Essay Two:
Dialectical Materialism -- Imposed On The World, Not 'Read' From It
Preface
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~~~~~~oOo~~~~~~
As is
the case with all my Essays, nothing here should be read as an attack either on
Historical Materialism [HM] -- a theory I fully accept --, or, indeed, on
revolutionary socialism. I remain as committed to the self-emancipation of the
working class and the dictatorship of the proletariat as I was when I first
became a revolutionary nearly thirty years ago. [The difference between
Dialectical Materialism [DM] and HM, as I see it, is explained
here.]
This particular Essay is intended to
motivate the ideas presented in the rest of the site, particularly those found
in Essays Three Parts
One
to Five, and Twelve Parts
One to Six, where the most controversial
allegation advanced below (i.e., that Marxist dialecticians have bought into a
ruling-class view of the world) will be explained and substantiated.
[That particular argument is summarised
here,
here and
here.]
In connection with the above, it is
worth pointing out that phrases like "ruling-class theory", "ruling-class view
of reality", "ruling-class ideology" (etc.) used in this Essay and at this site
(in connection with Traditional Philosophy and DM) aren't meant to imply
that all or even most members of various ruling-classes actually invented these
ways of thinking or of seeing the world (although some of them did -- for
example,
Heraclitus,
Plato,
Cicero
and
Marcus Aurelius).
They are intended to highlight theories (or "ruling
ideas")
that are conducive to, or which rationalise the interests of the various
ruling-classes history has inflicted on humanity, whoever invents them.
Up until recently
this dogmatic approach to knowledge had almost
invariably been promoted by thinkers who either relied on ruling-class
patronage, or who, in one capacity or another, helped run the system
for the elite.
However, this will become the central topic of Parts Two and Three of Essay
Twelve (when they are published); until then, the reader is directed
here,
here, and
here
for more details.
It is also worth emphasising that my
objection to DM isn't that it has reproduced key areas of ruling-class ideology,
but that it makes absolutely no sense. That serious allegation will be fully
substantiated in
Essays
Three through Thirteen at this site.
~~~~~~oOo~~~~~~
One of the problems with the material
presented below is that, even though I have included literally hundreds of
quotations substantiating the allegation that, despite what they say,
DM-theorists have imposed their ideas on the world, several DM-apologists
have argued that these are just "passing remarks", "taken out of context", or
that they are merely "hypothetical", etc.
First of all: the question whether or
not they are "hypothetical" has been dealt with below (mainly, but not
exclusively,
here and
here).
Second: had I included every dogmatic
passage to be found in the DM-classics (and in 'lesser' DM-books and articles)
this Essay would have been many hundreds of thousands of words longer than it
already is. In order to confirm that this isn't just lazy hyperbole, I have
now added an
Appendix to
this Essay where I have posted some of this additional material.
Indeed, and to that end, I have also
added a score or more examples of the
a priori dogmatic theses to be found in
just the first half of Engels's Anti-Dühring
[AD]. This tranche of new material is over 5000 words long, confirming my
estimation that Engels was a Dialectical Dogmatist to rank among the best. More
material will be added from other DM-classics over the next few years.
So, these aren't just "passing
remarks".
Moreover, as readers can readily check,
they
are in context, too. [On that, see
here.]
Indeed, when asked to supply the 'missing context', those who have advanced this
criticism have so far failed to respond. [E-mail
me if you think you can help them out!]
It
is also worth adding that in what follows the truth or falsehood of the
dogmatic passages I have quoted from the DM-literature isn't the main issue,
merely whether DM-theorists are consistent in their claim not to have imposed
their ideas on reality.
Why that
is important in itself will also be explained below.
Of course, in other Essays posted at
this site (especially in Essays Three Part One through Thirteen Part Three), the
actual truth or falsehood of DM-theses will become the issue. In
fact, what we will discover is that DM-theses are in general far too vague
and confused
for anyone to be able to say whether or not they are true. They don't make it
that far!
It
is also worth adding out that a good 50% of my case against DM has been
relegated to the
End Notes
and
Appendices. Indeed, in this particular Essay, most of the
supporting evidence and argument is to be found there. This has been done to
allow the main body of the Essay to flow a little more smoothly. This means that
if readers want to appreciate fully my case against DM, they will need to
consult this material. In most cases, I have added considerably more detail,
supporting evidence and argument; I have also raised objections (some obvious,
many not -- and some that will have occurred to the reader) to my own
accusations and allegations -- which I have then rebutted. [I explain why I have
adopted this tactic in
Essay One.]
If readers skip this material, then my
answers to any qualms or objections they might have will be missed, as will my
expanded comments and clarifications.
[Since I have been debating this theory
with dialectically-distracted comrades for over 25 years, I have heard all the
objections there are! (Links to many of the more recent on-line debates have
been posted
here.)]
~~~~~~oOo~~~~~~
This project began as a lengthy
criticism of John Rees's book The Algebra of Revolution (but it has now
moved way beyond that initial objective), so it is with this work that I begin.
I do so in order to show that he, too, is quite happy to appropriate an ancient,
ruling-class tradition -- i.e., one of imposing a philosophical theory
on nature and society. I next extend my criticism to the works of the
dialectical classicists themselves (Engels, Plekhanov, Lenin, Trotsky, Mao,
etc.), and then move on to literally dozens of secondary dialectical works that
have been published over the last century or so in order to substantiate fully
the allegation that they're all it: foisting their dogmatic theses on the
world.
In
Appendix One I aim to show that open and
honest mystics from across the planet not only impose their ideas on reality
in like manner,
they also accept a set of doctrines that is difficult to distinguish from those
of their DM-cousins -- namely, that: (1) Everything is inter-connected, (2)
Everything is a unity of opposites, (3) Change and development are the result of
the inter-play/'struggle' between these opposites/'contradictions', and (4)
Change is a universal phenomenon.
In
Appendix Two, I have begun to post yet more
passages from the DM-classics that further confirm the above allegations. In
Appendix Three, I have added dozens of passages
from across the Internet to the same end, and in
Appendix Four, I concentrate on the work of The
Dialectical Daddy:
Gerry Healy.
As of August 2015, this Essay is just
under
105,500 words long; a much shorter summary of
some of its main ideas can be accessed
here.
~~~~~~oOo~~~~~~
Finally, throughout this Essay, readers
will find me regularly asking the following rhetorical question: "How could
theorist A, B or C possibly know X, Y or Z (where "X", "Y", and "Z"
represent certain specific DM-theses)?"
The answer is pretty clear in each case:
they couldn't possibly know these things by any conceivable means, which
implies they must have been imposed on nature.
This question is asked continually in
order to underline the fact that dialecticians
en masse promulgate theses that can't possibly be, or have been
substantiated by any conceivable body of evidence, no matter how large --
since these doctrines are held to be true for all of space and time.
So,
just like the open and honest mystics
listed in Appendix
One -- who derived their ideas, not from a scientific study of
nature, but from each other, or from the deeper recesses of their own
imagination -- the theses
Marxist Dialecticians have imposed on
the universe were appropriated, again, not from a scientific study of the world,
but from Hegel's Logic and the work of earlier mystics (such as,
Heraclitus and
Spinoza).
Exactly why all DM-theorists do
this will also be revealed below, but in more detail in Essay Nine Parts
One and
Two.
Hard to believe?
Then read on...
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supporting argument and evidence set out in earlier sections.
If
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The material presented below
does not represent my final view of any of the issues raised; it is merely 'work
in progress'.
(A)
Introduction
(1)
Traditional, A Priori Dogmatics
(2)
Dialecticians In A Fix
(B)
Radical Politics -- Conservative
Philosophy
(1)
An Ironic 'Dialectical
Inversion'
(2)
Dialectics: Consistently
Inconsistent
(C)
Dialectics
Isn't A 'Master Key' --
Or So The Official Brochure Says
(1)
Dialectical Idealism?
(2)
Imposition Number One:
'Reality' Is Dialectical After All
(D)
Dialecticians Reveal Their True Colours
(1)
Throwing Caution To The
Wind
(2)
Tested In Practice?
(E)
The Dialectical Chorus Line
(1)
Rees Imposes His Theory
On Reality
(2)
The Dialectical
Classicists -- All A Priori Dogmatists
(a)
Engels Ignores His Own 'Modest'
Disclaimers
(b)
Lenin Finds The 'Master-Key' That
Unlocks All Of Reality
(c)
Bukharin 'The Bold'
(d)
Trotsky's Traditionalism
(e)
Plekhanov --
Apriorist Extraordinaire
(f)
Stalin Murders A 'Theory' -- For A
Change
(g) Mao's
Great 'Leap'
Backwards
(h)
Hegel --
The Mother Lode
(F)
A Priori Super-Science
(1)
The Norm, Not The
Exception
(2)
Trapped Between The
Scylla
Of Hegelianism And The
Charybdis
Of Positivism
(G)
The 'Dialectical Fig-Leaf'
(H)
Changeless Particles?
(I)
Lesser Dialectical Clones
(1)
They're All At It!
(2)
Dietzgen The Dogmatist
(3)
David Hayden-Guest
(4)
Edward Conze
(5)
August Thalheimer
(6)
George Novack
(7)
Woods And Grant
(8)
Harry Nielsen
(9)
Gerry Healy --
The Dialectical Daddy
(10) Amadeo
Bordiga
(11) Maurice
Cornforth
(12)
John Desmond Bernal
(13) Ira
Gollobin
(14)
Paul McGarr
(15)
John Molyneux
(16)
Chris Nineham
(17)
Levins And Lewontin
(18)
Terry Button
(19) 'No Proof Required' --
CLR James
(20)
'Proof Already Provided' -- Philip Moran
(21) Peter Mason
(22)
Potpourri [Mixed Bag]
(a)
David DeGrood, Ifor
Torbe, And Abdul Malek
(b) Terry Sullivan and Camilla Royle
(c)
DM-Dogmatism Spreads Across The Internet
(d)
YouTube
Apriorism
(J)
Academic Dialectical Dogmatists
(1)
Conservative Theorists Masquerading
As Radicals
(2)
Sean Sayers
(3)
Slavoj Zizek
(4)
Henri Lefebvre
(K)
Notes
(L)
References
(M)
Appendix One -- Open And Honest Dialectical Mystics
(1)
Greek Philosophy
(a)
Anaximander
(b)
Anaximenes
(2)
The Kybalion
(3)
Mysticism In General
(4)
Mixed Examples
(a)
Daoism
(b)
Buddhism
(c)
Hinduism
(d)
Muslim Mysticism
(e)
Eastern Mysticism
(f)
Native American Mysticism
(g)
Aztec Mysticism
(h) Kabbalism
(i)
Ancient Egyptian Mysticism
(j) Fascist
Mysticism
(N)
Appendix Two -- Dialectical Dogmatism On
Steroids
(1)
Engels Engages Dogmatic Hyperdrive
(a)
Anti-Dühring
(b)
Dialectics Of Nature
(P)
Appendix Three -- Dialectical
Dogmatism Litters The Internet
(Q)
Appendix Four -- Welcome To 'The Gerry
Healy Mausoleum Of A Priori Dogmatics'
Summary Of My Main Objections To
Dialectical Materialism
Abbreviations Used At This Site
Return To The Main Index Page
Contact Me
Introduction
Traditional A Priori Dogmatics
For
over two thousand years Traditional Philosophers have been playing on themselves
and their readers what can only be described as a series of
complex verbal tricks. Since Ancient Greek times, metaphysicians have
occupied themselves with deriving
a priori theses solely from the meaning of a narrow range of
specially-selected (and suitably doctored) words. These philosophical gems were
skilfully polished and then peddled to the rest of humanity dressed-up as
profound-looking truths about fundamental aspects of reality,
peremptorily imposed on nature, almost invariably without the benefit of a
single supporting experiment.01
In
fact, Traditional Theorists went further; their acts of linguistic legerdemain
'enabled' them to uncover
Super-Truths
in the comfort of their own heads -- yielding doctrines they claimed revealed
the underlying and
essential nature of existence, valid for all of space and time.
Unsurprisingly, discursive magic of this order of magnitude meshed rather well
with contemporaneous ruling-class forms-of-thought, chief among which was (and
still is) the belief that
reality is rational.
Clearly, the idea that the world is rational must be forced onto nature;
it can't be read from it since nature isn't Mind. Plainly, it is much
easier to rationalise the imposition of a hierarchical, oppressive and grossly
unequal class system on 'disorderly' workers if its ideologues can persuade one
and all that the 'law-like' order of the natural world perfectly reflects, and
is reflected in turn by the social order from which their patrons just happen
to benefit --, the fundamental aspects of which none may
legitimately question.
Material reality may not be rational, but it is certainly rational for
ruling-class "prize-fighters" to claim it is.
Dialecticians In A Fix
Even
before the first Marxist Dialecticians put pen to misuse they found themselves
surrounded on all sides by ideas drawn from this ancient, boss-class tradition.
Clearly, they faced a serious problem: if they
imposed their ideas on nature in like manner, they could easily be accused
of constructing a comparable form of Idealism. On the other hand, if they
didn't do this, they wouldn't have a 'philosophical theory' of their own to
lend weight to their claim to lead the revolution. Confronted thus by
Traditional Thought-forms (which they had no hand in creating, but which they
were only too happy to appropriate), DM-theorists found there was no easy way
out of this minefield -- or, at least, none that prevented their theory from
sliding remorselessly into some form of Idealism.
This
isn't to claim that dialecticians weren't aware of the Idealism implicit in
Traditional Philosophy -- indeed, 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.]
On
the contrary, their excuse for disregarding or downplaying the pernicious
influence of Traditional Thought on their own ideas was that the
materialist flip they say they had inflicted on
Hegel's
system (putting it 'back on its feet') was considered capable of transforming
theoretical dirt into philosophical gold.
However, as we are about to see in this Essay, flip or no flip, their own
thought is thoroughly traditional: it is dogmatic, a priori, and
expressed in jargon lifted straight from the Philosophers' Phrase Book. While
few DM-theorists will deny that Traditional Philosophy itself is predominantly
Idealist,
not one of them has failed to copy its approach to
a priori
knowledge.
Despite this, and for the above reasons, dialecticians insist that their theory
hasn't been imposed on nature, simply read from it.1
Because of this they insist they can deflect and then perhaps neutralise the
above allegations.
And yet, it is far from clear how any
theory could be read from nature -- at least, not
unambiguously. Not only have countless inconsistent theories been 'inferred'
from reality, the idea itself trades on the misleading metaphor that the world
is like a book, and that on it (or in it) have been inscribed countless secrets
just waiting for humanity to uncover.
Of
course, if it were true that the universe had such 'messages' encoded into it,
that would imply that it was indeed the product of Mind, and ultimately perhaps
that it was just one Big Idea Itself. As the record clearly shows, Traditional
Philosophers found it difficult to resist just such an inference. That fact is,
of course, well-known. Less widely appreciated perhaps are the class forces that
have encouraged Idealist conclusions of this sort, even among Marxist
Dialecticians.
[These will be explored in more detail in other Essays posted at this site
(particularly Nine Parts One and
Two, Twelve Parts
One to Seven (summary
here), and Fourteen Part One (summary
here)).]
Radical Politics
-- Conservative Philosophy
An Ironic 'Dialectical Inversion'
As
will soon become apparent, for all their claims to be radical, when it
comes to Philosophy
DM-theorists are
surprisingly conservative -- and universally incapable of
seeing this even after it has been pointed out to them!
[An
excellent example of this, and one that has
been highly influential
on how DM-theorists receive and then respond to such criticism, can be found
here.]
At a
rhetorical level, this conservatism is camouflaged behind what at first sight
appears to be a series of disarmingly modest denials --,
which are then promptly flouted.
The
quotations listed below (and in
Note 1) show that DM-theorists are keen to
deny that their system is wholly or even partly
a priori, or that it has been imposed on
the world, not merely read from it. However, the way that dialecticians actually
phrase their theses contradicts these superficially modest-looking claims,
clearly revealing that the opposite
is in fact the case.
This
inadvertent dialectical inversion -- whereby what DM-theorists say
about what they do is the reverse of what they actually do
with what they say -- neatly mirrors the distortion to which Traditional
Philosophy has subjected language for the last two millennia (outlined in Essay
Three Parts
One and
Two, and in Essay Twelve Part
One), a point underlined by Marx himself:
"The
philosophers have only to dissolve their
language into the ordinary language, from which it is abstracted, in order 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 emphasis alone added.]
However, unlike
dialecticians, Traditional Metaphysicians were quite open and honest about what
they were doing; indeed, they brazenly imposed their a priori theories on
reality and hung the consequences.
But,
because dialecticians have a novel (but nonetheless defective) view of both
Metaphysics and FL (on this, see
here and
here), they are oblivious of the
fact that they are just as eager as Traditional Theorists have always been to
impose their ideas on the world, and equally blind to the fact that in so-doing
they are aping the
alienated thought-forms of those whose society they seek to abolish.
Naturally, this means that their 'radical' guns were spiked before
they were even loaded; with such weapons, it is small wonder that DM-theorists
fire nothing but philosophical blanks.
[FL = Formal Logic; DM = Dialectical
Materialism.]
DM is
a conservative theory precisely because its adherents have adopted the
distorted methods,
a priori
thought-forms, theories and meaningless jargon of Traditional Philosophy.
Now,
these accusations might seem far easier to make than they are to substantiate.
In fact, the reverse is the case, as we shall now see...
DM:
Consistently Inconsistent
Given
the fact that DM-theorists see contradictions everywhere, one would be forgiven
for thinking that they would welcome a few more to add to the list. However, if
the past is anything to go by, it is a
reasonably safe bet that dialecticians won't be too happy with the many that
will be brought to their attention in the Essays posted at this site --
especially if the majority of these contradictions show that their theory is not
so much consistently inconsistent, as fatally so.
Dialecticians claim that even though their system has been derived from Hegel's
AIDS, the materialist flip they say they have imposed on it means that DM
isn't the least bit Idealist, but thoroughly materialist, having been refined
and tested in practice for over 150 years.
[AIDS = Absolute Idealism.]
That is, of course, what the official
brochure says.
But,
is it an accurate picture of DM?
As we
are about to see, it is as close to the truth as certain
dodgy Iraq WMD Dossiers were.
DM -- Not A "Master Key"
Dialectical Idealism?
The
claim that abstract concepts underlie our knowledge of the world has obvious
Idealist implications (on this, see below, and Essay Three Parts
One and
Two) -- implications that an
aspiring
materialist has pressing need to reject. The question is: How do
DM-theorists manage to do this?
[TAR = The Algebra Of Revolution,
i.e., Rees (1998).]
For
one, John Rees argues that human knowledge grows because it has:
"[Brought] to it a framework composed of
our past experiences; what we have learned of others' experience, both in the
present and in the past; and of our later reflections on and theories about this
experience…. Concepts and theories are necessary to interpret the world." [Rees
(1998), p.63.]
These
observations form part of a criticism of Hegel's belief that:
"[A]ll real knowledge of the world is
theoretical knowledge… [and] the development of knowledge primarily depends on
the further elaboration of concepts." [Ibid., p.63.]
However, Rees then argues that it would be a mistake for us to try to:
"[D]educe directly particular events
from general rules or to assume that general laws can be directly inferred from
specific, empirical observations." [Ibid., p.107.]
But,
this further requires us to:
"[M]ake an abstraction from the
inessential and accidental features of reality to grasp more clearly its key
features." [Ibid., p.110.]
Rees
also points out that the danger here is that this might reintroduce Hegel's own
errors, luring Marxists into a familiar Idealist trap. This can be avoided by
ensuring that:
"Testing
by facts or by practice…is…found in
each step of the analysis." [Ibid., p.113; quoting Lenin (1961), p.318 --
not p.320 as TAR
suggests.]
In
that case:
"Constant empirical work is...essential
to renew both the concrete analyses and the dialectical concepts that are
generalized from these analyses." [Ibid., p.110.]
Moreover, general concepts can't be seen as:
"[A] substitute for the difficult
empirical task of tracing the development of real contradictions, not as a
suprahistorical master key whose only advantage is to turn up when no real
historical knowledge is available." [Ibid., p.9.]
And
later, in a discussion of Trotsky's views on
DM, Rees reminds his
readers that Trotsky himself warned that the
dialectic isn't:
"'[A] magic master key for all
questions.' The dialectic is not a calculator into which it is possible to punch
the problem and allow it to compute the solution. This would be an idealist
method. A materialist dialectic must grow from a patient, empirical
examination of the facts and not be imposed on them…." [Ibid., p.271;
mis-quoting
Trotsky (1973), p.233. Quotation marks altered to conform to the
conventions adopted at this site. Italic emphases in the original.]
Even
though the metaphor of the garden has now replaced that of the book,
it is clear that the author of TAR accepts the standard line that DM mustn't be
imposed on nature, but should be derived from a scientific study of it -- adding
that not only should it be checked at every stage, it must be thoroughly tested
in practice.
The question is: Does
this succeed in avoiding the Idealist trap mentioned above? Even more to the
point: Is this an accurate picture of what DM-theorists actually do, as
opposed to what they merely say they do?
Indeed, is it even an accurate account of what Rees himself does?
Reality Is Dialectical After All
Clearly not, for just two lines later Rees added this revealing aside:
"A dialectical method is only possible
because reality itself is dialectically structured." [Ibid., p.271.]
But,
this is quite remarkable! One minute we are being soothed with reassuring words
that DM
mustn't be imposed on reality, but derived from it; the very next we are told
that reality itself
is dialectically structured!
But, how on earth could
Rees possibly know this? Clearly, unless DM had
already been imposed on reality, he couldn't conceivably know that
it is dialectically structured. What would be the point of stressing that DM
mustn't be imposed on reality, merely read from it, if nature
is already dialectically structured? That would be as pointless as insisting
that we shouldn't impose greenness on grass, or oddness on the number three. And
yet, what else could Rees's claim amount to except an imposition onto reality of
something we were told should only emerge as a result of a "patient
empirical examination of the facts"?1a
Plainly, the most
that could legitimately be claimed here is that up to now the available
evidence supports a dialectical view of reality. It shouldn't be that this
widely touted 'cautious approach' is only possible because "reality
itself is dialectically structured." If that were the case, caution could
be thrown to the wind.
Of
course, it could be objected here that Rees's conclusion is quite reasonable
since it is based on a careful consideration of the available scientific
evidence.
But,
Rees's claim goes much further than this; he asserts that "reality itself" (that
is, not just a
part of it, or even most of it, nor yet that of which we currently
have some knowledge, but the entire universe, at
every level, for all of time -- i.e., reality itself) is
dialectically structured.
Even
if we took into account all the available evidence (which evidence isn't
conducive to DM, anyway, as we shall see in other Essays posted at this site),
the inference that "reality itself" is dialectically structured goes way beyond
this. As seems plain, the claim that reality itself is
dialectically structured could only ever amount to a reading into nature
something that might not be there. And it certainly isn't justified on the basis
of the
meagre and threadbare
evidence dialecticians have so far scraped-together.
This
is all the more so if we take into account the fact that DM-theorists also claim
that human knowledge is not only
partial and relative,
it will only ever remain in this state. In fact, since DM-theorists believe
that the pursuit of knowledge is an
infinite quest, and that the gap
between Absolute and current/relative knowledge will
always be infinite, humanity
will only be in a position to agree with dialecticians about "reality itself" at
the end of an "infinite" epistemological journey. Now it is plain, I take it,
that Rees hasn't yet completed such a task, nor is he ever likely to (and
neither is humanity), so the conclusion that realty itself is
dialectically structured can't form part of human knowledge, now or ever.
Which
means it must have been imposed on reality.
Again, it might be
objected that Rees's claim is in fact a working hypothesis which has so
far been reasonably well-confirmed. However, as we will see, this isn't how he
actually frames his ideas, nor is it the way that other DM-theorists have
presented their ideas over the last 150 years. As this Essay unfolds, it will
become abundantly clear that dialecticians adopt a thoroughly traditional
approach to Philosophy, deriving a priori
theses from laughably thin evidence, which they then happily impose on nature.1b
Impertinent claims like these are, as it turns out, quite easy to substantiate.
Anyone who doubts this should read on.
'Materialists'
In Traditional Clothing
Throwing Caution To The Wind
So,
this isn't a reassuring way for Rees to demonstrate the "careful" application of
the "dialectical method" -- which is aimed at, let us recall, persuading the
rest of us that DM isn't just another form of Idealism.
However, as we have just seen, Rees's justification for the correct
application of the DM to reality is that reality is in fact dialectically
structured. That is, he appeals to the alleged fact that reality is as he says
it is to account for the applicability of the dialectical method to it:
"A dialectical method is only possible
because reality itself is dialectically structured." [Ibid., p.271.]
But
if, as we were told, this is indeed an example of the
cautious approach to knowledge (necessary to avoid accusations of
Idealism), the direction of justification should proceed the
other way. It would surely go something like this: "Because the dialectical
method is so successful, we may conclude that those parts of nature and society
to which it has so far been applied are dialectically structured." By no stretch
of the imagination should we conclude that the method works because
"reality itself" is dialectical. That inference isn't cautious, it is
dogmatic.
[As
we will see, Rees is simply
copying Engels,
here.]
Now,
the fact that Rees puts the point this way round strongly suggests that the
legendary dialectical spin that DM-theorists are supposed to have
inflicted on Hegel's system (putting it "back on its feet") was perhaps less
successful than we have been given to believe -- either that, or Hegel's system
remains Idealist in forward or reverse gear, 'the right way up' or upside down.
[AIDS = Absolute Idealism.]
If
so, this might be enough to show that DM isn't a materialist doctrine after all,
but an example of upside-down AIDS.
But,
is it enough?
The
rest of this Essay, and several others posted at this site, are aimed at
answering that question, greatly strengthening this suspicion.
Tested In Practice?
At
this point, it might be objected that DM has in fact been
tested in practice, which fact alone confirms that reality is
dialectically structured. It also proves that DM isn't remotely Idealist.
Or, so it could be alleged.
Unfortunately however, not only has practice not confirmed DM, the exact
opposite is in fact the case. [Detailed substantiation for that controversial
claim is given in Essay Ten Part One.]
If the evidence of the last hundred and forty years or so is anything to go by,
it is clear that dialectics has been tested in practice and has so far been
disproved. Indeed, history has delivered an almost unambiguously negative
verdict.
Sad
though it is to say, revolutionary socialism and success are almost total
strangers. In which case, it would be unwise of DM-theorists to continue
to appeal to practice as a test of their theory, or of its materialist
credentials.
But, even if this
weren't the case, even a thousand years of revolutionary practice would be
insufficient to show that "reality itself" is dialectically structured. At
best, this would merely confirm that human history might be. It
shouldn't need pointing out, but the Bolshevik revolution in 1917 in no way
confirms that the outer fringes of the Galaxy are dialectical or that every
photon in the entire universe is now, and will always be, powered by its
"internal contradictions".1c
The Dialectical Chorus Line
Rees Imposes
His Views On Reality
Again, in response to this, it could be argued that the above passage from
TAR is atypical, or that it doesn't really represent its author's
considered views, or that it doesn't imply what the above alleges of it, or even
that Rees is neither a leading nor a typical DM-theorist, etc., etc. But, as we
are about to see, not only is this set of rejoinders wrong in particular (in
that this passage does indeed reflect Rees's view), it is incorrect in general.
It
is typical of DM authors to talk this way;
they all do it, all the time!
In
fact, Rees endorses this a priori and dogmatic view of "reality":
"Lenin's worry is that previous
explanations of dialectics have simply shown that reality forms a totality and
that things which are assumed to be opposites are in reality connected with one
another. But they have not stressed that reality is a
contradictory totality or that it is the mutually antagonistic relationship
between the parts of the totality which are the motor force of its change and
development." [Rees (1998), p.186. Bold emphasis added.]
[Rees
nowhere objects to Lenin's dogmatic views.]
How
Rees knows this to be the case concerning reality itself (and,
contrary to what we are told, previous dialecticians hadn't
shown that
"reality forms a totality", they simply
pinched this idea from previous generations of mystics and imposed it on
nature), he annoyingly kept to himself. Even so, he, too, was quite happy to
impose it on the facts, despite having quoted Trotsky as follows:
"'[The dialectic isn't a] magic master
key for all questions.' The dialectic is not a calculator into which it is
possible to punch the problem and allow it to compute the solution. This would
be an idealist method. A materialist dialectic must grow from a patient,
empirical examination of the facts and not be imposed on them…."
[Ibid., p.271; mis-quoting
Trotsky (1973), p.233. Quotation marks altered to conform
to the conventions adopted at this site. Italic emphases in the original;
bold emphasis added.]
Rees's comments are in fact part of a long tradition; DM-theorists regularly
impose their a priori concepts on nature, just like the traditional
thinkers from whom they inherited this Idealist method.
Lenin
admitted as much when he said:
"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.]
Of
course, the influence of earlier thinkers isn't something dialecticians deny,
but it is equally clear they failed to appreciate its significance.
[However, in Essay Nine Parts
One and
Two, Lenin's claims about
sectarianism will be shown to be wildly inaccurate.]
Nevertheless, the fact that Rees's claim wasn't a mere slip of the
word-processor can be seen from several other things he says:
"Totality refers to the insistence
that the various seemingly separate elements of which the world is composed are
in fact related to one another." [Rees (1998), p.5. Emphasis added.]
Again, how is it possible for Rees to insist on something while claiming
that he isn't actually imposing it on nature? Of course, he and others might
choose to believe such things -- and they could even claim support for such a
belief from the available evidence --
but, as should seem obvious, an "insistence" of this sort could only ever be
justified if the pretence that dialectics hasn't been imposed on reality has
been quietly dropped.
And,
there is more:
"[The] natural and social world [form] a
single totality developing over time as a result of…internal contradictions….
[N]ature is an interconnected system that developed for millions of years before
humans." [Ibid., pp.285-86.]
But,
how could Rees possibly know that the natural and social world forms a
single Totality, as opposed to its being, say, two
Totalities, or ten thousand --, or perhaps even none at all? And how could he
possibly know that everything is interconnected, contradictory and
changing all the time? Or even that development is always and everywhere the
result of "internal contradictions"?
To be
sure, he could claim to know this if DM had been imposed on nature, but that is
the only way he could know this.
[What
little evidence and/or argument DM-apologists have offered in support of
such hyper-bold claims will be examined in Essays
Five,
Seven, Eight
Parts One and
Two, and Eleven Parts
One and
Two.]
As if
this weren't enough, Rees has several more things he wants to impose on reality:
"…[A] dialectical approach…presupposes
the parts and the whole are not reducible to each other. The parts and the whole
mutually condition, or mediate, each other." [Ibid., p.7.]
"In a dialectical system, the entire
nature of the part is determined by its relationships with the other parts and
so with the whole. The part makes the whole, and the whole makes the parts…. In
this analysis, it is not just the case that the whole is more than the sum of
the parts but also that the parts become more than they are individually by
being part of a whole…. [F]or dialectical materialists the whole is more than
the simple sum of its parts." [Rees (1998), pp.5, 77.]
But,
is a presupposition any different from an imposition? And, where
is all the "patiently collected" evidence that confirms that every single atom
in the entire universe "mediates", and is "mediated" in return by, everything
else -- or every other atom? How could Rees possibly know, for example,
that the whole "mediates" each and every part? He may perhaps surmise this from
the evidence available (which he failed to produce anyway), but these hyper-bold
claims can't be part of current knowledge -- and if DM-epistemology is anything
to go by, they
never will.
Indeed, it isn't easy to see how anyone could possibly confirm that, say, a
humble carrot is or isn't 'mediated' by
Galaxy
M100, or even
Galaxy
NGC1365, and vice versa. And what sort of spooky influence is a
'mediation', anyway, for goodness sake? What evidence would anyone be
looking for in order to confirm that these ill-defined 'influences'
(these "mediacies") actually exist? Is there any way to detect, let alone
study, these strange 'effects'? How could the latter possibly register on
scientific instruments? And yet, if the existence and nature of such 'effects'
aren't capable of being confirmed (and if no one is able to say what their
confirmation would
even look like), we surely have only Hegel's word for it that they actually
exist.
Of
course, this helps explain why Rees found he had to impose such things on
nature.
And
how does Rees know that every single whole that has ever existed in the
entire history of the universe up until now is more than the sum of its parts?
Or, that the entire nature of any part is determined by its relation to the
other parts and to the whole?
Naturally, this introduces factors connected with the elusive DM-"Totality". As
we will see in Essay Eleven Parts One
and
Two (where it will be shown
that the above claims aren't even factually correct), the "Totality" is an
impenetrable mystery --
even to dialecticians!
[The
argument Rees actually uses to counter objections like this (i.e., an argument
based on an analysis of 'friendship' (pp.109-10)), will be examined in detail in
Essay Three Part Four.]
More
to the point, however: How does Rees know that wholes
aren't reducible to their parts? Can he say with total confidence that not
one single whole (in the many thousands of millennia to come) will
never be reduced to its parts? If he does so attest -- and in advance
of the evidence -- how is that different from imposing this thesis on
reality?
Nevertheless, Rees is the one who wants to reduce all change to "internal
contradictions" -- which, for all the world, look like they are the
'logical atoms' of DM.
[Those who doubt that assertion should consult this
Essay.]
In
fact, Rees's only apparent objection to reductionism isn't that there is
a mountain of evidence demanding its rejection,
but that it would lead to something
Hegel called a "bad infinity" (or, in the more recent
translation of his 'Logic', a "spurious infinity" --
Hegel (1999), pp.137, 139):
"Hegel described this kind of account as
'bad infinity', because it postulated an endless series of causes and effects
regressing to 'who knows where?' The defect of all such approaches is that they
leave the ultimate cause of events outside the events they describe. The cause
is external to the system. A dialectical approach seeks to find the cause of
change within the system. And if the explanation of change lies within the
system, it cannot be conceived on the model of linear cause and effect, because
this will simply reproduce the problem we are trying to solve. If change is
internally generated, it must be a result of contradiction, of instability and
development as inherent properties of the system itself." [Ibid., p.7. Quotation
marks altered to conform to the conventions adopted at this site.]
But,
why should we accept Hegel's view? Hegel wasn't a scientist. The record fails
show he was well known for carrying out experiments. But, perhaps in
compensation for this failing, he probably holds the world record for the number
of theses foisted onto nature by one human being in a single lifetime.
He is not, therefore, a terribly good witness for the defence.
Naturally, Hegel had his own Idealist reasons for rejecting such infinities, but
is there any material
evidence that "bad infinities" are quite as evil as he (or Rees) seems to
think? If there is, they both unwisely failed to bring it to our attention.
This
suggests that Rees accepted this rather odd Hegelian
caveat for
Idealist reasons himself -- that is, he acknowledged that such infinities should
be rejected as "bad" even though that conclusion wasn't itself based on
material evidence of any sort (and despite his earlier claim that that
particular requirement wasn't an optional extra).
Clearly then, Rees seems quite happy to foist these Hegelian fancies on reality.
In
addition, how could Rees possibly know that there isn't in fact
an endless series of causes and effects responsible for any and all change in
the natural world? Or that change
can't be externally-induced -- or even that all change is
driven by "internal contradictions"? For all he knows, there could be parts of
the universe where dialectics just doesn't apply. It might fail to apply at the
centre of the earth, or it mightn't have worked for a few years during the
Permian age,
or before humanity evolved. Indeed, it might cease to work the other side of the
Crab
Nebula, or nearer to home, in a million years time. How could Rees rule out
any of these and countless other possibilities?
[UO = Unity of Opposites.]
Of
course, when faced with objections like this, dialecticians often reach for
other tried, but not very well tested, Hegelian concepts -- such as: all change
occurs as a result of "internal contradictions", or because of the existence of
UOs everywhere --, arguing that if all change is indeed a result of such things,
then there is no way that DM couldn't have applied at all times and
places -- in the Permian, for example, or at the centre of the earth.
But,
that response merely confirms the main thesis if this Essay: that DM-fans are
happy to impose their abstract schemas on reality, even when there is no
conceivable way that such things could be confirmed.
Now,
should any reader be tempted along similar lines, that too will confirm a claim
made earlier in this Essay:
As will soon become apparent, for all
their claims to be radical, when it comes to Philosophy DM-theorists are
surprisingly conservative -- and universally incapable of
seeing this, even after it has been pointed out to them.... At a
rhetorical level, this conservatism is camouflaged behind what at first appear
to be a set of disarmingly modest denials --,
which are then promptly flouted.
Indeed, as is the case with other traditionalists, DM-fans slip into a priori
dogmatic mode impressively quickly.
[We
will see, too, in Essays Five through Eight Part Two,
these DM-principles don't even work closer to home, with respect to such mundane
things as a bag of sugar and ambulatory felines, let alone operate in distant
regions of space and time.]
Now,
Rees may wish to believe such things, but if dialectics can only grow
from a "patient" examination of the evidence (etc.), it is quite clear that he
can't know them, given the present (or, indeed, any foreseeable) state of
knowledge.
In fact, as it turns out,
he will never know any of them; not only do "internal contradictions"
fail to explain change,
they
can't
possibly do so. Quite the reverse: as is surprisingly easy to demonstrate, the
idea that change can only arise from "internal contradictions" is itself
inconsistent with other DM-principles, and with what we already know
about nature and society.2
There
are many more suspiciously Idealist passages like this in TAR; here is another:
"If nature forms a totality, which it
must unless we depart from materialism completely and become believers in the
supernatural, and if this totality develops, as evolutionary theory
indicates, then are we not
obliged to picture this as self-development powered by internal
contradiction?" [Ibid., p.78. Bold emphasis added.]
Once
more, Rees's only argument in favour of the idea that nature forms a "totality"
seems to be that to deny that this would leave room for the supernatural. But,
that isn't evidence. He certainly wouldn't accept a converse argument
for the existence of God on the lines that to deny it would create a
materialist 'bad infinity' (in that it would leave the physical world
unaccounted for on purely rational
grounds -- which is what Hegel and other theists have argued), a view
that is similarly supported by no evidence whatsoever. In that case, and once
again, Rees's claim certainly looks like an imposition.
But,
what if evidence one day turned up to show that there are indeed things that
exist beyond this universe, which either are or aren't causally dependent upon
it? If so, dialecticians like Rees are just going to have to come to terms with
it -- but they can only rule that possibility out
now by imposing their current beliefs on nature (the latter perhaps
justified or not by several more a priori, idealist 'arguments' lifted
from Hegel, but plainly not based on "patiently" collected evidence).
Rees also claims that
alternative approaches depart from materialism; indeed they stand in danger of
lapsing into theism. But, as we will see, DM-theorists' own understanding of
what counts as matter actually allows place for the existence of 'God'.
Hence, if "carefully" collected evidence one day turned up showing that 'God'
does indeed exist, what could dialecticians like Rees say? Given their own
defective understanding of the nature of the material world (on this, see Essay
Thirteen Part One), and their
weak
gesture at the acceptance of evidence-based science, dialecticians could
only rule this possibility out now by imposing DM on reality. [In
fact, Rees's use of the word "obliged" in the above passage inadvertently
concedes this point, one feels.]3
Finally, in a recent article in Socialist Review, Rees endorsed Engels's
first 'Law' unreservedly. So, on the basis of just one example
(the hardy perennial: water freezing and/or boiling) he was happy to assert the
following:
"Indeed this is a feature of many
different sorts of change, even in the natural world. Water that rises in
temperature by one degree at a time shows no dramatic change until it reaches
boiling point when it 'suddenly' becomes steam. At that point its whole nature
is transformed from being a liquid into a vapour.
"Lower the temperature of water by a
single degree at a time and again there is no dramatic change until it reaches
freezing point, when it is transformed from a liquid into a solid -- ice.
"Dialecticians call this process the transformation of quantity into quality.
Slow, gradual changes that do not add up to a transformation in the nature of a
thing suddenly reach a tipping point when the whole nature of the thing is
transformed into something new." [Rees
(2008), p.24. Quotation marks altered to conform to the conventions adopted
at this site.]
From
where Rees "suddenly leaps" to this conclusion:
"This is why Marx described the dialectic as 'an
abomination to the bourgeoisie' and why Lenin said of this method that it 'alone
furnishes the key to "self-movement" of everything existing; it alone
furnishes the key to "leaps", to the "break in continuity"...to the destruction
of the old and the emergence of the new'". [Ibid. Bold emphasis added. Quotation
marks altered to conform to the conventions adopted at this site.]
So,
here we have yet more
a priori dogmatism -- based on little or no evidence in this
case, as we will see in Essay Seven Part
One.
And,
careful readers will no doubt notice that while Rees tells us in one breath that
DM isn't a "master key", in
the very next he quotes Lenin to
the effect that dialectics alone furnishes the key to the movement of
"everything existing".
And
yet,
what else could this be but a
"master key"?
DM-'Radicals'
copy Traditional thought-Forms
Engels Ignores
His Own Declaration
The
projection of DM-theses onto nature isn't just an aberration of modern-day
dialecticians; every DM-classicist has indulged extensively in the sport. For
example, this approach can be found right throughout Engels's writings.
True-to-form he tells us the following:
"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. Bold emphasis added. Several more quotations along similar
lines from Engels and others can be found in
Note 1.]
Also
true-to-form, he then proceeds to do the opposite.
For
instance, in his classic text, Socialism: Utopian and Scientific, he had
this to say (which is from where Rees derived this idea -- not from a
scientific analysis of nature):
"Nature
works dialectically and not metaphysically." [Engels (1892),
pp.407, repeated in Engels (1976), p.28.]
To
this may be added the following comment:
"Dialectics…prevails throughout
nature…. [T]he motion through opposites which asserts itself everywhere
in nature, and which by the continual conflict of the opposites…determines
the life of nature." [Engels (1954),
p.211. Bold emphases added.]
But, how could Engels
possibly have known all of this? How could he have known that
nature doesn't operate "metaphysically", say, in distant regions of space
and time, way beyond the edges of the known Universe of his day? Indeed, how
could he have been so sure that, for example, there aren't any
changeless objects anywhere in the entire universe?4
How could he have been so certain that the "life of
nature" is indeed the result of a "conflict of opposites" -- or that some
processes (in the whole of reality, for all of time) weren't/aren't governed by
non-dialectical factors? Where is his "carefully" collected evidence about every
object and event in nature, past, present and future?5
Notice that Engels didn't say that "all the evidence collected" up until
his day supported these contentions, or that "those parts of the world of which
the scientists" of his day are aware behave in the way he indicated; he simply
referred to nature tout court, without qualification (i.e., "throughout
nature" and "everywhere in nature"). In line with other DM-theorists, Engels
signally failed to inform his readers of the whereabouts of the large finite set
of "careful observations" upon which these wild generalisations had been based.
[On
this see
Note 1b, and the
Appendix below.]
To be
sure, he did say that
nature itself confirms DM, but that looks more like a manifesto claim than a
summary of the evidence -- especially if the evidence he actually bothered to
produce is watery thin anyway, and doesn't in fact support his theses -- as we
will see in several other Essays (especially
here).
And
Engels didn't just stop there; he made equally bold statements about other
fundamental aspects of nature:
"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….
"A motionless state of matter therefore
proves to be one of the most empty and nonsensical of ideas…." [Engels (1976),
p.74. Bold emphases alone added.]
"The great basic thought that the
world is not to be comprehended as a complex of ready-made things,
but a complex of processes, in which things apparently stable…, go
through an
uninterrupted change of coming into being and passing away…." [Engels
(1888), p.609. Bold emphases added.]
"Dialectics as the science of
universal
interconnection….
"The law of the transformation of
quantity into quality and vice versa…[operates] in nature, in a manner fixed for
each individual case, qualitative changes can only occur by the
quantitative addition or quantitative subtraction of matter or motion….
"Hence, it is impossible to alter
the quality of a body without addition or subtraction of matter or motion…. In
this form, therefore, Hegel's mysterious principle appears not only quite
rational but even rather obvious.
"Motion in the most general sense,
conceived as
the mode of existence, the inherent attribute of matter, comprehends all
changes and processes occurring in the universe….
"Dialectics, so called objective
dialectics,
prevails throughout nature…. [M]otion through opposites which asserts
itself everywhere in nature, and which by the continual conflict of
the opposites…determines the life of nature….
"The whole theory of gravity rests on
saying that attraction is the essence of matter. This is necessarily false.
Where there is attraction, it must be complemented by repulsion. Hence
already Hegel was quite right in saying that the essence of matter is
attraction and repulsion….
"The visible system of stars, the solar
system, terrestrial masses, molecules and atoms, and finally ether particles,
form each of them [a definite group]. It does not alter the case that
intermediate links can be found between the separate groups…. These intermediate
links prove only that there are no leaps in nature, precisely because nature
is composed entirely of leaps." [Engels (1954), pp.17, 63, 69, 211, 244,
271. Bold emphases added.]
Once
more, Engels forgot to say how he knew all these things were true. For
example, how could he possibly have known that:
"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…." [Engels (1976),
p.74. Bold emphasis added.]
Neither matter without motion nor motion without matter is inconceivable,
contrary to what Engels says. [That allegation is substantiated in Essays
Five and Twelve Part One.] In
fact, the contrary doctrine that matter is naturally motionless was
itself imposed on nature by
Aristotle;
Engels's
obverse imposition is no less unimpressive, and no less Idealist.
Consider another passage, this time taken from a
letter written by Engels:
"The identity of thinking and being, to
use Hegelian language, everywhere coincides with your example of the circle and
the polygon. Or the two of them, the concept of a thing and its reality, run
side by side like two asymptotes, always approaching each other but never
meeting. This difference between the two is the very difference which prevents
the concept from being directly and immediately reality and reality from being
immediately its own concept. Because a concept has the essential nature of the
concept and does not therefore prima facie directly coincide with
reality, from which it had to be abstracted in the first place, it is
nevertheless more than a fiction, unless you declare that all the results of
thought are fictions because reality corresponds to them only very circuitously,
and even then approaching it only asymptotically…. In other words, the unity of
concept and phenomenon manifests itself as an essentially infinite process, and
that is what it is, in this case as in all others." [Engels to Schmidt
(12/03/1895), in Marx and Engels (1975), pp.457-58, and Marx and Engels (2004),
pp.463-64.]
There
are several puzzling things about this quotation (which will have to be left
until later), but how could Engels possibly have known
that concepts and things interrelate in the way he alleges? In fact, if he were
right, in order for him to conclude what he does about "things" (about which he
admits the knowledge of his (and perhaps that of any other) day never
coincides), he must have extrapolated way beyond the state of knowledge in the
late nineteenth century -- and, as the next passage below reveals, way beyond
any conceivable state of knowledge.
Worse
still: if things never "coincide" with their own concepts, then on
that basis
alone Engels couldn't possibly have known that even this much was
the case. Plainly, if he did know this, then at least one concept
-- namely the one Engels was using here -- would in fact have coincided with its
object!
Clearly, such semi-divine confidence could only have arisen from: (1) Engels's
own imposition of this a priori thesis on nature, and/or from (2) The
a priori,
Idealist principles Engels admits he lifted from Hegel -- but, not from
(3) Perusing the 'book' of nature, or from collecting evidence, either
"patiently" or impatiently.
As should seem obvious,
if reality is permanently beyond our grasp then anything that anyone says
about 'it' must of necessity be
imposed on 'it' (that is, if we insist on depicting things in such an
obscure and foolhardy way).6
The next passage from
Engels only serves to underline this point:
"'Fundamentally, we can know only the
infinite.' In fact all real exhaustive knowledge consists solely in raising
the individual thing in thought from individuality into particularity and from
this into universality, in seeking and establishing the infinite in the finite,
the eternal in the transitory…. All true knowledge of nature is knowledge of
the eternal, the infinite, and essentially absolute…. The cognition of
the infinite…can only take place in an infinite asymptotic progress."
[Engels (1954),
pp.234-35.
Italic emphasis in the original; bold emphasis added.]
But, if no concept
(ever) matches reality fully, how could Engels have known any of this?
How could he possibly know that
"All true knowledge of
nature is knowledge of the eternal, the infinite, or that it is essentially
absolute..."? Either he was in possession of such absolute knowledge already
when he wrote this (which would have meant, once again, that at least one
concept matched reality, namely this one),
or he was himself infinitely wrong!
Of
course, we know the answer to this question already: Engels was able to foist
all this on reality because that is exactly what Hegel did, and it is exactly
what Traditional Philosophers have always done; he simply copied them.
[Why
he did this is explained
here.]
However, no doubt the infinite (or even extremely large finite) body of
evidence that Engels meant to include in Dialectics of Nature, which
would have been necessary to justify these quasi-theological claims, and
which has been mislaid in the meantime, will turn up one day.
Lenin
Finds 'The Master-Key'
There
is a passage similar to the one quoted above from Engels in Lenin's Notebooks:
"Cognition is the eternal, endless
approximation of thought to the object." [Lenin (1961),
p.195.]
Once
more, how on earth could Lenin possibly have known this for a fact?
Clearly, he can't have known that this process is endless -- since
the claim to know this alleged fact could only itself have been based on the
successful completion of an endless process, if what Lenin actually said were
correct. Whatever else we might think of Lenin, he was not, I take it, an
eternal being. Certainly, no amount of evidence could show that this
ambitious claim of his was true, or even approximately true. No finite
body of data, no matter how large, even so much as roughly approximates to an
infinite amount.
Not
only is the non-existent end this quotation postulates 'somewhere in the future'
(and hence beyond the reach of any and all current evidence/confirmation), if
the length of time between now and then is itself endless, the search for the
(missing) evidence which supports the claim that it is endless
must be endless, too!
Here
are several more 'cautious' claims Lenin advanced incautiously:
"Dialectics requires an all-round
consideration of relationships in their concrete development…. 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)….
"[D]ialectical logic holds that 'truth'
is
always concrete, never abstract, as the late Plekhanov liked to say
after Hegel." [Lenin (1921),
pp.90, 93. Bold emphases added.]
"Flexibility, applied objectively,
i.e., reflecting the all-sidedness of the material process and its unity, is
dialectics, is the correct reflection of the eternal development of the world."
[Lenin (1961),
p.110. Bold emphasis added.]
"Thought proceeding from the concrete to
the abstract -– provided it is correct (NB)… -- does not get away from
the truth but comes closer to it. The abstraction of matter, the law
of nature, the abstraction of value, etc., in short all
scientific (correct, serious, not absurd) abstractions reflect nature more
deeply, truly and completely." [Ibid.,
p.171. Emphases in the original.]
"The totality of all sides of the
phenomenon of reality and their (reciprocal) relations -– that is what
truth is composed of. The relations (= transitions = contradictions) of notions
= the main content of logic, by which these concepts (and their
relations, transitions, contradictions) are shown as reflections of the
objective world. The dialectic of things produces the dialectic of
ideas, and not vice versa." [Ibid.,
p.196. All emphases in the original.]
"Logical concepts are subjective so long
as they remain 'abstract,' in their abstract form, but at the same time they
express the Thing-in-themselves. Nature is both concrete and
abstract, both
phenomenon and essence, both moment and relation. Human
concepts are subjective in their abstractness, separateness, but objective as a
whole, in the process, in the sum-total, in the tendency, in the source."
[Ibid.,
p.208. All emphases in the original.]
And
here is another revealing passage:
"Nowadays, the ideas of development…as
formulated by Marx and Engels on the basis of Hegel…[encompass a process] that
seemingly repeats the stages already passed, but repeats them otherwise, on a
higher basis ('negation of negation'), a development, so to speak, in spirals,
not in a straight line; -- a development by leaps, catastrophes, revolutions; --
'breaks in continuity'; the transformation of quantity into quality; -- the
inner impulses to development, imparted by the contradiction and conflict of the
various forces and tendencies acting on a given body, or within a given
phenomenon, or within a given society; -- the interdependence and the closest,
indissoluble connection of all sides of every phenomenon…, a
connection that provides a uniform, law-governed, universal process of
motion -– such are some of the features of dialectics as a richer (than the
ordinary) doctrine of development." [Lenin (1914), pp.12-13.
Bold emphases alone added.]
But,
once again, how could Lenin possibly have known all of these things? How,
for instance, could he have been so sure that "[T]he dialectic of things
produces the dialectic of ideas", and not the other way round, or perhaps
a bit of both (rejecting here, of course, the "either or of understanding" on
'sound' Hegelian lines)? He might indeed choose to assume the validity of
these and other things, but there could be no body of evidence large enough to
justify the sorts of claims Lenin makes in the above passages, which he seems
quite happy to foist on nature, anyway.
And,
why "require" or "demand" something if science is supposed to be based on
evidence? Scientists do not normally require things of nature. When was
the last time they "required" that copper conducts electricity, "demanded" that
dogs bark, or "insisted" that humanity evolved from an ape-like ancestor?
But
worse: How could Lenin possibly
have known that dialectics reflected the "eternal development of the
world"?
From whom did he receive the stone
tablets upon which these semi-divine verities had been inscribed?
Even
though Lenin inconsistently claimed both that "truth is always concrete never
abstract", and that scientific abstractions are also somehow
more true (or, which allow truth to be approached more fully), just like
Engels he omitted the "carefully collected" evidence that confirmed either of
these universal theses -- which evidence would have been unhelpful anyway since
it would have been concrete, and hence less
scientifically true, if Lenin were correct.
And,
it is little use arguing that scientific evidence is both abstract and
concrete, for that claim itself is abstract, and thus not true (since, according
to Lenin, truth is always concrete, never abstract -- nor a bit of both):
"[D]ialectical logic holds that 'truth'
is
always concrete, never abstract, as the late Plekhanov liked to say
after Hegel." [Lenin (1921),
p.93. Bold emphases added.]
Moreover, the principles Lenin used to derive these conclusions are somewhat
dubious, themselves. In light of the above assertion that "truth is always
concrete never abstract", and since that claim is itself a non-concrete
abstraction, Lenin's
principles can't therefore be true!
So,
the thesis that all truth is concrete -- since it is an abstraction --
can't itself be true, just as the claim that all scientific abstractions reflect
nature more deeply and "truly", can't be true --
because it isn't concrete!
At
this point, we might be tempted to console ourselves with the thought that, at
least here, Engels's (comment from
earlier) is correct: there is no way that the thesis that "truth is always
concrete never abstract" will ever coincide with reality, and hence will ever be
judged true itself. Paradoxically, too, if this dialectical dogma ever does
turn out to be true, it would be false on that basis, since we would then
have at least one truth (namely this dialectical dogma) that isn't concrete, but
is manifestly abstract.
Nevertheless, could there be a body of "patiently" gathered data large
enough to confirm Lenin's claim that all objects are self-developing?
[Perhaps this is all to the good, given the next point.]
But,
if all objects and processes in nature do in fact influence one another, and
everything in reality is interconnected, then it seems that nothing in the
DM-universe could be self-developing.
Clearly, Lenin's incautious
atomism here -- which sees everything as developmentally autonomous,
with each object as an isolated, self-propelled unit -- contradicts (rather
fittingly, one feels) his other belief that all things are interconnected.
If all objects are indeed inter-related
then surely they could only develop if they were influenced by (and influenced
in return) other objects and processes external to themselves. On that
basis, it wouldn't be true to say that all objects self-develop.
[Doubters should take a look at this object,
which clearly didn't "self-develop".]
On
the other hand, if objects are 'self-developing', they can't be
interconnected in any meaningful sense.
Perhaps then it is just as well that there is no evidence that
all (or even any) objects in reality are "self-developing". To be sure,
DM-theorists need to pray to the 'dialectical deity' that it never turns up,
either, or they can kiss goodbye to their interconnected "Totality".
[These controversial observations and their problematic ramifications form the
main topic of Essays Eight
Part One and Eleven Parts
One and
Two.]
Be
this as it may, is it really all that inconceivable that in the entire
universe, over many aeons of time, there might be (or might have been, or
might one day be) a
single object that doesn't (or didn't, or won't) undergo self-development?
How could Lenin rule this possibility out? Again, as seems plain, he could only
do so if that thesis itself had been imposed on nature, perhaps by "requiring"
-- nay, "demanding" -- that
all objects undergo self-development. [Oops..., he already did that!]
Once
more: Where is the "careful" empirical work that justifies all this "demanding",
all this "insisting" and "requiring" --, not to mention the shed loads of data
that would be needed to justify the many other universal a priori claims
Lenin made about reality (listed above and below) --
something we were told had to be
undertaken by materialists if they were to avoid being branded as Idealists?
And
why do we find no dialecticians "requiring" -- nay, "demanding" -- of Lenin
(and/or his latter-day epigones) that he/they produce this evidence, or withdraw
such claims?
Alas,
the a priori litany continues:
"[Among the elements of dialectics are
the following:] [I]nternally contradictory tendencies…in [a thing]…as the
sum
and unity of opposites…. [E]ach thing (phenomenon, process, etc.)…is
connected with every other…. [This involves] not only the unity
of opposites, but the transitions of every
determination, quality, feature, side, property into every other….
"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….
"To begin with what is the simplest,
most ordinary, common, etc., [sic] with any proposition...: [like]
John is a man…. Here we already have dialectics (as Hegel's genius recognized):
the
individual is the universal…. Consequently, the opposites (the
individual is opposed to the universal) are identical: the individual exists
only in the connection that leads to the universal. The universal exists only in
the individual and through the individual. Every individual is (in one way or
another) a universal. Every universal is (a fragment, or an aspect, or the
essence of) an individual. Every universal only approximately embraces all the
individual objects. Every individual enters incompletely into the universal,
etc., etc. Every individual is connected by thousands of transitions with other
kinds of individuals (things, phenomena, processes), etc.
Here already we have the elements, the germs of the concept of necessity,
of objective connection in nature, etc. Here already we have the contingent and
the necessary, the phenomenon and the essence; for when we say John is a man…we
disregard a number of attributes as contingent; we separate the essence
from the appearance, and counterpose the one to the other….
"Thus in any proposition we
can (and must) disclose as a 'nucleus' ('cell') the germs of all the
elements of dialectics, and thereby show that dialectics is a property of all
human knowledge in general." [Lenin (1961), pp.221-22,
357-58, 359-60. Italic emphases in the original; bold emphases
added.]
Lest
we are tempted to search back through the archives to find the countless
container-loads of missing evidence Lenin had "carefully" marshalled in
support of these dramatic claims, a consideration of the next passage will at
least relieve us of that onerous task. Here, at last, Lenin is disarmingly
honest about where he derived these dogmatic generalisations:
"Hegel brilliantly
divined the dialectics of things (phenomena, the world, nature)
in the dialectics of concepts…. This aphorism should be expressed more
popularly, without the word dialectics: approximately as follows: In the
alternation, reciprocal dependence of all
notions, in the identity of their opposites, in the transitions
of one notion into another, in the eternal change, movement of notions, Hegel
brilliantly divined precisely this relation of things to nature…. [W]hat
constitutes dialectics?…. [M]utual dependence of notions all without
exception…. Every notion occurs in a certain relation, in a certain
connection with all the others." [Lenin (1961), pp.196-97.
Emphases in the original.]
Lenin
is quite open about his sources in these private
notebooks: dialectics derives its 'evidential' support, not from a "patient
empirical examination of the facts", but from studying Hegel! As far as
evidence goes, that is it! That's all there is! The search for evidence
begins and ends with dialecticians leafing through Hegel's Logic. That is
the extent of the 'evidence' Lenin offered in support of his assertions about
"all notions" without exception, about "all phenomena and processes in nature",
and about nature's "eternal development", etc., etc.
As
the rest of this Essay (and other Essays posted here) will show, this cavalier
approach to the 'science of dialectics' is shared by every other DM-theorist.
To be
sure, Lenin did add the following comment (however, on this see
here):
"The correctness of this aspect of the
content of dialectics must be tested by the history of science." [Ibid.,
p.357.]
Many
dialecticians make similar claims, or at least pay lip-service to them (for
example, this one).
However, as we have noted several times already, the other things they say
flatly contradict this seemingly modest admission. The theses Lenin and others
advance go way beyond the available evidence (and way beyond any conceivable
body of evidence); they transcend the listing of mere examples.
Indeed, since Lenin also claimed that human knowledge will only ever be
partial and incomplete, neither he nor even the most
pedantically thorough and patient of dialectical sleuths will ever be in
a position to justify the sweeping a priori claims we find him (and
others) regularly making -- like those about the "eternal development of the
world", for instance.
How could anything from the entire
history of science (past, present, and future) confirm something like that?
Moreover, Lenin himself admitted as much in the
very next few sentences:
"This aspect of dialectics…usually
receives inadequate attention: the identity of opposites is taken as the sum
total of
examples…and not as a law of cognition (and
as a law of the objective world)." [Ibid.,
p.357. Emphasis in the original.]
Hence, the need to provide evidence is in fact a distraction, one
that dedicated dialecticians should rightly eschew. In this particular case, the
thesis that UOs exist everywhere in nature and society, and which govern every
single instance of change right across the universe, for all of time, expresses
a "law of cognition" and a "law of the objective world", and it is these "laws"
that
legitimate the imposition of dialectical dogma on nature. Indeed, here is
Marcuse endorsing this a priori approach to knowledge:
"The doctrine of Essence seeks to
liberate knowledge from the worship of 'observable facts' and from the
scientific common sense that imposes this worship.... The real field of
knowledge is not the given fact about things as they are, but the critical
evaluation of them as a prelude to passing beyond their given form. Knowledge
deals with appearances in order to get beyond them. 'Everything, it is said, has
an essence, that is, things really are not what they immediately show
themselves. There is therefore something more to be done than merely rove from
one quality to another and merely to advance from one qualitative to
quantitative, and vice versa: there is a permanence in things, and that
permanent is in the first instance their Essence.' The knowledge that
appearance and essence do not jibe is the beginning of truth. The mark of
dialectical thinking is the ability to distinguish the essential from the
apparent process of reality and to grasp their relation." [Marcuse (1973),
pp.145-46. Marcuse is here quoting
Hegel (1975), p.163,
§112. Minor typo corrected.]
'Observable facts' just get in the way of these dogmatists.
Anyway, as we will see here
and here,
this "law of cognition" is in fact no law at all, since it is based on a
series of logical and argumentative blunders committed by Hegel.
[UO = Unity of Opposites.]
Nevertheless, in the next few sections of his Notebooks
Lenin went on to describe this DM-thesis in the
following terms:
"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…." [Ibid.,
pp.357-58. Bold emphasis alone added.]
Now,
the uncommitted reader might be forgiven for thinking that the claim (recorded
earlier) that DM doesn't provide a "master-key"
for the interpretation of everything in existence -- to which maxim all
aspiring dialecticians at least pay lip-service
-- has here been rescinded by Lenin. In this passage, Lenin describes the
struggle of opposites as "the key to the self-movement of everything existing"
(and, note, it isn't a key, but the key). This "everything" must
surely have included the countless things that were way beyond the science of
his day (or, indeed, beyond both current and future science), which
"everything" must also transcend any conceivable body of evidence. If
this principle covers "everything existing", it must surely encompass, say, the
behaviour of elementary particles at the outermost fringes of space and time,
far beyond anything humanity will
ever encounter,
and much else besides.
Compare Lenin's words with what John Rees had earlier claimed:
"Trotsky warns against seeing the
dialectic as a 'magic master
key for all questions'. The dialectic is not a calculator into which it is possible to punch the
problem and allow it to compute the solution. This would be an idealist method.
A materialist dialectic must grow from a patient, empirical examination
of the facts and not be imposed on them…." [Rees (1998), p.271; mis-quoting
Trotsky (1973), p.233.
Quotation marks altered to conform to the conventions adopted at this site.]
But,
we have just seen Lenin inform us that a belief in the universal existence of
UOs is indeed "the key" to understanding everything in existence, flatly
contradicting what Rees (and Trotsky) had said.
Hence, if Lenin is right,
it is perfectly clear why the need to provide evidence is a
distraction; the a priori approach to knowledge that DM-theorists
have inherited from Traditional Philosophy means that evidence is not only
unnecessary, it is to be avoided wherever possible.6a
As
these two authors note:
"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 have recorded 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 have recorded 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.]
Which
is underlined, too, by this source:
"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. Bold
emphasis added.]
This
is the ancient tradition, which long predates Kant and Fichte, that DM-fans have
bought into. So, no wonder they see no problem with all this a priori
thesis-mongering.
Clearly, in the minds of many dialecticians, the acceptance of an
evidence-based science is a sop to 'crude materialism' (or even worse,
it is a compromise with -- shock horror! --'empiricism' and 'positivism'!).
In
fact, when I demand of dialecticians evidence to justify their a priori
theses, they accuse me of being an "empiricist", or a "positivist" -- or, they
special plead, arguing that their theory doesn't need evidential support,
despite what George Novack argued (quoted earlier):
"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.]
Such
special
pleading is, of course, an indirect admission that the above allegations are
accurate -- that is, that DM-theses are dogmatic and a priori.
In
stark contrast, however, opponents of DM are given a hard time if they
can't supply any, or adequate, evidence in support of their criticisms of
dialectics. In that case, the demand that evidence be produced in support
of some theory or other can't itself be sufficient to brand the one doing this
an "empiricist" -- since dialecticians demand this of their opponents. It
must be this: "Any critic who has the temerity to hold dialecticians to
account and demand that they be consistent with the boast that their
theory has not been foisted on nature, but has been derived from the evidence,
is bang out of order." In that case, the DM-expletives "empiricist" and
"positivist" must be synonymous with "annoying critic who can't see that
there is no contradiction between the claim that dialectics hasn't been imposed
on nature and actually imposing dialectics on nature".
Contrast this with Marx's attitude (expressed in the German Ideology):
"The premises from which we begin are
not arbitrary ones, not dogmas, but real premises from which abstraction can
only be made in the imagination. They are the real individuals, their activity
and the material conditions under which they live, both those which they find
already existing and those produced by their activity. These premises can
thus be verified in a purely empirical way....
"The fact is, therefore, that definite
individuals who are productively active in a definite way enter into these
definite social and political relations. Empirical observation must in each
separate instance bring out empirically, and without any mystification and
speculation, the connection of the social and political structure with
production. The social structure and the State are continually evolving out of
the life-process of definite individuals, but of individuals, not as they may
appear in their own or other people's imagination, but as they really are; i.e.
as they operate, produce materially, and hence as they work under definite
material limits, presuppositions and conditions independent of their will." [Marx
and Engels (1970), pp.42, 46-47. Bold emphases added.]
Was
Marx an 'empiricist' for appealing to empirical evidence? Was Engels an
'empiricist' when he wrote this?
"We all agree that in every field of
science, in natural and historical science, one must proceed from the given
facts, in natural science therefore from the various material forms of
motion of matter; that therefore in theoretical natural science too the
interconnections are not to be built into the facts but to be discovered in
them, and when discovered to be verified as far as possible by experiment."
[Engels (1954),
p.47. Bold emphases alone added.]
However, when we look more closely at the way that dialecticians express their
ideas, we find they aren't in fact based on evidence, but are based on
"objective" laws, on "laws of cognition", on "dialectical logic", on "axioms"
(as Trotsky himself depicted things, recorded below), and on assorted
"insistences", "demands" and "requirements".
Hence, the request for evidence is dialectically demeaning; small wonder then
that DM-fans take umbrage when it is requested.
In
this way, therefore, we see Hegel's system -- even when it has allegedly been
put 'the right way up' -- takes over. Indeed, rather like the capitalist
system will tend to re-assert itself if it isn't eradicated, this boss-class,
a priori theory does the same. Boss-class thought-forms can't be reformed,
any more than it is possible to reform this rotten system and turn it into a
socialist society.
Plainly, therefore, DM/MD
is "objective" for believers since
their world is ultimately
Ideal, its logical form having been constructed in thought by Hegel and his
mystical forbears long before any evidence was available. DM-theorists
have in their possession an Ideal Master Key, which means they can unlock
the secrets concerning the "eternal development of the world". Hence, the
materialist aims of these erstwhile negators of ruling-class thought are
themselves negated; they end up adopting the traditional thought-forms of the
class enemy, the "ruling ideas", as Marx noted:
"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." [Marx and
Engels (1970), pp.64-65, quoted from
here.
Bold emphases added.]
Reformism, therefore,
isn't any less misguided in Philosophy than it is in Politics.6b
It seems perfectly
obvious, therefore, that we have indeed located the Dialectical Master
Key --, a key that opens the "doors
of perception"/cognition, and which explains why so few dialecticians ever
bother to provide adequate, or any(!), evidence in support of their universal,
omni-temporal theses, and why they react with genuine surprise
when they are required to produce it.6c
Bukharin 'The Bold'
In
this respect, Lenin's approach mirrors that of other prominent dialecticians.
Indeed, we find Bukharin asserting the following:
"There are two possible ways of
regarding
everything in nature and in society; in the eyes of some everything is
constantly at rest, immutable…. To others, however, it appears that there is
nothing unchanging in nature or in society…. This second point of view is called
the dynamic point of view…; the former point of view is called static.
Which is the correct position?... Even a hasty glance at nature will at
once convince us that there is nothing immutable
about it….
"Evidently…there is nothing
immutable
and rigid in the universe…. Matter in motion: such is the stuff of
this world…. This dynamic point of view is also called the dialectic
point of view….
"The world being in constant
motion, we must consider phenomena in their mutual relations, and not as
isolated cases. All portions of the universe are actually related to each
other and exert an influence on each other…. All things in the universe are
connected with an indissoluble bond; nothing exists as an isolated object,
independent of its surroundings….
"In
the first place, therefore, the dialectic method of interpretation demands
that all phenomena be considered in their indissoluble relations; in the second
place, that they be considered in their state of motion….
"Since everything in the world is in
a state of change, and indissolubly connected with everything else,
we
must draw the necessary conclusions for the social sciences….
"The basis of all things is
therefore the
law of change, the law of constant motion. Two philosophers
particularly (the ancient Heraclitus and the modern Hegel…) formulated this law
of change, but they did not stop there. They also set up the question of the
manner in which the process operates. The answer they discovered was that
changes are produced by constant internal contradictions, internal struggle.
Thus, Heraclitus declared: 'Conflict is the mother of all happenings,' while
Hegel said: 'Contradiction is the power that moves things.'
"There is no doubt of the correctness of
this law. A moment's thought will convince the reader. For, if there were
no conflict, no clash of forces, the world would be in a condition of unchanging
stable equilibrium, i.e., complete and absolute permanence, a state of rest
precluding all motion…. As we already know that all things change, all
things are 'in flux', it is certain that such an absolute state of rest
cannot possibly exist. We must therefore reject a condition in which
there is no 'contradiction between opposing and colliding forces' no disturbance
of equilibrium, but only an absolute immutability….
"In other words, the world
consists of forces, acting many ways, opposing each other. These forces are
balanced for a moment in exceptional cases only. We then have a state of 'rest',
i.e., their actual 'conflict' is concealed. But if we change only one of these
forces, immediately the 'internal contradictions' will be revealed, equilibrium
will be disturbed, and if a new equilibrium is again established, it will be on
a new basis, i.e., with a new combination of forces, etc. It follows that the
'conflict,' the 'contradiction,' i.e., the antagonism of forces acting in
various directions, determines the motion of the system….
"Hegel speaks of a transition of
quantity into quality….
"The transformation of quantity into
quality is one of the fundamental laws in the motion of matter; it may be
traced at
every step both in nature and society…." [Bukharin (1925), pp.63-67,
72-74, 80. Bold emphases added.]
So,
here is yet another dialectician happily 'deriving' DM-theses from a few hastily
constructed 'thought experiments' and the a priori
theories of earlier Idealists.
In
this regard, it is worth noting that Bukharin attributes the invention of the
so-called "law of change" to
Heraclitus,
a theorist who himself happened on that idea without the benefit of too much
supporting evidence (since he lived at a time when little was known about the
entire universe, let alone about the vanishingly small area which he inhabited).
Indeed, Heraclitus's all-embracing claim was based on what he thought was true
about the possibilities of stepping into the "same river"! Naturally, this
didn't stop him from pontificating about all of reality, for all of time
--, when for example he declared that "everything flows" -- just like his
latter-day dialectical progeny.
Admittedly, Bukharin did make a half-hearted attempt to provide his
readers with a few pages of 'evidence' in support of his claim that these
laws (which he, too, "demands" should apply to all phenomena) are true
everywhere, and for
all of time (ibid., pp.67-71). But, most of his 'data' was copied from other
DM-sources (and, of course, from Hegel). If this wasn't quite so serious, this
superficial gesture at providing adequate proof to back up these
assertions would be a joke. For example, how could Bukharin possibly have
known that "all portions of the universe" are interrelated?
[Indeed,
there are strong theoretical reasons for concluding they can't be.]
In
fact, his supporting evidence looks thinner than an anorexic flatworm.
Small wonder then that I have branded this cavalier approach to substantiation,
Mickey Mouse Science.
All that Bukharin offered his
bemused readers by way of support for that particular claim (i.e., that all
parts of the universe are interconnected) was the following extremely brief
thought experiment:
"I am now writing on paper with a pen. I
thus impart pressures to the table; the table presses on the earth, calling
forth a number of further changes. I move my hand, vibrate as I breathe, and
these motions pass on in slight impulses ending Lord knows where. The
fact that these may be but small changes does not change the essential nature of
the matter. All things in the universe are connected with an indissoluble
bond…." [Ibid., p.66. Emphasis added.]
Those
who are tempted to conclude that this 'argument' is sufficient to
establish the above truths about everything in the entire universe, for all time
(underpinned, no doubt, by means of yet another prayer to the "Lord"), should
now remind themselves (by consulting a dictionary) what the words "evidence" and
"sufficient" mean, and then perhaps think again.
Indeed, even if we were to be extremely charitable to Bukharin here, and count
this charade as evidence, the very best it might show is that some things
in the universe are connected -- but how it shows they are interconnected
Bukharin kept annoyingly to himself.
[For
example, how is the typing of this word -- "anti-dialectics" -- now
interconnected with the
Battle
of Actium? Someone might object that these aren't the sorts of things that
the theory supposes are interconnected, but that is part of the problem. No one
knows what this theory does imply. On that, see Essay Eleven
Part One.]
Bukharin also argued that with respect to change there are in fact just two
choices before us: (1) The view that nothing changes at all, and (2) The thesis
that all things change all the time. But, he failed to consider a third option
(thus excluding it): (3) That some things change while others do not. An
acceptance of this third alternative would at least have the merit of
undermining Bukharin's own un-dialectical use of the "either-or of
understanding, and commonsense", to rule out that particular excluded middle.
[Irony intended.]
Even
so, on what basis could Bukharin have been so sure that there is
absolutely nothing changeless in entire universe, for all of time? [Did he
really finish checking the outer fringes of the galaxy before he concluded
this?] Surely, the rational thing to do here would be to wait for the
development of scientific knowledge, not
lay down hard and fast, immutable laws about a mutable universe. Of course,
Bukharin wasn't to know that scientists would conclude one day that there are
indeed such (perhaps eternally) changeless objects in reality, and that there
are countless trillions of them in every microgram of matter.
As is pointed out in
Note 4,
each proton, for example, is estimated to have a lifespan of 1032
years (it may turn out to be entirely changeless since that estimate was only
advanced by scientists to make this 'particle' accord with the
Standard
Model and the
BBT).
Apparently, electrons and photons are, if anything, even more un-dialectical.
[BBT = Big Bang Theory.]
Clearly, the scientific thing to do here is not to issue dialectical
"demands", "insistences", "requirements", and caveats that nature
must conform to this or that a priori law -- imposing a
certain, favoured structure on a recalcitrant world --, but to study nature and
draw conclusions from it.
Now, where have we heard that before?
Trotsky's Traditionalism
Turning to another DM-classicist, Trotsky; his comments on the universal
applicability of DM (beyond all available, or even conceivable
evidence) are equally unambiguous. Consider the following:
"[A]ll bodies change uninterruptedly
in size, weight, colour etc. They are never equal to themselves…. [T]he
axiom 'A' is equal to 'A' signifies that a thing is equal to itself if it does
not change, that is, if it does not exist…. For concepts there also exists
'tolerance' which is established not by formal logic…, but by the
dialectical logic issuing from the axiom that everything is always changing….
Hegel in his Logic established a series of laws: change of quantity into
quality, development through contradiction, conflict and form, interruption of
continuity, change of possibility into inevitability, etc…." [Trotsky
(1971),
pp.64-66. Bold emphases added.]
"Every individual is a
dialectician to some extent or other, in most cases, unconsciously. A
housewife knows that a certain amount of salt flavours soup agreeably, but that
added salt makes the soup unpalatable. Consequently, an illiterate peasant woman
guides herself in cooking soup by the Hegelian law of the transformation of
quantity into quality…. Even animals arrive at their practical
conclusions…on the basis of the Hegelian dialectic. Thus a fox is aware
that quadrupeds and birds are nutritious and tasty…. When the same fox, however,
encounters the first animal which exceeds it in size, for example, a wolf, it
quickly concludes that quantity passes into quality, and turns to flee.
Clearly, the legs of a fox are equipped with Hegelian tendencies, even if
not fully conscious ones. All this demonstrates, in passing, that our methods of
thought, both formal logic and the dialectic, are not arbitrary constructions of
our reason but
rather expressions of the actual inter-relationships in nature itself. In
this sense the universe is permeated with 'unconscious' dialectics." [Ibid.,
pp.106-07. Bold emphases added.]
"It must be recognized that the
fundamental law of dialectics is the conversion of quantity into quality, for it
gives [us] the
general formula of all evolutionary processes -– of nature as well as of
society.
"…The principle of the transformation
of quantity into quality has universal significance, insofar as we view the
entire universe -- without any exception -- as a product of formation and
transformation….
"In these abstract formulas we have the
most general laws (forms) of motion, change, the transformation of the stars of
the heaven, of the earth, nature and human society.
"…Dialectics is the logic of
development. It examines the world -- completely without exception
-– not as a result of creation, of a sudden beginning, the realisation of a
plan, but as a result of motion, of transformation. Everything that is became
the way it is as a result of lawlike development." [Trotsky (1986), pp.88,
90, 96. Bold emphases added.]
Once
again, how could Trotsky possibly have known all this? Can he read the
minds of peasant women and foxes?
As we
found was the case with Lenin's own unlimited access to the otherwise restricted
areas of the 'Divine' knowledge of "Being", these questions needn't detain us
for too long; Trotsky answered them for us. His conclusions were based -- not on
evidence --, but on the "axiom" that "everything is always changing".
[Anyway, as we will see in Essay Seven Part One (here),
and Essay Nine Part One (here),
Trotsky's 'argument' (i.e., the one involving peasant women and foxes, etc.) is
so full of holes, it could serve as a colander.]
Now,
if something is an axiom, supporting evidence ("patiently" collected or
otherwise) is irrelevant. Only a hopelessly confused mathematician, for example,
would seek empirical evidence to justify the axiom that "a + b = b + a".
Again, like Lenin, Trotsky was quite open about where he obtained these "laws";
they weren't derived from careful work done in a laboratory, nor were they based
on tests carried out in the field, nor yet on surveys of workers'
attitudes and the views of peasant women -- or even on the 'beliefs' of
foxes --, they were lifted from Hegel's Logic. And, as far as can be
ascertained, Hegel did no experiments himself (on peasants, soup or
foxes). In fact, we already know where Hegel derived most of his own ideas: from
the writings and speculations of
Hermetic mystics and religious
fanatics littering the Germany of his day, and in earlier centuries.
Indeed, he tells us this
himself.
[This
sordid history will exposed in Essay Fourteen Part One (summary
here).]
Nothing New In Plekhanov
Not
to be outdone, other DM-classicists have joined this a priori
chorus-line. Here is Plekhanov:
"According to Hegel, dialectics is
the principle of all life…. [M]an has two qualities: first being alive,
and secondly of also being mortal. But on closer examination it turns out that
life itself bears in itself the germ of death, and that in general
any phenomenon is contradictory, in the sense that it develops out
of itself the elements which, sooner or later, will put an end to its existence
and will transform it into its opposite. Everything flows, everything changes;
and there is no force capable of holding back this constant flux, or arresting
its eternal movement. There is no force capable of resisting the dialectics of
phenomena….
"At a particular moment a moving body is
at a particular spot, but at the same time it is outside it as well because, if
it were only in that spot, it would, at least for that moment, become
motionless.
Every motion is a dialectical process, a living contradiction, and as
there is not a single phenomenon of nature in explaining which we do not have in
the long run to appeal to motion, we have to agree with Hegel, who said that
dialectics is the soul of any scientific cognition. And this applies not
only to cognition of nature….
"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….
"When you apply the dialectical method
to the study of phenomena, you need to remember that forms change
eternally in consequence of the 'higher development of their content….'
"In the words of Engels, Hegel's merit
consists in the fact that he was the first to regard all phenomena from
the point of view of their development, from the point of view of their origin
and destruction….
"[M]odern science confirms at every step
the idea expressed with such genius by Hegel, that quantity passes into
quality….
"[I]t will be understood without
difficulty by anyone who is in the least capable of dialectical
thinking...[that]
quantitative changes, accumulating gradually, lead in the end to
changes of quality, and that these changes of quality represent leaps,
interruptions in gradualness…. That's how all Nature acts…."
[Plekhanov
(1956), pp.74-77, 88, 163. Bold emphases alone added. (Unfortunately, the
Index page for this book over at the Marxist Internet Archive has no link to the
second half of Chapter Five, but it can be accessed directly
here. I have informed the editors of this error. Added June 2015: they have
now corrected it!)]
"Hegel goes on to show by a
number of examples how often leaps take place in Nature and in history….
"This dialectical view of Hegel's
as to the inevitability of leaps in the process of
development
was adopted in full by Marx and Engels….
"Thus [Engels] indicated that the
transition from one form of energy to another cannot take place otherwise
than by means of a leap…. Generally, speaking, he found that the
rights of
dialectical thinking are confirmed by the dialectical properties of being….
"Herzen was right in saying that
Hegel's
philosophy…was a genuine algebra of revolution….
"[W]e may say that this dialectic was
the first to supply a method necessary and competent to solve the problem of
the rational causes of all that exists….
"The motion of matter lies at the root
of all natural phenomena. But motion is a contradiction. It should be
judged in a dialectical manner…. Only the motion of matter is eternal, and
matter itself is indestructible substance….
"'All is flux, nothing is
stationary,' said the ancient thinker from Ephesus. The combinations we call
objects are in a state of constant and more or less rapid change….
In as much as they change and cease to exist as such, we must address
ourselves to the logic of contradiction….
"…[M]otion does not only make objects…,
it is constantly changing them.
It is for this reason that the logic of motion (the 'logic of
contradiction') never relinquishes its rights over the objects created by motion….
"With Hegel, thinking progresses in
consequence of the uncovering and resolution of the contradictions
inclosed (sic) in
concepts. According to our doctrine…the contradictions embodied in
concepts are merely reflections, translations into the language of thought,
of those contradictions that are embodied in phenomena owing to the
contradictory nature of their common basis, i.e., motion….
"…[T]he overwhelming majority of
phenomena that come within the compass of the natural and the social sciences
are among 'objects' of this kind…[:ones in which there is a coincidence of
opposites]. Diametrically opposite phenomena are united in the simplest
globule of protoplasm, and the life of the most undeveloped society…." [Plekhanov
(1908), pp.35-38, 92-96. Bold emphases alone added.]
"We know that Hegel called his method
dialectical; why did he do so?
"In his
Phänomenologie des Geistes he compares human life with dialogue, in the
sense that under the pressure of experience our views gradually change, as
happens to the opinions of disputants participating in a discussion of a
profound intellectual nature. Comparing the course of development of
consciousness with the progress of such a discussion, Hegel designated it by the
word dialectics, or dialectical motion. This word had already been used
by Plato, but it was Hegel who gave it its especially profound and important
meaning. To Hegel, dialectics is the soul of all scientific knowledge. It is of
extraordinary importance to comprehend its nature. It is the principle of all
motion, of all life, of all that occurs in reality. According to Hegel, the
finite is not only limited from without, but by virtue of its own nature it
negates itself and passes into its own opposite. All that exists can be taken as
an example to explain the nature of dialectics. Everything is fluid,
everything changes, everything passes away. Hegel compares the power of
dialectics with divine omnipotence. Dialectics is that universal
irresistible force which nothing can withstand. At the same time dialectics
makes itself felt in each separate phenomenon of each separate sphere of life.
Take motion. At a given moment, a body in motion is at a given point, but at the
very same moment it is also beyond that point too, since if it remained only
at the given point it would be motionless. All motion is a living
contradiction; all motion is a dialectical process. But the whole life of
nature is motion; so that in the study of nature it is absolutely essential to
adopt the dialectical viewpoint. Hegel sharply condemns those naturalists
who forget this. But the main reproach he addresses to them is that in their
classifications they put a wide and impassable gulf between things which in fact
pass into one another in obedience to the irresistible force of the law of
dialectical motion. The subsequent triumph of transformism in biology
clearly demonstrated that this reproach had a quite sound theoretical basis.
Exactly the same is being demonstrated by the remarkable discoveries in
chemistry which are proceeding before our very eyes....
"The following, however, should be
noted. Hegel's viewpoint was that of development. But development may be
understood variously. Even now there are naturalists who reiterate with an air
of importance: 'Nature does not make leaps.' Sociologists, too, frequently say:
'Social development is accomplished through slow, gradual changes.' Hegel, on
the contrary, affirmed that just as in nature so also in history, leaps are
inevitable...." [Plekhanov (1917),
pp.601-02. Quotation marks altered to conform to the conventions adopted at
this site. Bold emphases alone added.]
[In
fact, if all of Plekhanov's dogmatic and a priori
assertions had been included in this Essay, it would be tens of thousands of
words longer. Some of them will be added to the Appendix at a later
date.]
True-to-form, Plekhanov disarms the reader with the usual claim that his theses
have merely been derived from nature, not read into it:
"Hegel's logic is not at all the
creation of pure thought; it is the outcome of anticipatory abstraction from
nature.... In Hegel's dialectic, almost everything is derived from experience,
so that were experience to take away from dialectic all that the latter had
borrowed from it, dialectics would be reduced to penury." [Plekhanov (1908),
p.95.]
Perhaps Plekhanov had in mind these 'cautious' observations of Hegel's:
"Everything is opposite.
Neither in heaven nor in Earth, neither in the world of mind nor of nature, is
there anywhere such an abstract 'either-or' as the understanding maintains.
Whatever exists is concrete, with difference and opposition in itself. The
finitude of things will then lie in the want of correspondence between their
immediate being, and what they essentially are. Thus, in inorganic nature, the
acid is implicitly at the same time the base: in other words, its only being
consists in its relation to its other. Hence also the acid is not something that
persists quietly in the contrast: it is always in effort to realise what it
potentially is." [Hegel (1975), p.174;
Essence as Ground of Existence,
§119.
Bold emphasis added.]
Of
course, exactly how Hegel derived all of this from 'experience' both he and
Plekhanov left shrouded in mystery (and there it remains to this day).
[Hegel's comments are reduced to the absurdity they imply
here,
here and
here.]
Nevertheless, whatever it was that Hegel did or didn't manage to do, Plekhanov
then proceeded to do the exact opposite
of what he attributes even to this over-imaginative Idealist, extrapolating DM
way beyond the limited confines of the scanty evidence he offered in support,
imposing this doctrine on reality like a seasoned pro.
Beyond admitting that he lifted many of his ideas from Hegel and Heraclitus, how
Plekhanov knew that motion was eternal, that
no force could hold back change, or that "all that exists" has a
"rational cause", he took to his grave. After all, what else could a "dialectic
[that is] the first to supply a method necessary and competent to solve the
problem of the rational causes of all that exists" be but the Master
Key that unlocks the secret to everything in reality -- er..., which we
were told the dialectic isn't?
Stalin Murders A Theory --
For A Change
Stalin isn't widely known for his theoretical sophistication (except, that is,
for his few remaining 'groupies' who congregate in the various hardcore
Communist parties around the world, some of whom are even now trying to
rehabilitate this
monster) -- a serious defect he more than made up for in other ways, such as
imposing his will (or rather, imposing the collective will of the bureaucracy he
led) on the former USSR, and imposing DM on nature in like manner (as we will
see
here, these weren't
unconnected):
"Dialectical materialism is the world
outlook of the Marxist-Leninist party....
"The dialectical method therefore holds
that
no phenomenon in nature can be understood if taken by itself....; and that,
vice versa, any phenomenon can be understood and explained if considered in its
inseparable connection with surrounding phenomena, as one conditioned by
surrounding phenomena.
"Contrary to metaphysics, dialectics
holds that
nature is not in a state of rest and immobility, stagnation and immutability,
but a state of continuous movement and change, of continuous renewal and
development....
"The dialectical method therefore
requires
that phenomena should be considered not only from the standpoint of their
interconnection and interdependence, but also from the standpoint of their
movement and change....
"Contrary to metaphysics, dialectics
holds that
internal contradictions are inherent in all things and phenomena of nature,
for they all have their negative and positive sides...; and that the
struggle between these opposites, the struggle between the old and the new,
between that which is dying away and that which is being born..., constitutes
the internal content of the process of development, the internal content of the
transformation of quantitative changes into qualitative changes....
"If there are no isolated phenomena
in the world, if all phenomena are interconnected and interdependent,
then it is clear that every social system and every social movement in history
must be evaluated not from the standpoint of 'eternal justice'....
"Contrary to idealism..., Marxist
philosophical materialism holds that the world and its laws are fully knowable,
that our knowledge of the laws of nature, tested by experiment and practice, is
authentic knowledge having the validity of objective truth, and that there
are no things in the world which are unknowable, but only things which are
as yet not known, but which will be disclosed and made known by the efforts of
science and practice." [Stalin (1976b), pp.835-46. Bold emphases added.]
I
can't find anywhere in Stalin's writings where he says that DM mustn't be
imposed on nature, but it is quite clear from the above that he does the latter
nonetheless. I doubt that anyone lived long enough to challenge him on this
point anyway, even if they had had the courage to do so.
Once
more: how, for instance, could Stalin possibly know that there are no
things in the world which are unknowable? This is reminiscent of some
rather odd things that
Dietzgen said; Stalin perhaps copied this idea
from him.
Hence, it seems that 'Uncle Joe' was as traditional in his views as, say,
St Bonaventure
-- only far more dangerous, of course.
Mao's Great Leap
Backwards
Another of the dialectical 'giants', Mao Tse-Tung, was no less traditional,
no less repetitive. Again, true-to-form, Mao begins by noting how undogmatic he
proposes to be:
"The criticism to which the idealism of
the
Deborin
school has been subjected in Soviet philosophical circles in recent years has
aroused great interest among us. Deborin's idealism has exerted a very bad
influence in the Chinese Communist Party, and it cannot be said that the
dogmatist thinking in our Party is unrelated to the approach of that school.
Our present study of philosophy should therefore have the eradication of
dogmatist thinking as its main objective." [Mao (1937),
p.311. Bold emphasis and link added. See also
here.]
But,
then he ruins it by arguing as follows:
"The reason the dogmatist and empiricist
comrades in China have made mistakes lies precisely in their subjectivist,
one-sided and superficial way of looking at things. To be one-sided and
superficial is at the same time to be subjective. For all objective things
are actually interconnected and are governed by inner laws, but instead of
undertaking the task of reflecting things as they really are some people only
look at things one-sidedly or superficially and who know neither their
interconnections nor their inner laws, and so their method is subjectivist."
[Ibid.,
p.324. Bold emphasis added.]
But, where is Mao's proof (empirical or
otherwise) that all "objective things are actually interconnected and are
governed by inner laws"? As I noted earlier:
As
will soon become apparent, for all their claims to be radical, when it comes to
Philosophy
DM-theorists
are surprisingly conservative -- and universally incapable of
seeing this, even after it has been pointed out to them.... At a rhetorical
level, this conservatism is camouflaged behind what at first appear to be a set
of disarmingly modest denials --,
which are then promptly flouted.
Even
while he accuses others of "dogmatism", Mao is quite happy to impose (in
the very same paragraph!) a few dogmatic ideas of his own,
And,
there is more:
"The law of contradiction in things,
that is, the law of the unity of opposites, is the basic law of materialist
dialectics....
"As opposed to the metaphysical world
outlook, the world outlook of materialist dialectics holds that in order to
understand the development of a thing we should study it internally and in its
relations with other things; in other words, the development of things should be
seen as their internal and necessary self-movement, while each thing in
its movement is interrelated with and interacts on the things around it. The
fundamental cause of the development of a thing is not external but internal; it
lies in the contradictoriness within the thing. There is internal
contradiction in every single thing, hence its motion and development....
"The universality or absoluteness of
contradiction has a twofold meaning. One is that contradiction exists in
the process of development of all things, and the other is that in the
process of development of each thing a movement of opposites exists from
beginning to end....
"...There is nothing that does not
contain contradictions; without contradiction nothing would exist....
"Thus it is already clear that
contradiction exists universally and is in all processes, whether in the
simple or in the complex forms of motion, whether in objective phenomena or
ideological phenomena....
"...Contradiction is universal and
absolute, it is present in the process of the development of all things and
permeates every process from beginning to end...." [Ibid.,
pp.311-18. Bold emphases added.]
I
have cut this selection of quotations short since I fear that if I continue, my
sanity will suffer, to say nothing of the mental health of those who have made
it this far. But similar repetitive, dogmatic and baseless statements can be
found right throughout the above work.
[Mao's bogus distinction between 'primary' and secondary' contradictions will be
examined in a later
Essay. At a later date, I will
add to the Appendix several dozen more 'anti-dogmatic' dogmatic pronouncements
from Mao.]
As
can be seen from this and the other passages quoted in this Essay, dialecticians
more than make up for the lack of evidence supporting their Inter-Galactically
Bold assertions by the number of times they feel constrained to repeat them. [Why
they do this will be examined in Essay Nine
Part Two.]
Moreover, as was the case
with Stalin, I can find no evidence in Mao's writings where he says DM mustn't
be imposed on nature (however, as noted above, Mao does attempt to castigate
dogmatism; on this see
Note 6d), but if he believed in
scientific practice (which he elsewhere says he did; e.g.,
p.296
of Mao (1964)), then the convoy of trucks containing the mountains of
"carefully collected evidence" that would be needed to justify the above
semi-divine pronouncements must have been mislaid somewhere --, perhaps during
the
Long March?6d
Given
the unprecedented adulation paid to the last two Dialectical Gurus by
their groupies, the 'depth' of their analyses poses its own quirky sort of
'internal contradiction': how can such 23 carat dross be regarded by so
many as genuine philosophical gold?
As we
will see in Essay Nine
Part Two, this conundrum can be
answered by (1) considering something Marx once said about Alchemy, and
(2) something he said about the reasons so many human beings turn to religion --
and, of course, (3) by recalling the
substitutionist and opportunistic requirements of
Realpolitik.
Hegel's Non-Dogmatic Dogmatism
The
above dialecticians were, after all, merely slotting into an age-old tradition,
one that is happy to propound dogmatic theses about fundamental aspects of
'Being' based on little more than an
idiosyncratic use of language.
However, these dialecticians were also rather unique because of their open
disavowal of a priori dogmatism
(even if they then promptly did the opposite). But, in this they were following
in Hegel's footsteps, too. First of all, in his Shorter Logic, we
encounter the by-now-familiar self-effacing modesty:
"We can assume nothing and assert
nothing dogmatically." [Hegel (1975),
p.3, §1.]
[Surprising as this might seem to those who can read, Hegel's commentators can
still be found who will tell you with a straight face that he did indeed begin
with no presuppositions -- a bit like DM-fans who tell us the DM-classics aren't
full of a priori dogma.]
But
then, on the very same page, we find this 'non-dogmatic' statement:
"God and God only is the Truth." [Ibid.]
Followed a few pages later by:
"...we must presuppose
intelligence enough to know, not only that God is actual, that He is the supreme
actuality, that He alone is truly actual...." [Ibid.,
p.9, §6. Bold emphasis added.]
From
this, one is to suppose that in the minds of the aforementioned
commentators and Hegel-freaks -- who are themselves quite used to swallowing at
least one Hegel-inspired contradiction per minute --, that when Hegel tells us
in black and white that he is actually presupposing something it
obviously means he isn't.
The
rest of the book is a veritable catalogue of a priori,
dogmatic pronouncements. One is spoilt for choice. Here are just a few
examples:
"This immediate knowledge, consists in
knowing that the Infinite, the Eternal, the God which is in our Idea, really is:
or, it asserts that in our consciousness there is immediately and inseparably
bound up with this idea the certainty of its actual being." [Ibid.,
p.99, §64.]
"Pure
Being makes the beginning: because it is on the one hand pure thought,
and on the other immediacy itself, simple and indeterminate; and the first
beginning cannot be mediated by anything, or be further determined.
"All doubts and admonitions, which might
be brought against beginning the science with abstract empty being, will
disappear if we only perceive what a beginning naturally implies. It is possible
to define being as 'I = I', as 'Absolute Indifference' or Identity, and so on.
Where it is felt necessary to begin either with what is absolutely certain, i.e.
certainty of oneself, or with a definition or intuition of the absolute truth,
these and other forms of the kind may be looked on as if they must be the first.
But each of these forms contains a mediation, and hence cannot be the real
first: for all mediation implies advance made from a first on to a second, and
proceeding from something different. If I = I, or even the intellectual
intuition, are really taken to mean no more than the first, they are in this
mere immediacy identical with being: while conversely, pure being, if abstract
no longer, but including in it mediation, is pure thought or intuition.
"If we enunciate Being as a predicate of
the Absolute, we get the first definition of the latter. The Absolute is Being.
This is (in thought) the absolutely initial definition, the most abstract and
stinted. It is the definition given by the
Eleatics, but at the same
time is also the well-known definition of God as the sum of all realities. It
means, in short, that we are to set aside that limitation which is in every
reality, so that God shall be only the real in all reality, the superlatively
real. Or, if we reject reality, as implying a reflection, we get a more
immediate or unreflected statement of the same thing, when
Jacobi says that
the God of
Spinoza
is the
principium of being in all existence." [Ibid.,
pp.124-25,
§114.]
"Self-relation in Essence is the form of
Identity or of reflection-into-self, which has here taken the place of the
immediacy of Being. They are both the same abstraction -- self-relation.
"The unintelligence of sense, to take
everything limited and finite for Being, passes into the obstinacy of
understanding, which views the finite as self-identical, not inherently
self-contradictory.
"This identity, as it descended from
Being, appears in the first place only charged with the characteristics of
Being, and referred to Being as to something external. This external Being, if
taken in separation from the true Being (of Essence), is called the
Unessential. But that turns out to be a mistake. Because Essence is
Being-in-self, it is essential only to the extent that it has in itself its
negative, i.e. reference to another, or mediation. Consequently, it has the
unessential as its own proper seeming (reflection) in itself. But in seeming or
mediation there is distinction involved: and since what is distinguished (as
distinguished from identity out of which it arises, and in which it is not, or
lies as seeming) receives itself the form of identity, the semblance is still
not in the mode of Being, or of self-related immediacy.
"The sphere of Essence thus turns out to
be a still imperfect combination of immediacy and mediation. In it every term is
expressly invested with the character of self-relatedness, while yet at the same
time one is forced beyond it. It has Being -- reflected being, a being in which
another shows, and which shows in another. And so it is also the sphere in which
the contradiction, still implicit in the sphere of Being, is made explicit.
"As this one
notion is the common principle underlying all logic, there appear in the
development of Essence the same attributes or terms as in the development of
Being, but in reflex form. Instead of Being and Nought we have now the forms of
Positive and Negative; the former at first as Identity corresponding to pure and
uncontrasted Being, the latter developed (showing in itself) as Difference. So
also, we have Being represented by the Ground of determinate Being: which shows
itself, when reflected upon the Ground, as Existence." [Ibid.,
pp.165-66, §114.]
"Instead of speaking by the maxim of
Excluded Middle (which is the maxim of abstract understanding) we should rather
say: Everything is opposite. Neither in heaven nor in Earth, neither
in the world of mind nor of nature, is there anywhere such an abstract
'either-or' as the understanding maintains. Whatever exists is concrete,
with difference and opposition in itself. The finitude of things will then
lie in the want of correspondence between their immediate being, and what they
essentially are....
"Contradiction is the very moving
principle of the world: and it is ridiculous to say that contradiction is
unthinkable. The only thing correct in that statement is that contradiction is
not the end of the matter, but cancels itself. But contradiction, when
cancelled, does not leave abstract identity; for that is itself only one side of
the contrariety. The proximate result of opposition (when realised as
contradiction) is the Ground, which contains identity as well as difference
superseded and deposited to elements in the completer notion." [Ibid.,
p.174,
§119.
Bold emphases and links added. I have used the on-line versions above.]
"Everything is grounded in this unity of
identity and non-identity, of one and another, of sameness and distinction, of
affirmation and negation. The absolute is essentially dialectical. Dialectic is
the essence of Being or Being as essence. Essence is the sufficient
ground of all that seems to be non-absolute or finite. A is non-A: The
Absolute maintains itself in that which seems to escape it." [Hegel (1959),
p.120. Italic emphases in the original.]
Page
after page after page of this stuff; there is even more of it in the
Science of Logic! Unsurprisingly, one will search long and hard
and to no avail for any proof of these hyper-bold assertions (other than
perhaps an equally obscure
'derivation' from yet another paragraph, or paragraphs, of a priori
assertions) -- and even less evidence offered in their support -- in
Hegel's writings.
While
the above Marxist dialecticians could easily have
dogmatised for their countries -- if this were an Olympic event --, Hegel
(or one of his many epigones) is surely the one we would choose to represent
Earth in any future Inter-Planetary Dogmathon, and expect to win Gold every
time.
[With
Heidegger and
Spinoza on the subs bench, just in case.]
A priori
Super-Science:
Putting The Cart Before The Cart
The Norm,
Not The Exception
Indiscriminate
thesis-mongering like this is the norm,
not the exception, in the writings of the DM-classicists. Not surprisingly, this
idiosyncratic disregard of "careful empirical work" is copied ad nauseam
in the work of secondary DM-theorists, despite their own (by now familiar)
vociferous claims to the contrary.7
Consequently, in view of all the a priori legislating, all the
"insisting", "demanding", "presupposing", "obligating", "requiring", and
cosmic key-cutting going on, it now looks like
TAR's earlier claim
should be re-written along the following, but far more honest, lines:
"[Dialectics] is a
substitute for the difficult empirical task of tracing the development of real
contradictions,
and it is a suprahistorical master key whose…advantage is to turn
up when no real…knowledge is available." [Deliberate misquotation
of Rees (1998), p.9. Bold emphases added.]
This
underlines the tensions at work in DM. On the one hand, its theorists constantly
claim that their ideas are based on a thorough analysis of the evidence, while
on the other the way that their theses have been worded indicates the exact
opposite is the case.
In
the main, therefore, DM-theses represent universal, necessary and a priori
truths about reality, change, causality and development in their entirety,
valid for all of space and time. These are then casually projected onto
nature by any dialectician capable of mastering the "difficult empirical task"
of copying a page or two from Hegel, Engels, Plekhanov, Dietzgen, Lenin, Stalin,
Mao, or Trotsky.
Hence, Trotsky was quite happy to tell us that all bodies are constantly
changing, and that they are "never the same", even though he (and the entire
human race) could only ever have experienced a tiny fraction of those
that are doing, or have done, this. Understandably, that is why he had
to describe this idea of his an "axiom"; it certainly isn't an empirical truth
(nor is it one that humanity could ever verify). Plainly, it has been imposed on
nature, not read from it. [Any who think this unfair to Trotsky should read
this, and then think again.]
Similarly, the author of TAR is himself quite happy to tell us what "must" be
the case in connection with "change through contradiction". Had this view been
based on "careful" empirical work, the word "must" would surely be out of place;
a more tentative "is" being more appropriate. Indeed, John Rees himself had to
resort to an "insistence" (in relation to the nature of the mysterious
DM-Totality) in place of a more restrained "postulate" or "hypothesis".
Lenin's words are even less equivocal. He talks about "all
phenomena and processes of nature" being contradictory, and how dialectical
principles govern the "eternal development of the world". There is no hint in
what he said that these bold claims had been derived from a commensurately large
body of evidence/observations (indeed, he seems to indicate the opposite is the
case), nor does he make any attempt to restrict their universal scope. His
comments on core DM-theses are totally unqualified, even though he elsewhere
declared that our knowledge of reality will only ever be relative and
incomplete. Moreover, as we saw in his private Notebooks, Lenin advanced the
claim that DM does indeed provide
the key that
Trotsky and others have assured us it does not.
Other
DM-classicists are equally bold in what they tell us, and in what they then
impose on nature.
[Exactly why
they all do this will be examined in Essays Nine
Part Two and Twelve
Part One.]
So, the accusations made
earlier -- that when it comes to philosophy dialecticians are thoroughly
conservative, and that they emulate the a priori thought-forms invented
by ruling-class hacks -- has more than adequately been confirmed by the
"careful" empirical work recorded in this Essay.8
All
this strongly supports the claim that dialectics is just another form of
Idealism; the remaining Essays posted at this site are aimed at further
substantiating that controversial allegation.
So,
what can we conclude from our trawl through the Dustbowl of Dialectical Dogma?
Clearly: that all wings of Dialectical Marxism, from street-wise activists to
the High Priests of Theory, from the chief executives (and executioners) of
Sectariana to the DM-classicists, from
Tankies to Trots, from Maoists to Militants, from Libertarian Marxists to
Anti-Leninist Marxists, and beyond to Left Communists and (some) Anarchists --
all are confirmed, dyed-in-the-wool, a priori dogmatists.
Was
Marx right then when he said that the ideas of the ruling-class are in every
epoch the ruling ideas?
Who can now doubt it?
Trapped Between The Scylla Of Hegelianism And The Charybdis Of Positivism
To be
completed sometime in the near future.
Notes
01.
The evidence supporting
these seemingly dogmatic statements will be published in Essay Twelve
Part Two (when it is published). In the meantime, readers might like to consult
Barnes (2009),
Havelock (1983), and
Seligman (1962)
-- as well as
this.
1. The
Dialectical Fig-Leaf
[The
following material forms part of Note 1.]
Here
are several quotations from different DM sources, which
tell us that this theory hasn't been, or in some cases shouldn't be,
imposed on nature, simply read from it.
The
first few are from Engels:
"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. Bold emphasis added.]
In
Essay Seven we will find him
commenting as follows (on the 'laws' he says he derived from Hegel):
"All three are developed by Hegel in his
idealist fashion as mere laws of thought: the first, in the first part
of his Logic, in the Doctrine of Being; the second fills the
whole of the second and by far the most important part of his Logic,
the Doctrine of Essence; finally the third figures as the fundamental
law for the construction of the whole system. The mistake lies in the fact
that these laws are foisted on nature and history as laws of thought, and not
deduced from them. This is the source of the whole forced and often outrageous
treatment; the universe, willy-nilly, is made out to be arranged in accordance
with a system of thought which itself is only the product of a definite
stage of evolution of human thought." [Engels
(1954), p.62. Bold emphasis alone added.]
Indeed, Engels even went as far as to say that science (and that must include
DM) should be verified by experiment wherever possible:
"We all agree that in every field of
science, in natural and historical science, one must proceed from the given
facts, in natural science therefore from the various material forms of
motion of matter; that therefore in theoretical natural science too the
interconnections are not to be built into the facts but to be discovered in
them, and when discovered to be verified as far as possible by experiment.
"Just as little can it be a question of
maintaining the dogmatic content of the Hegelian system as it was preached by
the Berlin Hegelians of the older and younger line." [Ibid.,
p.47. Bold emphasis alone added.]
"In this way, however, the whole dogmatic content of the Hegelian system is
declared to be absolute truth, in contradiction to his dialectical method, which
dissolves all dogmatism...." [Engels
(1888), p.589. In all the above, bold emphases alone added.]
But,
as we will see in this Essay, the above is exactly what Engels did: he
dogmatically imposed DM on nature.
From
recently published Preparatory Writings for Anti-Dühring, we find the
following seemingly reasonable comment by Engels:
"The general results of the
investigation of the world are obtained at the end of this investigation, hence
are not principles, points of departure, but results, conclusions.
To construct the latter in one's head, take them as the basis from which to
start, and then reconstruct the world from them in one's head is ideology,
an ideology which tainted every species of materialism hitherto existing.... As
Dühring proceeds from 'principles' instead of facts he is an ideologist, and
can screen his being one only by formulating his propositions in such general
and vacuous terms that they appear axiomatic, flat. Moreover, nothing can
be concluded from them; one can only read something into them...." [Marx
and Engels (1987), Volume 25, p.597. Italic emphases in the original;
bold emphasis added. Quotation marks altered to conform to the conventions
adopted at this site.]
Again, as we will see, Engels is himself guilty of doing precisely what he has
just accused Dühring of doing.
John
Rees argues similarly:
"[The laws of dialectics] are not, as
Marx and Engels were quick to insist, a substitute for the difficult empirical
task of tracing the development of real contradictions, not a suprahistorical
master key
whose only advantage is to turn up when no real historical knowledge is
available." [Rees (1998), p.9. Bold emphasis added.]
"'[The dialectic is not a] magic
master key for all questions.' The dialectic is not a calculator into which
it is possible to punch the problem and allow it to compute the solution. This
would be an idealist method. A materialist dialectic must grow from a
patient, empirical examination of the facts and not be imposed on them…."
[Ibid., p.271. Bold emphases alone added.]
Lenin
even complained as follows about British and American Marxists:
"What
Marx and Engels criticise most sharply in British and American socialism is
its isolation from the working-class movement. The burden of all their numerous
comments on the
Social-Democratic Federation in Britain and on the American socialists is
the accusation that they have reduced Marxism to a dogma, to 'rigid [starre]
orthodoxy', that they consider it 'a credo and not a guide to action'."
[Lenin, 'Preface to
the Russian Translation of Letters by Johannes Becker, Joseph Dietzgen,
Frederick Engels, Karl Marx, and Others to Friedrich Sorge and Others',
1907, taken from
here; quotation marks altered to conform to the conventions adopted at this
site. Bold emphasis and link added. Italic emphases in the original.]
However,
as we will see, when it
comes to DM, Lenin is quite capable of dogmatising with the very best, using
DM as a test of 'orthodoxy'.
Likewise, Trotsky pointedly asserted that:
"The dialectic does not liberate the
investigator from
painstaking study of the facts, quite the contrary: it requires it."
[Trotsky (1986), p.92. Bold emphasis added.]
"Dialectics and materialism are the
basic elements in the Marxist cognition of the world. But this does not mean at
all that they can be applied to any sphere of knowledge, like an ever-ready
master key. Dialectics cannot be imposed on facts; it has to be deduced from
facts, from their nature and development…." [Trotsky
(1973), p.233. Bold
emphasis added.]
"Whenever any Marxist attempted to
transmute the theory of Marx into a universal
master key and ignore all other spheres of learning, Vladimir Ilyich would
rebuke him with the expressive phrase 'Komchvanstvo' ('communist swagger')."
[Ibid., p.221.]
Here,
too,
is Mao:
"Idealism and metaphysics are the
easiest things in the world, because people can talk as much nonsense as they
like without basing it on objective reality or having it tested against reality.
Materialism and dialectics, on the other hand, need effort. They must be based
on and tested by objective reality. Unless one makes the effort, one is liable
to slip into idealism and metaphysics." [Quoted from
here. Bold emphasis added.]
Compare the above with what Mao
actually did.
George Novack argued as follows:
"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, is Maurice Cornforth:
"Our party philosophy, then, has a right
to lay claim to truth. For it is the only philosophy which is based on a
standpoint which demands that we should always seek to understand things just
as they are…without disguises and without fantasy….
"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), pp.14-15. Bold emphases added.]
Cornforth even had the cheek to add
these thoughts:
"Separating knowledge from
practice, many philosophers have also maintained that knowledge is built up by a
process of 'pure thought'. The senses, they say, are unreliable, and cannot be
the source of knowledge, to gain which we should...rely on the intellect
alone....
"What we know about the
material world is derived form the exercise of our senses. Any supposed
knowledge which goes beyond that is not knowledge but fantasy, and any supposed
objective reality inaccessible to the sense is not real but imaginary. [Can this
dogma be 'derived from the senses'? -- RL.]
"It may be objected that
these are dogmatic statements, but there is no dogma here. On the contrary, once
we get away from this fundamental materialist position we get away from
verifiable knowledge and into the realms of pure speculation. One we allow
ourselves to start inventing 'realities' which cannot in any way be detected by
the instrumentality of the senses, we are away into the clouds.... [Can this too
be 'derived from the senses'? -- RL.]
"Hence we should steadily
reject all 'principles' and dogmas which claim to be known independent of
experience, independent of the exercise of the senses, whether by some inner
light or by virtue of some authority. [Such as the alleged contradictory nature
of motion, which can't be verified by
the senses? -- RL.] We should not trust those who seek to impose their views
because they claim to possess some special intellectual gift, or to have been
initiated into some mystery, or to be empowered with some special authority.
[Like Stalin, perhaps? -- RL.] We should be sceptical, and accept nothing from
anyone which cannot be explained and justified in terms of practice and sense
experience." [Cornforth (1963), pp.156-57. Quotation marks altered to conform to
the conventions adopted at this site. Bold emphases added.]
Reading the above is like listening to a Bishop
bloviate about the 'Prince of Peace' just after blessing a new warship:
Figure One: Christian
Equivalent Of Cornforth?
Throughout this Essay, and this site, we will see Cornforth and his DM-buddies
do the exact opposite of what he says above.
Here is David Hayden-Guest:
"This law of dialectical process is like
the others in that it cannot be arbitrarily 'foisted' on Nature or history. It
cannot be used as a substitute for empirical facts, or used to 'predict' things
without a concrete study of the facts in question….
"Dialectics is not magic. It provides no
mysterious formulas with occult properties, by means of which most marvellous
and unexpected results can be arrived at. [Dialectical laws] are...merely the
most general, universally found characteristics of process, and as such
they give us a method for investigating processes concretely in various
particular fields. But they can in no way eliminate the need for this detailed
investigation which falls within the province of one or other of the special
sciences." [Guest (1939), pp.49-50, 74. Italic emphasis in the original.]
As we
will see here, Guest promptly
ignored these fine words, and proceeded to impose DM on nature and society
(indeed, he even does this in the above passage when he talks about "the most
general, universally found characteristics"!), just like Engels, Plekhanov,
Lenin, Trotsky, Mao, before him, and just like practically every dialectician
since.
The
on-line editors of Tony Cliff's article, 'Deflected Permanent Revolution', added
this comment:
"Marx wrote: 'Philosophers have
explained the world.
The point however is to change it.' Marxists are often accused by our
opponents of being dogmatic and doctrinaire theorists. Nothing could be further
from the truth. If the point is to change the world then socialist theory
must always be changed and updated in the light of experience. This is what
Trotsky did and this is what Tony Cliff set out to do in this re-examination of
Trotsky's theory." [Quoted from
here. Bold emphases added. This comment does not appear in the pamphlet
version of this article. What
Marx actually said was this: "The philosophers have only interpreted the
world, in various ways; the point is to change it."]
And
yet, when it comes to DM, all we seem to find are Dogmatic Marxists --
again, as we will see throughout this Essay.
Even
the Daddy of Dogmatism, Gerry Healy, had this to say:
"Great care has to be taken not to
impose any abstract thought interpretations upon the external world. Its
independent properties must be allowed to build up in the mind and not have some
premature abstract thought imposed on these, concealed and unknown
properties....
"Training
and using our senses properly means to avoid imposing thought images on the
external world." [Healy, quoted in North (1991), pp.89-90.]
As
we will see,
Healy in fact did the exact opposite, and was quite happy to impose his
idiosyncratic, and highly abstract version of DM on the world.
Recent on-line examples of this phenomenon include the following:
"It has been said many times that the method of Marxism is to first study the
facts of a subject, and then to draw out its processes and its connections. This
describes not only the method of Marxism but also the method of science (and
Marxism is a science) -- not to impose an arbitrary idea, but to study a
subject from all angles and to find and generalise the underlying processes that
are taking place. Then to use that theoretical insight as a guide to action, to
learn from further experience, and to refine and develop the theory as a guide
to further action." [Harry Nielsen, quoted from
here. Bold emphasis added.]
"Thus, for Marx and Engels, thoughts
were not passive and independent reflections of the material world, but products
of human labour, and the contradictory nature of our thoughts had their origin
in the contradictions within human society. This meant that Dialectics was
not something imposed on to the world from outside which could be discovered by
the activity of pure Reason, but was a product of human labour changing the
world; its form was changed and developed by people, and could only be
understood by the practical struggle to overcome these contradictions -- not
just in thought, but in practice." [Marxist Internet Archive
Glossary of terms. Bold emphasis added.]
"Gollobin provides a clear exposition,
with numerous illustrations, of the key aspects of the laws of dialectics: the
unity and conflict of opposites, the transition of quality into quantity and
quantity into quality, and the negation of the negation. Of course, these
'laws' of dialectics are not prescriptive rules imposed on thinking any more
than the laws of nature are rules imposed on matter by some supernatural
law-giver. The laws of dialectics are formulations of our understanding of
the nature of things. There can 'be no question,' as Engels put it, 'of building
the laws of dialectics into nature, but of discovering them in it and evolving
them from it.'" [Review of Gollobin (1986) by
William Ash. Bold emphasis added; quotation marks altered to conform to the
conventions adopted at this site.]
And,
here is another recent example:
"Engels unashamedly bases himself on Georg Hegel (1770-1831). But -- and it is a
big but -- he set out to put the great philosopher onto his feet. Whereas Hegel
idealistically developed the dialectic 'as mere laws of thought', Engels
insisted that it is rooted in, and must be deduced from, the underlying
dialectic found in the world of matter itself....
"Engels emphasises that it would be
entirely wrong to crudely read the dialectic into nature. The dialectic has
to be discovered in nature and evolving out of nature....
"Of course, that does not mean we should impose some a priori
dialectical construct upon nature. The dialectic, as Engels explains time
and again, has to be painstakingly discovered in nature....
"Engels did not make the laws of nature dialectical. He tried, on the contrary,
to draw out the most
general dialectical laws from nature. Not force artificial,
preconceived, inappropriate notions onto nature." [Jack Conrad,
Weekly
Worker, 30/08/07. Bold emphasis alone added.]
On
the same page Conrad went on to say this:
"Engels moves on to discuss dialectical categories such as necessity and chance,
essence and appearance, causality and interaction, freedom and necessity. Formal
and dialectical logic are also touched upon and shown to have a relationship.
Dialectical logic is, needless to say, far superior. Like the moving image of
film compared to a single-frame photograph. Dialectical logic grasps totality,
interconnection, movement and the constancy of change." [Ibid.]
But,
these theses certainly look "preconceived" (as indeed they were -- by earlier
mystics, including Hegel). As we have seen, Engels was perfectly happy to
impose his 'Laws' on nature. Conrad does a little of this himself:
"Subject and object interpenetrate, are in a process of constant movement, and
time and again become their opposites." [Ibid.]
As we
will also
see,
not all things change into their "opposites" (nor yet even because of
them), but Conrad is nevertheless happy to impose this thesis on nature.
Here
are Woods and Grant:
"Hegel's idealism necessarily gave his
dialectics a highly abstract, and arbitrary character. In order to make
dialectics serve the 'Absolute Idea,' Hegel was forced to impose a schema
upon nature and society, in flat contradiction to the dialectical method itself,
which demands that we derive the laws of a given phenomenon from a scrupulously
objective study of the subject-matter...." [Woods and Grant (1995),
pp.43-44. Bold emphasis added. Quotation marks altered to conform to the
conventions adopted at this site.]
Alan
Woods also had this to say in the Preface to the new edition of the above book:
"This does not mean, of course, that
philosophy -- any philosophy -- must dictate to science, as did the Church
in the Middle Ages, or as the bureaucracy in Stalinist Russia. Science has its
own methods of investigation, observation and experiment, and must follow these
and these alone. Engels writes in The Dialectics of Nature:
"'All three are developed by Hegel
in his idealist fashion as mere laws of thought: the first, in the
first part of his Logic, in the Doctrine of Being; the
second fills the whole of the second and by far the most important part of
his
Logic, the Doctrine of Essence; finally the third figures as the
fundamental law for the construction of the whole system. The mistake
lies in the fact that these laws are foisted on nature and history as laws
of thought, and not deduced from them. This is the source of the whole
forced and often outrageous treatment; the universe, willy-nilly, is made
out to be arranged in accordance with a system of thought which itself is
only the product of a definite stage of evolution of human thought. If we
turn the thing round, then everything becomes simple, and the dialectical
laws that look so extremely mysterious in idealist philosophy at once become
simple and clear as noonday.' (My emphasis, AW.)
"Scientists necessarily approach their
subject matter with certain assumptions, of which they are usually unaware.
These assumptions invariably have a philosophical character. Behind every
hypothesis there are always many assumptions, not all of them derived from
science itself. For example, what led geneticists to conclude that humans
possessed far more genes than is, in fact, the case? It is the method of
reductionism, which flows from the mechanical assumption that nature knows
only purely quantitative relations. Biological determinism considers
humans as a collection of genes, and not as complex organisms, processes, the
product of a dialectical interrelation between genes and the environment."
[Quoted from
here. Bold emphasis alone added.]
Readers will no doubt have noticed that Woods first acknowledges that Philosophy
shouldn't dictate to science, but then he excuses his own dogmatism in this
regard on the basis that scientists also impose their ideas on the subject
matter! They may or may do this,
but then why say that you aren't going to do something when you fully intend to
do it?
[Examples of Woods and Grant's own brand of 'non-dogmatic' dogmatism are given
below, in
Note 7.]
Peter Mason
Here
is Peter Mason of the
CWI, a stern 'dialectical' critic of his ex-comrades, Woods and Grant:
"We have tried to show that
Marxism does not supply an a priori means of determining correct scientific
theories -- it cannot dictate by means of materialist dialectics which
scientific theory is verifiable and which is not." [Mason (2012),
p.108. Bold
emphasis added.]
"The
materialist dialectic exposes the shortcomings of all fixed formulas....
"For this reason Marxism
does not approach sciences such as quantum mechanics as if it must consist of
fixed formulas which must be either true for all time or false. Nor does it
insist that the processes that quantum mechanics has discovered conform to
dialectical formulas or laws....
"Why should dialectics have fixed
formulas to which nature should conform?...
"Dialectical materialism is not a magic
philosophical key which unlocks the mysteries of science, allowing the
dialectician to make judgements and criticisms on scientific matters." [Quoted
from here.
This now appears as the Appendix to Mason (2012), pp.115, 117.
Bold emphases added.]
Mason
even quotes Trotsky and Einstein:
"Dialectics and materialism
are the basic elements in the Marxist cognition of the world. But this does not
mean at all that they can be applied to any sphere of knowledge, like an
ever-ready master key. Dialectics cannot be imposed on facts; it has to be
deduced from facts, from their nature and development...." [Ibid., p.17
(this part of the book has not been reproduced on-line); quoting
Trotsky (1973), p.233.]
"The elements of physical
reality cannot be determined by a priori philosophical considerations but
must be found by an appeal to the results of experiments and measurements." [Ibid.,
p.117; quoting
Einstein,
Podolsky and Rosen (1935), p.777 (this links to a PDF).]
While
Mason is certainly one of the most reasonable DM-fans I have
so far studied, like so many others he is nevertheless quite happy to ignore the
above caveats and impose DM on the facts, on nature, as a "fixed formula" -- for example:
"A fundamental law of
dialectics: truth is concrete." [Mason
(2012),
p.16. Cf., p.3.]
"This was the origin of the unity and
interpenetration of opposites, which Engels summarised so clearly -- and
which Lenin, following Hegel, considered the central element of dialectics.
These opposites, which dialectics says is found in everything which changes,
attempt to negate the other, until one finally triumphs and there is a
qualitative change -- Louis XVI is guillotined, water boils, atoms decay, the
living die. There is a passing away and, perhaps, another coming into being.
This was called the dialectic of becoming." [Ibid.,
p.30.]
"In any case, from a dialectical point
of view, everything that changes has within it an interpenetration of opposites,
as Engels puts it in Dialectics of Nature." [Ibid.,
p.104.]
"Science has demonstrated the dialectics
of the universe. Some ten to twenty billion years ago, so far as is most broadly
accepted by science today, there was a sudden catastrophic dialectical
transformation, and the universe we know came into existence -- from what cause
we do not know. Time and space are bound up with matter and energy, and are not
exempt from the dialectics of nature. Time has not been ticking eternally,
exempt from the transformations of quantity into quality first discovered by the
ancient philosophers of Ionia, and which in modern times helped form the Marxist
understanding of processes here on earth." [Ibid.,
p.109. In all of the above, bold emphases and link added.
Italic emphases in the original.]
Of
course, science has shown no such thing. Mason has plainly imposed DM on
whatever it is that scientists have so far found. Moreover, the "ancient
philosophers of Ionia" 'discovered' this theory long before scientific
evidence of any sort had emerged, meaning that they, too, imposed these ideas on
nature. [As we will see in Essay Seven
Part One, the evidence that has emerged doesn't support it anyway.]
Mason
continues:
"Dialectics is a holistic
philosophy, which always considers things in their relations and their
development, as Lenin said....
"[The development of Ionian
philosophy] emerged from internal conflict, a war of opposing forces within all
things, a 'unity of opposites' as Lenin called it, an 'interpenetration of
opposites' as Engels termed it. These warring opposites were what drove the
eternal flux of change. Dialectics is a philosophy born of revolution."
"Marxists have a unique
definition [of materialism]. For Marxists, in this context, materialism can be
described as the philosophy that the world is primary, and thought is
secondary." [Ibid.,
pp.114, 116. Bold emphases added.]
Mason
seems quite happy to foist the above on nature, despite what he elsewhere says
he never does, or should never do.
Incidentally, although Mason traces the 'unity of opposites' back to these
Ionian Philosophers and their supposed revolution, this idea was in fact derived
from mystical Greek religion (as I hope to show in Essay Twelve Part Two),
summarised in the
following passage:
In
earlier
myths and
Theogonies,
conflict in this world was viewed as a reflection of the rivalries
that existed between various warring 'gods', which struggle took place in a hidden world
beyond the reach of the senses. Their verbal wrangles and machinations became the model upon
which later Idealist and
Hermetic thinkers based
their Super-Scientific ideas -- theories they happily imposed on nature and society.
Language, originally the product of collective
labour and developed as a means of communication, is ill-suited when
pressed into service as a means of representation (especially when it is
viewed as a way of
representing the thoughts of these 'gods'). In order to
transform it into a representational device, theorists found they had to take
words that had grown out of, and which expressed, the relations human beings have with one another
and with nature, and then apply them to the relations between objects and processes in nature itself
--,
or, indeed between these warring 'deities'.
Unfortunately, these expressions carried with them the connotations they
possessed in the ordinary use they had in connection with the
relations between human beings. These moves had a inevitable result: they
transformed the world into a projection of human social relations, thus
anthropomorphising nature. As, indeed, Marx pointed out:
"Feuerbach's
great achievement is.... The proof that philosophy is nothing else but
religion rendered into thought and expounded by thought, i.e., another form
and manner of existence of the estrangement of the essence of man; hence equally
to be condemned...." [Marx
(1975b),
p.381. Bold emphasis
and link added.]
As we will see in other Essays published at
this site: because they appropriated and then elaborated upon these
anthropomorphic concepts, later generations of thinkers (including Marxist
dialecticians
and the vast majority of post-Renaissance Philosophers) anthropomorphised
nature in like manner. In this way, much of subsequent thought failed to break free from this
animistic view of reality....
Superstitious individuals had earlier tried to interpret natural processes as
the work of various assorted 'spirits' and/or 'deities', using anthropomorphic
language to that end. Subsequently, in more developed class societies, priests
and theologians indulged in this thought-form for ideological reasons (i.e., in
order to suggest that the natural and social order was 'divinely-ordained', and which
not only couldn't, it shouldn't be questioned, let alone resisted). Subsequently, as we can see from the record,
Ancient Greek Thinkers began looking for increasingly secular ways of theorising
about the world (in order to concoct a less animistic rationale for the new forms of class
society beginning to emerge in the 6th century BC), but they retained this
transformed language, not noticing they had in fact banished the
aforementioned 'spirits' and 'gods' in
name only (indeed, as
Feuerbach half recognised) -- but, the
anthropomorphic
connotations still lingered on, and there they remain to this day.
Unfortunately for humanity, these
developments also meant
that it became 'natural' for theorists (like
Anaximenes and
Heraclitus) to see conflict in conceptual, logical and
linguistic (but not materialist) terms. And this is from
where Hegel appropriated these obscure ideas.
That, of course, set this
new form of discourse in direct opposition to the language of everyday
life. Again, as noted above, this alienated thought-form was bequeathed to all subsequent generations
of thinkers, since the latter individuals largely shared the same privileged material conditions,
ruling-class patronage, and hence
the ideological predispositions that came with this slice of the
intellectual territory.
In this artificial world,
populated by indolent thinkers like these,
words appeared to
exert
an irresistible form of authority;
commands, edicts and orders seemed to possess their own secret or magical power (which, of
course,
accounts for the ancient and early modern search for the original language 'God' gave to mankind;
on this, see
Eco
(1997), partially quoted
here).
Words were, after all, capable of moving slaves, servants, and
workers effortlessly about the place. Codified into law,
words
also appeared to possess genuine
coercive
power,
which helped mask the class domination on which this parasitic social form was based. Naturally, this
(superficial) aspect of official language would blind those who benefited from
these social forms
to its material roots in class society.
The very real social power that words seemed
to possess would
naturally suggest to such theoretical 'drones'
that if certain forms of language underpinned
the authority of the State, and if the
State mirrored
Cosmic Reality, then the universe must run along discursive lines.
[In
Appendix One, the reader will find
dozens of examples on mystical and Idealist systems of thought that see the
world in just this way -- powered by the 'conflict of opposites'.]
Which
is ironic in view of this comment of Mason's:
"As Trotsky writes, 'if any
idealist philosopher, instead of arriving in time to catch the nine p.m. train,
should turn up two minutes late, he would see the tail of the departing train
and would be convinced by his own eyes that time and space are inseparable from
material reality.'
But this becomes merely an
anthropomorphic view if, as we shall shortly see, time and space do not exist in
some real sense at the atomic level. Why define reality only by what we humans
commonly experience?" [Mason (2012),
p.128.]
And
yet, this is what Mason himself does when he projects a theory he says derives
from 'revolution' onto nature as a universally valid cosmic 'law' -- the 'unity
of opposites'.
Earlier in Mason's book we find this additional imposition on the facts
of a "fixed formula":
"For two-and-a-half
millennia, many philosophers have supported the view that infinity is an
imaginary concept which has no actual existence. Hegel arrived at a dialectical
proposition which can be expressed like this: you can always imagine an unending
series of galaxies following one after another, but in concrete reality, at a
certain point, quantity turns into quality and a new phenomenon emerges.
Whatever existed before is negated. From this point of view there may be many
galaxies undiscovered, or many universes beyond our own -- it is speculation --
but, at some point, some other property will arise that ends the tedious
repetition, whether of galaxies or universes, the conception of which is beyond
our current scientific horizons". [Ibid.,
pp.6-7.]
Mason
nowhere criticises Hegel for this prime example of a priori dogmatism;
indeed, and quite the opposite, he uses this presumed fact to berate Woods and
Grant (who do believe in the existence of the infinite). One might well
wonder, in passing, how the above presumed fact actually coheres with what
Engels had to say about this 'Law' (the "fixed formula", 'transformation of quantity into
quality'):
"...[T]he 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 emphasis
alone added.]
But,
precisely
what matter or energy has been added to the universe (or, to a collection
of universes) that is capable of bringing about the above 'transformation of
quantity into quality')? Does Mason really believe that matter is added to
the universe (or collection of universes) each time we discover a new
galaxy? But, if there is no matter/energy that is, or has been, added, then what
precisely is the 'quantity' that passes over into 'quality', here? And from where does it
originate?
Moreover, one presumes that the change in 'quality' is the change from an
infinite universe to a finite universe (although Mason is far from clear about
this). But, is he also suggesting that as galaxies are 'added' (or, perhaps,
discovered), at some point the universe suddenly becomes finite? If
he does, then what was it before the galaxies were discovered? Was it infinite?
If it wasn't, then precisely what 'quality' has changed?
None of this seems to
make sense even in DM-terms!
While
Mason rightly lambastes Woods and Grant for their many errors (of fact and/or
theory), he might have been well-advised to turn an equally critical eye on his own work,
for he seems not to 'understand' dialectics!
Either that, or Engels didn't!
Mason
even had the cheek to argue as follows:
"But to quote Engels 'The
mistake lies in the fact that these laws [of dialectics -- Mason's
interpolation, RL] are foisted on nature and history as laws of thought, and not
deduced from them.' (Dialectics of Nature) We begin with nature and
history as discovered over millennia by concrete, detailed and sometimes
painstaking analysis, rather than beginning with philosophy." [Ibid.,
p.v.
Quotation marks altered to conform to the conventions adopted at this site.
Bold emphasis added.
Italic emphases in the original.]
In spite of this apparent (but plainly
superficial) modesty, a few paragraphs earlier we were told the following:
"...[A] more flexible
'dialectical' outlook is required, a core view of which is that in the real
world any particular thing, whether it is an atom or a particular scientific
outlook, contains within it contradictory elements or opposites. The ancient
Greeks argued that anything which lacked such internal contradictions could
never change, and would exist for all eternity. They recognised the impermanence
of all things outside the 'Heavens', the starry firmament where the gods were
thought to reside." [Ibid.,
p.iv. Quotation marks altered to conform to the conventions adopted at this
site.]
Dialecticians
like Mason plainly do not
"begin with nature and history as discovered
over millennia by concrete, detailed and sometimes painstaking analysis", as
even he admits; they begin with the speculative fancies of ancient Greek
Philosophers -- which speculations they too were happy to impose on nature.
Hence, in direct (and ironic) contradiction to what Mason tells us: "rather than
beginning with philosophy,"
that is precisely where he begins.
To cap it all, Mason has the gall to
criticise Woods and Grant for imposing DM on nature:
"Reason in Revolt
reaches the pinnacle of its ridicule of modern science in its condemnation of
the modern science of black holes and the Big Bang theory. Yet there is no
direct mention of this in the 2007 preface. Instead, Woods comments on the
correct method by which to apply dialectical materialism. Woods quotes Engels,
who criticises the idealism of Hegel. Engels says:
'The mistake lies in the
fact that [the laws of dialectics] are foisted on nature and history as laws of
thought, and not deduced from them. (Dialectics of Nature, Chapter 2)'
[Quoted in Woods and Grant (2007), pp.12-13 -- RL.]
"In our critique we ask:
Does not Woods make the same type of mistake? Does not Woods attempt to foist on
cosmology what he believes are the laws of dialectical materialism?
Reviewing, with complete incomprehension, the modern science of the Big Bang in
relation to Einstein’s general theory of relativity, Woods cries, 'Here the
study of philosophy becomes indispensable.' (Reason
in Revolt, p.216)" [Ibid.,
p.8. Italic emphases in the original; bold emphasis and link added.
Formatting and quotation marks altered to conform to the conventions adopted at
this site.]
What was that again about 'He
who is without sin cast the first stone...'?
~~~~~oOo~~~~~
As
noted earlier, the Internet is full of such material, but here is a
particularly egregious example:
"Things change, sometimes slowly,
sometimes suddenly. When they change enough, whether slowly or suddenly, they
may change into something else. Things are connected to other things, to an
extent that we can't imagine but can find out, and we won't go far wrong if
we imagine that everything is connected to everything else.
"In other words, everything has a history, and everything has a context. For
practical reasons we may have to think about things as if they weren't changing,
and as if they were separate things, just there by themselves. But when
we're trying to really understand how the world works, we have to remember
that our ideas about things may have been formed by leaving aside the changes
going on in them, and the connections between them. And we have to bring
history and context back into our thinking about the things, and that may mean
changing our ideas about them.
"And that's dialectical materialism. No scientist would disagree with it, though
scientists (like other people) often forget it. I get outraged by the way
some Marxists think they can pronounce, on the basis of their supposed
all-embracing philosophy, on particular questions of science. They're behaving
exactly like clerics of a church that thinks its theology is the queen of
the sciences." [Ken McLeod, 18/07/11; quoted from
here. Bold emphases alone added.]
And
yet, in this one passage, while telling us he is "outraged" when others
impose this or that scientific idea on nature, McLeod is quite happy to do
likewise!
One or two dialecticians
are quite open an honest about their
Idealism (although they don't call it this). Here is
Herbert Marcuse, commenting on Hegel:
"The doctrine of Essence seeks to
liberate knowledge from the worship of 'observable facts' and from the
scientific common sense that imposes this worship.... The real field of
knowledge is not the given fact about things as they are, but the critical
evaluation of them as a prelude to passing beyond their given form. Knowledge
deals with appearances in order to get beyond them. 'Everything, it is said, has
an essence, that is, things really are not what they immediately show
themselves. There is therefore something more to be done than merely rove from
one quality to another and merely to advance from one qualitative to
quantitative, and vice versa: there is a permanence in things, and that
permanent is in the first instance their Essence.' The knowledge that
appearance and essence do not jibe is the beginning of truth. The mark of
dialectical thinking is the ability to distinguish the essential from the
apparent process of reality and to grasp their relation." [Marcuse (1973),
pp.145-46. Marcuse is here quoting
Hegel (1975), p.163,
§112. Minor typo corrected.]
Marcuse nowhere criticises Hegel for this Idealist approach to knowledge; quite
the reverse, in fact, he endorses it. His a priori
approach to Philosophy elsewhere (on this, see Essay Thirteen
Part Three)
only serves to confirm that allegation.
Be
this as it may, another DM-fan -- David DeGrood -- partially quoted the above
passage with open approval:
"To take each and every quality
displayed by an object or even at face value would necessarily mean that neither
a scientific nor a philosophic account could be given of it.
"[Added in a footnote:] As Herbert Marcuse explains: 'The doctrine of Essence
seeks to liberate knowledge from the worship of "observable facts".... Such an
anti-positivist, anti-phenomenalist, Hegelian conception of essence has been
continuously relied upon by Marxist philosophers ever since. The doctrine of
essence is a fundamental one. A [quotation] from Mao Tse-Tung [is a] striking
confirmation of this: 'When we look at a thing, we must examine its essence and
treat its appearance merely as an usher at the threshold, and once we cross the
threshold, we must grasp the essence of the thing; this is the only reliable and
scientific method of analysis.'
Quotations from Chairman Mao Tse-Tung (Peking: Foreign Languages Press,
1966),
p.213." [DeGrood (1976),
p.73. Quotation marks altered to conform to the conventions adopted at this
site.]
Neither DeGrood nor Marcuse (and, it must be said, nor Hegel) bothered to prove
(or even so much as provide so much as a weak argument in support of this
ancient idea) that
'essence' is anything other than a pure invention, a figment of the overheated
metaphysical mind, or, indeed, that anything in the universe actually has an 'essence'.
As noted in the
opening paragraphs of this Essay,
the invention of words like "essence" -- creations of the Ancient Greek fantasy
--,
this verbal trick 'allows' dialecticians to ignore the deliverances of
their senses, and impose these a priori theories on nature.
It
could be objected that this is to misrepresent the above argument. What Hegel,
DeGrood and Marcuse are arguing is that science and philosophy can't just
examine surface appearances, but must seek to find underlying patterns,
general laws, which reveal the essential, as opposed to accidental surface
phenomena.
I
will say more about this in Essay Three Parts One and Two (where I will reveal
(1) Precisely how
this verbal trick was
performed, (2) Its alleged rationale, (3) Its provenance, and show that (4)
The distinction between 'appearance' and 'reality'/'essence'
condemns
dialectics itself to oblivion); suffice it to say here that the above
volunteered response fails to tell us how dialecticians are able to 'see' what
the rest of us can't -- i.e., these mythical 'essences'. Do they possess a 'third
eye'? Are they especially gifted? And how is this unexplained 'ability' (i.e.,
the capacity to 'see' what the rest of humanity can't) any different from
imposing dialectics on nature?
Recall what Engels, Maurice Cornforth, and George Novack had to say:
"All three are developed by Hegel in his
idealist fashion as mere laws of thought: the first, in the first part
of his Logic, in the Doctrine of Being; the second fills the
whole of the second and by far the most important part of his Logic,
the Doctrine of Essence; finally the third figures as the fundamental
law for the construction of the whole system. The mistake lies in the fact
that these laws are foisted on nature and history as laws of thought, and not
deduced from them. This is the source of the whole forced and often outrageous
treatment; the universe, willy-nilly, is made out to be arranged in accordance
with a system of thought which itself is only the product of a definite
stage of evolution of human thought." [Engels
(1954), p.62. Bold emphasis alone added.]
"The general results of the
investigation of the world are obtained at the end of this investigation, hence
are not principles, points of departure, but results, conclusions.
To construct the latter in one's head, take them as the basis from which to
start, and then reconstruct the world from them in one's head is ideology,
an ideology which tainted every species of materialism hitherto existing.... As
Dühring proceeds from 'principles' instead of facts he is an ideologist, and
can screen his being one only by formulating his propositions in such general
and vacuous terms that they appear axiomatic, flat. Moreover, nothing can
be concluded from them; one can only read something into them...." [Marx
and Engels (1987), Volume 25, p.597. Italic emphases in the original;
bold emphasis added. Quotation marks altered to conform to the conventions
adopted at this site.]
"Our party philosophy, then, has a right
to lay claim to truth. For it is the only philosophy which is based on a
standpoint which demands that we should always seek to understand things just
as they are…without disguises and without fantasy….
"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), pp.14-15. Bold emphases added.]
"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.]
But,
this is what Hegel, Marcuse and all the rest do all the time.
It
could be argued that scientists regularly make general statements about reality,
so why aren't they also guilty of apriorism and dogmatism? [On this, see
Note 3, below.]
More
will be said about the difference between science and Dogmatic Metaphysics (of
the sort indulged in by dialecticians) in Essay Twelve
Part One and in Essay Thirteen Part Two (the latter of which will be wholly
devoted to DM and science, and will be published in the winter of 2015).
Again, suffice it to say that only those scientists who are keen to promote
their own amateur metaphysics (which often surfaces in their attempt to write
popular science) will even bother to mention 'essences', let alone
come out with the sorts of things Hegel, Marcuse and DeGrood have to say. [I
have said more about this in Essay Four Part One,
here and
here.]
Finally, this a priori approach to knowledge sits rather badly with what
both Marx and Engels had to
say about scientific proof.
1a.
As noted in the
Preface: throughout this Essay, readers
will find me continually asking the following rhetorical question: "How could
DM-theorist A, B, or C possibly know X, Y, or Z?"
The
answer is clear in each case: they couldn't possibly know these things by
any ordinary means other than dogmatic
a priori legislation --, which means DM-theses have been imposed on
nature:
"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." [Novack (1965), p.17. Bold emphasis added.]
This
question is asked continually in order to underline the fact that dialecticians
en masse propound theses that can't possibly be substantiated by any
conceivable body of evidence, no matter how large -- since they are
universal, necessary and eternally true.
Why DM-acolytes do this is
revealed in Essay Nine Parts One
and Two, but more particularly in
Essay Twelve --
Part One has already been published, but this exposé runs right though that
Essay (summary here).
1b.
Indeed, in
AD Engels pointedly
calls scientific theories "hypothetical" while the
'laws' of dialectics are deemed completely universal and not the least bit
provisional:
"The
mechanical theory of heat, according to which heat consists in a greater or
lesser vibration, depending on the temperature and state of aggregation, of the
smallest physically active particles (molecules) of a body -- a vibration which
under certain conditions can change into any other form of motion -- explains
that the heat that has disappeared has done work, has been transformed into
work. When ice melts, the close and firm connection between the individual
molecules is broken, and transformed into a loose juxtaposition; when water at
boiling point becomes steam a state is reached in which the individual molecules
no longer have any noticeable influence on one another, and under the influence
of heat even fly apart in all directions. It is clear that the single molecules
of a body are endowed with far greater energy in the gaseous state than they are
in the fluid state, and in the fluid state again more than in the solid state.
The tied-up heat, therefore, has not disappeared; it has merely been
transformed, and has assumed the form of molecular tension. As soon as the
condition under which the separate molecules are able to maintain their absolute
or relative freedom in regard to one another ceases to exist -- that is, as soon
as the temperature falls below the minimum of 100° or 0°, as the case may be,
this tension relaxes, the molecules again press towards each other with the same
force with which they had previously flown apart; and this force disappears, but
only to reappear as heat, and as precisely the same quantity of heat as had
previously been tied up. This explanation is of course a hypothesis, as is
the whole mechanical theory of heat, inasmuch as no one has up to now ever seen
a molecule, not to mention one in vibration. Just for this reason it is certain
to be full of defects as this still very young theory is as a whole, but it can
at least explain what happens without in any way coming into conflict with the
indestructibility and uncreatability of motion, and it is even able to
account for the whereabouts of heat during its transformations. Latent, or
tied-up, heat is therefore in no way a stumbling-block for the mechanical theory
of heat. On the contrary, this theory provides the first rational explanation of
what takes place, and it involves no stumbling-block except in so far as
physicists continue to describe heat which has been transformed into another
form of molecular energy by means of the term "tied-up", which has become
obsolete and unsuitable. [Engels (1976)
p.79.
Bold emphases added.]
"For that
matter,
there is absolutely no need to be alarmed at the fact that the stage of
knowledge which we have now reached is as little final as all that have preceded
it. It already embraces a vast mass of judgments and requires very great
specialisation of study on the part of anyone who wants to become conversant
with any particular science. But a man who applies the measure of genuine,
immutable, final and ultimate truth to knowledge which, by its very nature, must
either remain relative for many generations and be completed only step by step,
or which, as in cosmogony, geology and the history of mankind, must always
contain gaps and be incomplete because of the inadequacy of the historical
material -- such a man only proves thereby his own ignorance and perversity,
even if the real thing behind it all is not, as in this case, the claim to
personal infallibility. Truth and error, like
all thought-concepts which move in polar opposites, have absolute validity only
in an extremely limited field, as we have just seen, and as even Herr
Dühring would realise if he had any acquaintance with the first elements of
dialectics, which deal precisely with the inadequacy of all polar opposites.
As soon as we apply the antithesis between truth and error outside of that
narrow field which has been referred to above it becomes relative and therefore
unserviceable for exact scientific modes of expression, and if we attempt to
apply it as absolutely valid outside that field we really find ourselves
altogether beaten: both poles of the antithesis become transformed into their
opposites, truth becomes error and error truth. Let us take as an example
the well-known Boyle's law. According to it, if the temperature remains
constant, the volume of a gas varies inversely with the pressure to which it is
subjected.
Regnault found that this law does not hold good in certain cases. Had he
been a philosopher of reality he would have had to say: Boyle's law is mutable,
and is hence not a genuine truth, hence it is not a truth at all, hence it is an
error. But had he done this he would have committed an error far greater than
the one that was contained in Boyle's law; his grain of truth would have been
lost sight of in a sand-hill of error; he would have distorted his originally
correct conclusion into an error compared with which Boyle's law, along with the
little particle of error that clings to it would have seemed like truth. But
Regnault, being a man of science, did not indulge in such childishness, but
continued his investigations and discovered that in general Boyle's law is only
approximately true, and in particular loses its validity in the case of gases
which can be liquefied by pressure, namely, as soon as the pressure approaches
the point at which liquefaction begins. Boyle's law therefore was proved to be
true only within definite limits. But is it absolutely and finally true within
those limits? No physicist would assert that. He would maintain that it holds
good within certain limits of pressure and temperature and for certain gases;
and even within these more restricted limits he would not exclude the
possibility of a still narrower limitation or altered formulation as the result
of future investigations. This is how things stand with final and ultimate
truths in physics, for example. Really scientific works therefore, as a rule,
avoid such dogmatically moral expressions as error and truth, while these
expressions meet us everywhere in works such as the philosophy of reality, in
which empty phrasemongering attempts to impose itself on us as the most
sovereign result of sovereign thought." [Ibid.,
pp.113-14.
Bold emphases added.]
"It goes
without saying that my recapitulation of mathematics and the natural sciences
was undertaken in order to convince myself also in detail -- of what in general
I was not in doubt -- that in nature, amid the welter of innumerable
changes, the same dialectical laws of motion force their way through as those
which in history govern the apparent fortuitousness of events; the same laws
which similarly form the thread running through the history of the development
of human thought and gradually rise to consciousness in thinking man; the
laws which Hegel first developed in all-embracing but mystic form, and which we
made it one of our aims to strip of this mystic form and to bring clearly before
the mind in their complete simplicity and universality." [Ibid.,
pp.11-12.
Bold emphases added.]
"With
this assurance Herr Dühring saves himself the trouble of saying anything further
about the origin of life, although it might reasonably have been expected that a
thinker who had traced the evolution of the world back to its self-equal state,
and is so much at home on other celestial bodies, would have known exactly
what's what also on this point. For the rest, however, the assurance he gives
us is only half right unless it is completed by the Hegelian nodal line of
measure relations which has already been mentioned. In spite of all gradualness,
the transition from one form of motion to another always remains a leap, a
decisive change. This is true of the transition from the mechanics of celestial
bodies to that of smaller masses on a particular celestial body; it is equally
true of the transition from the mechanics of masses to the mechanics of
molecules -- including the forms of motion investigated in physics proper: heat,
light, electricity, magnetism. In the same way, the transition from the physics
of molecules to the physics of atoms -- chemistry -- in turn involves a decided
leap; and this is even more clearly the case in the transition from ordinary
chemical action to the chemism of albumen which we call life. Then within
the sphere of life the leaps become ever more infrequent and imperceptible. --
Once again, therefore, it is Hegel who has to correct Herr Dühring." [Ibid.,
pp.82-83.
Bold emphases added.]
"And
so, what is the negation of the negation? An extremely general -- and for this
reason extremely far-reaching and important -- law of development of nature,
history, and thought; a law which, as we have seen, holds good in the animal and
plant kingdoms, in geology, in mathematics, in history and in philosophy -- a
law which even Herr Dühring, in spite of all his stubborn resistance, has
unwittingly and in his own way to follow. It is obvious that I do not say
anything concerning the particular process of development of, for
example, a grain of barley from germination to the death of the fruit-bearing
plant, if I say it is a negation of the negation. For, as the integral calculus
is also a negation of the negation, if I said anything of the sort I should only
be making the nonsensical statement that the life-process of a barley plant was
integral calculus or for that matter that it was socialism. That, however, is
precisely what the metaphysicians are constantly imputing to dialectics. When
I say that all these processes are a negation of the negation, I bring them all
together under this one law of motion, and for this very reason I leave out of
account the specific peculiarities of each individual process.
Dialectics, however, is nothing more than the science of the general laws of
motion and development of nature, human society and thought." [Ibid.,
pp.179-80.
Bold emphases added.]
So, for Engels scientific
principles like Boyle's Law are "hypothetical" whereas dialectical 'laws' are
applicable everywhere and everywhen. They are "nothing
more than the science of the general laws of motion and development of nature,
human society and thought", and
enjoy "complete...universality".
Indeed, they can be used to
criticise all other forms of
thought.
Moreover, the 'tentative' nature of such 'laws' can be seen from the fact that
if subsequent dialecticians try to update, alter or reject them, they are, one
and all, branded "Revisionists" -- and, in my case,
subjected to endless abuse --, their
status as Marxists thrown into doubt.
Only
when dialectics is being sold to the unsuspecting public, to novices and new
recruits is it described as a reasonable "assumption"; in practice it is
regarded by the inner core of the faithful as the
foundation stone of Marxism, to be defended at all costs.
In
fact, here is how Trotsky regarded 'the dialectic' (this was taken from Essay
Nine
Part Two):
George Novack records the
following meeting he and
Max
Shachtman
had with Trotsky in Mexico, in 1937:
"[O]ur discussion glided into the
subject of philosophy.... We talked about the best ways of studying dialectical
materialism, about Lenin's Materialism and Empirio-Criticism, and about
the theoretical backwardness of American radicalism. Trotsky brought forward the
name of Max
Eastman, who in various works had polemicized against dialectics as a
worthless idealist hangover from the Hegelian heritage of Marxism.
"He became tense and agitated.
'Upon going back to the States,' he urged, 'you comrades must at once take up
the struggle against Eastman's distortion and repudiation of dialectical
materialism.
There is nothing more important than this. Pragmatism, empiricism, is [sic]
the greatest curse of American thought. You must inoculate younger comrades
against its infection.'
"I was somewhat surprised at the
vehemence of his argumentation on this matter at such a moment. As the
principal defendant in absentia in the
Moscow
trials, and because of the dramatic circumstances of his voyage in exile,
Trotsky then stood in the centre of international attention. He was fighting for
his reputation, liberty, and life against the powerful government of Stalin,
bent on his defamation and death. After having been imprisoned and gagged for
months by the Norwegian authorities, he had been kept incommunicado for weeks
aboard their tanker.
"Yet on the first day after reunion with
his cothinkers, he spent more than an hour explaining how important it was
for a Marxist movement to have a correct philosophical method and to defend
dialectical materialism against its opponents!...
"[Trotsky later wrote:] 'The question of
correct philosophical doctrine, that is, a correct method of thought, is of
decisive significance to a revolutionary party....'" [Novack
(1978), pp.269-71. Bold emphases alone added. Spelling altered to conform to
UK English; quotation marks changed in line with the conventions adopted at this
site. Link added.]
The accuracy of Novack's memory is confirmed by the following comment of
Trotsky's:
"...It would not be amiss, therefore, to
refer to the fact that my first serious conversation with comrades Shachtman and
Warde, in the train immediately after my arrival in Mexico in January 1937,
was devoted to the necessity of persistently propagating dialectic materialism.
After our American section split from the Socialist Party I insisted most
strongly on the earliest possible publication of a theoretical organ, having
again in mind the need to educate the party, first and foremost its new members,
in the spirit of dialectic materialism. In the United States, I wrote at
that time, where the bourgeoisie systematically in stills (sic) vulgar
empiricism in the workers, more than anywhere else is it necessary to speed the
elevation of the movement to a proper theoretical level. On January 20, 1939, I
wrote to comrade Shachtman concerning his joint article with comrade
Burnham,
'Intellectuals in Retreat':
"'The section on the dialectic is the
greatest blow that you, personally, as the editor of the New International
could have delivered to Marxist theory.... Good. We will speak about it
publicly.'
"Thus a year ago I gave open notice in
advance to Shachtman that I intended to wage a public struggle against his
eclectic tendencies. At that time there was no talk whatever of the coming
opposition; in any case furthest from my mind was the supposition that the
philosophic bloc against Marxism prepared the ground for a political bloc
against the program of the Fourth International." [Trotsky (1971),
p.142. Bold emphases and link added.]
Further confirmation comes from Max Eastman's own testimony:
"Like many great men I have met he
[Trotsky] does not seem altogether robust. There is apt to be a frailty
associated with great intellect. At any rate, Trotsky, especially in our
heated arguments concerning the 'dialectic' in which he becomes excited and
wrathful to the point of losing his breath, seems to me at times almost
weak. He can't laugh at my attacks on his philosophy, or be curious about them
-- as I imagine Lenin would -- because in that field he is not secure....
"...Yesterday we reached a point of
tension in our argument about dialectics that was extreme. Trotsky's throat was
throbbing and his face was red; he was in a rage...." [Eastman (1942),
p.113. Quotation marks altered to conform to the conventions adopted at this
site. Bold emphases added.]
[However, Eastman is surely wrong about Lenin; anyone who reads
MEC, for instance,
will soon see how irrational he, too, could become in this respect. On that see,
Essay Thirteen
Part One.]
Given
the content of this Essay -- and
Marx's
own words
--, Trotsky's semi-religious fervour, his emotional attachment to the
dialectic, and his irrational response to Max Eastman and
James
Burnham, for example, become much easier to understand. Can you imagine
anyone getting so worked up over the minutiae underlying the demise of
Feudalism? Or the falling rate of profit?
[There are several other examples of quasi-numinous
fervour like this in the above Essay.]
However, on a more personal note, experience has taught me that when
MD
is criticised on the Internet -- especially when its
deleterious effects
and absurd consequences
have been exposed -- a significant minority of comrades reply with a "Well, this
theory isn't really all that central to Marxism", or even a "Why are you
concentrating of what is in effect a side issue? This is despite their being
told that leading Marxists (like Engels, Plekhanov, Lenin and Trotsky) consider
it the lifeblood of Marxist theory and practice, and revolutionary parties the
world over promote it in the publications and on the websites. Indeed, we are
told that without it, history would be like a "clock without a spring".
Very
little that is 'hypothetical' here!
1c.
The tiny amount of evidence that dialecticians have scraped together to try to
show that their 'laws' enjoy universal instantiation will be destructively
analysed in the other Essays posted at this site -- especially
here.
2.
This will be demonstrated in detail in Essays
Five,
Seven
and Eight Parts
One and
Two, but especially
here.
3.
It is important to emphasise that these comments do not mean that I
believe in the existence of 'God'! The opposite is in fact the case. However,
unlike the 'arguments' constructed by dialecticians, my case against belief in
'God' is water-tight. [However,
that rather bold assertion will not be substantiated anywhere at this site.]
It is
also worth reminding the reader once again that the truth or falsity of any and
all of the DM-theses mentioned in this Essay isn't the main issue at hand,
merely whether
DM-theorists are consistent in their claim not to have imposed their ideas on
reality.
Of
course, in other Essays, the truth or falsehood of these theses will
be the issue. In fact, the aforementioned Essays will show that DM-theses
are far too vague and confused for anyone to be able to say whether or not they
are true. They don't make it that far.
Furthermore, an appeal to the scientific method -- as a way of defending the
a priori claims advanced by DM-theorists -- would be to no avail, either.
The mountains of evidence scientists amass in support of their hypotheses, and
the vastly superior nature of scientific theory, not only puts into the shade,
it dwarfs the pathetic 'evidential molehills' DM-fans have constructed, just as
it shames their sloppy approach to precision and detail. In fact, as if to take
pride in superficiality, detailed work is often derided by DM-fans as just so
much "pedantry", or "semantics"! [On that, see
here.]
And,
as will be agued in Essay Eleven Part
One, and in other Essays posted at this site, DM isn't a science, nor is it
even remotely like a science. [In fact, I describe it in later Essays as
"Mickey Mouse Science";
that is, it a 'science' in name only, and a joke at that.]
Finally, scientists do not go about the place "demanding" and "insisting" things
about this or that feature of reality, nor do they talk about the "eternal
development of the world" --, still less do they derive their ideas from
mystics.
[On this, see Essay Twelve
Part One.]
4.
Have Physicists Discovered Changeless
Particles?
[This forms part of Note 4.]
In fact, the half-life of a proton is
reckoned to be in excess of 1033
years (estimates vary, but this is approximately 1020
times longer than the age of the known universe, if current theory is correct).
Experimental evidence suggests this particle's half-life is probably longer even
than this. Predicted
proton decay
hasn't been observed yet. Apparently, electrons are even less 'dialectical'. In
that case, there could in fact be more changeless objects in nature than there
are changeable. The point is, of course, that this is an empirical
matter, not -- as Engels, Plekhanov, Lenin and Trotsky seem to have thought --
an
a priori truth based on the musings of an Idealist who died over 2500
years ago (i.e.,
Heraclitus)!
As
far as protons are concerned, we are told the following:
"Along with neutrons, protons make up
the nucleus, held together by the
strong force. The proton is a
baryon and is
considered to be composed of two up
quarks and one down quark.
"It has long been considered to be a
stable particle, but recent developments of
grand unification models have suggested that it might decay with a
half-life
of about 1032
years. Experiments are underway to see if such decays can be detected. Decay of
the proton would violate the conservation of
baryon
number, and in doing so would be the only known process in nature which does
so." [Quoted
from here.]
Wikipedia
adds:
"In
particle physics, proton
decay is a hypothetical form of
radioactive decay in
which the
proton decays into
lighter
subatomic particles,
usually a neutral
pion and a
positron.
Proton decay has not been observed. There is currently no experimental evidence that proton
decay occurs." [Accessed 29/07/2015.]
Another theoretical physicist has this to say:
"The only known stable particles in
nature are the electron (and anti-electron), the lightest of the three
types of neutrinos (and its anti-particle), and the photon and
(presumed) graviton (which are their own anti-particles). The presumed
graviton, too, is stable. The other
neutrinos,
the proton, and many atomic nuclei (and
their
anti-particles.... I'm
going to stop mentioning the anti-stuff, it goes without saying)
are probably not stable but are very, very, very long-lived. Protons, for
instance, are so long-lived that at most a minuscule fraction of them have
decayed since the
Big
Bang, so for all practical purposes they are probably stable. The other
rather long-lived particle is the
neutron,
which when on its own, outside an atomic nucleus, lives just 15 minutes or so.
But neutrons inside many atomic nuclei can live far longer than the age of the
universe; such nuclei provide them with a stable home. Finally, I should add
that if dark
matter is made from particles, then those particles, too, must be stable or
very, very long-lived.
"Why are these
particles stable? It turns out that our world imposes some rules on particle
behaviour, ones not visible to us in the physics of waves and vibrations that we
encounter in daily life, that prevent some particles from decaying, either
rapidly or at all. The fundamental rules are 'conservation laws', statements
that certain quantities in the universe never change in any physical
process. (These quantities include energy, momentum, electric charge, and a few
others.) There are also some approximate conservation laws, stating that certain
quantities only change very rarely. Conservation laws do not appear from
nowhere, imposed out of thin air by theorists; they are related to other
properties of the world. For example, if the laws of nature do not change over
time, then it follows (thanks to a theorem of the mathematician Emmy
Noether)
that energy is conserved. Meanwhile, the stability of the matter out of which we
are made provides strong tests of these conservation laws, as we'll see.
"Combining these laws with the
properties of particles leads to a set of simple rules that determine when
particles simply cannot decay, or when they can at most decay very rarely. And
these rules are (almost) entirely sufficient to explain the stability of the
particles out of which we are made, and those that we interact with most often."
[Max
Strassler,
quoted from
here; accessed 19/02/2014. Quotation marks altered to conform to the
conventions adopted at the site. Spelling adjusted to UK English; several links
added. Emphases in the original. The professor then proceeds to spell out these rules,
which I have omitted.]
Another Physics site had this to say (in October 2014):
"Protons live a long time
but perhaps not forever. Several theories predict that protons can decay,
and a handful of experiments have tried to detect such an event. The
Super-Kamiokande experiment in Japan has the longest track record in the
search for proton decay, and its researchers have now published a new lower
bound on the proton lifetime that is 2.5 times greater than their previous
bound. The proton's observed stability places constraints on certain
extensions of the standard model of particle physics.
"Proton decay is an
expected outcome of most
grand unified theories, or GUTs, which meld together the
three main particle forces -- strong, weak, and electromagnetism -- at
high energy. A certain class of GUTs, for example, predicts that a proton
should decay into a positron and
π meson with a lifetime of about 1031
years, which means roughly 1 decay per year in a sample of 1031
protons. Experiments have already ruled this possibility
out.
"Other GUTs that
incorporate
supersymmetry (SUSY), a hypothetical model that assumes all particles have a
partner with different spin, predict that the proton decays into a
K meson and a
neutrino with a lifetime of less than a few times 1034
years. The Super-Kamiokande collaboration has looked for signs of
this decay in a 50,000-ton tank of water surrounded by detectors. If one of the
many protons in the tank were to decay, the K meson's decay products (muons,
π mesons) would be detectable. The researchers simulated such proton decay
events but found no matches in data spanning 17 years. From this, they conclude
that the proton lifetime for this SUSY-inspired decay pathway is greater than
5.9 x 1033 years."
[Quoted from
here, accessed 23/08/2015; bold emphasis and links added.]
Much
of the universe, it seems, doesn't 'understand' dialectics, either.
Even
Peter Mason, an otherwise enthusiastic champion of DM, had to admit the
following (while criticising Woods and Grant):
"Although dialectics
certainly suggests that science will find a time limit beyond which protons will
decay in some way, and teams of scientists are testing to find that limit --
nevertheless the proton is stable over very long periods. A twelve-year
experiment, started in 1989, suggested that the proton has a lifetime of at
least ten million billion billion billion years (1034
years -- a one with 34 zeros after it). It does not ceaselessly change, as Woods
asserts." [Mason
(2012), p.14.]
Of
course, it could be objected that particles such as protons (i.e.,
hadrons) are composed of even more fundamental particles, which do
enjoy a contradictory life of their own 'inside' each host 'particle'; their
interactions would therefore mean that apparently
changeless protons are in fact changing 'internally' all the time. But, this
response simply pushes the problem further back, for these other, more
fundamental particles (i.e.,
quarks --, in
the case of protons, two "up"
and one "down"
quark), are themselves changeless, as far as is known. [These quarks certainly
have no 'internal contradictions' of their own.] Moreover, since protons are
baryons --
i.e., they are composed of three
quarks --, it isn't easy to see their inner lives as in any way 'contradictory'
(with three terms?).
Even
more difficult to account for dialectically are
electrons and photons (which are
leptons and
gauge bosons
respectively), since they have no known internal structure. Unless acted upon
externally, their 'lifespan' is, so we are told, infinite; hence, if
they change, it isn't because of any 'internal contradictions'.
An
appeal to
antiquarks here, to save the dialectical day, would be to no avail, either.
That is because quarks do not turn into antiquarks, nor vice versa, which
is what the Dialectical Holy Books tell us should happen to all such
'opposites'. (On that, see here.)
Anyway, since there is apparently very little
antimatter
in the entire universe, so we are also told, this is an academic question.
Moreover, DM-theorists
equivocate over the meaning of "internal". Sometimes they mean by this word,
"logically internal", while at others they mean, "spatially internal". The
latter sense would be fatal to DM (on that see
here);
the former is far too confused to
make much sense of, anyway.]
It seems, therefore, that the picture of reality painted by dialecticians is
more of a
Jackson Pollock than it is a
Van Eyck.
Figure Two: The 'DM-View' Of Nature
Figure Three: Genuine Science Pictures
Nature Rather More Precisely
[On
protons, see
here,
here, and
here; on
electrons,
here;
leptons,
here; photons,
here.]
Moreover, every electron is identical with every other electron, and the same
applies to other elementary particles (such as photons).
[On
this topic in general, cf., Perkins (2000),
French (2011), and French and Krause (2008) -- but more specifically
Saunders
(2006)
(this links to a PDF). See also
Dieks and Versteegh (2007/2008),
Ladyman and Bigaj (2010), and Caulton and Butterfield (2012), and Essay Six,
here.]
In
fact there appear to be two schools at work here, those who hold that all such
particles are identical and indiscernible (rather like the dollars/pounds in
your bank account, not the dollars/pounds in your wallet or pocket), and those
who claim they are identical and discernible. [On this, see the above references
and Muller and Seevinick (2009), and Muller and Saunders (2008).]
["Discernible" appears to mean different things to different philosophers (no
pun intended). In practice it seems to imply that while such objects are
identical, nevertheless they aren't!]
Naturally, dialecticians might want to object to the above on the lines that
electrons, for example, aren't really particles --, or that they are probability
waves, or that they are this or they are that. Perhaps so, but, once again,
whatever they are, they are identical with that, and they change equally
quickly as they themselves do.
Furthermore, if they change, they do not
do so as a result of their
'internal
contradictions'.
[This
comment puts paid to much of the confused ruminations on sub-atomic 'particles'
found in, for example, Woods and Grant (1995). More details on this will be
posted in Essay Seven Part Two at a later date. On change through 'internal
contradiction', see Essay Eight Parts
One, Two and
Three.]
Of
course, the above considerations will offend those who,
for some odd reason, might want to foist dialectics on nature.
But,
who on earth would want to do that?
Finally, it could be claimed that since the relations
between particles are always altering, even if certain particles are
seemingly
changeless, those particles will be changing all the time.
This
issue is discussed in more detail in Essays
Six,
Seven,
Eight Part One, and Eleven
Part Two. Suffice it to say here that (1) If this contention were correct,
most of the elementary objects in the universe wouldn't be self-developing,
but would be affected by external causes. In that case, this particular
claim would support one strand of DM by torpedoing another. Indeed, it would
also introduce into nature a "bad
infinity" (as
Hegel would have called it) as these external causes stretch off into the
blue beyond. In that case, and once more, yet another a priori
dialectical thesis will have been holed well below the waterline as a result.
[On Hegel and the infinite, see Houlgate (2006).]
And
(2), there is no evidence that every particle in nature has an effect on every
other, which changes it or them. [So-called "Quantum
Entanglement" is discussed
here.]
If,
on the other hand, change is defined in such a way that an alteration to
the relations between objects also counted as a change
to
those objects themselves (these are often called "internal
relations" by assorted Idealists and DM-fans alike) then that re-definition
would be no different from an imposition onto nature of something that might
not be true. If dialecticians have any evidence that there are indeed such
"internal relations" in nature and society (or which affect everything in the
universe in this way), then they need to produce it, or resist making such
claims.
Of
course, there are DM-theorists (mainly of the
High Church
persuasion) who attempt to deploy a handful of 'arguments' (culled from the
aforementioned Idealists) which are aimed at showing that such relations
do indeed exist between objects/processes; but they would, wouldn't they? They
are Idealists. They prefer 'conceptual arguments' over material proof any
day of the week (as Novack noted).
Indeed, the more they try to defend "internal relations" with a priori
arguments, the more they confirm Novack's allegation.
Plainly, such bogus reasoning wouldn't be needed if DM-fans had any
scientific evidence to back up these ancient, mystical ideas.
It
is, of course, a
Hermetic Idea that everything is
interconnected, and is a
union of opposites,
as Magee noted:
"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 (2008),
p.13. More on this
here, and
here.]
Bertell Ollman's recent book is just the latest example of this mystical genre
-- Ollman (2003). Ollman's work will be analysed in more detail in Essay Three
Part Two.
["Internal relations" will form the main topic of Essay Four Part Two, when it
is published.]
5. Admittedly,
Engels gestured at producing such evidence in AD and DN; this 'evidence' will be
examined in detail in Essays Five,
Seven, Eight Parts
One and
Two, and Eleven
Part Two. In advance of that,
it is worth noting that even if this 'evidence' were uncontroversial, the
quantity produced by Engels (and other dialecticians) is insufficient to
substantiate even the local
application of DM-theses to earth-bound processes, never mind their universal
extrapolation to all of reality, for all of time.
[AD = Anti-Dühring; DN =
Dialectics of Nature; DM = Dialectical Materialism; LF = Ludwig Feuerbach
and the End of Classical German Philosophy.]
6.
It could be argued that these and other comments made by Engels appear in
unpublished work, and because of that he shouldn't be held to account for
them. This is not even remotely true;
Socialism: Utopian and Scientific, LF and AD were quoted earlier, and will
be quoted again presently. They were all published.
Moreover, similar claims are constantly being made by other dialecticians, and
in works that have been published, as this Essay demonstrates. [On that,
see also
Note 7.]
6a.
This sweeping claim will need to be qualified somewhat as these Essays
progress. However, the reason for this approach to a priori
knowledge (equally apparent in the writings of Traditional Metaphysicians and
DM-fans alike), and the denigration of material evidence that accompanies
it, will be revealed in Essay Twelve
Part One.
Some
might take exception to the claim that dialecticians
denigrate material evidence, but any who react this way haven't faced the
accusation -- as I have repeatedly --, that to demand such evidence (in order to
substantiate the cosmically-over-bold claims dialecticians constantly make) is
to brand oneself an "empiricist", or worse, a "positivist".
However, and in addition to this, with respect to the need to produce
evidence
in support of their theories, I distinguish between two sorts of dialectician:
High Church and
Low Church.
It
seems that for the
former,
grubbing around in the physical world seeking evidence in support of their a
priori theses is beneath them. In its place, however, we find something far
worse:
wall-to-wall jargon --, spruced up with endless, and increasingly
baroque
commentaries on the jargon produced by other High Church Dialecticians, peppered
with constant stream of obscure
neologisms.
This is the intellectual world inhabited by these Dialectical Monks:
Systematic Theology replaced by
Systematic Dialectics.
In
contrast,
Low Church
Urchins at least make some sort of an effort to scrape together what
little support they can find (in nature and society) for the hyper-bold theses
that DM-classicists have bequeathed them --, although after the usual hardy
perennials (such as:
boiling water,
balding heads,
John and his alleged
manhood,
Mendeleyev's
Table,
wave/particle
duality,
contradictory motion, "A
is equal to A", a character from
Molière who has spoken "prose all his life without knowing it", "Yea,
Yea" and "Nay
Nay",
seeds
'negating' plants,
living/dying cells,
Mamelukes
who have a somewhat ambiguous fighting record against the French, etc., etc.)
have been given their ten thousandth airing, the 'evidence' peters out
alarmingly quickly.
Of
course, negative evidence/argument --, detailed in Essays Three to Eleven
Part Two --, is either ignored, or
ignored even more for good measure.
Now,
anyone who has engaged in genuine scientific research will know the
extent of the evidence required (and how precise it has to be)
even to settle minor side issues, let alone initiate a breakthrough into
a new area of knowledge. The watery-thin evidential gruel served up by Low
Church Urchins in support of their theses is rather pathetic in comparison: a
few paragraphs here and there, a few pages sometimes, the odd essay, perhaps
several sections in the odd book. Even at its 'best' (say, in Woods and Grant
(1995), or Gollobin (1986)), the contrast between
Dialectical Mickey
Mouse Science and genuine science is stark indeed.
In
fact, you have to 'understand' far more dialectics than is good for you to miss
it.
[More
on Woods and Grant, and
Gollobin, below.]
Can
you imagine the howls of derision that a scientist would face if he or she
attempted to resurrect, say,
Caloric
theory based on a book that contained a hundred or so pages of
semi-anecdotal, secondary or tertiary 'evidence' (some of it twisted to fit,
most of it irrelevant, all of it specially-selected) -- reminiscent of the
methods Creationists
employ to 'prove' that the Bible is infallible --,
with no primary data, no experimental
evidence, and no original research?
Well, that sums up Woods and Grant's book, as it does Gollobin's.
In
contrast, and with respect to
HM -- in relation to,
say, economic, political and social theory --, even Low Church Urchins
make a genuine attempt to support their analyses with copious amounts of
up-to-date, often primary data and evidence. But, in relation to DM they appear
to suffer from a dialectically-induced blind spot, compounded by a
Hermetic softening of the brain.
[In
fact, the contrast here is so glaring, so stark that we must look for
other, social psychological reasons to explain this selective blindness. That
will be attempted in Essay Nine
Part Two.]
What
is more, this selective blindness seems to have afflicted what few scientists
there are, or who have been High or Low Church-goers themselves (for example,
Richard
Lewontin,
J D Bernal
and J B
S Haldane). Their genuine commitment to Marxism appears to have seriously
impaired their scientific judgement --
and to such an extent that, while they seem, or seemed, happy to accept
as adequate 'proof' what little evidence there is in support of DM, in contrast
they would certainly have failed any of their students who dared to
submit comparable (or quite so amateurishly-composed) theses as part even of an
undergraduate degree course, let alone a more advanced qualification.
[I
have said much more about these 'DM-scientists',
here. Somewhat similar
episodic attacks of tunnel vision
afflict scientists who are also supporters of 'Intelligent
Design', etc. -- and probably for the same
reason.
(I look at Bernal's apriorism below.)]
Small
wonder then that High Church Dialecticians (who, in contrast, give the
impression they at least know something about 'the' scientific method)
look upon their Low Church Brethren with pity, scorn, disdain, and no little
alarm. Indeed, more than a few find it hard to believe such Dialectical
Dinosaurs still exist, or that they
matter even if they do. Several have contacted me (since this material
first appeared on the Internet) to inform me that in these Essays I am
attempting to slay the already dead. Plainly, for High Church-goers,
to be Low Church is to cease to
exist.
However, the fact that
RIRE can sell many
thousands of copies more
than the most popular book ever written by anyone from the High Church Faction (and
receive praise from Hugo Chavez, no less -- if we are to believe Alan Woods --
on this see Woods (2006), pp.97-98, and
here), combined with the additional fact these High Priests of the
Dialectic know nothing of this
(so divorced it seems have they now become from grubby material reality), says
far more than I think I can about their irrelevance to the class war. As far
as the latter is concerned, HCDs (as a group) have themselves ceased to exist.
So,
guided by HCD radar, the
Owl of Minerva appears to
have flown straight into the
Bermuda
Triangle.
Of
course, as individuals some of these
Professional
Dialectical Theologians may still be involved in the class war, but their
High Theory can't inform their revolutionary practice (or, more often than not,
lack of practice), for reasons examined in later Essays -- but. let's
face it, these reasons aren't unobvious! And yet they still bang on about
the dialectical relation between theory and practice (or, 'praxis') -- the
latter word apparently now meaning little more than the practice of reading
the works of rival HCDs, and then writing even more obscure responses of their
own. (On this, see Chomsky's comments about 'High Theory',
here.)]
Worse
still, the fact that so many Low Church Urchins think so highly of RIRE (or
likewise of Gollobin's book), while clearly knowing little of the stringent
requirements of proof in the hard sciences -- and even less about logic
-- suggests that human stupidity doesn't end at the entrance to the local Gospel
Hall.
Not
150 years ago, the UK Prime Minister,
Benjamin Disraeli bemoaned the fact that the 'Queen's Realm' comprised
two Nations, one
living in total ignorance of the other. The same might well be said of our High
and Low Church Brethren.
May
the non-existent 'Deity' have no mercy on their contradictory souls.
6b.
For High Church Dignitaries (on this, see the previous Note), the Master
Key is clearly Hegel's Logic, which is perhaps the only key in existence
that is vastly more complex than the door it was meant to open -- and which,
incidentally, fails even to fit the lock!
For
Low Church Urchins, their key is to be found the DM-classics, the sophistication
of which is sometimes pitched just above the level of
Janet and John books.
[Don't believe me? Then check
this out.]
Low
Key Dialectics is alas rather scriptural in its approach, and although it is
mind-numbingly repetitive, it is ridiculously easy to learn. High Key
Dialectics, in comparison, is largely incomprehensible, studiously esoteric,
and highly ritualised -- adepts must show adequate proof that they can produce
fluent jargon by the cartload, and on demand
-- anything less is simply sneer reviewed, as I have found to my
cost.
And,
it has now found a welcoming home in the journal
Historical
Materialism.
There
alone the analogy with High Church
Anglicanism is uncannily accurate, one feels.
[As
we shall see later (in Essay Fourteen -- summary
here),
Clavis was the title of an influential book
written by
Jakob Boehme, one of the most important
mystical influences on
Hegel. "Clavis" means "key", which word expressed a central concept in
Hermetic
Theosophy.]
6c.
Lest anyone think this unfair, these sweeping statements will be fully justified
throughout this site. In fact, on examination, what little 'evidence' DM-fans
have produced in support of their 'theory' achieves the exact opposite of what
was intended. [On this, see Essays Three through Thirteen.]
6d.
Mao at least made a
gesture in the direction of anti-Idealism, in the following passage:
"Our comrades must understand that we
study Marxism-Leninism not for display, nor because there is any mystery about
it, but solely because it is the science which leads the revolutionary cause of
the proletariat to victory. Even now, there are not a few people who still
regard odd quotations from Marxist-Leninist works as a ready-made panacea which,
once acquired, can easily cure all maladies. These people show childish
ignorance, and we should enlighten them. It is precisely such ignorant people
who take Marxism-Leninism as a religious dogma. To them we should say
bluntly, 'Your dogma is worthless.' Marx, Engels, Lenin and Stalin have
repeatedly stated that
our theory is not a dogma but a guide to action. But such people prefer
to forget this statement which is of the greatest, indeed the utmost,
importance. Chinese Communists can be regarded as linking theory with practice
only when they become good at applying the Marxist-Leninist stand, viewpoint and
method and the teachings of Lenin and Stalin concerning the Chinese revolution
and when, furthermore, through serious research into the realities of China's
history and revolution, they do creative theoretical work to meet China's needs
in different spheres. Merely talking about linking theory and practice without
actually doing anything about it is of no use, even if one goes on talking for a
hundred years. To oppose the subjectivist, one-sided approach to problems, we
must demolish dogmatist subjectiveness and one-sidedness." [Mao (1965b),
p.42. Bold emphases added.]
However, Mao speaking against dogmatism is perhaps on a par with Tony Blair
speaking against "the use of force for political ends" --, except, of course, if
you disagreed with Mao, you either disappeared or died -- or both.
Not
so much dogmatic, as dog meat, then.
On
the other hand, if you agreed with Blair, you were in danger of being hit by "American
Friendly Fire"!
7.
Lesser Dialectical Clones
They're
All At It
[This
forms part of Note 7.]
Below, readers will find a highly truncated selection of equally dogmatic
statements produced by scores of 'lesser' DM-clones (and drawn from different
wings of Marxism). These theorists propound theses that purport to depict
fundamental aspects of reality, true for all of space and time, and which
lie way beyond substantiation by any conceivable body of evidence. In doing so,
they are clearly oblivious of the glaring inconsistency between their claim that
DM
hasn't been imposed on reality and their
attempt to do the exact opposite.
[Irony not intended.]
Apologies must of course be given in advance for two things: (1) The length of
many of these quotations, and (2) Their extremely repetitive
nature.
The
first of these is unfortunately a necessary evil in order to bury
once-and-for-all the belief that DM-theorists do not try to impose their ideas
on reality (or they only did so in the past, when supporting evidence was less
abundant). It is also necessary, since DM-fans who have actually bothered to
read the material presented above still refuse to accept that these passages
are in any way representative (or even that they are dogmatic!). So, the only
way to prove to them that they are indeed representative is to quote them
extensively.
Even then, DM-fans often respond with the "You have taken them out of
context!" defence. Now, if anyone can show
which passages quoted below have been taken 'out of context', I'll be happy
to acknowledge that fact and will apologise profusely.
However, when
asked to show if, or how, I have
done this, objectors invariably go very quiet. So, I won't hold my breath
expecting any contact from them.
Precisely what sort of 'context' will show the following, for example, aren't
a priori and/or dogmatic?
"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….
"A motionless state of matter therefore
proves to be one of the most empty and nonsensical of ideas…." [Engels (1976),
p.74. Bold emphases added.]
"'Fundamentally, we can know only the
infinite.' In fact all real exhaustive knowledge consists solely in raising
the individual thing in thought from individuality into particularity and from
this into universality, in seeking and establishing the infinite in the finite,
the eternal in the transitory…. All true knowledge of nature is knowledge of
the eternal, the infinite, and essentially absolute…. The cognition of the
infinite…can only take place in an infinite asymptotic progress." [Engels
(1954),
pp.234-35.
Italic emphasis in the original; bold emphasis added.]
"Dialectics requires an all-round
consideration of relationships in their concrete development…. 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)….
"[D]ialectical logic holds that 'truth'
is
always concrete, never abstract, as the late Plekhanov liked to say
after Hegel." [Lenin (1921),
pp.90, 93. Bold emphases added.]
"Flexibility, applied objectively,
i.e., reflecting the all-sidedness of the material process and its unity, is
dialectics, is the correct reflection of the eternal development of the world."
[Lenin (1961),
p.110. Bold emphasis added.]
"[Among the elements of dialectics are
the following:] [I]nternally contradictory tendencies…in [a thing]…as the
sum
and unity of opposites…. [E]ach thing (phenomenon, process, etc.)…is
connected with every other…. [This involves] not only the unity
of opposites, but the transitions of every
determination, quality, feature, side, property into every other….
"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….
"To begin with what is the simplest,
most ordinary, common, etc., [sic] with any proposition...: [like]
John is a man…. Here we already have dialectics (as Hegel's genius recognized):
the
individual is the universal…. Consequently, the opposites (the
individual is opposed to the universal) are identical: the individual exists
only in the connection that leads to the universal. The universal exists only in
the individual and through the individual. Every individual is (in one way or
another) a universal. Every universal is (a fragment, or an aspect, or the
essence of) an individual. Every universal only approximately embraces all the
individual objects. Every individual enters incompletely into the universal,
etc., etc. Every individual is connected by thousands of transitions with other
kinds of individuals (things, phenomena, processes), etc.
Here already we have the elements, the germs of the concept of necessity,
of objective connection in nature, etc. Here already we have the contingent and
the necessary, the phenomenon and the essence; for when we say John is a man…we
disregard a number of attributes as contingent; we separate the essence
from the appearance, and counterpose the one to the other….
"Thus in any proposition we
can (and must) disclose as a 'nucleus' ('cell') the germs of all the
elements of dialectics, and thereby show that dialectics is a property of all
human knowledge in general." [Lenin (1961), pp.221-22,
357-58, 359-60. Italic emphases in the original; bold emphases
added.]
Or,
the countless other (similar) passages quoted throughout this Essay?
The
second point will be put to use
later on in at this site in an endeavour reveal the real nature and purpose
of DM-ideology, which exposé itself partly depends on the fact that DM is not
only traditional in form, it is dogmatic, highly
repetitive and has become thoroughly ritualised.
A
complete posting of examples of this a priori style-of-thought, culled
from every DM-text that even I possess would easily run into hundreds,
possibly thousands, of pages --, all saying practically the same sort of thing.
That this is no exaggeration may easily be confirmed by anyone who has access to
the many textbooks and articles on DM produced over the last hundred or so years
(in hard copy, or now on the Internet) by its acolytes -- and, of course,
plenty of
Prozac.
Finally, and once more, whether or not the following comrades are correct
in what they have to say isn't the issue here, merely their consistency:
Do they, or do they not impose their
ideas on nature?
[Of
course, the validity of what they actually say will be questioned in
other Essays posted at this site (for example,
here,
here,
here,
here,
here,
here and
here), but, naturally, that is a
separate issue.]
Dietzgen
Beginning with Joseph Dietzgen:
"Scientific socialists apply the
inductive method. They stick to facts. They live in the real world and not
in the spiritualist regions of scholasticism....
"Indeed, where we have to deal with
concrete phenomena, or, as it were, with palpable things, the method of
materialism has long since reigned supremely (sic). Yet, it needed more than
practical success: it needed the theoretical working-out in all its details in
order to completely rout its enemy, the scholastic speculation or deduction....
"Scientific 'laws' are deductions
drawn by human thinking from empiric material...." [Dietzgen (1906),
pp.81-84. Bold emphases added.]
So
much for the by-now-familiar initial disarming modesty. However, the
mailed metaphysical fist, hidden inside the self-effacing velvet glove, soon
emerges to pound the non-dialectical table:
"Nothing more is meant by these
deductions than this: the world is a unity, that is, there is only one world….
"...[R]eason makes of all existence
one order. To enroll (sic) under this order
all the phenomena of the world as different species, is to follow nature.
Because the intellect can do this, because it divides everything into orders and
species, into subjects and predicates so that finally only one order remains,
only one subject, Being or the Given Premises of which mind and body, reason,
fancy, matter, force, etc., are predicates or species -- because of that there
cannot possibly remain in the world any impassable gulf. Everything must
reduce itself to a theoretical harmony, to one system....
"I should like to make the reader
understand what the professors, so far as I know them, have not yet understood,
viz., that our intellect is a dialectical instrument, and instrument which
reconciles all opposites. The intellect creates unity by means of the variety
and comprehends the difference in the equality. Hegel made it clear long ago
that there is no either-or, but as well as...." [Ibid., pp.246-48. Bold
emphases added.]
Exactly how Dietzgen "deduced" all this from "empiric material" he forgot
to say, but the reader should note that even while he was helpfully upgrading
our non-dialectical minds with words of wisdom empirically copied
from Hegel's
Logic (i.e., to the effect that there is no "either-or") he neglected to
apply the rules he found there to his own non-empiric musings. Plainly,
if there is no "either-or", then the world must be both a unity and not a
unity (not the one or the other), just as it must also be true that "the
intellect", as a "dialectical instrument",
both reconciles and does not reconcile all opposites (not the one or
the other).
Dietzgen clearly failed to notice, too, that material reality (captured in the
conventions of ordinary language) resists the imposition on it of Idealist
nostrums like these; any attempt to do so rapidly backfires. In this case, it
becomes clear that neither Dietzgen nor any other dialectician is
free to reject the LEM while wishing to assert something determinate about
anything whatsoever -- even
about that 'law' itself.
[Why
this is so will be detailed in
Essay Four.]
So,
even Dietzgen had to ignore
Hegel to make his point!
[LEM = Law of Excluded Middle.]
Alas,
there is more:
"Before Philosophy could enter the
innermost of the mind-function, it had to be shown by the practical achievements
of natural science how the mental instrument of man possesses the hitherto
doubted faculty of illuminating the innermost of Nature. The physicists do not
close their eyes to the fact that there are many unknown worlds. Still
some of them have yet to learn that the Unknown, too, is not so
totally unknown and mysterious.
Even the most unknown world and the most mysterious things are together
with the known places and objects of one and the same category, namely, of
the universal union of Nature. Owing to the conception of the Universe
virtually existing, as a kind of innate idea, in the human mind, the
latter knows a priori that all things, the heavenly bodies included, exist in
the Universe, and are of universal and common nature...." [Ibid., pp.267-68.
Bold emphases added.]
It
should perhaps have occurred to Dietzgen's 'empiric' mind that if there are
indeed "unknown worlds" then humanity can have no
knowledge of them. How, therefore, such bold conclusions about these worlds
could be drawn in advance of such knowledge having emerged only those who are
similarly adrift in the dialectical mist will perhaps be able to tell us. But,
even they might stumble when it comes to explaining to those who are not
quite so lost just how such 'knowns' can be derived with confidence from all
those 'unknowns'. Still more might they wonder how Dietzgen's earlier rejection
of 'scholasticism' squares with his new-found liking for such a priori
impostures.
The
incoherent ramblings of the ex-US Secretary of Defence,
Donald
Rumsfeld, about "known
unknowns", come to mind here:
"As you know, there are known knowns.
There are things that we know we know. We also know that there are known
unknowns. That is to say, we know that there are some things that we do not
know. But there are also unknown unknowns, the ones we don't know we don't
know." [Quoting from
Dilip Hiro,
Secrets and Lies. The True History of the Iraq War, p.163, who was citing
the UK
Guardian, 03/05/03. A video of this can be found
here.]
When
card-carrying members of the ruling-class come up with prize 'thoughts' like
these we generally know how to respond. However, when dialecticians utter the
same inanities, some of us nod approvingly at their 'profundity'.
But,
from where have such epistemological gems originated? Dietzgen is keen to tell
us (while still doing his faux Rumsfeld impersonation):
"How then do we know that behind the
phenomena of Nature, behind the relative truths, there is a universal,
absolute Nature which does not reveal itself completely to man?....
"It is innate; it is given to
us with consciousness. The consciousness of man is the knowledge of his
personality as part of the human species, of mankind, and of the Universe. To
know is to form pictures in the consciousness that they are pictures of things
which all, both the pictures and the things, possess a general mother
from which they have issued and to which they will return. The mother is the
absolute truth;
she is perfectly true and yet mystical in a natural way, that is, she
is the inexhaustible source of knowledge and consequently never entirely to
be comprehended.
"All that is known in and of the world
is, however, true and exact, only a known truth, therefore a modified
truth, a modus or part of truth. When I say that the consciousness of the
endless,
absolute truth is innate in us, is one and the only knowledge a priori,
I am confirmed in my statement also by the experience of this innate
consciousness...." [Dietzgen (1906), pp.283-84. Italic emphases in the
original; bold emphases added.]
So,
the laws of Dietzgen's version of 'Rumsfeldian superscience' still follow from
experience --, except it is from the inner experience of "innate consciousness".
On that basis, presumably, we could conclude, if we were so minded, that Saddam
Hussein did possess Weapons of Mass Destruction, despite the absence of
'empiric evidence' to that effect. Indeed, we
could if we based this convenient piece of 'knowledge' on an 'inner
intuition', and because of that proceeded to support the imperialist invasion of
Iraq as a result. Who could object? Well, only those who doubt the existence of
"unknown unknowns", perhaps?
[Readers familiar the history of
Mother-Nature worship and
Hermetic Philosophy will no doubt recognize the
provenance of much of Dietzgen's ruminations, especially those highlighted in
bold. (It might be worth finding out if Rumsfeld ever read Dietzgen, or even the
Hermetic
Kybalion. Since the latter was (possibly?)
written by three
Masons, this is in fact highly likely!)]
The
promulgation of a priori dogma continues:
"...[T]he world is not made up of fixed
classes, but is a fluid unity, the Absolute incarnate, which develops
eternally, and is only classified by the human mind for purposes of forming
intelligent conceptions." [Ibid., p.322. Bold emphasis added.]
"The universe is in every place and at
any time itself new or present for the first time. It arises and passes away,
passes and arises under our very hands. Nothing remains the same, only the
infinite change is constant, and even the change varies. Every particle of time
and space brings new changes. It is true that the materialist believes in
the permanency, eternity and indestructibility of matter. He teaches us that not
the smallest particle of matter has even been lost in the world, that matter
simply changes its forms eternally, but that its nature last indestructibly
through all eternity." [Dietzgen (1984), p.37. Bold emphases added.]
But,
how could Dietzgen possibly have known that "The world...develops eternally",
that it is "the Absolute incarnate"? Or, that "Nothing remains the same" and
that "only...infinite change is constant"? Or, even that "Not the smallest
particle of matter has ever been lost to the world"? Of course, he couldn't
possibly have known any this on the basis of the science of his day, and we
can't even say we know this today. We can certainly hypothesise that some of
these things might be the case, but there is no way we can possibly know
that these things are true of every region of space and time -- nor are we
ever likely to know it.
In
fact, Dietzgen derived ideas like these, not from science,
but from the dogmatic theses promulgated by Traditional Philosophers.
There
are many more dogmatic, a priori passages like the above in Dietzgen's
rambling, almost aimless work. For example, these:
"Consciousness, as the Latin root word
indicates, is the knowledge of being in existence. It is a form, or a quality,
of existence which differs from other forms of being in that it is aware of its
existence. Quality cannot be explained, but must be experienced. We know by
experience that consciousness includes along with the knowledge of being in
existence the difference and contradiction between subject and object, thinking
and being, between form and content, between phenomenon and essential thing,
between attribute and substance, between the general and the concrete. This
innate contradiction explains the various terms applied to consciousness,
such as the organ of abstraction, the faculty of generalization or unification,
or in contradistinction thereto the faculty of differentiation. For
consciousness generalises differences and differentiates generalities.
Contradiction is innate in consciousness, and its nature is so contradictory
that it is at the same time a differentiating, a generalising, and an
understanding nature. Consciousness generalises contradiction. It recognizes
that all nature, all being, lives in contradictions, that everything is what it
is only in cooperation with its opposite. Just as visible things are not visible
without the faulty of sight, and vice versa the faculty of sight cannot see
anything but what is visible, so contradiction must be recognized as something
general which pervades all thought and being. The science of understanding,
by generalizing contradiction, solves all concrete contradictions." [Ibid.,
pp.32-33. Bold emphases added.]
Dietzgen, of course, offers no evidence in support of this 'innovative' a
priori psychology (which suggests we all have a little man/woman in our
heads to do all this 'processing' for us -- on this, see Essay Thirteen
Part Three), except, perhaps, he read it all in Hegel.
And
there is more of this a priori psycho-babble, admixed with no little
dogmatic pseudo-science:
"In the universe which constitutes the
object of science and the faculty of reason, both force and matter are
unseparated. In the world of sense perceptions force is matter and matter is
force. 'Force cannot be seen.' Oh yes! Seeing itself is pure force.
Seeing is as much an effect of its object as an effect of the eye, and this
double effect and other effects are forces. We do not see the things
themselves, but their effects on our eyes. We see their forces. And force cannot
alone be seen, it can also be heard, smelled, tasted, felt....
"It is just as true to say that we feel
matter and not its force as it is to say that we feel force and not matter.
Indeed,
both are inseparable from the object, as we have already remarked. But by
means of the faculty of thought we separate from the simultaneously and
successively occurring phenomena the general and the concrete. For instance, we
abstract the general concept of sight from the various phenomena of our sight
and distinguish it by the name of power of vision from the concrete objects, or
substances, of our eyes....
"The world of sense perceptions is made
known to us only by our consciousness, but consciousness is conditioned on the
world of sense perceptions. Nature is infinitely united or infinitely
separated, according to whether we regard it from the standpoint of
consciousness as an unconditional unit or from the standpoint of sense
perceptions and as unconditional multiplicity.... The abstract matter is force,
the concrete force is matter....
"True there is no force without
matter, no matter without force. Forceless matter and matter without force are
nonentities." [Ibid., pp.82-85. Bold emphases added. Quotation marks altered
to conform to the conventions adopted at this site.]
Naturally, this leaves Dietzgen in the
same predicament as
Lenin, who, with only 'images' to light his path, had no way of knowing if
there were in fact any 'objects' for him to 'image', and hence no proof
that the 'outside world' even existed.
If, according to
Dietzgen, we 'see' only the effects of objects on our eyes, and not the objects
that supposedly cause them, how do we know we even have eyes, let alone
that there is anything 'out there' that affects them? Indeed, if we don't
"see the things themselves, but their effects on our eyes", then we must have a
second set of eyes in our heads to do this extra 'seeing'. If not, what then
does this extra 'seeing'? If something else does this extra 'seeing' (an
'inner eye', for want of a better term), is it subject to the same limitations?
Can this mysterious 'inner eye' 'see' for itself? Or, does it, too, need help?
If it does need assistance to 'see', then there must be an 'even inner
eye' to do the 'seeing' it..., and so on. If not, and this 'inner eye' can
'see' for 'itself', then why
can't our ordinary eyes do this for themselves, too?
While
Dietzgen had no way of knowing whether or not any of these
dogmatic musings were true, but he clearly had no problem
asserting them as if they were all established fact -- just as Traditional
Philosophers have always done.
Exactly why Marx thought so highly of him is, therefore, a complete
mystery!
Having said that, this comment (which appears in a letter from Marx to
Engels, 05/01/1882) suggests he was beginning to wise-up toward the end of his
life:
"You will see from the enclosed letter
from Dietzgen that the unhappy fellow has 'progressed' backward and 'safely'
arrived at
Phänomenologie. I regard the case as an incurable one." [MECW
46, p.172. Link added.]
David Hayden-Guest
In a
similarly dogmatic vein, David Hayden-Guest opined as follows:
"Here it is the great service of
Hegel to have conceived history as exhibiting a process of development….
"Dialectical materialism appears at
first sight to be a return to the original Greek view of the world from
which philosophy started. And, indeed, like this Greek materialism, it sees
the world as a single interconnected whole in endless motion….
"The 'dialectical laws of motion'…are
the most general laws possible….
"The second dialectical law, that
of the 'unity, interpenetration or identity of opposites'…asserts the
essentially
contradictory character of reality -– at the same time asserts that
these 'opposites' which are everywhere to be found do not remain in
stark, metaphysical opposition, but also exist in unity. This law was known to
the early Greeks. It was classically expressed by Hegel over a
hundred years ago….
"[F]rom the standpoint of the
developing universe as a whole, what is vital is…motion and change which follows
from the conflict of the opposite.
"The Law of the Negation of the
Negation…. This law states one of the most characteristic features of
evolutionary process in
all fields -– that development takes place in a kind of spiral, one change
negating a given state of affairs and a succeeding change, which negated the
first, re-establishing (in a more developed form, or 'on a higher plane'…) some
essential feature of the original state of affairs….
"This law of dialectical process is like
the others in that it cannot be arbitrarily 'foisted' on Nature or
history. It cannot be used as a substitute for empirical facts, or used
to 'predict' things without a concrete study of the facts in question….
"Everything is not only part of
the great
world process but is itself essentially in process….
"Development is always the result of
internal conflict as well as of external relations, themselves including
conflict. It can only be explained and rationally grasped to the extent
that the internal contradictions of the thing have been investigated….
"Every 'thing' is itself vastly
complicated, made up of innumerable sides and aspects, related in various ways
to every other thing." [Guest (1963), pp.31, 32, 38, 40, 42, 45. Bold
emphases added.]
Careful readers will no doubt notice that while Guest makes the usual, hackneyed
claim that DM has not been imposed on reality, he then proceeds to do just that.
Exactly how he knew that reality was "essentially" contradictory, for
instance, he forgot to inform his bemused readers.
Edward Conze
The
quasi-Stalinist, but latter-day Buddhist,
Edward Conze
put things similarly:
"Scientific method is not a body of
ready-made statements which can be learnt by heart. It gives no mystical
formulae from which we can easily deduce reality without the trouble of
examining the facts…[it is not] a reverential pondering over quotations….
"Scientific method demands that
we should study things in their inter-relation with one another….
"…Each thing stands in some relation
to everything else in the world. It is thus fully understood only if its
relations are known. Therefore it has been said to know one thing completely
is to know everything….
"The philosopher sums up -–
Everything is inter-related with everything else….
"That everything should be
studied in its development and changing forms is the demand of the second
rule of scientific method….
"Everything in this world is
subject to
perpetual change…. Everything in the world once had a beginning; and
there is no part of the universe that will not perish….
"The scientific method demands
that the
world should be studied as a complex of processes and events
and not as a complex of ready-made things....
"The third law or rule of scientific
method is that opposites are always united, that they are in
unity…." [Conze (1944), pp.11, 14-15, 25-26, 35. Bold emphases added; italic
emphases in the original.]
Once
more, the puzzled reader will doubtless wonder where all the evidence supporting
these brave theses has gone in the intervening years. Into the 'unknown'
perhaps? They will similarly wonder what became of these sensible caveats:
"Scientific method is not a body of
ready-made statements which can be learnt by heart. It gives no mystical
formulae from which we can easily deduce reality without the trouble of
examining the facts…[it is not] a reverential pondering over quotations…."
[Ibid.]
However, in a rare moment of honesty, Conze admitted:
"I know of no general reason why
opposites
always must be united. The study of scientific method has not yet advanced
to give us a proof of this kind…. The reader must be warned against using the
law as a mystical formula…." [Ibid., p.36. Emphasis in the original.]
Nevertheless, this eminently reasonable plea hasn't stopped dialecticians ever
since using this "mystical formula" as just such a talisman. Sad though it is to
report, but in Conze's case this
caveat represented a false dawn, for on the very same page we
find the following:
"The negative electrical pole…cannot
exist
without the simultaneous presence of the positive electrical pole…. This
'unity of opposites' is therefore found in the core of all material things
and events." [Ibid., pp.35-36. Bold emphasis alone added.]
How
this comrade knew that negative poles can't exist apart from
positive poles, he kept to himself.
Despite this, Physicists are still looking for the famed
magnetic monopole (and seem to have
found it), foolishly
having paid no attention to those who unwisely impose dialectics on nature. Of
course, if the poles of a magnet were logically linked, as dialecticians
appear to believe, then Physicists wouldn't even have tried to look for
this monopole -- any more than they would attempt to find Longitude 360
degrees North (no, that isn't a misprint!), a field goal in chess, or
offside in tennis.
Update May 2009:
As noted above, scientists now claim to have found the elusive monopole:
"They seem magical: magnets, every
child's favourite science toy. Two otherwise ordinary lumps of metal draw
inexorably closer, finally locking together with a satisfying snap. Yet turn one
of them round and they show an entirely different, repulsive face: try as you
might to make them, never the twain shall meet.
"If magnets seem rather bipolar, that's
because they are. Every magnet has two poles, a north and a south. Like poles
repel, unlike poles attract. No magnet breaks the two-pole rule -- not the
humblest bar magnet, not the huge dynamo at the heart of our planet. Split a
magnet in two, and each half sprouts the pole it lost. It seems that poles
without their twins -- magnetic 'monopoles' -- simply do not exist.
"That hasn't stopped physicists hunting.
For decades they have ransacked everything from moon rock and cosmic rays to
ocean-floor sludge to find them. There is a simple reason for this quixotic
quest. Our best explanations of how the universe hangs together demand that
magnetic monopoles exist. If they are not plain to see, they must be hiding.
"Now, at last, we have might have spied
them out. The first convincing evidence for their existence has popped up in an
unexpected quarter. They are not exactly the monopoles of physics lore, but they
could provide us with essential clues as to how those legendary beasts behave.
"So what attracts physicists to
monopoles? Several things. First, there's symmetry -- a purely aesthetic
consideration, true, but one that for many physicists reveals a theory's true
worth. For over a century, we have known that magnetism and electricity are two
faces of one force: electromagnetism. Electric fields beget magnetic fields and
vice versa.
"Accordingly, the classical picture of
electromagnetism, formulated in the late 19th century, is pretty much
symmetrical in its treatment of electricity and magnetism. But although positive
and negative electric charges can separate and move freely in electric fields,
magnetic 'charge' remains bound up in pairs of north and south poles that cancel
each other out. 'No monopoles' is another way of saying that there is no such
thing as a freely moving magnetic charge.
"In 1931,
this puzzling asymmetry caught the attention of the pioneering
quantum
physicist
Paul Dirac. He pointed out that quantum theory did not deny the possibility
of monopoles; on the contrary, they could be quite useful. His calculations
showed that monopoles existing anywhere in the universe would explain why
electric charge always comes in the same bite-size chunks, or quanta.
"Even so,
monopoles were little more than a curiosity, and the lack of any obvious
examples nearby dampened the enthusiasm for the chase. That all changed in the
1960s with the wide acceptance of the big bang theory -- the idea that the
universe began in a fireball governed by a single force that has since
splintered into the fundamental forces we see today. The great ambition of
physics became to construct a theory that would
reunite these forces.
"There are many different
approaches to this goal, and almost all have an odd feature in common: they say
that chunks of magnetic charge must have been created in the very first fraction
of a nanosecond of the universe's existence. Some theories, like Dirac's
original idea, suggest these monopoles are very massive, with a mass around 1016
times that of a proton. Other approaches suggest more modest beasts with a mass
only a few thousand times the mass of the proton. But all predict they should be
there.
"Suddenly
monopoles assumed a new significance. Not only would the detection of magnetic
monopoles be a major boost for 'grand unified' theories of how the universe
began, but finding the mass of a monopole would help distinguish which of those
theories were on the right track. 'The search has a low chance of paying off,
but a very high importance if it did,' says Steven Weinberg of the University of
Texas at Austin, who won
the Nobel prize for physics in 1979 for his work
on force unification.
"Sheldon
Glashow of Harvard University, who also took a share of the 1979 prize, took
the monopole idea a stage further. That same year, he suggested that beefy,
Dirac-type monopoles might also be the answer to one of cosmology's most
important unsolved problems: they might be the identity of the unseen dark
matter that is thought to make up most of the universe and to have formed the
structures that led to galaxies.
"Physicists thus had a wealth of reasons
to believe that these 'cosmic' monopoles must exist somewhere. But where?
Besides the odd tantalising glimpse, no experiment has yet produced convincing
evidence of their existence (see
Race for the pole').
"There are reasons to believe they never
shall. According to the inflationary theory of the universe's origin, which has
gained wide currency since the 1980s, the cosmos expanded enormously fast just
after the big bang. This expansion should have carried most, if not all, of the
monopoles created in the first instants of the universe to a patch of the cosmos
so distant that they, and information about them, will probably never reach us.
Game over?
Perhaps
not, if the latest research is anything to go by. Monopoles might have been
under our noses for a while, in a strange type of solid known as spin ice. When
this material was reported in 1997 by physicists Mark Harris of the University
of Oxford, Steve Bramwell of University College London and their colleagues (Physical
Review Letters, vol. 79, p 2554),
monopole searches were not high on the agenda. The researchers were looking at
something else entirely -- an odd property of certain solids known as magnetic
frustration....
"'Suddenly, there was a community of physicists who became monopole hunters,'
says Peter Holdsworth of the École Normale Supérieure in Lyon, France, one of
the people bitten by the bug. Together with his colleague Ludovic Jaubert, he
has produced independent confirmation of the monopole idea. In a paper published
last month (Nature
Physics, vol 5, p 258),
the pair revisit an experiment reported in 2004 by a group led by Peter Schiffer
at Pennsylvania State University in University Park. Schiffer's team had shown
that when a magnetic field was applied to spin ice at low temperatures and then
removed, the spins were surprisingly slow to revert to their original state (Physical
Review B, vol. 64, p 064414).
Jaubert and Holdsworth calculated that monopoles explain this perfectly: at low
temperatures, monopoles do not have enough energy to move freely, and so make
the magnetic response of the entire system sluggish by just the amount the
experiments had found.
"It seems the elusive monopoles have
been pinned down at last. But Blas Cabrera, who looked for monopoles in cosmic
rays passing through his laboratory at Stanford University in the 1980s, sounds
a note of caution. The monopoles discovered in spin ice are rather different
beasts from those he and others were looking for. For a start, they are some
8000 times less magnetic and are free to move only within the spin ice, not to
roam the wider universe. So they are not really analogous to electric charges,
and it doesn't look as if they are going to solve the dark matter problem.
"Do they count at all? Quite possibly.
When Dirac dreamed up his cosmic monopoles, he imagined a vacuum as the lowest
possible energy state that free space could assume. Monopoles then represented a
higher-energy 'excitation' of a vacuum, in much the same way that the low-energy
two-in, two-out spin-ice state is excited to create monopoles. The new research
even borrows elements of Dirac's description of free-space monopoles -- such as
the invisible 'strings' he envisaged between pairs of poles that have separated.
The similarities mean that the interactions of spin-ice monopoles could provide
a way to learn about cosmic monopoles by proxy -- for example, how they might
have interacted in the early universe.
"'Quite apart from that, the more
down-to-earth monopoles might turn out to be practically useful', says
Tchernyshyov. Most computer memories store information magnetically, and the
ability to use magnetic rather than electric charges to read and write bits to
and from those stores could have great advantages in speed and flexibility.
What's more, the three-dimensional configuration of spin ice might allow for
memories of much higher density than is currently possible.
"That's for the future. For Holdsworth,
the mere fact that we have found monopoles somewhere -- anywhere -- is reason
enough to make a song and dance about them. 'These might not be exactly the
monopoles that Dirac dreamed of, but that doesn't mean they're not remarkable.'"
[Reich
(2009), pp.28-31. Quotation marks altered to conform to the conventions
adopted at this site. See also
here.]
Even
more worrying for dialecticians hooked on a priori
dogma is this recent comment:
"We have
moved a step closer to finding cosmic monopoles -- magnetic poles without their
opposite. Two experiments using strange stuff called spin ice have provided the
best evidence yet that
monopoles
really are out there.
"Nearly 80 years ago, physicist Paul
Dirac said it must be possible for magnetic north and south poles to exist
separately. But despite decades of searching, not one has been found. Last year,
researchers demonstrated that certain states of the crystalline material spin
ice would create monopoles that rove about the crystal (New
Scientist, 9 May, p 28). They would be seen as disturbances moving
through the spins of atoms within the crystal.
"Now two
separate groups claim to have spotted just that. Tom Fennell and his colleagues
at the Laue-Langevin Institute in Grenoble, France, recorded the disturbances
when they fired a beam of neutrons at a spin ice crystal to see how it affected
the neutrons' energy (Science,
DOI: 10.1126/science.1177582).
"Meanwhile, Jonathan Morris of the Helmholtz Centre for Materials and Energy in
Berlin, Germany, and his colleagues watched how atoms within the crystals fell
into alignment along trails through the lattice. These trails are known as
'Dirac strings', because Dirac predicted that cosmic monopoles would have just
such a connection between them (Science,
DOI: 10.1126/science.1178868).
"'To my mind there's now no question: we
have overwhelming evidence that these things are real,' says Steve Bramwell of
University College London." [New
Scientist, 203, 2725, 12/09/2009, p.17). Quotation marks altered
to conform to the conventions adopted at this site.]
Update 30/01/2014:
And, now we read yet more 'reactionary' news from the BBC:
"Elusive
magnetic 'monopole' seen in quantum system
"If
you break a magnet in two, you don't get a
north half and a south half -- you get two
new magnets, each with two poles.
'Monopoles' were
famously predicted to exist
by physicist Paul Dirac in 1931 -- but they
have remained elusive. Now scientists have
engineered a synthetic monopole in a quantum
system for the first time, allowing its
mysterious properties to be explored. They
describe their breakthrough
in Nature journal.
"'Detecting a natural magnetic monopole
would be a revolutionary event comparable to
the discovery of the electron,' wrote the
team from Aalto University, Finland, and
Amherst College, US, in their paper. '[Our
work] provides conclusive and long-awaited
experimental evidence of the existence of
Dirac monopoles. It provides an
unprecedented opportunity to observe and
manipulate these quantum mechanical entities
in a controlled environment.'
"The
discovery of magnetic monopoles has been
long-awaited as they can help to explain
various physical phenomena. Researchers have
hunted for them since Paul Dirac first
theorised their quantum-mechanical
characteristics in 1931. He demonstrated
that if even a single monopole exists, then
all electrical charge must come in discrete
packets -- which has indeed been
demonstrated.
"To
observe and test them in the lab, scientists
engineered a quantum system -- the magnetic
field of a cloud of
rubidium atoms in an unusual state of
matter known as a
Bose-Einstein condensate.
Using direct imaging, they detected a
distinct signature of the Dirac monopole --
known as a 'Dirac
string'. The
researchers note that -- while other teams
have
previously made analogues of monopoles
--, their demonstration is the first in a
quantum system which can be tested by
experiment.
"'This creation of a Dirac monopole is a
beautiful demonstration of quantum
simulation,' said Lindsay LeBlanc, of the
University of Alberta, a physicist not
involved in the study. Although these
results offer only an analogy to a magnetic
monopole, their compatibility with theory
reinforces the expectation that this
particle will be detected experimentally. As
Dirac said in 1931: "Under these
circumstances one would be surprised if
Nature had made no use of it".'" [Quoted
from
here; accessed 31/01/2014. Quotation
marks altered to conform to the conventions
adopted at this site. Some links added;
several paragraphs merged to save space.]
As
well as this:
"Researchers
have discovered a magnetic equivalent to electricity: single magnetic charges
that can behave and interact like electrical ones.
By Jason Palmer,
Science and technology
reporter, BBC News.
"The work is the first to make use of
the magnetic monopoles that exist in special crystals known as
spin ice.
Writing in Nature..., a team showed that monopoles gather to form a
'magnetic current' like electricity. The phenomenon, dubbed 'magnetricity',
could be used in magnetic storage or in computing.
"Magnetic monopoles were first predicted
to exist over a century ago, as a perfect analogue to electric charges. Although
there are protons and electrons with net positive and negative electric charges,
there were no particles in existence which carry magnetic charges. Rather, every
magnet has a 'north' and 'south' pole.
"Current
event
"In September this year, two research
groups independently reported the existence of monopoles -- 'particles' which
carry an overall magnetic charge. But they exist only in the spin ice crystals.
These crystals are made up of pyramids of charged atoms, or ions, arranged in
such a way that when cooled to exceptionally low temperatures, the materials
show tiny, discrete packets of magnetic charge.
"Now one of those teams has gone on to
show that these 'quasi-particles' of magnetic charge can move together, forming
a magnetic current just like the electric current formed by moving electrons.
"They did so by using sub-atomic
particles called
muons, created
at the Science and Technology Facilities Council's (STFC) ISIS
neutron and
muon source near Oxford. The muons decay millionths of a second after their
production into other sub-atomic particles. But the direction in which these
resulting particles fly off is an indicator of the magnetic field in a tiny
region around the muons.
"The team, led by Stephen Bramwell, from
the London Centre for Nanotechnology, implanted these muons into spin ice to
demonstrate how the magnetic monopoles moved around. They showed that when the
spin ice was placed in a magnetic field, the monopoles piled up on one side --
just like electrons would pile up when placed in an electric field.
"Professor Bramwell told BBC News that
the development is unlikely to catch on as a means of providing energy, not
least because the particles travel only inside spin ices.
"'We're not going to be seeing a
magnetic light bulb or anything like that,' he said.
"But by engineering different spin ice
materials to modify the ways monopoles move through them, the materials might in
future be used in 'magnetic memory' storage devices or in
spintronics -- a field which could boost future computing power." [Quoted
from
here. Accessed 09/09/2012. Bold emphases in the original. Quotations marks
altered to conform to the conventions adopted at this site. Several paragraphs
merged to save space. Links added.]
Nevertheless, Conze's obvious good sense forced its way to the surface once
more, leading him to make the following confession:
"I have had some 'dialecticians' assure
me that they did not know what the structure of the atom would turn out to be,
but they had not the shadow of doubt that it would be found to be 'dialectical'.
This is not the language of science, but of religion…. We should beware
of putting the dialectical method on the same level with the revelations of God.
There is nothing ultimate about scientific theories…. Too frequently do we
petrify the science of yesterday into the dogma of tomorrow. Science demands an
elastic and critical spirit." [Ibid., p.36. Bold emphasis added.]
This
passage should be required reading for all dialectical dogmatists (but
check out comrade
Thalheimer below, whom Conze
might well have had in mind).
Not
that it will do much good, for on the
same page we find Conze himself arguing once again:
"Both attraction and repulsion
are
necessary properties of matter. Each attraction in one place is
necessarily compensated for by a corresponding repulsion in another place…."
[Ibid., p.36. Bold emphases added; italic emphases in the original.]
Conze's non-standard meander through the wastelands of dialectical dogma
is instructive enough -- witness how, when his own theses are immediately
contradicted, they turn into a series of more cautious antitheses, which are
then contradicted right back again to become dogmatic theses once more. Hence,
and true-to-form, he back sasses all the way in this passage:
"A material contradiction means that
one concrete process contains two mutually incompatible and exclusive, but
nevertheless equally essential and indispensable parts or aspects….
"In some cases we can observe that a
thing moves and destroys itself. This is the case with radium and uranium….
Since [their] disintegration is not due to external causes, but to the
constitution of radium itself, we would assume the presence of a
contradiction in radium. At the moment, however, we are incapable of pointing
out what that contradiction is….
"We find clearer examples in…[Biology].
Engels pointed out that a living being is at any given moment the same and
yet another…. Its life consists in that it simultaneously performs two
contradictory processes, breaks down and builds itself up again…." [Ibid.,
p.52. Bold emphases added; italic emphasis in the original.]
Conze
is clearly an odd mixture of regulation-issue-dialectical-dogmatism and
recklessly un-dialectical-reasonableness, with the former often
dominating over the latter --, which is itself a consequence of the
aprioristic
tradition that has shaped all of Western Philosophy (since the Ancient Greeks
invented in the 'West) imposing itself on him. So, as part of that tradition,
Conze naturally felt he didn't need to say precisely how he knew
that contradictions were capable of causing change or how they seem to
power living cells. Just quoting Engels and/or Hegel was sufficient, apparently:
"Scientific method is not a body of
ready-made statements which can be learnt by heart. It gives no mystical
formulae from which we can easily deduce reality without the trouble of
examining the facts…[it isn't] a reverential pondering over quotations…."
[Ibid. Bold emphasis added.]
Clearly, in the Mystical Madhouse that is DM, it is!
August Thalheimer
Moving on; here are the thoughts of comrade Thalheimer, recorded (it has to be
said) in one of the best and most intelligent introductions to DM there is (no
sarcasm intended!) -- but here speaking with all the
ex cathedra
authority 'Being' has conferred on those who sit atop that holy mountain on the
edge of the universe, all of reality laid out in front of them, the location of
which
Empyrean Realm
is known only to Dialectical Mystics:
"The most general and the most inclusive
fundamental law of dialectics from which all others are deduced is the law of
permeation of opposites. This law has a two-fold meaning: first, that all
things, all processes, all concepts merge in the last analysis into an absolute
unity, or, in other words, that there are no opposites, no differences which
cannot ultimately be comprehended into a unity. Second, and just as
unconditionally valid, that all things are at the same time absolutely different
and absolutely or unqualifiedly opposed. The law may also be referred to as
the law of the polar unity of opposites. This law applies to every single
thing, every phenomenon, and to the world as a whole. Viewing thought and
its method alone, it can be put this way: The human mind is capable of
infinite condensation of things into unities, even the sharpest
contradictions and opposites, and, on the other hand, it is capable of
infinite differentiation and analysis of things into opposites. The human
mind can establish this unlimited unity and unlimited
differentiation because this unlimited unity and differentiation is present
in reality." [Thalheimer (1936), p.161. Bold emphasis added.]
At
first sight, it might look like Thalheimer is foisting DM onto nature,
but it is important not to be mislead here:
he is doing precisely that!
There
then follows a few pages of anecdotal 'evidence' (of the usual
Mickey Mouse sort) offered up in support of these universal pronouncements,
most of which will be reviewed in Essay
Seven -- followed by this a
priori
'deduction':
"Or take the smallest components of
matter: two electrons which form part of the atomic system can never be
absolutely identical. We can say this with certainty even though we are
not yet in a position to know anything about the individual peculiarity of
electrons.... This is based on the proposition of the permeation of
opposites, the proposition which says that the identity of things is just as
unlimited as their difference. The capacity of the mind infinitely to
equate things as well as to differentiate and oppose, corresponds to the
infinite identity and difference of things in nature.... We have previously
shown that being and non-being exist simultaneously in becoming, that they
constitute identical elements of becoming...." [Ibid., pp.167-68. Bold emphases
added.]
Now,
the evidence comrade Thalheimer quotes in support of these claims would be
considered a joke if this were hard science, but dialectics is perhaps
the softest science there is (even
Creationists supply more and better evidence in support of their whacko
ideas!) -- a melted marshmallow sort of science, where a few pages of
superficial, anecdotal evidence and secondary 'data' 'allow' its adepts to
predict what must be true, for instance, of every electron in the entire
universe, for all of time.
[As
we will see in
Essay Six,
there is now good reason to disagree with Thalheimer about the identity of all
electrons.]
However, Thalheimer had a sure-fire method of proof (and one he copied from
Hegel), which meant that supporting evidence is simply irrelevant:
"This law of the permeation of opposites
will probably be new to you, something to which you have probably not given
thought. Upon closer examination you will discover that you cannot utter a
single meaningful sentence which does not comprehend this proposition.... Let us
take a rather common sentence: 'The lion is a beast of prey.' A thing, A, the
lion is equated with a thing B. At the same time a distinction is made between A
and B. So far as the lion is a beast of prey, it is equated with all beasts of
that kind. At the same time, in the same sentence, it is distinguished from the
kind. It is impossible to utter a sentence which will not contain the formula, A
equals B. All meaningful sentences have a form which is conditioned by the
permeation of opposites. This contradiction [is] contained in every meaningful
sentence, the equation and at the same time differentiation between subject and
predicate...." [Ibid., pp.168-69.]
We
shall meet this rather odd 'argument' again later (in Essay Three
Part One) where it will be identified as one of the main sources of Hegelian
dialectics, and thus of DM. We will see there how a
grammatical dodge (which is never
justified) 'allows' dialecticians to turn a simple "is" of predication into
an "is" of identity, creating a spurious 'contradiction', out of which
logical cess pit
much of dialectics has since slithered. In that case, DM arises, not from a
scientific view of nature -- or even from the experience of individuals and/or
the revolutionary party, nor yet from revolutionary practice --
but from a crass error over the verb "to be"!
This
impressive 'scientific method' was invented, so far as we know, by
Parmenides, who it seems -- 'genius' though he
was -- had serious problems with other participles of the same verb.
From
this simple mistake evolved the subsequent and neurotic fascination with
"Being", an obsession which has gripped most of Western Philosophy since (Hegel
and
Heidegger being its most notorious recent victims, no pun intended) -- i.e.,
Parmenides's misunderstanding of the
present participle of the verb "to be"!
Can
you imagine a genuine science being based on a misconstrued present
participle?
Two thousand five hundred years of wasted effort thanks to a misinterpreted
verb!
[How
and why this 'confusion' arose, and was later adopted by DM-theorists, will be
detailed in Essay Three Parts
One and
Two, Essays Eight
Part Three, Twelve and Fourteen
-- a brief outline of this argument can be found
here.]
Suffice it to say that even though comrade Thalheimer was clearly a highly
intelligent man, it is inexplicable how he forgot about ordinary sentences like,
"Thalheimer writes well", which by no stretch of the imagination is of the form
"A = B" -- and neither is "Thalheimer failed to make his case", or "Thalheimer
ignored this example", nor even "Thalheimer, following Hegel, misconstrued the
'is' of predication with the 'is' of identity".
This
isn't to say that several of the above sentences can't be
forced into this dialectical boot -- as in, say,
T1: Thalheimer is someone who failed to
make his case.
Even then there would be
obvious problems interpreting this as:
T2: Thalheimer is
identical with someone who has failed to make his case.
But,
exactly
who is this person with whom Thalheimer is supposed to be identical?
[And
don't even ask what the highlighted "is" in T2 means! Given this
theory it can only mean that that sentence must become: "Thalheimer
is identical with identical with someone
who has failed to make his case" as that "is" is replaced with
what it allegedly means: "is identical with". And, with respect to that
sentence, too, awkward question would similarly arise over this new highlighted
"is", and so on.]
Just
try doing the same 'dialectical switch' with this:
T3: Someone told Thalheimer his watch
was broken.
Or
this:
T4: Anyone who reads Thalheimer's book
knows someone who hasn't read anything written by those who take Hegel
seriously.
The
subject/predicate form on which Thalheimer (and Hegel) relied is an
Indo-European invention, and even then it
captures only a tiny
fraction of the meaningful indicative sentences that can be formed in
that family of languages. The fact that Thalheimer could read such universal
verities from the peculiarities of a certain language group alone
(and then fail to spot the significance of the fact that he even thought
he could do this, and do so from such simplistic and unrepresentative
examples) underscores the claim made here that DM is just another form of LIE (and
not a very impressive form, at that) -- i.e., an attempt to derive universal
truths from discourse alone.
[On
the intimate connection between Indo-European Grammar and the subject-predicate
form, see Kahn (2003), pp.1-2; although Kahn takes a different view of its
implications. This is, of course, something
Nietzsche also noticed (Nietzsche (1997),
pp.20-21), and it is also part of the so-called
Sapir-Whorf thesis -- but the validity or
otherwise of that theory doesn't affect the point I am making.]
[LIE =
Linguistic Idealism. This is explained
here.]
Thalheimer must have used countless sentences every day that gave the lie to his
theory; exactly why he and every other dialectician ignore the material
language of everyday life will be exposed in Essay Nine Parts
One and
Two, and Essay Twelve (summary
here).
Thalheimer continues in the same vein for another fifteen pages or so. I might
add a few more of his a priori musings at a later date --
if I can summon up the will, and down enough bottles of wine, first.
George Novack
We
turn now to consider the thoughts of a comrade who was an intellectual and
political enemy of Stalinism:
George
Novack. Oddly enough, and despite what he had elsewhere
said about it, instead of opposing dogmatism,
he aped it, laying down the law like any other born-again apriorist:
"Everything in motion is continually
bringing forth this contradiction of being in two different places at the same
time, and also overcoming this contradiction by proceeding from one place to
the next….
"A moving thing is both here and there
simultaneously. Otherwise it is not in motion but at rest….
"Nothing is permanent. Reality is
never resting, ever changeable, always in flux. This unquestionable
universal process forms the foundation of the theory [of dialectical
materialism]….
"According to the theory of Marxism,
everything comes into being as a result of material causes, develops through
successive phases, and finally perishes….
"Dialectics is the logic of movement, of
evolution, of change. Reality is too full of contradictions, too elusive, too
manifold, too mutable to be snared in any single form or formula. Each
particular phase of reality has its own laws…. These laws…have to be discovered
by direct investigation of the concrete whole, they cannot be excogitated by
the mind alone before material reality is analysed. Moreover, all reality
is constantly changing, disclosing ever new aspects….
"If reality is ever changing,
concrete, full of novelty, fluent as a river, torn by oppositional forces, then
dialectics…must share the same characteristics….
"Nature cannot be unreasonable or
reason contrary to nature. Everything that exists must have a necessary and
sufficient reason for existence….
"The material base of this law lies in
the actual
interdependence of all things in their reciprocal interactions…. If
everything that exists has a necessary and sufficient reason for existence,
that means it had to come into being. It was pushed into existence and forced
its way into existence by natural necessity…. Reality, rationality and
necessity are intimately associated at all times….
"If everything actual is necessarily
rational, this means that every item of the real world has a sufficient reason
for existing and must find a rational explanation….
"But this is not the whole and final
truth about things…. The real truth about things is that they not only
exist, persist, but they also develop and pass away. This passing away of
things…is expressed in logical terminology by the term 'negation'. The whole
truth about things can be expressed only if we take into account this opposite
and negative aspect….
"All things are limited and changing….
In logical terms, they not only affirm themselves. They likewise negate
themselves and are negated by other things…. Such a movement of things and of
thought is called dialectical movement….
"From this dialectical essence of
reality
Hegel drew the conclusion that constitutes an indispensable part of his
famous aphorism: All that is rational is real….
"[M]ovement…from unreality into reality
and then back again into unreality, constitutes the essence, the inner
movement behind all appearance….
"Everything generates within itself
that force which leads to its negation, its passing away into some other and
higher form of being….
"This dialectical activity is
universal. There is no escaping from its unremitting and relentless embrace.
'Dialectics gives expression to a law which is felt in all 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 inflexible and ultimate, is rather changeable and transient; and
this is exactly what we mean by the dialectic of the finite, by which the
finite, as implicitly other than it is, is forced to surrender its own immediate
or natural being, and to turn suddenly into its opposite.' (Encyclopedia,
p.120)." [Novack (1971), pp.41, 43, 51, 70-71, 78-80, 84-87, 94-95; quoting
Hegel (1975), p.118, although in a different translation from the one used here.
Bold emphases added. Quotation marks altered to conform to the conventions
adopted at this site.]
Novack's book is chock full of dogmatic statements like these, practically all
of which he backs up -- not with data or evidence --, but with
quotations from Hegel and other assorted DM-luminaries! As far as this
aspect of Novack's work is concerned, DM might just as well stand for "Dogmatic
Materialism".
Compare the above with Novack's very own warning about dogmatism:
"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.]
Woods And Grant
[OT = Orthodox Trotskyist.]
Two
other OTs -- not to be outdone in this respect -- are Woods and Grant (in
Reason In Revolt [RIRE] -- some of the page references I have cited might
have changed in the second edition). First, they soften the reader up with the
usual disarming banter:
"Hegel was forced to impose a schema
upon nature and society, in flat contradiction to the dialectical method itself,
which demands that we derive the laws of a given phenomenon from a scrupulously
objective study of the subject matter…[and which should not be]…arbitrarily
foisted on history…." [Woods and Grant (1995),
pp.43-44. Bold emphasis added.]
Then,
over the next few pages (and, indeed, throughout the rest of their book) they
reveal their true colours:
"Dialectics…sets out from the axiom
that everything is in a constant state of change and flux….
"The fundamental proposition of
dialectics is
that everything is in a constant process of change, motion and development.
Even when it appears to us that nothing is happening, in reality, matter is
always changing….
"Everything is in a constant state of
motion, from neutrinos to super-clusters….
"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 law of the unity and interpenetration of
opposites….
"The law of the transformation of
quantity into quality has an extremely wide range of applications, from the
smallest particles of matter at the subatomic level to the largest phenomena
known to man.
"Positive is meaningless without
negative. They are necessarily inseparable. Hegel long ago explained that
'pure being' (devoid of all contradiction) is the same as pure nothing….
Everything in the real world contains positive and negative, being and not
being, because everything is in a constant state of movement and change….
"Moreover, everything is in permanent
relation with other things. Even over vast distances, we are affected
by light, radiation, gravity. Undetected by our senses, there is a process of
interaction, which causes a continual series of changes….
"This universal phenomenon of the
unity of opposites is, in reality the motor-force of all motion and
development in nature…. 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." [Ibid., pp.43-47,
65-68. Bold emphases added.]
"Men and women clearly distinguish
between past and future. A sense of time is, however, not unique to humans or
even animals. Organisms often have a kind of 'internal clock,' like plants which
turn one way during the day and another at night.
Time is an objective expression of the changing state of matter. This is
revealed even by the way we talk about it. It is common to say that time
'flows.' In fact, only material fluids can flow. The very choice of metaphor
shows that time is inseparable from matter. It is not only a subjective
thing. It is the way we express an actual process that exists in the physical
world. Time is thus just an expression of the fact that all matter exists in
a state of constant change. It is the destiny and necessity of all material
things to change into something other than what they are. 'Everything that
exists deserves to perish.'... [Quoting Hegel -- RL.]
"Time and movement are inseparable
concepts. They are essential to all life and all knowledge of the world,
including every manifestation of thought and imagination. Measurement, the
corner-stone of all science, would be impossible without time and space. Music
and dance are based upon time. Art itself attempts to convey a sense of time and
movement, which are present not just in representations of physical energy, but
in design. The colours, shapes and lines of a painting guide the eye across the
surface in a particular rhythm and tempo. This is what gives rise to the
particular mood, idea and emotion conveyed by the work of art. Timelessness is a
word that is often used to describe works of art, but really expresses the
opposite of what is intended. We cannot conceive of the absence of time,
since time is present in everything.
"There is a difference between time and
space. Space can also express change, as change of position. Matter exists and
moves through space. But the number of ways that this can occur is infinite:
forward, backward, up or down, to any degree. Movement in space is reversible.
Movement in time is irreversible. They are two different (and indeed
contradictory) ways of expressing the same fundamental property of matter --
change. This is the only Absolute that exists.
"Space is the 'otherness' of matter,
to use Hegel's terminology, whereas time is the process whereby matter (and
energy, which is the same thing) constantly changes into something other than
what it is. Time -- 'the fire in which we are all consumed' -- is commonly seen
as a destructive agent. But it is equally the expression of a permanent
process of self-creation, whereby matter is constantly transformed into and
endless number of forms. This process can be seen quite clearly in
non-organic matter, above all at the subatomic level." [Ibid.,
pp.141-42. Bold emphases added. Quotation marks altered to conform to the
conventions adopted at this site.]
"Dialectics teaches one to look beyond
the immediate, to penetrate beyond the appearance of stability and calm, and to
see the seething contradictions and ceaseless movement that lies beneath the
surface. We are imbued with the idea of constant change, and that sooner or
later everything changes into its opposite. The capitalist system, together
with its values, morality, politics and what sometimes passes for philosophy, is
not something eternal, which has no beginning and no end. In fact, it is a very
recent phenomenon with a turbulent past, a shaky present, and no future at all.
This, of course, is something the system's defenders find impossible to
contemplate. So much the worse for them!" [Authors', Preface to the second
Spanish Edition of RIRE; quoted from
here. Bold emphasis added.]
"Dialectics teaches us to
study things in motion, not statically; in their life, not in their death.
Every development is rooted in earlier stages, and in turn is the embryo and
starting point of new developments -- a never-ending web of relations that
reinforce and perpetuate each other. Hegel already developed this idea in his
Logic and other works. Dialectics teaches us to study things and processes
in all their interconnections. This is important as a methodology in areas
such as animal morphology. It is not possible to modify one part of the anatomy
without producing changes in all the others. Here too there is a dialectical
relationship....
"Dialectical materialism
allows us to study reality, not as a series of dry, unconnected, senseless
events or 'facts', but as a dynamic process, driven by its internal
contradictions, ever changing and with an infinitely rich content." [Alan
Woods, Introduction to the e-book edition of RIRE. May 2015; taken from
here. Quotation marks altered to conform to the conventions adopted at this
site; bold emphases added.]
The
above passages represent a mere fraction of the many that could have been
quoted from RIRE (first or second edition); indeed, if every dogmatic a
priori
paragraph had been reproduced from that work alone, this Essay would have
been tens of thousands of words longer that it already is!
As is
now becoming boringly familiar, these two comrades failed to reveal how they
obtained the "axiom" that everything is in a constant state of change, how they
knew that motion arises only from contradictions, or which
"scrupulous" examination of the evidence supports the view that contradictions
are an "essential
feature of all being". Moreover, they forgot to tell their readers what the
negative and
positive internal aspects of electrons and photons are, if, as they
claimed, everything is made of opposites -- positive and negative.
These cannot be protons, or positrons, nor yet antiphotons (although it is
controversial whether there can be antiphotons), since these are external
to electrons and photons. The same question can be posed in relation to
quarks,
geodesics,
Branes, and much more besides.
[This
introduces an equivocation mentioned elsewhere:
DM-fans vacillate between a logical and a spatial
interpretation of "internal" -- Woods and Grant included.]
Of
course, there are those who think that positrons are electrons travelling
'backwards in time' (although it isn't too clear what "travelling" might mean in
such odd company), and even that such particles are their own "self-opposites".
But, even if such enigmatic talk were correct (or made much sense), it can lend
no support to DM since such opposites do not 'struggle' with each other, as we
are assured they must do by the
Dialectical Gospels. Moreover, such talk is no more 'dialectical' than would
be that of someone who regarded forwards as the 'self-opposite' of backwards
(forgetting, perhaps, about sideways).
Indeed, there are dialecticians who dote on this sort of talk; their arguments
will be demolished in
Essay
Seven, and Eight Parts One,
Two, and Three.
Now,
it is entirely possible that Woods and Grant temporarily forgot what the word
"foisted" meant when they declared the following:
"Hegel was forced to impose a schema
upon nature and society, in flat contradiction to the dialectical method itself,
which demands that we derive the laws of a given phenomenon from a scrupulously
objective study of the subject matter…[and which should not be]…arbitrarily
foisted on history…." [Ibid.,
p.43.]
Even
so, and to be fair to these two, they do spend a significant proportion of their
book trying desperately to show that dialectical principles apply to
nature and society, using examples drawn both from everyday life and the
sciences, quoting prominent researchers and theorists in support. Nevertheless,
and to be brutally honest, their zeal and methodology resembles that found in
books and articles written by Fundamentalist Christians in their attempt
to 'prove' the Bible is not only correct, but scientifically accurate. In the
end, all these two have to offer is page after page of the selective quotation
of carefully chosen examples, highly repetitive sarcasm (mostly aimed at
FL), and acres of distortion and special-pleading. The 'evidence' Woods and
Grant present the reader is in a thoroughly populist format (no problem with
that -- if it doesn't distort the material on offer!); they quote no
original research, and present no primary data. In fact, their book is
impressionistic, superficial and comfortably situated in the soft,
melted-butter,
Mickey Mouse world
of 'dialectical science', mentioned earlier.
[FL = Formal Logic.]
Many
of the examples Woods and Grant use are highly fanciful (in general, these are
the ones they lifted from Engels and Hegel), others perhaps less so. Several of
the latter will be discussed in Essays
Four and
Seven, where the highly repetitive,
ill-informed and largely fabricated
comments these two make about FL will also be exposed for what they are. [No
exaggeration, but in relation to FL, this book contains easily the worst
examples of fabrication I have yet seen in a DM-text; this is something I have
taken up with one of the authors. He has promised to correct some of them in the
second edition. Added in 2008: several of them have been corrected,
but not all.]
Reason in Revolt?
More like
Reason in Remission!
Even
so, a thousand-volume Encyclopaedia wouldn't contain enough evidence to justify
the intergalactically over-ambitious "foistings" and declarations on behalf of
all "being" promulgated by these two.
[Their many errors will be exposed in Essay Seven Part Two, when it is
published. Some of them have already been outlined
here.]
Harry Nielsen
Here
is another recent example of disarming modesty linked to a (by-now-familiar and
hackneyed)
a priori imposition:
"It has been said many times that the method of Marxism is to first study the
facts of a subject, and then to draw out its processes and its connections. This
describes not only the method of Marxism but also the method of science (and
Marxism is a science) -- not to impose an arbitrary idea, but to study a
subject from all angles and to find and generalise the underlying processes that
are taking place. Then to use that theoretical insight as a guide to action, to
learn from further experience, and to refine and develop the theory as a guide
to further action....
"Modern
theoretical physics overwhelmingly emphasises deduction as the way to develop
ideas about the universe, deriving predictions from more general ideas. But
there is also another approach, philosophical induction, in which ideas and
generalisations are derived from observations. Scientists, and Marxists, in
reality use both approaches to learn about the world, from data to ideas and
from ideas to data, working in both directions, simultaneously. First data (but
according to an idea, a hypothesis to test, a direction to look), from which
more ideas, then more tests, more ideas, and so on. This is induction and
deduction, simultaneously, in parallel and in sequence -- a union and
interpenetration of opposites, out of which comes the growth and development of
scientific ideas." [Harry
Nielsen, a Woods and Grant fellow-traveller. Bold emphasis added.]
Whereas on another page at the same site he had this to say:
"That the quantity of matter and motion is conserved in any process is a
central and fundamental part of our knowledge of the physical world. And if
matter and motion exist now then they always have and always will exist --
not simply to the last syllable of recorded time but both before and beyond that
time, whether recorded or not. For human beings to understand the
abstraction infinity is difficult when it is so far outside of our experience
and seems to have little practical meaning. Yet the existence now of matter and
energy is the clearest evidence we have that they have always existed and
always will. If we start with the physics that we know, then we have to
conclude that the universe has no beginning, has no end, and that time is
infinite.
"But the universe is not static.
Everywhere, at all scales, from the very small to the very large, there is
change, motion and development. Galaxies, clusters of galaxies, evolve and
change. Stars and planets are born, grow and die...." [Harry
Nielsen. Bold emphases added.]
But, these universal and
infinitary conclusions can't follow from what little evidence even
modern Physics has amassed, let alone from the sub-set of which Nielsen
is aware. How could he possibly know that time is infinite, for example?
Or, that universe will never end? And, how can the following be extrapolated
beyond anything we do currently know, or could possibly know in the
future:
"And if matter and motion exist now then they always have and always will exist
-- not simply to the last syllable of recorded time but both before and beyond
that time, whether recorded or not"?
Moreover, it is little point replying that scientists do this sort of thing all
the time, since they don't shoot themselves in the foot by first saying they
will never impose their ideas on nature, as do dialecticians. And, except when
they pass a metaphysical sort of opinion in their popular work, scientists tend
to omit references to "eternity" and "infinity".
[Recall that the truth or falsity of DM-theses is not at issue here (even
if it will be later on). The main points of this Essay are (1) To expose
the glaring inconsistency between the claims made by DM-theorists not to
have imposed their ideas on nature, and the fact that they invariably proceed to
do just that, and (2) To suggest they do this because it is thoroughly
traditional to do so.]
Finally, in connection
with the first of the above quotations, it is worth noting that Nielsen's
assertion that the use of deduction and induction is a "union
and interpenetration of opposites", is itself an a priori imposition onto
logic of something that is manifestly not the case.
Deductive logic
has no opposite (in any clear sense of that word); it just has different
branches. And,
inductive logic is merely a loose form of reasoning, mainly concerning
probabilities.
Gerry Healy
The
late
Gerry Healy
was certainly no stranger to this
aprioristic tradition; in fact, if anything, he was the Dialectical
Daddy:
"Dialectical Materialists get to know
the world initially through a process of Cognition. It affects the sensory
organs, producing sensation in the form of indeterminate mental images.
"As forms of the motion and change of
the external world, these images are processed as concepts of phenomena. Upon
negation their dissolution from the positive sensation into their abstract
negative, they are negated again as the nature of semblance into positive
semblance which is the theory of knowledge of a human being. During this
interpenetration process, the images as thought forms are analysed through the
science of thought and reason which is Dialectical Logic….
"…Thus, the everlasting material
properties of thought in Dialectical Logic in self-relation between subject and
object, coincide materially with the theory of knowledge….
"The category of 'Appearance' exists
initially in the theory of knowledge as negative self-mediation. It is the
movement of antithesis apprehended in its unity before Negative semblance
interpenetrates Positive semblance, thus activating the theory of knowledge and
Appearance as a category. Law as a category is reflection of Appearance
into identity
with itself….
"…The 'whole' must be seen as an
inner force which will strive to manifest itself in external reality as
essence
which must appear. Real 'wholes' must have elements bound together
by the interaction of 'parts' and 'whole'. Since the 'parts' and 'whole' are
constantly changing, the 'whole' as such can never be a sum total of its
'parts'. It is instead the sum total and unity of opposites in constant change,
which are simultaneously not only single 'wholes' but many 'wholes'. Thus
'wholes' change into 'parts' and 'parts' into 'wholes'." [Healy
(1982), pp.1-3, 57-58. Bold emphases in the original; italic emphases
added. Recall that these articles originally appeared in Newsline, the
daily paper of the old
WRP!]
"In his book 'In Defence of Marxism'
Trotsky emphasised that Hegel in 'Logic' 'established a series of laws', amongst
them 'development through contradiction'....
"We reproduce for the benefit of the
anti-Hegel, Marx, Engels, Lenin and Trotsky brigade the following quotations on
contradiction....
[There then follows a series of
quotations from Lenin, but no data. That should put this 'brigade' in their
place! -- RL]
"Contradiction, therefore, cannot be
regarded as an 'empty word form' or a 'subjective' external impression, because
it is contained within the very essence of all material objects and
processes. It is the dialectical unity of external and internal contradiction.
Thus the infinite self-movement of matter is contradictory.
"...The development of Contradiction
in the essence of objects manifests itself as IDENTITY of the infinite
source of sensation in the external world." [Healy (1990), pp.7-8. Emphases and
capitalisation in the original. Parts of this can be found
here.]
It
is, therefore, a marvel that Healy managed to achieve so much in his life,
having surely spent most of it examining every atom of matter in the entire
universe, as well as every single human mind, in order to confirm these
startling results.
Readers will no doubt note how Healy 'derives' more than his fair share of
universalist conclusions -- not from nature --, but from Lenin and Trotsky's
references to Hegel! The fact that he proceeds as if this were the most
natural thing in the world indicates how deep traditional thought-forms had
seeped into Healy's ultra-sectarian brain. This is no accident; the connection
between Healy's sectarianism, the
personality cult
set up around him, and the bullying tactics he used, will be linked (in Essay
Nine Part Two) to the
ruling-class ideas that dominate the thought of dialectical dinosaurs like him
--, in this case clearly compounded by the impenetrably obscure ideas he had
been cultivating for many years.
Exhibit A for the prosecution:
"The IDENTITY of the objective source of
our sensation in the 'external world' is a quantitative infinite,
law-governed process of dialectical nature, human society (the class struggle)
and thought.
"Its self-related negation into
qualitative
finite DIFFERENCE in Subjective thought as a 'particular' or 'part' is the
interpenetration of opposites (Object into subject). The 'antithesis' is the
unity of negative infinity (IDENTITY) into finite (DIFFERENCE) and is a
negative with a positive image, which as a result of the first negation contains
contradiction. The 'antithesis' whose unity of negative and positive is the
essence of 'something' whose source is in the external world.
"...OTHER to OTHER is infinity to
infinity or IDENTITY to IDENTITY, with self-related Qualitative finite
Difference omitted, or incorporated into an eclectic 'unity.'
"'Speculative thought' is prepared to
consider the 'infinite' as a 'Unity' with the finite but ignores their
inseparable self-related connection.
"....As a new unity of opposites
consisting of a variety of 'parts' builds up, 'the regressive, rearward
confirmation of the beginning' 'and its progressive further determination
coincide and are the same'. A new 'whole' consisting of the new parts as a unity
of opposites is ready to appear in the form of 'Essence-in-Existence'. [Ibid.,
pp.18-20. Emphasis and capitalisation in the original. Again, parts of this can
be found
here.]
Once
more, this represents only a tiny fraction of similar dogmatic and a
priori passages in Healy's work; if every such passage had been quoted, this
Essay would have been half as long again. [On this, see
Appendix Four.]
It
can only be hoped that there is a 'next life', and that it affords the
indominatible Healy sufficient time to try to scrape together enough evidence to
prove that "negative infinity" is indeed "IDENTITY" -- with or without the use
of capital letters.
I
have been unable to find a clear statement in Healy's writings to the effect
that he felt there was some sort of need to gather evidence in support of truly
impressive
Dialectical-Superscience like this, but because he was a mega-OT
it is reasonably certain that he must at least have paid lip-service to this
minimal scientific ideal at some point, in view of Trotsky's
gesture
in that direction. Be this as it may, Healy's devotion to the scientific method
(aimed perhaps at confirming the radically 'innovative' psychology found in the
quotation above) unfortunately stretched only as far as perusing Hegel's
Logic, Engels's AD and DN, and Lenin's PN and MEC.
[PN = Philosophical Notebooks;
MEC =
Materialism and Empirio-Criticism; AD = Anti-Dühring; DN = Dialectics of
Nature; OT = Orthodox Trotskyist.]
No
doubt, he did this extremely "carefully".
Nevertheless, after dozens of pages of quotations from Lenin, Engels and
Trotsky, Healy did write this:
"The pragmatic eclecticist preselects
abstract quotations from Marxist and transforms them into dogma." [Ibid., p.61.]
To be
frank, this is rather like the
Apostle
Paul complaining about
misogyny,
or
Exxon about
pollution.
Moreover, in an introduction to Lenin's PN, Cliff Slaughter (Healy's side-kick
until the two fell out over Healy's abuse of female comrades -- more on this in
Essay Nine Part Two) -- had this
to say (and he certainly wouldn't have published it without Healy's approval):
"Lenin lays great stress on Hegel's
insistence that Dialectics is not a master-key; a sort of set of magic
numbers by which all secrets will be revealed. It is wrong to think of
dialectical logic as something that is complete in itself and then 'applied' to
particular examples. It is not a model of interpretation to be learned, then
fitted on to reality from the outside; the task is rather to uncover the law
of development of the reality itself." [Cliff Slaughter, quoted from
here. Bold emphasis added.]
Apparently, just as he failed to notice Healy's long-term sex abuse, Slaughter
also failed to spot Healy's, Lenin's and Trotsky's apriorism.
Amadeo Bordiga
In
his 1951 article 'On the Dialectical Method' we find Bordiga giving lip-service
to the usual, seemingly modest disclaimers we have come to expect from
DM-theorists:
"It is necessary to reject any idealist
assumptions, as well as any pretence to discover in the minds of men (or in
the mind of the author of the 'system') irrevocable rules that have precedence
over research in any field." [Quoted from
here. Minor typo corrected. Quotation marks altered to conform to the
conventions adopted at this site. Bold emphasis added.]
In
other words, the dialectic mustn't be imposed on the facts.
The
sincerity of Bordiga's disclaimer can be judged from the fact that in the
sentences surrounding the above passage (and in the very same paragraph)
we read this:
"It is therefore necessary, above all,
for Marxist militants to get to know the value of the dialectic. The
dialectic asserts that the same laws apply to both the presentation of the
natural and the historical processes.... It means recognizing, in the causal
order, the fact that the material and physical conditions for the life of man
and of society continuously determine and modify the way man thinks and feels.
But it also means seeing, in the action of groups of men in similar material
conditions, forces that influence the social situation and change it. This is
the real meaning of Marx’s determinism." [Ibid.
Bold emphases added.]
So, in the very same paragraph as he
asserts that dialecticians shouldn't put their ideas above any field of research
(i.e., they shouldn't be foisted on nature and society), Bordiga proceeds to do
the opposite.
Indeed, later in the same article we
find these rather dogmatic ideas imposed on the facts:
"Dialectics means connection, or
relation. Just as there is a relation between one thing and another, between one
event and another in the real world, so too is there a relation between the
(more or less imperfect) reflections of this real world in our thought, and
between the formulations that we employ to describe it and to store and to
practically enjoy the fruits of the knowledge that we have thereby acquired. As
a result, our way of explaining, reasoning, deducing and deriving conclusions,
can be guided and ordered by certain rules, corresponding to the appropriate
interpretation of reality. Such rules comprise the logic that guides the forms
of reasoning; and in a wider sense they comprise the dialectic that serves as a
method for connecting them with the scientific truths we have acquired....
"The dialectical method is different
from the scientific method. The latter, the stubborn legacy of the old fashioned
way of formulating thought, derived from religious concepts based on dogmatic
revelation, presents the concepts of things as immutable, absolute, eternal,
founded on a few first principles, alien to one another and having a kind of
independent life. For the dialectical method,
not only is everything in
motion, but in motion all things reciprocally influence each other, and this
also goes for their concepts, or the reflections of these things in our minds,
which are 'connected and united' (among themselves). Metaphysics proceeds by
way of antinomy, that is, by absolute terms that are opposed to one another.
These opposed terms can never mix or touch, nor can anything new emerge from
their unity that is not reduced to the simple affirmation of the presence of one
and the absence of the other and vice versa." [Ibid. Quotation marks altered to
conform to the conventions adopted at this site. Bold emphasis added.]
This is a bit rich. One minute, the
scientific method is criticised for its
"legacy [in] the old fashioned way of
formulating thought, derived from religious concepts based on dogmatic
revelation, presents the concepts of things as immutable, absolute, eternal...."
The next we are fed a set of ideas that
has come directly from the minds of
previous generations of religious mystics:
"[N]ot only is everything in motion, but
in motion all things reciprocally influence each other, and this also goes for
their concepts, or the reflections of these things in our minds, which are
'connected and united' (among themselves)...."
As
Glenn Magee notes (quoted earlier):
"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 (2008),
p.13.
Bold emphases added.
Quotation marks altered to conform to the conventions adopted at this site.]
But, how does Bordiga know that
everything is interconnected and in motion? Some things might be; indeed, most
things might be. But all? He can't possibly know this, but he is quite happy to
impose this idea on nature.
Bordiga continues:
"To provide an example, in the natural
sciences stasis is counterposed to motion: there can be no conciliation between
these two things; by virtue of the formal principle of contradiction, that which
is at rest does not move, and that which is moving is not at rest. But the
Eleatic School
under
Zeno had already exposed the fraud of such a distinction that seems so
certain: the arrow in motion, while it passes one point of its trajectory,
remains at that point, and therefore is not moving. The ship is moving with
respect to the shore, while for the passenger walking on the ship this is not
the case: the latter is motionless with respect to the shore, and is therefore
not moving. These so-called sophisms were demonstrations of the possibilities of
reconciling opposites: stasis and motion; only by breaking down motion into many
elements composed of points of time and space would it be possible for
infinitesimal mathematics and modern physics not blinded by the metaphysical
method to resolve the problems of non-rectilinear and non-uniform motion. Today
motion and stasis are considered to be relative terms, and neither absolute
movement nor absolute stasis has any meaning." [Ibid.
Links added.]
But, the Eleatics were idealists, and
Bordiga has already told us to "reject any idealist assumptions". Moreover, the
'contradictory' nature of motion can't be confirmed by observation, experiment
or any method known to the sciences (as we will discover in
Essay Five).
[Some might object that this idea
follows from a
mathematical analysis of motion, and hence from one of the methods used
by scientists. However, as I show in the above Essay, this isn't so. Readers are
directed there for more details.]
So, what is it doing here?
The answer is quite plain: Bordiga
didn't obtain this peculiar idea from the sciences but from the a priori
and dogmatic theses invented by Idealists like Zeno and Hegel -- which fact
Bordiga acknowledges, anyway:
"The introduction of the dialectic can
nonetheless be understood in two very different ways. First enunciated by the
most brilliant cosmological schools of Greek philosophy as a method to acquire
knowledge of nature that did not depend on aprioristic prejudices...."
From this it is reasonably clear that
Bordiga has a rather odd understanding of "aprioristic", since that is precisely
what Zeno's ideas were, as were those that
Heraclitus dreamt up.
Maurice Cornforth
[STD = Stalinist Dialectician; OT =
Orthodox Trotskyist.]
Inconsistent ruminations like these are not confined to OT-gurus, or, indeed,
OT-groupies. Generations of STDs have shown that they, too, are quite capable of
matching anything revolutionaries have ever tried to "foist" on nature, as
anyone foolish enough to trawl through their writings can well attest. Here are
some of the thoughts of comrade Cornforth:
"Our party philosophy, then, has a right
to lay claim to truth. For it is the only philosophy which is based on a
standpoint which demands that we should always seek to understand things just
as they are…without disguises and without fantasy….
"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….
"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 matter is always in motion, that motion is the mode of existence of
matter, so that
there can no more be matter without motion than motion without matter….
"Dialectical materialism understands the
motion of matter as comprehending all changes and processes in the universe….
"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….
"Dialectical materialism considers
the universe, not as static, not as unchanging, but as in a continual process of
development. It considers this development, not as a smooth, continuous and
unbroken process, but as a process…interrupted by breaks in continuity, by the
sudden leap from one state to another. And it seeks for the explanation, the
driving force, of this universal movement…within material processes themselves
-– in the inner contradictions, the opposite conflicting tendencies, which
are in operating in every process in nature and society….
"When we think of the properties of
things, their relationships, their modes of action and interaction, the
processes into which they enter, then we find that, generally speaking, all
these properties, relationships, interactions and processes divide into
fundamental opposites….
"As Hegel put it: 'In opposition,
the different is not confronted by any other, but by its other' (Encyclopaedia
of Philosophical Sciences: Logic, section 119)….
"The dialectical method demands
first, that we should consider things, not each by itself, but always in
their interconnections with other things….
"The employment of the Marxist
dialectical method does not mean that we apply a pre-conceived scheme and try
to make everything fit into it. No, it means that we study things as they
really are, in their interconnection and movement….
"All change has a quantitative aspect….
But quantitative change cannot go on indefinitely. At a certain point it
always leads to qualitative change; and at that critical point (or 'nodal
point', as Hegel called it) the qualitative change takes place relatively
suddenly, by a leap, as it were….
"Thus we see that quantitative changes
are transformed at a certain point into qualitative changes…. This is a
universal feature of development….
"The general conclusion [is] that
whenever a process of development takes place, with the transformation in it of
quantitative changes into qualitative changes, there is always present in
it the struggle of opposites –- of opposite tendencies, opposite forces within
the things and processes concerned….
"This struggle is not external and
accidental….
The struggle is internal and necessary, for it arises and follows from
the nature of the process as a whole. The opposite tendencies are not
independent the one of the other, but are inseparably connected as parts or
aspects of a single whole. And they operate and come into conflict on the
basis of the contradiction inherent in the process as a whole….
"Movement and change result from causes
inherent in things and processes, from internal contradictions….
"Contradiction is a universal feature
of all processes….
"The importance of the [developmental]
conception of the negation of the negation does not lie in its supposedly
expressing the necessary pattern of all development. All development takes
place through the working out of contradictions -– that is a necessary universal
law…." [Cornforth (1976), pp.14-15, 46-48, 53, 65-66, 72, 77, 82, 86, 90,
95, 117; quoting Hegel (1975), pp.172 and 160, respectively. Bold emphases
added.]
But,
how is it possible for someone not to have imposed a theory on reality
(as a "pre-conceived scheme" -- with everything made to "fit into it", as
Cornforth says) --,
if, in fact, they have done just that?
Despite the usual preliminary gestures at theoretical
modesty, Cornforth, in true form, is soon telling us that change is "not
external and accidental…[it] is internal and necessary," that "contradiction is
a universal feature of all processes," and that "all development takes place
through the working out of contradictions," which is "a necessary universal
law….", without once informing the reader from where he obtained this
information (other than copying it from Hegel, of course). But, could
there be a body of contingent evidence large enough to show that
anything in nature is necessary? Or, which is capable of
demonstrating that "all development" is the result of 'internal contradictions'?
Or even, that all change is internally-driven?
What
sort of super-duper evidence could that be?
That which was delivered to comrade
Cornforth -- perhaps, by the Archangel Gabriel, inscribed in mystic runes on
sapphire tablets by Elfin hands?
John Desmond Bernal
Historian of Science,
Herbert Butterfield,
said this of
Bernal:
"He was a big man of captivating charm
who certainly influenced hundreds of undergraduates. He was that rare creature,
a person of truly seminal ideas on a host of subjects, yet one who would never
have exercised the cumulative persistence with detail required to win a Nobel
Prize. I liked Bernal enormously." [Quoted from
here.]
Although, it has also been said (I
forget by whom) that didn't win this prestigious prize because of his fervent
Communism and the fact that
he had
already won the Order of Lenin (although it is a moot point whether he would
have accepted this prize even if he had been offered it). Be this as it may,
Bernal was without question one of the leading British scientists of the
Twentieth Century.
I will consider how Bernal's commitment
to Stalinism compromised his judgement (over such things as the work of
Lysenko --
on this, see Brown (2005)), but my concern here is to show that when he strayed
away from science into areas of Philosophy he was no less dogmatic that the
others that have been discussed in this Essay.
As usual we begin with the usual,
clichéd gesture toward the need to look for evidence and avoid a reliance on
dogmatic Philosophy:
"The central idea in Dialectical
Materialism is that of transformation. The problem is at the same time: How do
transformation occur and how can we make transformations occur? The approach
to this problem lies not in a philosophical analysis and definition of
transformation, but in an examination of all observable facts in the universe as
they are known to us from various sources, scientific and historical....
"Dialectical Materialism is not a not
a formula to be applied blindly either in the natural or human world. The
facts must first be known and the field of application delimited before it is
possible to say whether such and such a phenomenon exhibits a dialectical
movement or is part of a larger process exhibiting such a movement." [Bernal
(1935), pp.90, 109. Bold emphases added.]
Needless to say, Bernal omits this
evidence (he doesn't even tell his readers where it can be found, nor does he
try to summarise it), but instead spends most of his time looking at what
Philosophers have said about this "problem". Nevertheless, as is the case
with other DM-fans, he is quite happy to impose this theory on nature and
society in abeyance of the facts. Here are just a few examples:
"It was Engels who first attempted to
generalise this materialist inversion of the Hegelian dialectic by showing how
these unions of opposites were not confined to human society, or even to living
things, but occurred at all stages of the organisation of matter. These
oppositions are possessed of critical importance, in that they were forerunners
to the spontaneous processes of real change which go on in the universe. Here
Dialectics was pointing towards the solution of the central philosophical
problem, the problem of the origin of the new....
"The mere static existence of
opposites is, however, only the beginning of dialectic; actually opposites do
not exist statically. None of the qualities mentioned is conceivable except in
the process of movement and transformation. The relations, for instance, of
mass and energy are seen only in the violent transformations of rapidly moving
particles into light, and here again we come to one of the most positive
contributions of Dialectical Materialism -- the equivalence and
inseparability of matter and motion.... The...union of
opposites...removes the necessity for a prime mover in mechanical systems....
"The change of quantity into quality is
a second leading principle of Dialectical Materialism.... To the Dialectical
Materialist...quality, new quality, always appears just at those moments of
transition, when a system undergoing a purely quantitative change breaks down as
a result of its self-engendered contradictions.... Transformations of this
type are found all through the inorganic and organic world...." [Ibid.,
pp.99-106. Bold emphases added.]
In the above, we can see that Bernal
inadvertently acknowledges that it wasn't facts that originally drove
this theory, but Engels's extrapolation from a few trite examples (many of which
he pinched from Hegel) to a set of 'laws' that governs the entire universe for
all of time, flouting both his and Engels's disclaimers:
"Dialectical Materialism is not a not a
formula to be applied blindly either in the natural or human world." [Ibid.,
p.109.]
"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. Bold emphasis added.]
And, far from solving the
'problem of the new', declaring that novelty simply 'emerges' at certain points
as a result of a mere increase in quantity is no explanation at all. We aren't
told how or
why novelty arises (and, as we will see
here,
if DM were true, it couldn't arise), we are just told it does.
In which case, this supposed 'problem'
remains
unsolved.
Ira Gollobin
Now,
we turn to what is arguably the best book that has ever been written about
'orthodox' DM as such -- GOD --, which is itself a rather wordy version of
Baghavan (1987), and an up-market version of Woods and Grant (1995) --
minus the snide remarks about
FL, of course.
[GOD =
Gollobin's Dialectics; i.e.,
Gollobin (1986).]
Having said that, the author of GOD makes all the usual moves, readily imposing
dialectics on nature while failing to ask of his 'theory' the sorts of questions
raised at this site. Indeed, as far as can be ascertained, Gollobin doesn't even
bother to cover his rear and argue that DM must grow from a patient examination
of the evidence. This is up-front apriorism then, straight out of the
starting blocks!
However, a few weeks after writing the above, however, I discovered this
comment:
"'Not a single principle of dialectics
can be converted into an abstract schema from which, by purely logical means, it
would be possible to infer the answer to concrete questions. These principles
are a guide to activity and scientific research, not a dogma.'" [Gollobin
(1986), p.409, quoting the Soviet Encyclopedia.]
And
several pages after that he even quotes Engels:
"And finally, to me there could be no
question of building the laws of dialectics into nature, but of discovering
them in it and evolving them from it...." [Engels
(1976), p.13, quoted in Gollobin (1986), p.414. Bold emphasis added.]
Without a hint of irony,
Gollobin then proceeds to
quote a passage from Engels where the latter does the opposite of what he has
just said!
"Nature is the proof of dialectics, and
it must be said for modern science that it has furnished this proof with very
rich materials increasing daily, and thus has shown that, in the last resort,
nature works dialectically and not metaphysically." [Engels
(1976), p.28, quoted in Gollobin (1986), p.414. Bold emphasis added.]
Hence, it is quite clear that Gollobin is either blind to the fact that Engels
imposed this view on nature, or he is being deliberately disingenuous. Once
more, how could Engels possibly have known that nature works dialectically --
and not metaphysically, say, in parts of the universe that the scientists of his
day hadn't studied (let alone even knew existed)? As should be clear, he
couldn't possibly have known this, but he was still quite happy to "build" this
view into nature.
And,
as we are about to see, Gollobin is no less eager to do the same.
Oddly
enough, much of the 'evidence' that GOD lists in support of the many things it
alleges comes from
Piaget (whom Gollobin seems to think is an authority on everything
and anything), or from earlier DM-classicists (particularly Engels, Lenin
and Mao), whom he also quotes in place of scientific data, as if their word
were law -- and it must be said, in direct contradiction to this clear
statement of Mao's:
"Our comrades must understand that we
study Marxism-Leninism not for display, nor because there is any mystery about
it, but solely because it is the science which leads the revolutionary cause of
the proletariat to victory. Even now, there are not a few people who still
regard odd quotations from Marxist-Leninist works as a ready-made panacea which,
once acquired, can easily cure all maladies. These people show childish
ignorance, and we should enlighten them. It is precisely such ignorant people
who take Marxism-Leninism as a religious dogma." [Mao (1965b),
p.42. Bold emphases added.]
Which, in view of the way that 'Mao-Tse-Tung Thought' is quoted by Maoists,
isn't all that surprising.
Figure Four:
Incontrovertible Proof That Maoism Isn't A Quasi-Religious Dogma
GOD
also is in the habit of classifying each DM-thesis as a genuine part of the
"scientific view" of reality, failing to note that science is based on hard
evidence, primary data -- and container loads of it, too --, but not solely
on quotations from non-experts, nor even on those lifted from the
writings of the dialectical classics.
In
fact, for Gollobin -- just like Baghavan and Woods and Grant -- it seems that if
something merely appears to confirm DM, then into the pot it goes, no
matter where it came from, or how tenuous the support it actually lends the
'theory'.
Nevertheless, it isn't my aim in this Essay to discuss the countless errors GOD
contains (easily far more than there are pages, and only slightly less than
there are paragraphs), but to expose yet again the traditional, a priori
style of reasoning found among the DM-faithful.
[However, in a later Essay (which will be focussed solely on GOD) I will respond
to many of the things asserted in that work -- until then, see
here.]
Once
more, had every aprioristic passage from GOD been included, this Essay
would have been tens of thousands of words longer than it already is (no
exaggeration). Hence, I have confined the following selection to a handful
of randomly chosen quotations. Here are a few such (which themselves show signs
they have been lifted from Mao; on that see
here):
"Opposites are not only inseparably
conjoined, but at any instant one of the opposites comes to the fore. In their
mutual relations, one opposite plays the principle role and its other the
secondary role." [Gollobin (1986), p.120.]
How
does Gollobin know so much about all opposites (he must mean all
opposites, or the above would make little sense)? Well, dear reader, you can
search through his book in vain to find the answer to that one.
It
seems he knows it simply because Mao said it.
The
watery thin 'evidence' that GOD offers to illustrate
this thesis is coloured by other Mao-isms, and can easily be re-interpreted
otherwise so that they fail to support Gollobin's contentions. But, even if
things were exactly as either GOD or Mao says, the two
examples Gollobin quoted -- in fact they were taken from cellular biology and US
history; cf., p.123 -- would hardly constitute universal proof of the above.
But, if Mao (or GOD) has spoken, who are we to argue?
[And,
since neither Hegel, Marx, Engels, Plekhanov nor Lenin mentioned such
contradictions (i.e., "principle" and "secondary"), that must make the author
of GOD -- and Mao -- "Revisionists"!]
"Contradictions not only have very
general features, true for any time or part of the universe (e.g., the
absoluteness of conflict), but also special, particular features...." [Ibid.,
p.131. Bold emphasis added.]
This
passage sits right under the sub-heading: "Scientific Views". Impartial readers
should, I suggest, contact the publishers and ask them if this is a misprint,
and whether the original title actually read "Dogmatic Views".
Does
GOD offer the reader any evidence that
contradictions inhabit all of reality,
for all of space and time?
Are you serious?
"Dialectics as a whole, its totality,
comprises two overall parts: the dialectics of the object (the very general
aspects of the universe -- aspects present in nature, society, and thought),
and the dialectics of the subject....
"The dialectics of the object includes
laws and categories present in all processes, in all things -- nature,
society and thought. As regards the presence of these laws and categories,
humans are like the rest of the universe." [Ibid., p.400. Bold emphases
added.]
Dialectical Dogma, once
more?
Imposed on the world?
If you think so, you clearly do not
'understand' dialectics!
"Dialectical materialism as a whole is a
synthesis of syntheses, a peak from which to take an overview of the historic
ascent of consciousness to knowledge of very general aspects of the cosmos,
including consciousness itself. The unity of the world is absolute in that all
things objectively exist...." [Ibid., p.419. Bold emphasis added.]
From
this, it seems that GOD has the merit of being both honest and thoroughly
traditional all in one go (in that it openly admits the semi-divine status
of DM).
With
respect to "sameness and difference", GOD had this to say:
"No two things are completely alike, not
matter how seemingly identical, whether they are leaves on a tree, blades of
grass, fingerprints, or any other thing....
"Sameness and difference do not simply
subsist side by side in mere conjunction. They cannot exist apart from each
other....
Every affirmation of a thing's features is simultaneously a denial a denial
of its possession of other features." [Ibid., pp.92-93. Bold emphases
added.]
The
'evidence' that Gollobin offers in support of this latest a priori claim
amounts to no more than a few trite examples drawn from nature, allied with a
quote from
Leibniz
(which, in fact, merely expresses Leibniz's own a priori dogmatic claim
about identicals and the rationality of 'God')!
That's it! On this 'basis',
Mickey Mouse Science
like this can safely reveal to us truths about everything in existence, for all
of space and time!
Unfortunately,
however, for Gollobin, as we have
seen, scientists have, it
seems, found many identicals in nature -- and
countless trillions of them in every cubic millimetre of matter. [On this,
see
here (this links to a PDF),
here
and
here.]
Returning to the claim made in the second paragraph above:
"Sameness and difference do not simply
subsist side by side in mere conjunction. They cannot exist apart from each
other....
Every affirmation of a thing's features is simultaneously a denial a denial
of its possession of other features." [Ibid., pp.92-93. Bold emphases
added.]
This
is no less a priori; from an alleged logical principle, GOD (following
Hegel) attempts to derive a universal thesis about "sameness" and
"difference" (which, naturally, have to be
nominalised for this trick to
work), true everywhere and everywhen.
This
principle (supposedly derived from
Spinoza), which I
later call "Spinoza's
Greedy Principle" [SGP], isn't the least bit logical, nor is it at all reliable.
[More on that later.] But, even if it were completely trustworthy, how is this
not an example of "building" dialectics into nature? [Irony intended.]
And
there is more:
"At the
dawn of bourgeois society, proof of the
heliocentric theory
vitiated the concept of an earth-centred closed universe. Thereafter, Newton's
laws inter-related the movement of celestial bodies;
Mayer and
Joule
formulated the general principles governing the transformation of kinds of
energy from one form into another;
Mendeleyev discerned a system determining the linkages between chemical
elements, the
periodic
table; Darwin found certain ordered relationships between species; and
Einstein's theories of special and general relativity disclosed certain
basic connections of matter, energy, space and time....
"These scientific advances, and many
more,
demonstrate that all things are connected with others and that nothing exists
completely sealed off, unaffected by other things...." [Ibid., p.95. Bold
emphasis added.]
As we
will see in Essay Eleven Parts
One and
Two, dogmatic attempts like
this to "build" dialectical theses into nature (on the supposed back of certain
advances in the sciences) can't succeed. We shall also see that this a priori
approach to reality has also been peddled by
countless mystics down the
ages,
who themselves hit upon this idea before there was any evidence at all.
Naturally, just like contemporary dialecticians (such as Gollobin), they were
quite happy to "build" this dogma into nature.
Paul McGarr
From
the UK-SWP, this is how Paul McGarr summed things up:
"Nature is historical at every level.
No aspect of nature simply exists: it has a history, it comes into being,
changes and develops, is transformed, and, finally, ceases to exist. Aspects
of nature may appear to be fixed, stable, in a state of equilibrium for a
shorter or longer time, but none is permanently so….
"…Engels was right to see the
interconnectedness of different aspects of nature…. Parts only have a full
meaning in relation to the whole….
"Engels' arguments about quantitative
change giving rise at certain points to qualitative transformations are
generally correct. In every field of science, every aspect of nature, one cannot
but be struck by precisely this process….
"Throughout nature it seems that
things which appear to have any persistence, any stability, for a greater or
shorter time, are the result of a temporary dynamic balance between opposing or
contradictory tendencies. This is as true of simple physical objects like
atoms as of living organisms…." [McGarr (1994),
pp.173-75. Bold emphases added.]
Admittedly, McGarr's comments are far more tentative and measured than is
usually the case with DM-fans (his approach is in fact reminiscent of
Conze's, noted earlier); like other
dialecticians he stresses the need to check such claims against reality.
However, he is just as eager as other dialecticians are to impose dialectics on
reality. Hence, no qualification at all was attached to the following:
"Nature is historical at every level.
No aspect of nature simply exists: it has a history, it comes into being,
changes and develops, is transformed, and, finally, ceases to exist. Aspects
of nature may appear to be fixed, stable, in a state of equilibrium for a
shorter or longer time, but none is permanently so…." [Ibid., p.173. Bold
emphases added.]
At
this point, it is important to stress, once again, that the
truth or falsehood of any or all of the above assertions isn't being
questioned here -- only the inconsistent way that the dialectical method
is depicted by DM-authors.
However,
as we have
seen, McGarr's claims about permanence are now believed to be false.
John Molyneux
John
Molyneux has been imposing the same dogmatic 'dialectical' theses on nature and
society for more than a generation (irony intended), despite this having been
pointed out to him many times.
Back
in the late 1980s, Molyneux wrote an excellent book that explained revolutionary
socialism in simple and easy to understand language -- i.e., Molyneux (1987).
Unfortunately, he also added a brief and
dogmatic account of DM:
"Dialectics is the logic of change, of
evolution, of development. Its starting point is the idea (and the fact) that
everything changes and is involved in an on-going process of coming into being
and ceasing to be....
"Dialectics, however, insists that
nothing is fixed or lasts forever...
"This brings us to the second
fundamental proposition of dialectics. This is that social change occurs
through internal contradiction, through the struggle of opposites....
"A third
proposition of dialectics is that quantitative changes become qualitative
ones." [Molyneux (1987), pp.49-51. Bold emphases added.]
However, despite being told that everything changes, this theory seems to
remain fixed in Platonic heaven; nearly thirty years later we find Molyneux
still trying to sell his readers the same dogmatic ideas
(at his blog and then in his latest book).
First
Molyneux disarms the reader in the time-honoured
fashion:
"Dialectics reflects and expresses the logic of natural and social change but it
is not a magic key to history. In itself dialectics cannot prove that any
particular change has happened or will happen. Only a dialectical analysis of
the real world can do that. And, like Marxism as a whole, dialectics is not a
dogma but a guide to action." [Quoted from
here.]
But, on the very same Internet page,
he soon dons his dogmatist's hat:
"As was said at the very beginning of
this series the starting point of Marxism was not an abstract philosophy but a
determination to change the world and an identification of and with the working
class as the agent of that change. Nevertheless from that point of departure
Marx developed, very rapidly, a coherent philosophical outlook which both built
on all previous philosophy and transcended it. This outlook is usually called
dialectical materialism (though Marx, himself, did not use the term).
"It is materialist in that it asserts
the objective existence of the material world and the priority of matter over
mind, so that, fundamentally, it is the material conditions of life that
shape human consciousness and ideas rather than ideas which determine material
conditions. But it is not at all a mechanical materialism or fatalistic
determinism which treats human history as working like clockwork towards a
predetermined outcome. Rather it is dialectical in that it deals always with
complex interactions and contradictions....
"The philosophical starting point of
dialectics is that
everything, everything in the universe, is moving and changing....
"First, every existing 'thing' or
'state' is both a unity and a conflict of opposites, i.e. it is a temporary
balance or moment of equilibrium between the forces that brought that state into
being and maintain it and the forces that will bring about its dissolution or
transformation. Second, every process of change involves an accumulation of
gradual or quantitative changes within an existing state, which at a certain
point turn into a qualitative change in which the nature of that state is
transformed. Third, in every process of change the 'negative' or
revolutionary force which brings about the change is itself transformed or
'negated' so that a new state, a new unity of opposites, emerges (Engels
called this 'the negation of the negation')." [Ibid.
Bold emphases added.]
We
find similar statements in his recent book:
"Materialism in philosophy involved
commitment to the following propositions:
"-- The material world
exists.
"-- The material world exists
independently of human consciousness.
"-- Real, if not total and
absolute knowledge of the world is possible.
"-- Human beings are part of
nature, albeit a distinct part.
"-- The material world does
not derive from human thought; human thought derives from the material world....
"Let us start with the question of
change. At the heart of dialectics is the proposition that everything
changes. 'Everything' here refers to everything in the universe from the
totality of the universe itself to the tiniest particle. For a start everything
is in motion, the most basic form of change, but everything is also developing,
altering, evolving, coming into being or passing out of being. [The evidence
is what? -- RL] As Bob Dylan once put it 'Who isn't busy being born, is busy
dying.'...
"...[D]ialectics insists
that nothing lasts forever, and that everything, day by day, second by second,
is involved in a process of constant change.
"If anything (a grain of sand, a
mountain, a tree, a fish, a human, a society) gives the appearance of stability
and permanence it is because it constitutes a particular moment in a longer
process of change. That moment constitutes a particular balance between forces
within it working for and against change -- a unity of opposites...
"No phenomenon or incident...can be
properly understood or analysed in isolation. It is always necessary to see it
in its context and its interrelations....
"'Truth is concrete,' Lenin
(following Hegel) used to say.... Yes every individual event must be related to
the whole but it does not thereby lose its specificity....
"How does one thing become something
else?... In each case a process occurs in which there is a gradual
accumulation of quantitative changes within a given totality up to a point where
there is a sudden or relatively sudden transformation in the nature of the
totality as a whole....
"The transformation of quantitative into
qualitative change...presupposes that the object or given totality which changes
is a unity of opposites -- a (temporary) balance of conflicting forces. This
applies to everything from a single atom...to the US New World Order....
"The
unity (coincidence, identity, equal action) of opposites is conditional,
temporary, transitional, relative. The struggle of mutually exclusive
opposites is absolute, just as motion and development are absolute....
[Molyneux is here paraphrasing Lenin's formulation, almost word-for-word --
RL.]" [Molyneux (2012), pp.32-33; 40-52. Quotation marks altered to conform to the
conventions adopted at this site; bold emphases added.]
Although Molyneux
gestures in the direction of providing some sort of proof (asserting, for
example, that modern science substantiates sweeping statements like these), what
he actually offers his readers is a very thin and watery gruel -- of the sort
which amply merits the epithet I have given it:
Mickey Mouse Science.
It is
worth reminding readers yet again of the following comment (quoted
from the Preface):
Moreover..., in what follows the truth
or falsity of these dogmatic passages is not the main issue...,
merely whether
DM-theorists are consistent in their claim not to have imposed them on reality.
However, their truth or falsity will
be examined in the rest of this site -- especially
here.
Chris Nineham
In a
recent book on the work of Marxist Philosopher,
György
Lukács, ex-SWP honcho, Chris Nineham, had this to say:
"Despite the common caricatures of
Marxism, it is precisely not a theory in which thought is entirely dependent on
a pre-existing, separate 'being'. Thought and being are part of a totality, but
a differentiated, dialectical totality. If thought and being were identical, we
would be back to the notion of an automatic, predetermined history." [Nineham
(2010), p.34.]
Unfortunately, Nineham offers his readers no argument or evidence to show that
(1) there is such a thing (or process) as 'being', let alone a disembodied
entity called "thought", that (2) they are related in any way, that (3)
there exists something called the "Totality" (or even what it actually is),
nor yet that (4) 'thought' and 'being' form all or part of it. Nevertheless, and
just like other DM-fans (and
Traditional Philosophers), he is happy to assert it dogmatically. [Otherwise
known as "imposing it on the facts".]
Levins And Lewontin
The above two scientists aren't above
imposing DM on nature, either:
"What characterises the dialectical
world, in all its aspects, as we have described it is that it is constantly in
motion. Constants become variables, causes become effects, and systems
develop, destroying the conditions that gave rise to them. Even elements that
appear to be stable are in a dynamic equilibrium of forces that can suddenly
become unbalanced, as when a grey lump of metal of a critical size becomes a
fireball brighter than a thousand suns....
"This appearance of opposing forces has
given rise to the most debated and difficult, yet the most central, concept in
dialectical thought, the principle of contradiction.... For us, contradiction
is not only epistemic and political, but ontological in the broadest sense.
Contradictions between forces are everywhere in nature, not only in human
social institutions.... [O]pposing forces lie at the basis of the evolving
physical and biological world.
"Things change because of the action of
opposing forces on them, and things are the way they are because of the
temporary balance of opposing forces....
"The dialectical view insists that
persistence and equilibrium are not the natural state of things but require
explanation, which must be sought in the actions of the opposing forces....
"The opposing forces are seen as
contradictory in the sense that each taken separately would have opposite
effects, and their joint action may be different from the results of either
acting alone.... However, the principle that all things are internally
heterogeneous directs our attention to the opposing processes at work within
the object....
"...Thus systems are either
self-negating (state A leads to some state not-A) or depend for their
persistence on self-negating processes.
"We see contradiction first of all as
self-negation. From this perspective it is not too different from logical
contradiction. In formal logic process is usually replaced by static
set-structural relations, and the dynamic of 'A leads to B' is replaced by 'A
implies B'. But all real reasoning is takes place in time, and the classical
logical paradoxes can be seen as A leads to not-A leads to A, and so on....
"As against the alienated world view
that objects are isolated until proven otherwise, for us the simplest
assumption is that things are connected...." [Levins and Lewontin (1985),
pp.279-87. Bold emphases alone added. Spelling altered to conform to UK
English.]
As usual, these two make a gesture at
providing adequate supporting evidence, but the level of sophistication and
detail they give would result in an F grade had it been reproduced in a paper
submitted by one of their undergraduate students, let alone a postgraduate
researcher. I have called this approach to proof,
Mickey Mouse Science.
All DM-fans indulge in it.
Levins and Lewontin also have the cheek
to quote Engels:
"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. Quoted in Levins and Lewontin (1995), p.279. However, these
two mistakenly attribute this passage to Engels's Dialectics of Nature.]
And yet they tell us on the very next
page:
"The dialectical view insists
that persistence and equilibrium are not the natural state of things but require
explanation, which must be sought in the actions of the opposing
forces...." [Levins and Lewontin, op cit., p.280. Bold added.]
Naturally, a "must" and an "insistence" differ from an "imposition" in name
alone.
The
other things they say in the section of their book devoted to feedback systems
in living organisms (not quoted) have been dealt with in Essay Seven Part One (here
and here),
where their status as 'dialectical' systems/processes has been shown to be no
less misguided (which, of course, means that this idea has also been imposed
on nature). We have also seen in Essay Eight
Part Two that there is no way that opposing forces can be interpreted as
'dialectical contradictions' (even if we knew what the latter were!).
Finally, what these two have to say about
FL would result in
them being failed from the introductory class to Logic 101. [More
on this in Essay Four
Part One.]
I
have also highlighted Richard Levins's 'errors of logic' (which originally
appeared in an e-mail exchange with me),
here.
Terry Button
Comrade Button is clearly a Dogma-Meister of the first order (having caught this
condition, it seems, from Gerry Healy):
"All that exists, all that is in
being, can be divided into two categories, the objective material world, and the
world of thought. The question then arises, how do these two things, these
two sides of the totality of Being, relate to each other? In general, there are
only two possible answers to this question, and from the very beginning
philosophers have been divided into two opposing camps, depending on which of
these they took to be correct.
"These two opposing points of view are
materialism, which holds that the objective material world, (matter), exists
independently of man, and that human thought, consciousness, is a reflection of
it, and idealism, which holds that human consciousness exists independently of
the objective material world, and all that apparently exists is somehow a
creation of thought. The battle between these two diametrically opposed
points of view rages to this day. The reason for this antagonism is that each of
the two philosophies represents, or serves, a particular class
interest. Idealism serves the interests of the capitalist ruling class, while
materialism serves the interest of the working class. Marxism is a materialist
philosophy....
"Since materialism is the practice of
allowing the external world of matter to determine thought, and since matter
is in constant motion, then it follows that to be truly materialistic
thought must correctly reflect this motion. We have explained that Marxism is
materialism, but it is materialism of a particular kind, materialism guided by
dialectical logic, or dialectical materialism. The dialectical method
proceeds by grasping everything in relation to its own opposite, how these
opposites relate, and how the conflict between them causes them to change and
develop.
"All progress takes place through the
unity, conflict, interpenetration, and transformation of opposites.
"We must weigh each word carefully. What
precisely is meant by unity? A study of the nature of matter shows that all
the matter in the universe is inter-connected in one way or another, no matter
how distantly, and a material thing which is in direct connection with another
thing has an effect on that with which it is connected and is in turn affected
by it. This is all that it meant by 'opposites' in this context. Any two
things may come into proximity or physical contact, but for any scientific
consideration what is important is how the two things relate, and to grasp this
we must consider the two things in their motion and change, and how, through
this motion and change, they affect each other. For dialectics then, unity
implies a living, inter-relating connection between opposites. Some forms of
being have their own special opposites from which they can never be separated,
and these are generally opposites of extremes such as black and white, positive
and negative. Such opposites are united by their very opposition -- it would be
impossible to have the concept of positive at all in the absence of the concept
of negative. Each is necessary to the other. But this unity is at the same time
conflict, because each excludes the other -- each is what it is only because it
is not the other. Such opposites as these are called Self-related Opposites.
"Paradoxical as it may seem, opposites
become identical precisely because they start off different. It is clear that
a thing must be different to that which it affects and changes or no change
could take place at all. That which is changed resists, hence the
changing process appears as a struggle of opposites, conflict. The
concept of inter-penetration expresses the way in which each of the opposites in
conflict imposes its qualities on the other, forcing it to become alike,
identical. The matter of precisely how opposites inter-penetrate to the
point of transformation is dealt with in the second law, which is:-
"All progress takes place through the
transformation of quantity into quality and vice versa.
"The transformation of quantity into
quality and vice versa is an obvious case of things being transformed into their
opposites, and to find how they are transformed we must first discover how, by a
process of interpenetration, they become identical. How exactly does
quantity become identical with quality? The first thing we note is that it is
not even possible to speak of one in isolation from the other. In our
example from Engels we see that he does not speak of quantity as an abstraction,
but of a quantity of a quality; a quantity of matter or a quantity of energy of
some kind, and the quantitative change of quality is expressed in the concept of
Alteration. Let us take as an example a quality such as a colour, say blue. If
we leave a dark blue object out in the sunlight it will fade and become light
blue -- but it is still blue. Alteration is change of quality within the limits
of that quality. If we leave the object in the sunlight long enough it will
exceed the limits of the quality in question, the colour blue in this case, and
become white. At the moment of qualitative transformation, the infinitely
small quantity of blue is the same as the quality white. Quantity and
quality find a moment of identity, and that is the leap from one quality to
another. We see countless examples of this. By increasing the quantity of
heat in a body of water the transformation to a new quality, from liquid to
steam, suddenly occurs at a definite temperature at a given pressure;
progressively adding weight to one side of a balance causes it to tip, and so
on. So this is what we mean by the transformation of quantity into quality. The
reverse process, the transformation of quality into quantity, is best understood
by a study of the third law, which is:-
"The law of the negation of the
negation.
"This law brings the other two into a
unity and expresses the whole nature of the dialectical motion of matter, so
that it must be explained at greater length, and in doing so we must introduce
more terms and concepts which are necessary to the practice of dialectical
logic.
"To understand the concept of Negation
we must start from the twin concepts of Quantity and Quality. If a thing or
substance exists then it is self-evident that it has some Quality which
identifies it and that there is a Quantity of it, and negation simply means
cancellation, rendering null. Negation, therefore, must be understood
in a double sense, in the sense of Quantitative negation, and in the sense of
Qualitative negation. Clearly quantitative change is a continuous and more or
less gradual process over a period of time, and if we take two consecutive
moments of time, then the first quantity is replaced, rendered null, or
'negated' by the second. The first quantity no longer exists and the second has
come into being. This latter must also be said of Quality, but there is a
difference. Whereas quantitative change is a gradual and continuous process, a
thing either has a particular Quality or it has not. Qualitative
change, then, can only be conceived as a sudden leap, from one Quality to
another. This is apparent from the above explanation of the Second Law where
we spoke of transformation rather than negation, but clearly each implies the
other.
"We begin with the consideration of the
unity and conflict of opposites. Each opposite affects the other in some way,
and in turn is affected by it. We may say that each Reflects the other. The
dominating opposite determines the outcome of the motion involved, so we refer
to this one as Cause and the way it changes the other as Effect. There is
Difference between the two opposites, and it is helpful to consider this
Difference from the point of view of one side, the affected side. The opposite
with which it is in unity and conflict is a separate thing outside it, so we
refer to the Difference between them as External Difference, and since the two
opposites are different each one has its own Identity. We have said that the
affected opposite, (Effect), Reflects the other, dominant opposite,
(Cause). This means that the External Difference is reflected within the
affected side, and changes it. This is Quantitative change. The affected side
becomes, through time, more and more like its opposite, and correspondingly less
and less like itself, and for this reason we tend to regard Cause as Positive
and Effect as Negative. In every moment then, the affected opposite reflects
the External difference internally, and this is its own Internal Difference...."
[Terry
Button. Bold emphases added. Formatting and quotation marks altered to
conform to the conventions adopted at this site.]
[This dogma-fest continues for
some time at the above link. Masochists are encouraged to read all of it.]
Attentive readers will no doubt note
that comrade Button supplies very little evidence in support of these hyper-bold
theses -- that is, over-and-above referring us to the usual trite examples we
have come to expect from DM-clones. This comrade is also a big fan of
Gerry Healy, which explains his
fondness for obscure Hegel-speak.
On another page (linked to a site run by
a splinter group that formed out of the wreckage created by the
disintegration of the old WRP), he even quotes Trotsky:
"The dialectic is not a master key for
all questions. It does not replace concrete scientific analysis. But it directs
this analysis along the correct road, securing it against sterile wanderings in
the desert of subjectivism and scholasticism." [Quoted from
here.]
Which only goes to show that DM-fans
do
have a sense of humour.
No Proof Required
--
CLR James
According to James, to ask for any sort of proof of the 'dialectic' is
misguided:
"Hegel defines the principle of
Contradiction as follows:
'Contradiction is the root of all movement and life, and it is only in so far as
it contains a contradiction that anything moves and has impulse and activity.'
[Hegel (1999),
p.439, §956.]
"The first thing to note is that
Hegel makes little attempt to prove this. A few lines later he says:
'With regard to the assertion that
contradiction does not exist, that it is non-existent, we may disregard this
statement.'
"We here meet one of the most important
principles of the dialectical logic, and one that has been consistently
misunderstood, vilified or lied about. Dialectic for Hegel was a strictly
scientific method. He might speak of inevitable laws, but he insists from the
beginning that the proof of dialectic as scientific method is that the laws
prove their correspondence with reality. Marx's dialectic is of the same
character. Thus he excluded what later became The Critique of Political
Economy from Capital because it took for granted what only the
detailed argument and logical development of Capital could prove. Still
more specifically, in his famous letter to Kugelmann on the theory of value, he
ridiculed the idea of having to 'prove' the labour theory of value. If the
labour theory of value proved to be the means whereby the real relations of
bourgeois society could be demonstrated in their movement, where they came from,
what they were, and where they were going, that was the proof of the theory.
Neither Hegel nor Marx understood any other scientific proof.
"To ask for some proof of the laws,
as Burnham implied, or to prove them 'wrong' as Sidney Hook tried to do, this
is to misconceive dialectical logic entirely. Hegel complicated the question
by his search for a completely closed system embracing all aspects of the
universe; this no Marxist ever did. The frantic shrieks that Marx's dialectic is
some sort of religion or teleological construction, proving inevitably the
victory of socialism, spring usually from men who are frantically defending the
inevitability of bourgeois democracy against the proletarian revolution." [James
(1947), quoted from
here. Bold emphases alone added. Quotation marks altered to conform to the
conventions adopted at this site.]
[We
have already seen other
DM-fans argue that an appeal to empirical evidence is beneath them.]
This
is rather odd. One minute we are being told that the "laws" of the dialectic
must "correspond with reality", and that this is the only "proof" Marx and Hegel
"understood". The next we are being told that to ask for a proof is
"misconceived".
Anyway, as we have seen, James is wrong when he tells us that no Marxist has
ever searched for a "completely closed system embracing all aspects of the
universe". Engels would disagree:
"And
so, what is the negation of the negation? An extremely general -- and for this
reason extremely far-reaching and important -- law of development of nature,
history, and thought; a law which, as we have seen, holds good in the animal and
plant kingdoms, in geology, in mathematics, in history and in philosophy --
a law which even Herr Dühring, in spite of all his stubborn resistance, has
unwittingly and in his own way to follow.... Dialectics, however, is nothing
more than the science of the general laws of motion and development of nature,
human society and thought." [Engels (1976),
pp.179-80.
Bold emphases added.]
As,
indeed, would many of the other DM-theorists cited and quoted throughout this
Essay.
James
also tells us that: "the laws
of the dialectic are 'hypotheses'" (Ibid.),
but as I have already pointed out:
In
AD
Engels pointedly calls scientific theories "hypothetical" while the 'laws' of
dialectics are deemed completely universal and not the least bit provisional.
I
then listed several quotations that
support this view. Moreover, these 'laws' also look far from "hypothetical" to
other DM-theorists; here are just a few
examples of what they think:
"Dialectics requires an all-round
consideration of relationships in their concrete development…. 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)….
"[D]ialectical logic holds that 'truth'
is
always concrete, never abstract, as the late Plekhanov liked to say
after Hegel." [Lenin (1921),
pp.90, 93. Bold emphases added.]
"Flexibility, applied objectively,
i.e., reflecting the all-sidedness of the material process and its unity, is
dialectics, is the correct reflection of the eternal development of the world."
[Lenin (1961),
p.110. Bold emphasis added.]
"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.
357-58.
Bold emphases alone added.]
"[A]ll bodies change uninterruptedly
in size, weight, colour etc. They are never equal to themselves…. [T]he
axiom 'A' is equal to 'A' signifies that a thing is equal to itself if it does
not change, that is, if it does not exist…. For concepts there also exists
'tolerance' which is established not by formal logic…, but by the
dialectical logic issuing from the axiom that everything is always changing….
Hegel in his Logic established a series of laws: change of quantity into
quality, development through contradiction, conflict and form, interruption of
continuity, change of possibility into inevitability, etc…." [Trotsky
(1971),
pp.64-66. Bold emphases added.]
"…The principle of the transformation
of quantity into quality has universal significance, insofar as we view the
entire universe -- without any exception -- as a product of formation and
transformation….
"In these abstract formulas we have the
most general laws (forms) of motion, change, the transformation of the stars of
the heaven, of the earth, nature and human society.
"…Dialectics is the logic of
development. It examines the world -- completely without exception
-– not as a result of creation, of a sudden beginning, the realisation of a
plan, but as a result of motion, of transformation. Everything that is became
the way it is as a result of lawlike development." [Trotsky (1986), pp.88,
90, 96. Bold emphases added.]
Perhaps James forgot to check the meaning of "hypothesis".
In
fact, it is quite clear that for James the 'laws' of the dialectic aren't the
least bit 'hypothetical'. If they were, why would he have written the
following:
"Thus, the inevitability of socialism is
the inevitability of the negation of the negation, the third and most important
law of the dialectic....
"The philosophy of history which is
Bolshevism bases itself upon the destruction of the barbarism by the inevitable
triumph of the socialist revolution. There are even revolutionaries who
deny this. For them it is not scientific to believe in inevitability. Such a
belief implies that dialectic is a religion or mysticism. For them the
correct scientific attitude is to reserve judgement. Yet these very ones turn
out to be the mystics and the practitioners of an ill-concealed religiosity.
"If they recognise the bankruptcy of
bourgeois democracy, if they accept the need for universality in the masses, if
they recognise that barbarism is the only force that can suppress this need,
then to refuse to accept the inevitability of socialism leaves only one of two
choices. Either the inevitability of barbarism, that is to say, the acceptance
of the principle of inevitability which they have just rejected or the hope, the
faith, the belief that history will offer some way out of the impasse. This
is the denial of a philosophy of history, that is to say, the denial of a method
of thought, for which the only name is irrationalism or mysticism.
"The deniers of the inevitability of
socialism can be routed both historically and logically."
[James
(1947).
Bold emphases added.]
The
above do not look the least bit 'hypothetical'.
He even castigates those
Marxists who regard the dialectic as tentative, and who "reserve judgement"!
More
on James to follow...
Proof Already Provided -- Philip Moran
I
have just received a copy of Moran (1980); I will add some thoughts on what he
has to say in a future re-write of this Essay
Potpourri -- Mixed Bag
David DeGrood, Ifor Torbe, And Abdul
Malek
Here
is arch-dogmatist, David DeGrood:
"With Hegel dialectics began to become
self-conscious...; with Lenin dialectics becomes not only self-conscious but a
dialectics of realization in practice. The seed was present in Heraclitus...,
and the oak in Lenin. Philosophy was changing the world.
"The
unity (struggle, identity, interpenetration) of opposites reflects the dynamics
of reality, both natural and historical, and it is vital to see its
operation in today's frontiers of science and social practice...." [DeGrood
(1978), p.45. Italic emphasis in the original, bold emphasis added.]
Notice that on the basis of little or no evidence (see Essay Seven
Part One on this), DeGrood is happy to impose this theory, not just on the
universe as we now know it, but on "reality" itself.
[We
will also see (here
and here) that
not only did Lenin and the Bolsheviks not use dialectics in 1917,
they
couldn't have used it even if they had wanted to!]
Here,
too, is Ifor Torbe (formerly Lecturer in Structural Analysis at the University
of Southampton, and veteran communist), first of all disarming the unsuspecting
reader in the usual manner, quoting Engels approvingly:
"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. Bold emphasis added. I have used to on-line version here.
Quoted in Torbe (1997), p.11.]
"The mistake lies in the fact that
these laws are foisted on nature and history as laws of thought, and not deduced
from them. This is the source of the whole forced and often outrageous
treatment; the universe, willy-nilly, is made out to be arranged in accordance
with a system of thought which itself is only the product of a definite
stage of evolution of human thought....
"We all agree that in every field of
science, in natural and historical science, one must proceed from the given
facts, in natural science therefore from the various material forms of
motion of matter; that therefore in theoretical natural science too the
interconnections are not to be built into the facts but to be discovered in
them, and when discovered to be verified as far as possible by experiment."
[Engels (1954), pp.62,
47. Bold emphasis alone added. Again, I have used to on-line version here;
partially quoted in Torbe (1997), p.11.]
However, Torbe then proceeds to assert things like the following:
"It is a matter of observation that
all things change, that everything is in ceaseless motion, and that every
change, and in every motion, the laws of dialectics can be seen to be operative
(p.16)...."
"The
position is clearer for the law of the transformation of quantity into
quality.... In the physical domain of the processes of Nature
it is impossible to find a situation in which a quantifiable parameter can
increase indefinitely without a qualitative change occurring at some, usually
precisely defined, value of that parameter (p.18)...."
His
evidence?
"Water
when it is heated, boils and turns into steam.... Metals fracture, each when it
reaches its specific level of mechanical stress, and so on through a whole range
of phenomena. Everything has its specific critical limiting value (p.19)...."
[Perhaps Torbe forgot about "quantifiable parameters" like weight, speed,
distance, time and temperature. All of these can increase indefinitely without
changing into something new. A temperature of one million degrees K is still a
temperature; a distance of one billion light years is still a distance; one
trillion tonnes is still a weight; one hundred billion years is still a measure
of time.]
With
Mickey Mouse 'proof' like this one wonders why Darwin, for instance,
bothered to collect hundreds of pages of evidence in support of his theory, and
why scientists have been collecting container loads more, ever since.
Don't they know that all they needed
were a few trite and/or anecdotal examples?
To be
sure, Torbe does add the following comment:
"Far too often [the laws of dialectics]
are given an a priori status, elevated into a sort of Holy Trinity of
incomprehensibles for the uninitiated." [Ibid., p.17.]
But,
as we can see from the passages quoted above, this is precisely what Torbe
does.
And, he keeps on doing it:
"Appreciation of the oneness of
physical reality is helped also by the dialectic of the unity of opposites
(p.21)...." [Torbe (1997). Bold emphases alone added.]
The
sub-title of Torbe's book is a dead give-away, too: The Dialectics Of Reality.
Notice, it isn't The Dialectics Of Nature As We Know It Today, but The
Dialectics Of Reality. But, when will humanity ever
experience/know 'Reality' as such -- as opposed, perhaps, to
parts/segments/slices of it, at best?
Here,
too, is retired physicist, Abdul Malek, with whom I have debated this 'theory'
over at the
Guardian
discussion page; Malek posts under the pseudonym 'FutureHuman' (I refer to
him as 'Future'). I say "debated", but Malek soon gave up trying to discuss this
'theory', and simply retreated into a dogmatic sulk. Among his (highly
repetitive) a priori theses (which, true-to-form, he supports with little
or no evidence, and even less argument!) are the following:
"Opposites reside together in the
very element of a thing or a process in simultaneous unity and opposition to
each other and a resolution of this logical contradiction and conflict
provided the dynamics for change, motion, evolution, development, etc....
"One of the most important
characteristics of dialectics is that it denies any permanence or
absoluteness in any thing or process, everything is in a flux of coming into
being and passing out of existence so that change...remains the only
absolute.... [C]ontradiction (unity of opposites) in the unit of a thing or
a process is the most fundamental attribute of all existence...and
change or motion is the manifestation of that inherent contradiction....
[The only exception to this 'absolute' appears to be this 'theory' itself --
RL.]
"The universe is the dialectical
manifestation a) of matter...in eternal self-propelled motion, b) of its
infinite series of leaps, change, transformations...; c) the perpetual process
of its objects coming into being and passing out of existence mediated by
blind chance and iron necessity that is inherent in chance. This motion is
reflected in three...general laws i.e., i) inter-transformation of quality and
quantity; ii) interpenetration of the opposites; and iii) the law of the
negation of the negation that follow the dynamical and helical triads of thesis,
anti-thesis and synthesis. Matter itself appears and disappears in the void
of the infinite universe, in some elementary forms as dialectical and quantum
mechanical necessities and in accordance with the first dialectical triad
being-nothing-becoming.... [We
have already seen that the triad -- 'thesis, anti-thesis and synthesis' --
is a
Fichtean, not an Hegelian, concept -- RL.]
"For dialectical materialism...reality
is always in flux, motion, change, development and it is unstable and
inherently uncertain at quantum scale, such that an exact, fixed, definitive and
quantifiable understanding or an exhaustive description of this reality
forever is impossible. But this also is at the root of the basic dialectical
contradiction and the unity of the opposites between ontology and epistemology,
and resolves this contradiction in the endless progressive evolution of
consciousness/mind....
"Further,
gravity cannot only be an attractive force, but according to the dialectical law
of the unity of the opposites, must also possess a repulsive nature."
[Malek (2012), pp.5, 7, 12, 15, 56. Bold emphases alone added.]
In
fact,
much of comrade Malek's book
is composed of little other than dogmatic theses like these!
Terry Sullivan And Camilla Royle
I
pointed out the following in
Essay Nine Part Two:
In
view of the recent crisis that swept over the SWP, followed by its haemorrhaging
of members, one should expect Dialectical Mysticism to make a strong comeback in
UK-SWP publications. And that is exactly what we find in the shape of John
Molyneux's latest book -- The Point Is To Change It, An Introduction To
Marxist Philosophy --
alongside (1) An article in a recent edition of
Socialist Worker, and (2) Two much longer articles in International
Socialism,
Royle (2014), and
Sullivan (2015). Molyneux's book also received a favourable (and predictably
uncritical) response in
Socialist Review.
I
examined Molyneux's attempt to impose DM on nature earlier in this Essay; the
question is: do these other two SWP theorists attempt to do the same?
One
would have thought not given these closing remarks:
"Perhaps the most distinctive aspect of
my account is the contention that dialectical biology and dialectics more
generally should in part be understood as a heuristic device -- a device that
allows us to understand the world, not as a guarantee of knowledge but rather
as a useful guide to understanding." [Sullivan
(2015), p.193. Bold emphasis added.]
Sullivan also refers his readers to a passage in Anti-Dühring (which we have
also already seen):
"As Engels writes in Anti-Dühring:
'to me there could be no question of building laws of dialectics into nature,
but of discovering them in it and evolving them from it'." [Ibid.,
p.183. Quotation marks altered to conform to the conventions adopted at this
site.]
And
yet, in the very same paragraph
(in fact, in the sentence that preceded the above words), he had this to
say:
"[T]he dialectic is both
a method for coming to understand the world, that is, an epistemological
concept, and, for Marx as well as Engels, the dialectic is a claim about the
nature of the world itself, that is, an ontological claim." [Ibid.,
p.183. Bold emphasis alone added.]
According to Sullivan (who nowhere contradicts what he thinks Marx and Engels
believed), DM is an "ontological claim" about "the nature of the world itself",
not a theory about what we currently know about nature (which is but a tiny
fraction of what we'll know in (even) two or three centuries time). And yet,
Sullivan is quite happy to impose this theory on the world, and he has the cheek
to do this in the same breath as saying this is something he won't do!
If
only there were some sort of pattern here...
Incidentally, Sullivan nowhere quotes Marx to the effect that "the dialectic is
a claim about the nature of the world itself, that is, an ontological claim",
and no wonder, he has completely made it up!
Not
content with the above, he continues a few pages later:
"First, I have been arguing that
dialectics holds that the world must be understood as a constantly changing
whole driven by internal contradictions. And it is within this broader
concept that the three laws should be understood. To be clear it would be a
mistake to examine the worth or otherwise of the three laws separately from the
notions of totality, change and contradiction." [Ibid.,
p.186. Sullivan repeats this almost verbatim on the following page. Bold
emphasis added.]
But
where has this "must" suddenly come from? If, according to Engels (with whom
Sullivan at least seems to agree, even if only for a few seconds!) "there
could be no question of building laws of dialectics into nature", there can be
no "must" about it. On the other hand, if there is to be a "must", then we need
to adjust Engels's words accordingly, perhaps to: "for me there could be no question of
not building laws of dialectics into nature". That would at least have the
merit of being both more accurate and more honest.
Further 'foistings' by Sullivan include the following:
"In addition to regarding existing
phenomena as stages in a continuing process it is no less important to
consider every part as a component of a whole." [Ibid.,
p.181.]
"[T]he world must be viewed as
whole. The second is that this whole is undergoing a constant process of
change. The third is that change is the result of opposition between the
poles of contradiction." [Ibid.,
p.184.]
[I]f we are to understand the world
around us, for example, capitalism, we must begin with the totality of
social relations -- economic, political, ideological and cultural --
recognising that this totality is undergoing constant change. Further,
this process of 'total change' is a result of opposition between the poles of a
contradiction." [Ibid.,
p.184.]
"[T]he world must be viewed as a
whole that is undergoing a constant process of change as a result of
opposition between the poles of contradiction." [Ibid.,
p.186.]
"[W]e should see the three laws
as examples of patterns of dialectical change that may take place in wholes (or
totalities) undergoing change as a result of internal contradictions." [Ibid.,
p.190.]
"[T]he world must be viewed as a
whole that is undergoing a constant process of change where this change
is the result of opposition between the poles of a contradiction." [Ibid.,
p.193. In all of the above bold emphases alone added. Quotation marks
altered to conform to the conventions adopted at this site.]
[What
was that again about DM being highly repetitive?]
To be
sure, in many of the above Sullivan is summarising what he thinks are the
opinions of Marx and Engels, but it is equally clear that he agrees with what he
thinks they have to say.
Here
are several examples of Dialectical Dogmatism to be found in Royle's
article, but first the usual, almost knee-jerk reference to reasonableness:
"But taking a dogmatic
approach to dialectics was the last thing Engels intended.... This position
is also suggested by Engels's own comments on science, again in Ludwig
Feuerbach. Here he discusses the potential useful contribution of Hegel's
philosophy, from which he derived the three laws, and rejects some conservative
interpretations of Hegel. Engels states: 'The whole dogmatic content of the
Hegelian system is declared to be absolute truth, in contradiction to his
dialectical method, which dissolves all dogmatism. Thus his revolutionary side
becomes smothered beneath the overgrowth of the conservative side.'
"Here it seems he is saying
that Hegel's laws should themselves be left open to being evaluated and
reinterpreted. They are not a fixed set of rules. However, this is not to say
that he intended dialectics to be purely a method. It also seems clear that, at
least as far as Engels was concerned, ways of thinking about the world cannot be
separated from the real nature of the world we are intending to study." [Royle
(2014), pp.106-07.]
This is even though, as we have seen, Engels
was happy to impose this theory dogmatically on the facts -- and, as we have
seen with others who feign modesty, Royle is quite capable of dogmatising with
the best:
"For many theorists the
most important aspects of dialectics are change and contradiction. It allows us
to grasp the nature of a world that is constantly changing, an element
that John Molyneux highlights and deals with in his recent guide to Marxist
philosophy.
Dialectics can be called a critical
philosophy because it calls into question the idea that our world has always
remained the same and will carry on unchanged into the future. But it also
argues that change is not always gradual -- that things can progress by
leaps.... Most theories take it for granted at the outset that we can start by
looking at the world as if it is static and then try to explain any changes that
we see. For dialectical thinkers the reverse is true. Change is the default
state of the universe; it is stasis that is unusual and requires
explanation." [Ibid.,
pp.99-100.]
"[Paraphrasing David Harvey,
with whom she agrees on this:] He is effectively saying that there is no such
thing as a 'thing'. What we think of as solid objects are actually made up of
processes. Different processes can come together temporarily to produce things
but these are always transitory. Things are always in the process of being
created or destroyed -- all that is solid melts into air. In this
approach a thing could be an idea or concept or something concretely existing
like a city. Engels also argued something similar in Ludwig Feuerbach and
the End of Classical German Philosophy: 'The world is not to be
comprehended as a complex of ready-made things, but as a complex of
processes, in which the things…go through an uninterrupted change of coming
into being and passing away'.
"For Marx, and for many of
his followers, dialectics is about contradiction as well as change. The two are
related, internal contradictions drive change forward and lead to the
dynamism that we observe. Everything under capitalism seems, and is,
contradictory. However, Harvey argues that thinking in terms of
contradictions is compatible with his own approach. If things are made up of
shifting complexes of processes it stands to reason that some of those processes
will be in opposition to each other." [Ibid.,
pp.100-01.]
"The whole of the universe
is both complex and constantly changing. Everything is related to everything
else...." [Ibid.,
pp.111-12.]
"It seems like Engels was
trying to understand something fundamental about the way the world works. He saw
dialectics as describing real material processes. When he says quantitative
change leads to qualitative change it doesn't just mean that it is useful as a
method to treat the world as if this happens or to think about the world in this
way. He means that it really does act in this way." [Ibid.,
p.113.]
"The dialectics of Marx and
Engels is a materialist philosophy. It treats the world as if it is changing
because it does change, and as contradictory because it is contradictory. The
'natural' world really is changing." [Ibid.,
p.116. In all of the above bold emphases alone added. Quotation marks
altered to conform to the conventions adopted at this site.]
Dialectical Dogmatism Spreads Across The Internet
There
are literally scores of examples of DM-"foisting" in other books and articles
devoted to this theory, just as there seem to be countless sites on the Internet
that do likewise.
Below
is a brief selection of the latter --
apologies are once more owed the reader
for the mind-numbingly repetitive nature of the following material:
(1) "Every phenomenon in nature is a
contradiction, a unity of opposites. Contradiction is an internal process
and
the basis of all quantitative development. Development or motion comes
about through the struggle and unity of opposites....
"All phenomena are comprised of
opposing poles which are mutually exclusive and interdependent, and in
contradiction. This polarity -- the relation between the two poles –-
organizes them and makes them what they are, a quality. [Quoted from
here and
here. This site alone contains dozens of examples of the sort of 'foisting'
in which DM-fans tells us they never indulge. Bold emphases added.]
(2) "The world in which we live is a
unity of contradictions or a unity of opposites: cold-heat, light-darkness,
Capital-Labour, birth-death, riches-poverty, positive-negative, boom-slump,
thinking-being, finite-infinite, repulsion-attraction, left-right, above-below,
evolution-revolution, chance-necessity, sale-purchase, and so on.
"The fact that two poles of a
contradictory antithesis can manage to coexist as a whole is regarded in popular
wisdom as a paradox. The paradox is a recognition that two contradictory, or
opposite, considerations may both be true.
This is a reflection in thought of a
unity of opposites in the material world.
"Motion, space and time are nothing
else but the mode of existence of matter. Motion, as we have explained is a
contradiction, -- being in one place and another at the same time. It is a unity
of opposites. "Movement means to be in this place and not to be in it; this is
the continuity of space and time -- and it is this which first makes motion
possible." (Hegel)
"To understand something, its essence,
it is necessary to seek out these internal contradictions. Under certain
circumstances, the universal is the individual, and the individual is the
universal. That things turn into their opposites, -- cause can become effect
and effect can become cause -- is because they are merely links in the
never-ending chain in the development of matter....
In the words of Hegel, everything
which exists, exists of necessity. But, equally, everything which exists
is doomed to perish, to be transformed into something else. Thus what is
"necessary" in one time and place becomes "unnecessary" in another.
Everything begets its opposite, which is destined to overcome and negate it.
This is true of individual living things as much as societies and nature
generally." [Rob
Sewell. Bold emphases added.]
As we
will see, motion isn't
'contradictory', but it is worth pointing out that comrade Sewell's only
evidence for thinking it is...,
is Hegel's say-so!
Even
so, comrade Sewell is quite happy to impose this thesis on nature.
Here
is yet another Duplicitous Dialectical Dogmatist:
"Dialectical thought is merely the
reflection of objective dialectics: laws governing the development of nature,
the laws of uninterrupted change or, as Darwin discovered, the laws of
evolution. According to this view, change occurs in the struggle between
opposites. Nothing exists without opposition. When opposites confront each
other, changes occur." [Quoted from
here. Bold emphasis added.]
Compare
the above with this passage from the
Corpus Hermeticum:
"For everything must be the product
of opposition and contrariety, and it cannot be otherwise." [Copenhaver
(1995), p.38. Bold emphasis added.]
[The
on-line translation has this as follows: "For all things must consist out of
antithesis and contrariety; and this can otherwise not be." (Quoted from
here,
Book Ten, Section Ten.)]
Here are the thoughts of several more
latter-day Hermeticists
(compare the following with the above and with
these mystics):
"Opposition is universal.
Every process coexists with its opposite (Heraclitus): harmony and conflict,
asymmetry and symmetry, union and separation, positive and negative, male and
female....
"If
opposition is universal in reality, then opposition must be included in
logic. In contrast, it is excluded by the principles of no contradiction
(nothing is A and no[t]-A) and of the excluded third (either A or no[t]-A).
Other formulations of logic dismiss the excluded middle...or allow the
coexistence of opposites....." [Quoted from
here.
Bold emphases and two letter "t"s added.]
"One -- Every thing (every object and
every process) is made of opposing forces/opposing sides.
"Two -- Gradual changes lead to turning points, where one opposite overcomes the
other.
"Three -- Change moves in spirals, not circles.
"These are the three laws of dialectics
according to Frederick Engels, a revolutionary thinker and partner of Karl Marx,
writing in the 1870s in his book Dialectics of Nature. Engels believed that
dialectics was 'A very simple process which is taking place everywhere and every
day, which any child can understand'....
"Here's how it works --
"1) Everything is made of opposites.
"No object could hold together without an opposing force to keep it from
flying apart. The earth tries to fly away from the sun, but gravity holds it
in orbit. Electrons try to fly away from the nucleus of an atom, but
electromagnetism holds the atom together. Ligaments and tendons provide the ties
that hold bones together and muscles to bones.
"Like material objects, the process of change needs opposing forces. Change
needs a driving force to push it ahead, otherwise everything stays put. A
billiard ball only moves when hit with a pool cue or another ball. We eat when
our hunger tells us to. A car won't move if it's engine won't start. To win in
fair elections candidates need more votes than their opponents.
"Engels, drawing from the philosopher, Hegel, called this law the
'interpenetration of opposites'; Hegel often referred to the 'unity of
opposites.' This may sound contradictory, but it is easy to understand. It's
like the saying, 'It takes two to tango.' There is no game if one side quits.
There is no atom if the electrons fly away. The whole needs all of its parts to
be a whole." [Taken from
here;
accessed 24/10/2013. Quotation marks altered to conform to the conventions
adopted at this site. Some of this
dogmatic material (this links to a PDF)
even featured in the awful film
Half Nelson, a movie directed by
the son of the owner of the site Dialectics For Kids, which is where
the above quotation originated. Indeed, the PDF linked to above had this to say:
"In a New York Times review, Dennis Lim (2006), who interviewed Ryan
Fleck [the director of the film -- RL], stated: 'Mr. Fleck's father, Jack Lucero
Fleck, a San Francisco traffic engineer, was a central influence on Half
Nelson. A dialectics autodidact, the senior Mr. Fleck maintains a Website,
http://dialectics4kids.com, which includes educational stories and MP3s of songs
like "Do Our Lives Go Round in Circles?" Many of [Dan Dunne's] classroom
monologues are lifted almost verbatim from the site.'" See also my comments
about Dialectics For Kids,
here (which, unfortunately, contains links to this site when it was
published by my old ISP -- now badly out-of-date).]
"Dialectics is the science of the
most general laws of development of nature, society, and thought. Its
principal features are as follows:
"1) The universe is not an accidental
mix of things isolated from each other, but an integral whole, wherein things
are mutually interdependent.
"2) Nature is in a state of constant
motion....
"3) Development is a process whereby
insignificant and imperceptible quantitative changes lead to fundamental,
qualitative changes. The latter occur not gradually, but rapidly and abruptly,
in the form of a leap from one state to another.
"4)
All things contain within themselves internal contradictions, which are the
primary cause of motion, change, development in the world." [Quoted from
here.
Bold emphases added.]
"Again, matter is not only dynamic,
it is dialectical. Since matter is dialectical, it is dynamic. So, the
reason why matter is dynamic is no longer unknown. Not only this, motion is
not considered external, it is the internal property of matter arising from
internal contradiction and conflict....
"It is
now established that all particular matters are interrelated --
interrelated by unity and struggle. Contradictions, you know, are of two types
-- internal and external. The contradiction within any particular matter is its
internal contradiction and the contradiction between one particular matter and
another is called the external contradiction. Now, the nature of relationship
between the internal and the external contradiction should be understood. First,
we are to understand that they help and influence each other and so the relation
is what we call supplementary-complementary. But it is to be understood that out
of these two, the internal contradiction is the basis of change. The external
contradiction influences the internal contradiction no doubt and in some cases
plays a very important role indeed. But despite this, it should be understood,
when a change occurs it cannot at all come about until the internal
contradiction matures. So, the point is to be understood like this that whatever
influence the external contradiction might have and however important its role
might be in initiating a change, it is the internal contradiction that is the
basic cause of change, the basis of change." [Quoted from
here.
Bold emphases added.]
"All things have to be understood in
their interconnections and their development, not as fixed, eternal objects
isolated from one another. To achieve this, the dialectic sets out new
logical laws. The three major laws of the dialectic are:
"No object or thing should ever be
treated as if it is fixed or static forever. Each 'thing', in nature and
society, is composed of a complex of interacting elements and forces.
Contending components of a thing exist in contradiction with one another, giving
motion and development to the thing itself....
"Gradual
changes which occur to an object will eventually reach a point of rupture, at
which point the thing itself is abruptly transformed....
"As inner contradictions unfold, a change in the quality of an object takes
place. Yet the original object is not simply obliterated by a completely
separate thing which takes its place. A complex process occurs in which both the
original object and the prevailing force that transforms it are themselves
transcended and replaced by a higher unity incorporating aspects of both in a
radically different relationship." [Quoted from the
Fifth International
website. Bold emphases added.]
"Since ancient limes, people have
pondered the cause of changes in nature and the society, looking for their
source and driving power.
"Thinkers made various suppositions on
this point, either
approaching or moving away from the truth. Thus, religion attributes the
changes going on in the world to God, idealists to the operation of some
universal will or supernatural absolute idea, and metaphysicians look for the
source of motion and change in some external force, in an initial impulse, and
so end up in idealism.
"The scientific answer to the question
of the cause of development given by the Marxist-Leninist philosophy is
expressed in the law of the unity and struggle of opposites. Lenin called that
law the essence, the core of materialist dialectics. It reveals the inner
cause of development, showing that its source lies in the contradictory nature
of phenomena and processes, the interaction and struggle of the opposites
immanent in them.
"To understand this law, one should
first clear up the meaning of opposites and contradictions.
"Opposites are the inner aspects,
tendencies or forces of an object or phenomenon which rule each other out while
simultaneously presupposing each other. The interconnection of opposites
constitutes a contradiction....
"So,
all phenomena and processes of reality have opposite aspects. Everything is
shot through with contradiction." [Quoted from
here.
Bold emphases added; numerous typos corrected.]
"Dialectics was initially a particular
kind of dialogue invented in Ancient Greece in which two or more people holding
different points of view about a subject seek to establish the truth of the
matter by dialogue with reasoned arguments.... Today dialectics denotes a
mode of cognition which recognizes the most general laws of motion,
contradiction and new development. There exist four 'laws' to the
dialectical method. They are:
"1) Everything is in a constant state
of motion, development and change.
"2) Everywhere there exist opposing
forces which are mutually exclusive yet cannot exist without the other.
Their conflict results in movement.
"3) Change occurs suddenly, all at
once. A quantitative amount of something results in a qualitative change (a
'breaking' point).
"4) Development moves in spirals,
from lower to higher planes of development....
"Dialectical materialism is the
recognition of a transient nature --
a physical reality in constant motion and change. What makes dialectical
materialism a revolutionary scientific method is that it excludes all static
states, all metaphysical views of reality, all one-sidedness and inflexibility.
Because it recognizes the concrete and present side of things, at the same time
it acknowledges that this present state is bound to end. For dialectal
materialism, the only absolute is that there are no eternal absolutes....
"Motion is the mode of existence of
matter. Never anywhere has there been matter without motion, nor can there be.
As we mentioned earlier, everything in nature is transient, finite, and in
motion. Matter cannot exist without motion. Everything has its beginning and its
end. People are born, grow and eventually pass away. Stars such as our sun
eventually begin to die, either slowly burning out or self-destructing. Species
evolve, adapt, or go extinct. Rain falls from the clouds, evaporates back into
the clouds where it will once again rain. Human society is also part of nature
and is therefore subject to the same laws....
"The
principle governing all growth and development is the idea of opposition and
contradiction. Two mutually exclusive forces which at the same time cannot
exist without each other has been a common theme in many philosophies for a
long time (i.e. yin and yang) exactly because such processes occurring around us
reflect this concept upon our minds...." [Quoted from
here.
Bold emphases added; quotation marks altered to conform to the conventions
adopted at this site. Minor typos corrected.]
[Many
more examples of this traditional and dogmatic approach to Philosophy will be
added to
Appendix Three over the next few years.]
And, if the above isn't enough,
readers should feast their eyes on
this
tangled web of crazed 'psychedelic' dialectics. Follow any of the
links on that page for a free 'trip' into another dimension without the need to
inject, snort or smoke anything 'illegal'. Or, if your eyes need an extra
work-out, cast them over the material re-reposted
here.
[I'd
reproduce a few paragraphs from that site on this page but I'm not sure my
computer would survive the trauma! Anyway, before I was banned for being rather
too good at exposing this gobbledygook for what it is, I posted a response,
here. Unfortunately, the last two links are now dead since the character
involved was banned for posting anti-Semitic remarks, so I am told.]
YouTube
Apriorism
Over
the last few years there has been a proliferation of videos on YouTube
that purport to 'explain' nature's deepest secrets, true for all of space and
time, in but a few idle
minutes:
Video One -- How To Misconstrue Formal
Logic, Module 101
Video Two -- Dialectics For Novices --
Awful Music, Too!
Video Three -- Dialectics For Numpties
Video Four -- UK-SWP's Contribution To
Dialectical Confusion
Despite superficial differences, they all say basically
the same sorts
of things, just as they all dogmatically impose their ideas on nature and
society. In a world supposedly governed by the
Heraclitean Flux
--
ironically -- not much change on show here!
Moreover, and unsurprisingly, these videos receive very few hits. The
masses apparently prefer cat videos.
Academic Dialectical Dogmatists
Conservative Theorists
Masquerading As Radicals
As noted above,
a priori dogmatics isn't confined to the Dialectical Musings of lowly
LCDs. In
fact, if anything,
HCDs
are not only more dogmatic, they are far less likely to own up to the
crime. This is probably because they either don't know when they are indulging
in it,
or, they care even less about it when they do.
[Here
is an excellent recent example.] Far more likely though: this is because
Traditional Thought has always adopted a dogmatic approach to 'philosophical
knowledge',
and HCDs are only too keen to show how 'intellectual' and traditional they
are, even if it means they have had to appropriate a whole range ruling-class
ideas and forms-of-thought to prove it -- as, indeed, Marx predicted they
would:
"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." [Marx and
Engels (1970), pp.64-65, quoted from
here.
Bold emphases added.]
And,
here follows a particularly good example of this genre:
Sean Sayers
We
now turn to
HCD-theorist Sean Sayers's impressive bid to be
enrolled into this ancient, dogmatic philosophical fraternity (and not
just this more
contemporary conservative club). First, we will note in passing the
by-now-familiar, almost de rigueur, disarming initial declaration,
followed by its prompt abrogation:
"Dialectical materialism diverges from
Hegelian dialectic at this point. Marx's dialectic is not an a priori
deduction, but a summary of human knowledge. 'Nature is
proof of dialectics' [Engels (1976), p.28] according to Engels.
Colletti,
Popper
and company do not understand this. Their constant refrain is that dialectics is
an a priori dogma….
"No doubt dialectical materialism can be
used as a set of dogmatic principles from which to deduce things. But
Marxists have been at pains to stress that dialectical materialism is not a
universal formula which may be applied to generate significant conclusions a
priori….
"Correctly understood, dialectical
materialism is
not a dogma. Indeed, it is rather Popper, Colletti and other such critics
of dialectic who show themselves to be dogmatists by the terms of their
criticisms. For they merely assert their philosophy, embodied in the principles
of formal logic, and when confronted with the dialectical concept of
contradiction reject it as 'absurd', and 'irrational' for failing to conform to
formal logic.
"Philosophy and logic can never
replace the need for a detailed investigation of the concrete and particular
conditions under study. They can never replace the need for the fullest
possible practical experience; and no philosophy makes this point more forcibly
than dialectical materialism. According to it, philosophy is not a body of
merely conceptual, logical or a priori truths. Philosophy has a
twofold character: it
summarizes, at the most general level, the results of human knowledge and
experience; and it functions as a guide to further thought and action.
"There is no
question here of using the principles of dialectics as 'axioms' from which
to 'deduce' any concrete results. If anything, the process works the other
way around, and philosophies are based upon results in the particular
sciences…." [Sayers (1980a), pp.19-21. Bold emphases alone added. Engels's
reference altered to conform to the edition used here.]
This
seems admirably clear and disarmingly honest: the critics of DM are the
dogmatists here; dialecticians never impose their ideas on reality, never
reason a priori. In fact, Sayers assures us that DM-theorists are the
exact opposite of the caricature of them retailed in the writings of
anti-dialecticians, like Popper and Colletti.
Nevertheless, when we encounter claims like the following (in this case,
just two pages after the above 'modest' disavowals!), we might be
forgiven for thinking that Sayers is living on another planet -- alongside the
rest of his conservative, dialectical peers:
"Dialectical materialism, by contrast,
is a philosophy of struggle and of conflict. Nothing comes into being except
through struggle; struggle is involved in the development of all things; and it
is through struggle that things are negated and pass away. Conflict and
contradiction are inevitable…." [Ibid., p.23. Bold emphasis added.]
But, how could Sayers possibly know all this?
The above manifestly
isn't
a summary of experience, nor of the available evidence, but a clear
imposition on reality of things it might not possess, or of processes it might
not exhibit. For example, where is the evidence that "contradictions" are
"inevitable", or that "nothing" comes into being "except through struggle"? To
be sure, Sayers quotes passages from Hegel in support (!!), but apart from an
appeal to that
dubious authority, where is his evidence?
[Once
more: as we shall see in Essays Three through Thirteen, the
'evidence' that
some
DM-fans have scraped together in support of their cosmically over-blown
theses makes the phrase "watery thin" look impressively substantial in
comparison.]
With
bombastic claims like these confronting the reader within pages (sometimes
within a few sentences) of the familiar knee-jerk, 'modest denials' that
accompany them, is it any wonder that consistent materialists accuse
dialecticians of Idealist dogmatism --,
and are right to do so?
And,
it is to no avail pointing the finger at other traditional dogmatists (like
Popper and Colletti), saying "Well, they did it first!", since that would merely
confirm the accusation made here that dialecticians
are indeed part of a well-entrenched, ruling-class tradition, where this
sort of thing is the norm, and where it is so common and ubiquitous that
comrades (like Sayers)
can't even tell when they themselves
are doing it!
Nor
will it do to divert attention onto the alleged dogmatism found in the (alleged)
use of FL to settle all questions, as Sayers tries to do. In fact, it is far
from clear that Colletti and Popper actually do what he says; but even if they
did, the case against 'Materialist Dialectics' doesn't depend on the
existence or otherwise of anti-DM dogmatism.
Far
more importantly, however, the real problem here is that, time and again,
dialecticians misconstrue even basic FL-principles. Hence, when
DM-apologists are reminded of them, far from this being dogmatic,
it is in fact being remedial
Or, it would be if DM-fans actually got the point!
[LOI = Law of identity; LOC = Law on
Non-contradiction; LEM = Law of Excluded Middle. AFL = Aristotelian Formal
Logic; MFL = Modern Formal Logic.]
As if
to prove the above allegation correct, here is Sayers's own misconstrual of the
LOC:
"According to the logical law of
non-contradiction, it is impossible for a proposition, P, and its negation,
not-P, both to be true at the same time of the same thing in the same respect."
[Ibid, p.24, note 6.]
First, the precise role of "not-", in "not-P", is unclear. More on that
here.
Second, if the "P" used here is a propositional sign, it cannot be true or false
of things. Sayers has perhaps confused his own use of this sign with that
of predicate letters (or better, with proposition-forming functors).
Finally, a proposition and its negation cannot both be true and cannot both
be false at once. DM-fans invariably omit this second caveat, which means
they often confuse
inconsistencies and contraries with contradictions. Sayers has clearly
fallen into this trap, too; more on that in Essay Twelve.
Here
is an another example, taken from a more recent article of his:
"In Frege-Russell
logic there are valid equivalents for the traditional Aristotelian logical laws:
the law of identity (A = A), the law of excluded middle (A v ~A), and the law of
non-contradiction (~(A & ~A)). For this reason, the Frege-Russell system
is often referred to as 'standard logic'." [Sayers (1992), page reference
unknown; I have used the
on-line version. (This links to an RTF.)]
[As
we have seen, the LOI was unknown to Aristotle, and the other two alleged 'laws'
weren't laws for Aristotle either! On that, see
here and
here. However, it is revealing to
see Sayers adopt the
by-now-familiar
sloppy DM-approach to AFL, let alone MFL.]
The LOI concerns the
supposed relation between an object and itself (or between its names, depending
on how it is read), whereas the LOC and the LEM concern the truth-functional
link between a proposition and its negation. So, the denotation of the letter
"A"s here isn't the same. For the LOI, "A" must stand for a name or some other
singular term (such as a definite description), whereas for both the LOC and the
LEM, they stand for propositions or clauses. As we will see in Essay Eight
Part Three, it is sloppy syntax
like this that 'allowed' Hegel to imagine that there was a connection between
the LOI 'stated negatively' and the LOC, when there not only isn't, there
can't be. Indeed, it was from this egregiously sloppy syntax that the entire
dialectic emerged. [On
this, see also my comments over at
Wikipedia.]
Which, of course, means that Hegel's work is no more to be taken seriously than
Anselm's Ontological Argument; in fact less so --, at least Anselm was a
competent logician and philosopher.
[Even
so, and once more, it is instructive to see an HCD like Sayers replicate these
rather simple
and ancient
errors.]
As if
that weren't enough, Sayers also makes the traditional
mistake of thinking that contradictions somehow 'cancel' or "nullify" one
another (quoting Hegel to that effect, on page 11), and of thinking that they
result in a "mere nothingness":
"The result of attempting to express a
contradiction is supposed to be an absolutely self-nullifying proposition....
"[A formal contradiction]...is indeed
self-annulling.... Its result is mere nothingness." [Ibid., p.11.]
Indeed, as we will see (here),
and to paraphrase
Joey
Tribbiani of 'Friends'
-- this is so far from the truth, the truth is a dot.
Now,
those who assert things like this (that contradictions are "self-annulling", or
"self-cancelling") have clearly confused propositions with commands or
instructions. Clearly, no proposition can annul the content of any
other -- least of all its contradictory, otherwise it would no longer be its
contradictory. Indeed, as Wittgenstein noted, a proposition and its negation
share the same content (that is why they connect with one another in the
required manner). [More on that in Essay Twelve
Part One.]
In
which case, the result of 'asserting' a proposition and its contradictory isn't
a 'nothingness', but an indication that no assertion has been made (hence
the 'scare' quotes around "nothingness" and "asserting").
The
above a priori dogmatic claims that Sayers advances weren't in fact a
one-off; on the contrary, they litter his article, and the next. Here is a small
selection of them:
"A dialectical process of development
characterizes not only the human world, but also all natural phenomena…. [p.4.]
"…This is the purpose of dialectical
philosophy and this is what it means when it says that everything is
contradictory.
For contradiction is at the root of both the identity and relationships of
things, and of their development.... [p.6.]
"All concrete things are
contradictory.
There are tensions and conflicts within all things and in the relations
between things. This is the law of contradiction. Which is the most universal
expression of the philosophy of dialectics….
"It is this contradiction and negativity
which must be recognized in order to comprehend things in their movement.
'Contradiction is the root of all movement and vitality; it is only in so far
as something has a contradiction within it that it moves, has an urge and
activity'. [Hegel
(1999), p.439;
§956.]
"(1)…All determinate and concrete
things are in opposition to other things. (2) The concept of contradiction
is required in order to stress that such concrete opposition is not external and
accidental to things, but rather essential and necessary: it is internal to
things and part of their nature. Contradiction is not mere accidental conflict,
but essential opposition...." [p.8.]
"The law of contradiction, however,
applies to all things and not just to society." [p.9. Bold emphases added.
Reference to Hegel's Logic has been changed to conform to the edition
used at this site.]
But,
theses like these can't be derived from the phenomena; they have to be
imposed on them, as indeed they have been.
[To
be sure, Sayers does attempt to respond to that criticism (i.e., to the
claim that 'essential' and 'necessary' truths cannot be derived from contingent
facts about nature), but his comments are restricted to Hume's objections, and
hence they are now badly dated. More on that in a later Essay.]
Even
so, and once more, Sayers's only 'evidence' that everything is contradictory is
Hegel's 'authority', a thinker not known for his experimental achievements.
Moreover, and contrary to what Sayers says (that dialecticians do not use DM to
derive 'concrete results'),
in the very next passage we find him doing just that:
"For example, to say that capitalism is
contradictory does not mean that it is impossible and unreal, but rather that it
is an essentially dynamic social form, and that it is ultimately destined to
perish and be negated in a new social form, socialism, which will emerge from it
as its result." [Ibid., p.13. Bold emphasis added.]
Apart
from an appeal to a few a priori DM-theses, exactly what is it that
justifies the 'derivation' of socialism (indeed its "destined" emergence) from
capitalism? There is no evidence which could demonstrate that since it
still lies in the future.
As
seems reasonably clear, Sayers is quite happy to use Hegel's a priori
schema to derive a favoured outcome -- contrary to his stated aims:
"There is no question here of using
the principles of dialectics as 'axioms' from which to 'deduce' any concrete
results." [Ibid. Bold emphasis added.]
The
emergence of socialism looks pretty concrete. After all, no one supposes that
we are all fighting for an abstraction to come to pass.
However, we will have to
wait to see if nature/history plays ball, and things inevitably alter (i.e.,
whether they will
"ultimately [be] destined to perish and be
negated in a new social form, socialism, which will emerge from it as its result")
in the way Sayers says they will,
or whether, as Marx noted -- in a refreshingly non-dogmatic
frame-of-mind, foreign to DM-fans --, the class war might in fact lead to
the
mutual ruin
of the contending classes.
Unfortunately, Sayers has more Dialectical Dogma up his Ideal Sleeve:
"This raises the question: why do
dialectical philosophers insist on speaking of 'contradictions'? Why don't they
instead talk of 'conflicts' and 'oppositions'…. In order to understand why they
nevertheless insist on the language of 'contradiction', it is crucial to see
that dialectical contradiction is more than mere conflict: it is essential
opposition; conflict with a unity; internal conflict -- not mere external and
accidental conflict. The dialectical law of contradiction asserts that conflict
and opposition are necessary, essential and internal to things....
"...Nothing concrete and real is
merely positive.
Everything is contradictory and contains negative as well as positive aspects
within it. The dialectical notion of contradiction is such that conflicts
between opposed aspects are necessary and essential. [Ibid.,
p.16. Bold emphases alone added.]
Sayers clearly belongs to the 'parrot and shout' school of philosophy, according
to which, if you repeat something enough times, and throw enough emphatic words
at the page, that (on its own) constitutes proof.
As we
will see in subsequent Essays, when the 'evidence' and the 'arguments' (that
DM-fans have cobbled-together in support of their mantra-like theses) are
examined, they fall apart faster than a
Humvee
that has 'encountered' an
IED. [On this, see Essays Three through Thirteen, but specifically Essays
Eight Parts One and
Two.]
Figure Five:
A Humvee 'Re-configured' By Something
Other
Than Its 'Internal
Contradictions'
Here
we may note once more that electrons, for instance, are awkward beggars: clearly
they are in receipt of a DM/Sayers Exemption Certificate, since they are
exclusively negative (and, what is more, they are of a simple nature, too,
having no internal dynamic), with no positive aspect -- contrary to the message
Sayers's beamed in from the Dialectical Mountain Top situated at the end of
time, where all such final truths reside. And, as if to rub it in, nature has
conspired to produce positrons, too, which are similarly
dialectically-challenged, but in an opposite sense. [And what are we to say of
Neutrinos,
which are, so we are told, neutrally charged elementary particles? Or, indeed,
of those that carry no charge at all --
photons, for
example?]
And
it is no use appealing to the 'opposition' between electrons and positrons
(forgetting perhaps the 'opposition' between protons and electrons, of course),
since if they meet they annihilate -- they do not "sublate" -- one another. [In
fact, the situation is far more complex than this might suggest; on that, see
here.] And, neither of them "contains" its opposite, as Sayers pontificated
they should, nor do they turn into one another as the
DM-classics assure they should. [Naturally, this depends on what DM-fans
mean by "internal opposite"; as noted in Essay Eight
Part One, they all tend to equivocate between a logical and a
spatial understanding of this term.]
Later
on, in Sayers's next article, we find this revealing admission:
"The philosophy of dialectic is a
logical theory,
which is universal in its application." [Sayers (1980b), p.80. Bold
emphasis added.]
Contrast that with this earlier claim:
"No doubt dialectical materialism can be
used as a set of dogmatic principles from which to deduce things. But
Marxists have been at pains to stress that dialectical materialism is not a
universal formula which may be applied to generate significant conclusions
a priori…." [Sayers (1980a), p.20. Bold emphasis added.]
Clearly, Dialectical Myopia (or even Amnesia?) has found yet another victim.
Finally, we find this mega-dogmatic,
Hermetic gem:
"Dialectics, by contrast, maintains that
nothing is simply and solely positive. Nothing has mere being. This is the
essence of dialectics; it is the first and fundamental thought of Hegel's
Logic.
Pure being -- mere positivity -- is an abstraction which is equivalent to pure
nothingness. All determinate being is a unity of being and nothing, of positive
and negative aspects. This is what Hegel argues in the famous opening sections
of his Logics. He says, 'Neither in heaven nor on earth, neither in the
world of mind nor of nature, is there anywhere such an abstract "Either-Or" as
the understanding maintains. Whatever exists is concrete, with difference and
opposition in itself.' [Hegel
(1975), p.174; §199.] All concrete and determinate things contain
negation: they are finite, limited and perishable." [Sayers (1980b), p.100.
Reference to Hegel's Logic altered to conform to the edition used at this
site.
Bold emphases avoided, or the whole passage would have had to have been
highlighted!]
[This
sorry passage continues (in fact, it does this almost self-mockingly, since it
contains nothing remotely positive -- or at least nothing positively
comprehensible) for several more pages, but my obstinately materialist
fingers simply refuse to type any more of it.]
Nevertheless, as we have just seen, electrons and positrons must have somehow
sneaked past 'Being' when it was doling out a priori
and essentialist certificates to everything in existence, according to Archangel
Hegel and his latter-day disciple, Sayers. Protons are equally nonconformist:
they are, as far as we know, changeless, and so do not perish. [More on this in
Note 4.]
Moreover, Hegel (and Sayers) forgot to notice that the abstract "understanding"
is just as bolshie as elementary particles ever were. In fact, I must now
admit to being forced by my unruly
"understanding" to remind Hegel (and/or Sayers) that not even he can be both
right and wrong about any or all of this (thus ruling out the third option:
Hegel was both right and wrong, here).
Indeed, Hegel was either right or he was wrong in what he said. But, if
he was right, then he was thereby wrong -- since this Hegelian assertion would
be a clear example of an "either-or" (which we have just been told exist nowhere
in the entire universe) -- because, in this case, in being right he was wrong!
On the other hand, if he was wrong, then plainly he was wrong. Either way, Hegel
was wrong.
[There is more on this dogmatic passage of Hegel's,
here.]
In
that case, Sayers himself needs to change his view of this Hilarious Hermetic
Harebrain -- which long-overdue modification will have been prompted by an
ironic 'internal contradiction' in Hegel's thought, highlighted by yours
truly.
But,
even if this weren't so, and nature displayed far less bourgeois disrespect for
'Being' than has up until now been apparent, how does the above Hegelian
declaration (about "either-or") differ from a priori dogmatics? To be
sure, Hegel concocted a lame-brained 'argument' to support some of his
contentions (which will be demolished in Essay Twelve (summary
here)),
but Sayers explicitly ruled that particular option out (for Marxists), by
saying:
"Dialectical materialism diverges from
Hegelian dialectic at this point. Marx's dialectic is not an a priori
deduction, but a summary of human knowledge." [Sayers (1980a), p.19.]
This suggests that either the meaning of
the phrase "a priori" has itself changed, or Sayers doesn't know what it
means.
As we can now see,
HCDs
--
despite their sophisticated use of hardcore jargon borrowed from centuries of
boss-class philosophy -- are no less dogmatic than their
conceptually-challenged
LCD
brethren ever were.
[Several more examples of HCD-dogmatism
will be published here at a later date.
Zizek's work is full of it, especially Zizek (2012).]
The
above quotations (and those in the main body of this Essay) show that in this
area DM-fans are consistently inconsistent. Almost invariably they disarm the
reader by declaring how
tentative DM is, how it hasn't been forced onto nature and society, etc.,
etc. Then, sometimes on the same page (in some cases, in the same
paragraph, or in the very next sentence) they proceed to do the exact
opposite!
In
addition to the hundreds of quotations posted in this Essay, many more examples
of this a priori approach to knowledge will be given throughout this
site. In such cases the associated assertions will be shown to be fanciful (at
best), false or devious (at worst) -- or, more often,
far too vague and confused for them to be assessed either for their truth or
their falsehood.
8.
Discussions with DM-fans on the Internet has revealed this not un-expected
result: even when confronted with tens of thousands of words of DM-dogma imposed
on the facts, they either (1) Deny that this proves DM has been imposed on the
facts, or they (2) Don't actually care if it has.
Response (2) is often elicited from
HCDs,
for whom a priori thesis-mongering comes with the territory, and is
good for the CV. These characters sold their radical souls to boss-class
theorising long ago. However, 'The Dialectical Deity' has taken suitable revenge
on them, for their work has had no impact on the class war (other than
negative), and never will. So much for 'praxis'.
Response (1) is often elicited from
LCD
comrades. It seems that if you are prepared to swallow obscure and
non-sensical dogma on the basis
of little or no evidence, you are hardly likely to accept the impertinent
accusation that DM has been imposed on reality on the basis of tens of
thousands of words which show that it has. Evidence, it seems, is now an
irrelevance, both ways!
DM-fans en masse appear to be able to 'grasp'
this contradiction with ease:
DM hasn't been imposed on the facts even
though it has!
Slavoj Zizek
Seeking perhaps to put
Gerry Healy well-and-truly in the shade,
Zizek's recent book,
Less Than Nothing, is cram packed full of dogmatic, a priori (as
well as aimless and rambling) passages, like the following (but, as is the
case with so much found in
this
woolly, 'Continental' genre, large parts of his book seem to comprise blocks
of text haphazardly stitched together (the academic equivalent of 'stream
of consciousness' literature) -- with names continually dropped into the mix
in order to impress the easily impressed --, compounded by page-after-page of
impenetrable Kantian and post-Kantian jargon):
"This dialectic reaches its apogee when
the universal as such, in contrast to the particular content, enters into being,
acquires real existence -- this is the rise of subjectivity described in Hegel's
theory of the Notion as the first moment of his 'subjective logic.' Two
introductory remarks should be made here. First, one should note the paradox of
the fundamental difference between the logic of Essence and the logic of the
Notion: precisely because the logic of essence is the logic of Understanding --
and, as such, sticks to fixed oppositions, being unable to grasp their
self-mediation -- it results in a mad dance of self-destruction in which all
fixed determinations are dissolved. The logic of the Notion, by contrast,
is the logic of fluid self-mediations which, precisely for this reason, is able
to generate a stable structure. Second, the term 'subjective logic' is fully
justified in the precise sense that, for Hegel, the 'Notion' is not the usual
abstract universality designating a common feature of an empirical multiplicity
-- the original 'Notion' is the 'I,' the subject itself....
"It is easy to see how universality
and particularity are co-present in every Notion: every Notion is by definition
universal, designating a single abstract feature that unites a series of
particulars, and precisely as such, it is always already particular -- not in
addition to its universality, but in virtue of it. 'Human' is a universal
Notion, designating the universal dimension of all human beings, and as such it
is particular, or determinate -- it designates a certain feature, ignoring
endless others (not only are there beings who are not human, but every human
being has an endless number of other properties which can also be designated by
other determinate Notions). Universality and particularity are thus two aspects
of one and the same Notion: its very 'abstract' universality makes it
particular. A Notion is thus an immediate unity of indeterminacy and
determination: it is both elevated above, or subtracted from, the texture of
spatio-temporal reality, and simultaneously a fixed abstract determination.
Why and how is the Notion subjective? First in the simple sense that it is
posited as such only in the mind of a subject, a thinking being who possesses
the power of abstraction: only a thinking being can subtract or abstract from
the empirical multitude a singe uniting feature and designate it as such.
Then, in a much more radical sense: the passage to individuality is the
passage from subjective notion to Subject (Self, I) itself as a pure Notion.
What can this mean? Is not the subject in its singularity what
Kierkegaard emphasizes as the singularity irreducible to all universal
mediation?
"In a determinate Notion,
universality and particularity immediately co-exist; that is, the notion's (sic)
universality immediately 'passes' into its particular determination. The
problem here is not how to reconcile or 'synthesize' the opposites (the
universal and the particular aspects of a Notion), but, on the contrary, how to
pull them apart, how to separate universality from its 'otherness,' from its
particular determinations. The absolute contradiction between universality
and particularity can only be resolved, their immediate overlapping can only be
mediated, when the Notion's universality is asserted or posited (or appears) as
such, in opposition to its otherness, to every particular determination. In such
a move, the Notion returns 'out of its determinations into itself,' it
reinstates itself 'as self-identical, but in the determination of absolute
negativity' -- absolutely negating all and every positive content, all and every
particular determination. The pure I (the
Cartesian
cogito, or
Kantian transcendental apperception) is just such an absolute negation of
all determinate content: it is the void of radical abstraction from all
determinations, the form of 'I think' emptied of all determinate thoughts.
What happens there is what Hegel himself refers to as a 'miracle': this pure
universality emptied of all content is simultaneously the pure singularity of
the 'I'; it refers to myself as the unique evanescent point which excludes all
others, which cannot be replaced by any others -- my self is, by definition,
only me and nothing else. The I is, in this sense, the coincidence of pure
universality and pure singularity, of radical abstraction with absolute
singularity....
"This
is the first, theoretical, triad of the Notion; once this is accomplished and
the singular universality of the Subject is in place, we face the opposite
process: not U-P-I, but U-I-P -- not the contradiction between Universal and
Particular resolved by the I, but the contradiction between the Universal and
the I resolved by the Particular. That is to say, how can the pure I break
out of the abyss of radical self-relating negativity in which universality and
singularity immediately coincide, excluding all determinate content? Here we
enter the practical domain of will and decision: the subject qua pure Notion
has to freely determine itself, to posit some determinate particular content
which will count as 'its own.' And what we should not forget is that this
determinate content (as the expression of the subject's freedom) is irreducibly
arbitrary: it is ultimately grounded only in the subject's 'It is so because I
will it so,' the moment of pure subjective decision or choice which stabilizes a
world. In his
Logics of Worlds, by way of designating this moment,
Badiou
proposes the concept of 'point' understood as a simple decision in a situation
reduced to a choice of Yes or No. He implicitly refers to
Lacan's
point de capiton, of course -- and does not this imply that there is no
'world' outside language, no world whose horizon of meaning is not determined by
a symbolic order? The passage to truth is therefore the passage from language
('the limits of my language are the limits of my world' -- Zizek is here quoting
Wittgenstein's
Tractatus 5.6 -- in fact he says "The limits of my language
mean the limits of my world" -- RL) to the letter, to 'mathemes' which
run diagonally across a multitude of worlds. Postmodern relativism is precisely
the thought of the irreducible multitude of worlds, each of them
sustained by a specific language game, so that each world 'is' the narrative its
members tell themselves about themselves, with no shared terrain, no common
language; and the problem of truth is how to establish something that -- to use
the terms popular in modal logic -- remains the same in all possible worlds."
[Zizek (2012),
pp.364-67. (This links to a PDF.) Bold emphases and links alone added;
quotation marks altered to conform to the conventions adopted at this site.
Minor typo corrected (a missing bracket).]
Admittedly, Zizek is summarising what he thinks Hegel is trying to say,
but he nowhere repudiates the latter's dogmatic pronouncements and
pseudo-inferences. Indeed, he elaborates upon them.
In
Essay Three Part One, I reveal to
real source of these odd ideas (concerning 'Universals' and 'Particulars') --
supposedly uncovered by the mythical 'process of abstraction' --, and show that,
if 'true', they would actually destroy the capacity we have for saying anything
at all, let alone about 'Selves', 'Notions', and 'passages'.
In
the next quoted block of text, taken from the same book, Zizek gives vent to his
predilection for asserting dogmatic, a priori
theses (I have also quoted several of the opening, less dogmatic but no less
aimless paragraphs so that the reader is more easily able to follow the
'argument', such as it is):
"The key question is thus: how is
thought possible in a universe of matter, how can it arise out of matter?
Like thought, the subject (Self) is also immaterial: its One-ness, its
self-identity, is not reducible to its material support. I am precisely
not my body: the Self can only arise against the background of the death of
its substantial being, of what it is 'objectively'. So, again, how can one
explain the rise of subjectivity out of the 'incomplete' ontology, how are these
two dimensions (the abyss/void of subjectivity, the incompleteness of reality)
to be thought together? We should apply here something like a weak
anthropic principle: how should the Real be structured so that it allows for
the emergence of subjectivity (in its autonomous efficacy, not as a mere 'user's
illusion')?
"This confronts us with a hard choice:
is the void of subjectivity a particular domain ('region') of the 'universal'
incompleteness/void of reality, or is that incompleteness already in itself a
mode of subjectivity, such that subjectivity is always already part of the
Absolute, and reality is not even thinkable without subjectivity (as in
Heidegger, where there is no Sein without Da-Sein as its
locality)? It is at this precise point that
Ray Brassier
criticises me for choosing the second, 'transcendental' option, unable as I am
to think the Void of Being as such without subjectivity; from my standpoint,
however, Brassier is here following
Meillassoux, who pays a fateful price for his suspension of the
transcendental dimension -- the price of a regression to a 'naive' ontology of
spheres or levels in a style of
Nicolai
Hartmann: material reality, life, thought. This is a move which is to be
avoided at all costs....
"The first step in resolving this
deadlock is to invert the standard 'realist' notion of an ontologically fully
constituted reality which exists 'out there independently of our mind' and is
then only imperfectly 'reflected' in human cognition -- the lesson of Kant's
transcendental idealism should be fully absorbed here: it is the subjective act
of transcendental synthesis which transforms the chaotic array of sensual
impressions into 'objective reality.' Shamelessly ignoring the objection that we
are confounding ontological and empirical levels, here we must invoke quantum
physics; it is the
collapse of the quantum waves in the act of perception which fixes quantum
oscillations into a single objective reality. And furthermore, this point
must be universalised: every figure of reality is rooted in a determinate
standpoint. Even at a level closer to us, we know how different 'reality'
appears to a frog or a bird, starting with the different tapestry of colours
each living being perceives (and interacts with) its own 'reality'. And one
should push this insight to the extreme of Cartesian doubt: the very notion of
greatness should be relativised. How do we know that our Milky Way isn't just a
speck of dust in another universe? Why, when we think about aliens, do we always
accept that, though they may be smaller or larger than us, they nonetheless live
in a world which is proportionally of the same order of greatness as ours?
Perhaps aliens are already here, but just so large or so small that we do not
even notice each other. Remember that thought itself exists only for beings
which think, but also only for beings of a physical grandeur comparable to ours:
if we were to observe ourselves from too close (or too far), there would be no
meaning or thought discernible in our acts, and our brain would be just a tiny
(or gigantic) piece of living matter.
"It is against this background that one
can make out the contours of what can perhaps only be designated by the oxymoron
'transcendental materialism' (proposed by
Adrian Johnson (sic)):
all reality is transcendentally constituted, 'correlative' to a subjective
position, and, to push this through to the end, the way out of this
'correlationist' circle is not to try to directly reach the In-itself, but to
inscribe this transcendental correlation into the Thing itself. The path
to the In-itself leads through the subjective gap, since the gap between For-us
and In-itself is immanent to the In-itself: appearance is itself 'objective,'
therein resides the truth of the realist problem of 'How can we pass from
appearance For-us to reality In-itself?'
"It may appear that the basic defining
feature of materialism is a commonsense trust in the reality of the external
world -- we do not live in the fancies of our imagination, caught up in its web,
there is a rich and full-blooded world open to us out there. But this is the
premise of any serious form of dialectical materialism has to do away with:
there is no 'objective' reality, every
reality is already transcendentally constituted. 'Reality' is not the
transcendentally hard core that eludes our grasp, accessible to us only in a
distorted perspectival approach; it is rather the very gap that separates
different perspectival approaches. The 'Real' is not the inaccessible X, it is
the very cause or obstacle that distorts our view on reality, that prevents our
direct access to it. The real difficulty is to think the subjective perspective
as inscribed in 'reality' itself.
"It is
true that, at the most elementary level of the natural sciences, epistemological
shifts and ruptures should not be directly grounded in ontological shifts or
ruptures in the Thing itself -- not every epistemological limitation is an
indication of ontological incompleteness. The epistemological passage from
classical physics to the theory of relativity did not mean that this shift in
our knowledge was correlated to a shift in nature itself, that in Newton's times
(sic) nature itself was Newtonian and that its laws mysteriously changed with
the arrival of Einstein -- at this level, clearly, it was our knowledge of
nature that changed, not nature itself. But this is not the whole story:
there is nonetheless a level at which the epistemological break of modern
physics is to be correlated to an ontological shift -- the level not of
knowledge, but of truth as the subjective position from which knowledge is
generated. What is totally lacking in Meillassoux is the dimension of truth in
its opposition to knowledge; truth as that self-reflective 'engaged' or
'practical' knowledge which is validated through the adequa-tio rei but
through the way it relates to the subject's position of enunciation (a statement
which is factually 'true' can be 'existentially' a lie). This is the
dimension Meillassoux ignores in his critical account of the Transcendental:
since, for him, there is no truth outside knowledge, the Transcendental is
dismissed as a deceptive lure." [Ibid.,
pp.905-07. (This links to a PDF.) Bold emphases and links alone added.
Quotation marks altered to conform to the conventions adopted at this site.]
However, Zizek's book isn't like the other DM-texts quoted in this Essay; it
doesn't confine itself merely to asserting or regurgitating basic DM-theses.
But, just like rival
HCD
works, Zizek indulges in endless name-dropping, surrounded by an ocean
of academic gobbledygook, whose only aim it seems is to impress other
academics with the extent of his own reading -- indeed, as I pointed out at
the beginning of this sub-section.
Once
more, if I were to quote all the dogmatic passages in this work (which I
estimate to be over 500,000 in length), this Essay would be several hundred
thousand words longer itself.
On a
side issue, it is perhaps instructive to note that while Zizek assures us that
there is in fact no 'reality' out there (but how he knows this he kept to
himself -- perhaps because the rest of us don't exist?), he seems happy
to tell us what frogs or birds are really capable of seeing. He also
appears to know rather a lot about the 'reality' he informs us isn't 'really'
there (in that case, his 'book' can only have been addressed to himself!).
For
instance, we read:
"The 'Real' is not the inaccessible X,
it is the very cause or obstacle that distorts our view on reality, that
prevents our direct access to it." [Ibid.]
But,
what is this 'it' if we can't actually access it since there is no 'it'
there to begin with? That would be rather like saying that A
or B prevents our accessing the real Tooth Fairy or the
genuine Santa Claus. And, what "view of reality" can this possibly be if
there is none to be had, because Zizek has just "distorted" it (which "it"
doesn't exist, anyway)? Moreover, what the dickens does "direct access" mean?
"Access" to what, for goodness sake? And by what non-distorting means?
[Is
this what passes for profundity in HCD circles these days?]
The
only "distortion" here, it seems, is the one Marx himself warned us about:
"The philosophers have only to dissolve
their language into the ordinary language, from which it is abstracted, in order
to recognise it, as the distorted language of the actual world...." [Marx
and Engels (1970), p.118. Bold emphasis added.]
[I will post several more dogmatic
passages from Zizek's book in a future re-write of this page.]
Henri Lefebvre
To be completed in the next month or
so...
Appendix One:
Open And Honest Mystical Dogmatists
"The word 'mysticism' has so many
definitions and uses that it means little anymore. And yet there is a certain
phenomenon that has to have a name, and the only name we can give it is
mysticism. This is a phenomenon that seem to occur in all religions and
cultures; it is different in external form, but in essence everywhere it is the
same: it is the experimental knowledge that, in one way or another,
everything is interconnected...." [Borchert (1994), p.3. Bold emphasis
alone added. Quotation marks altered to conform to the conventions adopted at
this site.]
"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." [Marx and
Engels (1970), pp.64-65, quoted from
here.
Bold emphases added.]
Compare the examples of a priori DM-dogmatism that litter this Essay with
the following examples of a priori dogmatism taken from the writings of
open and
honest mystics, who have come out of the closet -- or who, to be
more accurate, were never
actually in it.
Greek Philosophy
Anaximander
"Further, there cannot be a
single, simple body which is infinite, either, as some hold, one distinct from
the elements, which they then derive from it, nor without this qualification.
For there are some who make this (i.e. a body distinct from the elements)
the infinite, and not air or water, in order that the other things may not be
destroyed by their infinity. They are in opposition one to another --
air is cold, water moist, and fire hot -- and therefore, if any
one of them were infinite, the rest would have ceased to be by this time.
Accordingly they say that is infinite is something other than the elements, and
from it the element arise." [Quoted from
here.
Italic emphases in the original; bold emphasis added. According to many,
this is Aristotle's account of
Anaximander's
theory. Cf., Aristotle (1984b), p.349. The original from Anaximander has been
lost.]
Anaximenes
This
is from Burnet's history:
"'And the form of the air is as follows.
Where it is most even, it is invisible to our sight; but cold and heat, moisture
and motion, make it visible. It is always in motion; for, if it were not, it
would not change so much as it does.' [Burnet is quoting
Hipparchus's
account of Anaximenes's
theory, here -- RL.]
"...It was natural for Anaximenes to fix
upon 'air' as the primary substance; for, in the system of Anaximander, it
occupied an intermediate place between the two fundamental opposites, the
ring of flame and the cold, moist mass within it (§19). We know from Plutarch
that he fancied air became warmer when rarefied, and colder when condensed. Of
this he satisfied himself by a curious experimental proof. When we breathe with
our mouths open, the air is warm; when our lips are closed, it is cold." [Burnet
(1908), pp.77-79. Quotation marks altered according to the conventions adopted
at this site. Bold emphases added.]
More
to follow...
The Kybalion
The Kybalion
is supposed to be the third most revered book of
Hermeticism.
This is what it has to say about "Polarity":
"CHAPTER
X:
POLARITY
"'Everything is dual; everything has
poles; everything has its pair of opposites; like and unlike are the same;
opposites are identical in nature, but different in degree; extremes meet; all
truths are but half-truths; all paradoxes may be reconciled.'
"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...
"Then passing on to the Physical Plane,
they illustrate the Principle by showing that Heat and Cold are identical in
nature, the differences being merely a matter of degrees. The thermometer shows
many degrees of temperature, the lowest pole being called 'cold,' and the
highest heat.' Between these two poles are many degrees of 'heat' or 'cold,'
call them either and you are equally correct.
"The higher of two degrees is always
'warmer, while the lower is always 'colder.' There is no absolute standard-all
is a matter of degree. There is no place on the thermometer where heat ceases
and cold begins. It is all a matter of higher or lower vibrations. The very
terms 'high' and 'low,' which we are compelled to use, are but poles of the same
thing-the terms are relative. So with 'East and West'-travel around the world in
an eastward direction, and you reach a point which is called west at your
starting point, and you return from that westward point. Travel far enough
North, and you will find yourself travelling South, or vice versa.
"Light and Darkness are poles of the
same thing, with many degrees between them. The musical scale is the
same-starting with 'C' you moved upward until you reach another 'C,' and so on,
the differences between the two ends of the board being the same, with many
degrees between the two extremes. The scale of colour is the same-higher and
lower vibrations being the only difference between high violet and low red.
Large and Small are relative. So are Noise and Quiet; Hard and Soft follow the
rule. Likewise Sharp and Dull. Positive and Negative are two poles of the same
thing, with countless degrees between them." [Quoted from
here.
Quotation marks altered to conform to the conventions adopted at this site.
Spelling adapted to UK English. ]
In
The Kybalion, there are many other paragraphs of
Mickey Mouse
'evidence' like this intended to support each of its theses -- which are also
about everything in the entire universe, for all of time, just like the
dogmatic opinions of DM-fans quoted throughout this Essay.
And,
there is more:
"CHAPTER
IV: The ALL
"Under and behind all outward
appearances or manifestations, there must always be a Substantial Reality. This
is the Law. Man considering the Universe, of which he is a unit, sees nothing
but change in matter, forces, and mental states. He sees that nothing really IS,
but that everything is BECOMING and CHANGING. Nothing stands still -- everything
is being born, growing, dying -- the very instant a thing reaches its height, it
begins to decline -- the law of rhythm is in constant operation -- there is no
reality, enduring quality, fixity, or substantiality in anything -- nothing is
permanent but Change. He sees all things evolving from other things, and
resolving into other things -- a constant action and reaction; inflow and
outflow; building up and tearing down; creation and destruction; birth, growth
and death. Nothing endures but Change. And if he be a thinking man, he realizes
that all of these changing things must be but outward appearances or
manifestations of some Underlying Power -- some Substantial Reality.
"All thinkers, in all lands and in all
times, have assumed the necessity for postulating the existence of this
Substantial Reality. All philosophies worthy of the name have been based upon
this thought. Men have given to this Substantial Reality many names-some have
called it by the term of Deity (under many titles); others have called it 'The
Infinite and Eternal Energy'; others have tried to call it 'Matter' -- but all
have acknowledged its existence. It is self-evident -- it needs no argument.
"In these lessons we have followed the
example of some of the world's greatest thinkers, both ancient and modern -- the
Hermetic Masters -- and have called this Underlying Power-this Substantial
Reality -- by the Hermetic name of 'THE ALL,' which term we consider the most
comprehensive of the many terms applied by Man to THAT which transcends names
and terms...." [Quoted from
here.
Quotation marks altered to conform to the conventions adopted at this site.
Capitals in the original.]
"CHAPTER IX: VIBRATION
"'Nothing rests; everything moves;
everything vibrates.'
"The great Third Hermetic Principle --
the Principle of Vibration -- embodies the truth that Motion is manifest in
everything in the Universe -- that nothing is at rest -- that everything moves,
vibrates, and circles. This Hermetic Principle was recognized by some of the
early Greek philosophers who embodied it in their systems. But, then, for
centuries it was lost sight of by the thinkers outside of the Hermetic ranks.
But in the Nineteenth Century physical science re-discovered the truth and the
Twentieth Century scientific discoveries have added additional proof of the
correctness and truth of this centuries-old Hermetic doctrine.
"The Hermetic Teachings are that not
only is everything in constant movement and vibration, but that the
'differences' between the various manifestations of the universal power are due
entirely to the varying rate and mode of vibrations. Not only this, but that
even THE ALL [the Hermetic equivalent of the DM-"Totality" -- RL], in itself,
manifests a constant vibration of such an infinite degree of intensity and rapid
motion that it may be practically considered as at rest, the teachers directing
the attention of the students to the fact that even on the physical plane a
rapidly moving object (such as a revolving wheel) seems to be at rest. The
Teachings are to the effect that Spirit is at one end of the Pole of Vibration,
the other Pole being certain extremely gross forms of Matter. Between these two
poles are millions upon millions of different rates and modes of vibration.
"Modern Science has proven that all that
we call Matter and Energy are but 'modes of vibratory motion,' and some of the
more advanced scientists are rapidly moving toward the positions of the
occultists who hold that the phenomena of Mind are likewise modes of vibration
or motion. Let us see what science has to say regarding the question of
vibrations in matter and energy.
"In the first place, science teaches
that all matter manifests, in some degree, the vibrations arising from
temperature or heat. Be an object cold or hot-both being but degrees of the same
things -- it manifests certain heat vibrations, and in that sense is in motion
and vibration. Then all particles of Matter are in circular movement, from
corpuscle to suns. The planets revolve around suns, and many of them turn on
their axes. The suns move around greater central points, and these are believed
to move around still greater, and so on, ad infinitum. The molecules of which
the particular kinds of Matter are composed are in a state of constant vibration
and movement around each other and against each other. The molecules are
composed of Atoms, which, likewise, are in a state of constant movement and
vibration. The atoms are composed of Corpuscles, sometimes called 'electrons,'
'ions,' etc., which also are in a state of rapid motion, revolving around each
other, and which manifest a very rapid state and mode of vibration. And, so we
see that all forms of Matter manifest Vibration, in accordance with the Hermetic
Principle of Vibration.
"And so it is with the various forms of
Energy. Science teaches that Light, Heat, Magnetism and Electricity are but
forms of vibratory motion connected in some way with, and probably emanating
from the Ether. Science does not as yet attempt to explain the nature of the
phenomena known as Cohesion, which is the principle of Molecular Attraction; nor
Chemical Affinity, which is the principle of Atomic Attraction; nor Gravitation
(the greatest mystery of the three), which is the principle of attraction by
which every particle or mass of Matter is bound to every other particle or mass.
These three forms of Energy are not as yet understood by science, yet the
writers incline to the opinion that these too are manifestations of some form of
vibratory energy, a fact which the Hermetists (sic) have held and taught for
ages past.
"The Universal Ether, which is
postulated by science, without its nature being understood clearly, is held by
the Hermetists to be but higher manifestation of that which is erroneously
called matter-that is to say, Matter at a higher degree of vibration-and is
called by them 'The Ethereal Substance.' The Hermetists teach that this Ethereal
Substance is of extreme tenuity and elasticity, and pervades universal space,
serving as a medium of transmission of waves of vibratory energy, such as heat,
light, electricity, magnetism, etc. The Teachings are that The Ethereal
Substance is a connecting link between the forms of vibratory energy known as
'Matter' on the one hand, and 'Energy or Force' on the other; and also that it
manifests a degree of vibration, in rate and mode, entirely its own." [Quoted
from
here.
Quotation marks altered to conform to the conventions adopted at this site.]
Compare this with the things that the vast majority of DM-fans tell us about
motion -- that it is a "mode" of the existence of matter --, and with what
Engels and Lenin asserted about the 'Ether'. [On the latter, see Essays Seven
Part One, Eleven Part One and
Thirteen
Part One.]
Mysticism In General
The
'unity of opposites' also crops up all over the place in Traditional Mysticism:
"It is not the purpose of this paper to
argue that one symbol system for spirit or divinity is correct and others are
wrong. All sought to honour spirit in some way. If God or spirit is beyond all
dualities, however -- which the mystical traditions of all religions seem to
suggest -- then clearly God or spirit or divinity is also beyond our human
attempts to categorize it as either all male, or all female, at the exclusion of
the other....
"One of the themes of this paper is that if we want to create peace in the
world, then we need to find a way to include all the parts of the whole, or the
world, in this process. It would thus seem in keeping with this theme that
divinity or spirit should be seen to be the unity that transcends all opposites
or dualities, however they are represented. In support of this idea, [Figure Six below -- RL] cites examples of spiritual symbols from a number of different
religions in the world, which are all based on this idea of recognizing that the
spiritual path involves balancing and transcending polar opposites, or
dualities. Indeed, the mystical or esoteric path in all religions is based on
this simple truth: unitive consciousness transcends duality....
"Ancient Egyptian
Ankh: Represents the unity of opposites, which are symbolized by the two
halves of the Ankh: the top, circular part representing the female principle;
the bottom straight part representing the male principle. The Ankh also
symbolized eternal life and immortality (with the balancing and transcending of
opposites -- represented by the male and female principles -- being the way to
get there), as well as the union of Upper and Lower Egypt (the upper half
representing the Delta region of Lower Egypt and the bottom half representing
the rest of the Nile River that flowed through Upper Egypt, in the South, to the
Delta in the North).
Figure Six: Symbols From Different
Religious Traditions Representing The 'Unity
And Transcendence Of Opposites'
"Celtic
Cross: The Celtic Cross is an interesting Christian cross in that it
combines the traditional symbol of the cross (representing Christ on the cross,
who died to the physical life and was resurrected into eternal life with the
Father -- more a representation of the male principle) with the circle around it
(representing the female principle). [In this regard, it should be noted that
the ancient temples in Malta to the goddess were all made in circular shapes
representing the female figure.]
"Vesica
Pisces (Pre-Christian, Celtic Symbol): This pre-Christian, Celtic symbol
also represents the unity (outer circle) of opposites -- the two inner circles,
which are also seen to be overlapping or interdependent. The area in the middle,
where these two circles overlap, is also the shape of a fish, which later became
one of the dominant symbols for Christianity. This symbol can be found on the
ancient well at Glastonbury, England, which some call the mythical 'Isle of
Avalon' of King Arthur legends. This well has provided healing waters at a
constant temperature for 5,000 years, according to tradition. This overlapping
and interdependence of opposites also represents, in the Celtic tradition, the
interdependence of spiritual and material life; it is not a choice of one or the
other, but of both together.
"Yin Yang: This is the famous Yin-Yang
symbol from Taoism, which also represents the idea of the unity, balance, and
interdependence of opposites -- as the basis for a balanced and healthy life,
including a spiritual life. What is most interesting here is that there is
always a small amount of the opposite characteristic in each half of the symbol
(Yin or Female in Yang or Male, and Yang or Male in Yin or Female). The meaning
of this is clear. If you try to totally eliminate your opposite, and create a
pure Yin, or pure Yang (half of the whole), it will have the opposite effect of
what you intended, i.e., the state of total Yin, or Yang, will be so out of
balance that it will cause the situation to begin to move in its opposite
direction -- towards what you were trying to eliminate. Thus the lesson is
clear: if you want to maintain a current situation, always keep a little of its
opposite present, so that the situation will be partially balanced and thus
maintainable. This basic philosophical principle is also embedded in the
I Ching, or
Chinese Book of Changes.
"Hinduism: Male-Female Embrace: Another
version of the balance of male and female principles or opposites as a symbol of
the path to attain spiritual union with God can be seen in the Hindu symbol of a
male and female in an often voluptuous embrace. Westerners sometimes
misinterpret the meaning of this symbol. What it really means is that the
spiritual, mystical path requires the balancing and transcending of opposites,
not the elimination of opposites.
"Spirals (Coming Into Form, Going Out of
Form): These ancient spirals -- moving in two opposite circular directions --
can be found on the ancient temples to the goddess in Malta, on ancient stone
circles in England and Europe, and even in the Andes, as well as other places.
These symbols have been interpreted to mean the spiral of coming into life and
the spiral of going out of life as a continuous and interconnected process, thus
indicating a belief in reincarnation by the people drawing these symbols.
"Jewish
Menorah: Apparently the Jewish Menorah is an outgrowth of one of these
spirals which was cut in half.
"In conclusion, if a symbol can represent a whole philosophy, as well as an
approach, to the mystical path of enlightenment, then perhaps these symbols --
from a number of different religious traditions -- are a simple, visual way to
do so. These symbols are also archetypal and thus communicate in deeper
archetypal ways to our psyche or consciousness. One might also note that many,
if not most religions, are based not only on the idea of the unity or
interconnectedness of opposites; they are also based on the trinity principle in
which two opposites come together and create something new." [Quoted from
here; accessed 05/09/13. Figure number changed to conform to the ordering
found on this page.]
"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...."
[Maybury-Lewis (1992), p.125.]
"There are many ways of representing the
differentiation of the Absolute into antagonistic yet co-operative pairs of
opposites. Among the oldest and most usual of these is that based on the duality
of the sexes; Father Heaven and Mother Earth,
Uranos and
Gaia,
Zeus and
Hera, the Chinese and Yang and Yin. This is a
convention that has been developed with particular emphasis in the Hindu and
later Buddhist traditions, where, though the outward symbolization in images is
strikingly erotic, the connotations of all the forms are almost exclusively
allegorical." [Zimmer (1972), p.137.]
[There is another, longer list of such
symbols posted
here.]
I am
sure we can all recall reading similar passages from the DM-classics:
"[Among the elements of dialectics are
the following:] [I]nternally contradictory tendencies…in [a thing]…as the
sum
and unity of opposites…. [E]ach thing (phenomenon, process, etc.)…is
connected with every other…. [This involves] not only the unity of
opposites, but the transitions of every determination, quality,
feature, side, property into every other….
"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 (it would be
more correct, perhaps, to say their 'unity,' -- although the difference between
the terms identity and unity is not particularly important here. In a certain
sense both are correct) is the recognition (discovery) of the contradictory,
mutually exclusive, opposite tendencies in all phenomena and processes of nature
(including mind and society). 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 'leaps,'
to the 'break in continuity,' to the 'transformation into the opposite,' to the
destruction of the old and the emergence of the new.
"The unity (coincidence, identity, equal
action) of opposites is conditional, temporary, transitory, relative. The
struggle of mutually exclusive opposites is absolute, just as development and
motion are absolute....
"To begin with what is the simplest,
most ordinary, common, etc., [sic] with any proposition...: [like] John
is a man…. Here we already have dialectics (as Hegel's genius recognized): the
individual is the universal…. Consequently, the opposites (the individual
is opposed to the universal) are identical: the individual exists only in the
connection that leads to the universal. The universal exists only in the
individual and through the individual. Every individual is (in one way or
another) a universal. Every universal is (a fragment, or an aspect, or the
essence of) an individual. Every universal only approximately embraces all the
individual objects. Every individual enters incompletely into the universal,
etc., etc. Every individual is connected by thousands of transitions with other
kinds of individuals (things, phenomena, processes), etc.
Here already we have the elements, the germs of the concept of necessity,
of objective connection in nature, etc. Here already we have the contingent and
the necessary, the phenomenon and the essence; for when we say John is a man…we
disregard a number of attributes as contingent; we separate the essence
from the appearance, and counterpose the one to the other….
"Thus in any proposition we can
(and must) disclose as a 'nucleus' ('cell') the germs of all the elements
of dialectics, and thereby show that dialectics is a property of all human
knowledge in general.
"Human knowledge is not (or does not
follow) a straight line, but a curve, which endlessly approximates a series of
circles, a spiral. Any fragment, segment, section of this curve can be
transformed (transformed one-sidedly) into an independent, complete, straight
line, which then (if one does not see the wood for the trees) leads into the
quagmire, into clerical obscurantism (where it is anchored by the class
interests of the ruling classes). Rectilinearity and one-sidedness, woodenness
and petrification, subjectivism and subjective blindness -- voilà the
epistemological roots of idealism. And clerical obscrutantism (= philosophical
idealism), of course, has epistemological roots, it is not groundless; it is a
sterile flower undoubtedly, but a sterile flower that grows on the living tree
of living, fertile, genuine, powerful, omnipotent, objective, absolute human
knowledge." [Lenin (1961), pp.221-22,
357-61. Italic emphases in the original. Quotation marks altered to
conform to the conventions adopted at this site.]
"The law of the transformation of
quantity into quality, and vice versa; The law of the interpenetration of
opposites; The law of the negation of the negation." [Engels (1954),
p.62.]
"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." [Ibid.,
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. It already becomes evident that matter is unthinkable
without motion." [Ibid.,
p.70.]
When we consider and reflect upon Nature
at large, or the history of mankind, or our own intellectual activity, at first
we see the picture of an endless entanglement of relations and reactions,
permutations and combinations, in which nothing remains what, where and as it
was, but everything moves, changes, comes into being and passes away....
"We see, therefore, at first the picture
as a whole, with its individual parts still more or less kept in the background;
we observe the movements, transitions, connections, rather than the things that
move, combine, and are connected. This primitive, naive but intrinsically
correct conception of the world is that of ancient Greek philosophy, and was
first clearly formulated by
Heraclitus:
everything is and is not, for everything is fluid, is constantly changing,
constantly coming into being and passing away....
"[The] new German philosophy culminated
in the Hegelian system. In this system -- and herein is its great merit -- for
the first time the whole world, natural, historical, intellectual, is
represented as a process -- i.e., as in constant motion, change, transformation,
development; and the attempt is made to trace out the internal connection that
makes a continuous whole of all this movement and development."
[Engels (1892),
pp.405-08.]
"Contrary to metaphysics, dialectics
does not regard Nature as an accidental agglomeration of things, of phenomena,
unconnected with, isolated from, and independent of, each other, but as a
connected and integral whole, in which things…are organically connected with,
dependent on, and determined by, each other.
"The dialectical method therefore holds
that no phenomenon in Nature can be understood if taken by itself, isolated from
surrounding phenomena….
"The dialectical method therefore
requires that phenomena should be considered not only from the standpoint of
their interconnection and interdependence, but also from the standpoint of their
movement, their change, their development, their coming into being and going out
of being….
"Speaking of the materialist views of
the ancient philosopher Heraclitus, who held that 'the world, the all is
one...,' Lenin comments: 'A very good exposition of the rudiments of dialectical
materialism.'" [Stalin
(1976b), pp.837-38, 845.]
Here are our old friends, Woods and
Grant:
"Dialectics envisages the fundamental
processes at work in the universe, in society and in the history of ideas, not
as a closed circle, where the same processes merely repeat themselves in an
endless mechanical cycle, but as a kind of open-ended spiral of development in
which nothing is ever repeated exactly in the same way. This process can be
clearly seen in the history of philosophy and science. The entire history of
thought consists of an endless process of development through contradiction."
[Woods and Grant (2007),
p.80. Woods and Grant (1995), pp.74-75.]
And then there is that joke-of-a-site --
Dialectics For Kids:
"Dialectics is a tool to understand the way things are and the way things
change. Understanding dialectics is as easy as 1 - 2 - 3.
"One -- Every thing (every object and every process) is made of opposing
forces/opposing sides.
"Two -- Gradual changes lead to turning points, where one opposite overcomes
the other.
"Three -- Change moves in spirals, not circles." [Quoted from
here.
Bold added.]
The
owner of the site is clearly eager to create a new generation of Diminutive
Dogmatic Mystics.
Mixed Examples
Here
follows a mixed bag of similarly dogmatic assertions, from open and honest
mystics:
Daoism:
"The Yin Yang principle is 'the'
preeminent ancient Chinese secret offering explanation to everything that
exists, changes or moves. Its origin comes from observing the very essence of
the Universe -- from darkness there is light. Yin Yang embodies duality or an
opposite nature with Yin tending toward passive, dark, feminine, downward
seeking and Yang tending toward active, light, masculine, upward seeking.
"Because we can see dark and we can see light they appear separate yet they are
connected. Everything in life has this same connective quality. However, notice
your tendency to identify Yin and Yang as separate and to judge which one you
relate to or prefer over the other. This same human tendency prevents us from
accessing the power of the principle. So to access the power of Yin Yang we must
embrace both Yin and Yang and observe without judgment.
"There is also a cyclical nature to Yin Yang. Everything changes into its
opposite in an ongoing cycle of reversal. Health changes to sickness and
sickness changes into health. The more you embrace Yin Yang and see your life as
one continuous flow; your experiences in life will naturally reverse or begin to
flow more easily." [China
Daily, 25/02/2011. Bold emphasis added. Quotation marks altered to
conform to the conventions adopted at this site.]
Buddhism
On
the use of contradictions in Buddhism, see this
on-line article (a PDF), Contradictions In Buddhism, by Yasuo
Deguchi, Jay Garfield and Graham Priest.
[LOC = Law of
Non-Contradiction.]
Here
is what
The Buddhist Channel has to say about the LOC:
"In Buddhist logic, the origin of every
judgment and concept from data of our senses starts with the act of running
through the manifold of undetermined pure sensations first before we fasten upon
one point of that series of pure sensations, a point with regard to which the
rest will be divided in two.
"On the one side we have a comparatively
limited number of similar things, on the other the less limited number of
dissimilar ones. Both parts mutually represent the absence of each other.
Therefore, every [part/aspect? -- RL] of our conscious thought or cognition thus
represents a division into two parts. Thus, our cognition begins with an act of
dichotomy.
"As soon as our intellectual eye begins
to 'see', our thought is already beset with contradiction. Once our thought has
stopped running and has fixed upon an external point, to produce a judgment
said, 'this is blue', we have already separated the universe of discourse into
two unequal halves, the part that is blue and the infinite part that is
non-blue.
"Both parts are relative to each other.
There is actually nothing blue in itself. The Law of Contradiction is an
expression of the fact that all cognition is dichotomizing and relative. We can
only cognize or determine a thing by opposing it to what it is not.
"Now, everything be it real or imagined,
is subject to the Law of Otherness also. Otherness and opposition are realized
as representing the negation of the similar. Differences and the contraries
cannot be conceived so long as the non-existence of the similar is not realized.
Otherness and opposition is the absence of the similar indirectly.
"Contradiction can be conceived in its
logical or dynamic forms. View logically it is a complete mutual exclusion such
as e.g., blue and non-blue. They can co-exist in close proximity with each other
without interference with each others' existence. This mutual exclusion can also
be referred to as the Law of Excluded Middle. In its dynamic form, both the
opposing parts are mutually endeavouring to oust one another out of their mutual
opposition. Light and darkness is such an example as each is a complete negation
of the other. They cannot peacefully co-exist in close proximity with each
other. They appear and disappear due to the totally of causes. This is the
Buddhist theory of causation. The Law of Excluded Middle also fully applied here
as well.
"In real phenomena, there is always
something in the middle. If light appears all of a sudden, there is always an
intermediate moment of twilight between darkness and light. This is different in
the case of logical opposition between light and non-light, the opposition is
complete without an intermediate twilight moment. Here, it can also be mentioned
that the
Theravada
tradition maintained that between pleasure and pain there is the third position
of Indifferent feeling in the middle. To the Buddhist logician, the last moment
of the series of darkness is the cause (in the sense of dependent origination)
of the first moment of light. Real causation belongs to a single moment only. On
the other hand, efficient opposition is between one set of moments (duration of
time) and another set which is constructed by our intellect. It is not ultimate
reality. It is constructed phenomena.
"The Laws of Contradiction is one of the
main tools used by the Buddhist logicians in establishing their theory of
Instantaneous Being, for Instantaneousness is the very essence of every real
thing. The logical law of contradiction does not apply to the 'Things-in
Themselves', as logic is thought and thought is imagination and not ultimate
reality. Ultimate reality in Buddhist philosophy is the reality of a point
instant. It is the efficiency of a point instant. There is no relation of
opposition between entities." [Aik Theng Chong,
The Buddhist Channel, May 31, 2011. Formatting and spelling altered to
conform to the conventions adopted at this site. Accessed 18/07/2011. Link
added.]
We
can see from the above that Buddhist thinkers
make nearly as
many mistakes about logic as DM-fans. Be this as it may, anyone reading this
material can't fail to recognise the similarities between its approach and much
that can be found in the Hegelian tradition. [On Hegel and Buddhism, see
Morton (ND).]
And,
here is what Ha Tai Kim had to say about Hegel and
Zen Buddhism:
"The paradoxical nature of Zen manifests
itself in its ignoring of the law of contradiction. It does not attempt to
invalidate the law of contradiction, but ignores it only to illuminate the law
of identity. Thus the logical proposition of illogical Zen is: 'A is not-A;
therefore, A is A.' Zen believes that the true meaning of the proposition 'A is
A' will be realized only when 'A is not-A.' The Zen way of thinking is to assert
that to be itself is not to be itself, and also that I am really I only by
negating myself.
"The philosophical 'fun' of
contradiction manifested in the logic of illogical Zen seems to have two
intended purposes. First, Zen believes that the logical dissection of reality
will never bring about the unitive point of view, the only method by which
reality can be presented as it is. The unitive point of view achieved by the
intuitive method transcends not only subject and object but also all logical
categories, including affirmation and negation. Zen masters frequently resort to
the following pattern of argument: 'Do not call this a staff; if you do, it is
an affirmation; if you do not, it is a negation. Apart from affirmation and
negation say a word, quick, quick.' Zen aims at acquiring the pure experience in
which subject and object are not yet separated.
"The second purpose of Zen's employment
of this method may be detected from the fact that the logic of the illogical
accounts for many paradoxical problems of practical philosophy more adequately
than does ordinary logic. In a sense, it is a form of practical reason; it is
the logic of life. It is reasonable to say that 'living is dying' (A is not-A),
as existentialists seem to point out. A fine illustration of this method is
Jesus' pronouncement that 'He that findeth his life shall lose it, and he that
loseth his life shall find it' (Matt. 10:39). In the moral and religious sphere,
this method is frequently employed. Any idea of the good which is not carefully
scrutinized in the light of the practical and concrete situation cannot really
be called good; thus, we may say that 'good is not-good.' Only by examining the
idea of good to the ultimate extreme can we say that we understand the idea. In
order to understand fully the implications of a concept -- for example,
philanthropy -- we must allow room for reasonable doubt about the concept, even
stating that philanthropy is selfishness, that is, 'A is not-A.'
"The simple proposition 'A is A' does
not go beyond the socially accepted meaning of the term: it is limited, and,
therefore, infinite possibilities of the meaning of the term are excluded. The
proposition excludes all doubt and skepticism. However, in the proposition 'A is
not-A' we can travel far beyond the limited and determined meaning of a concept
by placing it at the most extreme opposite. A is fully understood as A, because
A is scrutinized to the fullest degree, and all possible meanings of A are
exhaustively explored. This is precisely the meaning of Hegel's dictum that
'Truth is the whole.' By negating the very meaning of a concept, we are able to
move toward the apprehension of the whole. For both Zen and Hegel, the negative
method signifies that an affirmative concept contains within it the possibility
of a negative.
"We are surprised, at first, to discover
that the logic of the illogical in Zen is akin to Hegel's dialectical method.
But it is no surprise at all if we note that Hegel's dialectical method is also
the logic of life. The 'fun' of contradiction, or 'pretension' of the other, in
the act of negating itself, is the comical impersonation of which
Loewenberg speaks in describing Hegelian dialectic. 'The logic called
dialectical,' writes Loewenberg, 'is the logic of comedy par excellence. It is
the logic by which ideas and beliefs are made to whip themselves, as it were, in
the process of exhibiting their internal contradictions.' It is the method
of the self-alienation of the Absolute in Hegel's philosophy. Even in his
legend, 'The Naked Boy,'
Eckhart
identifies the Naked Boy with God himself, 'who was having a bit of fun.' As
early as 1800, when Hegel wrote his Fragment of a System, he knew that
the dialectical method was the logic of life, for he regarded life as the 'union
of union and nonunion.' Both Hegel and Zen thinkers assume the absolute
viewpoint to be the ground of unity between A and not-A, being and not-being.
The only difference is that the universal of universals in Hegel is the
Absolute, while in Zen it is Nothing, which is a sort of Absolute itself." [Kim
(1955),
pp.22-23. Accessed 18/07/2011. Quotation marks altered to conform to the
conventions adopted at this site.]
So,
Zen logicians appear to be about as
confused as Hegel!
[However, later in his paper Kim makes the mistake of attributing to Hegel
ideas that can only be found in
Kant and
Fichte concerning the notorious 'Thesis/Antithesis/Synthesis' triad. On that
see here.]
This
is what others have had to say about this aspect of Buddhism:
"Everything is interconnected.
Everything affects everything else. Everything that is, is because other things
are. This is the teaching of Dependent Origination.
"This teaching has many names. It is
called Interdependent Origination, or (Inter)dependent Arising, or Co-Arising,
or variations thereof. It's called Conditioned Genesis and Causal Nexus and many
other things. It would be nice if English-speaking Buddhists could agree on a
term, but so far we haven't. The Sanskrit is Pratitya-samutpada. I've
found the Pali name spelled Panicca-samuppada, Paticca-samuppada
and Patichcha-samuppada.
"Whatever it is called, Dependent
Origination is a core teaching of all schools of Buddhism." [Quoted from
here; italic
emphases in the original. Accessed 05/09/13. See also
here.]
"The changing nature of all phenomena,
the interdependence of all things, the elegance and perfection inherent in the
Universe is eminently described in The Buddhism of the mystic Law by the Buddha
Nichiren DaiShonin." [Quoted from
here.
Accessed 05/09/13.]
"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.]
Hinduism
"Everything is interconnected and
interdependent. For example, a Ship is made of many different things such as
wood, metal, notion.... The wood that made that ship came from a tree, which
came from the dirt in the ground that the Sun helped nourish and grow. Nothing
can exist on its own; it is all connected in some way or another. The Ship does
not exist as a separate and distinct entity, it is made up of many other things
and therefore cannot exist independently from the tree or the grass or the
dirt." [Quoted from
here; accessed 05/09/13.]
"Although all four parts of yoga are
separated for four different types of people, they are all interconnected.
In Hinduism, everyone and everything is interconnected in the cycle of time,
life, and the Karmic universe. No matter what type of person you are, don’t
exclusively concentrate on one type of yoga." [Quoted from
here; accessed 05/09/13.]
"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."
[Quoted from
here.
(This links to a PDF.)]
"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.]
"Maya
is existence: both the world of which we are aware who are contained in the
growing and dissolving environment, growing and dissolving in our turn. At the
same time, Maya is the supreme power that generates and animates the
display…thus it is at once effect (the cosmic flux) and cause (the creative
power). In this latter regard it is known as
Shakti, 'cosmic energy'.... Shakti is power,
ability, capacity, faculty, strength, energy, prowess, regal power; the power of
composition, poetic power, genius; the power of signification of a word or term;
the power inherent in cause to produce its necessary effect....
Maya-shakti is personified as the
world-protecting, feminine, maternal side of the Ultimate being and as such
stands for the spontaneous, loving acceptance of life's tangible reality.... She
instils into us -- and she is, herself -- surrender to the changing aspects of
existence...the character of Maya-Shakti-Devi is multifariously ambiguous.
Having mothered the universe and the individual (macro-and microcosm) as
correlative manifestations of the divine, Maya then immediately muffles
consciousness within the wrappings of her perishable production.... The aim of
Indian thought has always been to learn that secret of entanglement and if
possible, to cut through into a realm outside and beneath the emotional and
intellectual convolutions that enwrap our conscious being....
Vishnu teaches the identity of opposites....
The secret of Maya is this identity of opposites. Maya is a
simultaneous-and-successive manifestation of energies that are at variance with
each other, processes contradicting and annihilating each other: creation and
destruction, evolution
and dissolution, the dream-idyll of the inward vision of the god and
the desolate nought, the terror of the void, the dread infinite. Maya is the
whole cycle of the year, generating everything and taking it away. This
'and,' uniting incompatibles, expresses the fundamental character of the Highest
Being who is the Lord and Wielder of Maya, whose energy is Maya. Opposites are
fundamentally of the one essence, two aspects of the one Vishnu." [Zimmer (1972),
pp.25-46, largely quoted from
here. I have altered the spelling to agree with
UK English; quotation marks have been adapted to agree with the conventions
adopted at this site.]
Muslim Mysticism
"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.]
Eastern Mysticism In General
"The most important characteristic of
the Eastern world view -- one could almost say the essence of it -- is the
awareness of the unity and mutual interrelation of all things and events, the
experience of all phenomena in the world as manifestations of a basic oneness.
All things are seen as interdependent and inseparable parts of this cosmic
whole; as different manifestations of the same ultimate reality....
"This reality is seen as the essence of
the universe underlying and unifying the multitude of things and events we
observe.... This ultimate essence, however, cannot be separated from its
multiple manifestations. It is central to its very nature to manifest itself in
myriad forms which come into being and disintegrate, transforming themselves
into one another without end. In its phenomenal aspect, the cosmic One is thus
intrinsically dynamic, and the apprehension of its dynamic nature is basic to
all schools of Eastern mysticism....
"The emphasis on movement, flow and
change is not only characteristic of Eastern mystical traditions, but has been
an essential aspect of the world view of mystics throughout the ages. In
ancient Greece, Heraclitus taught that 'everything flows' and compared the world
to an ever-living fire....
"The
Rig Veda
uses an other term to express the dynamic nature of the universe, the term
Rita....
The order of nature was conceived by the Vedic seers, not as a static divine
law, but as a dynamic principle which is inherent in the universe. This idea is
not unlike the Chinese conception of
Tao -- 'The
Way'.... Like the Vedic seers, the Chinese sages saw the world in terms of flow
and change, and thus gave the idea of a cosmic order an essentially dynamic
connotation. Both concepts, Rita and Tao, were later brought down
from their original cosmic level to the human level and were interpreted in a
moral sense; Rita as the universal law which all gods and humans must
obey, and Tao as the right way of life.
"The Vedic concept of Rita
anticipates the idea of
karma
which was developed later to express the dynamic interplay of all things and
events. The word karma means 'action' and denotes the 'active', or
dynamic, interrelation of all phenomena....
"The Eastern mystics see the universe as
an inseparable web, whose interconnections are dynamic and not static. The
cosmic web is alive; it moves, grows and changes continually. Modern physics,
too, has come to conceive of the universe as such a web of relations, and, like
Eastern mysticism, has recognised that this web is intrinsically dynamic. The
dynamic aspect of matter arises in quantum theory as a consequence of the
wave-nature of subatomic particles, and is even more essential in relativity
theory...where the unification of space and time implies that the being of
matter cannot be separated from its activity. The properties of subatomic
particles can therefore only be understood in a dynamic context; in terms of
movement, interaction and transformation." [Capra (1999), pp.130, 190-92.
Italic emphases in the original; links added.]
Readers will no doubt notice that Capra
is also quite happy to rope modern science into his mystical view of nature,
just like the Dialectical Mystics we have studied on this page. Indeed, many of
the chapter headings of his book,
The
Tao of Physics, could have been lifted from any randomly-selected
textbook devoted to DM.
Native American Mysticism
"Just as
Plotinus
and Hindu metaphysicians indicate that the realm of Soul binds the universe
together, the general Native American sense, as
Penobscot elder Eunice Baumann-Nelson says, is that everything is
interconnected, everything is essentially unified. Such a world-view is an
essential element of the unitive life. In their total acceptance of the
essential sameness of natural, material reality and symbolic realities, Native
Americans describe a form of living the unitive life. When Black Elk speaks of
circles and roundness as symbols of unbroken wholeness, he speaks symbolically
of that vested view of the whole universe as unified, one." [Quoted from
here.
Links added. Accessed 05/09/13.]
Aztec Mysticism
This
is what the Internet Encyclopaedia of Philosophy had to say about Aztec 'dialectical
monism':
"Teotl
continually generates and regenerates as well as permeates, encompasses, and
shapes the cosmos as part of its endless process of
self-generation-and–regeneration. That which humans commonly understand as
nature -- e.g. heavens, earth, rain, humans, trees, rocks, animals, etc. -- is
generated by teotl, from teotl as one
aspect, facet, or moment of its endless process of
self-generation-and-regeneration. Yet teotl is more than the unified
totality of things; teotl is identical with everything and
everything is identical with teotl. Since identical with teotl,
they cosmos and its contents ultimately transcend such dichotomies as personal
vs. impersonal, animate vs. inanimate, etc. As the single, all-encompassing life
force of the universe, teotl vivifies the cosmos and its contents.
Lastly, teotl is both metaphysically immanent and
transcendent. It is immanent in that it penetrates deeply into every detail of
the universe and exists within the myriad of created things; it is transcendent
in that it is not exhausted by any single, existing thing.
"Nahua
metaphysics is processive. Process, movement, becoming and transmutation are
essential attributes of teotl. Teotl is properly understood as
ever-flowing and ever-changing energy-in-motion -- not as a discrete, static
entity. Because doing so better reflects teotl's dynamic and
processual nature, I suggest...that we treat the word 'teotl' as a verb
denoting process and movement rather than as a noun denoting a discrete static
entity. So construed, 'teotl' refers to the eternal, universal process
of teotlizing....
"Although essentially processive and
devoid of any permanent order, the ceaseless becoming of the cosmos is
nevertheless characterized by an overarching balance, rhythm, and regularity:
one provided by and constituted by teotl.
Teotl's and hence the cosmos' ceaseless becoming is characterized by what I
call 'dialectical polar monism'. Dialectical polar monism holds that: (1)
the cosmos and its contents are substantively and formally identical with teotl;
and (2) teotl presents itself primarily as the ceaseless, cyclical
oscillation of polar yet complementary opposites.
"Teotl's process presents itself in
multiple aspects, preeminent among which is duality. This duality takes the form
of the endless opposition of contrary yet mutually interdependent and mutually
complementary polarities which divide, alternately dominate, and explain the
diversity, movement, and momentary arrangement of the universe. These include:
being and not-being, order and disorder, life and death, light and darkness,
masculine and feminine, dry and wet, hot and cold, and active and passive.
Life and death, for example, are mutually arising, interdependent, and
complementary aspects of one and the same process. Life contains the seed of
death; death, the fertile, energizing seed of life. The artists of
Tlatilco
and
Oaxaca,
for example, presented this duality artistically by fashioning a split-faced
mask, one-half alive, one-half skull-like.... The masks are intentionally
ambiguous. Skulls simultaneously symbolize death and life, since life springs
from the bones of the dead. Flesh simultaneously symbolizes life and death,
since death arises from the flesh of the living. The faces are thus
neither-alive-nor-dead-yet-both-alive-and-dead all at once.
"The
Nahuas' notion of duality contrasts with
Zoroastrian-style
eschatological dualisms. The latter claim: (1) order (goodness, life, light)
and disorder (evil, death, darkness) are mutually exclusive forces; and (2)
order (life, etc.) triumphs over disorder (death, etc.) at the end of history.
According to Nahua duality, order and disorder, life and death, etc. alternate
endlessly without resolution. It neither conceives death as inherently evil and
life as inherently good nor advocates the conquest of death or the search for
eternal life....
"The created cosmos consists of the
unending, cyclical tug-of-war or dialectical oscillation of these polarities
-- all of which are the manifold manifestations of teotl. Because of this,
the created cosmos is characterized as unstable, transitory, and devoid of any
lasting being, order or structure. Yet teotl is nevertheless characterized
by enduring pattern or regularity. How is this so? Teotl is the dynamic,
sacred energy shaping as well as constituting these endless oscillations; it is
the immanent balance of the endless, dialectical alternation of the created
universe's interdependent polarities.
"Because essentially processive and
dynamic, teotl is properly characterized neither by being nor not-being but
by becoming. Being and not-being are simply two dialectically interrelated
presentations or facets of teotl, and as such inapplicable to teotl itself.
Similarly, teotl is properly understood as neither ordered (law-governed) nor
disordered (anarchic) but as unordered. Indeed, this point is fully general:
life/death, active/passive, male/female, etc. are strictly speaking not
predicable of teotl. Teotl captures a
tertium quid
transcending these dichotomies by being simultaneously
neither-alive-nor-dead-yet-both-alive-and-dead, simultaneously
neither-orderly-nor-disorderly-yet-both-orderly-and-disorderly, etc.
"In the end, teotl is essentially an
unstructured and unordered, seamless totality. Differentiation, regularity,
order, etc. are simultaneously fictions of human unknowing and artistic-shamanic
presentations of teotl. In Western philosophical terminology, one perhaps best
characterizes the radical ontological indeterminacy of Nahua metaphysics as an
extreme nominalist anti-realism, and teotl, as a Kantian-like
noumenon."
[Maffie (ND);
links and bold emphases added. Minor typo corrected. Quotation marks altered to
conform to the conventions adopted at this site.]
Sound
familiar?
Kabbalism
"We have been taught that God is an
all-powerful, all–knowing, and all good being; a being that can be likened to a
person, especially a human father. Kabbalah teaches that God is not a person at
all. God is the force, the energy, the process, the light that powers the
universe and its ongoing evolution. Jewish mysticism teaches that God, 'as the
innermost heart of reality,' cannot be described as a person or for that matter,
as any kind of noun, for that would be inadequate and an insufficient. The
mystics teach that God is process, God is motion, God is best understood as a
verb. In the parlance of our own day, I would say that the mystics conceptualize
God as a cosmic ecosystem, an ecosystem to which we all belong....
"Jewish mysticism teaches that each of
us is apart of the totality of God. Each of us is a spark within the flame of
God. Each of us is a wave within the ocean of God. To be a human being is to be
interconnected with each other and interdependent upon each other in ways that
we can scarcely imagine. We are more connected to each other than we realize....
"The essential spiritual teaching is
that all is one: we are one, expressing one life, sharing one being. Everything
is interconnected, and each of us belongs. Because we are connected to all life,
we ourselves are impacted by how we treat another." [Quoted from
here; this links to a PDF. Accessed 05/09/13.]
Ancient Egyptian Mysticism
"Set
or Seth (Egyptian), according to the
Heliopolitan mythology, the son of
Seb and
Nut, is the brother of
Osiris,
Isis, and
Nephthys; and the father of
Anubis by Nephthys. In later times he became
associated with
Typhon.
"The attributes of the god underwent several changes: he is described as very
closely connected with
Aroeris (Heru-ur or Horus the Elder), his chief
office being that of helper and friend to the deceased; in this association a
twin-god is pictured, having the hawk head of
Horus (light) and the Set animal (darkness)
upon one human body. Furthermore, Horus was the god of the sky by day, while Set
was god of the sky by night: in this sense were they opposite yet identic
deities in earliest times, one the shadow of the other." [Quoted from
here. Minor typo corrected.]
Fascist Mysticism
Incidentally, it is worth pointing out that even fascist mystics concur
with the above metaphysic:
"The cosmos operates through polarities,
and the interaction of these polarities causes change and evolution." [White
Order of Thule, quoted from
here.]
What was that again about "the ideas of the ruling-class..."?
Several more examples of mystical
apriorism will be posted here over the next few years. In the meantime
readers are encouraged to check
this and
this out.
Appendix Two:
Yet More Dialectical Dogma
Over
the next few years I will be adding countless examples of dogmatic assertions
that DM-fans have inflicted on their readers for the last century-and-a-half.
Naturally, there has to be a limit to this otherwise if every dogmatic
pronouncement DM-fans have committed to paper (or the Internet) were reproduced
here, this Essay would be several million words longer!
Unless otherwise stated,
in what follows, bold emphases have been added,
italic emphases are those in the original
and quotation marks have been altered to conform to the conventions
adopted at this site.
Engels In Dogmatic Hyper-Drive
Anti-Dühring
[AD]:
It is
still possible to find defenders of Engels who will inform their readers with a
straight face that AD, for example, isn't the least bit
dogmatic. Here is a relatively recent example:
"A
commitment to scientific socialism has no necessary connection with dogmatic
Marxism.... In both Anti-Dühring and
Dialectics of Nature Engels defends a fallibilist account of science. His
defence of scientific socialism in Anti-Dühring was aimed precisely
against dogmatic conceptions of socialism.... Whatever the faults of the texts
of the 1870s -- and there are many -- they are not the exercises in dogmatism
they are standardly portrayed as being." [O'Neill (1996), pp.49-50.]
In
order to show that the above conclusion (concerning Engels's dogmatism) is about
as misguided as anything found in
Crystal
Gazing or
Flat Earth
'Theory', here are a couple of dozen dogmatic pronouncements that Engels imposed
on the facts (in addition to
those quoted earlier) -- amounting to close on 6000 words -- taken from
the first half of AD alone:
"It goes
without saying that my recapitulation of mathematics and the natural sciences
was undertaken in order to convince myself also in detail -- of what in general
I was not in doubt -- that in nature, amid the welter of innumerable
changes, the same dialectical laws of motion force their way through as those
which in history govern the apparent fortuitousness of events; the same
laws which similarly form the thread running through the history of the
development of human thought and gradually rise to consciousness in thinking
man; the laws which Hegel first developed in all-embracing but mystic form, and
which we made it one of our aims to strip of this mystic form and to bring
clearly before the mind in their complete simplicity and universality."
[Engels (1976),
pp.11-12.]
"It is however precisely the polar
antagonisms put forward as irreconcilable and insoluble, the forcibly fixed
lines of demarcation and class distinctions, which have given modern theoretical
natural science its restricted, metaphysical character. The recognition that
these antagonisms and distinctions, though to be found in nature, are only of
relative validity, and that on the other hand their imagined rigidity and
absolute validity have been introduced into nature only by our reflective minds
-- this recognition is the kernel of the dialectical conception of nature.
It is possible to arrive at this recognition because the accumulating facts of
natural science compel us to do so; but one arrives at it more easily if one
approaches the dialectical character of these facts equipped with an
understanding of the laws of dialectical thought. In any case natural
science has now advanced so far that it can no longer escape dialectical
generalisation." [Ibid.,
pp.15-16.]
"When we consider and reflect upon
nature at large or the history of mankind or our own intellectual activity,
at first we see the picture of an endless entanglement of relations and
reactions in which nothing remains what, where and as it was, but everything
moves, changes, comes into being and passes away. This primitive, naive but
intrinsically correct conception of the world is that of ancient Greek
philosophy, and was first clearly formulated by Heraclitus: everything is and
is not, for everything is fluid, is constantly changing,
constantly coming into being and passing away." [Ibid.,
p.24.]
"To the metaphysician, things and
their mental reflexes, ideas, are isolated, are to be considered one after the
other and apart from each other, are objects of investigation fixed, rigid,
given once for all. He thinks in absolutely irreconcilable antitheses. 'His
communication is "yea, yea; nay, nay"; for whatsoever is more than these cometh
of evil.' [Matthew 5:37 -- Ed.]
For him a thing either exists or does not exist; a thing cannot at the same
time be itself and something else. Positive and negative absolutely exclude one
another, cause and effect stand in a rigid antithesis one to the other.
"At first sight this mode of thinking
seems to us very luminous, because it is that of so-called sound
common sense. Only sound common sense, respectable fellow that he is, in the
homely realm of his own four walls, has very wonderful adventures directly he
ventures out into the wide world of research. And the metaphysical mode of
thought, justifiable and even necessary as it is in a number of domains whose
extent varies according to the nature of the particular object of investigation,
sooner or later reaches a limit, beyond which it becomes one-sided, restricted,
abstract, lost in insoluble contradictions. In the contemplation of individual
things it forgets the connection between them; in the contemplation of their
existence, it forgets the beginning and end of that existence; of their repose,
it forgets their motion. It cannot see the wood for the trees." [Ibid.,
p.26.]
"In like manner,
every organic being is every moment the same and not the same, every moment
it assimilates matter supplied from without, and gets rid of other matter;
every moment some cells of its body die and others build themselves anew; in a
longer or shorter time the matter of its body is completely renewed, and is
replaced by other atoms of matter, so that every organic being is always itself,
and yet something other than itself.
"Further, we find upon closer
investigation that the two poles of an antithesis positive and negative, e.g.,
are as inseparable as they are opposed and that despite all their opposition,
they mutually interpenetrate. And we find, in like manner, that cause and
effect are conceptions which only hold good in their application to individual
cases; but as soon as we
consider the individual cases in their general connection with the universe as a
whole, they run into each other, and they become confounded when we contemplate
that universal action and reaction in which causes and effects are eternally
changing places, so that what is effect here and now will be cause there and
then, and vice versa.
"None of these processes and modes of
thought enters into the framework of metaphysical reasoning. Dialectics, on the
other hand, comprehends things and their representations, ideas, in their
essential connection, concatenation, motion, origin, and ending. Such
processes as those mentioned above are, therefore, so many corroborations of its
own method of procedure." [Ibid.,
p.27.]
"Nature
is the proof of dialectics, and it must be said for modern science that it
has furnished this proof with very rich materials increasing daily, and thus has
shown that, in the last resort, nature works dialectically and not
metaphysically. But the naturalists who have learned to think dialectically
are few and far between, and this conflict of the results of discovery with
preconceived modes of thinking explains the endless confusion now reigning in
theoretical natural science, the despair of teachers as well as learners, of
authors and readers alike." [Ibid.,
p.28.]
"Counting
requires not only objects that can be counted, but also the ability to
exclude all properties of the objects considered except their number -- and
this ability is the product of a long historical development based on
experience." [Ibid.,
p.47.]
"Mathematical axioms are expressions of
the scantiest thought-content, which mathematics is obliged to borrow from
logic. They can be reduced to two:
"1)
The whole is greater than its part. This statement is pure tautology, as
the quantitatively conceived idea 'part' is from the outset definitely related
to the idea 'whole', and in fact in such a way that 'part' simply means that the
quantitative 'whole' consists of several quantitative 'parts'. In stating
this explicitly, the so-called axiom does not take us a step further. This
tautology can even in a way be proved by saying: a whole is that which
consists of several parts; a part is that of which several make a whole; hence
the part is less than the whole -- in which the inanity of repetition brings out
even more clearly the inanity of content." [Ibid.,
p.49.]
[Those who agree with this set of dogmatic pronouncements should consult Essay
Eleven Part Two, and
this,
and then think again.]
"This is
precisely the Hegelian nodal line of measure relations, in which, at certain
definite nodal points, the purely quantitative increase or decrease gives rise
to a
qualitative leap; for example, in the case of heated or cooled
water, where boiling-point and freezing-point are the nodes at which -- under
normal pressure -- the leap to a new state of aggregation takes place, and
where consequently quantity is transformed into quality." [Ibid.,
p.56.]
"With
this assurance Herr Dühring saves himself the trouble of saying anything further
about the origin of life, although it might reasonably have been expected that a
thinker who had traced the evolution of the world back to its self-equal state,
and is so much at home on other celestial bodies, would have known exactly
what's what also on this point. For the rest, however, the assurance he gives
us is only half right unless it is completed by the Hegelian nodal line of
measure relations which has already been mentioned. In spite of all gradualness,
the transition from one form of motion to another always remains a leap, a
decisive change. This is true of the transition from the mechanics of celestial
bodies to that of smaller masses on a particular celestial body; it is equally
true of the transition from the mechanics of masses to the mechanics of
molecules -- including the forms of motion investigated in physics proper: heat,
light, electricity, magnetism. In the same way, the transition from the physics
of molecules to the physics of atoms -- chemistry -- in turn involves a decided
leap; and this is even more clearly the case in the transition from ordinary
chemical action to the chemism of albumen which we call life. Then within
the sphere of life the leaps become ever more infrequent and imperceptible.
-- Once again, therefore, it is Hegel who has to correct Herr Dühring." [Ibid.,
pp.82-83.]
"We
have already seen earlier, when discussing world schematism, that in connection
with
this Hegelian nodal line of measure relations -- in which
quantitative change suddenly passes at certain points into qualitative
transformation -- Herr Dühring had a little accident: in a weak moment he
himself recognised and made use of this line. We gave there one of the
best-known examples -- that of the change of the aggregate states of water,
which under normal atmospheric pressure changes at 0°C
from the liquid into the solid state, and at 100°C
from the liquid into the gaseous state, so that at both these turning-points the
merely quantitative change of temperature brings about a qualitative change in
the condition of the water." [Ibid.,
p.160.]
"When we speak of being, and
purely of being, unity can only consist in that all the objects to which we
are referring -- are, exist.
They are comprised in the unity of
this being, and in no other unity, and the general dictum that they all are
not only cannot give them any additional qualities, whether common or not, but
provisionally excludes all such qualities from consideration. For as soon as we
depart even a millimetre from the simple basic fact that being is common to all
these things, the
differences between these things begin to emerge -- and whether these
differences consist in the circumstance that some are white and others black,
that some are animate and others inanimate, that some may be of this world and
others of the world beyond, cannot be decided by us from the fact that mere
existence is in equal manner ascribed to them all.
"The
unity of the world does not consist in its being, although its being is a
precondition of its unity, as it must certainly first be before it can
be one. Being, indeed, is always an open question beyond the point
where our sphere of observation ends. The real unity of the world
consists in its materiality, and this is proved not by a few juggled phrases,
but by a long and wearisome development of philosophy and natural science."
[Ibid.,
p.54.]
"It is clear that an infinity which has
an end but no beginning is neither more nor less infinite than that which has a
beginning but no end. The slightest dialectical insight should have told Herr
Dühring that beginning and end necessarily belong together, like the north
pole and the south pole, and that if the end is left out, the beginning just
becomes the end -- the one end which the series has; and vice
versa. The whole deception would be impossible but for the mathematical usage of
working with infinite series. Because in mathematics it is necessary to start
from definite, finite terms in order to reach the indefinite, the infinite, all
mathematical series, positive or negative, must start from 1, or they cannot be
used for calculation. The abstract requirement of a mathematician is, however,
far from being a compulsory law for the world of reality.
"For that matter, Herr Dühring will
never succeed in conceiving real infinity without contradiction. Infinity is
a contradiction, and is full of contradictions. From the outset it
is a contradiction that an infinity is composed of nothing but finites, and
yet this is the case. The limitedness of the material world leads no less to
contradictions than its unlimitedness, and every attempt to get over these
contradictions leads, as we have seen, to new and worse contradictions. It
is just because infinity is a contradiction that it is an infinite
process, unrolling endlessly in time and in space. The removal of the
contradiction would be the end of infinity. Hegel saw this quite correctly,
and for that reason treated with well-merited contempt the gentlemen who
subtilised over this contradiction." [Ibid.,
p.63.]
"Let us pass on. So time had a
beginning. What was there before this beginning? The universe, which was then in
a self-equal, unchanging state. And as in this state no changes succeed one
another, the more specialised idea of time transforms itself into the more
general idea of being. In the first place, we are here not in the least
concerned with what ideas change in Herr Dühring's head. The subject at issue is
not the idea of time, but real time, which Herr Dühring cannot
rid himself of so cheaply. In the second place, however much the idea of time
may convert itself into the more general idea of being, this does not take us
one step further. For the basic forms of all being are space and time, and
being out of time is just as gross an absurdity as being out of space."
[Ibid.,
p.64.]
"The materialists before Herr Dühring
spoke of matter and motion. He reduces motion to mechanical force as its
supposed basic form, and thereby makes it impossible for himself to understand
the real connection between matter and motion, which moreover was also unclear
to all former materialists. And yet it is simple enough.
Motion is the mode of existence of matter. Never anywhere has there been
matter without motion, nor can there be. Motion in cosmic space, mechanical
motion of smaller masses on the various celestial bodies, the vibration of
molecules as heat or as electrical or magnetic currents, chemical disintegration
and combination, organic life -- at each given moment each individual atom of
matter in the world is in one or other of these forms of motion, or in several
forms at once. All rest, all equilibrium, is only relative, only has
meaning in relation to one or other definite form of motion. On the earth,
for example, a body may be in mechanical equilibrium, may be mechanically at
rest; but this in no way prevents it from participating in the motion of the
earth and in that of the whole solar system, just as little as it prevents its
most minute physical particles from carrying out the vibrations determined by
its temperature, or its atoms from passing through a chemical process. 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
transferred. When motion is transferred from one body to another, it may be
regarded, in so far as it transfers itself, is active, as the- cause of motion,
in so far as the latter is transferred, is passive. We call this active motion
force, and the passive, the manifestation of force. Hence it
is as clear as daylight that a force is as great as its manifestation, because
in fact the same motion takes place in both.
"A motionless state of matter is
therefore one of the most empty and nonsensical of ideas
-- a
'delirious fantasy'
of the purest water.... We may turn and twist as much as we like, but under
Herr Dühring's guidance we always come back again to -- the finger of God."
[Ibid.,
pp.73-74.]
"Now
Darwin would not dream of saying that the origin of the idea of the
struggle for existence is to be found in Malthus. He only says that his theory
of the struggle for existence is the theory of Malthus applied to the animal and
plant world as a whole. However great the blunder made by Darwin in accepting
the Malthusian theory so naively and uncritically, nevertheless anyone can see
at the first glance that no Malthusian spectacles are required to perceive the
struggle for existence in nature -- the contradiction between the countless
host of germs which nature so lavishly produces and the small number of those
which ever reach maturity, a contradiction which in fact for the most part finds
its solution in a struggle for existence -- often of extreme cruelty...."
[Ibid.,
p.86.]
"Life is the mode of existence of
albuminous bodies,
and this mode of existence essentially consists in the constant self-renewal of
the chemical constituents of these bodies." [Ibid.,
p.102.]
"But what
are these universal phenomena of life which are equally present among all living
organisms? Above all the fact that an albuminous body absorbs other appropriate
substances from its environment and assimilates them, while other, older parts
of the body disintegrate and are excreted. Other non-living, bodies also change,
disintegrate or enter into combinations in the natural course of events; but in
doing this they cease to be what they were. A weather-worn rock is no longer a
rock, metal which oxidises turns into rust. But what with non-living bodies is
the cause of destruction, with albumen is the fundamental condition of
existence. From the moment when this uninterrupted metamorphosis of its
constituents, this constant alternation of nutrition and excretion, no longer
takes place in an albuminous body, the albuminous body itself comes to an end,
it decomposes, that is, dies. Life, the mode of existence of an
albuminous body, therefore consists primarily in the fact that every moment it
is itself and at the same time something else; and this does not take place
as the result of a process to which it is subjected from without, as is the way
in which this can occur also in the case of inanimate bodies. On the contrary,
life, the metabolism which takes place through nutrition and excretion, is a
self-implementing process which is inherent in, native to, its bearer, albumen,
without which the latter cannot exist. And hence it follows that if
chemistry ever succeeds in producing albumen artificially, this albumen must
show the phenomena of life, however weak these may be. It is certainly open
to question whether chemistry will at the same time also discover the right food
for this albumen." [Ibid.,
pp.102-03.]
"...Truth
and error, like all thought-concepts which move in polar opposites, have
absolute validity only in an extremely limited field, as we have just seen,
and as even Herr Dühring would realise if he had any acquaintance with the
first elements of dialectics, which deal precisely with the inadequacy of all
polar opposites. As soon as we apply the antithesis between truth and
error outside of that narrow field which has been referred to above it becomes
relative and therefore unserviceable for exact scientific modes of expression,
and if we attempt to apply it as absolutely valid outside that field we really
find ourselves altogether beaten: both poles of the antithesis become
transformed into their opposites, truth becomes error and error truth...."
[Ibid.,
p.114.]
"True, so
long as we consider things as at rest and lifeless, each one by itself,
alongside and after each other, we do not run up against any contradictions in
them. We find certain qualities which are partly common to, partly different
from, and even contradictory to each other, but which in the last-mentioned case
are distributed among different objects and therefore contain no contradiction
within. Inside the limits of this sphere of observation we can get along on the
basis of the usual, metaphysical mode of thought. But the position is quite
different as soon as we consider things in their motion, their change, their
life, their reciprocal influence on one another. Then we immediately become
involved in contradictions. Motion itself is a contradiction: even simple
mechanical change of position can only come about through a body being at one
and the same moment of time both in one place and in another place, being in one
and the same place and also not in it. And the continuous origination and
simultaneous solution of this contradiction is precisely what motion is."
[Ibid.,
p.152.]
"If simple mechanical change of position
contains a contradiction this is even more true of the higher forms of motion of
matter, and especially of organic life and its development. We saw above that
life consists precisely and primarily in this -- that a being is at each moment
itself and yet something else. Life is therefore also a contradiction which is
present in things and processes themselves, and which constantly originates and
resolves itself; and as soon as the contradiction ceases, life, too, comes to an
end, and death steps in.
We likewise saw that also in the sphere
of thought we could not escape contradictions, and that for example the
contradiction between man's inherently unlimited capacity for knowledge and its
actual presence only in men who are externally limited and possess limited
cognition finds its solution in what is -- at least practically, for us -- an
endless succession of generations, in infinite progress.
"We have already noted that one of the
basic principles of higher mathematics is the contradiction that in certain
circumstances straight lines and curves may be the same. It also gets up this
other contradiction: that lines which intersect each other before our eyes
nevertheless, only five or six centimetres from their point of intersection, can
be shown to be parallel, that is, that they will never meet even if extended to
infinity. And yet, working with these and with even far greater
contradictions, it attains results which are not only correct but also quite
unattainable for lower mathematics." [Ibid.,
pp.153-54.]
"But even lower
mathematics teems with contradictions.
It is for example a
contradiction that a root of A should be a power of A, and yet A1/2
= [the square root of A
-- RL]. It is a contradiction that a negative quantity should be the square
of anything, for every negative quantity multiplied by itself gives a
positive square. The square root of minus one is therefore not only a
contradiction, but even an absurd contradiction, a real absurdity. And yet
[the square root of minus one -- RL] is in many cases a necessary result of
correct mathematical operations. Furthermore, where would mathematics -- lower
or higher -- be, if it were prohibited from operation with [the square root of
minus one -- RL]?
"In its operations with variable
quantities mathematics itself enters the field of dialectics, and it is
significant that it was a dialectical philosopher, Descartes, who introduced
this advance. The relation between the mathematics of variable and the
mathematics of constant quantities is in general the same as the relation of
dialectical to metaphysical thought. But this does not prevent the great mass
of mathematicians from recognising dialectics only in the sphere of mathematics,
and a good many of them from continuing to work in the old, limited,
metaphysical way with methods that were obtained dialectically." [Ibid.,
p.154.]
"...Elementary mathematics, the
mathematics of constant quantities, moves within the confines of formal logic,
at any rate on the whole; the mathematics of variables, whose most important
part is the infinitesimal calculus, is in essence nothing other than the
application of dialectics to mathematical relations. In it, the simple
question of proof is definitely pushed into the background, as compared with the
manifold application of the method to new spheres of research. But almost all
the proofs of higher mathematics, from the first proofs of the differential
calculus on, are from the standpoint of elementary mathematics strictly
speaking, wrong. And this is necessarily so, when, as happens in this
case, an attempt is made to prove by formal logic results obtained in the field
of dialectics...." [Ibid.,
pp.171-72.]
"...Let us take a grain of barley.
Billions of such grains of barley are milled, boiled and brewed and then
consumed. But if such a grain of barley meets with conditions which are normal
for it, if it falls on suitable soil, then under the influence of heat and
moisture it undergoes a specific change, it germinates; the grain as such ceases
to exist, it is negated, and in its place appears the plant which has arisen
from it, the negation of the grain. But what is the normal life-process of this
plant? It grows, flowers, is fertilised and finally once more produces grains of
barley, and as soon as these have ripened the stalk dies, is in its turn
negated. As a result of this negation of the negation we have once again the
original grain of barley, but not as a single unit, but ten-, twenty- or
thirtyfold. Species of grain change extremely slowly, and so the barley of
today is almost the same as it-was a century ago. But if we take a plastic
ornamental plant, for example a dahlia or an orchid, and treat the seed and the
plant which grows from it according to the gardener's art, we get as a result of
this negation of the negation not only more seeds, but also qualitatively
improved seeds, which produce more beautiful flowers, and each repetition of
this process, each fresh negation of the negation, enhances this process of
perfection.
"With most insects, this process follows
the same lines as in the case of the grain of barley. Butterflies, for
example, spring from the egg by a negation of the egg, pass through certain
transformations until they reach sexual maturity, pair and are in turn negated,
dying as soon as the pairing process has been completed and the female has laid
its numerous eggs. We are not concerned at the moment with the fact that
with other plants and animals the process does not take such a simple form, that
before they die they produce seeds, eggs or offspring not once but many times;
our purpose here is only to show that the negation of the negation really
does take place in both kingdoms of the organic world. Furthermore, the
whole of geology is a series of negated negations, a series of successive
shatterings of old and deposits of new rock formations...." [Ibid.,
pp.172-74.]
"It is the same in mathematics. Let us
take any algebraic quantity whatever: for example, a. If this is negated, we
get -a (minus a). If we negate that negation, by multiplying -a
by -a, we get +a^2, i.e.,
the original positive quantity, but at a higher degree, raised-to its second
power. In this case also it makes no difference that we can obtain the same a^2
by multiplying the positive a by itself, thus likewise getting a^2. For
the negated negation is so securely entrenched in a^2 that the latter always has
two square roots, namely, a and -a. And the fact that it
is impossible to get rid of the negated negation, the negative root of the
square, acquires very obvious significance as soon as we come to quadratic
equations. -- The negation of the negation is even more strikingly obvious in
higher analysis, in those "summations of indefinitely small magnitudes" {D. Ph.
418} which Herr Dühring himself declares are the highest operations of
mathematics, and in ordinary language are known as the differential and integral
calculus. How are these forms of calculus used? In a given problem, for example,
I have two variables, x and y, neither of which can vary without the
other also varying in a ratio determined by the facts of the case. I
differentiate x and y, i.e., I take x and y
as so infinitely small that in comparison with any real quantity, however small,
they disappear, that nothing is left of x and y but their
reciprocal relation without any, so to speak, material basis, a quantitative
ratio in which there is no quantity. Therefore, dy/dx, the
ratio between the differentials of x and y, is dx
equal to 0/0 but 0/0 taken as the expression of y/x. I only
mention in passing that this ratio between two quantities which have
disappeared, caught at the moment of their disappearance, is a contradiction;
however, it cannot disturb us any more than it has disturbed the whole of
mathematics for almost two hundred years. And now, what have I done but negate
x and y, though not in such a way that I need not bother about
them any more, not in the way that metaphysics negates, but in the way that
corresponds with the facts of the case? In place of x and y,
therefore, I have their negation, dx and dy, in the
formulas or equations before me. I continue then to operate with these formulas,
treating
dx and dy as quantities which are real, though subject to
certain exceptional laws, and at a certain point I negate the negation,
i.e., I integrate the differential formula, and in place of dx and dy
again get the real quantities x and y, and am then not
where I was at the beginning, but by using this method I have solved the problem
on which ordinary geometry and algebra might perhaps have broken their jaws in
vain." [Ibid.,
pp.174-75.]
"...[P]rocesses which in their nature
are antagonistic, contain a contradiction; transformation of one extreme into
its opposite; and finally, as the kernel of the whole thing, the negation of the
negation. And though in 1754 Rousseau was not yet able to speak the Hegelian
jargon {D. K. G. 491}, he was certainly, sixteen years before Hegel was born,
deeply bitten with the Hegelian pestilence, dialectics of contradiction, Logos
doctrine, theologies, and so forth...." [Ibid.,
p.179.]
"And
so, what is the negation of the negation? An extremely general -- and for this
reason extremely far-reaching and important -- law of development of nature,
history, and thought; a law which, as we have seen, holds good in the animal and
plant kingdoms, in geology, in mathematics, in history and in philosophy -- a
law which even Herr Dühring, in spite of all his stubborn resistance, has
unwittingly and in his own way to follow. It is obvious that I do not say
anything concerning the particular process of development of, for
example, a grain of barley from germination to the death of the fruit-bearing
plant, if I say it is a negation of the negation. For, as the integral calculus
is also a negation of the negation, if I said anything of the sort I should only
be making the nonsensical statement that the life-process of a barley plant was
integral calculus or for that matter that it was socialism. That, however, is
precisely what the metaphysicians are constantly imputing to dialectics. When I
say that all these processes are a negation of the negation, I bring them all
together under this one law of motion, and for this very reason I leave out of
account the specific peculiarities of each individual process.
Dialectics, however, is nothing more than the science of the general laws of
motion and development of nature, human society and thought." [Ibid.,
pp.179-80.]
"...Long ago Spinoza said: Omnis
determinatio est negatio -- every limitation or determination is at the
same time a negation. And further: the kind of negation is here determined,
firstly, by the general and, secondly, by the particular nature of the process.
I must not only negate,
but also sublate the negation. I must therefore so arrange the first
negation that the second remains or becomes possible. How? This depends on
the particular nature of each individual case. If I grind a grain of barley, or
crush an insect, I have carried out the first part of the action, but have made
the second part impossible. Every kind of thing therefore has a peculiar way
of being negated in such manner that it gives rise to a development, and it is
just the same with every kind of conception or idea. The infinitesimal
calculus involves a form of negation which is different from that used in the
formation of positive powers from negative roots. This has to be learnt,
like everything else. The bare knowledge that the barley plant and the
infinitesimal calculus are both governed by negation of negation does not enable
me either to grow barley successfully or to differentiate and integrate; just as
little as the bare knowledge of the laws of the determination of sound by the
dimensions of the strings enables me to play the violin." [Ibid.,
pp.180-81.]
"Once
again, therefore, it is no one but Herr Dühring who is mystifying us when he
asserts that the negation of the negation is a stupid analogy invented by Hegel,
borrowed from the sphere of religion and based on the story of the fall of man
and his redemption.... Men thought dialectically long before they knew what
dialectics was, just as they spoke prose long before the term prose existed.
[An allusion to Molière's comedy Le Bourgeois gentilhomme, Act II,
Scene 6 -- Ed.] The law of negation of the negation, which is
unconsciously operative in nature and history and, until it has been recognised,
also in our heads, was only first clearly formulated by Hegel. And if Herr
Dühring wants to operate with it himself on the quiet and it is only that he
cannot stand the name, then let him find a better name. But if his aim is to
banish the process itself from thought, we must ask him to be so good as first
to banish it from nature and history and to invent a mathematical system in
which -a x -a is not +a^2 and in which differentiation and
integration are prohibited under severe penalties." [Ibid.,
pp.181-82.]
[In the above, I have used the on-line
version of AD, but the page numbers refer to the Foreign Languages Edition. I
have also had to alter several mathematical symbols (or replace them with
paraphrases) since the Web Editor I have used doesn't seem to have those
employed by Engels in its archive.]
All
this, of course, makes Engels an Olympic Gold Standard A Priori Dogmatist.
How
O'Neill, for example, can read AD and fail to see this is something we can
perhaps leave to the
professionals to fathom.
Dialectics Of Nature
[DN]
This
section will be completed in the next year or so.
Appendix Three -- Dialectical
Knotweed Spreads Across The Internet
Since
this Essay was first published, the number of revolutionary socialist sites on
the Internet that promote this failed 'theory' have multiplied like
Japanese Knotweed. Again, if I were to reproduce even a tiny fraction of all
the dogmatic dialectical documents one now finds posted on the Web, this Essay
would be more than twice its present length -- as anyone who knows how to use
Google can easily confirm.
Nevertheless, here are a few more examples of this mystical pest; their
mind-numbingly banal and repetitive nature will not, I hope, have escaped
the reader (dogmatic passages have been highlighted in bold):
(1) "Dialectical materialism is the
world outlook and method of scientific socialism. It holds that every
natural, social and intellectual formation is the transitory product of given
material conditions. That all phenomena come into being, develop and
eventually perish as a result of the action of the contradictions within them....
"All phenomena contain contradictions
which form the unity of opposites: society is divided into classes. Marx's
philosophy is partisan because reality is partisan. Thought and philosophy could
not be neutral because they are parts of a world in struggle....
"Matter exists in motion. All matter,
galaxies, plants, molecules and society is in a state of motion....
"Matter exists independently of
consciousness and its laws apply -- gravity, thermo-dynamics, etc -- whether we
know of them or not." [Trevor Rayne, quoted from
here. Bold emphases added.]
(2) "Materialism, in direct
contradiction, states that the world is, by its very nature, composed of matter,
and that everything that exists comes into being on the basis of material causes.
Everything arises and develops in accordance with the laws of motion of matter.
Materialism teaches that matter is objective reality, existing outside of and
independent of ideas, and that, far from the mental existing in separation
from the material, ideas, including spiritual ones, are a product of material
processes. Materialism also teaches that the world and its laws are knowable
and that, while much in the material world might not be known, there is no
unknowable sphere that lies outside of the material world....
"Nothing exists in isolation, either
in nature or in society. Contradiction, the unity and struggle of mutually
opposed forces and tendencies, is inherent within things. Change and movement
operate on the basis of contradictions. Contradictions constitute the foundation
of movement....
"The dialectical materialist conception
is that all processes of nature and society are in a constant and
uninterrupted process of change and development, of eternal becoming...." [Spartacist
League member, Don Alexander, quoted from
here. Bold emphases added.]
(3) "Dialectics, as has been discussed
earlier, shows us that everything is divided into different, opposed aspects
and that opposed aspects always struggle. Dialectics also recognizes
that on the basis of the struggle between them, the opposed aspects of a
contradiction can and do transition and transform themselves into, or become,
one another. In reality there, as Lenin wrote, 'the transitions of
every determination, quality, feature, side, property into every
other…into its opposite...'. This is called the 'identizing' of opposites. When
the opposed aspects of a contradiction transform themselves into one another
they may exchange the different and opposed roles they play (their forms), and
they may exchange the content they 'hold' within themselves....
"Fundamental to the reason things
develop is that they connect to one another and due to the flow of material and
forces between them, things develop on the basis of their unique makeup and
nature. Key to grasping the connection and flow between things is
understanding things in both their immediacy and mediacy:
immediacy <-> mediacy. George W. F. Hegel, a major, though idealist,
elaborator of dialectics in the 1800s, emphasized that things exist with their
immediate form and content -- immediacy -- and things have connections --
mediacy -- with the rest of reality (everything that objectively exists) through
an infinite number of links. Mediacy, or connection between things
means that one thing may effect another and connection makes it possible to for
a single thing to have an effect on multiple other things at the same time....
"Negation in a thing's development means
that when a thing moves from one stage of its development to the next, one, or
more of its key features, characteristics and, or properties is nullified,
destroyed, or undergoes qualitative change. All things experience
negation. In the first place because everything experiences some
kind change in some way in its lifetime. Secondly, everything is negated when it
passes away because its fundamental contradiction is destroyed, or the
configuration between the set of fundamental contradictions in a thing that make
it unique is destroyed....
"[W]e should strive to have as holistic
as possible a view of the situation surrounding a task at the beginning of every
major tide, or at the beginning of every major iteration of activity related to
the task. This is in line with the Marxist principle of making an
all-sided analysis of the situation related to every area of our work.
And this is flows from the fact that everything is connected, has many facets in
the same context, and has many contexts associated with it....
"Because every contradiction is a
system, all things are a part of one, or more systems. That is because all
things have internal contradictions that are in contradiction with things that
are external to it and thus because a thing is the internal aspect, or part, of
an internal <-> external contradiction, everything is a part of a system.
In this way all things in the cosmos are parts of a single cosmos wide system.
The context we are interested in determines how closely coupled any 2 things are
in a system. For instance a computer in a room and the door to the room in
which the computer resides are loosely coupled if we are interested in the
algorithms used to calculate a formula on the computer, but the door may be very
more closely coupled to the computer when we consider the temperature system of
the room in which the computer operates." [Quoted from
here -- a site that is a veritable
foist-everything-onto-nature-and-society-fest. Minor typos corrected, bold
emphases alone added. Quotation marks altered to conform to the conventions
adopted at my site. These represent the thoughts of comrade Tim Redd and
The U.S. Worker's Political
Party of Marxism-Leninism-Maoism-Redd Thought. (I am at the moment
engaged in an e-mail debate with this comrade. Update: comrade Redd has
now broken off our 'discussion' since he found he couldn't extricate Lenin from
the solipsistic dungeon into which he had cast himself, because of his reliance
on "images". More on this in Essay Thirteen
Part One.)]
(4) "The idea that everything is in a
state of flux is his most famous and the one most emphasised by his
followers: 'You cannot step twice into the same river; for fresh waters are ever
flowing in upon you.' Indeed is the river which flows into the sea that same
river? Of course not, it is now the sea! And yet it is still the river, it is
and is not....
"Heraclitis [sic] also said: 'We are,
and are not', in this he is absolutely correct. As Frederick Engels states,
every organic being is every moment the same and not the same; every moment
it assimilates matter supplied from without, and gets rid of other matter; every
moment some cells of its body die and others build themselves anew. In a longer
or shorter time the matter of its body is completely renewed and is replaced by
other molecules of matter, so that every organic being is always itself, and yet
something other than itself....
"A strength of their theory [i.e.,
invented by the Ancient Greek Atomists -- RL] is the recognition that
matter -- and in this case matter takes on the form of atoms -- has always
been, and always will be in motion. As Engels explains: 'Motion is the mode of
existence of matter.' Never anywhere has there been matter without motion, nor
can there be. Things change, disintegrate or enter into combinations in the
natural course of events; but in doing so they cease to be what they were. A
weather worn rock is no longer the same rock; metal which oxidises turns into
rust....
"The mode of outlook of the great
founders of philosophy and science (some of whom we have looked at) was the
view that the whole of the natural world, from the smallest element to the
greatest, from grains of sand to suns
had its existence in eternal coming into being and passing away, in ceaseless
flux, in unresting motion and change." [Quoted from
here. Accessed 24/10/2013. (What was that again about the ideas of the
ruling-class...?)]
(5) "Dialectics is the philosophy of
motion. The dialectical method of analysis enables us to study natural
phenomena, the evolution of society and thought itself, as processes of
development based upon motion and contradiction.
"Everything is in a constant state of
flux and change; all reality is matter in motion.
"The roots of dialectical thought can be
traced back to the ancient Greeks who, just because their civilisation was not
yet advanced enough to dissect and analyse nature in its separate parts, viewed
nature as a whole, in its connections, dialectically. Nothing in life is
static. In the words of the ancient Greek philosopher Heraclitus: 'All things
flow, all change.'...
"Based upon the laws of motion,
dialectics enables us to see things in their connection. Our bodies and our
thoughts are continually changing. From conception to death there is never a
moment when our physical development is still. Neither are our thoughts and
mental growth. We are always evolving our ideas....
"Everything, which exists, does so
out of necessity. But everything perishes, only to be transformed into
something else. Thus what is ‘necessary’ in one time and place becomes
'unnecessary' in another. Everything creates its opposite, which is destined
to overcome and negate it." [Taken from
here.
Bold emphases added; quotation marks altered to conform to the conventions
adopted at this site. Accessed 30/12/2013.]
(6) "At the end of the day, the world is
not a collection of happenings unrelated to one another. Everything is
interwoven and interconnected. We cannot look at phenomena in isolation;
we can only understand something if we understand its relation to other
things....
"Much ado was made among Chinese
revolutionaries about how 'one divides into two.' Indeed, this is the most
important aspect of dialectics. All things contain contradictions.... The
fundamental point is this: all things are made up of two aspects which are
constantly in struggle with one another, and these struggling contradictions
make up a unified whole. When two aspects within a unified whole are
struggling against one another, we call this a 'unity of opposites' or
'dialectical unity.'...
"The world is constantly changing.
The direction of motion of something is fundamentally determined by the
interplay between the contradictions within that thing....
"The way in which things move is from
quantitative change to qualitative change. A quantitative change is a
small, almost imperceptible change that does not alter the fundamental aspects
of something. A qualitative change is a sudden leap that changes the
essence of a thing. The world moves by accumulating quantitative changes, until
they accumulate to the point where a sudden, qualitative leap occurs.
"A good analogy is the boiling of water.
If water is resting at 50 degrees C, and I increase the temperature to 51
degrees C, the water is still water. This is a quantitative change.
However, I can keep making these quantitative changes, increasing the
temperature degree by degree, to 60 degrees, 70 degrees, and so on, until I
reach 100 degrees C. At this point, a sudden leap occurs. The water begins
boiling. This is a qualitative change. Water becomes steam. A number of
quantitative changes, which individually did not fundamentally alter the essence
of the water, eventually accumulated to the point where a sudden, qualitative
leap occurred: the water turned into steam.
"Dialectics holds that all change
operates in this manner...." [Taken from
here; bold emphases alone added. Quotation marks altered to conform to the
conventions adopted at this site.]
(7) "[T]here is a contradiction between
the particle and its movement, between matter and motion.
"This contradiction is at the heart
of our understanding of the universe because it is impossible to conceive of
matter without [it?]. All matter is in motion; the particles that make up
everything are constantly vibrating, moving and changing. The planet itself
is in constant motion around the sun, and our solar system is in constant motion
with the spinning of the Milky Way, which in turn is constantly moving in
relation to other galaxies.
"Heraclitus, the ancient Greek
philosopher, famously said that 'everything changes and nothing remains the
same' and that 'you can never step twice into the same stream'. It is the ideas
of ceaseless change, motion, interconnectedness and contradiction that define
dialectical thought.
"The philosopher
Zeno famously tried to illustrate how essential dialectical
thinking is to our understanding of the world by using
thought experiments. He poses the following:
"Imagine an arrow in
flight. At any one durationless instant in time (like the
freeze-frame in a film) the arrow is not moving to where it
is going to, nor is it moving to where it already is. Thus,
at every conceivable instant in time, there is no motion
occurring, so how does the arrow move?
"To answer this we
are forced to embrace what appears on the surface to be a
contradictory idea -- that the arrow is, at any one time, in
more than one place at once. This thought experiment
serves to highlight the contradictory nature of the movement
of matter in the world.
"The German
philosopher Hegel further developed the dialectical in a
systematic form.
Instead trying to discard contradictions Hegel saw in them
the real impulse for all development. In fact Hegel saw
the interpenetration of opposites as one of the fundamental
characters of all phenomena. Hegel's philosophy is one of
interconnectedness where the means and the end, the cause
and the effect, are constantly changing place. It explains
progress in terms of struggle and contradiction, not a
straight line or an inevitable triumphal march forward."
[Taken from
here. Quotation marks altered to conform to the
conventions adopted at this site. Bold emphases added.
Does this author really think that a contradiction makes
this arrow move, or provides it with the "impulse" to move?
Nevertheless, as we have seen (here),
motion isn't the least bit 'contradictory'.]
(8) "Contradictions
also occur everywhere in nature, like the forces of
attraction and repulsion inside an atom....
"Contradictions are
important because they make things change. The internal back
and forth struggle of the two sides of the contradiction
causes change, and point that change in a particular
direction.... The contradiction between two teams in a
basketball game drives both teams to play harder.
Contradictions inside an atom can make it break up into
smaller atoms....
"Contradictions
cause change, but they don't last forever. Eventually they
get resolved, that is, they stop being contradictions. When
the buzzer sounds in the basketball game, the game ends and
the contradiction is resolved until the next game." [Quoted
from
here. (This links to a PDF.) Bold emphasis added.]
"There is a strong
tendency for idealist philosophers and scientists to
introduce much confusion concerning the concept of matter,
but for Lenin...it is simple enough. Matter is a general
philosophical category denoting all that exists external to,
and independently of, the world of thought, whatever its
nature, whatever we know of it today or may discover in the
future. The reason why we must think of matter
dialectically is because all matter is interconnected and is
in eternal motion and change. Motion is the fundamental
attribute of matter, it is the mode of existence of matter.
Since, as we have said, matter is all that exists beyond the
world of thought, then this motion, the mode of existence
of matter, is included in the general concept of matter
itself, since it is its very nature. If we do not grasp the
external world in its movement and life, then we have not
grasped it materialistically." [Quoted from
here, which is a (hagiographic) site devoted to Gerry
Healy's life, thought and writing. Bold emphases added.]
"The modern
materialist dialectical method developed by Marx is much
more definite and therefore, able to provide us with a much
clearer understanding. Materialist dialectics goes beyond
just seeking the truth of a statement, beyond just
understanding that contradictions are present in statements,
into understanding that contradictions exist throughout
nature and the whole material world. The Marxist
dialectical method has four basic features. First, all
phenomena of nature (or simply put, all real things) are
connected. Second, everything is in constant motion. Third,
all phenomena are undergoing constant change. Fourth, the
change and development of things is the result of the
interaction of opposing forces or internal contradictions
within everything. All this is in opposition to what is
called metaphysics. Metaphysics sees the world and things in
it as static, isolated, one-sided. It views any change there
is as simply one of magnitude, a mere increase or increase
in quantity on a set stage. Metaphysics is the common
philosophy advanced by capitalist thinkers and is taught in
U.S. schools. In general it is the type of world outlook the
capitalist system tries to foist on us so we stay in the
dark about what's really going on.
"The first point of
materialist dialectics is that all matter -- everything
that exists –- is connected. Not only are, say, people and
prisons and courts and cops related, but all life -- water,
fish, air, people, machines, countries, etc. -- all things
are organically connected with, dependent on, and determined
by each other....
"The second point of
materialist dialectics is that all matter, everything, is
in motion. Things never stay the same. Instead, something is
always arising and developing and something is always
disintegrating and dying away. The only real constant is
constant motion and change. This is true whether we are
considering atoms, plants, people, or societies. All related
aspects are always influencing one another and things are
always developing and/or disintegrating, always in motion....
"The third point of
material dialectics is that this connections of things and
how all matter is always moving (rising and falling away),
has a certain definite method or process of movement from
one level to a completely different level. This is described
as the quantitative change or movement at some point leading
to a qualitative change. This means that things don't
just repeat or go in circles. Because a thing is connected
and influenced by many other things, it is moved step by
step (quantitative change) up to a certain point, where the
thing then rapidly and abruptly makes a complete change
(qualitative change) in itself. Let us take an example
of this in the world of nature by looking at water, which is
made of oxygen and hydrogen. If we apply heat or cold to
water, it changes degree by degree (quantitative change),
until it reaches a certain point. There the water abruptly
changes its form (qualitative change) to steam or ice. It
makes a complete change.
"This same
process of change is true for all things....
"The fourth point,
though last, is the most important one in order to
understand and use materialist dialectics. Number four
states that besides all the outside influences on a thing (and
let us remember we are talking about everything that
exists), the thing in question has internal contradictions.
Everything has two opposing aspects (internal
contradictions) and each set of these opposite aspects forms
a contradiction. When we speak of a thing we are really
talking about a set of opposites that struggle with each
other, yet coexist and combine to form the thing itself.
There is no up without down, no cold without hot, no victory
without defeat, no capitalist class without a working class,
etc. When a ball is thrown in the air two contradictory
forces are at work simultaneously -- the force propelling
the ball upward and the force of gravity. While gravity is
weaker, the ball goes up. When gravity becomes stronger the
ball changes direction and comes down....
"This last point,
then, says that there is a constant movement, constant
struggle, between the two opposing aspects of the thing in
question and this conflict of the internal contradictions is
the most important single force that leads the thing to
change. Or, to put it briefly, there is an internal
contradiction in every single thing and this, more than all
else, causes its motion and development. External forces
are also important, but dialectics understands that external
causes are the condition of change, while internal causes
are the basis of change. For example, a chicken sitting on
an egg will lead to a baby chick, while the same chicken can
sit on a rock forever and hatch nothing -- the internal
contradictions are the most important factor in the
development and motion of not just the egg, but all things....
"This, then, is an
introductory definition of dialectics, a method that teaches
us how to observe and analyze the movement of contradictions
in things in the real world and, on the basis of such
analysis, to find ways to resolve the contradictions and
thus bring about a new thing or situation.
"Put another way,
dialectics is the scientific method of understanding how
things are and how they change. Dialectics recognizes:
1.) that all things are connected; 2.) that all things are
in motion (developing or dying away); 3.) that quantitative
changes (changes in size or amount) are step by step changes
that lead to qualitative changes (changes in substance or
type) which come about swiftly or abruptly (and in the case
of society, violently and abruptly), transforming the old
into a new thing or situation and 4.) that the primary basis
of all change and movement is the internal contradiction
that exists in all things." [Quoted from
here; accessed 22/02/2014. Minor typos corrected. Bold
emphases added.]
Readers will no
doubt be interested to learn precisely which 'force' manages
to do the following:
"When a ball is
thrown in the air two contradictory forces are at work
simultaneously -- the force propelling the ball upward and
the force of gravity." [Ibid.]
This is in fact
a garbled version of
Aristotle's theory of motion!
And, scientists will
be eager to study the details behind this example of
innovative physics:
"While gravity is
weaker, the ball goes up. When gravity becomes stronger the
ball changes direction and comes down." [Ibid.]
I have in fact
posted a comment at this site itemising these (and other)
errors; however, I rather suspect they'll not be published.
[Indeed, they weren't.]
And, there is more:
(9) "Marxism is
based on philosophical materialism. Philosophical
materialism is the view that all things in the universe are
natural and follow the laws of nature, i.e. that there is no
such thing as the supernatural.
"Marx, and his
associate Engels, developed a philosophy known as
dialectical materialism. Dialectical Materialism is the
merger of the ideas of dialectics and materialism and
basically states that all things in the universe are
material, that evolution is constantly taking place at all
levels of existence and in all systems, that defined
boundaries are man made concepts which do not actually exist
in nature, and that the universe is an interconnected
unified entity in which all elements are connected to, and
dependant upon, each other. The philosophy holds that
science is the only means by which truth can be determined."
[Quoted from
here; accessed 22/02/2014. Bold emphases added.]
(10) "Thought
that does not originate from a brain cannot and does not
exist. Thought is a product of thinking beings, but the
world existed billions of years before such beings evolved.
Matter is primary; thought, consciousness secondary....
"Not only the
world, but the entire universe around us is a demonstration
that objective reality is material. That is, all that exists
outside of our heads, outside of the minds of people, is
material. This is an integral part of the
Marxist theory of knowledge, of how mankind acquires valid
knowledge. There is a relationship between mind and matter,
but it is one which only dialectical materialism can
properly explain....
"Motion in this
sense is not only mechanical motion in space (or space-time)
but all forms of change and development, growth and decay.
Matter is in constant motion wherever man looks, both in the
world and in the cosmos. Within every atom, electrons
are spinning and orbiting a central nucleus, and every
object, however infinitesimal, is either a moving particle
or made up of moving particles, which can also have a dual
character as particle and wave....
"Thus when we
examine the world of nature we find that change and
development are universal, even though with some things
change seems so slow that they appear to be at rest. But
this rest is only relative to certain times when these same
things undergo rapid changes. There is nothing whatsoever in
the universe that is at absolute rest....
Attentive readers will no doubt have noticed the dogmatic and
a priori psychology evident in the second paragraph above, just as they will
appreciate that the following comment
completely
undermines the social nature of both language and knowledge:
"[F]rom the standpoint of the most
thoroughgoing materialism the production of language...enables the subject to
articulate its own being in relation to a sensuous world of existents, it is a
construct of a thing which is a contingent and autonomous being." [Ibid.]
Not
only that, but the above passage confirms the allegation advanced in Essay Three Part
Two: that DM-theorists have bought into their own version of
bourgeois
individualism.
Here
is yet another dogmatic 'summary' of 'the dialectic':
(13) "Materialism is the school of philosophy which asserts the primacy of
physical reality. All which we can perceive around us as well as ourselves is
objective; it exists outside of us and is independent of our perceptions and
ability to experience it. For materialism, all phenomena has a physical or
objective reason for occurring. Even though we may not be able to understand
the cause of said phenomena immediately it does not mean that it is unknowable.
Materialism excludes the intervention of direct human consciousness, ghosts,
spirits, the alignment of the stars, a voodoo curse or some supreme being in the
physical happenings around us. Reality does not know such things....
"For the materialist, our ideas are nothing more than physical reality
reflected on our minds through our senses. Ideas do not simply come out of a
vacuum; they are the culmination of experiences and perceptions we collect from
day to day life. In order to cook, we must first learn how for the simple fact
that we are not born with such knowledge. We would do well to point out that the
brain (which is the source of our consciousness) is also made out of matter.
Thought is the result of a physical process taking place within our brain....
"Things do not exist for their own sake, outside of our grasp. Things exist and
they can be understood and used for our own advancement. Only with a materialist
outlook combined with a dialectic method can we better grasp the world around
us. This begs the question; What is the dialectic method?...
"Today dialectics denotes a mode of cognition which recognizes the most general
laws of motion, contradiction and new development. There exist four 'laws' to
the dialectical method. They are;
1) Everything is in a constant state of motion, development and change.
2) Everywhere there exist opposing forces which are mutually exclusive yet
cannot exist without the other. Their conflict results in movement.
3) Change occurs suddenly, all at once. A quantitative amount of something
results in a qualitative change (a 'breaking' point).
4) Development moves in spirals, from lower to higher planes of development....
"Dialectical materialism is the recognition of a transient nature -- a
physical reality in constant motion and change. What makes dialectical
materialism a revolutionary scientific method is that it excludes all static
states, all metaphysical views of reality, all one-sidedness and
inflexibility. Because it recognizes the concrete and present side of things, at
the same time it acknowledges that this present state is bound to end. For
dialectal materialism, the only absolute is that there are no eternal absolutes.
If we apply this to capitalist society, with all its multitudes of forms,
processes and contradictions, it is easy to see why the Marxist-Leninist outlook
is degraded by the capitalists -- because it boldly proclaims that they and
their system of oppression are numbered. Nothing in nature exists forever
and neither will the capitalists....
"According to the materialist premise that the world surrounding us is objective
and not subjective, it follows that all forms of matter and their various
processes are physical. The essence of the above quote is thus; because
everything exists in matter
and one of the fundamental laws of physics is cause and effect, we can
conclude that every phenomena in nature occurs for a physical reason. Nature is
thus unified.
"Effects are the predetermined consequence of a cause. If we drop a rock into a
pool of water, it sinks to the bottom. The mass of the rock has greater density
than that of the water, and therefore it sinks below the surface....
Dialectical materialism recognizes that there are effects which occur out of
necessity (i.e. species adaptation) and that some effects are causal and
happen on accident.
"One of the fundamental ways of properly applying dialectical materialism is
being able to examine issues objectively and from all angles, to see all the
factors that give rise to a particular event, as well as the direction the
events will lead, and other factors that may develop....
"Motion is the mode of existence of matter. Never anywhere has there been
matter without motion, nor can there be. As we mentioned earlier,
everything in nature is transient, finite, and in motion. Matter cannot exist
without motion. Everything has its beginning and its end. People are born,
grow and eventually pass away. Stars such as our sun eventually begin to die,
either slowly burning out or self-destructing. Species evolve, adapt, or go
extinct. Rain falls from the clouds, evaporates back into the clouds where it
will once again rain. Human society is also part of nature and is therefore
subject to the same laws....
"The principle governing all growth and development is the idea of opposition
and contradiction. Two mutually exclusive forces which at the same time
cannot exist without each other has been a common theme in many philosophies for
a long time (i.e. yin and yang) exactly because such processes occurring
around us reflect this concept upon our minds.
"Applying this concept is important to dialectic though[t]. Such contradictory
struggles are not always obvious to us. There are simple ones, such as hot and
cold, wet and dry, high and low, light and dark. These concepts are familiar
to us and none of these opposites can exist without the other. We would do
especially well to emphasize that not all struggles and contradictions are so
simplistic....
"The basis of quality into quantity is
simple; a certain amount of something will result in a change of appearance or
form. Returning to the life of our fish [mentioned in a section I have not
reproduced -- RL], if his adaptive capabilities are bountiful, we will see a
qualitative change in his mode of living. He will grow and produce offspring. On
the inverse; if the conditions that would otherwise kill the fish are
overwhelming, he will meet an untimely end.
"If we take another example such as
water, we see that if we add or subtract a certain amount of heat eventually the
water will change it's [sic] qualitative form from a liquid into a solid (ice)
or a gas (steam). Such changes are usually gradual and aren't readily
noticeable. Only when one opposite has quantitatively changed to the point where
it is able to overcome the other opposite does the qualitative change become
obvious.
"Gradual changes always result in a
crisis, a breaking point, where one opposite is negated by the other. When
the qualitative change takes place, we call this a leap. If we have a balloon
and continue to add air, the balloon will get bigger and bigger. One the one
hand, the rubber can only stretch so far, while on the other hand we keep adding
air. Eventually, the rubber will no longer be able to contain the air and a leap
occurs where the qualitative form of the balloon changes from an object of
childhood delight to a ripped piece of rubber.
"Nature is rife with leaps. If we
acknowledge this fundamental aspect of dialectical materialism it will be easy
to see unfolding stride of nature to newer and higher forms -- a concept that is
especially important concerning the fate of human society....
"Progress is a fact of nature. We see new
forms of matter in development always and everywhere, one coming into existence
and the other one dying away. Let's recall the concept of opposites. Both sides
are mutually exclusive yet cannot exist without the other. When one of these
opposites is negated and a leap occurs, the old form has died. We have reached a
higher form of development. Still, these higher forms will contain the most
viable aspects of the previous form. If we recall the transformation of liquid
water into steam -- on a molecular level, it is still water, but the added heat,
which speeds up the movement of the atoms, results in a change of physical
appearance, a newer or 'higher' form of water....
"When things reach a
higher form, they carry aspects of the old but in a more advanced compilation.
These advancements aren't always clear. The seed from a tree, for example, will
fall from the tree and into the ground. From there, assuming conditions are
ripe, it will begin to take root and change forms. Soon enough it will become a
full-grown tree. Although it appears at first glance that it is simply a
repetition of the previous tree, it is not. Firstly, the new and old tree are
separated in time and space. Secondly, the direction of the roots, branches and
grooves on the trunk are all different. The tree is 'higher' in that it is a
continuation of the old tree and that it is newer. The tree represents the same
fundamental object, but on a 'higher' basis...." [Quoted from
here; accessed 19/12/2014.
Quotation marks altered to conform to
the conventions adopted at this site. Bold emphases added.]
In
addition to its repetitive, almost bombastic dogmatism, readers will no doubt
have spotted the Mickey Mouse Science (of
the sort we have witnessed throughout the work of
DM-fans) in the above passage -- in addition to the odd idea that steam is a
"higher" form of water! Have the authors of this piece not noticed condensation?
Is the water that forms as a result a higher or a lower form of steam? Why is
evaporation a higher process than condensation? We aren't told. Someone needs to
introduce these comrades to the
Water Cycle
-- where is the 'development' there? As far as we know, this cycle has been
plugging away for billions of years, and yet water (as a solid, a liquid, or a
gas) is still H2O, with no apparent "development" anywhere in sight. Is this
where DM "spirals" off into oblivion?
The
tsunami of dogmatism rolls on:
(14) "Is it possible for matter to be
in a state in which no changes take place in it? Of course not. Even in the
remote past when there were no people, no animals, no living cells, matter
underwent changes. Bodies consist of molecules and atoms and the latter are
in constant motion. Hence, there never was any ossified, absolutely
motionless body. Furthermore, if there were atoms, molecules and electrons,
there could not fail to be chemical reactions. Hence, there was also the
chemical motion of matter.
"It is easy to see, therefore, that
matter never was in a state in which it existed without motion. Hence, we
say motion is a form of the existence, of the being, of matter. Motion is
an inseparable property of matter or, as philosophers put it, an attribute of
matter. There is no matter without motion, it exists only in motion....
"If at some time matter had been in a
motionless state, motion would not have arisen in it. Hence,
motion is always inherent in matter, and the latter has no need of any 'first
impulse'. There was never such an 'impulse'. This does not mean that
dialectical materialism denies the existence of rest. Rest exists in nature, but
it is relative. This means that there is no phenomenon in which everything is at
rest, in which there is no motion. This was shown above.
"If a body is at rest it is so
relatively to something. During a journey by car, for example, we are at rest
relative to the moving car. But this is not absolute rest, for continual changes
are taking place in our body. The dialectical conception of rest is radically
different from the metaphysical conception. Metaphysics conceives rest as
the absence of all motion. Dialectical materialism is opposed to this
conception. What is of decisive importance in nature is not rest, although it
does exist, but movement, development, change." [O Yakhot, quoted from
here; accessed 02/04/2015. Bold emphases added; italic emphases in
the original. Several paragraphs merged to save space. Quotations altered to
conform to the conventions adopted at this site.]
(15) "There exist two
different logic systems, one static and one not fully reflecting material
reality; the other dynamic and accurately reflecting the contradictory nature
of the real world!...
"All things and processes
contain contradictions which exhibit the unity and struggle of
inter-penetrating opposites!
"In order to know
something one must also know its opposite! The only way to know socialism
and the working class is to also know capitalism and the bourgeoisie!...
"The entire world about us
is essentially bi-polar and the logical structure of the universe is and can
only be 'dialectics' and not 'mono-lectics', or 'tri-lectics' or
'quanta-lectics'....
"Further analysis will show
the importance of the simple/complex dialectic, the phenomena of stages and the
role of catalysts in evolving processes, as well as the ascertainment of main
and secondary contradictions, and the discrimination of antagonistic form
non-antagonistic contradictions. Dialectics, in and of itself, does not supply
answers; it is the method that shows the way. Answers come from concrete
analyses of concrete situations combined with revolutionary practice." [Quoted
from
here; accessed 08/06/2015. Bold emphases added. Quotation marks altered to
conform to the conventions adopted at this site. Minor typo corrected.]
Readers will no doubt have noticed that while the above passage tells us that
dialectics "does not supply answers", it then proceeds to supply answers! Answers to
questions such as: "Is everything in the universe a unity of opposites?" Or, "Do
all things contain contradictions?"
In a universe cram packed full of
'contradictions' it is only to be expected that articles on 'dialectics' should
contain a few of their own.
(16)
"Nothing comes from
nothing. Things exist and they have a history. In the beginning was the
world, not the word, though while the world preceded words, words are
extraordinarily important in interpreting and remaking the world.
"1. The physical world and
our minds interact. When we interpret the world, we reinvent it. 'I am,
therefore I think.' Ideas reflect and recreate the material world and are
themselves a material force when acted on by masses of people. Ideas refract and
recreate matter-and become social forces when adopted by masses of people.
"2. All things are
interrelated, interpenetrating, interdependent. Nothing is random, nothing
isolated. Of course, some things are more directly connected than others....
"'Laws' of Dialectics (which
are interrelated too).
"1. Unity & Struggle of
Opposites (contradictions: one becomes two)
"1. (sic) Struggle is
permanent, unity temporary.
"2. Internal motion is
primary over external.
"3. Find the main
contradiction and the primary side of that contradiction (which will prevail?).
"2. (sic) Quantity becomes
Quality
"1. (sic) Quantitative change
adds up to a qualitative LEAP. Quantitative change has limits which, exceeded,
transform into qualitative change.
"3. (sic) Reinventing of the
New (Negation of the Negation)
"1. (sic) Change is
irrevocable, not circular, but like a spiral. When things change, we witness
something entirely new, yet carrying forward aspects of what it was....
"Laws and categories are convenient
structures placed on reality which is infinitely intricate and ever-changing.
Every analysis captures a moment which is complex -- and gone. Because of
profound social inequality, all ideas are partisan, stamped with the interests
of class. Our grasp on reality is tested and enriched only through practice.
This is the only vision of the world which calls for a rational
examination-testing in the real world -- of itself by human beings." [Quoted
from here;
accessed 08/06/2015. Bold emphases added. Quotation marks altered to conform to
the conventions adopted at this site.]
(17) "Materialism contends
that everything in existence, including living beings, is made of matter and
evolved from material processes. Human consciousness is inseparable from the
body whose processes create it, and matter exists independently of our awareness
of it. Because of these processes, matter is in a constant state of change --
only the existence of matter is eternal. It existed long before
minds evolved capable of perceiving and analysing it, and human consciousness
can be aware of only the tiniest fraction of the things happening in the
universe. We can only draw conclusions about the world as subjective human
beings, using our senses and intellect to observe and assess external phenomena....
"Our consciousness is the
product of matter and our ideas are reflections of material processes. This
does not mean we are a passive part of our environment. We are able to change
it: this is what made possible human evolution through labour....
"Dialectics may be termed the
logic of change....
"Hegel, and later Engels,
outlined three main principles for dialectical motion:
"1. The law of the transformation of quantity into quality and vice versa;
"2. The law of the interpenetration of opposites;
"3. The law of the negation of the negation....
"Processes of change are not smooth and even. Some change is immensely
slow, other change very fast. Dialectical materialism sees change as
resulting from a series of quantitative changes, which accumulate until a
qualitative change is brought about. This new quality is not a peaceful
outgrowth of what existed before, but a radical break with it. A good example is
the boiling of water. As the water gets hotter, it bubbles more and more but it
is still water. When it reaches 100 degrees Celsius, however, it turns to steam,
i.e. it is no longer water -- quantitative change has passed into qualitative
change....
"'Contradiction is the
root of all movement and vitality,' wrote Hegel, 'and it is only insofar as
it contains a contradiction that anything moves and has impulse and activity.'
Every thing is a balance between the forces that created it, and contains
forces that will break it up or transform it. These contradictions are what
create change....
"Countless things in the
universe exist in opposition to one another: rich and poor, capitalism and
socialism, positive and negative, light and dark, thought and matter and so on.
To understand a thing one must seek out the contradictory forces that combine
within it. An atom is constructed around a nucleus containing positively-charged
protons and neutral neutrons; negatively-charged electrons surround the nucleus,
bound to it by electromagnetic force. The atom as a whole is electrically
neutral, because the protons and electrons cancel one another out....
"During a process of change,
the 'negative' quality that caused the change is itself 'negated' or transformed
into something new. As one thing comes into being, its predecessor passes away.
As the steam comes out of the kettle, it represents the negation of the water.
The steam itself won’t last forever -- for example it might change into
condensation on a window. As the steam is the negation of the water, so the
condensation is the negation of the steam. This is the negation (in turn) of the
negation (that caused the original change).
"Whereas metaphysics moves in circles, this movement is best described in terms
of a spiral: the thing returns to where it was, but at a higher level, and the
thing it used to be is not entirely replaced...." [Quoted from
here; accessed 08/06/2015. Quotation marks altered to conform to the
conventions adopted at this site. Bold emphases alone added.]
(18) "The materialist
dialectic posits an organic relationship in which everything is part of the
whole and the whole organises and dominates the parts -- that is to say the
totality exists both in its components and as an entity in-itself.
However, the totality is not fixed, it is moving, composed of numerous
contradictions which are in fluid motion with each other. Everything must be
comprehended as a part of the whole -- both as it is and how it is moving,
in other words what it is becoming. There can be no artificial distinction
between the parts, it is wrong to separate economy from politics, just as much
as it is to isolate art and culture from the totality. Of course individuals
parts can be analysed abstractly, but not in such a way that dissolves the
living connections and bonds that it has to the totality. Marx develops a way of
analysing distinct levels or components of social formations and the correlatory
ideas called abstraction, which we will examine later." [Quoted from
here; accessed 30/06/2015. Bold emphasis added.]
(19) "The dialectical method
teaches that nature remains in a state of constant change, development and
renewal. This can be seen through scientific and even general studies of
nature and natural processes. Nothing remains the same....
"Everything is in a state
of either growth, relative equilibrium or decline, but is never stagnant. All
matter is in a state of constant motion through increases or decreases in
quantity.
"But dialectics doesn't
merely see things in a state of motion where there is only increase or decrease
in quantity without fundamental changes in quality. This means that phenomena
moves and develops not in straight lines but in spirals. These qualitative and
overlapping changes are seen as leaps. An example of change from quantity to
quality can be seen in how all matter changes in quality, according to the
quantity (increase or decrease) of temperature, from gas to liquid to solid.
"In recognizing the
continual growth and development of all material processes, dialectics
recognizes that at the root of all motion are internal contradictions --
opposite forces operating inside of things, pulling back and forth between their
poles for control. Such polar forces can be seen competing, merging and changing
positions in everything; negative and positive, light and dark, sickness and
health, hot and cold, birth and death, pain and pleasure, advancement and
decline, old and new, contraction and expansion, electron and proton and etc.
"This is the unity of
opposites that operates within all phenomena large and small, known and unknown.
Without one, the other could not exist, nor could the matter or phenomenon
exist that they combine into. Because of the constant struggle between such
opposite forces, everything remains in constant motion. Because of this
constant motion and resultant change, dialectics recognizes that that there are
no unchangeable absolutes, and therefore continual study and experience of
these material processes is the only source of proofs, 'truth,' and
understanding....
"Idealists claim only our
consciousness really exists and the real world, therefore, exists only in our
minds. However, Marxist materialism recognizes that the world of matter, nature
and being is an actual world that exists independent of our consciousness.
Matter is primary, since it is the source of all we know, feel and think,
whereas consciousness is secondary, since it is a product of and reflection of
matter that actually exists in the physical world. The brain is of material
construction. Without it, we'd have no thoughts and no mechanism with which to
process thoughts into physical actions -- so how can we separate or raise our
consciousness above matter?...
"DM realizes that, like all
processes, social development repeats stages previously passed through, but on a
higher level -- in spirals not circles. These leaps in cycles of development are
the dialectical transformation of quantity into quality, namely revolution.
They are the result of the contradictions within a thing or process that act on
and are acted upon by external contradictions. It is the law of motion
expressing itself. By understanding this law, we can act upon and within the
internal contradictions of a thing -- our society -- to bring about fundamental
changes in its quality -- through revolution." [Quoted from
here; accessed
18/08/2015. Bold emphases added; quotation marks altered to conform to the
conventions adopted at this site.]
Readers will note that the above DM-fan asserts that
"the unity of opposites that operates within
all phenomena large and small, known and unknown", which they couldn't possibly
know (since, as they admit, these are "unknown").
(20) "Now to understand the
process of change in any particular department of knowledge you must discover
the laws, the uniformity in the apparently haphazard and this is just what
scientists do. They discover the laws in that particular department by applying
the evolutionary concept. Evolution does not merely signify that there is
perpetual change, but that the changes are an unfolding and further development
of forces within that which is changing. The direction of the change is
determined by the alignment of internal constituents and the impact of external.
Everything is a part of an unending world process, no section of which can be
isolated except in thought. And even when isolating everything in thought it
must still be studied in connection with other things.
"Change, then, consists of
a combination, dissolution and recombination of elements in an ascending series,
that is to say, an ever more complicated arrangement of elements. Existence is
only a temporary equilibrium of opposing elements always in motion, that at a
certain stage, bursts apart and forms a new combination when one element becomes
present in greater abundance than another or the relation between internal
quantities changes. In analysing these progressive combinations, scientists
discover the numerous laws that govern such progressive movement enabling them
to foretell with varying degrees of accuracy the future developments....
"Social evolution moves in
a spiral, coming back, not to its starting point, but to a point above the
starting point. Let us apply the dialectical materialism of Marx to the
development we have described. First, the statement that an increase in
quantity beyond a certain point results in a change in quality. The increase in
the means of production and the product changed the social form from communist
society to private property society and will change the latter into a higher
form of communist society. Communist society was negated by private property
society and this will in time be negated by a higher form of communist society:
the negation of the negation. The entire process is accomplished by the
growth of antagonism and the solving of antagonism. The elements that have
changed the form of society were contained within the original communal
communities. The unity in the whole process is social Man. The contradictions
are the contrary outlook arising from the growth of the means of production and
the solution is the reduction of these outlooks to one common outlook." [Quoted
from
here; accessed 18/08/2015. Minor typos corrected; bold emphases added.]
More
to follow...
Appendix Four: Welcome To 'The Gerry
Healy Mausoleum Of A
Priori Dogmatics'
Over
the next few months, I'll be posting yet more evidence (that is, if any more is
needed!) that confirms Gerry Healy's pre-eminent position as
The Daddy Of
Dialectical Dogmatics:
The 'Cell' Of Materialist Dialectics (Marxist
Monthly, Vol 1, No. 2, April 1988)
Dialectical Logic as a science is
developed in the process of cognising phenomena negated from the infinite motion
of the external world. The
phenomena which demand our most urgent attention are generated by the world
class struggle and its continuous interaction with the property relations
established by the October 1917 Socialist Revolution. This process constitutes
the form and content of the political revolution now well underway in the USSR.
It is achieved through the use of images which are sensations whose source is in
the world of the class struggle. They are then analysed 'in themselves' through
the use of dialectical thought, (logic). As Lenin explains on page 225 of volume
38 of his Collected Works, 'images and thought, the development of both, nothing
else.'
Since the infinite motion of the
external world, (including the class struggle), has to be negated into concepts,
great care must be taken as to how we define them. It amounts to definitions of
the object in itself which is being cognised. Every concept, therefore,
must be an abstract concept, if the 'subject' is to define the 'object' of
cognition. From the standpoint of materialism, the dialectical relationship
between subject an object is dominated by the requirements of objective
revolutionary practice. Left-sounding words as forms devoid of content are
always abstract and lifeless. 'One of the most difficult tasks confronting the
philosopher', wrote Marx and Engels, 'is to descend from the world of thought to
the actual real world. Language is an immediate actuality of thought. Just as
philosophers have given thought an independent existence, so they were bound to
make language into an independent realm …neither thoughts nor language in
themselves form a realm of their own, they are only manifestations of actual
life…. Language, of course, becomes a phrase as soon as it is given an
independent existence.' (Vol.5, Collected Works Marx and Engels, pp.446-47)
The objective being of things and
human beings can only be established through practical activity involving
objects. The purely verbal
and theoretical tasks are inadequate for this purpose. In What is to be Done
Lenin, however, sternly warned 'that the worst sin we commit is that we
downgrade our political and organisational tasks to the level of immediate
"palpable", "concrete" interests of everyday economic struggle.' (p.446 Vol.5
Collected Works)....
A Sum And Unity Of Opposites
In materialist dialectics each
concept records only one particular moment of concrete reality as a concrete
abstraction. Each negation of negation of a new content contains the property
of the thing that is being negated, (abstracted).
Since each negated moment records a different moment of sensation, the
'thing, phenomenon' etc. builds up into a 'sum and unity of opposites'. Their
unity emerges not from their similarity to each other, but on the contrary
through their difference and opposition to one another. Lenin always opposed
empty word forms, insisting that truth is always concrete. The word form must
have an 'in itself' historical content. Concepts negated in the process of
cognition are both abstract and concrete, and cannot be separated. Marx, in
the fifth Thesis of Feuerbach, emphasised that 'Feuerbach, not satisfied with
abstract thinking wants sensuous contemplation but he does not conceive
sensuousness contemplation as practical human activity'. (p.4, Vol.5 Marx and
Engels Collected Works)
Man's thinking cannot be separated from
his practice, because he is the result and product of his own labour.
Everything that is human in man is determined by his development of tools as
instruments of production which is a universal practice. This 'universal'
embodies both the 'individual' and the 'particular', as objective reality,
which is manifested in the concept.
In reality, the universal exists only through the individual and the
particular. Its properties can only be revealed through an analysis of the
particular. Universal reality in the class struggle can only be manifested
through analysis of its law-governed relations between the individual and the
particular in contrast to the self-created images of the subjective idealist
pasted over this dialectical reality. Such bourgeois ideological bankruptcy
is totally inadequate in contrast to the union of analysis synthesis of
dialectical logic for the working out of the universal definitions of concepts.
As Lenin explains in the box, (p.99 Vol.38, Collected Works), when he quotes
Hegel from a previous paragraph: 'A beautiful formula, "Not merely an abstract
universal, but a universal which comprises in itself the wealth of the
particular, the individual, the single" (all the wealth of the particular and
the single)!! Tresbien'. (double quotes are Hegel, single quotes Lenin)
The sum and unity of opposites,
(contents), cannot exist outside a certain coherent whole in which the
interaction of each opposite, (content), realises its specific nature through
interaction with another opposite, (content), within the given whole. Each
separate content negated from a dialectically divided whole must express
one-sidedly the universal nature of this whole in its difference from other
contents instead of an abstract identity with them. This process of interacting
contents is already a substance, which through the union of analysis and
synthesis was historically formed. It is essence in existence which through the
build-up of the Measure of qualities of the contents changes the motion in
transition to Appearance.
Engels, on page 22 of Dialectics of Nature explains the process under the
heading 'Abstract and Concrete' -- 'The general law of the change of form of
motion is much more concrete than any single concrete example of it.' This
'change of form of motion' provides the impulse for the transition to appearance.
In his article, On the Question of Dialectics, (page 361 Vol.38), Lenin
describes the 'cell' when 'we separate the essence from the appearance and
counter-pose the one to the other'. In the Critique of Political Economy,
page 206, Marx describes the 'cell' as follows: 'The concrete concept is
concrete because it is a synthesis of many definitions' ['determinations'? --
RL]. The 'synthesis of many definitions' is the negation of contents which
contain the concrete from which they have been negated from the external world
of the class struggle.
Marx continues: 'thus representing the unity of diverse aspects' as abstractions
containing the concrete negated into each content. 'It appears therefore in
reasoning as a summing up, a result, and not as the starting point, although it
is the real point of origin, and thus also the point of origin of perception and
imagination. The first procedure attenuates meaningful images to abstract
definitions, the second leads from abstract definitions by way of reasoning to
the reproduction of the concrete situation…the method of advancing from the
abstract to the concrete is simply the way in which thinking assimilates the
concrete and reproduces it as a concrete mental category.'
For Marx also, as well as Lenin, the 'cell' of materialist dialectics was the
transition through change of form of the build-up of the concrete properties of
the abstract definitions (negations) into concrete appearances by way of
reasoning through the union of analysis and synthesis. Marx begins first
with the concrete external world from which he negates 'abstract images' and
from these he establishes a synthesis which is the thing, phenomena etc, as the
sum and unity of opposites (page 221 Vol.38). The dialectical motion from the
abstract to the concrete can only be perceived through its opposite from the
concrete to the abstract. This is the fore most determinant in the unity and
transformation of opposites into one another as a law-governed process. This is
the unbridgeable gulf between materialist dialectics and the eclectical
combinations of subjective idealism. The transition of opposites into one
another is a decisive element. Theory as a guide to practice occurs only in
the transition of the abstract to the concrete and vice versa in which
the union of analysis and synthesis are closely interwoven. Theory does not
develop out of nature as such, but in man's struggle to transform nature by his
practice. Concrete truth is formed in the process of motion itself. The union
of analysis and synthesis are internal, inseparable opposites in the process of
dialectically analysing motion in its immediacy, that is, in a state of
'becoming'.
The Logical Method
Lenin defined the logical method of
analysing the historical-materialist process in a state of becoming as 'the
splitting of a single whole and the cognition of its contradictory parts -- this
is the essence (one of the "essentials", one of the principle, if not the
principle, characteristics or features) of dialectics.' (p.360 Vol.38)
Development through the inseparable union of analysis and synthesis must
correspond to the internal division of the whole negated from the concrete
external world outside thought. In this negation of the concrete historical
reality, we are in principle concerned with the universal moments of its
development in their concrete historical interaction. It is this historical
interaction of concrete phenomena in the external world which constitutes the
essence of dialectical concepts. Lenin in Element (5) describes it as 'the
thing (phenomena, etc) as the sum and unity of opposites.' (page 221 Vol.38)
As negation forms the concrete universal, this general summation of opposites
(contents) is an abstraction into which has been negated the moments of the
external concrete whole. To establish phenomenon, we must discover its
origin in the external world, otherwise without establishing the inner
connection of phenomena we replace dialectical logic as a theory of knowledge
with eclecticism, and the decent into empiricism begins.
The Dialectical 'Cell' Of 'Capital'
Each negation must
express and contain only those previous negations of the forms of the
ever-changing existence of the object of cognition. Dialectical logic does not
reproduce the whole of history as such. It negates the concrete historical
concepts as a whole which interact upon one another in the external world,
emerging in logic as internal contradictions.
A commodity contains the interaction of two polar opposites: use value and
exchange value. It is a 'relation', wrote Lenin, 'encountered billions of
times, viz. the exchange of commodities. In this very simple phenomenon, (in
this "cell" of bourgeois society), analysis reveals all the contradictions, (or
the germs of all the contradictions), of modern society.' (page 360-61 Vol.38).
Their subsequent development through conflict as 'polar opposites' is the
essence of the class struggle, in the course of which this 'cell' appears
indifferent forms.... [Quoted from
here
(accessed 18/02/2014). Several minor typos corrected. Bold and italic
emphases added. Re-formatted to conform to the conventions adopted at this
site.]
More
to follow (which will be drawn mostly from
here).
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--------, (1980), On The Question Of Dialectics (Progress Publishers).
Levy,
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Lloyd, G. (1971), Polarity And Analogy. Two Types Of Argument In Early Greek
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[ND = No Date.]
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--------, (1964),
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--------, (1970),
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[Unfortunately, the Index page for this book over at the Marxist Internet
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directly
here. I have informed the editors
of this error. Added June 2015: they have now corrected it!]
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