see for themselves the dire political and social consequences of Dialectical Marxism.

And now, this 'theory' is being used to justify the existence of 'socialist' billionaires!

What's that you say? A contradiction in terms?

You clearly do not "understand" dialectics...

Trotskyism

The Trotskyist movement has similarly been cursed by the Dialectical Deity;  its founder succeeded in welding his followers to the crazy dialectical dogma that the 'socialist' regime in the former USSR was contradictory. Once more, it made perfectly good dialectical-sense to suppose that the alleged ruling-class (the proletariat) exercised no power at all, and were oppressed for their pains, even while they somehow exercised it!

[This was, of course, uncomfortably close to the conclusion the Stalinists themselves drew. So much for the difference between Trotskyist dialectics and the allegedly "wooden" Stalinist strain!]

Hence, because "materialist dialectics" demanded it, all good Trotskyists were told to defend the USSR as a workers' state --, albeit deformed and/or degenerated. As Trotsky argued at length [in Trotsky (1971)], only those who do not "understand" dialectics would think to disagree.

This helped cripple the politics of the Fourth International in the run-up to WW2 -- whose cadres, even while they were advocating a principled anti-imperialist stance, were quite happy to defend Stalinist imperialism. Yet more 'dialectical contradictions' to match any that the STDs were capable of concocting.

And, as if to compound this dialectical clanger, Trotsky used this 'theory' to defend the murderous Stalinist invasion of Finland!

More dialectical practice, more dead workers, more ordure heaped on Marxism.

Are you beginning to see a pattern here?

After Trotsky was murdered by a Stalinist agent, the application of 'scientific dialectics' to the contradictory nature of the USSR split the Fourth International into countless warring sects all with the 'correct' dialectical line -- who have, unsurprisingly, continued to fragment to this day.

Indeed, this is the only aspect of practical dialectics that Trotskyists have managed to perfect, as the movement continues to splinter under its own 'internal contradictions'.

Chief among which is this:- Trotsky's heirs could not quite decide which was the more important principle: loyalty to their founder's 'dialectical method' or to Marx's belief that the emancipation of the working class must be the act of the working class itself -- and hence not an act of the Red Army/Russian tanks (in Finland, Eastern Europe, or Korea), or of 'Third World' guerrillas (in China, Cuba, Nepal or Peru), or indeed of nationalist/'progressive' dictators, or even of radicalised students -- to name just a few of the groups that have been 'dialectically substituted' for the working class by assorted Trotskyists ever since. Socialism from above wedded to socialism from below.

Dialectics has been, and is still being used to justify every conceivable form of substitutionism. Just to take one example: it prompted Ted Grant to invent the contradictory idea of "Proletarian Bonapartism", and he did this so that he could account for the fact that the Stalinist regime in the former USSR, and the Maoist clique in Beijing, were able to oppress the alleged ruling-class -- i.e., workers -- while those regimes were still capable of being called (degenerated) workers' states!

As I argue in detail Essay Nine Parts One and Two, dialectics is indeed the ideology of substitutionist elements in Marxism.

All this has fatally wounded Trotskyism.

It might never recover.

Current signs are not encouraging...

The above are just three concrete examples of the thoroughly malignant effect this Hermetic theory has had on our movement. There are many more.

Is it any wonder then that since at least the 1920s, Dialectical Marxism has been to success what George W Bush is to intellectual achievement?

And, this is not a short-term or ephemeral feature of Dialectical Marxism, but one that has dogged it since the beginning, and which shows no sign of improving -- quite the reverse, in fact!

Heads In The Sand, Comrades!

3) This is probably the safest alternative for dialecticians to adopt: ignore the problem (or explain it away). It is certainly the option that inadvertently helps further the interests of the ruling-class, since it prevents the serious theoretical problems our movement faces from ever being addressed, thus guaranteeing another century of failure.

Indeed, the bosses could not have designed a better theory to screw around with our heads if they had tried, initiating in our movement a monumental waste of time as our best theorists vainly try to grapple with Hegel's fluent Martian in order to make some sort of sense of it -- clearly, no success so far in that direction!

All this is quite apart from the fact that practice cannot distinguish between correct and incorrect theories. The latter often work (and they can do so for many centuries). For example, Ptolemaic Astronomy was highly successful for more than a thousand years, and it became increasingly accurate over time.

Furthermore, correct theories can sometimes fail. For instance, Copernican Astronomy predicted stellar parallax, which was not observed until the 1838, with the work of Friedrich Bessel three hundred years after Copernicus's work was published.

[More examples of both alternatives can be found in Essay Ten Part One.]

And even if this were not so, and success was an unfailing criterion of truth, since there is as yet no socialist society on earth, we will only know if Marxism is correct after the event. Hence, this criterion cannot tell us whether Marxism is correct now. [That disposes of Excuse Number Four.]

In fact, the following declaration could become true:

"Freeman and slave, patrician and plebeian, lord and serf, guild-master and journeyman, in a word, oppressor and oppressed, stood in constant opposition to one another, carried on an uninterrupted, now hidden, now open fight, a fight that each time ended, either in a revolutionary reconstitution of society at large, or in the common ruin of the contending classes." [Marx and Engels (1848), pp.35-36. Bold emphasis added.]

According to these two, the "contending classes" could wipe each other out --, or at least the class war could result in their "common ruin" -- which outcome itself is not at all easy to square with the NON. [Why this is so will be explored in Essay Three, Part Five, when it is published.]

[NON = Negation of the Negation.]

However, judging from the way that dialecticians themselves disregard the deliverances of practice, this suggests that, in practice, even they do not accept this criterion!

For in practice, they ignore it.

Unfortunately, pragmatic theories (like this) are hostages to fortune; those who adhere to them should feign no surprise if history pays little heed to their dialectically-compromised day-dreams, and delivers decade after decade of refutation.

There are other (much better, and more materially-based) ways of confirming the validity of HM -- these will be explored in an Essay to be published at the main site in 2010 or 2011.

All this means that if we want our practice to be more successful, we will have to ditch the theory that has helped drop our movement into this bottomless pit of failure: "materialist dialectics".

[It is important to add that I am not blaming this 'theory' for all our problems, only for some of them; however, no matter how many times I repeat this, I still encounter comrades on internet discussion boards who claim the opposite, that I am blaming dialectics for all our woes. Why they do this will be revealed below.]

Why Revolutionaries Cling To DM Like Grim Death

Alien-Class Theory

No matter how deep, long-term, devastating or repetitive the refutations history delivers, and despite the cogent arguments ranged against it in my Essays and elsewhere, the DM-faithful remain hopelessly mesmerised by their 'theory'.

Why is this? And why have revolutionaries of the stature of Engels, Lenin and Trotsky sold their radical souls to this demonstrably conservative thought-form? [Marx was an exception; on this, see here and here.]

The historical origin of the philosophical system from which DM emerged is not in any doubt (a summary can be found here), and neither are the petty-bourgeois origins of DM-classicists (such as Engels, Plekhanov, Lenin and Trotsky). Unfortunately, this means that dialectics itself has an impressive alien-class pedigree.

It is important to note, however, what is not being alleged here: that the above comrades imported these class-compromised ideas into the workers' movement knowingly or duplicitously. On the contrary, it is being asserted that they did this honestly and unwittingly.

Honestly, because of their class origins and education they genuinely thought that our movement needed a Philosophy of some sort. Unwittingly, because the only theories on offer in their day were those that had already been compromised by ruling-class forms-of-thought (which salient fact these comrades clearly failed to appreciate). [More on that below.]

The founders of DM plainly weren't workers; they came from a class that educated their children in the classics and in philosophy. This tradition taught that behind appearances there lay a hidden world, accessible to thought alone, which is more real than the material universe we see around us.

As we have seen above, this way of viewing things was invented by ideologues of the ruling class, who openly regarded reality this way, and who ensured that others were educated to see it this way, too.

So, when they became Marxists, these non-worker founders of our movement (Engels, Lenin, Trotsky, etc.), who, when young, had been indoctrinated to believe there was just such a secret world governing everything. In that case, they looked for principles in that invisible world that told them that change was inevitable since it was an integral part of the hidden, cosmic order. Enter dialectics, courtesy of the dogmatic ideas of that ruling-class mystic, Hegel.

This was of course why they felt they could impose dialectics on nature, since this theory dealt with secret goings-on beneath surface of 'appearances'.

This does not of course mean that only workers can be good socialists, but it does mean that we should be alert to the class-compromised origin of the ideas that DM-classicists brought with them into our movement -- before the working class could provide them with an effective materialist counter-weight.

Today, a hundred or so years later, there is no longer any excuse for continuing to import these ideas into Marxism, since that counter-weight now exists.

However, this does help explain a rather curious anomaly: as the working-class daily grows bigger, the influence that Dialectical Marxism has on it dwindles ever faster. [More on that in Essay Nine Part One.]

Parallel to this, our movement continues to fragment, and thus has decreasing influence on the class struggle. Moreover, the fact that workers ignore our movement en masse means that their counter-weight now has no influence where it counts: on our ideas.

So Marxist Idealism lives on as its theorists think of new ways to make such awkward facts disappear.

The lack of active socialist workers means that the unifying force of the class struggle by-passes, and thus has no impact upon, the revolutionary movement, which, because it is dominated by petty-bourgeois individuals, does little other than split (for well-known social-psychological reasons -- on this, see here).

Hence, the same social forces that motivate workers to unite, drive professional revolutionaries in the opposite direction, and toward fragmentation.

A rather ironic 'dialectical' inversion in itself!

But, are these accusations enough to condemn DM?

Certainly not on their own.

DM is demonstrably flawed from end to end (as my Essays show); that alone is sufficient to condemn it.

However, the alien class-origin of both "materialist dialectics" and its originators explains why this theory has had such a deleterious effect on militant minds, rendering our movement all but impotent. It also helps account for the disastrous effect it has had on post-1920s Marxism.

The Dialectics Of Defeat

But, why is it that hard-headed revolutionaries cling on to this lamentable theory like drunks to lamp posts?

Marxists are aware that in defeat there is a tendency (even among revolutionaries) to turn to mysticism both as a means of explanation and as a source of consolation. This was indeed one of the main reasons why Lenin wrote Materialism and Empirio-Criticism. However, Lenin failed to note that the defeats suffered in Russia in and around 1905 turned him toward dialectics, a theory about which he had been all but silent before.

Unfortunately, Dialectical Marxism has known little other than defeat and set-back for most of its history. And that is why DM-fans cling onto this theory.

This means that the theory that has played an important subjective role in helping to engineer this catastrophic state of affairs also 'allows' its adherents to ignore its consequences.

It does this in at least two ways:

1) The NON persuades true believers that any and all retreats are only temporary; the onward march of Dialectical Marxism is assured by the underlying logic of the universe. [We saw this surface in Excuse Four, above. Indeed, it motivates the other excuses, too.]

2) DM-epistemology teaches that appearances contradict underlying "essences" -- that is: how things appear to be is the opposite of the way they really are. That being so, what might seem (to the dialectically untrained eye) to be a series of defeats is really part of the long-term, onward march of Marxism --, or, perhaps, part of a run of successes about to begin, any day soon...

This is the dialectical equivalent of 'pie-in-the-sky'.

So, the theory that has helped engineer these set-backs also says that (1) they have not really taken place, or that (2) they are really the opposite of what they seem, or even that (3) they do not matter.

Anyone who doubts this should try telling any randomly-selected, dialectically-distracted comrade that Dialectical Marxism is highly unsuccessful. Unless you are extraordinarily unlucky, you can expect to be subjected to some ludicrously tortured logic that will attempt to prove otherwise.

The latter will no doubt include a convoluted explanation as to why, when 99% of the working class ignores Marxism --, and has done so for many generations --, and all four Internationals have gone down the pan, and the vast majority of the former 'socialist' states have gone into reverse, and Marxist parties everywhere (especially the Trotskyist variety) are a by-word for in-fighting, splits and divisions (indeed they are a standing joke in this regard),² and even though practically every communist party on the planet has embraced open reformism --, meaning that we are now further away from establishing a Workers' State than the Bolsheviks were in 1921 --, that none of this matters, or that none of this has actually happened, or is really now happening, or is any part of the particular 'tradition' to which this sad soul belongs.

You see, it's the fault of those other "sects"; it's a failure of revolutionary "leadership" and an 'incorrect' use of dialectics that are to blame -- those fools in the Workers' Yada Yada Party, you understand, not ours.

Alternatively, the "objective circumstances" ploy will be dusted-off, and given another spin around the dialectical exercise yard.

Doubtless, you will then be informed of the good news that the latest stunt, conference, intervention, split, or expulsion that the party to which this sad dreamer belongs has just pulled off (or is about to stage) heralds the long-awaited turning-point for the international proletariat.^2a

Without a hint of irony -- still less of embarrassment --, this comrade will pronounce such verities on behalf of at most 0.00001% of the population of this planet (this being the entire membership of his or her tiny grouplet (formed largely of non-workers)), some of whom are about to be expelled from the Workers' Yada Yada Party anyway --, probably for failing to 'understand' "materialist dialectics"!

And, as sure as eggs aren't dialectical eggs, this comrade will fail to see the connection between such facts and such failures --, and no doubt will then give you a hard time for even thinking to question the sacred gospel that preaches the exact opposite.

Or, if you belong to another "sect", you can expect to be called a "Revisionist!", "bourgeois stooge", or worse.

Those familiar with revolutionary papers will already know about their unsinkable optimism -- anger is always "growing", movements are always "gaining strength", meetings are always "historic", victory is always "around the corner" --, how almost all of them claim to be the only one that is "leading the class", and how Capitalism is once again entering its "final crisis", the latter apparently having more lives than a lorry load of cats.

But, all that this will confirm is how unreasonable dialecticians are, and how they are prepared to bend every rule, every fact, and lie and invent in order to protect the sacred dialectic.

So, Dialectical Marxists cling to this 'theory' because without it not only would their entire world-view fall apart, their source of consolation would disappear. Hence, they are super-glued to dialectics for the same sorts of reasons that religious folk cling to their faith. [More on this here.]

That, of course, explains the mind-numbing and mantra-like repetitiveness of DM, the pathological fear of the "R" word ("Revisionism"), the sacred books, the constant appeal to 'orthodoxy', the heroic pictures of the dialectical saints carried on parades (Marx, Engels, Lenin, Stalin, Mao, Che, Kim Jong-il, etc., etc.), and the inexplicable adherence to the Stone Age Logic found in a thinly-disguised work of mystical theology that celebrates the goings-on of an invisible 'Being' (i.e., Hegel's 'Logic').

If this wasn't quite so serious, you'd laugh.

Ruling-Class Theory

One of the main reasons why I reject not just DM, but all forms of traditional Philosophy, is that, as Marx noted above, both represent a boss-class view of the world.

In earlier times, the vast majority of Philosophers were either members of various ruling-classes, or were patronised by them. These theorists saw the state as an earthly embodiment of the cosmic order. In that case, just as society was ruled by "law", so was reality.

In ancient and medieval class societies, rulers used highly specialised language to frame their laws in order to (1) reflect the above connection, (2) secure property and (3) help keep the 'great unwashed' in their place. In all of this they failed to see this social form (language) for what it was: a means of communication. On the contrary, they regarded discourse as a means of representation, a secret code that contained within itself hidden clues that could reveal the essential nature of 'Being'.

This encouraged them to think that if language was capable of ordering servants about the place, if words codified into law actually controlled the state, and secured both power and property, then language must likewise control reality (for the state was a reflection of the cosmic order). As the historical record shows, the idea soon suggested itself to ruling-class hacks that language must not only constitute the underlying fabric of reality, it must be capable of making things move. [So, this belief is not just found in magic.]

It thus became natural for ruling-class theorists to think of conflict and change in linguistic or conceptual terms.

And that is why mystics all argue and think in the way they do (as we saw above --, and will see again below, this time in connection with Heraclitus (540-475BC)): language is a secret code.

In that case, thought alone was capable of unmasking hidden truths -- which were far too profound for the masses to understand.

So, to paraphrase Marx, what had once been the product of the relations between human beings (ordinary language) became inverted and fetishised into a secret code that theorists took to be, or to represent, the real relations among things, or indeed those things themselves.

Indeed, it also became natural for the ruling-class and their theoretical hangers-on to think that this is how the 'gods' must have constituted the universe. As early creation myths reveal, this is exactly how the ancients saw things: the 'gods' merely had to speak and not only did everything spring into existence, all of reality did as it was told as it effortlessly obeyed the 'word of god', materialised now as physical law. So, just as good citizens observed the civil and criminal law, everything in nature bends the knee to 'divine law'.

Hence, according to this world-view, reality was either controlled by language or was constituted by it. In that case, language alone could be used to derive truths about it.

This doctrine I call "Linguistic Idealism" [LIE].

LIE, in one form or another, dominated all subsequent philosophical theories, and that is why all traditional philosophers think it quite natural to impose their ideas on reality. [More on that here and here.]

Hence, those who conceptualised reality in this way would naturally think that, if the status quo on earth is the product of language (which deliberately or accidentally masked the realities of class power, hidden now behind this superficially 'benign' façade) --, and if reality reflected, or was a reflection of, the state --, then thought alone could unmask, and then perhaps control, the secrets of nature. Thus was born Philosophy, the most abstract form of ruling-class ideology.

Such theories could now be imposed on nature because 'God' originally constituted the world this way, which meant that reality was simply condensed discourse -- after all, nature was Mind, constituted by the Divine Logos.

This doctrine, as far as we know, was invented by the very first dialectician in history, Heraclitus:^2b

"Heraclitus, along with Parmenides, is probably the most significant philosopher of ancient Greece until Socrates and Plato; in fact, Heraclitus's philosophy is perhaps even more fundamental in the formation of the European mind than any other thinker in European history, including Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle. Why? Heraclitus, like Parmenides, postulated a model of nature and the universe which created the foundation for all other speculation on physics and metaphysics. The ideas that the universe is in constant change and that there is an underlying order or reason to this change -- the Logos -- form the essential foundation of the European world view. Every time you walk into a science, economics, or political science course, to some extent everything you do in that class originates with Heraclitus's speculations on change and the Logos....

"In reading these passages, you should be able to piece together the central components of Heraclitus's thought. What, precisely, is the Logos? Can it be comprehended or defined by human beings? What does it mean to claim that the Logos consists of all the paired opposites in the universe? What is the nature of the Logos as the composite of all paired opposites? How does the Logos explain change? Finally, how would you compare Heraclitus's Logos to its later incarnations: in the Divided Line in Plato, in foundational and early Christianity? How would you relate Heraclitus's cryptic statements to those of Lao Tzu?" [Quoted from here. Bold emphasis added.]

The short answer here is, obviously: The ruling ideas are always those of the ruling-class!

From then on, for most traditional thinkers, Logic depicted the underlying form of reality, its essential structure. This further justified then the imposition of the products of thought onto nature.

Although recently there have been notable exceptions to the above generalisations, for most philosophers, a priori knowledge was the only reliable form of knowledge. Empirical knowledge (that is, knowledge based on material evidence and experience) was considered unreliable since it reflected the debased experience and life of ordinary folk.

[This is brought out well in Conner (2005).]

So, from the beginning philosophers denigrated the material language of working people, just as they undervalued their view of the world, gradually transforming their own discourse into a complex, jargon-filled code that represented 'divine truth' and the 'rational' structure of reality.

And, surprise, surprise: dialecticians do the just same -- and we can now see why.

Which is rather odd, since Marx emphasised the opposite approach:

"For philosophers, one of the most difficult tasks is to descend from the world of thought to the actual world. Language is the immediate actuality of thought. Just as philosophers have given thought an independent existence, so they had to make language into an independent realm. This is the secret of philosophical language, in which thoughts in the form of words have their own content....

"...The philosophers would only have to dissolve their language into the ordinary language, from which it is abstracted, to recognise it as the distorted language of the actual world, and to realise that neither thoughts nor language in themselves form a realm of their own, that they are only manifestations of actual life." [Marx and Engels (1970), p.118. Bold emphases alone added.]

Traditional Philosophers thus sought to invent a priori theses that revealed the underlying 'essence' of reality -- i.e., fundamental features of existence inaccessible to the senses, and hence irrefutable by any material means.

In every case, but in different forms depending on which Mode of Production was dominant at the time, and because they all now saw the world as in effect, 'condensed language', Philosophers derived their theses from words (or from 'concepts') alone -- either from specially-concocted jargon (such as, "Being", "Entelechy", "Substance", or "Nothing"), or from suitably distorted ordinary terms (like "cause", "law", "thought", or "determined"), as Marx pointed out.

Such theses were imposed on nature, and were not only held to be true everywhere and everywhen, they determined the form of any and all possible worlds.

Moreover, because these doctrines have been derived from language alone, they appeared to be 'self-evident' (that is, no external material evidence was required to establish their truth; they were thus self-certifying). In that case, these super-truths were not only easy to invent (a few moments reflection on the 'hidden meaning' of a handful of words was all that was required), but once concocted, they seemed impossible to disbelieve.

The same is true of the theses dialecticians lifted from Hegel.

Of course, that is just one more reason why practice has never been a test of the truth of Marxism, and never will be if Dialectical Mystics remain in control. Dialectics is self-certifying. It does not require testing in practice, nor does it need 'revising'. In which case, whatever happens, this theory will always appear to ratify itself.

Small wonder then that we have seen in actual practice, practice has been ignored.

This approach to knowledge is well summarised by James White (in this case in relation to German Idealism):

"Already with Fichte the idea of the unity of the sciences, of system, was connected with that of finding a reliable starting-point in certainty on which knowledge could be based. Thinkers from Kant onwards were quite convinced that the kind of knowledge which came from experience was not reliable. Empirical knowledge could be subject to error, incomplete, or superseded by further observation or experiment. It would be foolish, therefore, to base the whole of knowledge on something which had been established only empirically. The kind of knowledge which Kant and his followers believed to be the most secure was a priori knowledge, the kind embodied in the laws of Nature. These had been formulated without every occurrence of the Natural phenomenon in question being observed, so they did not summarise empirical information, and yet they held good by necessity for every case; these laws were truly universal in their application." [White (1996), p.29.]

It is worth noting here how the word "law" has been lifted from legal theory and projected onto nature -- the use of which term plainly suggests that reality is governed by a cosmic will of some sort. [After all, who enacted universal law, and who enforces it?]

Hence, for traditional theorists, if nature is deemed to have an underlying rational structure, then not only was it easy to 'justify' the status quo (as a reflection of that underlying order), it was equally easy to argue that all those who rebelled against it could be opposed on 'legitimate' and 'rational' grounds.

In fact, oppositional was futile; the cosmic order will always re-assert itself (these days, this task has been hived-off to our genes).

The above is further amplified by the following two authors:

"Empirical, contingent truths have always struck philosophers as being, in some sense, ultimately unintelligible. It is not that none can be known with certainty…; nor is it that some cannot be explained…. Rather is it that all explanation of empirical truths rests ultimately on brute contingency -- that is how the world is! Where science comes to rest in explaining empirical facts varies from epoch to epoch, but it is in the nature of empirical explanation that it will hit the bedrock of contingency somewhere, e.g., in atomic theory in the nineteenth century or in quantum mechanics today. One feature that explains philosophers' fascination with truths of Reason is that they seem, in a deep sense, to be fully intelligible. To understand a necessary proposition is to see why things must be so, it is to gain an insight into the nature of things and to apprehend not only how things are, but also why they cannot be otherwise. It is striking how pervasive visual metaphors are in philosophical discussions of these issues. We see the universal in the particular (by Aristotelian intuitive induction); by the Light of Reason we see the essential relations of Simple Natures; mathematical truths are apprehended by Intellectual Intuition, or by a priori insight. Yet instead of examining the use of these arresting pictures or metaphors to determine their aptness as pictures, we build upon them mythological structures.

"We think of necessary propositions as being true or false, as objective and independent of our minds or will. We conceive of them as being about various entities, about numbers even about extraordinary numbers that the mind seems barely able to grasp…, or about universals, such as colours, shapes, tones; or about logical entities, such as the truth-functions or (in Frege's case) the truth-values. We naturally think of necessary propositions as describing the features of these entities, their essential characteristics. So we take mathematical propositions to describe mathematical objects…. Hence investigation into the domain of necessary propositions is conceived as a process of discovery. Empirical scientists make discoveries about the empirical domain, uncovering contingent truths; metaphysicians, logicians and mathematicians appear to make discoveries of necessary truths about a supra-empirical domain (a 'third realm'). Mathematics seems to be the 'natural history of mathematical objects' [Wittgenstein (1978), p.137], 'the physics of numbers' [Wittgenstein (1976), p.138; however these authors record this erroneously as p.139, RL] or the 'mineralogy of numbers' [Wittgenstein (1978), p.229]. The mathematician, e.g., Pascal, admires the beauty of a theorem as though it were a kind of crystal. Numbers seem to him to have wonderful properties; it is as if he were confronting a beautiful natural phenomenon [Wittgenstein (1998), p.47; again, these authors have recorded this erroneously as p.41, RL]. Logic seems to investigate the laws governing logical objects…. Metaphysics looks as if it is a description of the essential structure of the world. Hence we think that a reality corresponds to our (true) necessary propositions. Our logic is correct because it corresponds to the laws of logic….

"In our eagerness to ensure the objectivity of truths of reason, their sempiternality and mind-independence, we slowly but surely transform them into truths that are no less 'brutish' than empirical, contingent truths. Why must red exclude being green? To be told that this is the essential nature of red and green merely reiterates the brutish necessity. A proof in arithmetic or geometry seems to provide an explanation, but ultimately the structure of proofs rests on axioms. Their truth is held to be self-evident, something we apprehend by means of our faculty of intuition; we must simply see that they are necessarily true…. We may analyse such ultimate truths into their constituent 'indefinables'. Yet if 'the discussion of indefinables…is the endeavour to see clearly, and to make others see clearly, the entities concerned, in order that the mind may have that kind of acquaintance with them which it has with redness or the taste of a pineapple' [Russell (1937), p.xv; again these authors record this erroneously as p.v, RL], then the mere intellectual vision does not penetrate the logical or metaphysical that to the why or wherefore…. For if we construe necessary propositions as truths about logical, mathematical or metaphysical entities which describe their essential properties, then, of course, the final products of our analyses will be as impenetrable to reason as the final products of physical theorising, such as Planck's constant." [Baker and Hacker (1988), pp.273-75. Referencing conventions in the original have been altered to conform to those adopted here.]

DM-theorists attempt to do something rather similar: from a few specially-selected, jargonised words they suddenly produce a host of a priori theses, which they then impose on nature. For instance, from what he imagined was the 'real' meaning of the word "move", Engels thought he could derive what he thought was true of every example of motion in the entire universe, for all of time:

"...[A]s soon as we consider things in their motion, their change, their life, their reciprocal influence on one another[,] [t]hen we immediately become involved in contradictions. Motion itself is a contradiction: even simple mechanical change of place can only come about through a body at one and the same moment of time being both in one place and in another place, being in one and the same place and also not in it. And the continuous assertion and simultaneous solution of this contradiction is precisely what motion is." [Engels (1976), p.152.]

Unfortunately for Engels (and Hegel), there are many legitimate uses of words connected with movement (including "move" and "place") that do not imply this. [More details can be found here.]

Anyway, even if Engels were right, this use of language is a 'brute fact', too. After all, why should a 'contradiction' make anything change or move? And, why should quantity change into quality? Why should the whole be more than the sum of the parts? The only possible answer is that, if they are true, then they too are just brute facts about reality.

Hence, just as metaphysics cannot in the end explain anything, neither can 'Materialist Dialectics' -- even if it were true! In that case, not only have Dialectical Marxists bought a pig in a poke, there is in fact no pig and no poke!

Once more, all this is not the least bit surprising since, as we have just seen, these ideas originated from within an ancient ruling-class, Idealist tradition. Moreover, as we have also seen, without exception every DM-classicist was a non-worker, educated to think precisely this way.³

So, DM is based on, and has aped the thought-forms of a well-entrenched ruling-class.

No wonder then it has presided over little other than defeat, failure, and disaster.⁴

Conclusion

And that is why I am implacably opposed to DM.

In fact, it is difficult for me to understand why most revolutionaries are not.

Notes

1. For anyone interested, there is an entire site devoted to the unity/identity of opposites in mystical thought.

Here are few more quotations from assorted mystics that show they too appealed to 'unities of opposites', and the like, to account for change, etc.:

"Sufism is usually associated with Islam. It has developed Bhakti to a high point with erotic imagery symbolising the unity of opposites. The subtle anatomy and microcosm-macrocosm model also found in Tantra and Taoism is used by it, dressed in its own symbols. Certain orders use ecstatic music and/or dance which reminds one of the Tantric celebration of the senses. Sometimes, the union of opposites is seen as a kind of gnosis. This is similar to Jnani Yoga." [Quoted from here.]

"The fact that the Reality of God which is disclosed through the cosmos can be described by opposite and conflicting attributes explains, in the Muslim view, why the cosmos itself can be seen as a vast collection of opposites. The two hands of God are busy shaping all that exists. Hence, mercy and wrath, severity and gentleness, life-giving and slaying, exalting and abasing, and all the contradictory attributes of God are displayed in existence. These opposing pairs of names act together in a manner analogous to yin and yang. One way in which we perceive this constant interaction of the names is through change (haraka) and transmutation (estehala). Here Chuang Tzu could say: 'The existence of things is like a galloping horse. With every motion existence changes, at every second it is transformed' (Chuang Tsu 17. 6). For their part, the Ash'arite theologians said that nothing stands still in creation and no phenomenon remains constant in its place for two successive moments. Everything is in constant need of divine replenishment, since nothing exists on its own. Things can exist only if God gives them existence. If God were to stop giving existence to the universe for an instant, it would disappear. Hence, at each moment God re-creates the cosmos to prevent its annihilation." [Quoted from here.]

"According to Acharya Mahaprajna, opposition is a fundamental rule for existence. 'There is no type of existence in which opposites do not co-exist. In a sense, existence may also be defined as the coming together of opposites. It is the principle of the quest for unity between two apparently different characteristics of a substance. It tries to point out that the characteristics which differences have, also have an identicality. Reconciliation, which is a principle of anekant, comes about only with the recognition of the identity principle.'...

"In the opposite lies the affirmation of an attribute. This seems to be true at all levels. Even within the atom, the electron has an anti-particle called photon (sic). Writes Richard Feynman, 'Photons look exactly the same in all respects when they travel backwards in time...so they are their own anti-particles.'" [Quoted from here.]

"The great Fourth Hermetic Principle -- the Principle of Polarity -- embodies the truth that all manifested things have 'two sides'; 'two aspects'; 'two poles'; a 'pair of opposites,' with manifold degrees between the two extremes. The old paradoxes, which have ever perplexed the mind of men, are explained by an understanding of this Principle. Man has always recognized something akin to this Principle, and has endeavoured to express it by such sayings, maxims and aphorisms as the following: 'Everything is and isn't, at the same time'; 'all truths are but half-truths'; 'every truth is half-false'; 'there are two sides to everything'; 'there is a reverse side to every shield,' etc., etc. The Hermetic Teachings are to the effect that the difference between things seemingly diametrically opposed to each is merely a matter of degree. It teaches that 'the pairs of opposites may be reconciled,' and that 'thesis and antithesis are identical in nature, but different in degree'; and that the 'universal reconciliation of opposites' is effected by a recognition of this Principle of Polarity. The teachers claim that illustrations of this Principle may be had on every hand, and from an examination into the real nature of anything. They begin by showing that Spirit and Matter are but the two poles of the same thing, the intermediate planes being merely degrees of vibration...." [The Kybalion, reputed by some to be the third most important book of Hermeticism, quoted from here.]

Finally, there is this revealing comment:

"The ancient Egyptians believed that a totality must consist of the union of opposites. A similar premise, that the interaction between yin (the female principle) and yang (the male principle) underlies the workings of the universe, is at the heart of much Chinese thinking. The idea has been central to Taoist philosophy from the fourth century B.C. to the present day and is still embraced by many Chinese who are not Taoists. Nor is the idea confined to the Egyptians and the Chinese. Peoples all over the world, in Eurasia, Africa and the Americas, have come to the conclusion that the cosmos is a combining of opposites and that one of the most important aspects of this dualism is the opposition between male and female." [Maybury-Lewis (1992), p.125. Bold emphasis added.]

Notice how both the arguments and examples used by the above mystics are broadly similar to those found in DM-texts. It seems that open and honest mystics (the traditional sort) also like to appeal to the same sort of Mickey Mouse Science to substantiate their 'theories' as do many of our (closet mystical) comrades.

Exactly why both sets of mystics (i.e., the traditional and the dialectical sort) do this is explained in Essay Nine Part Two, and Essays Twelve and Fourteen (summaries here and here).

2. This was made into a famous joke by the Monty Python crew (video available here):

BRIAN: Are you the Judean People's Front?

REG: Fuck off!

BRIAN: What?

REG: Judean People's Front. We're the People's Front of Judea! Judean People's Front. Cawk.

FRANCIS: Wankers!

BRIAN: Can I... join your group?

REG: No. Piss off!

BRIAN: I didn't want to sell this stuff. It's only a job. I hate the Romans as much as anybody.

PEOPLE'S FRONT OF JUDEA: Shhhh. Shhhh. Shhh. Shh. Shhhh!

REG: Schtum!

JUDITH: Are you sure?

BRIAN: Oh, dead sure. I hate the Romans already.

REG: Listen. If you really wanted to join the P.F.J., you'd have to really hate the Romans.

BRIAN: I do!

REG: Oh, yeah? How much?

BRIAN: A lot!

REG: Right. You're in. Listen. The only people we hate more than the Romans are the fucking Judean People's Front.

P.F.J.: Yeah...!

JUDITH: Splitters!

P.F.J.: Splitters...!

FRANCIS: And the Judean Popular People's Front.

P.F.J.: Yeah. Oh, yeah. Splitters. Splitters...!

LORETTA: And the People's Front of Judea.

P.F.J.: Yeah. Splitters. Splitters...!

REG: What?

LORETTA: The People's Front of Judea. Splitters!

REG: We're the People's Front of Judea!

LORETTA: Oh. I thought we were the Popular Front.

REG: People's Front! C-huh.

FRANCIS: Whatever happened to the Popular Front, Reg?

REG: He's over there.

P.F.J.: Splitter!