Essay Seven Part Three -- Why
Dialectical Materialism Can't Explain Change
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Preface
The material presented below originally began life as a
subsection of
Essay Seven
Part One, but I thought it might be more useful to re-write it,
expand it
and then publish it as an Essay in its own right.
As is the case with all my
work, 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
thirty-five years ago.
The
difference between
Dialectical Materialism [DM] and HM, as I see it, is explained
here.
It
is also worth pointing out
that phrases
like "ruling-class theory", "ruling-class view of reality",
"ruling-class ideology" (etc.) used 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, the above 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.
[Why I have included DM in
this assessment of ruling-class thought is explained
here and
here.]
Several readers have
complained about the number of links I have added to these Essays because they
say it makes them very difficult to read. Of course, DM-supporters can hardly
lodge that complaint since they believe everything is interconnected, and
that must surely apply even to Essays that
attempt to debunk that very idea. However, to those
who find such links do make these Essays difficult to read I say this: ignore them -- unless you want to access
further supporting evidence and argument for a particular point, or a certain
topic fires your interest.
Others wonder why I have linked to familiar
subjects and issues that are part of common knowledge (such as the names of
recent Presidents of the
USA, UK Prime Ministers, the names of rivers and mountains, the titles of
popular films, or certain words
that are in common usage). I have done so for the following reason: my Essays
are read all over the world and by people from all 'walks of life', so I can't
assume that topics which are part of common knowledge in 'the west' are equally
well-known across the planet -- or, indeed, by those who haven't had the benefit
of the sort of education that is generally available in the 'advanced economies',
or any at
all. Many of my readers also struggle with English, so any help I can give them
I will continue to provide.
Finally on this specific topic, several of the aforementioned links
connect to
web-pages that regularly change their
URLs, or which vanish from the
Internet altogether. While I try to update them when it becomes apparent
that they have changed or have disappeared I can't possibly keep on top of
this all the time. I would greatly appreciate it, therefore, if readers
informed me
of any dead links they happen to notice.
In general, links to 'Haloscan'
no longer seem to work, so readers needn't tell me about them! Links to
RevForum, RevLeft, Socialist Unity and The North Star also appear to have died.
~~~~~~oOo~~~~~~
As of May 2024, this Essay is just over 67,000
words long (at least 24,000 words of which comprise quotations from
Hegel, the DM-classics and subsequent DM-authors). A much shorter summary of some of its main ideas can be
accessed
here.
The material below does
not
represent my final view of any of the issues raised; it is merely 'work in
progress'.
[Latest Update: 12/05/24.]
Quick Links
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If your Firewall/Browser has a pop-up blocker, you will need to press the
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(1) Introduction
(2)
The Problem Stated
(a)
Dialectical Confusion
(3)
What Do
Dialecticians Themselves Say?
(a)
The DM-Classicists
(i)
Hegel
(ii)
Engels
(iii)
Plekhanov
(iv)
Lenin
(v)
Stalin
(vi)
Mao
(b) Other DM-Theorists
(4)
The Absurd Consequences Of
This 'Theory'
(a)
Why Objects And Processes Can't Change Into That With Which They Struggle
(5)
Concrete Examples
(a) 'Dialectical'
John Can't In Fact Age
(b) Turning The Tables On DM
(c)
Are 'Dialectical' Cats Immortal?
(d)
Stop
Press: 'Dialectical' Kettles Use Zero Energy!
(6)
Critics
Answered
(a)
The General Response To This Essay
(b)
'Unrepresentative' Or 'Taken Out Of Context'
(c)
The DM-Classicists 'Didn't Mean What They Said'
(d)
They Misspoke Or Committed A Series Of
Simple Errors
(e)
'Use Your
Commonsense!'
(f)
'Formal Logic Is Inappropriate In This Area'
(g)
Impromptu Repairs
Attempted On-The-Hoof
(i)
Hegel's Response
To Hume
(ii)
Lenin Endorses
Hegel's Theory
(h)
This Essay Is Completely Misguided Since
It Ignores 'Opposite Tendencies'
(i)
Dialectical Change Applies 'Only In Certain Circumstances'
(7)
Social Change
(a)
If
DM Were Correct, Capitalism Couldn't In Fact Change!
(b)
Forces And
Relations Of Production
(c)
Can Cats Defy This Iron
Law?
(d)
Does Nature Work in Pairs?
(e)
Are Cats Non-Dialectical,
After All?
(f)
Problems Keep Stacking Up
(g)
Human Input
(h)
Use Value Versus Exchange Value
(8)
The Real Source Of The Problem
(a)
Hegel's Hare-Brained
'Logic'
(9)
Conclusion
(10)
Notes
(11)
Appendix A -- Mao On Change
(12)
References
Summary Of My Main Objections To
Dialectical Materialism
Abbreviations Used At This
Site
Return To
The Main Index Page
Contact Me
Introduction
Dialectical
Marxists claim that their theory/method, DM, is not only capable of explaining
simple and complex changes in nature and society, it is able to do so
far better than any other theory/method yet invented,
especially those that rely on FL.
[FL = Formal Logic; DM = Dialectical Materialism.]
[Henceforth,
I will drop the phrase "theory/method"; readers should assume that when I refer
to this theory [DM], I am also referring to the associated method.]
Also worth
pointing out,
this isn't an academic exercise. Dialecticians are at pains to underline their
belief that DM is unique in its ability to assist socialists engaged in revolutionary
struggle. In which case, DM isn't just the
quintessential theory of change, as a guide to practice, it is the only effective
theory of revolutionary transformation. In fact, according to them, DM
is the only game in town.
But, what if
it should turn out that this theory can't actually cope with,
or even account for, change?
Worse still: what if it should turn out that,
if DM were
'true', change would actually be impossible?
The implied assumption behind each of the above
controversial questions might at first
sight seem not only completely false, but patently absurd. And yet, as we are about to
find out,
the exact opposite of that is the case.
This Essay aims to
demonstrate the following, that:
(1)
DM
can't actually cope with change.
And,
(2) If,
per impossible, DM were 'true', change would be impossible.
As it turns out, these highly contentious
claims -- unique
to this site -- are nearly as easy to substantiate as they are to load
onto your computer screen.
Anyone who
harbours doubts is encouraged to read on.
The problem Stated
Dialectical Confusion
As will soon
become obvious, DM-theorists are
decidedly unclear whether or not objects and processes in nature and society change because of:
(i) A
'contradictory' relationship, or 'struggle', between their 'internal' or
'dialectical' opposites.
Or because:
(ii) They change
into those 'opposites'.
Or even because:
(iii) Change itself creates
these
'opposites'.
Unfortunately, these three considerations imply that change would be impossible.
Why that
is so will be explained in detail in what follows.
However, every
time
that I have debated this topic with dialecticians,
points (i)-(iii) above are almost invariably disputed, and that remains the case even after those who take exception
to them are confronted
with proof texts drawn from the DM-classics and from other, 'lesser', DM-texts.
In that
case, it might prove helpful if we review what DM-theorists themselves have to
say.
What Do Dialecticians Themselves
Say?
So, precisely what do the DM-classics tell us? And, what do other
DM-sources have to say?
[DM = Dialectical Materialism/Materialist,
depending on context.]
In order to
answer these questions, in the next two sub-sections I have quoted well
over fifty of the aforementioned 'proof
texts'.
However, apologies must be given in advance for the length and
extremely repetitive nature of most of these passages, but DM-fans simply
refuse to accept that the Dialectical-classicists actually said the things alleged of them above (and again below) --
and that is especially so even after
they have been confronted with the absurd consequences that flow from them
(the latter will be detailed in the rest of this Essay) -- unless they are shown chapter and
verse
and in extensive detail. One or two passages they brush off as
"outliers". Indeed, in the absence of dozens of proof texts, they
tend to regard anything that a particular theorist had to say -- regardless
of whether that
theorist is Engels, Plekhanov, Lenin, Trotsky, or Mao -- as either "far too
crude", unrepresentative, or unreliable. Alternatively, they complain that these
passages have been "taken out of context".
I have dealt with these and other objections,
here.
The DM-Classicists
In what
follows, unless otherwise stated, (i) bold emphases alone have been added, (ii) quotation marks have been altered to conform with the
conventions adopted at
this site, and (iii) some paragraphs have been merged.
Hegel
Beginning
with Hegel (but, see also
here):
"In
the Dialectical stage these finite characterisations or formulae supersede
themselves, and pass into their opposites.... But when we look more closely, we find
that the limitations of the
finite do not merely come from without; that its own nature is the cause
of its abrogation, and that by its own act it passes into its counterpart.
We say, for instance, that man is mortal, and seem to think that the ground of
his death is in external circumstances only; so that if this way of looking were
correct, man would have two special properties, vitality and -- also --
mortality. But the true view of the matter is that life as life, involves the
germ of death, and that the finite, being radically self-contradictory, involves
its own self-suppression....
If, for instance, the
Sophists
claimed to be teachers,
Socrates by a series of questions forced the Sophist
Protagoras
to confess that
all learning is only recollection. In his more strictly scientific dialogues,
Plato employs the dialectical method to show the finitude of all hard and fast
terms of understanding. Thus in the
Parmenides
he deduces the many from
the one. In this grand style did Plato treat Dialectic. In modern times it was,
more than any other, Kant who resuscitated the name of Dialectic, and restored
it to its post of honour. He did it, as we have seen, by working out the
Antinomies of the reason.
The problem of these Antinomies is no mere subjective piece of work oscillating
between one set of grounds and another;
it really serves to show that every abstract proposition of understanding, taken
precisely as it is given, naturally veers round to its opposite.
"However reluctant Understanding may be to admit the
action of Dialectic, we must not suppose that the recognition of its existence
is peculiarly confined to the philosopher. It would be truer to say that
Dialectic gives expression to a law which is felt in all other grades of
consciousness, and in general experience. Everything that surrounds us may be
viewed as an instance of Dialectic. We are aware that everything finite, instead
of being stable and ultimate, is rather changeable and transient; and this is
exactly what we mean by that Dialectic of the finite, by which the finite, as
implicitly other than what it is, is forced beyond its own immediate or natural
being to turn suddenly into its opposite." [Hegel (1975),
§81 (1)
pp.115-18.
Several links added and some paragraphs merged..]
"Everything
is opposite.
Neither in heaven nor in earth, neither in
the world of mind nor nature, is there anywhere an abstract 'either-or' as the
understanding maintains. Whatever exists is concrete, with difference and
opposition in itself. The finitude of things with 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
the acid persists quietly in the contrast: it is always in effort to realize
what it potentially is. Contradiction is the very moving principle of the
world." [Ibid.,
p.174.]
"In the self-excluding reflection we have just considered,
positive and negative, each in its self-subsistence, sublates itself; each is
simply the transition or rather the self-transposition of itself into its
opposite. This ceaseless vanishing of the opposites into themselves is
the first unity resulting from contradiction...." [Hegel
(1999), §939, p.433. Bold emphasis added.]
"The self-contradictory, self-subsistent opposition was
therefore already itself ground; all that was added to it was the determination
of unity-with-self, which results from the fact that each of the
self-subsistent opposites sublates itself and makes itself into its opposite,
thus falling to the ground...; but in this process it at the same time only
unites with itself; therefore, it is only in falling to the ground..., that is,
in its positedness or negation, that the opposite is really the essence that is
reflected into and identical with itself." [Ibid.,
§945, p.435. Bold emphasis added.]
"In the perception of the movement of force, consciousness
becomes aware that the extremes, in both these aspects, are nothing per se,
that rather these sides, in which their distinction of nature was meant to
consist, are merely vanishing moments, an immediate transition of each into
its opposite." [Hegel
(1977), §140, p.85. Bold emphasis added.]
Engels
"The law of the interpenetration of
opposites.... [M]utual penetration of polar opposites and transformation into
each other when carried to extremes...." [Engels (1954), pp.17,
62.]
"Dialectics has proved from the results of our experience of nature so far that
all polar opposites in general are determined by the mutual action of the two
opposite poles on one another, that the separation and opposition of these poles
exists only within their unity and inter-connection, and, conversely, that their
inter-connection exists only in their separation and their unity only in their
opposition."
[Ibid.,
p.72.]
"Two philosophical tendencies, the
metaphysical with fixed categories, the dialectical (Aristotle and especially
Hegel) with fluid categories; the proofs that these fixed opposites of basis and
consequence, cause and effect, identity and difference, appearance and essence
are untenable, that analysis shows one pole already present in the other in
nuce, that at a definite point the one pole becomes transformed into the
other, and that all logic develops only from these progressing
contradictions." [Ibid.,
pp.202-03.]
"Dialectics, so-called objective
dialectics, prevails throughout nature, and so-called subjective dialectics,
dialectical thought, is only the reflection of the motion through opposites
which asserts itself everywhere in nature, and which by the continual
conflict of the opposites and their final passage into one another, or into
higher forms, determines the life of nature. Attraction and repulsion.
Polarity begins with magnetism, it is exhibited in one and the same body; in the
case of electricity it distributes itself over two or more bodies which become
oppositely charged. All chemical processes reduce themselves -- to processes of
chemical attraction and repulsion. Finally, in organic life the formation of the
cell nucleus is likewise to be regarded as a polarisation of the living protein
material, and from the simple cell -- onwards the theory of evolution
demonstrates how each advance up to the most complicated plant on the one side,
and up to man on the other, is effected by the continual conflict between
heredity and adaptation. In this connection it becomes evident how little
applicable to such forms of evolution are categories like 'positive' and
'negative.' One can conceive of heredity as the positive, conservative side,
adaptation as the negative side that continually destroys what has been
inherited, but one can just as well take adaptation as the creative, active,
positive activity, and heredity as the resisting, passive, negative activity."
[Ibid.,
p.211.]
"For a stage in the outlook on nature where all
differences become merged in intermediate steps, and all opposites pass into
one another through intermediate links, the old metaphysical method of
thought no longer suffices. Dialectics, which likewise knows no hard and fast
lines, no unconditional, universally valid 'either-or' and which bridges
the fixed metaphysical differences, and besides 'either-or' recognises also in
the right place 'both this-and that' and reconciles the opposites, is the sole
method of thought appropriate in the highest degree to this stage. Of course,
for everyday use, for the small change of science, the metaphysical categories
retain their validity." [Ibid.,
pp.212-13.]
"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." [Engels
(1976),
p.27.]
"Already in Rousseau, therefore, we find not only a line
of thought which corresponds exactly to the one developed in Marx's
Capital, but also, in details, a whole series of the same dialectical turns
of speech as Marx used: processes 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."
[Ibid.,
p.179.]
"...but the theory of Essence is the main thing: the
resolution of the abstract contradictions into their own instability, where one
no sooner tries to hold on to one side alone than it is transformed unnoticed
into the other, etc." [Engels (1891a),
p.414.]
Plekhanov
"According to Hegel, dialectics is the
principle of all life. Frequently one meets people who, having expressed
some abstract proposition, willingly recognize that perhaps they are mistaken,
and that perhaps the exactly opposite point of view is correct. These are
well-bred people, saturated to their finger tips with 'tolerance': live
and let live, they say to their intellect. Dialectics has nothing in common with
the sceptical tolerance of men of the world, but it, too, knows how to reconcile
directly opposite abstract propositions. Man is mortal, we say, regarding death
as something rooted in external circumstances and quite alien to the nature of
living man. It follows that a man has two qualities: first of being alive, and
secondly of also being mortal. But upon closer investigation 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 own opposite. Everything flows,
everything changes; and there is no force capable of holding back this constant
flux, or arresting this 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. What for example is the meaning of the old saw: summum
jus, summa injuria? [Extreme justice is extreme injustice -- RL.] Does it
mean that we act most justly when, having paid our tribute to law, we at the
same time give its due to lawlessness? No, that is the interpretation only of
'surface thinking, the mind of fools.' The aphorism means that every abstract
justice, carried to its logical conclusion, is transformed into injustice, i.e.,
into its own opposite. Shakespeare's Merchant of Venice serves as
a brilliant illustration of this. Take a look at economic phenomena. What is the
logical conclusion of 'free competition'? Every capitalist strives to
beat his competitors and to remain sole master of the market. And, of course,
cases are frequent when some Rothschild or Vanderbilt succeeds in happily
fulfilling this ambition. But this shows that free competition leads to
monopoly, that is to the negation of competition, i.e., to its own opposite.
Or look at the conclusion to which the so-called labour principle of property,
extolled by our Narodnik
literature, leads. Only that belongs to me which has been created by my labour.
Nothing can be more just than that. And it is no less just that I use the thing
I have created at my own free discretion: I use it myself or I exchange it for
something else, which for some reason I need more. It is equally just, then,
that I make use of the thing I have secured by exchange -- again at my free
discretion -- as I find pleasant, best and advantageous. Let us now suppose that
I have sold the product of my own labour for money, and have used the money to
hire a labourer, i.e., I have bought somebody else's labour-power. Having taken
advantage of this labour-power of another, I turn out to be the owner of value
which is considerably higher than the value I spent on its purchase. This, on
the one hand, is very just, because it has already been recognized, after all,
that I can use what I have secured by exchange as is best and most advantageous
for myself: and, on the other hand, it is very unjust, because I am exploiting
the labour of another and thereby negating the principle which lay at the
foundation of my conception of justice. The property acquired by my personal
labour bears me the property created by the labour of another. Summum jus, summa
injuria. And such injuria springs up by the very nature of things in the economy
of almost any well-to-do handicraftsman, almost every prosperous peasant.
"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….
Every phenomenon, developing to its
conclusion, becomes transformed into its opposite; but as the new
phenomenon, being opposite to the first, also is transformed in its turn into
its own opposite, the third phase of development bears a formal
resemblance to the first."
[Plekhanov (1974),
pp.539-44. Link added.]
Lenin
"[Among the
elements of dialectics are the following:] [I]nternally contradictory
tendencies…in [a thing]…as the sum and unity of opposites…. [This involves] not
only the unity of opposites, but the transitions of every determination,
quality, feature, side, property into every other [into its opposite?]….
"In brief,
dialectics can be defined as the doctrine of the unity of opposites. This
embodies the essence of dialectics….
The
splitting of the whole and the cognition of its contradictory parts…is the
essence (one of the 'essentials', one of the principal, if not the
principal, characteristic features) of dialectics….
"The
identity of opposites…is the recognition…of the contradictory, mutually
exclusive, opposite tendencies in all phenomena and processes of nature…. The
condition for the knowledge of all processes of the world in their
'self-movement,' in their spontaneous development, in their real life, is the
knowledge of them as a unity of opposites. Development is the 'struggle' of
opposites…. [This] alone furnishes the key to the 'self-movement' of everything
existing…. The
unity…of opposites is conditional, temporary, transitory, relative. The struggle
of mutually exclusive opposites is absolute, just as development and motion are
absolute…." [Lenin (1961), pp.221-22,
357-58.]
"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.]
"'This harmony is precisely absolute Becoming
change, -- not becoming other, now this and then another. The essential thing is
that each different thing [tone], each particular, is different from another,
not abstractly so from any other, but from its other. Each particular
only is, insofar as its other is implicitly contained in its Notion....' Quite
right and important: the 'other' as its other, development into its opposite."
[Ibid., p.260. Lenin is here commenting on Hegel (1995a), pp.278-98; this
particular quotation coming from p.285.]
"Dialectics
is the teaching which shows how Opposites can be and
how they happen to be (how they become) identical, -- under
what conditions they are identical, becoming transformed into one another,
-- why the human mind should grasp these opposites not as dead, rigid, but as
living, conditional, mobile, becoming transformed into one another." [Ibid.,
p.109.]
"Development
is the 'struggle' of opposites." [Lenin, Collected Works, Volume
XIII, p.301.]
"Of course, the fundamental proposition of
Marxian dialectics is that all boundaries in nature and society are conventional
and mobile, that there is not a single phenomenon which cannot under
certain conditions be transformed into its opposite." [Lenin (1916),
p.309.]
Stalin
"Dialectics comes from the Greek dialego,
to discourse, to debate. In ancient times dialectics was the art of arriving at
the truth by disclosing the contradictions in the argument of an opponent and
overcoming these contradictions. There were philosophers in ancient times who
believed that the disclosure of contradictions in thought and the clash of
opposite opinions was the best method of arriving at the truth. This dialectical
method of thought, later extended to the phenomena of nature, developed into the
dialectical method of apprehending nature, which regards the phenomena of nature
as being in constant movement and undergoing constant change, and the
development of nature as the result of the development of the contradictions
in nature, as the result of the interaction of opposed forces in nature....
"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, a past and a future,
something dying away and something developing; 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, between that which is disappearing and
that which is developing, constitutes the internal content of the process of
development, the internal content of the transformation of quantitative
changes into qualitative changes.
"The dialectical method therefore holds that
the process of development from the lower to the higher takes place not as a
harmonious unfolding of phenomena, but as a disclosure of the contradictions
inherent in things and phenomena, as a 'struggle' of opposite tendencies
which operate on the basis of these contradictions." [Stalin
(1976b), pp.836, 840.]
Mao
"All contradictory things are interconnected; not only
do they coexist in a single entity in given conditions, but in other given
conditions, they also transform themselves into each other. This is the full
meaning of the identity of opposites. This is what Lenin meant when he discussed
'how they happen to be (how they become) identical -- under what
conditions they are identical, transforming themselves into one another...'.
"Why is it
that '...the human mind should take these opposites not as dead, rigid, but as
living, conditional, mobile, transforming themselves into one another'? Because
that is just how things are in objective reality. The fact is that the unity or
identity of opposites in objective things is not dead or rigid, but is living,
conditional, mobile, temporary and relative; in given conditions, every
contradictory aspect transforms itself into its opposite....
"In speaking
of the identity of opposites in given conditions, what we are referring to is
real and concrete opposites and the real and concrete transformations of
opposites into one another....
All
processes have a beginning and an end, all processes transform themselves into
their opposites. The constancy of all processes is relative, but the mutability
manifested in the transformation of one process into another is absolute." [Mao
(1961b),
pp.340-42.]
"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...." [Ibid.,
pp.311-18.]
"In given conditions, each of the two opposing aspects of
a contradiction invariably transforms itself into its opposite as a result of
the struggle between them. Here, it is the conditions which are essential.
Without the given conditions, neither of the two contradictory aspects can
transform itself into its opposite. Of all the classes in the world the
proletariat is the one which is most eager to change its position, and next
comes the semi-proletariat, for the former possesses nothing at all while the
latter is hardly any better off. The United States now controls a majority in
the United Nations and dominates many parts of the world -- this state of
affairs is temporary and will be changed one of these days. China's position as
a poor country denied its rights in international affairs will also be changed
-- the poor country will change into a rich one, the country denied its rights
into one enjoying them -- a transformation of things into their opposites.
Here, the decisive conditions are the socialist system and the concerted efforts
of a united people." [Mao (1977b,
p.417.]
I have now added to
Appendix A all of Mao's highly repetitive comments on this aspect of
his theory of change [taken from Mao (1961b)] so that readers can see for themselves that (i) What he had to say hasn't been taken
out of context, and (ii) This isn't an insignificant or peripheral
aspect of his thought.
Other
DM-Theorists
Here are the comments of several 'lesser' DM-theorists:
"[The sides of] dialectical contradictions do not
dissolve one another, do not neutralise one another, while oppositely directed
forces do not prevail over one another but turn into one another, and this
transition of every phenomenon, every process into its opposite also constitutes
the essence of all forms of movement of matter, a general law of its existence."
[Boris Gessen and Ivan Podvolotskii, quoted in Weston (2008), p.435. These two
characters were
Deborinites
writing in the 1920s.]
"[D]evelopment comes about through contradictions, that a
thing always develops out of its opposite." [Thalheimer
(1936), p.27.]
"In this connection, I want to point out to you what is meant
by historical dialectics. You have already met the term several times. From this
instance we see that it means that a phenomenon which is necessary under certain
conditions and signifies progress, under changed historical conditions
straightway changes to its opposite and becomes a hindrance to further
development. In the role of religion in different historical periods we see the
elucidation of the universal law of historical development, namely,
development through opposites or contradictions. We shall further see that this
law of development through contradictions is valid not only for historical
motion, but that it is a law of all motion." [Ibid.,
pp.59-60.]
"Another basic idea of Heraclitus is that this change of all things follows the
rule that
opposites always emerge from opposites;
that is, that this
change always takes place in the form of contradictions.
For this, too, he found a striking metaphorical expression: 'Conflict is the
father of all things.'
The conflict of opposites is the impulse to all change, to all development.
This is also a fundamental conception of dialectics,
and Heraclitus was able to express even this thought in very general fashion. He
applied it to the relation of Being and Non-Being. Heraclitus said that Being
and Non-Being, these two extreme opposites, come together in the concept of
Becoming. The thought is clear. A thing that is becoming is, and at the same
time is not, that thing. These two ideas are contained in Becoming. Otherwise
expressed: The nature of all things and processes consists of the togetherness
of opposites.
All things, in other words, are polar, are composed of opposites or
contradictions....
"Therefore there developed in him [Heraclitus -- RL] the
conception that it is a general law of all existing things not to remain as
they are, but to change – to change, indeed, into their opposites. [Ibid.,
pp.73-75.]
"Most important and revolutionary was the dialectical method. Hegel discovered
dialectics anew, so to speak. He was the first to elaborate it systematically
and put it on a much higher plane than it had previously been. This was a
revolutionary act of the highest order. Dialectics was an extremely
revolutionary method. Dialectics teaches that no individual thing, whether in
the external world or in thought, remains static, but that it constantly
changes, that every single thing, every single institution must have a beginning
and therefore necessarily an end, a rising and a declining phase of development.
Dialectics teaches that every thing, every institution, every thought disappears
because it is transformed into its opposite.
Dialectics halts for nothing. Nothing is sacred to it, nothing is inviolable.
This destructive power of dialectics is, in the Hegelian view, the strongest
force of historical progress...." [Ibid.,
pp.122-23.]
"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." [Ibid.,
p.161.]
"So far we have discussed the most general and
most fundamental law of dialectics, namely, the law of the permeation of
opposites, or the law of polar unity. We shall now take up the second main
proposition of dialectics, the law of the negation of the negation, or the
law of development through opposites. This is the most general law of the
process of thought. I will first state the law itself and support it with
examples, and then I will show on what it is based and how it is related to the
first law of the permeation of opposites. There is already a presentiment of
this law in the oldest Chinese philosophy, in the of Transformations, as well as
in
Lao-tse and
his disciples -- and likewise in the oldest Greek philosophy, especially in
Heraclitus.
Not until Hegel, however, was this law developed.
"This law applies to all motion and changes of things, to real things as well
as to their images in our minds, i.e., concepts. It states first of all that
things and concepts move, change, and develop; all things are processes. All
fixity of individual things is only relative, limited; their motion, change, or
development is absolute, unlimited. For the world as a whole absolute motion and
absolute rest coincide. The proof of this part of the proposition, namely, that
all things are in flux, we have already given in our discussion of Heraclitus.
"The law of the negation of the negation has a special sense beyond the mere
proposition that all things are processes and change. It also states something
about the most general form of these changes, motions, or developments. It
states, in the first place, that all motion, development, or change, takes place
through opposites or contradictions, or through the negation of a thing.
"Conceptually the actual movement of things appears as a negation. In other
words, negation is the most general way in which motion or change of things is
represented in the mind. This is the first stage of this process. The negation
of a thing from which the change proceeds, however, is in turn subject to the
law of the transformation of things into their opposites." [Ibid.,
pp.170-71.]
"This first
conception [i.e., the first conception
Lenin had mentioned -- RL] remains on the surface
of phenomena. It can describe merely the outer appearance of movement but cannot
divulge its essence; it is able merely to describe the growth or diminution of
different elements or factors in a process, but cannot explain the internal
cause of its evolutionary movement, cannot show how and why a given process
develops. The supporters of this conception, when they would attempt such an
explanation, are compelled to seek for some external factor to account for the
qualitatively new, since this could never be given by merely quantitative
changes. It is hardly surprising that they are frequently driven to the theory
of divine intervention. The supporters of this view cannot explain how a
thing comes to be turned into its own opposite, cannot explain 'leaps,' the
disappearance of the 'old' and the emergence of the 'new.' Thus from this
standpoint it is impossible to show why capitalism must inevitably grow into
socialism, or why classes in the U.S.S.R. disappear as the result of sharp class
struggle. The exponents of this point of view are supporters of the mechanistic
conception of development.
"The
exponents of the second conception proceed from the standpoint that
everything develops by means of a struggle of opposites, by a division, a
dichotomy, of every unity into mutually exclusive opposites. Thus capitalism
develops in virtue of the contradiction between the social character of
production and the private means of appropriation; transitional economy develops
on the basis of the struggle between developing and growing socialism and
developed, but not yet annihilated, capitalism, and also on the basis of the
sharpened conflict of classes in this period in the course of which classes
ultimately disappear.
"The second conception, not remaining on the surface of phenomena,
expresses the essence of movement as the unity of opposites.... This conception
seeks the causes of development not outside the process but in its very midst;
it seeks mainly to disclose the source of 'self-movement' of the process. To
understand a process means to disclose its contradictory aspects, to establish
their mutual relationship, to follow up the movement of its contradictions
through all its stages. This view gives the key to the 'leaps' which
characterises the evolutionary series; it explains the changing of a process
into its opposite, the annihilation of the 'old' and the emergence of the
'new'...." [Shirokov (1937),
pp.134-36.]
"This conception of all
existence as movement, process, is the fundamental condition for the
understanding of the dialectic. Only from this standpoint do the
contradictions and opposites, their struggle, their transformation and
conversion into one another, their inter-penetration, their dialectical
interaction become comprehensible. Those who see rigid entities before them and
have rigid concepts of them in their heads will find it impossible to
understand how the same thing can possess contradictory determinations or change
into its opposite. But to those who regard both things and their reflection
in our minds as processes, it will not seem strange that a process should
have contradictory tendencies, sides, elements which conflict with one
another, penetrate one another and change into the other....
"So the 'other' which arise from the dialectical process
of becoming is not an other, i.e.., not only 'otherness,' but its other,
as Hegel emphasised:
'This harmony', he says, 'is just absolute becoming,
change -- not becoming something other, now this and now an other. The essential
point is that each different, particular thing is different from an other, not
abstractly different from any other, but different from its other.'
[Rudas is here quoting
Hegel (1995a),
pp.278-98; this particular passage coming from p.285 -- RL.]
"Upon which Lenin comments:
'Very true and important: the "other" as its other,
development into its opposite.' [Rudas is here quoting
Lenin
(1961), p.260. This comment of Lenin's expresses a key idea
present in Hegel's response to David Hume; on
that, see
here -- RL.]
"Are life and death, matter and thought, bourgeois and
proletarian, capitalism...and communism only 'otherness,' and not also
opposites which arise from a contradictory process of development and represent
its opposite poles or the transformation of one into another?" [Rudas
(1933), pp.19-21. (This links to a PDF.)]
"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." [Guest (1963), pp.31,
32.]
"The negative
electrical pole…can't 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." [Conze (1944),
pp.35-36.]
"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.94-95; quoting Hegel
(1975), p.118, although in a different translation from the one used at this
site.]
"Formal logic,
which is based on abstract, or simple, identity (A equals A), is too
one-sided to explain this negation of one state of matter and its transformation
into its opposite, in this case the lifeless into the living, because it
excludes from its premises real difference and contradiction, which is the
extreme development of difference. But the unity of opposites (A equals
non-A), which makes contradiction explicit and intelligible, can explain this
transition, which actually occurred on earth. The emergence of life from the
nonliving in turn substantiates the objective basis in nature of this law of
concrete contradiction, a cornerstone of dialectical logic." [Novack (1978),
p.239
and Novack (2002), p.196.
(The second links to a PDF.)]
"The world of subatomic particles is in a state of constant
movement and ferment, in which nothing is ever the same as itself. Particles
are constantly changing into their opposites, so that it is impossible even
to assert their identity at any given moment of time. Neutrons change into
protons, and protons into neutrons in a ceaseless exchange of identity. [Is a
proton really the opposite of a neutron? In fact,
on p.67, (p.72 of the second edition), Woods and Grant tell us that the
opposite of a proton is an
antiproton!
Moreover,
protons are highly stable -- RL.]
"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….
"In dialectics, sooner or later, things change
into their opposite. In the words of the Bible, 'the first shall be last and
the last shall be first.' We have seen this many times, not least in the history
of great revolutions. Formerly backward and inert layers can catch up with a
bang. Consciousness develops in sudden leaps. This can be seen in any strike.
And in any strike we can see the elements of a revolution in an undeveloped,
embryonic form. In such situations, the presence of a conscious and audacious
minority can play a role quite similar to that of a catalyst in a chemical
reaction. In certain instances, even a single individual can play an absolutely
decisive role....
"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....
"Contradictions
are found at all levels of nature, and woe betide the logic that denies it. Not
only can an electron be in two or more places at the same time, but it can move
simultaneously in different directions. We are sadly left with no alternative
but to agree with Hegel: they are and are not. Things change into their
opposite. Negatively-charged electrons become transformed into
positively-charged positrons. An electron that unites with a proton is not
destroyed, as one might expect, but produces a new particle, a neutron, with a
neutral charge.
"This is an extension of the law of the unity
and interpenetration of opposites. It is a law which permeates the whole of
nature, from the smallest phenomena to the largest...."
[Woods and Grant (1995),
pp.45-47,
63-71.]
"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 Reason in Revolt (i.e., Woods and Grant (1995); quoted
from
here.]
"Ted Grant was an incorrigible optimist all his
life. Marxists are optimistic by their very nature because of two things: the
philosophy of dialectical materialism, and our faith in the working class and
the socialist future of humanity. Most people look only at the surface of the
events that shape their lives and determine their destiny. 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. The idea of constant change, in which
sooner or later everything changes into its opposite enables a Marxist to rise
above the immediate situation and to see the broader picture." [Authors'
Preface to the second English Edition of Reason in Revolt; quoted from
here.]
"Dialectics teaches us that sooner or
later, things change into their opposite. The most striking manifestation of
dialectics is the crisis of capitalism itself. Dialectics are taking their
revenge on the European bourgeoisie who have understood nothing, predicted
nothing and are capable of solving nothing. The old, stable, peaceful,
prosperous Europe is dead, and with it the old peaceful, harmonious relations
between the classes. The future of Europe will be one of years and decades of
austerity, unemployment and falling living standards. That is a finished recipe
for a revival of the class struggle everywhere.
"It is true that most people have not yet
grasped the seriousness of the crisis. Consciousness is lagging far behind
events. But that also will change into its opposite. Contrary to what the
idealists believe, human consciousness in general is very conservative. Most
people do not like change, especially sudden, violent change. They will cling to
the things they know and have got used to: the ideas, religion, institutions,
morality, leaders and parties [and Dialectical Materialism -- RL!]. Routine,
habit and customs all lie like a leaden weight on the shoulders of humanity. For
all these reasons consciousness lags behind events." [Alan Woods, Introduction
to the e-reader edition of Reason In Revolt, May 2015; quoted from
here.]
"But
this elementary conception immediately comes into a series of contradictions, if
what is being analyzed is considered, not as an isolated atom, but as a process
of constant change, in which
things can be transformed into their opposites....
"The power of thought lies precisely in its capacity for abstraction, its
ability to exclude particulars and arrive at generalizations that express the
main and most essential aspects of a given phenomenon. The initial step is
merely to obtain a sense of the being as an individual object. This, however,
proves to be impossible and compels us to delve deeper into the subject,
revealing inner contradictions that provide the impulse for movement and change,
in which things turn into their opposite....
"Hegel’s
basic idea was that of development
through contradictions.
To give it another name, dialectics is the
logic of contradiction.
Whereas traditional (formal) logic attempts to banish contradiction, dialectics
embraces it, accepts it as a normal and necessary element of all life and
nature.
Giordano Bruno, the 16th-century Italian philosopher, astronomer, and
mathematician -- whose theories anticipated modern science and whose reward by
the Inquisition was to be burned at the stake -- gave us a charming definition
of dialectics when he described it as la
divina arte degli opposti ('the
divine art of opposites')....
"The unity -- coincidence, identity, and resultant dynamic interplay -- of
opposites is conditional, temporary, transitory, and relative.
The mutually exclusive relationship of opposites is absolute,
and it is the basis of all movement, change, and evolution....
"The unity of opposites can be clearly observed at all levels of matter.
Conflicting tendencies are found at all levels in nature, from the largest
galaxies to the smallest subatomic particles.
The identity of opposites is the recognition -- or discovery -- of the mutually
exclusive tendencies that exist in all the phenomena and processes of nature.
This is what Engels meant when he defined dialectics as the most general laws of
nature, society, and human thought....
"Marxism, on the contrary, presents us with a scientific analysis of the status
quo, penetrating beneath the surface of the 'facts' to reveal
the hidden contradictions that will eventually lead what appears to be stable,
solid, and unchangeable into its opposite."
[Woods
(2018). Link added;
italic
emphases in the original.]
"The empiricist thinker, who claims to take things 'as they are', imagines
himself to be very practical and concrete. But, in reality, things are not
always what they seem to be, and frequently turn out to be their opposite. This
kind of immediate sensuous knowledge is the lowest kind of knowledge, like that
of a baby. A really scientific understanding of reality requires us to break
down the information provided by sense perception in order to get at the true
nature of the things under consideration. A deeper analysis always reveals
the contradictory tendencies which underlie even the most apparently fixed,
solid, and immutable things, which eventually will lead to them being transform
into their opposites. It is precisely these contradictions which are the
source of all life, movement and development throughout nature. In order to get
a real understanding, it is necessary to take things, not just as they are, but
also as they have been, and as they necessarily will become." [Woods (2021),
p.110; this is a page reference to the on-line PDF version of an early and
partial draft of the book, not the published hard copy. However, the passage
itself occurs on pp.309-10 of the (final) published PDF version. Bold
emphasis added.]
"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." [Woods and Sewell (2017), p.83.]
"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.]
"Opposites in a thing are not only mutually
exclusive, polar, repelling, each other; they also attract and interpenetrate
each other. They begin and cease to exist together.... These dual aspects of
opposites -- conflict and unity -- are like scissor blades in cutting, jaws in
mastication, and two legs in walking. Where there is only one, the process as
such is impossible: 'all polar opposites are in general determined by the mutual
action of two opposite poles on one another, the separation and opposition of
these poles exists only within their unity and interconnection, and, conversely,
their interconnection exists only in their separation and their unity only in
their opposition.' In fact, 'where one no sooner tries to hold on to one side
alone then it is transformed unnoticed into the other....'" [Gollobin (1986),
p.115; quoting
Engels
(1891a), p.414.]
"The
unity of opposites and contradiction.... The
scientific world-view does not seek causes of the motion of the universe beyond
its boundaries. It finds them in the universe itself, in its contradictions.
The scientific approach to an object of research involves skill in perceiving a
dynamic essence, a combination in one and the same object of mutually
incompatible elements, which negate each other and yet at the same time belong
to each other.
"It is even more important to remember this point
when we are talking about connections between phenomena that are in the process
of development. In the whole world there is no developing object in which one
can't find opposite sides, elements or tendencies: stability and change,
old and new, and so on. The dialectical principle of contradiction reflects a
dualistic relationship within the whole: the unity of opposites and their
struggle. Opposites may come into conflict only to the extent that they
form a whole in which one element is as necessary as another. This necessity
for opposing elements is what constitutes the life of the whole. Moreover, the
unity of opposites, expressing the stability of an object, is relative and
transient, while the struggle of opposites is absolute, ex pressing the infinity
of the process of development. This is because contradiction is not only a
relationship between opposite tendencies in an object or between opposite
objects, but also the relationship of the object to itself, that is to say, its
constant self-negation. The fabric of all life is woven out of two kinds of
thread, positive and negative, new and old, progressive and reactionary.
They
are constantly in conflict, fighting each other....
"The opposite sides, elements and tendencies of a
whole whose interaction forms a contradiction are not given in some eternally
ready-made form. At the initial stage, while existing only as a possibility,
contradiction appears as a unity containing an inessential difference. The next
stage is an essential difference within this unity. Though possessing a common
basis, certain essential properties or tendencies in the object do not
correspond to each other. The essential difference produces opposites,
which in negating each other grow into a contradiction. The extreme case of
contradiction is an acute conflict. Opposites do not stand around in dismal
inactivity; they are not something static, like two wrestlers in a photograph.
They interact and are more like a live wrestling match. Every development
produces contradictions, resolves them and at the same time gives birth to new
ones. Life is an eternal overcoming of obstacles. Everything is interwoven in a
network of contradictions." [Spirkin
(1983), pp.143-46.]
"The statement that the struggle of opposites is
decisive in development in no way belittles the importance of their unity. The
unity of opposites is a requisite of struggle, because there is struggle only
where opposite sides exist in one object or phenomenon....
"And so, objects and phenomena have
opposite aspects -- they represent the unity of opposites. Opposites not merely
exist side by side, but are in a state of constant contradiction, a struggle is
going on between them. The struggle of opposites is the inner content, the
source of development of reality." [Afanasyev (1968), pp.95-97.
Italic emphasis in the original.]
"'The contradiction,
however, is the source of all movement and life; only in so far as it contains a
contradiction can anything have movement, power, and effect.' (Hegel). 'In
brief', states Lenin, 'dialectics can be defined as the doctrine of the unity
of opposites. This embodies the essence of dialectics…'
"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.
Lenin explains this
self-movement in a note when he says, 'Dialectics is the teaching which shows
how opposites can be and how they become identical -- under what conditions they
are identical, becoming transformed into one another -- why the human mind
should grasp these opposites not as dead, rigid, but living, conditional,
mobile, becoming transformed into one another.'"
[Rob Sewell, quoted from
here.]
"But, change itself also constitutes a
unity of opposites. In the most general way, a system undergoing change is
becoming something that it was not and is cessing to be what it was. In one form
or another a change represents the transformation of an object into
its dialectical opposite, a process referred to as dialectical negation...."
[Marquit (1982), pp.69-70.]
"Motion is contradiction. Contradiction is the
co-existence of elements opposed to each other, simultaneous co-existence and
opposition between these elements. If there is integral homogeneity, a
total absence of elements opposed to each other, there is no contradiction, no
motion, no life, no existence.... All motion tends to produce the negation of
certain phenomena, tends to transform objects into their opposite...."
[Mandel (1982), pp.163-64.]
"Qualitative change is one of the basic concepts
of dialectics. And so-called qualitative change refers precisely to the
transformation of the character of a thing into the opposite and its change
into another thing. To deny this is to deny the whole of dialectics." [Wang
Jo-Shui, p.3, quoted from
here. (This
links to a PDF.)]
"Apart from the more or less broad division of
contradictions into antagonistic and non-antagonistic, it is possible to
emphasize specifically contradictions which are the basic source of development
of an object (this is contradiction in its essence), contradictions connected
with the transition of an object from a given state into its opposite state...."
[I. Narski, Soviet Philosophical Encyclopedia (1963), p.1; quoted from
here.
(This links to a PDF.)]
"Materialist dialectics teaches us that the law
of the unity of opposites is universal. The identity of opposites, that
is, their mutual dependence for existence and their transformation into each
other, is undoubtedly applicable to the relationship between thinking and
being." [Three
Major Struggles On China's Philosophical Front.]
"All
phenomena, taken to their logical conclusion,
will eventually turn into their opposite.
Everything is in a state of uninterrupted change; of coming into being and
passing away. As soon as one is born, one begins to die. Every human cell that
is created will eventually cease to be. At a certain stage, our cells reproduce
at a slower rate than they die and hence humans begin our period of decline,
which reaches another critical stage with death. But our death is not the end of
humanity. Just like our birth was not its beginning. We are descendants of our
parents who again came from previous generations etc." ['In Defence of Hegel',
quoted from here.]
"The second conception not remaining on the surface of phenomena, expresses the
essence of movement as the unity of opposites. It demands a penetration into the
depth of a process, a disclosure of the internal laws which are responsible for
the development of that process. This conception seeks the causes of development
not outside the process but in its very midst; it seeks mainly to disclose the
source of the 'self-movement' of the process. To understand a process means to
disclose its contradictory aspects, to establish their mutual relationship, to
follow up the movement of its contradictions through all its stages. This view
gives the key to the 'leaps' which characterize the evolutionary series;
it explains the changing of a process into its opposite,
the annihilation of the 'old' and emergence of the 'new.' Thus only by
disclosing the basic contradictions of capitalism and by showing that the
inevitable consequence of such contradictions is the destruction of capitalism
by proletarian revolution do we explain the historic necessity of socialism.
This second conception is the conception of dialectic materialism....
The mutual penetration of opposites,
the transition of one opposite into another, belongs to all processes....
"Such
indeed must be the method of studying any process, i.e., our task must be to
find its simplest, basic relations, to disclose in it the basic contradictions,
to investigate their development and their conflict; to investigate how the
development of a contradiction prepares its resolution and determines the form
of its resolution; to investigate the qualitative changes in the successive
phases of development of a process, the relative independence of movement of
contradictory aspects, their mutual connection,
their transitions one into the other; to disclose in the development of the
conflict of opposites in any process the necessity and also all the conditions
and possibilities of its conversion into its own opposite.
Such must be the course of study of any process in its emergence, development
and decay."
[Quoted from
here; accessed 19/01/2022. Some paragraphs merged.]
Even the
following
US-RCP theorist agrees:
"Constant
development and transformation, explosiveness and changeability, all based on
the struggle of opposites, drives forward not only the sun but the entire
material universe; and this fundamental law forms the basis of materialist
dialectics. 'Marxist philosophy,' Mao wrote, 'holds that the law of the
unity of opposites is the fundamental law of the universe. This law operates
universally, whether in the natural world, in human society, or in man's
thinking.' ('On
the Correct Handling of Contradictions Among the People,' i.e., Mao (1977b),
p.392.)
"To grasp the
contradictory properties within a phenomenon and the character of their constant
struggle and mutual transformation, to understand how that struggle in turn
gives rise to qualitatively new things -- that is the heart of the dialectical
method....
"Contradiction
is universal, propelling every process and thing. But universality
also means that in the development of each thing, a movement of opposites goes
on from beginning to end. The growth of a child, for instance, unfolds in
contradictions between bursts of rapid growth and periods of relative
consolidation, dependence and independence, learning the old ways and forging
and trying out (their own) new ideas. Where, at any point in the process, is
there not contradiction and struggle?...
"...Philosophically, the identity of opposites does not mean that the two
aspects of a contradiction are the same as each other, or can't be told apart;
it refers instead both to the coexistence of opposites within a single entity,
and to their property
under certain circumstances of transforming into each other, thereby
qualitatively transforming the character of the thing or process at hand....
"The identity of
opposites in the preceding examples resides not only in their coexistence, but
also in their change of place in their relationship within the contradiction. In
the leap from water to ice, the contradictory identity between the energy of the
individual molecule (which tends to random motion) on the one hand, and the
bonding force between molecules on the other, goes from a state in which
the molecular energy is dominant enough to permit a degree of fluidity to one in
which the molecular bonding force becomes principal, and the molecules are
frozen. Between the proletariat and the bourgeoisie, the bourgeoisie (as noted)
does not vanish immediately after the socialist revolution but continues to
exist and wage struggle (speaking here specifically of the internal makeup of
socialist countries) as a dominated and subordinate aspect of the contradiction
(as long as the society remains on the socialist road); what has changed is the
respective position of the two aspects in the contradiction.
This transformation of
opposites into each other changes the qualitative character of the entity
as a whole and the forms assumed by its contradictory aspects - from water to
ice, or capitalism to socialism. In the latter case, the period in which the
bourgeoisie is dominated (first in various countries, later on a world scale)
will eventually result in its full disappearance -- at which point the
proletariat itself will also go out of existence (after all, how could there be
a proletariat without its opposite?) and another new entity, communist society,
with its own contradictions and struggle, will arise....
"Identity, to sum
up, is contradictory:
opposites both coexist and transform themselves into one another. Their
coexistence is itself a process of mutual transformation, and their
transformation into each other is generally not absolute but goes on in
wave-Iike, or spiral-like, development (more on this later)....
"Further, in the
relationship between the opposite aspects of a contradiction, identity and
struggle do not exist on a par. Struggle is principal over identity. Identity,
or relative order, is a temporary condition, but struggle never ceases; it
permeates a process from beginning to end and
leads to the
transformation of opposites and the eventual annihilation of the process
(and its replacement by something new). In fact, when struggle ceases, identity
goes out of existence as well, since the process itself has come to an end...."
[Wolff
(1983), pp.24-35. Referencing conventions altered to conform to the
conventions adopted at this site. Spelling modified to UK English.]
"The identity of opposites is of course
an abstraction, and an abstraction of an exceedingly high level: one of the most
general laws of universal becoming. The word 'identity' is here used not in the
ordinary sense, but in a special, philosophical sense, which includes the
notions of unity (or inseparability) in a single process, mutual penetration,
mutual dependence, transformation of each into the other. The identity
of opposites implies that the existence and development of each opposite is the
condition for the existence and development of the other; that under certain
conditions every property or aspect turns into its opposite; and that in the
case of the categories both contradictory aspects are interwoven throughout the
universe at every level of motion of matter. Lenin saw the identity of
opposites as conditional, transitory and relative, the struggle of opposites as
absolute, in the sense that development and motion were absolute.
Development was the struggle of opposites; this conception of development
furnished the key to the self-movement of everything in existence, to the leaps,
breaks in continuity and transformations into the opposite, to the
destruction of the old and emergence of the new." [Peter Fryer, quoted from
here; accessed 18/06/2021.]
"Metaphysical
thinking divides phenomena into immutable opposites: good and bad, love and
hate, life and death, truth and error, and so on. Dialectics, on the other hand,
recognizes not merely the co-existence, but the unity of opposites, their
interpenetration, inter-action, their transformation, one into the other....
Hegel not only showed that contradictions lead to development, he also pointed
out that development leads to 'negation', the self-transformation of a
phenomenon into its opposite.... It must be emphasized that the Hegelian
concept of negation is not artificial or mechanical, not a mere placing of a
minus sign before a given quality, but a self-transformation of a phenomenon
into its opposite." [Baghavan
(1987), pp.39, 94-96.
Bold emphasis alone added; paragraphs merged.]
"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." [Quoted from
here; accessed 18/06/2021.]
Left Communists, too, seem to have been seduced
by this Hermetic Creed:
"It is assumed that the dialectical character of
historical materialism is best described when it is referred to as the theory of
development. However, the process of evolution was also known to the natural
science of the 19th century. Scientists were well acquainted with the growth of
the cell into a complex organism, the evolution of animal species as expressed
in the origin of species, and the theory of the evolution of the physical world
known as the law of entropy. But their method of reasoning was undialectical.
They believed their concepts were concrete objects and considered their
identities and opposites as absolutes. Consequently, the evolution of the
universe as well as the continued progress of knowledge brought out
contradictions in the theory of knowledge of which many examples have been
quoted by Engels in his 'Anti-Dühring.' Understanding in general and science in
particular segregate and systematise into definite concepts and laws what in the
real world of phenomena occurs in continuous flux and transition. By means of
names, through which language separates and defines the sequel of events, all
occurrences falling into a particular group are considered similar and
unchangeable. As abstract concepts they differ sharply, but in reality they
converge and fuse. The colours blue and green are distinct from each other but
in the intermediary nuances no one can say definitely where one colour ends and
the other begins. It cannot be stated at which point during its life cycle a
flower begins or ceases to be a flower. That in practical life good and evil are
not absolute opposites and that the greatest justice may become the greatest
injustice is acknowledged everyday, just as juridical freedom may be
transformed into its opposite. Dialectical thinking corresponds to reality
inasmuch as it takes into consideration that the finite cannot explain the
infinite, nor the static the dynamic world; that every concept has to develop
into new concepts, or even into its opposite. Metaphysical thinking, on the
other hand, leads to dogmatic assertions and contradictions because it views
conceptions as fixed entities. Metaphysical, that is undialectical, thinking
considers concepts formulated by thought as independent concepts that make up
the reality of the world. Natural science proper does not suffer much from this
shortcoming. It surmounts difficulties and contradictions in practice insofar as
the very process of development compels it to continually revise its
formulations and concepts, to amplify them by breaking them up in greater
detail, to further modify its formulations to account for the new changes and to
find new formulas for additions and corrections, thereby bringing the picture
ever closer to the original model, the phenomenal world. The lack in dialectic
reasoning becomes disturbing only when the naturalist passes from his special
field of knowledge towards general philosophy and theory, as is the case with
bourgeois materialism." [Anton Pannekoek, Materialism And Historical
Materialism, 1942. Quoted from
here. Spelling modified to conform with UK English.]
And, this idea crops up all over the place on the
Internet; here for example, is Jack Conrad, dialectical 'guru' of the
Communist Party of Great
Britain:
"The philosophical concepts and language used
by Lukács are sometimes opaque and certainly some of his assumptions seem to be
fundamentally flawed. In nature, although this is denied by Lukács, object and
subject interpenetrate and move dialectically. Both being matter, they
necessarily form a unity. E.g., bacteria, plants and animals (object) evolve due
to changes in the environment -- that is well known. However, by the same
measure, the environment (subject) changes due to the impact of plants and
animals. Bacteria and plants evolved in an atmosphere very different from today.
Some three billion years ago the atmosphere primarily consisted of nitrogen,
ammonia and carbon dioxide. It was bacteria and plants which produced oxygen
through the process of photosynthesis. They were responsible for our present
atmosphere by sequestrating carbon dioxide and releasing oxygen -- allowing the
evolution of animal life. Subject and
object interpenetrate, are in a process of constant movement, and time and again
become their opposites....
"Humanity is therefore matter which has become self-aware. What of the rest of
planet Earth? Especially since the Neolithic, it (unconscious nature) has been
marked by the -- intended and unintended -- actions of humanity. Nature and
humanity at various stages of social development interpenetrate.
Gaia
is increasingly anthropomorphic. The possibility of human-induced runaway
climate change tells us that object and subject can once again become their
opposites." [Weekly
Worker, 1057, 07/05/2015;
accessed 18/07/2015. Link added.]
Here are several more examples
drawn from across the Internet:
"Logic since Aristotle (384-322 BCE) had been
based on the so-called formal logic of A = A, a thing is always equal to itself.
With the advances in science just after the French Revolution Hegel was able to
propound a new logic, which based itself on movement. This can be summed up with
the idea that A = -A, everything will eventually change into its opposite.
Light and dark, life and death, up and down, all phenomena are in movement
and eventually change into their opposite. Even the most durable elements
break down into nothing over time." [Quoted from
here.]
"The two mutually contradictory aspects of an objective
thing are not dead and rigid, but living, conditional and mobile and they
transform themselves into each other." [Yen Feng, quoted from
here.]
"It is hardly surprising that they are frequently driven
to the theory of divine intervention. The supporters of this view cannot explain
how a thing comes to be turned into its own opposite, cannot explain
'leaps,' the disappearance of the 'old' and the emergence of the 'new.' Thus
from this standpoint it is impossible to show why capitalism must inevitably
grow into socialism, or why classes in the U.S.S.R. disappear as the result of
sharp class struggle. The exponents of this point of view are supporters of the
mechanistic conception of development.... The mutual penetration of opposites, the transition of
one opposite into another, belongs to all processes....
"Such indeed must be the method of studying any process,
i.e. our task must be to find its simplest, basic relations, to disclose in it
the basic contradictions, to investigate their development and their conflict;
to investigate how the development of a contradiction prepares its resolution
and determines the form of its resolution; to investigate the qualitative
changes in the successive phases of development of a process, the relative
independence of movement of contradictory aspects, their mutual connection,
their transitions one into the other; to disclose in the development of the
conflict of opposites in any process the necessity and also all the conditions
and possibilities of its conversion into its own opposite. Such must be the
course of study of any process in its emergence, development and decay." [Quoted
from
here.]
"This does not end with merely
acknowledging that their contradictory aspects are necessary
for each other's existence. What we also need to include
is their transformation into each other. In given conditions
each of the contradictory aspects within a thing transforms
itself into its opposite, changes its position to that of
its opposite. This transforming into its
opposite is what revolution is about....
"This is the full meaning of the
identity of opposites. All contradictory things are
interconnected. They coexist in a single entity in given
conditions, under other conditions they transform
themselves into each other. This is what Lenin meant
when he said, 'how they happen to be (how they become)
identical -- under what conditions they are identical,
transforming themselves into one another." [Quoted from
here.]
"The universe has not been created,
but has always existed, in a process of continuous flux
and change, whereby things change into their opposites,
cause becomes effect, and effect cause. Thus
contradiction lies at the root of everything. In order to
get at the truth, it is necessary to go beyond the
appearances, and lay bear the inner conflicting tendencies
of a given phenomenon, in order to understand its inner
motive forces." [Allan Woods, quoted from
here.]
"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." [Quoted from
here.]
"The relentless analysis
of concepts happens to show that no concept has meaning on
its own, its content includes its other, its dialectical
opposite…." [Quoted from
here; accessed 24/12/2015.]
"One of the laws of dialectics is the law of negation:
Everything that exists eventually turns into its opposite -- even when, for
a time, the outward appearance may have changed little." [Quoted from
here. Accessed 16/12/2018.]
"This 'dialectical' logic of progress, in which
each moment contains its opposite,
is the key to understanding the system....
Yet negativity again turns into its opposite."
[Quoted from
here.]
"It is an important idea of dialectics that under specific
conditions, things can make a transition into their opposites." [Quoted
from
here.]
Of course, this is ancient doctrine even
appears in Chinese Philosophy:
"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.]
Other, far more open and honest mystics, hold
to the
same belief:
"The messages that we receive every day from Babuji
Maharaj emphasise that we have no choice. We have to go through it, suffering
whatever happens to us, even to the extent of understanding that happiness is a
suffering. Because today's happiness brings us sorrow tomorrow. Today's sorrow
brings us happiness tomorrow. Everything changes into its [opposite] as we move
through this incarnation. Nothing is fixed. What is fixed is the real experience
of life that we treasure in our heart -- love." [Quoted from
here.]
'This is why no one could ever defeat me. There
was no way to defeat me because I was never victorious. There was not a single
person on this earth who could defeat me. Nobody could defeat me because I had
already accepted the defeat on my own. I never tried to win. But you are saying
that you want to win, and you don't want to be defeated by anyone. Then you are
bound to be defeated because victory and defeat are two sides of the same coin.'
"What
Krishna is saying is that one who sees
this…. And remember one thing about this seeing: it is an existential
experience. It is our everyday experience, but it is a wonder how we go on
missing it, how we protect ourselves from seeing it. It seems we are playing a
big trick on ourselves, otherwise it would be astonishing for such a living
truth of life to escape our notice.
"We experience it every day. Everything
changes into its opposite. If you go more deeply into a friendship, it
starts turning into enmity. But what is the trick, that we go on avoiding seeing
it? The trick is that when the friendship starts turning into enmity, we don't
see it like that. We say that the friend is turning into an enemy." [Bhagwan
Shree Rajneesh, quoted from
here. Link added. Many more examples of this ancient doctrine, which seem to
have been accepted by every mystic that has ever walked the earth, have
been posted
here.]
It wouldn't be difficult to double or
treble the number of quotations (taken from Dialectical Marxists and from the above more open and honest mystics, like the
good Bhagwan, here) that say more-or-less the same thing, as anyone who has access to as
many books and articles on dialectics as I have -- or, who knows how to use Google
-- can easily confirm.
From the above, it is quite clear
that the vast majority of classical (and more recent) dialecticians do indeed believe
that objects and
processes:
(i) Change
because of a "struggle" between their 'internal'/'dialectical' opposites;
(ii)
Change into
those opposites (indeed,
according to Lenin, they change into all
of them!) as a result of "struggle", and they,
(iii)
Produce these opposites while they change, or,
they do so as a
result of that change.
This implies
that if objects and processes struggle with their opposites and then change into
those opposites, they change into that with which they have struggled!
As we will
also see, in order to rescue this theory from total absurdity (detailed below), some of my more vocal critics have
been tempted to drop one or other of the above three conditions, but
there were actually very good
philosophical reasons why the DM-classicists argued the way they did.
Unfortunately, most DM-apologists seem to be totally oblivious of those
reasons. I will return to consider what they are in a
later
sub-section.
So, anyone
tempted to abandon one or more of (i)-(iii) above would be well advised to
postpone those ill-advised moves until they have acquainted themselves with that
material.
The Absurd Consequences Of This 'Theory'
Why Objects And Processes Can't Change Into That With Which They Struggle
In what follows, I will be ignoring the equivocation
(outlined
here,
here and here),
whereby dialecticians sometimes
appear to mean by "internal
opposite",
"spatially-internal opposite", and sometimes they seem to mean
"conceptually-", or "logically-internal opposite", thus conflating a spatial with a logical use of "internal".
[The serious
confusion this introduces into DM has been explored
here and
here.]
As we are
about to see, the idea that there are such things as "dialectical
contradictions" and "unities of opposites" (etc.), which
supposedly cause change because
they "struggle" with and then change into each other --
and that objects and processes change into that with which they have struggled, their
'dialectical opposite' --,
presents DM-theorists with some rather nasty non-dialectical headaches if
interpreted along the lines intended by the dialectical classics, and 'lesser' DM-theorists.
In order to see this, let us suppose that object/process, A, is comprised of, or
possesses, two
"internal contradictory opposites", or "opposite tendencies", O*
and O**, and thus changes as a result of the struggle between them.
[Henceforth, in order to save on
unnecessary repetition
I will omit the phrase "or possesses".]
Unfortunately,
if that were so, O* couldn't in fact change into O**
since O** already exists! If O** didn't already exist then, according to this
theory, O* couldn't change, for there would be no opposite with
which it could "struggle" in order to bring that
about!
[Several obvious objections to the above
argument have been neutralised below. Incidentally, the same problems arise if these
'contradictions' and 'opposites' are viewed as
'external'. However, as we have seen in Essay Eight
Part One, the introduction of
'external contradictions'/'opposites' attracts serious problems of its own. In what follows, I have also avoided using "A" and "non-A"/"not-A"
as 'opposites' in order to prevent several options from being ruled out or
ignored too soon. Not
much hangs on this, anyway, which fact readers can confirm for themselves if they replace O*
and O** with "A" and/or non-A/not-A
respectively throughout. (That will be done anyway, later on.) Concentrating on A alone won't help,
either. If
A changes into non-A/not-A, A will have to exist at
the same time as non-A/not-A, or A and non-A/not-A couldn't 'struggle' with one
another in order for A to change into one or other of non-A/not-A.
Once more, however, if non-A/not-A already exist, A
can't change into either of them, since, plainly, it/they already exist!
Incidentally, I have highlighted A and O in bold (along with other
letters I have employed to stand for objects and processes) in order to
distinguish them from the ordinary use of capital letters.]
As we have just seen,
'dialectical opposites'
have to co-exist if they are to engage in "struggle" -- as
Gollobin
confirms:
"Opposites in a thing are not only mutually
exclusive, polar, repelling, each other; they also attract and interpenetrate
each other. They begin and cease to exist together.... These dual aspects
of opposites -- conflict and unity -- are like scissor blades in cutting, jaws
in mastication, and two legs in walking. Where there is only one, the process
as such is impossible: 'all polar opposites are in general determined by the
mutual action of two opposite poles on one another, the separation and
opposition of these poles exists only within their unity and interconnection,
and, conversely, their interconnection exists only in their separation and their
unity only in their opposition.' In fact, 'where one no sooner tries to hold on
to one side alone then it is transformed unnoticed into the other....'" [Gollobin
(1986), p.113; quoting Engels (1891a),
p.414. Bold emphases added.]
Mao incidentally made the same point:
"The fact is
that no contradictory aspect can exist in isolation. Without its opposite
aspect, each loses the condition for its existence. Just think, can any one
contradictory aspect of a thing or of a concept in the human mind exist
independently? Without life, there would be no death; without death, there would
be no life. Without 'above', there would be no 'below'; without 'below', there
would be no 'above'. Without misfortune, there would be no good fortune; without
good fortune, these would be no misfortune. Without facility, there would be no
difficulty; without difficulty, there would be no facility. Without landlords,
there would be no tenant-peasants; without tenant-peasants, there would be no
landlords. Without the bourgeoisie, there would be no proletariat; without the
proletariat, there would be no bourgeoisie. Without imperialist oppression of
nations, there would be no colonies or semi-colonies; without colonies or
semicolonies, there would be no imperialist oppression of nations. It is so with
all opposites; in given conditions, on the one hand they are opposed to each
other, and on the other they are interconnected, interpenetrating,
interpermeating and interdependent, and this character is described as identity.
In given conditions, all contradictory aspects possess the character of
non-identity and hence are described as being in contradiction. But they also
possess the character of identity and hence are interconnected. This is what
Lenin means when he says that dialectics studies 'how opposites can be
and how they become identical'. How then can they be identical? Because each is the
condition for the other's existence. This is the first meaning of identity.
"But is it enough to say merely that each of the
contradictory aspects is the condition for the other's existence, that there is
identity between them and that consequently they can coexist in a single entity?
No, it is not. The matter does not end with their dependence on each other for
their existence; what is more important is their transformation into each other.
That is to say, in given conditions, each of the contradictory aspects within a
thing transforms itself into its opposite, changes its position to that of its
opposite. This is the second meaning of the identity of contradiction.
"Why is there identity here, too? You see, by
means of revolution the proletariat, at one time the ruled, is
transformed into the ruler, while the bourgeoisie, the erstwhile ruler, is
transformed into the ruled and changes its position to that originally occupied
by its opposite. This has already taken place in the Soviet Union, as it will
take place throughout the world. If there were no interconnection and identity
of opposites in given conditions, how could such a change take place?" [Mao
(1961b), pp.337-39.
Bold emphases alone added. Quotation
marks altered to conform with the conventions adopted at this site. Three minor
typos corrected; missing words "and how they become",
present in the published
version, but absent on-line, have been added. I have informed the Marxist
Internet Archive (MIA) of these errors.]
As did Engels:
blik
"And it is just as impossible have one side of a
contradiction without the other, as it is to retain the whole of an apple in
one's hand after half has been eaten." [Engels (1891b), p.496. Bold
emphasis added.]
The online
version renders the above passage slightly differently:
"And one cannot have one side of this
contradiction without the other, any more than a man has a whole apple in his
hand after eating half." [Quoted from
here.]
In that
case, these 'opposites' must co-exist.
In fact, it is
difficult to see how
O* could "struggle" with
O** if
O** didn't actually exist at the same time as
O*!
And,
it is no use propelling O** into the future -- so that it is what
O* will change into -- since O* will do no such thing unless
O** is already there, in the present, to make that happen!
So, if object/process A is already composed of a 'dialectical union' of
O* and
not-O*
(if we now interpret
O** as not-O*,
which is how the DM-classicists tend to view these opposites),
O*
can't change into not-O*
since
not-O*
already exists.
[Several alternatives now suggest themselves which might
allow dialecticians to dig themselves out of this dialectical hole. I have considered
all of them
below, and in
Note 1.]
Of course, the same problems
simply reappear at the next stage as
not-O*
readies itself to change into whatever it changes into (always assuming it isn't
a changeless object or process), which appears to be not-not-O*.
But, there
now is an
added twist, for there is as yet no not-not-O*
to make that happen. Recall that 'dialectical objects/processes'
struggle with whatever it is they change into, their opposite. So not-O*
can only change into
not-not-O*
if it struggles with
not-not-O*, which doesn't yet exist! That being so, the 'dialectical process'
will obviously grind to a halt unless a not-not-O*
pops into existence (out of thin air, it seems) to start things up again or to
keep things going. But, what could possibly cause
that?
Indeed, at the very least, this 'theory' of change leaves it entirely mysterious how
not-O* itself came about
in the first place. It seems to have popped into existence from nowhere, too.
[Gollobin (above) sort of half recognises this
untoward consequence of DM without realising the serious problems
it creates
for his entire theory.]
Some might
claim that each object/process has many opposites, which fact the above argument
ignores; possibly because it completely undermines that argument. I
have neutralised that objection,
below.
Returning to the last point concerning the
question where not-O*
itself came from. It seems it must have come from
O*
(its opposite -- recall that that is where everything comes from,
its opposite, according to the
DM-classics), but
O* can only change because of its struggle with
not-O*,
which doesn't yet exist! And, pushing the process into the past (via a
'reverse' version of the NON) will only create the same problems -- as
we will see in Note 1 (but in that case, in relation to Capitalism, Socialism and Feudalism).1
[However, on the NON, see
below.]
[NON = Negation of the Negation; FL = Formal Logic.]
Maybe this is being a little
too quick? Perhaps we are
ignoring, something obvious? Hence, in order to ascertain if the above
line-of-argument is indeed being a little too hasty, it might be wise to push this
process into the past to see if we can circumvent these 'difficulties'. To that end, let us suppose
that
O* itself came from object/process, X, and
that not-O*
came from object/process, Y.
However, according to the DM-classics, X
itself can only change because of a "struggle" with its own "opposite" -- call
this, "not-X". So, as a result of that particular "struggle", X changes into not-X. But, once
again, not-X already exists, so X can't change into it! If
not-X didn't already exist, there would be nothing with which X
could "struggle", and hence change.
We hit the same non-dialectical brick wall!
Of course, this
leaves the origin of not-X itself unexplained! And yet it can only have come into
existence because of an earlier "struggle" with its own opposite, X!
However, as we have seen, X can't change into not-X, since not-X already
exists! If it didn't, X couldn't in turn change since there would be nothing
there with which it could "struggle". If so, both X and
not-X must have popped into existence from nowhere, too -- if the DM-classics
are to be believed!
The same problems
afflict Y. According to the DM-classics, Y itself can
only change because of a "struggle" with its own "opposite" -- call this
opposite, "not-Y". As a result, Y changes into that opposite. But,
once more, not-Y
already exists, so Y can't change into it! If not-Y didn't
already exist, there would be nothing with which Y could "struggle", and
hence change.
Again, this
also leaves the origin of not-Y unexplained. Not-Y can only have come
into existence because of an earlier "struggle" with its own opposite, Y!
But, once again, Y can't change into not-Y since not-Y already exists!
If it didn't, Y couldn't change. In which case, both Y and not-Y
must have popped into existence from nowhere, too!
It could be objected that
the above seems to place objects and/or processes
in fixed categories, which is one of the main criticisms dialecticians
advance about
FL. Hence, on that
basis, it could be maintained that the convoluted argument above is completely misguided.
Fortunately, repairs are relatively easy to make.
Let us now suppose that object/process, A, is comprised of two
changing
"internal/external opposites", or tendencies, O*
and O** -- the latter once again interpreted as not-O*
--,
and
thus it develops as a result.
The rest follows as before: if object/process, A, is already composed of a changing
'dialectical union' of
O* and not-O*,
and
O* develops into not-O*
because of that, then, plainly,
it can't happen. As we have already seen, it isn't possible for
O* to change into not-O*
if
not-O*
already exists -- and this will be the case whether or not
O* and not-O*
are changeless or constantly changing objects and/or processes (or,
indeed, a mixture of the two).
Of
course, it could further be objected that not-O* develops into O*
while not-O* develops into
O*. They develop into each other.
[This objection might even incorporate that obscure Hegelian
term-of-art: "sublation".
More on that presently.]
If
that were so, while this was happening, O*
and not-O* would no
longer be opposites of one another --, not unless we widen the term "opposite"
to mean "anything that an object/process turns into, and/or any intermediate
object/process, while that is happening". Naturally, that
would make this 'Law' work by definitional fiat, rendering it eminently
'subjective'. It would also threaten to undermine this 'Law' in other
ways, too, since, as we will see, each object/process has to have a unique
"opposite" (something Hegel and Lenin called its "other").
Of course,
this get-out-of-jail-free card has a few untoward consequences of its own. For
example, if workers and capitalist are 'dialectical opposites', and we interpret
O* as the proletariat, and not-O*
as the capitalist class, then the above response implies that when they struggle
the proletariat changes into the capitalist class, and the capitalist class
changes into the proletariat!
Ignoring this 'minor difficulty' for now --
and even
if we suppose it were the case that not-O* 'develops' into O*
while not-O* 'develops' into
O*, and that and such change was governed by the obscure term "sublation"
-- this theory still won't work, as we are
about to find out.
In order to see why that is so, it might
be a good idea to motivate the above objection
(i.e., that not-O* develops into O*
while not-O* develops into
O*) a little more fully. Indeed, it
could be argued that Engels had
anticipated these 'difficulties' with the following comments:
"[RL: Negation of the negation is] a very simple process which is
taking place everywhere and every day, which any child can understand as soon as
it is stripped of the veil of mystery in which it was enveloped by the old
idealist philosophy and in which it is to the advantage of helpless
metaphysicians of Herr Dühring's calibre to keep it enveloped. 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. [Engels
(1976),
pp.172-73. Bold emphases
added.]
"But someone may
object: the negation that has taken place in this case is not a real negation: I
negate a grain of barley also when I grind it, an insect when I crush it
underfoot, or the positive quantity a when I cancel it, and so on. Or I
negate the sentence: the rose is a rose, when I say: the rose is not a rose; and
what do I get if I then negate this negation and say: but after all the rose is
a rose? -- These objections are in fact the chief arguments put forward by the
metaphysicians against dialectics, and they are wholly worthy of the
narrow-mindedness of this mode of thought. Negation in dialectics does not mean
simply saying no, or declaring that something does not exist, or destroying it
in any way one likes.
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....
"But it is clear
that from a negation of the negation which consists in the childish pastime of
alternately writing and cancelling a, or in alternately declaring that
a rose is a rose and that it is not a rose, nothing eventuates but the silliness
of the person who adopts such a tedious procedure. And yet the metaphysicians
try to make us believe that this is the right way to carry out a negation of the
negation, if we ever should want to do such a thing. [Ibid.,
pp.180-81. Bold emphases
and link added.]
Engels's argument here appears to be that "dialectical negation" isn't the
same as ordinary (or even logical) negation, in that it isn't simple destruction
--,
nor is it mere cancellation. Dialectical
negation "sublates"; that is, it both destroys and preserves,
so that something new or 'higher' emerges as a result. Nevertheless, as we have seen,
Hegel's use of this word (i.e., "sublate") is highly suspect in itself,
just as we will also
see, this 'Law' (i.e., the NON) is even more dubious still (and that is partly because
Hegel
himself confused ordinary negation with 'cancelling out', or with destruction
-- as,
indeed, did Engels and subsequent DM-fans).
Despite this,
the question now is: Does the above passage neutralise
the argument presented earlier? Is the argument presented in this Essay guilty of
the following?
"These objections are in fact the chief arguments put
forward by the metaphysicians against dialectics, and they are wholly worthy of
the narrow-mindedness of this mode of thought."? [Ibid.]
To answer that question, let us once again suppose that object/process, A, is comprised of
two changing "internal opposites"/"tendencies", O* and not-O*, and
it thus
develops as a result.
Given this scenario, O* would change/develop into a
"sublated"
intermediary --, but not into not-O*, or, at least, not
directly into it --, which, incidentally, appears to contradict the DM-worthies quoted earlier.
If we believe what they tell us, O* should, of course, change into not-O*,
not into some intermediary. It could be objected that Engels did speak
about "intermediate stages. Maybe so; I have dealt with that riposte in Note
01a.01a
[Anyway, I have dealt with the 'intermediary
objection' here
and here.]
Putting this minor quibble to one side
for now,
and given this 'revised' view,
we may now suppose that O* does indeed change into an intermediary. To that end, let us call this
intermediary,
"Oi*"
(which can be interpreted as a combination of the old and the new; a 'negation'
which also 'preserves'/'sublates').
If
so, Oi*
must remain forever in that state, unchanged, for there is as yet no not-Oi*
in existence to make it develop any further!
Recall that according to this 'theory', everything in existence (and that must include
Oi*)
changes because of a 'struggle' with its 'opposite'.
So, there must be a not-Oi*
already
in existence
to make Oi*
change further. To be sure, we could try to exempt
Oi*
from this essential requirement on an
ad hoc
basis (arguing, perhaps, that
Oi*
changes spontaneously with nothing actually causing it to do so), and yet if we do that,
there would seem to be no good reason to accept the version of events presented
by
the DM-classics, which tell us that everything and every process in the entire universe changes because
of a "struggle" between opposites (and Oi*
is certainly a thing/process). Furthermore, if we make an exemption here, then
the whole point of the exercise would be lost, for if some things do and some
things do not change according this dialectical 'Law', we would be left with no
way of telling which changes were and which weren't subject to it.
[That would also mean that Engels's Second 'Law'
can't be a law,
after all -- which is what we found
was the case with
the First 'Law',
anyway.]
This is, of course, quite apart from the fact that such a subjectively
applied exemption certificate (issued in this case to Oi*)
would mean that nothing at all could change, for everything in the universe
is in the process of change and is thus already an intermediately -- a 'sublated' version of
whatever it used to be.
Ignoring this 'difficulty', too:
Even if
Oi*
were to change into not-Oi* (as we suppose it must, given
the doctrine laid down in the DM-classics), then the serious problems we met earlier
simply reappear, for
Oi*
would only be able to change if
not-Oi*
already exists to make that happen! But, not-Oi*
can't already exist, for Oi*
hasn't changed into it yet!
On the other hand, even if we were to suppose not-Oi*
already exists, Oi*
couldn't change into it, since, as we have just seen, not-Oi*
already exists!
Again, it could be objected that the dialectical negation of
O*,
which
produces not-O*,
isn't ordinary negation, as the above seems to assume.
In that case, let us now suppose that
O* turns into its 'sublated' opposite, not-Os*
(and we stipulate that this "not" isn't an 'FL-not', it is a dialectical-not).
But, if that is to happen, according to the Dialectical Classics,
not-Os*
must already exist if
O* is both to struggle with, and then change into it!
Once again, if that were so,
O* couldn't turn into not-Os*,
for not-Os* already exists! Alternatively, if not-Os*
didn't already exist, O*
couldn't change, since
O*
can only change if it "struggles" with what it changes into, i.e., not-Os*!
So, not-Os*
must already exist.
We hit
the same non-dialectical brick wall, time and again!
It could be
argued that the above abstract argument misses the
point. In the real world things manifestly change. For instance, to use Mao's
example, peace changes into war; love can change into hate, and so on.
No one doubts this, but
DM is manifestly incapable of explaining why that happens.
Indeed, if DM were true, such things couldn't happen!
So, for peace to change into war, it would have to struggle with it
(if we are to believe the
DM-classics). Has anyone
witnessed this odd event? Can an abstraction like peace actually struggle with
another abstraction, such as war? And yet, both Mao and Lenin were quite clear:
"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. Quotation marks altered to conform with the
conventions adopted at this site; paragraphs merged.]
"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.
"Engels said, 'Motion itself is a contradiction.' Lenin defined the law of the
unity of opposites as 'the recognition (discovery) of the contradictory,
mutually exclusive, opposite tendencies in all phenomena and
processes of nature (including mind and society)'. Are these ideas
correct? Yes, they are. The interdependence of the contradictory aspects
present in all things and the struggle between these aspects determine the life
of all things and push their development forward. There is nothing that does not
contain contradiction; without contradiction nothing would exist....
"The
contradictory aspects in every process exclude each other, struggle with each
other and are in opposition to each other. Without exception, they are contained
in the process of development of all things and in all human thought. A
simple process contains only a single pair of opposites, while a complex process
contains more. And in turn, the pairs of opposites are in contradiction to one
another.
"That is how all things in the objective world
and all human thought are constituted and how they are set in motion....
"War and peace, as everybody knows, transform
themselves into each other. War is transformed into peace; for instance, the
First World War was transformed into the post-war peace, and the civil war in
China has now stopped, giving place to internal peace. Peace is transformed into
war; for instance, the Kuomintang-Communist co-operation was transformed into
war in 1927, and today's situation of world peace may be transformed into a
second world war. Why is this so? Because in class society such contradictory
things as war and peace have an identity in given conditions.
"All contradictory things are interconnected; not
only do they coexist in a single entity in given conditions, but in other given
conditions, they also transform themselves into each other. This is the full
meaning of the identity of opposites. This is what Lenin meant when he discussed
'how they happen to be (how they become) identical -- under what
conditions they are identical, transforming themselves into one another...'.
"Why is it that 'the human mind should take these
opposites not as dead, rigid, but as living, conditional, mobile, transforming
themselves into one another'? Because that is just how things are in objective
reality. The fact is that the unity or identity of opposites in objective things
is not dead or rigid, but is living, conditional, mobile, temporary and
relative; in given conditions, every contradictory aspect transforms itself
into its opposite. Reflected in man's thinking, this becomes the Marxist
world outlook of materialist dialectics. It is only the reactionary ruling
classes of the past and present and the metaphysicians in their service who
regard opposites not as living, conditional, mobile and transforming themselves
into one another, but as dead and rigid, and they propagate this fallacy
everywhere to delude the masses of the people, thus seeking to perpetuate their
rule....
"All processes have a beginning and an end,
all processes transform themselves into their opposites. The constancy of
all processes is relative, but the mutability manifested in the
transformation of one process into another is absolute.
"There are two states of motion in all things,
that of relative rest and that of conspicuous change. Both are caused by the
struggle between the two contradictory elements contained in a thing. When
the thing is in the first state of motion, it is undergoing only quantitative
and not qualitative change and consequently presents the outward appearance of
being at rest. When the thing is in the second state of motion, the quantitative
change of the first state has already reached a culminating point and gives rise
to the dissolution of the thing as an entity and thereupon a qualitative change
ensues, hence the appearance of a conspicuous change. Such unity, solidarity,
combination, harmony, balance, stalemate, deadlock, rest, constancy,
equilibrium, solidity, attraction, etc., as we see in daily life, are all the
appearances of things in the state of quantitative change. On the other hand,
the dissolution of unity, that is, the destruction of this solidarity,
combination, harmony, balance, stalemate, deadlock, rest, constancy,
equilibrium, solidity and attraction, and the change of each into its opposite
are all the appearances of things in the state of qualitative change, the
transformation of one process into another. Things are constantly transforming
themselves from the first into the second state of motion; the struggle of
opposites goes on in both states but the contradiction is resolved through the
second state. That is why we say that the unity of opposites is conditional,
temporary and relative, while the struggle of mutually exclusive opposites is
absolute.
"When we said above that two opposite things can
coexist in a single entity and can transform themselves into each other because
there is identity between them, we were speaking of conditionality, that is to
say, in given conditions two contradictory things can be united and can
transform themselves into each other, but in the absence of these conditions,
they can't constitute a contradiction, can't coexist in the same entity and
can't transform themselves into one another. It is because the identity of
opposites obtains only in given conditions that we have said identity is
conditional and relative. We may add that the struggle between opposites
permeates a process from beginning to end and makes one process transform itself
into another, that it is ubiquitous, and that struggle is therefore
unconditional and absolute.
"The combination of conditional, relative
identity and unconditional, absolute struggle constitutes the movement of
opposites in all things." [Mao (1961b),
pp.316, 337-38, 339-40, 342-43. Bold emphases alone added; quotation marks
altered to conform with the conventions adopted at this site.]
If the above DM-classicists are right in what they
say, how can peace change into war unless it "struggles" with it?
It could be
objected that that is ridiculous. It is the contradictory aspects, or
the underlying processes/tendencies of a given society, or given societies -- which might give the
appearance of being at peace -- that turn peace in to war. It is the mutual struggle of
these contradictory aspects (or underlying processes/tendencies/forces) that change the
one into the other.
In that case, let us call these underlying contradictory
aspects (or underlying processes/tendencies/forces) UA and UA*,
respectively. If the above were correct, it would be the
struggle between UA and UA* that changes Peace (P) into War (W).
And yet, if that were indeed so, the DM-classics would be wrong; P and its opposite, W,
don't actually struggle with one another -- even though they are
opposites and should struggle with one another (again, if the DM-classics are to be
believed).
Given this 'modified' view, what changes P into W is a struggle between their
non-opposites, UA and UA* (that is, the latter aren't the
opposite of P and W). But, if either UA or
UA* changes
P into W, then
one of them must be the opposite of P, and if one of them
is the opposite of P, they should
change into P! Either that, or the DM-classics were mistaken, once more.
On the other hand, if UA and UA*
are indeed opposites of one another, they should change into each other. But,
they can't do
that since they both already exist!
Yet again, we hit the same non-dialectical brick wall.
It could be
argued that the above ignores an excellent example of dialectical change
mentioned by August Thalheimer:
"In this connection, I want to point out to you what is meant
by historical dialectics. You have already met the term several times. From this
instance we see that it means that a phenomenon which is necessary under certain
conditions and signifies progress, under changed historical conditions
straightway changes to its opposite and becomes a hindrance to further
development. In the role of religion in different historical periods we see the
elucidation of the universal law of historical development, namely, development
through opposites or contradictions. We shall further see that this law of
development through contradictions is valid not only for historical motion, but
that it is a law of all motion." [Thalheimer (1938),
pp.59-60. Bold emphasis added.]
The argument
here appears to be that in one set of historical conditions, religion might be
progressive (although Thalheimer does mention this example he might have had the
following in mind: certain Protestant denominations in the English Civil War --
cf.,
Carlin (1980) and
Rees (2017)), while in another it will be the opposite (for instance, the
Roman Catholic Church after the
Council of Trent).
[We are
forced to consider concrete examples, here, since "religion" is also far too abstract
to do anything with. One abstraction can't struggle with anything let alone its
alleged 'opposite'. But even if it could, we face the same problems. Call this
particular abstraction, R, and its 'opposite', R*. R can't change in
R* since R* already exists. If it didn't, no struggle could take
place. On the other hand, if R* exists only in the future, being what R
changes into at some point, R can't struggle with it and so can't change, since
R* doesn't yet exist!]
But, once
again, are these more concrete examples (i.e., certain Protestant denominations
in the English Civil War, and Roman Catholicism after the Council of Trent)
actually dialectical
'opposites', such that they imply one another and can't exist without each other
(like the proletariat and the capitalist class imply one another and can't exist
without each other, so we are told)? If they are, dialecticians have yet to
explain how this is possible (especially since they existed at least century
apart!). Did they struggle with and then turn into one another (which they must
do according to
the DM-classics)? If so, historians appear to have missed it. Did
those 17th
century Protestant sects really turn into 16th
century Roman Catholicism, and vice versa?
So, this attempt to rescue the DM theory of change
also smacks right into the
same brick wall.
Readers might be beginning to see a pattern
here...
Concrete Examples
It could be argued that if we
instead considered concrete examples
of change, we
might be able to understand what the DM-classics meant when they claimed that
things struggle with, and then change into, their opposites.
In what follows, I propose to examine several 'concrete' examples,
some of which have been put
to me in debate with comrades, some of whom rejected the general criticisms advanced above. Once
again,
apologies are owed in advance for the somewhat repetitive nature of this
material, but DM-fans who appealed to these examples thought they could neutralise
my criticisms
in this way.
It is important to show there is no way out of this DM-hole.
In every single case,
these critics imagined they could show the above absurd conclusions were
mistaken by ignoring one or more of the core theses advanced
by
the DM-classics -- namely one or more of the following:
(i) Everything changes
because of a 'struggle' between 'dialectical opposites',
(ii) Everything changes
into its
'opposite' -- i.e., everything changes into that with which it has 'struggled' --, and,
(iii) Change produces that
'opposite'.
Hence, the next four sub-sections are aimed at showing that if we accept what the DM-classics have to say,
the general criticisms levelled in this Essay do indeed apply in each 'concrete' case. Hence
the need for repetition.
[However, my
refutation of this theory (expressed above) is completely general, so it
is no surprise to see it apply in each particular instance of it!]
'Dialectical John' Can't In Fact Age
Consider "John"
again (a character referred to by Lenin, among others); it has been pointed out to me that
the above criticisms fail to apply to his development. The counter-argument goes
something like this: while it might be the case that John is now a boy, in a few years time it
will be the case that he is a man (all things being equal). However, the fact that
other individuals are already men -- i.e., it is a fact that men already
exist -- doesn't
prevent John from changing into a man (his opposite). So, John can change into his
opposite even though examples of this opposite already exist (as other men). In that case, the above
criticisms of DM fail.
Or, so it could be maintained.
And yet, as we have seen, this theory tells us that all things/processes change because
they "struggle" with their 'opposites', and that they "struggle" with
that with which they change into (i.e., this 'opposite'). As predicted, the above
counter-argument ignores these salient
facts. But, if we refuse to go along with that, if we
refuse to ignore these facts, we can perhaps see
where the above riposte goes wrong.
The
DM-classics
tell us that John has to struggle with his
opposite if he is to change. However, according to the above response it isn't too clear what John
is struggling with in order to become a man. His opposite must either be (a) The
man he later becomes, or (b) All men (i.e., the set or class of
individuals he is to join, and thus partake of whatever it is they partake of), or
perhaps it is simply (c) 'Manhood'.
Considering (b) first:
in this case
(and if we are to believe the DM-classics), John must struggle with all the
individuals that are already men (i.e., all men) if he is to become a man himself!
The question is: Do we find boys, and particularly John, struggling with every grown
man on the planet? If this does happen, or has happened, I
must have missed it. I
suspect I'm not the only one.
Moreover, in view of the fact
that John must turn into his opposite (and his opposite is, presumably,
all men, or all men currently alive, if we adopt option (b)), does this mean he
has to turn into all these other men, too? Or, does he turn into just one of
them? But, it seems he must do one or the other of these if the Dialectical
Classics are to be believed.
On the other
hand, if we now
consider the first of
the above alternatives, (a), the question now becomes: Are we to suppose that John must struggle with what he
himself is to become, his
individual opposite -- call 'him', John-as-a-man --, even
before John-as-a-man actually exists?
If not, then the above objection to the argument presented in this
Essay is beside the point; John can only
change if he struggles with this specific opposite, John-as-a-man. But that opposite doesn't yet exist.
And yet, if this specific opposite -- i.e., John-as-a-man -- doesn't
exist, John can't struggle with it/him,
and hence he can't change. On the other hand, if John-as-a-man does exist
so that John can struggle with 'him', then he can't change into 'him' since he
is already there!
No
surprise -- we hit the same brick wall.
Anyway, according to the DM-worthies, John can only
change because of a struggle between dialectically-paired opposites that takes place in the here-and-now.
If so, are we
really supposed to
believe that "John-as-a-man" is struggling with "John-as-a-boy"
in the here-and-now?
If we now move on to the last alternative, (c),
the question becomes: Is the abstraction, 'Manhood', struggling with that other abstraction,
'Boyhood', so that John can become a man? One might well wonder how two
abstractions are capable of struggling, especially since we have yet to be told
by DM-theorists with what in nature or society abstractions like this
actually correspond. If there is nothing with which they do correspond, then how
is it possible for them to interact, let alone struggle with one another
and initiate
change? Of they do exist, where do they exist and what are they
made of? [On the mysterious nature of DM-'abstractions', see
here.]
Some might be tempted to reply that this is precisely what
adolescence is, a struggle with emerging physical, emotional and
psychological maturity, typically in an individual's teenage years. And yet, if that were the case, John-as-boy and John-as-a-man would
have to be locked in struggle in the here-and-now -- or concurrently in each individual's
teenage years. Of course, adolescence
can't struggle with anything since it, too, is an abstraction. And a struggle in
John's 'mind' over what he is to become can't make him develop into a man,
either!
For Idealists,
what happens in 'the mind' might be able to effect a change in John, but one assumes
genuine materialists would want to reject that option; it should hardly
need pointing out that a struggle in the mind can't change a boy into a man.
That isn't to deny such struggles do indeed take place, it
is merely to remind us that mere thought doesn't make something so, or
happen -- if it did,
beggars would ride.
Nevertheless, John-as-a-man doesn't yet exist, so John-as-a-man can't struggle with John-as-boy. On the other hand, if
John-as-a-man does exist alongside John-as-boy, so that 'he' is able to
struggle with his own youthful self, and hence initiate change, then John-as-boy can't
in the end change into 'him', for John-as-a-man already
exists!
To be sure, John's 'opposite' is whatever he will become (if he is
allowed to develop 'naturally'), but, as noted above,
that 'opposite' can't now exist
otherwise, plainly, John wouldn't need to become it since it is already there!
On the other hand, and once again, if that opposite doesn't exist, John can't change, for there would be nothing with which he could struggle.
Looking at this a little more concretely: In ten or fifteen years time, John
won't become just any
man, he will become a particular man. In that case, let us call the
specific man that
John becomes, "ManJ".
But, and once again, ManJ
must exist now
or John couldn't change into him (if the DM-classics
quoted earlier are to be
believed) -- for John can only become a man if he is now locked in struggle with what he is to become, his own opposite, ManJ.
Once more: if that were so, John
couldn't
become ManJ since ManJ
already exists!
It could be objected that the DM-classics argue that an
object in change takes on an opposite property or quality, expressed by the
negation of the predicate term that once applied to it. So, in abstract terms,
if
A is F (where "A" is stands for the name of an
individual, such as John,
or even that of some object or process, and "F" stands for an
"essential" (or even ordinary) property or quality he/it
possesses at some point) -- then, in this case, the A that is F later becomes the A that is not-F.
Or, perhaps better:
J1: It used to be the case that A is F; later it is the
case that A is not-F.
J2: It used to be the case that
John is a boy; later it is the
case that John is not-a boy. [If we now interpret "not-a-boy" as "a
man".]
This is
surely possible -- indeed, it is actual. It happens all the time. Moreover, A being F doesn't
prevent A becoming not-F on the spurious basis that (i) both F and not-F
already exist, or are instantiated in a population -- there are many
instantiations of both F and not-F, or
even on the basis that (ii) not-F doesn't
yet exist in A. So, dialectical change is not only possible, it is actual.
However, this is just
the generalisation of the
counter-argument advanced
earlier (about John
becoming a man), and is susceptible to the same rebuttal: if the A
that is not-F
doesn't yet exist, then the A that is F can't struggle with it,
and hence it can't
change -- if we accept what the
DM-classics tell
us. In which case, the above response ignores what they have to say: change is the
result of a struggle between co-existent opposites, in
this case, between the
A that is F and the A that is not-F -- or, maybe,
even between F and not-F.
But, and once more, if they do co-exist in the same individual (which
they must do or they couldn't struggle), then the one can't turn into the other,
for
they both exist!
It could be argued
that not-F does already exist, so this
struggle can take place. Hence, A can both struggle with not-F
and become not-F. More perhaps concretely, tendencies in John that maintain
him as a boy (call these B) are locked in a struggle with those that are
changing him into a man, or, into not-a-boy (i.e., not-B).
Again, this is just a particular example of a point that has
already been considered,
several times. Are we really supposed to believe that John
changes into a tendency -- for that is what not-F is, according to
the above
objection?
[Anyway, I
have examined the 'opposite tendencies defence' in more detail,
below.]
Independently of that, it is difficult to believe that
anyone who has read the DM-classics could conclude that this new interpretation
finds any support in what they have to say. For example, if it is indeed the
case that the A that is
F turns into the A is not-F -- or, that A's being F
develops into A's being not-F -- then, according to those
classics, they must struggle with one another. But, how can this happen if it is admitted
that the A that is not-F doesn't yet exist?
It could be countered that what is important here is that F-applied-to-A turns into its opposite, not-F-applied-to-A.
Numerous not-Fs
will typically already exist in the population. For example, John might be alive one day (i.e.,
A is F), but the next he could be dead, or not alive (i.e., he
becomes A is
not-F). However, many other individuals will also be dead at that time, or
who aren't alive when John was
alive. But, that doesn't stop him from becoming not alive (not-F), contrary to
the repeated assertions above. The fact that some things are already not-F
doesn't prevent other things from also becoming not-F. That disposes of
much of the convoluted material above.
Or, so it might
be objected.
Again, this is just a re-packaged version of the point made above
about John becoming a man. In this case, when John dies he doesn't just become any old
corpse, he becomes John's corpse. If that is so, and the DM-classics are to be
believed (when they tell us that objects and processes struggle with what they become), that can only happen if John struggles with his opposite, i.e.,
with his own corpse! Do we all really have to fight our own future cadavers
in order to die?
It could be objected that
that is just ridiculous. The above changes could happen if F struggles
with not-F. For instance, life and death (i.e., not-life) are dialectically-united
and dialectically-opposed to one
another, as Engels pointed out. So,
for example, the forces that keep John alive are opposed to those that are killing him, and which will kill him one day.
But, if that is so, and the DM-classics are correct, these
dialectical opposites must turn into one another. Is it really the case then
that the forces that keep John alive will turn into those that are killing him,
and vice versa? Will
anabolic processes become
catabolic
processes, and catabolic become anabolic? In fact, these
processes don't even struggle with
one another in living cells! [Follow the links below for an explanation why that is so.] But, they should do
this if we were to believe everything we read in those dusty old DM-classics.
[Since I have devoted several sections of Essay Seven Part One to this very
point, the reader is
re-directed
there for
more details.]
Furthermore, and returning to a consideration of whatever it is that
the F in "A that is F" relates to, the F
(in
"A
that is F")
doesn't just change into any old not-F, it changes into a particular
not-F. Let us call the particular not-F that F changes into
"FA".
Once more, according to the dialectical classics, every object/process changes
because (a) It struggles with its opposite and (b) It changes into that
opposite. If so, F can only change by struggling with FA;
but FA
already exists, so F can't change into it. If FA
didn't already exist, F couldn't struggle with it in order to
change.
So, it
doesn't matter how many objects or processes there are that are also F
-- that is, it doesn't matter how many instances of F there are in the
world --
F can only change by struggling with FA,
with a specific instance of F in A. But, since that
specific instance of F in A already exists (or there could be no
struggle and hence no change), F can't change into it, since it already exists!
No matter how many bends we try to negotiate with this rusty
old banger of a
theory, it still smacks into the same
non-dialectical brick wall.
Turning The Tables On DM
Consider another concrete example with which I have been
confronted: wood being fashioned into a
table. Once more,
according to the dialectical classics
every object and process changes because of:
(i)
A 'struggle' between opposites, and,
(ii) changes into its opposite, into that with which it has 'struggled'.
So, according to this 'theory', the wood that is used to make a table has to
'struggle' with what it turns into; that is, this wood has to 'struggle' with
the table it is made into!
In that case, the table must already exist, or it couldn't 'struggle' with the
wood from which it is to be made.
But, if the table already exists, then the wood can't be changed into it, since
the table is already there!
Indeed, why bother making
a table that already exists?
On the other hand, if the table doesn't already exist, then this wood
couldn't
'struggle' with it, its own opposite; that is, it couldn't 'struggle' with the table it
has yet to become!
Either way, change like this can't happen, according to this 'theory'.
And, it is little use introducing human agency here, for if a
carpenter is required to turn wood into a table, then he/she has to 'struggle' with that
wood to make it into that table -- since we are told that every object and
process in nature and society is governed by this 'Law'. But, once again, according to the
Dialectical Classics, objects and processes 'struggle' with their dialectical
'opposites', and they turn into those opposites. If so, the wood in
question must turn
into the carpenter, not the table! And the carpenter must change into wood!
Nor is it
any use complaining that the above conclusions are ridiculous -- since they
follow directly from what we read in the DM-classics.
[I have
dealt with that
particular objection more fully
here.]
Incidentally, the same result emerges if we consider the
intermediate stages in
the making of a table (call it "T"), whether or not these are 'sublated'
intermediaries, or 'tendencies', or, indeed, something else.
Let us assume, therefore, that T goes through n successive stages
T(1), T(2),
T(3)..., T(k)..., T(n-3), T(n-2), T(n-1), until at stage
T(n) it is finally
a table.
For
simplicity's sake, I will assume that stage, T(1), involves all the items required to make a
given table (e.g., wood, screws, tools, glue, nails, etc.). Initially, I will
also omit all reference to the human labour required to make this table; that
extra complicating factor will be re-introduced later. Finally, the above stages
can be set as close together as DM-fans deem necessary (if they but thought
about such 'pettifogging' details!) -- for example, each stage is, say, a
nanosecond apart. In addition, these stages can be credited with whatever
'dialectical properties'/'relations' they require or are deemed fit and
appropriate -- such as: (a) no stage is static, but is dynamically
interconnected with its 'unique dialectical opposite', and (b) each stage is
inter-related to the rest of the DM-'Totality' (howsoever
that is conceived). Finally, I will assume that each of the above stages is
the 'dialectical opposite' of the next stage in line.
As we have seen, according to the
dialectical classics,
T(1) can only change into T(2)
because of:
(i) A 'struggle
between opposites' -- that is, T(1) must 'struggle' with T(2); and,
(ii) T(1)
must also change into that
with which it has 'struggled'; it must change into its 'opposite'.
Hence, T(1) must
both 'struggle' with and change into T(2).
But, T(1)
can't change into T(2) since
T(2)
already exists! If it didn't exist, T(1) couldn't 'struggle' with it.
Furthermore, if
T(2) is itself to change, it must also 'struggle' with whatever it changes
into -- that is, it must 'struggle' with and change into, T(3). But,
T(2) can't change into T(3) since T(3) already exists! If it
didn't, there would be nothing to make T(2) change, nothing with which it
could 'struggle'.
By n applications of the above argument -- if this 'theory' is to be believed -- all the stages
in a table's construction must
co-exist. In which case, no table would ever need to be made --, since, as
we have just seen, the final stage, T(n), must already exist. That
must be so otherwise stage T(n-1) would have nothing with which it could
'struggle', and hence change. But, once again, that means T(n-1) can't
change into T(n) since it already exists!
The same
applies to stages T(n-1) and T(n-2), they must also co-exist
otherwise T(n-2) would have nothing with which to 'struggle'. Well we
needn't labour the point: all the stages in the making of a table must
co-exist if this theory is to be believed.
Again, why
bother making tables? In this weird and wonderful 'dialectical universe',
every single table is already there (alongside all the stages required to make
them)!
The DM-'theory' of change thus stands as a neat
refutation of the labour theory of value!
No labour is needed to make a single commodity; they
all already exist!
In that
case, if everything
in the entire universe
has to co-exist alongside all its
developmental stages in order for anything to change, it is a mystery how there
is any room left in the
dialectical universe for anything to move, let alone change!
At this point, the Introduction of human labour into
the mix is no use. In fact, it is even worse -- since it has decidedly weird
consequences.
Assume carpenter, C, is involved in making
table, T. Let us further assume that this process begins at stage
T(1), and that C
and T(1) are 'dialectical opposites'. Since the DM-classics tell us that
all change is the result of the interaction of such 'opposites' we have
to assume this -- or conclude that carpenters can't make tables!
[Also, if a human being is involved in the
making of a table, we will need to assume the time gaps between successive
stages are longer than a nanosecond -- they will more likely vary from few
seconds to a few hours (in the latter case, maybe, allowing glue to set, etc.).]
But, if C is to change
T(1) into T(2), she
will have to 'struggle' with it -- that is, if we once again decide to believe
what the
DM-classics tell us about change. But, those classics also inform us that
every object and process in the entire universe changes into that with which it
has 'struggled'. If so, C must change into
T(1) -- she must
change into the first stage in the making of a table --, and
T(1) must change into C!
Has anyone every noticed this? That a collection of wood, screws, tools,
glue, nails, etc., has ever changed into a carpenter?
Once again,
it is little use DM-apologists complaining that this is ridiculous -- since
it is a direct consequence of their own theory.
[I have dealt
more fully with this
particular objection -- that tries to argue that conclusions like this are patently ridiculous
-- below.]
Once more, with a crazy 'theory' like this at its core, is it any wonder
Dialectical Marxism is now a by-word for
long-term failure?
Are 'Dialectical' Cats Immortal?
If we examine another
counter-example (with which I have also been confronted on several Internet
Discussion Boards) we will soon see that this 'law' possesses similarly
absurd
consequences. The
DM-classics inform us that cats, for
instance, can only change because of:
(i) A
'struggle between dialectical opposites',
which means they:
(ii) Change into those 'opposites'
(since we are told everything in
the entire universe changes this way),
and hence
that:
(iii) They
change into that with which they have struggled.
Consider,
therefore, live cat, C, and its 'dialectical opposite', C*.
According to the DM-classics, C must 'struggle' with and then change into C*. But, at some point, C
also changes from a live cat into a dead cat. So, this dead cat must be the
'opposite' of that live cat; that is, C* must be this dead cat. In
that case, if the dialectical classics are to be believed, a dialectical
cat must 'struggle' with the dead cat it is one day to become!
Hence,
C can only
die by struggling with itself as a dead cat!
On the other hand, live cat, C, can't change into dead cat, C*, since dead cat, C*,
already exists! If C* didn't already exist, C couldn't 'struggle'
with it and hence couldn't change. So, according to this 'theory', C
can't actually die, for to do so it would have to change into something that
already exists, and that is impossible, even for a cat.
In that case, DM implies that cats are immortal!
Alternatively, this 'theory' predicts that cats must be constantly scrapping
with the dead cats that they will one day fail to turn into.
Has anyone witnessed this
universal catfight?
Perhaps we don't 'understand' dialectics...
Incidentally, the same result emerges if we consider the
intermediate stages in
the life and death of cat, C, whether or not these are 'sublated'
intermediaries, or 'tendencies', or, indeed, something else.
Let us assume, therefore, that cat, C, goes through n successive stages C(1), C(2),
C(3)..., C(i)..., C(n-1), C(n), until at stage C(n+1) it finally
pops its clogs.
[These
stages can even be seen as 'dialectically' interlinked, or even as 'moments' in the
ongoing process of change experienced by this cat. I consider the alternative
model that "opposite tendencies" in
this cat are what cause it to change, and then die,
here.]
However, according to the dialectical classics, C(1) can only change into C(2)
because of a 'struggle between opposites' (since we are told that all
change occurs this way), and C(1) must also change into that
with which it has struggled.
So, C(1) must 'struggle' with and change into, C(2).
However, the insurmountable problems we have already met several times now
re-surface, for C(1) can't change into C(2) since
C(2)
already exists. If
C(2)
didn't already exist, C(1) couldn't 'struggle' with it and hence change!
Furthermore, if C(2)
is itself to change, it must struggle with whatever it changes into -- that is, it must 'struggle' with and change into, C(3),
its 'opposite'. But,
C(2) can't change into C(3) since C(3) already exists! If it
didn't, there would be nothing to make C(2) change, nothing with which it
could struggle.
By n applications of the above argument -- if this 'theory' is to be believed -- all the stages of a cat's life must
co-exist if it is to change. In which case, no cat could change, let alone die!
And what applies
to cats, applies to anything and everything in the entire universe that changes. All their stages
must co-exist, too, if we are to believe what we read in the DM-classics.
Once
more, with such absurd implications, is it any wonder that
this 'theory' has failed us for so long, and that workers
in their hundreds of millions across the globe ignore Dialectical Marxism?
Stop Press:
Dialectical Kettles Use Zero Energy!
Consider another hackneyed DM-example: water turning into steam at
100oC (under normal
conditions). Are we really supposed to believe what the DM-classics tell
us, that the 'opposite' that
water becomes (i.e., steam) makes water turn into steam? But, that
must be so if the DM-classics are correct.
So, while you might think it is the
heat or energy you are putting into the water that turns it into steam, what really
happens, according to these wise old dialecticians, is that
steam makes water
turn into steam!
In that case, save energy. Turn the gas off!
It might be helpful if we
rendered this example a little more concrete: To that end, let us track a water molecule to see what happens to it
when the liquid (of which it is a part) is heated.
In order to
identify this molecule let us call it, "W1",
and the steam molecule it turns into, "S1".
But, if the DM-classics are right, W1
can only turn into S1
by 'struggling' with it. In that case, S1
must already exist, otherwise W1
couldn't struggle with it and thus change! But, how can W1
turn into S1
if S1
already exists?
It seems,
therefore, that
'dialectical' water (in kettles -- or anywhere else, for that matter) can't actually boil!
Either that or it is constantly boiling since stream molecules always exist!
[The same result emerges if we consider a set, or
body, of water molecules,
W, and the set, or body, of steam molecules, S, that they turn into. I have
left those details for the reader to fill in for herself.]
In fact, according to the DM-classics,
opposites turn
into each other; if so, S1
must change into W1
at the same time that W1
is turning into S1!
In that case, while you are trying to boil some water in a kettle --
according to this Super-Scientific 'theory' -- steam must be condensing back into the water you are
attempting to boil, and it must
be doing so at the same rate that the water is turning into steam!
One wonders, therefore, how a 'dialectical' kettle
(or any body of 'dialectical' water) manages to boil dry, or even evaporate.
Of course, the same argument applies to water freezing
-- and, as
we have seen, to
any and all alleged examples of 'dialectical' change in the universe.
It might be objected that the opposite that liquid water turns
into is a gas (i.e., steam/water vapour); so the dialectical classicists are correct.
However, if we take the DM-classics at their word,
that gas
(steam) must
'struggle' with liquid water in the here-and-now if that water is to change into it.
But, plainly, this gas doesn't yet exist,
or the water would already have changed into it! In
which case, water would never boil if this 'theory' were true, since the gas
that liquid water
is supposed to change into isn't yet there for it to struggle with.
It could be
countered that what happens is that the heat energy
put into the system makes water boil. Indeed, but then, if heat makes
water boil, that water must struggle with this heat, and then change into it (again, if
we are to believe the DM-classicists),
just as heat must change into water! If not, the DM-classics are wrong, and dialecticians
have
no theory of change.
[Follow the above link for an explanation why Hegel and Lenin adopted this
unworkable
'theory'.]
Critics Answered
General Response
The argument
presented above completely undermines the undeserved reputation
DM has claimed for itself for over a century that
it is
the theory of change. In which case, one would have expected some sort of
coherent defence from DM-fans. But, what do we find?
Other than completely ignoring
the demolition of their 'theory' set out in this Essay (and others), when
confronted with such startling revelations --
and to most DM-fans
these passages are indeed revelations,
since few of them seem to have read the DM-classics with due care, or even given them much thought --,
dialecticians with whom I have 'debated' this topic tend to respond in one or
more of the following ways:
(1) They
deny the
DM classicists
meant what they said, or they
claim that the DM-classicists
didn't in fact say what the quoted passages clearly say they said! [Yes, they
are that desperate!]
(2) They argue that
the above quotations aren't
representative, or they have been "taken out of context".
(3) They claim that
each DM-author mis-spoke, or made an error.
(4) They argue that my demolition of this core
DM-theory is merely "semantic", or that it is "academic", a classic example of "pedantry".
That particular response -- or to be more honest, that particular deflection
-- has been neutralised
here.
Independently
of that, it is worth pointing out that the argument that Hegel published in
order to motivate
his own 'theory' of change was itself based on 'semantic' principles -- on that, see
here and
here. So, if Hegel's 'theory'
(upside down or the 'right way up') was
originally based on 'semantics', DM-fans can hardly complain if 'semantics' is
used in its demolition.
(5) They suggest we must use
our "commonsense" when applying this 'Law', and should therefore reject the
'absurd conclusions' I have "erroneously" drawn.
[Here
is a recent example of the above tactic -- and
here is my reply. (Alas, these links are now dead!)]
(6) They point out that it is inappropriate to use
symbols drawn from FL in order to try to understand or interpret dialectics, since FL puts objects and processes
in 'fixed categories'.
[An example of that sort of response can be found
here, on page 2. (Sadly, that link is now dead, too!)]
[FL = Formal Logic.]
(7) They attempt to make impromptu
repairs, on-the-hoof as it were, substituting their own preferred
but hastily concocted 'theory' in its place -- each of which suffers from
fatal defects that they also fail to spot. These
'repairs' in fact expose
the very problems
Hegel and the DM-classicists were well aware of, and tried to address. Indeed, Hegel's theory was
specifically designed to avoid
many of these
'problems'.
(8) They argue that (a) This 'Law'
deals solely with, or pertains exclusively to, "opposing tendencies", or (b)
It only applies in
specific circumstances.
(9) As noted above,
they simply ignore the fatal defects implied by their 'theory', exposed in this Essay,
or they deflect attention back onto me, asking, "Who does Ms Lichtenstein think she is questioning
this great Philosopher (Hegel), or these great revolutionaries?"
[An
excellent example of that
particular dodge can be found
here -- check out the rather emotional and excitable replies of comrade 'Loz'. But there are many
others
like it. Added on Edit, September 2021: There is a recent example
of this type of response to me in the comments section over at YouTube,
under this video;
comment coming in from one 'Kamalpreet Singh'.]
I will now deal with each of the above
in turn -- beginning with (2), but ignoring (4), since it has
already
been dealt with.
(2)
'Unrepresentative' Or 'Taken Out Of
Context'
First of all, I have
quoted literally dozens of
passages from the dialectical classics and 'lesser' DM-clones,
which
proves that (a) they are indeed
representative, and that (b) subsequent DM-theorists do in fact believe:
(i)
Everything changes into its 'opposite'; and,
(ii) Everything changes by
'struggling' with that 'opposite'.
Based on those passages, it is clear that the vast
majority of classical (and more recent) dialecticians do indeed accept (i)
and (ii).
However, when asked in what way these passages have been
"taken out of context", the 'reply' I invariably receive from my
'dialectical' critics is..., er..., total silence. So, if any of my
current readers think I have taken any of these passages "out of context", I
would greatly appreciate it if they emailed me
with their point of view/proof,
and, if it turns out that I have erred in this regard, I will apologise profusely
and withdraw my criticisms.
I
have absolutely no desire to misrepresent fellow revolutionaries.
[The material
reproduced in this Essay has now been on the Internet, in one form or
another, for well over fifteen years. In that time, not one single DM-fan has
emailed me or contacted me in any other way to point out where I have taken this material "out of
context", nor has a single DM-fan explained what the 'correct' context
happens to be.]
(1)
The DM-Classicists 'Didn't
Mean What They Said'
As far as (1)
above is concerned, if the DM-worthies didn't mean what they said then
any dialecticians who advance this excuse, it seems, will have to
ignore
their own classics!
However, readers will
no doubt have noticed that many of the
above
dialecticians (and that includes contemporary DM-theorists) quote one another word-for-word -- so they at least
think their sources
meant what they said.
Nevertheless,
as many of those who advance Reply (1)
are no doubt unaware (otherwise they would know why the DM-classics
argued the way they did), there are
deeper, philosophical reasons
why Hegel, and at least
Lenin, accepted this theory of change. In which case, those two
definitely did
mean what they said.
If all the rest
didn't mean what they said, then they, too, were
woefully ignorant of the philosophical problems that originally motivated Hegel
to construct this theory. In that case, their opinions carry little weight.
If this
were left to those
who advance (or agree with) Reply (1), Dialectical Marxism would have no theory of change!
(3)
The
DM-Classicists Misspoke Or Committed A Series Of Errors
More-or-less the same can be said about
Reply (3); if the above worthies miss-spoke, or
were wrong, then contemporary DM-fans would be well advised to ignore those
error-strewn classics, since they all say the same thing!
Of course, anyone foolish enough to
adopt the above sound advice will have to endure
a torrent of abuse for their pains (perhaps of the same
volume and intensity that has been aimed in my direction).
(5)
Use
Your Commonsense!
Reply (5)
is a little different. Clearly we should use our common sense when interpreting
anything, but the suggestion that we should adopt this otherwise sensible
approach to anyone else's work is a little rich coming from those who spare no
effort endorsing the
following comment about 'commonsense':
"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.' For
him, a thing either exists or does not exist; a thing can't 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 commonsense. Only
sound commonsense, 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
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 can't see the woods for the trees." [Engels
(1976), p.26. Quotation marks altered to conform with the conventions adopted
at this site. Bold emphases added.]
Especially those who turn round and
now expect 'commonsense'
to help them out!
In fact, Engels tells us that 'commonsense' is all but useless
in such contexts -- i.e., in relation to change. How 'commonsense' can lift
itself by its own bootstraps, as it were, and help the beleaguered dialectician
escape from the hole they have dug for themselves is therefore entirely mysterious.
Indeed, and on the contrary, a
consistent application of ordinary common sense shows
this 'Law' would make change impossible.
[I explain the difference between
"common sense" and "commonsense",
here.]
Even so, Lenin and Mao were quite clear, this
'Law' is both universal and absolute:
"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. Quotation marks altered to conform with the conventions
adopted at this site; paragraphs merged.]
"All processes have a beginning and an end, all
processes transform themselves into their opposites. The constancy of all
processes is relative, but the mutability manifested in the transformation of
one process into another is absolute." [Mao (1961b),
pp.340-42.]
"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.... [Ibid.,
p.318.
Quotation marks altered to conform with the conventions adopted at this site. Bold
emphases added.]
Not much wiggle room
there, one feels.
(6)
the Use Of FL Is Highly Inappropriate In
Relation To Dialectics
In fact, I have used very little, if any,
FL in this
Essay. And, as far as symbols are concerned, we need look no further than Mao's own use of
them:
"But this situation is not static; the principal and the non-principal
aspects of a contradiction transform themselves into each other and the nature
of the thing changes accordingly. In a given process or at a given stage
in the development of a contradiction, A
is the principal aspect and B is the non-principal aspect; at another stage or
in another process the roles are reversed -- a change determined by the
extent of the increase or decrease in the force of each aspect in its struggle
against the other in the course of the development of a thing." [Mao
(1961b), p.333.
Bold emphases added.]
Any who still complain about
my use of symbols should
turn an equally critical eye toward
their use by
DM-theorists themselves -- and, indeed,
by
Hegel, too.
So, the use of abbreviative letters in this Essay (my symbols are no more than this -- they
are certainly not variables imported from
FL!) is
uncontroversial and plainly doesn't imply a use of 'fixed categories', as
Mao himself indicates.
In order to see this, it might be helpful to re-write an
earlier argument
(but now edited accordingly) that used these abbreviative symbols in order to see what happens
when
they have been dropped; check this out:
The
DM-classics inform us that cats, for example, change because of a
'struggle of opposites', and that they change into those 'opposites'
(since we are told everything in
the entire universe changes this way).
Consider, therefore, a live cat and its 'dialectical opposite'. According to
the DM-classicists that live cat must 'struggle' with and then change into that 'opposite'. Again, at some
point, that live cat also changes from a live cat to a dead cat. So, this dead
cat must be the 'opposite' of the live cat. In that case, if the dialectical
classics are to be believed, a dialectical
cat must 'struggle' with the dead cat it is one day to become; hence, it can only
die by struggling with itself as a dead cat!
Alternatively, that live cat can't change into the aforementioned dead cat since
that dead cat already exists! If it didn't already exist, the live cat couldn't
'struggle' with it and so couldn't change. Hence, according to this 'theory',
the above live cat can't actually die, for to do so it would have to change into something that
already exists, and that is impossible, even for a cat.
So, DM implies that cats are immortal!
On the other hand, it also predicts that cats must be constantly scrapping with
the dead cats that they will one day fail to turn into!
Has anyone witnessed this
universal catfight?
Perhaps we don't 'understand' dialectics...
Incidentally, the same result emerges if we consider the intermediate stages in
the life and death of a cat, whether or not these are 'sublated'
intermediaries.
Let us assume, therefore, that this live cat goes through an indefinite number
of successive stages: cat stage one, cat stage two, cat stage three..., cat
stage any large number you care to name, cat stage one bigger than that, until at
that stage it finally
pops its clogs.
[These stages can even be seen as 'dialectically'
interlinked, or even 'moments' in the ongoing process of change experienced by
this cat.]
But, according to the dialectical classics, cat stage one can only change into
cat stage two
because of a 'struggle of opposites', and cat stage one must also change into that
with which it has struggled; hence, cat stage one must inevitably
change into cat stage two.
So, cat stage one must 'struggle' with and change into cat stage two.
If so, the same problems arise that we have seen countless times, for cat stage one can't change into cat stage
two since
cat stage two
already exists. If it didn't, cat stage one couldn't 'struggle' with it!
Moreover, if cat stage two is itself also to change, it must struggle with whatever it changes
into -- that is, it must 'struggle' with, and change into, cat stage
three. But, cat stage two can't change into cat stage three since cat stage three already exists! If it
didn't, there would be nothing to make cat stage two change, nothing with which it
could 'struggle'.
By an indefinite number of applications of the above argument -- if this 'theory' is to be believed -- all the stages of a cat's life must
co-exist if it is to change. In which case, no cat could change, let alone die! And what applies
to cats applies to anything and everything in the entire universe that changes. All their stages
must co-exist.
If everything
must co-exist alongside all its
developmental stages in order for it to change, it is a mystery how there is any room left in the
dialectical universe for anything to move, let alone change!
With such absurd implications, is it any wonder that
this 'theory' has failed us for so long, and that workers
in their hundreds of millions across the globe ignore Dialectical Marxism?
The reader will no doubt appreciate that
not much has changed
(no pun intended), except perhaps the argument isn't quite as clear or as
concise as it used to be.
Hence, very little hangs on my use of abbreviative symbols.
(7)
Impromptu Repairs Attempted
'On-The-Hoof'
It seems
that very few DM-fans have given much thought to their own 'theory' of change,
so when its absurd consequences are pointed out to them they first of all react
with horror and disbelief. Soon after reading my objections some of them attempt to apply their own hastily constructed and impromptu repairs. [An excellent example of
this tactic can be found
here, on page 2 -- followed by my demonstration why such repairs don't work.] But, these repairs, carried out 'on-the-hoof', fail to
address the core problems that Hegel's theory was itself supposed to address
and resolve --
which is why DM-theorists like Lenin were keen to import it into Marxism.
Before
I examine how Lenin thought Hegel had constructed a valid and successful theory of change
(albeit one that needed to be 'put back on its feet', its mystical 'appendages'
removed, etc.), it might be a good idea to fill in
some of the background details.
Hegel's Response To Hume
In
response to Reply (7)
above, it is worth recalling that Hegel
developed this way
of characterising change by adapting Kant's
response to
Hume's criticisms of rationalist theories of causation. Hume had argued that
there is no logical or conceptual connection between cause and effect. This
struck right at the heart of
Rationalism, and Hegel was keen to show that Hume
and the
Empiricists were radically mistaken. Kant had already attempted to respond
to Hume, but his solution
pushed necessitating causation off into the
Noumenon,
about which we can know nothing. That approach was totally unacceptable to
Hegel, so he looked for a logical connection between cause and effect. He
found it in (a) Spinoza's claim that every determination is also a negation (which,
by the way, neither
Spinoza nor Hegel even so much as attempted to justify -- more about that in Essays
Eight Part Two and
Twelve Part Five), and (b) His argument that the
LOI "stated negatively" implies
the LOC (which,
unfortunately, it doesn't).1a
[LOI = Law of Identity; LOC = Law of
Non-contradiction.]
Based on these
considerations, Hegel thought he could argue that for any concept, A,
"determinate
negation" implies it is also not-A, and then not-not-A. [I
am, of course, paraphrasing and greatly simplifying, here! I have reproduced
Hegel's argument below for
those who think I might have misrepresented him.]
This then 'allowed' Hegel to conclude that every concept has development built
into it as
A
transforms into not-A, and then into not-not-A, the 'sublated'
version of A. This move provided him with the
logical/conceptual link he sought in causation. Hence, when A changes it
doesn't do so accidentally into this or that; what it changes into is not-A,
which is logically connected with A and is thus a rational
consequence of the overall development of reality. This led him to postulate that
for every concept A, there must also be its paired "other" (as he called it),
not-A, its 'internal' and hence its unique 'opposite'. Hegel
was forced to
derive this consequence since, plainly,
everything (else) in the universe is also not-A, which would mean that A
could change into anything whatsoever if he hadn't introduced this limiting factor,
this unique "other".
From this
set of moves, the "unity of opposites" was born. So, the link between cause and
effect was now given by a 'logical' form of unity, which meant that causation and change were the result of the interaction
between these logically-linked "opposites".
Plainly, this
paired,
unique opposite,
not-A, was essential to Hegel's theory, otherwise, he could provide his
readers with no
explanation why A should be followed by a unique not-A as opposed
to just any old not-A -- say,
B, or, indeed, something else, C, for
example -- all of which are also not-A.
[Hume, of course,
wouldn't have denied that A
changes into "what it is not", into not-A, he would merely have
pointed out that this can't provide the conceptual link that rationalists require unless all the
other (potentially infinite) not-As could be ruled out in some way. He
concluded that it is only a habit of the mind that prompts us to expect A
to change into what we have always, or what we have in general, experienced before. There is no
logical link (over and above our expectations) between A and what it develops into since there is no contradiction in supposing A to
change into B or C, or, indeed, something else. (In saying all this the
reader shouldn't conclude that I agree with Hume, or that the outline I
have put in Hume's mouth
is itself valid -- or even that it is an effective answer to Hegel!)]
Hence, as an integral part of his reply, Hegel introduced
this unique "other" with which each object and process was conceptually
linked -- a unique "other" that was 'internally' connected to A --, something he claimed could be derived by 'determinate
negation' from A.
[How he in fact derived this "other" will be examined in Essay Twelve Part
Five, but a DM-'explanation' -- and my criticism of it -- can be found in Essay
Eight Part Three.]
This special not-A
was now the unique
"other" of A. Without it
Hegel's reply to Hume falls flat.
Engels, Lenin, Mao and Plekhanov (alongside a host of other Marxist
dialecticians) bought into this spurious 'logic' (several of them possibly unaware of the
above 'rationale'; although, as far as I can see, of the DM-classicists, only Lenin seems
to be explicitly cognisant of it!), and attempted to give it a 'materialist make-over'. And, that
is why this Hegelian theory (albeit "put back on its feet")
is integral to classical DM. It supplied Engels, Lenin and Mao (and all the
rest) with a materialist answer to Hume.
[There are in fact far better ways than this to neutralise Hume's criticisms,
as well as
those of more recent Humeans, and which do not thereby make change
impossible. More details will be given in Essay Three Part Five. Until then, the
reader is referred to Hacker (2007) and Essay
Thirteen Part Three,
for more details.]
Lenin Endorses Hegel's Theory
Here is Lenin's open acknowledgement and endorsement of
Hegel's
theory:
"'This harmony is precisely absolute Becoming
change, -- not becoming other, now this and then another. The essential thing is
that each different thing [tone], each particular, is different from another,
not abstractly so from any other, but from its other. Each particular
only is, insofar as its other is implicitly contained in its Notion....' Quite
right and important: the 'other' as its other, development into its opposite."
[Lenin
(1961), p.260. Lenin is here commenting on Hegel (1995a), pp.278-98; this
particular quotation is found on p.285. Bold emphasis added; quotation marks
altered to conform with the conventions adopted at this site.]
"But
the Other is essentially not the empty negative or Nothing
which is commonly taken as the result of dialectics, it is the Other of the
first, the negative of the immediate; it is thus determined as mediated, -- and
altogether contains the determination of the first. The first is thus
essentially contained and preserved in the Other. -- To hold
fast the positive in its negative, and the content of the
presupposition in the result, is the most important part of rational cognition;
also only the simplest reflection is needed to furnish conviction of the
absolute truth and necessity of this requirement, while with regard to the
examples of proofs, the whole of Logic consists of these." [Lenin (1961),
p.225, quoting Hegel (1999),
pp.833-34, §1795.
Bold emphases alone added.]
Lenin
wrote in the margin:
"This
is very important for understanding dialectics." [Lenin (1961),
p.225.]
To which he added (earlier in the same
book):
"Marxists criticised (at the beginning of the twentieth century) the Kantians
and Humists [i.e., Humeans -- RL] more in the manner of Feuerbach (and Büchner) than
of Hegel." [Ibid.,
p.179.]
This shows that Lenin understood this to be a reply to Hume, and
that it was central to comprehending dialectics.
As, indeed, did the authors of the following textbook on dialectics:
"An acid has many properties, but the most
essential is its ability to combine with an alkali or a metal and form a salt.
In a word the most essential qualities are those which a thing manifests in
relation to 'its other,' to its opposite." [Shirokov
(1937), p.272. Quotation marks altered to conform with the conventions
adopted at this site.]
It is
worth quoting the entire passage from Hegel's
Logic (much of which Lenin approvingly copied into the above Notebooks --
pp.225-28):
"Now this is the very standpoint indicated above from which a
universal first, considered in and for itself, shows itself to be the other of
itself. Taken
quite generally, this determination can be taken to mean that what is at first
immediate now appears as mediated, related to an other, or that the universal
appears as a particular. Hence the second term that has thereby come into being
is the negative of the first, and if we anticipate the subsequent progress, the
first negative. The immediate, from this negative side, has been extinguished in
the other, but
the other is essentially not the empty
negative, the nothing, that is taken to be the usual result of dialectic; rather
is it the other of the first, the negative of the immediate; it is therefore
determined as the mediated -- contains in general the determination of the first
within itself. Consequently the first is essentially preserved and retained even
in the other. To hold fast to the positive in its negative, in the content of
the presupposition, in the result, this is the most important feature in
rational cognition; at the same time only the simplest reflection is needed to
convince one of the absolute truth and necessity of this requirement and so far
as examples of the proof of this are concerned, the whole of logic
consists of such.
"Accordingly, what we now have before us is the mediated, which to
begin with, or, if it is likewise taken immediately, is also a simple
determination; for as the first has been extinguished in it, only the second is
present. Now since the first also is contained in the second, and
the latter is the truth of the former, this unity can be expressed as a
proposition in which the immediate is put as subject, and the mediated as its
predicate; for example, the finite is infinite,
one is many, the individual is the universal. However, the inadequate
form of such propositions is at once obvious. In treating of the judgment
it has been shown that its form in general, and most of all the immediate form
of the positive judgment, is incapable of holding within its grasp
speculative determinations and truth. The direct supplement to it, the
negative judgment, would at least have to be added as well. In the
judgment the first, as subject, has the illusory show of a self-dependent
subsistence, whereas it is sublated in its predicate as in its other; this
negation is indeed contained in the content of the above propositions, but their
positive form contradicts the content; consequently what is contained in
them is not posited -- which would be precisely the purpose of employing a
proposition.
"The
second determination, the negative or mediated, is at the same
time also the mediating determination. It may be taken in the first
instance as a simple determination, but in its truth it is a relation
or relationship; for it is the negative, but the negative of the
positive, and includes the positive within itself. It is therefore the
other, but not the other of something to which it is indifferent -- in that case
it would not be an other, nor a relation or relationship -- rather it is the
other in its own self, the other of an other; therefore it
includes its own other within it and is consequently as contradiction,
the posited dialectic of itself. Because the
first or the immediate is implicitly the Notion, and consequently is also only
implicitly the negative, the dialectical moment with it consists in positing in
it the difference that it implicitly contains. The second, on the contrary, is
itself the determinate moment, the difference or relationship; therefore with it
the dialectical moment consists in positing the unity that is contained in it. If then the negative, the determinate, relationship,
judgment, and all the determinations falling under this second moment do not at
once appear on their own account as contradiction and as dialectical, this is
solely the fault of a thinking that does not bring its thoughts together. For
the material, the opposed determinations in one relation, is already posited and
at hand for thought. But formal thinking makes identity its law, and allows the
contradictory content before it to sink into the sphere of ordinary conception,
into space and time, in which the contradictories are held asunder in
juxtaposition and temporal succession and so come before consciousness without
reciprocal contact. On this point, formal thinking lays down for
its principle that contradiction is unthinkable; but as a matter of fact the
thinking of contradiction is the essential moment of the Notion. Formal thinking
does in fact think contradiction, only it at once looks away from it, and in
saying that it is unthinkable it merely passes over from it into abstract
negation." [Hegel (1999),
pp.833-35, §§1795-1798. Bold
emphases alone added. I have used the on-line version here, correcting several
minor typos.]
The most relevant and important part of which is this:
"It is therefore the other, but not the
other of something to which it is indifferent -- in that case it would not be an
other, nor a relation or relationship -- rather it is the
other in its own self, the other of an other; therefore it
includes its own other within it and is consequently as contradiction,
the posited dialectic of itself." [Ibid.
Bold emphases alone added.]
This "reflection", as Hegel elsewhere calls it, of the "other in
its own self", a unique "other", provides the logical link
his theory required. Any other "other" would be "indifferent", and not
the logical
reflection he sought. It is from this set of considerations that 'dialectical contradictions' arose, as Hegel
notes. Hence, Lenin was
absolutely right, this "other" is essential for "understanding"
dialectics --
except he failed to notice that dialectics is
rendered incomprehensible and
unworkable, thereby!
Hegel underlined this point (but perhaps less obscurely) in the
'Shorter Logic':
"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. 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 emphases added.]
[The
problems these rather odd ideas create for Hegel have been highlighted
here.]
Hence, any attempt to (i) Eliminate the idea that change results from
a 'struggle of opposites', or (ii) Deny that objects and processes change into these 'opposites', or
even (iii) Reject the idea that
these 'opposites' are 'internally'-related as one "other" to another
specific "other", will
leave DM-fans with no answer to Hume, and thus with no viable theory of change.
[For Hegel's other comments on Hume, see Hegel (1995b),
pp.369-75.]
In which
case,
Hegel's theory (coupled with the part-whole dialectic) was at least
a theory of causation, change and the (supposed) logical development of
history. So, the above dialecticians were absolutely right to incorporate these
ideas into DM (that is, as they saw things). It allowed them to argue that, among other things, history isn't accidental
-- i.e., it isn't just 'one thing after another' -- there is an inner logic to it. Hence,
Hegel's
'logical' theory enabled them to argue, for example, that capitalism must
give way to the dictatorship of the proletariat, and to
nothing else. Hume's criticisms -- or, rather, more recent re-incarnations of them, which,
combined with contemporary versions of
Adam Smith's
economic theory (Smith was, of course, a close friend and collaborator of Hume's)
in
essence feature in much of modern economic theory and philosophy, and thus
in contemporary criticisms of Marx's economics and politics -- those criticisms
are a direct threat to Hegel's theory of change. If these bourgeois critics are right, it
isn't possible to predict what the class struggle will produce. Or, rather, if
Hume is right, the course of history is
contingent, not
necessary, and definitely not "rational". In that case, given this
neo-Humean counter-theory, there is no 'inner
logic' to capitalism, and
HM can be thrown onto the trash heap of history.
[This
dependency on Hegel's theory of causation and change also explains the
teleology and
determinism
implicit in DM -- which clearly provide its acolytes with hope in a hopeless world. (The
reason for asserting this can be found in Essay Nine Part Two. The mystical and rationalist foundations of this approach to
change are outlined here,
here,
here and
here.)
As far as
I can tell, other than Lenin, very few dialecticians have discussed (or have even
so much as noticed!) this aspect of their own theory. The only authors
that I am aware of who take this aspect of DM into consideration are Ruben (1979), Lawler (1982), and Fisk (1973, 1979). I will examine Fisk's arguments, which
are the most sophisticated I have so far encountered on this topic, in a future
re-write of this Essay. Lawler's analysis is one of the main subjects of Essay Eight
Part Three. (However, since
writing the above, I
have also come across some of
Charles Bettelheim's
comments,
which suggest he, too, fully understood this point.) I hasten to add that
I do not think any of these ideas impact on the validity of HM; I am simply
filling in background details here!]
[STD = Stalinist Dialectician; MIST = Maoist
Dialectician.]
Incidentally,
this puts paid to the idea that there can be such things as 'external
contradictions' (a notion beloved of STDs and MISTs). If there were any
of these oddities in nature and society, they couldn't be 'logically'
connected as 'one-other-linked-with-another-unique-other' required by Hegel's
(and Lenin's) theory. For Hegel, upside down or the 'right way up',
'external contradictions' would fragment
the 'rational order' of reality, introducing contingency where once there had been
'logico-conceptual' or 'necessary' development. Hence, any DM-fan reckless
enough to introduce 'external contradictions' into his or her system/theory
would in effect be 're-Hume-ing' Hegel, not putting him 'back on his
feet'!
Moreover,
we can't put such changes down to 'external contradictions', since they
can't fundamentally change the nature of
anything (so we
have also been told); here is Cornforth:
"The second dogmatic
assumption of mechanism is the assumption that no change can ever happen except
by the action of some external cause. Just as no part of a machine
moves unless another part acts on it and makes it move, so mechanism sees matter
as being inert -- without motion, or rather without self-motion. For
mechanism, nothing ever moves unless something else pushes or pulls is, it never
changes unless something else interferes with it. No wonder that, regarding
matter in this way, the mechanists had to believe in a Supreme Being to give the
'initial push'....
"So in studying the causes of
change, we should not merely seek for external causes of change, but should
above all seek for the source of change within the process itself, in its own
self-movement, in the inner impulses to development contained in things
themselves...."
"...'[S]truggle' is not
external and accidental. It is not adequately understood if we suppose that
it is a question of forces or tendencies arising quite independently the one of
the other, which happen to meet, to bump up against each other and come into
conflict. No. 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. Thus, for example, the old
mechanist conception of movement was that it only happened when one body bumped
into another: there were no internal causes of movement, that is, no 'self-movement',
but only external causes. But on the contrary, the opposed tendencies which
operate in the course of the change of state of a body operate on the basis of
the contradictory unity of attractive and repulsive forces inherent in all
physical phenomena....
"Why should we say that
contradiction is the driving force of change? It is because it is only the
presence of contradictions in a process which provides the internal
conditions making change necessary.... It is the presence of contradictions,
that is of contradictory tendencies of movement, or of a unity and struggle of
opposites, which brings about changes of movement in the course of a
process. [Cornforth (1976), pp.40-43; 90, 94. Italic emphases in the original.
Bold emphases added. Several paragraphs merged.]
In which case, it is no surprise to find that 'external contradictions'
were unknown to Hegel, Marx, Engels, Lenin and Plekhanov. They were invented by
the Stalinists in order to justify the doctrine of 'Socialism in One Country.'
[On that, see here.]
[I have also analysed several other fatal defects implicit in the idea that there can
be such 'entities' as 'external' and 'internal contradictions' (in nature
and society) in Essay
Eleven Part Two, here
and here. See also
here, where I develop the above argument in response to a 'Marxist Leninist'
who seems not to know his own theory too well.]
The problem is that even though Hegel's theory sort of works
-- if one is both an Idealist
and a p*ss-poor logician
(more on that in Essay Twelve Part Five) --, it can't work in relation to DM (or,
indeed, HM) for the reasons
outlined in this Essay -- since, if it were true, change would be impossible!
So, if, for instance, the relations of production and the forces of production,
the proletariat and the capitalist class, are linked as 'contradictory
opposites' in the way that Lenin supposed (employing either the upside down or 'the right way up'
versions of Hegel's 'theory'/'method') --
which they will have to be, or Hume's criticisms (or the more contemporary re-incarnations of them)
will have their place --, then the forces of production must change into the relations of
production, and the proletariat must change into the capitalist class, and
vice versa!
It could be
objected that it is the class war that will change society in the above manner
-- but more specifically the struggle between the proletariat and the capitalist
class. Maybe so, but if the DM-classics are to be believed then these two
classes must change into one another, since they are the 'dialectical opposites'
here and they the ones locked in struggle! So, if the
DM-classics are
correct, the working class will become the
capitalist class!
It could now be
countered that
the proletariat will in fact change into
the
ruling-class, its opposite. Hence, this theory is correct, at least here.
But, the
opposite of the proletariat isn't just any old ruling-class, it is the
capitalist class -- the bourgeoisie.
This class is
the unique "other" of the proletariat with whom they are
'internally' linked (a 'generic ruling-class' isn't its unique other). The
proletariat is a special sub-class of the working class under capitalism, and
the bourgeoisie is similarly a sub-class of the historic ruling-class. So, according to this theory, the
proletariat must change into the bourgeoisie, thus
making socialism impossible. The existence of a ruling-class doesn't imply
the proletariat, and many forms of ruling-class can exist without the
proletariat, but the bourgeoisie can't exist without the proletariat (or so we
have been told); these two classes are the 'dialectical opposites' here -- as, indeed, Mao himself pointed out:
"The fact is that no contradictory aspect can exist in
isolation. Without its opposite aspect, each loses the condition for its
existence. Just think, can any one contradictory aspect of a thing or of a
concept in the human mind exist independently? Without life, there would be no
death; without death, there would be no life.... Without the bourgeoisie,
there would be no proletariat; without the proletariat, there would be no
bourgeoisie."
[Mao (1961b),
p.338. Bold emphasis added.]
Attentive
readers will no doubt notice that Mao tells us that the dialectical "opposite"
of the proletariat isn't just any ruling-class, it is "the bourgeoisie". In
which case, the proletariat will change into "the bourgeoisie", and they
will change into the
proletariat -- that is, if the DM-classics are to be believed.
Is this
what revolutionaries are fighting for? For the proletariat to become the
bourgeoisie, and the bourgeoisie to become the proletariat?
If so, the
new parasitic boss-class (i.e., this new class comprised entirely of
ex-proles who have just turned into the bourgeoisie) would now constitute
the vast bulk of the population!
Conversely, there would be a massive reduction in the size of the working class,
created by a concomitant change in the bourgeoisie (as they become the new proles!). Scarcity would become the
norm, surely, with so few workers! Such a society would last about as long as a
suicidal
Mayfly.
One set of
DM-theorists (I am assuming this was a collective response since no single name
was given as its author) attempted to reply to the above (but not to me
specifically):
"It is an important idea of dialectics that under specific
conditions, things can make a transition into their opposites. This transition
does not mean, for example, that the working class will turn into capitalists
after the revolution. It means that in its relation with the capitalist class,
the working class will make the transition from being dominated to being in the
more powerful position, and will use that power to set up communism." [Quoted
from
here.]
But that
isn't an example of change into an 'opposite'. The opposite of the proletariat
isn't 'domination by a more powerful opponent', nor is it its "relation with the
capitalist class". It's 'dialectical opposite' is the capitalist class, the
class with which it struggles, and so, according to the DM-classicists, that is the
'dialectical opposite' into which it must change. The above DM-fans
clearly didn't read the classics too carefully.
However, back in the real world very
material workers struggle against equally material Capitalists (and/or their
lackeys), but neither of these turn into one another, and they can't help change
Capitalist Relations of Production [CRAP]
into Socialist Relations of Production [SORP], either.
And that is
because neither of these classes is the opposite of CRAP or SORP, nor vice
versa.
[On this,
see also Note 1. I also return to
consider the above issues in more detail
later in this Essay.]
(8a)
These Criticisms Are Completely Misguided Since They Ignore "Opposite
Tendencies"
Considering now the first half of
Reply (8)
above, it could be pointed out that Lenin actually argued as
follows:
"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)." [Lenin
(1961),
pp.357-58. Italic emphases in the original; bold emphasis added. Quotation marks altered to
conform with
the conventions adopted at this site.]
As
one critic of my argument put things (this is in fact one of the few detailed
and carefully argued responses to my objections I have encountered in the last
sixteen years on the Internet):
"This is a complete misreading of the law of
unity and interpenetration of opposites. To borrow Rosa's symobology (sic), a
contradiction means in essence that an entity A contains internally
contradictory tendencies O* and O** which cause A to turn into not-A. The
struggle within A is between O* and O**, the internal tendency for it to stay
the same (O*) and the internal forces acting on it to change (O**). The whole
essence of dialectics is that O* and O** can not exist within a stable
equilibrium. Rosa quotes Lenin saying quite clearly that we are not dealing with
O* turning into O**, but with the working-out of 'internally contradictory
tendencies' within A.
"Now, Rosa may point out that some presentations
of dialectics may say that things 'struggle with and become' their opposites.
This is looking at the outside -- the change from A to not-A, because of the
internal tendencies O* and O**. Not-A does not yet exist as a realized entity;
it does not need to. The struggle is the internal struggle between O* (which
preserves A) and O** (which causes its transformation into not-A). In essence we
can say that O** is the seed of the unrealized entity not-A which exists within
the realized entity A, and A struggles (in the form of O*) against its
transformation into not-A (through the operation of O**).
"Now, Rosa's going to object that dialectics
pictures entities that 'struggle with' what they are going to become, which
presupposes that these entities already exist. But this is because she fails to
distinguish between the realized entities A and not-A, and the internal
tendencies O* and O**. When A exists, both O* and O** exist, and struggle with
one another. These may be united within a physical object such as a seed, which
contains structures that form its O* to keep it a seed, and yet has a tendency
O** to transform into its opposite, a seedling. Or they may be united in
capitalist society, such as the capitalist class O* which struggles with the
working class O** over the control of the means of production. The working out
of this contradiction is nothing less than the struggle for socialism....
"Again, Lenin talks about these tendencies
in phenomena and processes that elude your grasp. The above is precisely what I
have been illustrating with the difference between A (the entity) and O*/O**
(its contradictory tendencies) that you have not understood.
"Things do not change into their contradictions, which is what your
mock-refutation entails, they change into their opposites. That is, A does not
change into O**, but into not-A.
O* does not change into O** but into not-O*."
[Bold added.]
Readers will look long and hard and to no avail to find where I
say that things "change into their contradictions" -- but into their
contradictories, in this case into not-A, which is, after all, what the
DM-classics tell us, and it is something this critic admits anyway: "A does not
change into O**, but into not-A". So, this critic will need to
tell us why not-A
isn't the 'contradictory' of A. They will also look long and hard for a single quotation
from the DM-classics (certainly this critic offered none) that supports his
revisionist reading of DM.
It could be objected that the above critic did
in fact refer to
this quotation from Lenin:
"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)." [Lenin
(1961),
p.357. Bold emphasis alone added. Quotation marks altered to conform with the
conventions adopted at this site.]
However, when asked (several times), the above critic
refused to comment on this quotation from Lenin:
"Dialectics
is the teaching which shows how Opposites can be and
how they happen to be (how they become) identical, -- under
what conditions they are identical, becoming transformed into one another,
-- why the human mind should grasp these opposites not as dead, rigid, but as
living, conditional, mobile, becoming transformed into one another." [Lenin
(1961),
p.109. Bold emphasis alone added.]
According to the above, the opposite tendencies
within A -- that is,
"the internal tendency for it to stay the same (O*)"
and "the internal forces acting on it to change (O**)" must change into
one another. But, how can they do that if both these two tendencies
already exist? Small wonder then that this critic ignored Lenin's words, and
quoted the only part that seemed to him to agree with his 'revisionism'.
[However, see below.]
But, what about this part of the argument?
"Now, Rosa may point out that some presentations
of dialectics may say that things 'struggle with and become' their opposites.
This is looking at the outside -- the change from A to not-A, because of the
internal tendencies O* and O**. Not-A does not yet exist as a realized entity;
it does not need to. The struggle is the internal struggle between O* (which
preserves A) and O** (which causes its transformation into not-A). In essence we
can say that O** is the seed of the unrealized entity not-A which exists within
the realized entity A, and A struggles (in the form of O*) against its
transformation into not-A (through the operation of O**)."
Unfortunately, this ignores the philosophical
background to Hegel's theory (which Lenin accepted, even if he had to put it
"back on its feet"). That background was outlined
earlier.
It could be argued that this critic has answered the point
made by Lenin (that opposites are transformed into one another):
"Now, Rosa may point out that some presentations
of dialectics may say that things 'struggle with and become' their opposites.
This is looking at the outside -- the change from A to not-A, because of the
internal tendencies O* and O**."
And yet this fails to explain why
O* and O**
don't also change into one another. If they struggle with each other, then, according
to the DM-classics (several of them have been quoted again below), they should
turn into one another. Despite being pressed on this point many times, this
critic refused to respond. And, this isn't to look "at the outside". [Whatever
that means! More on that,
below.] The DM-classics are quite clear
when they tell us this process applies to "everything
existing", and that it is an "absolute":
"The law of the interpenetration of
opposites.... [M]utual penetration of polar opposites and transformation into
each other when carried to extremes...." [Engels (1954), pp.17,
62.]
"Dialectics, so-called objective
dialectics, prevails throughout nature, and so-called subjective dialectics,
dialectical thought, is only the reflection of the motion through opposites
which asserts itself everywhere in nature, and which by the continual
conflict of the opposites and their final passage into one another, or into
higher forms, determines the life of nature." [Ibid.,
p.211.]
"For a stage in the outlook on nature where all
differences become merged in intermediate steps, and all opposites pass into
one another through intermediate links, the old metaphysical method of
thought no longer suffices. Dialectics, which likewise knows no hard and fast
lines, no unconditional, universally valid 'either-or' and which bridges
the fixed metaphysical differences, and besides 'either-or' recognises also in
the right place 'both this-and that' and reconciles the opposites, is the sole
method of thought appropriate in the highest degree to this stage. Of course,
for everyday use, for the small change of science, the metaphysical categories
retain their validity." [Ibid.,
pp.212-13.]
"And so
every phenomenon, by the action of those same forces which condition its
existence, sooner or later, but inevitably, is transformed into its own opposite…."
[Plekhanov (1956),
p.77.]
"[Among the
elements of dialectics are the following:] [I]nternally contradictory
tendencies…in [a thing]…as the sum and unity of opposites…. [This involves] not
only the unity of opposites, but the transitions of every determination,
quality, feature, side, property into every other [into its opposite?]….
"In brief,
dialectics can be defined as the doctrine of the unity of opposites. This
embodies the essence of dialectics….
"The
splitting of the whole and the cognition of its contradictory parts…is the
essence (one of the 'essentials', one of the principal, if not the
principal, characteristic features) of dialectics….
"The
identity of opposites…is the recognition…of the contradictory, mutually
exclusive, opposite tendencies in all phenomena and processes of nature…. The
condition for the knowledge of all processes of the world in their
'self-movement,' in their spontaneous development, in their real life, is the
knowledge of them as a unity of opposites. Development is the 'struggle' of
opposites…. [This] alone furnishes the key to the 'self-movement' of everything
existing…. The
unity…of opposites is conditional, temporary, transitory, relative. The struggle
of mutually exclusive opposites is absolute, just as development and motion are
absolute…." [Lenin (1961), pp.221-22,
357-58.]
"'This harmony is precisely absolute Becoming
change, -- not becoming other, now this and then another. The essential thing is
that each different thing [tone], each particular, is different from another,
not abstractly so from any other, but from its other. Each particular
only is, insofar as its other is implicitly contained in its Notion....' Quite
right and important: the 'other' as its other, development into its opposite."
[Ibid., p.260. Lenin is here commenting on Hegel (1995a), pp.278-98; this
particular quotation coming from p.285.]
"Dialectics
is the teaching which shows how Opposites can be and
how they happen to be (how they become) identical, -- under
what conditions they are identical, becoming transformed into one another,
-- why the human mind should grasp these opposites not as dead, rigid, but as
living, conditional, mobile, becoming transformed into one another." [Ibid.,
p.109.]
"Of course, the fundamental proposition of
Marxian dialectics is that all boundaries in nature and society are conventional
and mobile, that there is not a single phenomenon which cannot under
certain conditions be transformed into its opposite." [Lenin (1916). Quoted
from
here.]
"Why is it
that '...the human mind should take these opposites not as dead, rigid, but as
living, conditional, mobile, transforming themselves into one another'? Because
that is just how things are in objective reality. The fact is that the unity or
identity of opposites in objective things is not dead or rigid, but is living,
conditional, mobile, temporary and relative; in given conditions, every
contradictory aspect transforms itself into its opposite....
"In speaking
of the identity of opposites in given conditions, what we are referring to is
real and concrete opposites and the real and concrete transformations of
opposites into one another....
"All
processes have a beginning and an end, all processes transform themselves into
their opposites. The constancy of all processes is relative, but the mutability
manifested in the transformation of one process into another is absolute." [Mao
(1961b),
pp.340-42.
In all of the above, bold emphases alone added; quotation marks have been altered to
conform with the conventions adopted at this site. Some paragraphs have been
merged.]
This critic
actually complained when I quoted such passages at him -- he said they weren't relevant!
--,
and we can now see why. They blow his 'revisionist' theory out of the water.
The above
passages are
from the classics, but we have seen that 'lesser' DM-clones also say the same things.
However, this critic is a fellow Trotskyist, so he might not be prepared to
accept what Mao had to say. But, as we can see, Mao was merely echoing Hegel,
Engels and Lenin. Anyway, other Trotskyists I have quoted also argue along the
same lines.
[One of the difficulties trying to
argue with DM-fans is that it is a waste of time quoting other DM-theorists on
such matters since they are unlikely to accept their authority unless they
hail from the very same party, sect, or tendency as they themselves -- or unless they have
been
'approved' by their very own DM-Orthodoxy-Committee. This is an unfortunate consequence of
the sectarian approach to 'orthodoxy' on the far-left. Hence,
if comrade, C, is, for instance, a Trotskyist, then, concerning theorist,
M, unless it can
be shown to C that M is a member of the very same Tendency or Party as C
(or is one of the 'approved theorists'),
C is highly unlikely to accept anything M says about DM -- unless,
of course, it happens to agree with their own quirky interpretation. The same is true,
mutatis
mutandis, if C is a Stalinist, Maoist, or Libertarian Communist
--
or, indeed, hails from some other wing of the myriad options on offer in
revolutionary and far-left politics these days.]
However, it could be argued that
several of the above passages
merely say that everything changes into its opposite; they don't say that they
change into one another. But, if everything changes into its opposite, and that
opposite is also part of "everything", then it, too, must change into
its opposite; that is, O*
must change into O**, and O** must change into O*.
Or, even more directly, if everything changes into its opposite, then O*
must change into not-O*. But, not-O* is the opposite of O*,
hence, not-O* must change into O*, too. If it doesn't, then
not everything changes into its opposite, and the DM-classics stand refuted.
This comrade
also failed to note that the DM-classics tell us all change is a result
of a struggle between 'dialectical opposites' and that these opposites change
into one another. So, when he says this:
"That is, A does not
change into O**, but into not-A. O* does not change into O** but into not-O*."
[Loc cit.]
That must
mean that O* struggles with not-O* if it changes into it.
But, he also
says this:
"The struggle within A is between O* and O**, the internal tendency for it to stay
the same (O*) and the internal forces acting on it to change (O**)."
[Loc cit.]
That can
only mean that O** and not-O* are one and the same! And if "the
struggle within A is between O* and O**" then O*
must change into O**, contrary to what he says
Quite
fittingly, one feels, this 'on the hoof' attempt to repair the DM-theory of
change is full of contradictions.
But, what of the argument itself? Are "tendencies"
causal agents? Can they cause other things to change? Aren't they (i.e., both these "tendencies" and the changes
they supposedly initiate) rather the result of other causes? For example,
no one supposes that the "tendency" for glass to break is what makes it break.
In fact, we appeal to inter-molecular forces within glass, coupled with an external shock,
when asked to explain why, say, a window shattered.
But, aren't these inner forces (to which
this critic referred) "tendencies", too? Aren't there such inner "tendencies"
in glass?
If there are, it is pertinent to ask what their causes are. Or, are these
inner "tendencies" in glass themselves uncaused? In
fact, if we appealed solely to "tendencies" to explain things, nothing would be explained.
(i) "Why did that glass break?" "It just has a tendency to do so."/"The
forces internal to glass have a tendency to react the way they do."
(ii) "Why is it
raining?" "It simply has a tendency to do so in this area."
(iii) "Why did those cops
attack the strikers?" "They have a tendency to defend the bosses."
Who would be
happy to accept any of those?
In which case, an appeal
to "tendencies" is no explanation at all. And, plainly, that is because we don't recognise
"tendencies" as causes in themselves, but as the consequence of other causes.
On the other hand, if we insist on
regarding an appeal to (opposing) "tendencies" as an explanation in its own
right for a particular phenomenon or series of events, that would only be because
we also viewed this word as a shorthand for other causes (known or unknown) at
work in the system. For example, consider the "tendency" of the rate of profit
to fall. Is that uncaused? But, no Marxist will argue this way. Indeed,
Marxists point to
several contributory causal factors that combine to make the rate of profit
tend to fall over time. Would any of us have been satisfied if Marx had simply said
there is a "tendency" for the rate of profit to fall and then made no attempt to
explain its cause or causes?
So, "tendencies" aren't
causes; they are the result of one or more other causes. In that case, this critic is
mistaken; an internal "tendency",
O*, can't "preserve A", nor can the opposite "tendency",
O**, cause a "transformation into not-A", since these "tendencies" are
derivative not causative. Indeed, as the DM-classics inform us, the cause of
these "tendencies" is the "unity and interpenetration of opposites", the
"contradiction" and the "struggle" that results from, or is
a consequence of, this
'dialectical' relation.
As Gollobin points out (quoting Engels):
"Opposites in a thing are not only mutually
exclusive, polar, repelling, each other; they also attract and interpenetrate
each other. They begin and cease to exist together.... These dual aspects
of opposites -- conflict and unity -- are like scissor blades in cutting, jaws
in mastication, and two legs in walking. Where there is only one, the process
as such is impossible: 'all polar opposites are in general determined by the
mutual action of two opposite poles on one another, the separation and
opposition of these poles exists only within their unity and interconnection,
and, conversely, their interconnection exists only in their separation and their
unity only in their opposition.' In fact, 'where one no sooner tries to hold on
to one side alone then it is transformed unnoticed into the other....'" [Gollobin
(1986), p.113; quoting Engels (1891a),
p.414. Bold emphases added.]
Indeed, as Lenin also noted, these 'internal
opposites' not only struggle with, they turn into, one another:
"Dialectics
is the teaching which shows how Opposites can be and
how they happen to be (how they become) identical, -- under
what conditions they are identical, becoming transformed into one another,
-- why the human mind should grasp these opposites not as dead, rigid, but as
living, conditional, mobile, becoming transformed into one another." [Lenin
(1961),
p.109. Bold emphasis alone added.]
But, this can't happen, and for reasons explored
several times throughout this Essay.
Well, perhaps it is the struggle between
these "opposite tendencies" that causes A to change? Here is my critic
again:
"When A exists, both O* and O** exist, and struggle with
one another. These may be united within a physical object such as a seed, which
contains structures that form its O* to keep it a seed, and yet has a tendency
O** to transform into its opposite, a seedling. Or they may be united in
capitalist society, such as the capitalist class O* which struggles with the
working class O** over the control of the means of production. The
working out of this contradiction is nothing less than the struggle for
socialism...."
But, the DM-classics are quite clear: when these
opposites struggle, they change into one another, repeatedly noted above.
[And it is no use this critic blithely
asserting that this idea is to be found
only in "some presentations" of the theory. It is found throughout the
DM-classics and other DM-texts, as we have seen. On the other hand, there is
only one passage that speaks about these "tendencies". Exactly why this
critic based his 'revisionist theory' on only one passage, all the while
ignoring other comments in that very same passage -- ignoring the
many I have quoted that fail to agree with his interpretation --, is revealing in
itself.]
So, O* must change into O**, and vice versa.
Otherwise, O* and O** will be changeless. If they
themselves have causal powers -- or we allow them to be causal powers in their
own right --, then
they, too, must also be objects (structures?), relations, or processes of some sort. In which case,
they, too,
must change (if we accept the repeated claim in the DM-classis that
all things change all the time). On the other hand, if they don't possess causal powers of their own, or they
aren't causal powers in their own right, then they can't cause
change, anyway. And, we can see this critic also assumes that to be so,
since he has stopped calling O* and O** "tendencies"; they have
become the "capitalist class" and the "working class", respectively.
Now, by no stretch of the imagination, are these two competing classes "tendencies".
What is more, they surely
change one another, and thereby change themselves. Their struggle is
the most important
cause, or one of the most important causes, of change in Capitalism. There are
reasons why these classes struggle with one another, and those reasons aren't "tendencies",
either.
Indeed, this critic admits they do
change:
"That is, A does not change into
O**, but
into not-A.
O*
does not change into O** but into not-O*."
And yet, if we ignore his impromptu 'theory',
which this critic has pulled out of thin air, and accept (for the purposes of
argument) the account given in the DM-classics, the above can only happen if O* struggles with not-O*,
and then turns into it,
which puts us exactly where we were several paragraphs back.
Attentive readers will also no doubt have noticed
that when this critic says "O*
does not change into O** but into not-O*"
he failed to tell us how that particular change comes about. First of all, even
though he adopted my "symbology", he failed to note that
I had defined
O**, for example, as not-O*. In which case, he has no explanation
why O* changes into not-O*. Are there further "tendencies" buried
inside
each "tendency"? That
must be the case if this critic's theory is to work; there must be a further "tendency" inside O* that
"preserves" it as O* -- let us
call this "tendency", "T*" -- just as there must be a "tendency" to turn it into not-O*
-- let us call it, "T**".
But, do these
inner inner "tendencies" go on forever, as a series of
"tendencies" within
"tendencies" within "tendencies"? It seems they must if all change
-- including each and every change experienced by such "tendencies", morphing
them into whatever they become -- is a result of
"internal tendencies". If not, these "tendencies"
themselves would be
forever changeless (since they would not have their own "inner tendencies"
to bring such changes about) -- if the
DM-classics are to be believed.
This seems to imply
that every single change must involve a potentially
infinite number of "tendencies" within "tendencies" within "tendencies". Let us
suppose it does imply this, and that each interaction between these inner
"tendencies" takes, say, 10-10
seconds to act in the way they do (i.e., each one takes one ten-billionth of a second
to act). Let us further suppose
that there is a series of, say, 10100 of these "tendencies"
within "tendencies" within "tendencies". Now, even though this number is huge
(i.e., it is one followed by a hundred
zeros, and it is even called a
Googol),
it is way short of infinity. But, let us suppose there is this number
of inner, inner "tendencies"
involved in each 'dialectical' change involving an
object or process developing into its opposite (i.e., A into not-A). If each such change (to these inner, inner
"tendencies") takes 10-10
seconds to complete, then any individual such change will take 10-10
x 10100 = 1090
seconds to complete. If a year is 60 x 60 x 24 x 365 = 31,536,000 seconds, then
each such change will take 1090/31,536,000
= 3.171 x 1083 years -- that is, approximately 3 followed by 83 zeros, years! If we now take
into consideration the
latest estimate for the age of the universe -- at approximately 14 billion
years (that is, fourteen followed by nine zeros) --, then each 'dialectical change' --
even
assuming there isn't an infinite number of these inner, inner
"tendencies" --
would take approximately 2 x 1073
(i.e., 2 followed by 73 zeros) times longer than the entire length of time that
has elapsed since the 'Big Bang'!
On the other hand,
of course, an infinite series of these inner, inner
"tendencies" will take an infinite number of years to complete. The
'dialectical' universe would
grind to a halt just as soon as it 'began'.
Alternatively, if there isn't an infinite
series of these
inner, inner "tendencies", then at some point there will be a
"tendency", Tk, that
changes into another "tendency", T(k+1) (or even into not-/non-Tk) that won't itself have
been caused, or initiated, by a struggle of still further inner, inner "tendencies". At this
point, the theory would collapse, since it would then be obvious that any change (every
one of which
must begin with this very last uncaused "tendency" for it to change) will have been uncaused,
and which would therefore just 'happen'. In that case, on this assumption, since any and all changes must
begin with this first 'uncaused change'/"tendency", 'dialectical change' won't ultimately be the result of
a struggle between 'opposites', but will just happen spontaneously, and will thus have
had no 'dialectical'
cause.
Either way,
the DM-classics would stand refuted, once more.
So, if this
objector's theory were correct, then either (i) Change would never have happened,
or would maybe have ground to a halt a billionth of a
second or so after the Big Bang (which itself wouldn't have happened!), or (ii)
Change isn't 'dialectical'.
Anyway, this revisionist theory ignores the fact that the
DM-classics tell us that such changes can only happen if O* and its
opposite, not-O*, struggle with one another, and then change into each
other. But, this can't happen since they both already exist.
Once more, we hit the same non-dialectical brick wall!
In which case, my refutation still stands.
[Readers are encouraged to read my lengthier reply to this
critic,
here. (That link is now dead!) Several other, related objections have been fielded
here, and
here.]
I
return again below to the "tendencies" within capitalism that this objector
thinks either "tend" to cause it to change or "tend" to make it remain the same (or,
indeed,
which "tend" to make it resist change).
(8B)
These Changes Only
Apply In "Certain Circumstances"
The idea behind the
second half of Reply (8) seems to be
an echo of the following point made by Mao:
"All
contradictory things are interconnected; not only do they coexist in a single
entity in given conditions, but in other given conditions, they also
transform themselves into each other. This is the full meaning of the
identity of opposites. This is what Lenin meant when he discussed 'how they
happen to be (how they become) identical -- under what conditions they
are identical, transforming themselves into one another...'.
"Why
is it that 'the human mind should take these opposites not as dead, rigid, but
as living, conditional, mobile, transforming themselves into one another'?
Because that is just how things are in objective reality. The fact is that the
unity or identity of opposites in objective things is not dead or rigid, but is
living, conditional, mobile, temporary and relative; in given
conditions, every contradictory aspect transforms itself into its opposite.
Reflected in man's thinking, this becomes the Marxist world outlook of
materialist dialectics. It is only the reactionary ruling classes of the past
and present and the metaphysicians in their service who regard opposites not as
living, conditional, mobile and transforming themselves into one another, but as
dead and rigid, and they propagate this fallacy everywhere to delude the masses
of the people, thus seeking to perpetuate their rule. The task of Communists is
to expose the fallacies of the reactionaries and metaphysicians, to propagate
the dialectics inherent in things, and so accelerate the transformation of
things and achieve the goal of revolution.
"In
speaking of the identity of opposites in given conditions, what we are referring
to is real and concrete opposites and the real and concrete transformations of
opposites into one another." [Mao (1961b),
p.340. Bold emphases added; quotation marks altered to conform with the
conventions adopted at this site.]
Lenin
appears to have agreed:
"The unity (coincidence, identity, equal action)
of opposites is conditional, temporary, transitory, relative." [Lenin
(1961),
p.358. Bold emphasis added.]
[There are
also passages in Engels's work, quoted earlier, which
look like they say the same sort
of thing.]
Hence, it could be
argued that the criticisms aired in this Essay to trade on the idea that
dialectical contradictions are abstractions of some sort, or that they operate
unconditionally, everywhere and at all times. As the above quotations
show, the unity and identity of opposites applies to real, material processes,
which have to be identified first (they can't just be invented, like the examples on show in
this Essay), they have to be studied dialectically so that the real contradictions
they contain can be understood in all their complexity, and as part of their
inter-relationships with other objects and processes taken as a whole. Moreover, these
contradictions operate conditionally and relatively. In which case, the criticisms
advanced in this Essay are completely misguided.
However, Lenin and Mao went on to point out the following
awkward facts:
"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." [Lenin (1961),
p.358. Bold emphasis added.]
"Why can an egg but not a stone be transformed
into a chicken? Why is there identity between war and peace and none between war
and a stone? Why can human beings give birth only to human beings and not to
anything else? The sole reason is that the identity of opposites exists only
in necessary given conditions. Without these necessary given conditions there
can be no identity whatsoever....
"Why
is it that in Russia in 1917 the bourgeois-democratic February Revolution was
directly linked with the proletarian socialist October Revolution, while in
France the bourgeois revolution was not directly linked with a socialist
revolution and the Paris Commune of 1871 ended in failure? Why is it, on the
other hand, that the nomadic system of Mongolia and Central Asia has been
directly linked with socialism? Why is it that the Chinese revolution can avoid
a capitalist future and be directly linked with socialism without taking the old
historical road of the Western countries, without passing through a period of
bourgeois dictatorship? The sole reason is the concrete conditions of the time.
When certain necessary conditions are present, certain contradictions arise
in the process of development of things and, moreover, the opposites contained
in them are interdependent and become transformed into one another; otherwise
none of this would be possible.
"Such
is the problem of identity. What then is struggle? And what is the relation
between identity and struggle?
"Lenin
said:
'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.'
"What
does this passage mean?
"All
processes have a beginning and an end, all processes transform themselves into
their opposites. The constancy of all processes is relative, but the mutability
manifested in the transformation of one process into another is absolute."
[Mao (1961b),
pp.341-42. Bold emphases added. Quotation marks also added to conform with the
conventions adopted at this site.]
So, the struggle and the transformation into opposites is
absolute, but the identity of opposites is conditional and relative.
According to Mao it seems that the identity of opposites supplies some sort of
constancy, while the struggle of opposites initiates change. [Unfortunately, Mao isn't at all clear,
so this might be to misrepresent him.]
However,
that interpretation is partially supported by the very
next thing Mao went on to say:
"There
are two states of motion in all things, that of relative rest and that of
conspicuous change. Both are caused by the struggle between the two
contradictory elements contained in a thing. When the thing is in the first
state of motion, it is undergoing only quantitative and not qualitative change
and consequently presents the outward appearance of being at rest. When the
thing is in the second state of motion, the quantitative change of the first
state has already reached a culminating point and gives rise to the dissolution
of the thing as an entity and thereupon a qualitative change ensues, hence the
appearance of a conspicuous change. Such unity, solidarity, combination,
harmony, balance, stalemate, deadlock, rest, constancy, equilibrium, solidity,
attraction, etc., as we see in daily life, are all the appearances of things in
the state of quantitative change. On the other hand, the dissolution of unity,
that is, the destruction of this solidarity, combination, harmony, balance,
stalemate, deadlock, rest, constancy, equilibrium, solidity and attraction, and
the change of each into its opposite are all the appearances of things in the
state of qualitative change, the transformation of one process into another.
Things are constantly transforming themselves from the first into the second
state of motion; the struggle of opposites goes on in both states but the
contradiction is resolved through the second state. That is why we say that the
unity of opposites is conditional, temporary and relative, while the struggle of
mutually exclusive opposites is absolute.
"When
we said above that two opposite things can coexist in a single entity and can
transform themselves into each other because there is identity between them,
we were speaking of conditionality, that is to say, in given conditions two
contradictory things can be united and can transform themselves into each other,
but in the absence of these conditions, they can't constitute a contradiction,
can't coexist in the same entity and can't transform themselves into one
another. It is because the identity of opposites obtains only in given
conditions that we have said identity is conditional and relative. We may add
that the struggle between opposites permeates a process from beginning to end
and makes one process transform itself into another, that it is ubiquitous, and
that struggle is therefore unconditional and absolute.
"The
combination of conditional, relative identity and unconditional, absolute
struggle constitutes the movement of opposites in all things." [Mao (1961b),
pp.342-43. Bold emphases added.]
Much of the difficulty interpreting Mao (and,
indeed, other dialecticians)
lies in the fact that they all like to talk in riddles, perhaps on the
assumption that enigmatic language will fool the unwary into mistaking it for
profundity. [As we will see in Essay Nine
Part Two, there were, and still
are, ideological reasons for such confused and bewildering rhetorical
flourishes -- which operate in a manner analogous to the confused and confusing things
Bishops, Monks, and Imams come out with. Stage magicians also know about the
efficacy of misdirection.]
Hence, in addition to the
perplexing passages above, we also find
the following:
"We
Chinese often say, 'Things that oppose each other also complement each other.'
[The original passage gives the source of this remark -- RL] That is, things opposed to
each other have identity. This saying is dialectical and contrary to
metaphysics. 'Oppose each other' refers to the mutual exclusion or the struggle
of two contradictory aspects. 'Complement each other' means that in given
conditions the two contradictory aspects unite and achieve identity. Yet
struggle is inherent in identity and without struggle there can be no identity.
"In
identity there is struggle, in particularity there is universality, and in
individuality there is generality. To quote Lenin, '...there is an absolute in
the relative.'" [Mao (1961b),
p.343. Quotation marks altered to conform with the conventions adopted at this
site.]
Mao was, of
course, quoting Lenin:
"The distinction between subjectivism
(scepticism, sophistry, etc.) and dialectics, incidentally, is that in
(objective) dialectics the difference between the relative and the absolute is
itself relative. For objective dialectics there is an absolute
within the relative. For subjectivism and sophistry the relative is only
relative and excludes the absolute." [Lenin (1961),
p.358. Italic emphases in the original.]
Ok, well
good luck trying to make sense of
any of that!
Be this as it may, let us
assume that
the above criticism is
valid,
and that all such 'dialectical change' is relative and conditional --
even assuming that, the result will be no
different.
Consider, therefore, the following modified argument:
Let us suppose that
object/process, A, is comprised of two
"internal contradictory opposites", or "opposite tendencies", O*
and O**,
and that it changes, but only under conditions, C, as a result.
However, even under these conditions, O*
can't
itself change into O**
since O** already exists! If O** didn't already exist then, according to this
theory, O* couldn't change at all, for there would be no opposite to bring that
about.
[Of course, the other complications
explored
earlier now only need to have the clause "which change only under conditions, C" added
in order to make them work, too -- but, I'll refrain from doing that, otherwise this Essay will
become even more unwieldy. That unpleasant task is left to enthusiastic readers.]
The same sort of adjustment will also take care of this part of the
above objection:
"The
unity and identity of opposites applies to real, material processes, which have
to be identified first (they can't just be invented, like the examples on show
in this Essay), they have to be studied dialectically so that the real contradictions
they contain can be understood in all their complexity, and as part of their
inter-relationships with other objects and processes taken as a whole."
In that case:
Let us suppose that
real, concrete, material object/process, A -- proven to be such by a
thoroughly dialectical, all-round analysis -- is comprised of two
"internal contradictory opposites", or "opposite tendencies", O*
and O**,
and that it changes only under conditions C as a result.
However, even under these conditions, O*
can't
itself change into O**
since O** already exists! If O** didn't already exist then, according to this
theory, O* couldn't change at all, for there would be no opposite to bring that
about.
Once more,
the same dialectically-debunked denouement emerges
at the end.
Of course, none of this denies
the reality of
change; it is just that DM can't account for it.
Alternatively,
once more, if DM were true, change would be impossible.
Howsoever we try to re-package this 'Law', we end up
crashing into the same non-dialectical brick wall.
Let it go comrades! Your defective
theory of change can't be made to work whatever repairs are attempted, or
whatever modifications are hastily grafted onto it!
Social
Change
If DM Were Correct,
Capitalism Couldn't In Fact Change
[On this, also see Note 1.]
The above 'problems'
aren't confined to changes that involve water molecules, tables or assorted furry mammals;
they surface in a different form with respect to the structures
and processes in 'Materialist Dialectics', in social development, too.
For example, as we are about to see:
If, according to the
DM-classics,
(a) All things change into their dialectically-paired
opposites,
and,
(b) All change is caused by the
'dialectical tension' between 'dialectical opposites', which throws them periodically into struggle,
and if,
(c) Capitalism is
ever to change into Socialism,
then
it turns out that Socialism must now exist somewhere for that to happen!
As far as revolutionaries are concerned,
that observation alone means that not only is DM of no use, it is worse than useless.
But, is the above controversial
inference valid?
In order to see that it is indeed valid, it might be a
good idea to examine the connection between the Capitalist Relations of Production [CRAP], and Socialist
Relations of Production [SORP] --, but, more pointedly, the
link between the Forces and
Relations of Production [FP and RP, respectively], where it is patently obvious that
none of these change into the other
(their 'other', their 'opposite'),
despite what the
DM-classics had to say.
We have already had occasion to quote
the DM-classics, and 'lesser' DM-texts to the effect that they promote (a) and
(b) above; here now is Marx himself extending this idea to take in the FP and the
RP:
"In the social
production of their life, men enter into definite
relations that are indispensable and independent of their will,
relations of production which correspond to a definite
stage of development of their material
productive forces. The sum total of these relations of
production constitutes the economic structure of society, the real foundation,
on which rises a legal and political superstructure and to which correspond
definite forms of social consciousness.
The
mode
of production of material life conditions the social,
political and intellectual life process in general. It is not the
consciousness of men that determines their being, but,
on the contrary, their social being that determines their consciousness.
"At a
certain stage of their development, the material productive forces of society
come in conflict with the existing relations of production, or -- what is
but a legal expression for the same thing -- with the
property
relations within which they have been at work hitherto. From forms of
development of the productive forces these relations turn into their fetters.
Then begins an
epoch of social revolution. With the change of the economic foundation the
entire immense superstructure is more or less rapidly transformed. In
considering such transformations a distinction should always be made between the
material transformation of the economic conditions of production, which can be
determined with the precision of natural science, and the legal, political,
religious, aesthetic or philosophic -- in short, ideological forms in which men
become conscious of this conflict and fight it out. Just as our opinion of an
individual is not based on what he thinks of himself, so can we not judge of
such a period of transformation by its own consciousness; on the contrary,
this consciousness must be explained rather from the contradictions of material
life, from the existing conflict between the social productive forces and the
relations of production." [Marx
(1968), pp.181-82. Bold emphases added. Several
paragraphs merged.]
[I will return to the above
quotation and this specific topic presently.]
For the purposes of argument, let us assume that SORP
doesn't actually exist anywhere on earth right now.
The problem is that, given
the above DM-theses,
if CRAP is to change into SORP, SORP must exist alongside it in the here-and-now for CRAP to change into it, by struggling with it!
[For those
comrades who think there are places on earth where SORP does
exist, then all that needs pointing out is that there was a time when they
didn't exist. In that case, they should just project the argument developed here
back to that time in history, and the point will, one hopes, become clear to
them. SORP will have had to exist before it existed if it were capable of
changing CRAP into SORP!]
But, if SORP already exists,
it can't have come from CRAP (its 'opposite') since CRAP can only change into
SORP because of a struggle with its own opposite -- namely, SORP -- which
doesn't yet exist since CRAP hasn't changed into it yet!
That is, unless we are to suppose SORP exists before it exists!
The same comments
apply to "potential SORP" -- or even to some sort of "tendency to produce
SORP", be this a 'sublated' "tendency", or indeed a 'sublated'
causal actuality -- it matters not.
In order to see this, let us call "potential SORP",
"PSORP", and a 'sublated' "tendency to
produce SORP", "TSORP".
To repeat: according to the DM-classics,
if PSORP is to change into SORP, it has to:
(i) Struggle with its opposite (whatever
that is), and,
(ii) Change into that opposite -- or,
(iii) Certain tendencies within either
or both of these (i.e., PSORP and its opposite) must change them from 'within' (but we have already seen that that
particular option is a dead-end)
So, PSORP has to both struggle with and
change into SORP. But, as we have seen, that means that SORP must already exist, otherwise
PSORP will have nothing with which it could struggle. And, if that is so, PSORP
can't change
into it since it already exists!
Let us
assume that the 'dialectical opposite' of PSORP isn't SORP (and yet, SORP must
be that opposite otherwise PSORP won't change into it!), but something else,
call it PSORP*.
In that
case, if the DM-classics are to be believed, PSORP must struggle with PSORP* and
then change into it. However, as we have seen countless times, if PSORP* already
exists, PSORP can't change into it, since it is already there! And yet, PSORP*
must coexist with PSORP otherwise they can't struggle with one another and hence
change.
The problem
here is that PSORP was introduced to explain how SORP itself came about, but
SORP can't have come from PSORP since PSORP struggles with PSORP*, not SORP. So,
it seems that SORP must pop into existence from nowhere.
The same comments
apply to any tendency in CRAP to produce SORP. If we call that tendency, "TSORP",
we hit the same problem: if TSORP is to change into SORP, SORP must already
exist, otherwise no struggle can take place between them, and if it already
exists TSORP can change into it!
But, let us suppose there is both a
tendency in Capitalism to produce SORP (howsoever that is understood), and a tendency
to oppose it.
Let us call these "TCRAP" and "TCRAP*", respectively.
Once again, if these are 'dialectical
opposites' -- always assuming they aren't the only changeless
'objects', structures, or processes in the entire universe --, they can only change by struggling with, and then changing into, one another -- that is, if the DM-classics are
to be believed.
However, they can't
change into one another since they already exist!
But struggle
between them was supposed to lead to the emergence of SORP -- and yet TSORP*
struggles with TSORP**, and turns into that with which it has struggled (according
to the DM-classics); that is TSORP* changes into TSORP**, not into SORP!
Yet again, we slam into the same non-dialectical brick wall.
Anyway, are we
really supposed to believe that the tendencies in capitalism to produce
socialism, and the tendencies that oppose it must change into one another
-- for example, that, say, the working class (and/or the economic forces that
drive workers into struggle) must change into the Capitalist Class/Police/Courts (and/or the forces that oppose workers' struggles, or which impel,
motivate or enable bosses to
attack workers), and the Capitalist
Class/Police/Courts (and/or the forces that oppose workers' struggles, or which
impel, motivate or enable bosses to attack workers) must change into the working class
(and/or the economic forces that move workers into struggle)?
But, that is what the
DM-Classics assure us must always happen.
You guessed
it:
the very same
non-dialectical brick wall blocks our path.
Let us now assume
that it is TCRAP that changes CRAP into SORP; that is, there is a tendency,
or group of tendencies,
in Capitalism that causes CRAP to change -- we can chose to label these the falling rate of
profit and the proletariat -- or anything else deemed to be relevant. But, if that is so, TCRAP must
struggle with and change into CRAP, not SORP! That is because, once
more, the
DM-Worthies tell us that everything in the entire universe changes into that
with which it has struggled, its 'opposite'. Moreover, it is reasonably clear that TCRAP,
whatever it is, must exist
somewhere in this universe if it is to effect change.
In that case, and once again: the
only alternative is that SORP must have popped into existence from nowhere --,
or it must have always existed --, if DM-theorists are correct.
It
could be objected that it is the class war that will change society in the above
manner -- but more specifically the struggle between the proletariat and the
capitalist class. I fully agree --, but if the DM-classics are to be believed, these
two classes will change into one another! The working class would become the
capitalist class!
[I have
dealt with the above objection more fully,
here. Readers are directed there for more details.]
Once more, this isn't to deny change, nor is it to suggest that the present author doesn't want to see the back of
CRAP
and the establishment of SORP;
but if DM were correct, that will not only never
happen, it couldn't happen.
To be sure, in the real world very
material workers struggle against equally material Capitalists (and/or their
lackeys), but neither of these turn into one another, and they can't help change CRAP
into SORP, either, since neither of these is the 'dialectical opposite' of CRAP or SORP, nor vice
versa.
[Readers
are directed back to my general discussion of such 'tendencies',
here.]
Forces And Relations Of Production
Of course, the above
problems afflict the social and material relations constitutive of each and
every Mode of Production. We find Dialectical Marxists often asserting things
like the following:
"Throughout the mature Marx's economic works the idea that a contradiction
between forces and relations of production underlies the dynamic of the
capitalist mode of production is present. More generally, such a contradiction
accounts for history existing as a succession of modes of production, since it
leads to the necessary collapse of one mode and its supersession by another....
The power
of the contradiction between relations and forces to act as the motor of history
is also stated in the same place: 'at a certain stage of their development, the
material productive forces of society come in conflict with the existing
relations of production...within which they have been at work hitherto'; and
'from forms of development of the productive forces these relations turn into
their fetters', thereby initiating social revolution." [Harris
(1985), p.178, quoting
Marx (1968), pp.181-82. Paragraphs merged.]
[There are, of course,
many other DM-theorists who say the same sort of thing; I have quoted several of
them in Note 1b.]1b
If this is indeed a 'dialectical
contradiction', then the Forces and Relations of Production [FP and RP,
respectively] must also be 'dialectical opposites', and if that is so, they
must (i) Struggle with one another, and (ii) Change into each other -- if the
DM-classics are
to be believed. Is it really the case that relations of ownership,
exploitation and control will struggle with and then change into labour power,
factories, motorways, airports, mines..., and vice versa?
If so, no one seems to
have noticed this remarkable struggle or the subsequent transformation.
Can Cats Defy This Iron Law?
It is worth noting at the start that the relevancy of the comments
in this section depend on what dialecticians mean by "internal opposite".
As pointed out in an earlier Essay, they sometimes mean
by "internal", "spatially-internal", at other times they mean "logically-internal".
[This
ambiguity has been examined in Essay Eight
Part One, but
in more detail in Seven
Part One.
Concerning the serious difficulties this equivocation creates for DM-theorists, see
here. We have also
seen that an objector
considered earlier seemed to want to view these "opposites" spatially, when
he spoke about considering the dialectical process externally -- i.e., "at the
outside".]
Furthermore, it is plain that this
particular equivocation
has also arisen because of an inappropriate
organicist metaphor
dialecticians have also borrowed from Hegel. Clearly, the various organs and other
parts of an animal or plant are spatially-internal to it --, and some might even be logically-internal, too (even though those organs/parts aren't logically-internal, or
logically-related, to each other, as noted above), although I prefer to call
this a grammatical connection. However, when we move
beyond Biology this metaphor loses all of its seeming plausibility, where the
above equivocation (between the spatial-, and the logical-meaning of "internal") creates serious problems -- indeed,
as we
are about to find out.
So,
as we have seen, if cats change, as surely they do, then,
according to the DM-classics, they
must both struggle with and change into their opposites. But, where are these 'opposite cats'
with which they are supposed to be struggling? And, how
do they feature in and cause the changes they allegedly bring about in the original
animal? On the other hand, if they don't do this, does this mean
that feline parts of nature aren't
subject to dialectical law? Is this why cats have
at least
nine lives?
Figure One: Another Dialectical Catastrophe?
Engels did at least try to
address a few of the fatal flaws in his theory. He argued that we must learn from nature what the actual
properties of objects and processes are in each case, and hence, presumably,
what each can legitimately change into. [Admittedly, he made this point in
relation to the First and Third of his 'Laws' (the change of 'Quantity into
Quality' and the 'Negation of the Negation', respectively), but there is no reason to suppose he would have denied this of
his Second 'Law' (the 'Unity and Interpenetration of Opposites').] In addition, he pointed out that 'dialectical negation'
isn't simple annihilation. [Engels (1954),
pp.62-63, and (1976),
p.181.] I quoted the second of these two passage
earlier in this Essay.]
However,
nature and society are annoyingly ambiguous in relation to
what we can learn from them. For example, lumps of iron ore can turn, or be turned into,
a host of
different things with or without the input of human labour, etc. These include
the following:
cars, car parts, rolling stock, aeroplane components, ships, submarines,
magnets, surgical equipment, surgical appliances, cutlery, kitchen utensils, scaffolding,
pipes, chains,
bollards, barriers, cranes, plant machinery,
pumps, tubes, engines (diesel, petrol and electric), ornaments, jewellery, steel girders,
guns, spears, swords, axes, machetes, tanks, shells, bullets, bombs, rockets,
missiles, sheet metal, tools,
instruments, wire, springs, furniture, doors, locks, keys, gates, grates,
manhole covers, lifts, escalators, anchors, railings, railroad tracks, bridges, wheels,
ball bearings, zips,
bars, handcuffs, iron filings, rivets, nails, screws, staples, steel wool, helmets,
armour, artwork, and dietary supplements --, alongside other assorted naturally occurring
and
artificial substances, such as,
haemoglobin,
cytochrome
nitrogenase,
hematite,
magnetite,
taconite,
ferrofluids, countless ferrous and ferric compounds (including
rust, Ferrous and
Ferric Sulphides,
Fools Gold,
etc., etc.) --, to name just a few.
Are we really supposed to believe that all of these reside inside
each lump of iron (if we appeal to the 'spatial view' of "internal opposites",
here)? Are each 'logically' connected with iron ore that has just been mined as
an Hegelian
unique "other"? Are we to suppose there are 'inner tendencies' quietly humming away in each
block of iron ore just waiting for the chance to turn into a pair of handcuffs,
a tea pot,
or a manhole cover?
Are
we really supposed to believe that all of these reside inside
each lump of iron -- if we appeal to the 'spatial interpretation' of "internal opposites",
here? They would surely have to do so if "internal opposite" des
indeed mean "spatially
internal". Alternatively, are each of the above examples 'logically' connected with
some iron ore that has just been mined
(as
an single Hegelian unique "other"
-- or an entire range of them)
so that the ore can turn into, or be turned into, one or more of the items
listed above?
Are we really meant to suppose there are 'inner tendencies' quietly humming away in each
block of iron ore just waiting for the chance to turn into a pair of handcuffs,
a tea pot, or a manhole cover?
On the other hand, if we adopt the 'logical view' of "internal opposites"
once more,
how can all of the above be logically-related to iron ore as its unique
"other"? If not,
what exactly is the point
of this 'Law' if iron can change, or be changed, into any of the above
objects/compounds? If each one isn't the
unique "other" of iron
ore, and yet iron ore can be turned into any of them, doesn't that fact alone
suggest that iron
ore possesses no unique 'other', and hence,
according to
Hegel and Lenin, it can't change?
Alternatively,
if we now combine the 'spatial view' with the 'logical interpretation' of "internal
opposites", the following question now confronts us: If these items don't in fact exist
inside
each lump of iron (the 'spatial view') -- or, even if they don't confront each other as antagonistic external or 'logical'
opposites -- how is it possible for human labour and natural forces to turn iron
ore into one or more of the above objects/substances while obeying 'dialectical Law'? Does human
labour work with or against these 'dialectical Laws'? If a lump of iron doesn't (logically or spatially)
'contain' or 'imply', say, a carving knife, how is it possible for human beings to change
iron ore into carving knives, dialectically? Or, are
there changes in nature and society that aren't governed by such 'laws'?
Are these
Iron-DM-'Laws'
not applicable to iron itself?
Exactly which opposites are
('logically'/physically) united in, or with, any specific lump of iron ore?
Furthermore,
and perhaps worse, if,
according to the
DM-classics, objects and process change because they struggle with and then
turn into their opposites -- that is, they turn into that with which they have
struggled --, then a lump of iron ore must both struggle with and turn into the
frying pan it is to become, and the latter must similarly turn onto iron ore!
But how can the ore turn into a frying pan of that pan is already there? If it
weren't already there, how can the iron ore struggle with it, and hence change?
When was
the last time you saw a frying pan turn back into iron ore after struggling with
it?
Of course, if none of the above are the case
(which they aren't!), then we can surely ignore the DM-classics which tell us
that such miracles must happen every day.
Does Nature Work In Pairs?
It could be objected that the above
considerations are ridiculous and completely misconstrue the nature of this
'Law'. No one supposes
that cats and nuggets of iron ore contain their opposites. Indeed, this is how
Woods and Grant explained things:
"Nature seems to work in pairs. We have the
'strong' and the 'weak' forces at the subatomic level; attraction and repulsion;
north and south in magnetism; positive and negative in electricity; matter and
anti-matter; male and female in biology, odd and even in mathematics; even the
concept of 'left and right handedness in relation to the spin of subatomic
particles.... There are two kinds of matter, which can be called positive and
negative. Like kinds repel and unlike attract." [Woods and Grant (1995),
p.65.]2
But, if nature works
(at least) in pairs,
what is the paired opposite of a cat that causes it to change?
If cats have no opposites as such, then these feline-oppositional parts of nature (at least)
don't
exist, or don't interact, in 'dialectical pairs'. And, whatever applies to cats must surely apply to countless other
objects and processes that change, too. What then are the external and/or internal opposites of things like the
following: Giraffes, Snowy Owls, Mountain Gorillas, Daffodils, Oak trees,
Chinese Puzzles, broom
handles, craters on the Moon, waste paper, copies of Anti-Dühring,
any
ten grains of sand in the Gobi Desert, the four
thousand-and-first moth to hatch in
Cook County, Illinois, USA, in May 2012 -- or
the question mark at the end of this sentence (on your screen, not mine)? All of these are subject to
change, but not, it seems, as a result of any obvious oppositional pairing, tension
or 'struggle' with anything unique to each.
Is a question mark, for example, really locked in a life-and-death struggle
with other punctuation marks? Or, even with its
Hegelian 'other'? But, what is
the 'other'
of a "?"? Or an "!"? Or even a "-"?
What should we
say about things like broom handles and copies
of Trotsky's IDM? Do they change because of the 'dialectical' tension
created by their own inner (or outer) 'logical' opposites? But, what could they possibly be? Is the
opposite of IDM, Mein Kampf or Stalin's Problems of Leninism?
Could it even be these Essays?
In view of the fact
that the
Dialectical
Classics tell us
that such opposites "turn into one another", does this mean that IDM will
change into one of my
Essays? Well, perhaps TAR will, since my work was originally aimed
specifically at that book. In which case, had this work not been
undertaken, would TAR and IDM have been eternally changeless works?
[IDM = In Defense of
Marxism (i.e., Trotsky (1971)); TAR = The Algebra of Revolution (i.e., Rees (1998)); RIRE =
Reason In Revolt (i.e., Woods and Grant (1995/2007)).]
Hence, the above passage from RIRE
is no help at all in resolving this problem.
It could be objected that in the case
of cats (and, indeed, some of the other objects listed above), the opposites concerned are plainly "male" and "female".
But, even if that were so, these are manifestly not "internal opposites", and neither are
they "internally related" to each other -- they are causally,
historically and biologically related. Sexual
diversity isn't a logical feature of reality -- if it were, there would
be no hermaphrodites or
asexual
organisms. So, change in this case can't be the result of any 'internal contradictions' between male and female organisms.
Many female organisms could very well still exist (and thrive if they reproduced
parthenogenetically)
even if every male organism was wiped from the face of the earth. This shows
that the link between males and females isn't logical. The one doesn't
imply the other such that they have to co-exist, as is the case with the proletariat and the
bourgeoisie (or so we are told).
[On
Parthenogenesis, see Prasad (2012).]
As is well-known, parthenogenetic reproduction proceeds without the
intervention of the male; it is found in the following right-wing
and shamelessly reactionary
species: water fleas, aphids, honey bees, lizards, salamanders, nematode worms, turkeys,
several species of
spider (this links to a PDF), and some
varieties of fish. Apparently, it can also be
artificially induced in both fish and amphibians. Indeed, we read this from the BBC (in an article entitled "Lesbian
Lizards"):
"Every individual in this whip-tailed lizard
population is female -- genetically the same female. Every time they lay eggs, a
clutch of new female clones is born. The lizards live in the deserts of Arizona
and New Mexico, and must be perfectly adapted to their surroundings. As a
result, they don't want their good genes diluted by the involvement of males.
The females have opted to hang on to their favourable genes and have driven the
males to extinction. But the ghost of the male haunts their life nevertheless.
Near laying, all the virgins need the stimulation which a male would provide to
make them ovulate. With none around, the role is played by a female. In every
sense she apes being a male. Driven by a surge of the male hormone
testosterone,
she temporarily forsakes her true gender -- and goes through the motions of
copulating." [The film can be viewed
here.
Accessed 21/11/2011. Link added.]
As
well as this:
"Researchers have bred a
new species of all-female lizard, mimicking a process
that has happened naturally in the past but has never
been directly observed. 'It's recreating the
events that lead to new species,' said cell biologist
Peter Baumann of the Stowers Institute for Medical
Research, whose new species is described May 3 in the
Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
'It relates to the question of how these unisexual
species arise in the first place.'
"Female-only species that
reproduce by cloning themselves -- a process called
parthenogenesis, in which embryos develop without
fertilization -- were once considered dead-end
evolutionary flukes. But in the last decade,
unisexuality has been
found in more than 80 groups
of fish, amphibian and reptiles. It might not be such a
dead end after all.
Best-known among all
unisexual species are Aspidoscelis, the
whiptail lizards of southwestern North America, of which
7 of 12 species are unisexual. Genetic studies suggest
their unisexuality emerged from historical unions of two
sexually-reproducing lizards belonging to
closely-related species, the hybrid offspring of which
possessed mutations needed for parthenogenesis.
"In two of the unisexual
whiptails, that seems to have been enough; they
immediately went all-female. In the other five, it took
another round of traditional sexual mating. Those
species are so-called triploids, bearing two sets of
chromosomes from the original mother species and one
from the father.
But for all the evidence
of these historical hybridizations, it's been remarkably
difficult to observe in the present. When new hybrid
whiptails have been found in nature, they've invariably
proved sterile. The same goes for laboratory efforts,
including
one that lasted for 29 years
and involved 230 lizards from nine species. Researchers
were left with a conundrum: Though adding chromosomes is
clearly possible, it's a disaster whenever seen.
"'There are recognized
species for which that hybridization event occurred
100,000 years ago,' said Baumann. 'But there are also
hybrids that have arisen in the last five years. If you
go to New Mexico and look around, you can find them.
They've also arisen in the lab, but they're sterile.' There was, however, one
historical hint of hybrid success. In 1967, a captive
A. exsanguis female, triploid and
parthenogetic, successfully mated with a male A.
inornata. One female offspring laid eggs. They
weren't cared for, but Baumann and colleagues suspected
that they might have developed.
"In the new study they
revisited that experiment, again mating A. exsanguis
with A. inornata. This time, it conclusively
worked. Six eggs were recovered and incubated, producing
four hybrid females. All went on to clone themselves.
Those offspring are now into their fourth generation,
fully healthy and representing 'a proof of principle'
for how new parthenogenetic lizards could evolve in
nature.
"Baumann's team hasn't
yet decided what to name their new species, which as of
March numbered 68 females with more eggs on the way.
More pressing than a name is continued study. 'What is
the fundamental difference between these lizards and
every hybrid that's been examined in the last 40 years?'
he said. It's a question with
multiple implications. Baumann's expertise is in cell
division; comparing sexual cell division, known as
meosis, in the new species with other, infertile lizards
could reveal as-yet-unappreciated mechanisms. 'By
comparing and contrasting meiosis in different species,
I've gained an appreciation for how little we know about
meiosis in any organism,' he said.
"If this laboratory
hybridization proves analogous to naturally-occurring
moments of hybridization, it could support the notion
that unisexuality is not an evolutionary dead end.
Baumann's lizards have effectively just received an
influx of genetic mutations, providing variety
unavailable to self-cloners. He wonders if some lizard
lineages might actually alternate between sexual and
unisexual reproduction, depending on the pressures of
each era.
Is it really the case
that, once a species is unisexual, it's set in stone,
and it will be that way until it dies out?' he said. 'Or
is it there a chance that material in unisexual lineages
could find its way back?'" [Quoted from
here; written May 2011, accessed 21/11/2011. Quotation
marks altered to conform with the conventions adopted at
this site. Several paragraphs merged.]
Looks like lizards, too, can outwit (or be coaxed into
outwitting) this rather whimpish 'Law'.
Indeed, as can some
species of shark:
"An international team of
scientists
surprised the
world by reporting that female hammerhead sharks can
reproduce without males through parthenogenesis, or
'virgin birth'. It was previously believed that sharks
reproduced only sexually.
Researchers from Ireland
and the United States performed genetic tests on a baby
hammerhead born in an Omaha, Nebraska aquarium in 2001.
The three occupants of the tank were all females who
were captured as babies and had never been introduced to
a male in captivity, which is what prompted the
curiosity. The genetic tests proved that there was no
'DNA of male origin' in the baby hammerhead.
"Female sharks are able
to
store sperm for months, if not
years, so
there was some suspicion that the mother had mated prior
to be taken into captivity, but the repeated DNA tests
apparently ruled out this possibility.
While useful at times,
reproduction through parthenogenesis carries risks for
the species, as it reduces the genetic diversity of
offspring and makes them more prone to being wiped out
by disease. Given this new data, scientists speculate
that parthenogenesis occurs in sharks only rarely --
when male mates are hard to find.
"The new discovery poses
a dilemma: mammals are now the only major vertebrate
group where parthenogenesis has not been observed. Are
they (we) incapable, or have scientists just not
looked?" [Quoted from
here; written May 2007, accessed 21/11/2011. Quotation
marks altered to conform with the conventions adopted at
this site. Some links added. Several paragraphs merged.]
Countless
other organisms reproduce
asexually,
showing admirable contempt both for the
UO and the
NON.
Since the above was written, animals
seem to have taken another sharp turn to the right, for now we read this from
the BBC:
"By Jeremy Coles,
BBC
Nature
"Virgin
births have been reported in wild
vertebrates for the first time.
Researchers
in the US caught pregnant females from two
snake species and genetically analysed the
litters. That proved the
North American pit-vipers reproduced
without a male, a phenomenon called
facultative parthenogenesis
that has
previously been found only in captive
species. Scientists say the findings could
change our understanding of animal
reproduction and vertebrate evolution.
It was
thought to be extremely rare for a normally
sexual species to reproduce asexually, a
process known as facultative
parthenogenesis. First identified in
domestic chickens, such 'virgin births' have
been reported in recent years in a few
snake, shark, lizard and bird species.
Crucially though, all such virgin births
have occurred in captivity, to females kept
away from males.
"Virgin
births in vertebrates in general have been
viewed as 'evolutionary novelties', said
Warren Booth, from the University of Tulsa,
Oklahoma, US. Professor Booth is lead author
of a paper published in the Royal Society's
Biological Letters
that challenges this label. He and his
collaborators investigated virgin births in
wild populations of two geographically
separated and long-studied species of snake.
They captured pregnant
copperhead
and
cottonmouth
female pit-vipers from the
field, where males were present. The snakes
gave birth, allowing the scientists to study
the physical and genetic characteristics of
the litters. Of the 22 copperheads, the
scientists found one female that must have
had a virgin birth. Another single virgin
birth occurred within the 37 cottonmouth
litters.
"'I think the
frequency is what really shocked us,' said
Prof Booth. 'That's between 2.5 and 5% of
litters produced in these populations may be
resulting from parthenogenesis. That's quite
remarkable for something that has been
considered an evolutionary novelty,' he
said.... A virgin
birth, or parthenogenesis, is when an egg
grows and develops without being fertilised
by sperm. It results in offspring that only
have their mother's genetic material; no
fatherly contribution is required. This is
not uncommon in invertebrates such as
aphids, bees and ants.
"It also
happens in a few all-female species of
lizard; geckos and whiptails for example.
But here it occurs across a generation; all
female reproduce asexually via a process
called
obligate parthenogenesis. But asexual
reproduction by a normally sexual vertebrate
species is still rare, having been reported
in less than 0.1% of species. It was only
in the mid 1990s that virgin births began to
be documented in captive snakes, followed by
a captive giant lizard in 2006 and a captive
shark in 2007. To date this now includes
around 10 species of snakes including a
couple of boas, and a python, four species
of shark, and several
monitor lizards, including the
endangered
Komodo dragon. Recently the
zebra finch
and
Chinese painted quail were added to the
list. All were kept in isolation in
unnatural conditions and away from any
males. So to find asexual reproduction in
two species of snake in the wild on their
first attempt was 'astounding', according to
Prof Booth and his collaborators. Virgin
births should no longer be viewed as 'some
rare curiosity outside the mainstream of
evolution,' he said....
"It remains
unclear whether the female snakes actively
select to reproduce this way, or whether the
virgin births are triggered by some other
factor, such as a virus or bacterial
infection. 'Any answer is pure speculation
at this point,' says Prof Booth. In
captivity, two sharks, and three snakes,
have been shown to have had multiple virgin
births, producing more than one litter via
facultative parthenogenesis. As yet, it also
remains unclear whether the offspring of
these wild virgin births can themselves go
on to have normal, or virgin births of their
own. In captive snakes studied so far,
offspring have so far not been proved
viable, that is capable of surviving and
reproducing.
"However,
earlier
this
year
Prof
Booth
and
colleagues
reported
that a
checkered
gartersnake
that has
had
consecutive
virgin
births,
appears
to have
produced
viable
male
offspring.
Parthenogenically
born
copperheads
and
cottonmouths
are also
currently
being
raised
and 'in
the next
two to
three
years we
will
know if
they are
indeed
viable,'
said
Prof
Booth.
'If
they
cannot
survive
and
reproduce,
then
this is
a
reproductive
dead-end.
However,
if they
are
healthy
and can
reproduce,
that
opens an
entirely
new
avenue
for
research,'
he said.
"Being
able to
switch
from
sexual
to
asexual
reproduction
could be
advantageous;
in the
absence
of males
a female
could
still
give
birth
and
start a
new,
albeit
inbred,
population.
Her
genes
could
still be
passed
on via
her
fertile
male
offspring.
Scientists
believe
that
facultative
parthenogenesis
is more
common
in some
lineages
such as
reptiles
and
sharks.
However
it is
unlikely
that
similar
virgin
births
will be
found
among
placental
mammals,
which
include
all the
mammals
aside
from the
platypus
and
echidnas.
That is
because
mammals
require
a
process
called
genomic
imprinting
to
reproduce,
where a
set of
genes
from one
parent
dominates
over the
other.
The
interaction
between
the two
sets of
parental
genes is
required
for
embryos
to
develop
normally."
[Quoted
from
here.
Accessed
12/09/2012.
Quotations
marks
altered
to
conform
with the
conventions
adopted
at this
site.
Minor
typos
corrected;
links
added.
Several
paragraphs
merged.]
Consider, too,
the
Japanese Knotweed. In the UK, every plant of this noxious weed is female -- but that hasn't
stopped its rapid spread:
"Every Japanese Knotweed plant in Britain
is female and reproduces through its
rhizomes
or
fragments of its own vegetation.
Strimming
it is the worst thing you can do: it
creates millions of tiny pieces, each of which can sprout into a new plant. In
Kenidjack [in Cornwall -- RL], the weed quickly spread down the valley: when
local residents hacked it from their
gardens, tiny fragments
fell into the stream and seeded along the bank. For the past three years, local
landowners, the county council, the
National Trust and other agencies have
worked together on an incredibly pain-staking and expensive clearance programme:
cutting the knotweed by hand, carefully disposing of the waste and injecting
each individual stump with specialist weedkiller. This summer, the valley has
been returned to a native normality, with bluebells and bracken." [Guardian
G2 Supplement, 14/08/2009,
p.11. Links added.]
What are the 'interpenetrated opposites'
at work here?
Which plant
(or part of a plant) is the 'negation', and which the NON?
As
seems likely, this
weed has been issued with a DM-exemption certificate in order to reproduce in the
UK.
It looks like
certain species of swordfish in the USA have joined
this reactionary stampede rightwards; here again is the BBC --
all this
non-dialectics must be an "abomination" to DM-fans:
"Virgin-Born' Swordfish
are a first in the wild
"By Jonathan Webb Science
reporter BBC News. June 1st 2015
"Seven sawfish in
Florida have become the first virgin-born animals ever found in the wild from a
sexually reproducing species. The discovery suggests that such births may be a
natural response to dwindling numbers, rather than a freak occurrence largely
seen in captivity. It was made by ecologists studying genetic diversity in a
critically endangered species of ray. They say that births of this kind may be
more common than previously thought. The findings appear
in the journal Current Biology....
"There are many species, particularly
invertebrates, that naturally reproduce alone; some types of whiptail lizard,
meanwhile, are bizarrely all-female. But for an animal that normally reproduces
by mating, a virgin birth is an oddity. And yet a number of captive animals have
produced virgin births. This
roster of surprise arrivals
includes sharks, snakes,
Komodo dragons and turkeys -- all species that normally use sexual reproduction.
And in 2012 a US research group reported two pregnant pit vipers, caught in the
wild, each gestating baby snakes (inside eggs) that
appeared
to be fatherless.
"But the
smalltooth sawfish, a strange-looking beast that grows up to four metres
long, is the first sexually reproducing species whose virgin-born babies have
been found roaming free and healthy in their native habitat. Andrew Fields, a
PhD student at Stony Brook University in New York and the study's first author,
said the find was entirely unexpected. It came during a survey of the sawfish
population in the estuaries of southwest Florida.
'We were conducting routine
DNA fingerprinting of the sawfish found in this area in order to see if
relatives were often reproducing with relatives due to their small population
size,' Mr Fields said. 'What the DNA fingerprints told us was altogether more
surprising: female sawfish are sometimes reproducing without even mating.'
"Of the 190 individual
sawfish that Mr Fields and his colleagues surveyed, seven had DNA that indicated
they only had one parent. Specifically, these seven historic fish had identical
copies of at least 14 of the 16 genes that the scientists looked at; if they had
arisen from normal sexual reproduction, the team calculated that the chance of
the animals being 'homozygous'
for all those genes was less than one-in-100 billion.
"So they concluded that the
seven sawfish -- all of them female, five of them sisters -- were produced by
'parthenogenesis': a process by which an unfertilised egg develops into an
embryo. Researchers believe this takes place in vertebrates when the egg absorbs
an identical sister cell. Because the resulting offspring have much less genetic
diversity than normal sexual offspring, their chances of survival are usually
thought to be very low. But the seven fish in Mr Fields' study were up to one
year old, normal in size and apparently getting on fine.
"'Occasional parthenogenesis
may be much more routine in wild animal populations than we ever thought,' said
Dr Kevin Feldheim of the Field Museum of Chicago, a co-author of the study. The
researchers suggest it might be a last-ditch evolutionary strategy that takes
hold when a population goes through an extremely lean patch -- such as that
presently faced by the smalltooth sawfish, whose numbers have plummeted to less
than 5% of what they were a century ago. But for this to make sense, the
'parthenogens' themselves would have to be fertile, so that they could help the
species to bounce back. It is too early to know whether that is the case for the
seven sawfish.
"Dr David Jacoby is a behavioural ecologist and
marine biologist at the
ZSL
Institute of Zoology. He told the BBC
that the Florida findings were 'interesting and groundbreaking', particularly
with regard to the question of whether virgin births are a natural adaptation.
'We kind of associate parthenogenesis with invertebrates: corals or crustaceans
or things...like that. There are instances of this happening in vertebrates
-- birds and reptiles, and some shark species -- but it's all been in captivity.
The fact that this has not only been inferred in the wild, but also in a species
that is seeing critically low levels of population -- it definitely raises the
question as to whether this is a strategy which has evolved.'
"But Dr Jacoby cautioned, as
did the researchers themselves, that although this remarkable ability might slow
the demise of the sawfish, it is unlikely to halt it altogether. 'It doesn't
seem as though this type of adaptation is going to be a way of restoring
population levels,' he said. 'It's not a get-out clause.' They might have
produced a natural miracle, but the sawfish of the Florida estuaries still need
human help to avoid extinction." [Quoted from
here; accessed 02/06/2015. Quotation marks altered to conform with the
conventions adopted at this site. Several paragraphs merged; some links
added.]
Even odder is the fish Poecillia formosa
-- the South
American Amazon Molly:
"The Amazon molly, a small fish from the rivers
of Central and South America, is one of the few species that appears to have rid
itself of the need to reproduce sexually. The fish are all female, and
scientists had thought that they produced young without ever mixing their genes
with those from a male partner. But it turns out the fish were fooling us all
along. German biologists have shown that eggs produced by female Amazon mollies
occasionally take up small fragments of genetic material from sperm produced by
males from closely related species.
"The researchers do not yet know exactly how the
fish 'capture' these foreign genes, but their finding resolves a long-standing
puzzle surrounding the Amazon molly. Evolutionary biologists argue that species
which eschew sex should become extinct in less than 100 000 generations. Without
the genetic reshuffling brought about by sexual reproduction, harmful mutations
should simply accumulate over time, eventually causing the species to die out. The Amazon molly apparently gave up conventional
sexual reproduction more than 500,000 generations ago, yet it is still going
strong. 'In some of the rivers of Mexico it's taking over,' says Manfred Schartl
of the University of Würzburg, who led the team that made the discovery. Schartl
believes that some of the small foreign genetic fragments taken up by Amazon
molly eggs must contain healthy genes that can counter the effects of damaging
mutations.
"The researchers made their discovery by breeding
Amazon mollies in tanks which also contained male black mollies. The black molly
is an ornamental variety of a closely related species which lives alongside the
Amazon molly in its natural habitat. In a tiny proportion of the resulting
broods, the fish were speckled with black, instead of showing the Amazon molly's
usual uniform silver-grey coloration. The researchers looked at cells from these
speckled fish and counted their chromosomes. In addition to the Amazon molly's
usual complement of chromosomes, the cells contained fragments of black molly
chromosome (Nature, volume 373, p.68).
"Schartl and his team have shown that these
fragments contain the gene responsible for the black molly's characteristic dark
colour. They have also found that around 5 per cent of wild Amazon mollies carry
similar 'microchromosomes', presumably taken up from sperm produced by related
species. This may explain how the Amazon molly has avoided extinction.
Amazon molly eggs have ample opportunity to take
up genes from foreign sperm because they are triggered to develop by the
presence of sperm from related species. But some all-female species, including
several salamanders, produce young in the absence of sperm, so the same
mechanism can't work for them." [New
Scientist, 14/01/1995. Quotation marks altered to conform with the
conventions adopted at this site. Several paragraphs merged.]
The situation is
in fact even odder:
"The South American Amazon Molly...is a
particularly fascinating fish. Most generations of this species consist of
asexually reproducing female clones. Amazon Mollies produce fully viable clone
eggs; however sperm are required to trigger the developmental process. Thus, an
Amazon Molly will mate with either of the related species Atlantic Molly (Poecillia
mexicana) or Sailfin Molly (Poecillia latipinna). Usually this mating
only serves to trigger the cloning process; however, and occasionally (and the
necessary conditions are still not well understood) the mating does result in
cross-fertilisation between the species. Surprisingly, the offspring of these
pairings are not hybrids of the two species, but develop into female, asexually
reproducing Amazon Mollies...." [Crozier (2008), p.465. Italic
emphasis in the
original.]
With the worst will in the world, it isn't easy to see how such
strange organisms can be incorporated into the 'dialectical universe'.
Mercifully,
there are far too many non-dialectical creatures on this planet to consider here.
Even if this
weren't so, is it really the case
that males and females must always conflict/'struggle'? Anyone
who has, for example, seen
Leopard Slugs mating might be forgiven for thinking that these fortunate
creatures have had a dialectical exemption certificate encoded in their DNA. They manifestly do not 'conflict'!
That is to say nothing
about gay sex,
either.
One might well wonder how Woods and Grant propose to
account for homosexuality, not just among human beings, but
right across the animal kingdom, along DM-lines. Indeed, how might
DM-theorists in general account for it? Where is the 'Unity of Opposites', here?
Might this not explain the fact that large sections of the
Marxist left
were openly homophobic until relatively recently. The old
Militant Tendency (of which Woods and Grant were leading figures)
was apathetic, if not overtly hostile toward gay rights. In some communist countries
this is still the case. For example, the
Cuban regime was openly homophobic until the 1980s and 1990s. Homosexuality
was only
decriminalised in China in 1997, and removed from the list of mental
illnesses in 2002. Gays still face discrimination
in Vietnam. The Soviet Union originally decriminalised homosexuality after
the 1917 revolution,
which was reversed in the 1930s. The situation didn't change much
until the 1970s; it was only legalised when the Soviet Union collapsed in
1991. Since then, gay rights have come under sustained attack in Russia
in the last few years (which hostility was only slightly attenuated
because of international pressure threatening a boycott of the
Olympic Winter Games in Sochi, and the
World Cup in 2018) -- but, plainly, that has nothing to do with communism.
'Just so' stories to one side, not only is
it difficult for Darwinism to account for homosexuality, Dialectical Marxists
face no less serious problems explaining it in terms consistent with DM.
To say nothing of transgender issues...
And what are we to say about stories like the following,
from the BBC?
"Fur seals have
been caught engaging in an extreme form of sexual behaviour. Specifically,
trying to have sex with penguins.
"Things are
heating up in cold climes of the sub-Antarctic. On a remote, and mostly desolate
island, seals have been caught engaging in an extreme form of sexual behaviour.
Specifically, they have been trying to have sex with penguins. More than one fur
seal has been caught in the act, on more than one occasion. And it's all been
captured on film, with details published in the journal
Polar Biology. The sexual behaviour of the fur seals hasn't come as a
complete shock to the scientists that recorded it.
"In 2006, they
saw, for the first time,
a fur
seal attempting to copulate with a king penguin, on
Marion Island, a
sub-Antarctic island that is home to both species.
They published details of that incident, and speculated that the sex act at
the time may have been the behaviour of a frustrated, sexually inexperienced
seal. Or an aggressive, predatory act. Or a playful one that turned sexual. But
the new incidents, published in the study 'Multiple occurrences of king penguin
(Aptenodytes patagonicus) sexual harassment by Antarctic fur seals (Arctocephalus
gazella)', still surprised the researchers.
"'Honestly I did
not expect that follow up sightings of a similar nature to that 2006 one would
ever be made again, and certainly not on multiple occasions,' said Nico de
Bruyn, of the Mammal Research Institute at the University of Pretoria, South
Africa. Scientists
routinely monitor wildlife on the island, and look out for rare and unusual
behaviour. On three separate occasions, a research team led by William A. Haddad
and de Bruyn spotted young male seals sexually coercing what appeared to be
healthy penguins of unknown gender.
"Two
incidents occurred on
Goodhope Bay,
and one on Funk beach. The incident in 2006 occurred on a different beach again,
called Trypot.
'This
really made us sit up and take notice,' said de Bruyn, of the new sightings. All
four known sexual incidents followed a common pattern. Each time a seal chased,
captured and mounted the penguin. The seal then attempted copulation several
times, lasting about five minutes each, with periods of rest in between. Male
and female penguins mate via an opening called a cloaca, and the seals are
thought to have actually penetrated the penguins in some of the acts, which were
caught on film by Haddad. In three of the four recorded incidents the seal let
the penguin go. But on one of the more recent occasions, the seal killed and ate
the penguin after trying to mate with it. Fur seals often catch and eat penguins
on the island.
"The
incidents are the only time
pinnipeds,
the group that includes seals, fur seals and sea-lions, have been known to have
sex with an animal from a different biological class, in this case a mammal
trying to have sex with a bird. The scientists can only speculate about why the
seals are behaving this way. But the new observations suggest that having sex
with penguins may be becoming a learned behaviour among seals on the island.
"'Seals have capacity for learning -- we know this from their foraging behaviour
for example,' explained de Bruyn. 'So male seals may see each other coercing
penguins, then attempt it themselves. That might explain why the number of
incidents appears to be increasing.... But
'if this is learned behaviour, we really can’t think of what the reward may be
for these young males,' he adds. 'Other than perhaps learning that these birds
are an easier target to practice their copulatory skills.' The
seals were not yet old or large enough to defend harems of female seals,
explained de Bruyn.
"'Perhaps it is a release of sexual frustration, given the hormonal surges
during seal breeding season. It is very unlikely to be failed mate recognition
-- i.e. the misidentification of the penguin as a female seal. All in all it's
difficult to say really,' he admits." [Quoted from
here; accessed 19/11/2014.
Several paragraphs merged; spelling adjusted to UK English.
Quotation marks altered to conform with the
conventions adopted at this site. Some
links added. Video film published in the original article has been omitted.]
And, who
hasn't seen cows trying to mount other cows?
In fact, here's a
video of a bull trying to hump a motorcycle! [YouTube is full of oddities
like this.] Who
hasn't seen
dogs trying to hump table legs, human legs, other objects -- or even other
animals? [Here's
a video of a dog humping a pillow.] Is a randy dog the 'dialectical
opposite' of a table leg? Or is it a pillow?
[There are
dozens of videos on YouTube showing dogs humping all manner of objects as
well as other
animals.]
Maybe 'the
dialectic' has by-passed these animals, permitting the copulation of a mammal with a bird, or a
dog with a
fluffy toy (I had to resist the temptation to call it a "stuffed toy"). Maybe 'Being' has a wicked sense of
humour and has planted these sad cases in nature to test the faith of DM-fans,
rather like
the way that some Christians think 'God' (or 'Satan') placed certain fossils in the ground
to test their
faith, too.
Of course, the following research would have to be ruled out in
advance by all decent, 'God'-, ..., er..., 'Being'-fearing DM-fans, since it is a
clear violation of 'dialectical law', as it supposedly features in, or governs, sexual reproduction:
"'Three
people, one baby' public consultation begins
"By James
Gallagher,
Health and
science reporter, BBC News
"A public
consultation has been launched to discuss
the ethics of using three people to create
one baby. The technique could be used to
prevent debilitating and
fatal
'mitochondrial' diseases, which are
passed down only from mother to child.
However, the resulting baby would contain
genetic information from three people -- two
parents and a donor woman. Ministers could
change the law to make the technique legal
after the results of the consultation are
known.
"About one in
200 children are born with faulty
mitochondria -- the tiny power stations
which provide energy to every cell in the
body. Most show little or no symptoms, but
in the severest cases the cells of the body
are starved of energy. It can lead to muscle
weakness, blindness, heart failure and in
some cases can be fatal. Mitochondria are
passed on from the mother's egg to the child
-- the father does not pass on mitochondria
through his sperm. The idea to prevent this
is to add a healthy woman's mitochondria
into the mix. Two main techniques have been
shown to work in the laboratory, by using a
donor embryo or a donor egg.
"How do
you make a baby from three people?
"1) Two embryos are fertilised with sperm
creating an embryo from the intended parents and another from the donors. 2) The
pronuclei,
which contain genetic information, are removed from both embryos but only the
parents' is kept. 3) A healthy embryo is created by adding the parents' pronuclei
to the donor embryo, which is finally implanted into the womb.
However,
mitochondria contain their own genes in
their own set of DNA. It means any babies
produced would contain genetic material from
three people. The vast majority would come
from the mother and father, but also
mitochondrial DNA from the donor woman. This
would be a permanent form of genetic
modification, which would be passed down
through the generations.
"It is
one of
the
ethical
considerations
which
will be
discussed
as part
of the
Human
Fertilisation
and
Embryology
Authority's
consultation.
The
chair of
the
organisation,
Prof
Lisa
Jardine,
said:
'It is
genetic
modification
of the
egg --
that is
uncharted
territory.
Once we
have
genetic
modification
we have
to be
sure we
are damn
happy.'
She said
it was a
question
of
'balancing
the
desire
to help
families
have
healthy
children
with the
possible
impact
on the
children
themselves
and
wider
society'....
"However,
treatments in
IVF
clinics will be years away even if
the public and ministers decide the
techniques should go ahead. There are still
questions around safety which need to be
addressed. One of the pioneers of the
methods,
Prof Mary Herbert from Newcastle
University, said: 'We are now undertaking
experiments to test the safety and efficacy
of the new techniques. This work may take
three to five years to complete.'" [Quoted
from
here. Some links added; several
paragraphs merged. Bold
emphases in the original. Accessed
17/08/2012. Further updates on thus line of
research can be found
here.]
Update, September 2016:
The first
'three-parent baby' has now been born:
"The world's first three-parent baby has been born. Scientists revealed the
birth of a baby boy, now five months old, using DNA from three parents.
Fertility experts hailed the breakthrough as 'great news and a huge deal' for
the future of reproduction. But they expressed concern that it was only achieved
because US scientists crossed the border to Mexico to take advantage of lax
regulation. And critics last night accused the scientists of taking 'outrageous'
and 'unethical' steps in order to achieve the world first. The child was born to
a couple from Jordan, who had been trying to start a family for almost 20 years.
"His mother carries genes for Leigh
Syndrome, a fatal disorder that affects the developing nervous system, and
caused the deaths of their first two children. The
baby was conceived from an egg containing nuclear DNA from his mother and
father, and mitochondrial DNA from a "second" mother - an unknown female donor.
The aim was to replace defective mitochondrial DNA and prevent the disease being
passed on through the maternal line. British researchers expressed excitement
about the breakthrough, saying it would 'accelerate' advances in the field and
'tame the more zealous critics'.
"The controversial technique -- which allows
parents with rare genetic mutations to have healthy babies, is only legal in
this country [the UK -- RL], and this followed fierce parliamentary debate. The
breakthrough, which came about using an approach called spindle nuclear transfer
was revealed in New Scientist magazine. Scientists from the New Hope Fertility
Center in New York City removed the nucleus from one of the mother's eggs and
inserted it into a donor egg that had had its own nucleus removed. The resulting
egg -- with nuclear DNA from the mother and mitochondrial DNA from a donor --
was then fertilised with her husband's sperm. The team, led by Dr John Zhang
used this approach to create five embryos, one of which developed normally, and
was implanted, resulting in the birth nine months later.
"The method has not been approved in the US,
so Dr Zhang went to Mexico instead, where he said 'there are no rules'.
Defending his decision, he said: 'To save lives is the ethical thing to do'.
Other scientists working in the field welcomed the news -- but expressed concern
that it had occurred in a country which lacks stringent regulation. Dr Dusko
Ilic, a reader in stem cell science at King's College London, said: 'This is
great news and a huge deal -- it's revolutionary.' He described the child's
birth as an 'ice-breaker' which was likely to be swiftly followed. 'The baby is
reportedly healthy. Hopefully, this will tame the more zealous critics,
accelerate the field, and we will witness soon a birth of the first
mitochondrial donation baby in the UK.'" [Quoted from
here. Links added; several paragraphs merged. Accessed
10/10/2016.]
[Update January 2017: Several such
children have now been born. On that, see
here and
here.
I have posted several more instances of
thoroughly reactionary, anti-dialectical science to
Appendix A
to Essay Seven Part One.]
Notice, there is no mention of this
brazen violation of Engels's Second 'Law' by any of the scientists involved in
the above investigations (perhaps part of what should be a legitimate objection to this
line of research, if they were 'unconscious dialecticians'),
and I have yet to see a single article or blog written by a DM-fan
anathematising this research -- or, indeed, a single DM-fan objecting to gay sex, or 'dry-humping' dogs,
on the same grounds. But, what price the
UO if it is so easily by-passed,
violated or snubbed by
reactionary scientists and anti-dialectical, right-wing animals such as these?
Without
doubt, modern medicine is quite
remarkable -- indeed, a few snips of the surgeon's scissors and Bob's your
aunty. And yet (but this should hardly need pointing out) males don't change into females (nor
vice versa), unaided and of their own accord, which is what the
DM-classics tell us must happen
to
all such opposites. What is worse, they should do so by struggling with the
opposite that they become; that is, they should struggle with the oppositely
sexed individual they turn into (if those classics are to be believed)!
Moreover, while it is true that cats are able to
reproduce because of well known goings-on between the male and the female of the
species, cats themselves
don't change because of the relationship between the opposite two sexes of
the cat family. If they
did, then a lone cat on a desert island would surely be capable of living
forever (or, at least, of not changing). In that case, as long as this eternal
and miserably chaste moggie stayed clear of members of the opposite sex, it
would be able to look forward to
becoming a sort of feline Super-Methuselah.
Are Cats Non-Dialectical After All?
Returning to an earlier theme,
if cats don't change as a
result of the machinations of their external and/or 'logical' opposites, but
because of their 'internal contradictions' -- or even as a result of their 'internal, opposite tendencies'
-- then factors internal to cats must surely be responsible for their
development (if, as noted above, we interpret the word "internal" spatially --
since we seem to have got nowhere interpreting it 'logically'). Should we now
look inside cats for these illusive opposites? If so, do these opposites appear
at the level of this
furry animal's internal organs, or should we look elsewhere?
But what is the opposite of, say, a cat's liver? Does it have one? If not, is it
an
everlasting liver? It must be if it has no 'opposite'. On the other hand, if it does have an 'opposite', will a cat's liver one
day turn into a cat's 'non-liver'? -- A
fossil
trilobite, say, or the
Dog Star,
maybe? These are all 'cat non-livers'. But,
as we saw earlier, this can't
happen unless these 'opposites' struggle with and then turn into
each other. Has anyone witnessed a cat's liver slugging it out with a cat's
non-liver?
In order to discover what the 'internal contradictions'
or 'opposing
tendencies'
are in this case, perhaps we should delve even deeper into
the inner recesses of these rather awkward, feline aspects of 'Being'?
[I will omit reference to
'opposing tendencies' from now so that unnecessary pedantic detail is reduced as
much as possible; readers can assume they are also intended in what follows.]
If a cat's liver has no opposite, then
perhaps its liver cells do? But once more, what is the opposite of a
cat's liver cell? A kidney cell? A blood cell? An onion cell?
As we
ferret deeper into the nether regions of inner
moggie space, perhaps these
elusive opposites will appear at the molecular or atomic level? Some
dialecticians seem to think so, but they can only argue this way by ignoring their own claim that all of
nature works in pairs, and we have
just seen that was a dead end.
To that end,
we have yet to be told which 'opposite' the River
Amazon is twinned with, let alone what the
Oort Cloud's dialectical alter ego --
its "other" -- could possibly be.
Nevertheless, it could be argued that
'internal opposites' actually involve the relations that exist between sub-atomic,
or inter-atomic forces and processes at work inside cats, lumps of iron, and
much else besides.
But, if each
thing (and not just each part of a thing), and each system or process in the
Totality, is a UO (as we have been assured they are by the
DM-Luminaries), then
cats and iron bars (and not just electrons,
π-mesons,
and positrons) must have their own internal and/or spatially external opposites -- that is, if they
are to change.
So,
for a cat to become a 'non-cat' -- which is, presumably, the 'internal' (or even 'spatially external'?) opposite it is supposed to turn into --, it must be in dialectical tension with that opposite
in the here-and-now if that opposite is to help bring about such a change. [We
saw this in a more abstract
form,
here.] If not, then
we can only wonder what dialecticians imagine the forces are (and from whence
they originate) that cause cats, or lumps of iron, to change into whatever their opposites are
imagined to be.
Even
if it were argued that molecular, inter-atomic or sub-atomic
forces actually cause the development of cats, they would still in general have to change because of
their paired macro-level opposites (whose identities still remain a
mystery). It isn't as if each cat is struggling against all the
protons, electrons and
quarks that
exist beneath its fur. Nor
are we to suppose that
cats
are constantly conflicting with their own internal organs, or with their fur and whiskers. If they
were, then according to
DM-lore,
cats would have to turn into their internal organs, fur or whiskers, and the
latter would have to turn into cats!
Furthermore, even if sub-atomic particles were locked
in some sort of 'quantum struggle' with one another (or with their 'opposites',
whatever they turn out to be), the
changes they induce in the average 'dialectical moggie'
must find expression in macro-phenomena at some point, or cats wouldn't change.
But what on earth could these
macro-phenomena be?
Moreover,
even if change were to be located
ultimately at the quantum level, then the following question naturally arises: What are all those sub-atomic particles changing
into? Many are
highly stable. But, even supposing they
weren't --
and we naively believed what the DM-classics have to say -- whatever they
change into must exist right now if it is to cause them to change into it, or
they couldn't struggle with them and hence change. And
yet, if these opposites already exist, the original particles can't change into
them. The very best that could happen here is that these 'opposite particles'
must replace the
originals (which then magically disappear!). In that case, given this
'disappearing' view of nature,
things don't
actually change, they just vanish, while other (seemingly identical)
objects and processes take their place -- and they do so undialectically since
their opposites will have simply vanished, and there would now be nothing
with which they could struggle. Hence, these particles won't have changed into
their opposites.
With no more 'opposites' with which they could struggle, they plainly couldn't be subject
to further change.
The
entire process would grind to a halt.
So, what specific changes are supposed to happen at the
sub-atomic level? Do protons struggle with electrons, or with positrons? In
either case, if the DM-classics were correct, protons would have to change into
electrons or positrons, and each of the latter would have to change into
protons. If that were the case, much of
High Energy Physics
(i.e., Particle Physics) will need to be ditched, and the brave DM-fan who
came up this novel, 'innovative theory', would walk off with a guaranteed Nobel Prize.
Or, does this inner struggle involve machinations at
a higher level, between atoms and molecules? If so, similar questions impose
themselves upon us: do these molecules/atoms struggle with and then change into
one another? But they can't do that since the atoms/molecules
with which they struggle already exist! If they didn't already exist, no struggle could take
place. Are we really supposed to believe that atoms of, say, Carbon struggle
with and then change into atoms of, say, Potassium? Or that sugar molecules struggle
with and then change into
ATP, and vice versa? If so, then much of modern
Chemistry will need to be binned, too, and the brave DM-fan mentioned earlier would
walk off with a second gong.
If we
now ask what the 'inner tendencies' are that cause live cats to change into dead
cats, it isn't easy to come up with a viable candidate. Some might point to catabolic and anabolic processes as
just such an example of these 'inner
tendencies', but they aren't actually tendencies, they are manifestly causal.
[We have already seen that tendencies
aren't causes.]
But, let us assume these processes (anabolism and catabolism) are
viable candidates in this case; even then this theory still falls flat.
As was noted
elsewhere in this Essay:
Will
anabolic processes become
catabolic
processes, and catabolic processes become anabolic processes? In fact, these
processes don't even struggle with
one another! [Follow the links below for more details.] But, they should if we
were to believe
everything we read in those dusty old DM-classics.
[I
have devoted several sections of Essay Seven Part One to this very
point, so the reader is
re-directed
here for
more details.]
Since these processes don't change into one another (which
we have been told
should happen to all such opposites), it isn't easy to see how DM can account
for changing cats, let alone anything else!
Problems Keep Stacking Up
But, what
are we to conclude about organisms that don't reproduce sexually. Worse still,
what are we to make of
hermaphrodites?
Here is Engels:
"And if strict monogamy is to be regarded as
the acme of all virtue, then the palm must be given to the
tapeworm, which possesses a complete male and female sexual apparatus in
every one of its 50 to 200
proglottids or segments of the body, and passes the whole of its life in
cohabiting with itself in every one of these segments." [Engels
(1891b), p.469. Links added.]
Are
tapeworms -- are hermaphrodites -- an expression of some sort of cosmic,
ruling-class
plot against DM?
Consider the
African Bat
Bug.
The New Scientist had the following to say about this strange insect:
"If you thought human sexual relationships were
tricky, be thankful you're not an African bat bug. They show what could be the
most extreme case of transsexualism yet discovered. Male bat bugs sport female
genitalia, and some females have genitalia that mimic the male's version of the
female bits -- as well as their own redundant vagina. Bat bugs, and their relatives the bed bugs, are
renowned among entomologists for their gruesome and bizarre method of
reproduction. Males never use the vagina, instead piercing the female's abdomen
and inseminating directly into the blood, where the sperm then swim to the
ovaries. It is this 'traumatic insemination', as it is termed, which is at the
root of the extreme levels of gender bending in the African bat bug, says Klaus
Reinhardt of the University of Sheffield, UK.
"Female bat bugs have evolved a countermeasure to
the stabbing of the male's penis -- structures on their abdomens known as
paragenitals. These are a defence mechanism that limits the damage by guiding
the male's sharp penis into a spongy structure full of immune cells. When Reinhardt's team studied bat bugs in a cave
on Mount Elgon, Kenya...they found that the males also had defence genitals. What's more,
they had scarring on their abdomens similar to that of the females following
copulation. In other words, males had been using their penises to stab other
males.
"If that isn't strange enough, when the team
looked at 43 preserved female bat bugs, they found that 84% had male versions of
the defence genitals. Females with this male version of female genitals had less
scarring due to penetration than the other females. 'This is what we think might have happened,'
says Reinhardt. 'Males started getting nobbled (sic) by other males, so they
evolved the female defensive genitals. As this reduced the amount of penis
damage they were getting, females evolved the male version of the female
genitals.'
"While theoretical models have predicted that
females should evolve different morphologies to escape male attention, this is
the first time it has been seen in genitalia, Reinhardt says. 'It's a
spectacular example of evolution through sexual conflict.'" [New
Scientist, 195, 2622, 22/09/2007, p.11. Quotation marks altered to
conform with the conventions adopted at this site. Several paragraphs merged.]
[UO = Unity of Opposites.]
In fact, the Second 'Law', with its UOs, seems to be
coming under sustained attack from all sides of the animal and plant kingdoms. Consider the sea slug:
"Striking that happy balance between giving and
receiving in a relationship can be fraught with difficulty. But not, it seems,
for hermaphrodite sea slugs. These gentle soft-bodied animals, blessed with both
male and female genitalia, solve the battle of the sexes by engaging in 'sperm
trading'. They donate sperm only on the condition that
they receive it, so thwarting the male desire to fertilise and run. During sex,
each slug inserts its penis into the other and one transfers a small package of
sperm. The transfer of further sperm will only proceed if the other partner
reciprocates by transferring a package of its sperm.
"That hermaphrodite sex worked this way was
suggested 20 years ago but this is the first time it has been demonstrated. Nico
Michiels and colleagues at the University of Tübingen, Germany, sealed off the
sperm ducts of Chelidonura hirundinina sea slugs so that they could
insert the penis but not transfer sperm. In 57 staged sexual encounters, sea slugs paired
with a 'cheating' partner, unable to transfer sperm, were more likely to abandon
sex than animals paired with a 'fair trader' (Current Biology, 15,
p.792). 'I expect that sperm trading is widespread in
hermaphrodites,' says Michiels. 'These sea slugs have found a way to optimise
sperm transfer so that both partners benefit.'" [New
Scientist, 2521, 15/10/2005. Quotation marks altered to conform with the
conventions adopted at this site. Italic emphases in the original.
Several paragraphs merged.]
There seems to be a unity of non-opposites going on here.
Other species of sea slug are even more mendaciously
anti-dialectical:
"Every cloud has a silver lining. There's even an
upside to being repeatedly stabbed -- at least if you're an hermaphroditic sea
slug.
A species of sea slug known as
Siphopteron quadrispinosum
is a
simultaneous hermaphrodite: each
animal has male and female sexual organs, and it can use both at once.
An animal acting as a male first uses a
syringe-like organ to stab its partner and inject prostate fluid into its body.
The 'male' then inserts its penis into the partner's genital opening; the penis
has spines that anchor it in place, but harm the other slug.
Because mating is so traumatic for the
'female', the slugs prefer to act male, and often resist mating altogether.
But curiously, they still mate as females much more often than is necessary
simply to ensure that their eggs are fertilised, says
Rolanda Lange
of the University of
Tübingen in Germany.
Lange and colleagues captured groups of sea
slugs and gave different groups more or fewer opportunities to mate. The slugs
produced the most eggs when they acted as females at a medium rate.
"In theory, slugs should act as females just
often enough to maintain a store of sperm, and no more. But the slugs mated as
females much more often than that. Yet they produced the same proportion of
fertilised eggs regardless of how many mating opportunities they had. This
indicates that even the slugs that mated the least had gathered more than enough
sperm for their reproductive needs.
All of this suggests the traumatic mating has
some benefit that goes beyond reproduction -- an advantage that offsets the
bodily harm. We don't know what that might be, says
Mike
Siva-Jothy
of the University of
Sheffield, UK. But the injections of prostate fluid might include nutrients that
benefit the stabbed slug.
"Male insects and spiders often proffer food as a
bribe to persuade females to mate. 'Male' sea slugs might be doing the same
thing. 'Males are giving with one hand and taking with the other,' Siva-Jothy
says." [New
Scientist, 01/09/2012, p.14. Quotations marks altered to conform to the
conventions adopted at this site. Italic emphases in the original, bold
emphasis added. Several paragraphs merged.]
These non-opposites seem to swap places almost at will.
And don't
even think about the fire ant:
"It is often said that males and females are
different species. For the little fire ant, that seems to be literally true. The ant Wasmannia auropunctata, which is
native to Central and South America but has spread into the US and beyond, has
opted for a unique stand-off in the battle of the sexes. Both queens and males
reproduce by making genetically identical copies of themselves -- so males and
females seem to have entirely separate gene pools. The only time they reproduce conventionally is
to produce workers, says Denis Fournier from the Free University of
Brussels...in Belgium, a member of the team that discovered the phenomenon (Nature,
435, p.1230). But workers are sterile and never pass on their genes. This is the first reported case in the animal
kingdom of males reproducing exclusively by cloning, although male honeybees do
it occasionally.
But it is too early to assume male and female
gene pools are entirely separate, cautions Andrew Bourke from the Institute of
Zoology in London. Males may occasionally reproduce by mating with a queen to
top up the gene pool. Fournier's study analysed DNA from 199 queens, 41 males
and 264 workers collected in New Caledonia in the south Pacific, and French
Guiana. Only a much larger study could rule out gene pool mixing, he says." [New
Scientist, 2506, 02/07/2005.
Paragraphs merged.]
Moreover, such dialectically-benighted creatures aren't confined to the
non-vertebrate world; evolution has thrown up the mangrove Killifish:
"Something fishy is happening in the mangrove
forests of the western Atlantic. A fish is living in the trees. The mangrove killifish (Kryptolebias
marmoratus) is a tiny fish that lives in ephemeral pools of water around the
roots of mangroves. When these dry up the 100-milligram fish can survive for
months in moist spots on land. Being stranded high and dry makes it hard to find
a mate, but fortunately the killifish doesn't need a partner to reproduce. It is
the only known hermaphrodite vertebrate that is self-fertilising.
Now biologists wading through muddy mangrove swamps in
Belize and Florida have discovered another exceptional adaptation. Near dried-up
pools, they found hundreds of killifish lined up end to end, like peas in a pod,
inside the tracks carved out by insects in rotting logs. 'They really don't meet
standard behavioural criteria for fish,' says Scott Taylor of the Brevard County
Environmentally Endangered Lands Program in Florida, who reports the findings in
an upcoming issue of
The American Naturalist....
"The rotting logs may help explain how killifish
occupy such a large range, stretching from southern Brazil to central Florida.
Self-fertilisation makes it easy for individuals to colonise new places, and
dead logs are good rafts for getting around, says John Avise, an evolutionary
biologist at the University of California at Irvine. 'They might be washed
ashore in a rotting log and start a new population.'" [New
Scientist, 196, 2626, 20/10/2007, p.20. Quotation marks altered to
conform with the conventions adopted at this site. Several paragraphs merged.]
Even worse
news: it now seems that scientists can further
'negate' this shaky DM-'Law', as it applies to an already
'dialectically-confused' semi-hermaphrodite
worm:
"The sexual preferences of microscopic worms have
been manipulated in the laboratory so that they are attracted to the same sex,
offering new evidence that sexuality may be hard-wired in the brain.
By activating a single gene in the brains of
hermaphrodite
nematode worms, scientists have induced them to attempt to mate
with other hermaphrodites, instead of being attracted exclusively to males....
"While nematode worms are extremely simple
organisms, and details of their behaviour are difficult to apply to people with
any accuracy, the researchers said that the existence of a biological pathway to
same-sex attraction offered a possible insight into human sexuality. Erik Jorgensen, Professor of Biology at the
University of Utah, who led the study, said: 'Our conclusions are narrow in that
they are about worms and how attraction behaviours are derived from the same
brain circuit.'... 'We can't say what this means for human sexual
orientation, but it raises the possibility that sexual preference is wired in
the brain. Humans are subject to evolutionary forces just like worms. It seems
possible that if sexual orientation is genetically wired in worms, it would be
in people too. Humans have free will, so the picture is more complicated in
people.'
"Nematode worms, of the species Caenorhabditis
elegans, are one millimetre long and live in soil, where they feed on
bacteria. The overwhelming majority -- more than 99.9 per cent -- are
hermaphrodites, which produce both sperm and eggs and generally fertilise
themselves before laying eggs. About 0.05 per cent of nematodes are male,
however, and these worms must seek out hermaphrodites to reproduce.
Hermaphrodites will mate with an available male rather than fertilise
themselves, and though they produce sperm they will not impregnate other
hermaphrodites as they lack the required copulatory structure.
"There are no true females and hermaphrodites
were treated as female for the purposes of the study. C. elegans shares
many of its genes with human beings and other animals, and is a standard
organism used for early laboratory studies of genetics. 'A hermaphrodite makes both eggs and sperm,'
Professor Jorgensen said. 'She doesn't need to mate [with a male] to have
progeny. Most of the time, the hermaphrodites do not mate. But if they mate,
instead of having 200 progeny, they can have 1,200 progeny.' As the worms have no eyes -- hermaphrodites have
only 959 cells and males 1,031 cells -- they detect one another's sex using
scent cues. In the study, published in the journal
Current Biology, the scientists activated a gene called fem-3 in
hermaphrodites. This gene makes the nematode body develop as male, with neurons
that appear only in male brains and copulatory structures such as tails. In the experiment, fem-3 was activated only in
the brain, so the worms developed male nerve cells but not other male body
characteristics. Despite this, they behaved like males, attempting to seek out
and fertilise other hermaphrodites.
"'They look like girls, but act and think like
boys,' said Jamie White, who conducted the key experiments. 'The [same-sex
attraction] behaviour is part of the nervous system.' Professor Jorgensen said: 'The conclusion is
that sexual attraction is wired into brain circuits common to both sexes of
worms, and is not caused solely by extra nerve cells added to the male or female
brain. The reason males and females behave differently is that the same nerve
cells have been rewired to alter sexual preference.' In a second phase of the study, the scientists
manipulated different kinds of nerve cell in the male brain to determine which
were responsible for switching on male attraction to hermaphrodites. They found
that, although switching off one of the eight sensory neurons impaired
attraction in adults, young males developed normally if just one such nerve cell
was intact.
This finding suggests that there is considerable
redundancy built into the sexual development of males. Dr White said: 'It must
be that the behaviour is very important.'" [The
Times, 26/10/2007. Quotation marks altered to conform with the conventions
adopted at this site. Several paragraphs merged. On the complex mating habits of
nematode worms, which are the
most abundant animal life-form on the planet (indeed, four out of every five
animals on earth is a nematode), see
here.]
Spare a
thought now for other 'dialectically-confused' organisms -- i.e., for those
that exhibit
Pseudohermaphroditism:
"Pseudohermaphroditism
is a clinical term for the condition in which an organism is
born with primary sex characteristics of one sex but develops the
secondary sex characteristics that are different from what would be expected
on the basis of the
gonadal tissue (ovary
or
testis). It can be contrasted with the term
true hermaphroditism, which described a condition where testicular and
ovarian tissue were present in the same individual. This language has fallen out
of favour due to misconceptions and pejorative connotations associated with the
terms, and also a shift to nomenclature based on genetics. The term male
pseudohermaphrodite was used when a testis is present, and the term
female pseudohermaphrodite was used when an ovary is present." [Quoted from
here; accessed 30/08/2017. Links and italic emphases
in the original. Spelling modified to agree with UK English. Paragraphs merged.]
Worse
still what are we to say about
Gynandromorphism, where organisms exhibit both male and female
characteristics? Is nature so reactionary that it is ganging up on DM? It
certainly looks like it.
It is
to be hoped that the dialectical deity (aka 'Being') visits these highly
confused insects one day to give them more than just friendly couple
counselling.
It could be
argued that no law is without exceptions, and that
applies to Engels's Second and Third laws, too -- that doesn't stop them from
being laws. [One rather brave defender of Engels
did
indeed advance this objection in response to an article of mine.] In reply,
it is worth pointing out that DM is unlike any normal science; its 'laws'
are a priori, dogmatic,
and weren't derived from a scientific study of nature, but from Hegel's 'Logic' and
Traditional Philosophy. Hence, these 'laws' can have no exceptions -- rather like the rules of
Pure Mathematics can have none. That was the point of
Hegel's response
to Empiricist attacks on Rationalist theories of causation, for example. In a rational
universe there are no 'accidents', no genuine contingencies, they just seem that
way because we lack the complete picture -- or, indeed, have failed to
'understand' dialectics. A 'dialectical view' of nature will reveal to us the
necessary connections between every event, between causes and their effects.
That was the point of the following comments advanced by Lenin:
"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)." [Lenin (1961),
p.357.
Emphasis in the original.]
"'This harmony is precisely absolute Becoming
change, -- not becoming other, now this and then another. The essential thing is
that each different thing [tone], each particular, is different from another,
not abstractly so from any other, but from its other. Each particular
only is, insofar as its other is implicitly contained in its Notion....' Quite
right and important: the 'other' as its other, development into its opposite."
[Lenin
(1961), p.260. Lenin is here commenting on Hegel (1995a), pp.278-98; this
particular quotation is found on p.285. Bold emphasis added; quotation marks
altered to conform with the conventions adopted at this site.]
"But
the Other is essentially not the empty negative or Nothing
which is commonly taken as the result of dialectics, it is the Other of the
first, the negative of the immediate; it is thus determined as mediated, -- and
altogether contains the determination of the first. The first is thus
essentially contained and preserved in the Other. -- To hold
fast the positive in its negative, and the content of the
presupposition in the result, is the most important part of rational cognition;
also only the simplest reflection is needed to furnish conviction of the
absolute truth and necessity of this requirement, while with regard to the
examples of proofs, the whole of Logic consists of these." [Lenin (1961),
p.225, quoting Hegel (1999),
pp.833-34, §1795.
Bold emphasis alone added.]
Lenin
wrote in the margin:
"This
is very important for understanding dialectics." [Lenin (1961),
p.225.]
A 'law of cognition',
coupled with the above remarks about "absolute truth and necessity", put
DM on a par with the laws of
mathematics, not the empirical sciences. Since I have already
covered
this ground elsewhere, I will say no more about it here.
Be
this as it may,
it now appears that scientists can by-pass these rather shaky DM-'Laws' almost at will:
"With a surprisingly simple genetic tweak,
scientists have transformed
nematode worms into hermaphrodites. They
report in the journal Science that lowering the activity of just two
genetic pathways produces the change. Evolution from a species consisting of males and females into one consisting of
only males and hermaphrodites happens naturally in many nematodes. A
team of US researchers says their experiment explains how this might take place. They
say it also provides a simple model helping scientists to work out the mechanism
of evolutionary change. The
researchers chose to study the evolution of female worms into hermaphrodites
because it was a 'striking change' that occurred relatively recently.
"Ronald Ellis, a biologist from the University of Medicine and Dentistry[,] New
Jersey..., who led the research, said that most big evolutionary changes
within species happened too long ago to study at the genetic level. 'But
this dramatic change happened fairly recently and in a group of animals that we
know a lot about...[,] that's why we're studying it to find out how complex traits
are created,' he told BBC News. Dr
Ellis said it was exciting to discover that, by lowering the activity of just
two genetic pathways he and his team were able to 'take what should have been a
female animal and turn it into a cell fertile hermaphrodite'. The
two genes the researchers 'tweaked' were one involved in making sperm and
another involved in activating them. 'These were small changes to the activity of genetic pathways that already
existed,' said Dr Ellis. 'So
the pieces were already in place, they just had to be altered so they worked in
a slightly new way.' He
said the finding was surprising because it was such a simple change that
produced a trait that was so dramatic....
"The
scientists use nematode worms as simple models to show how evolution works at a
genetic level. 'We
understand how evolution tweaks simple traits, like a giraffe's neck [getting]
longer and longer over time,' he said. 'But
most of the most important changes -- the creation of the eye, the development
of feathers in birds, wings in insects -- involved the creation of novel traits. The
better we understand this, the better we can understand the kinds of changes
that created humans from our ancestors.' Dr
David Lunt, an evolutionary biologist from the University of Hull, UK, who was
not involved in this study told BBC News that said this was an 'excellent
experiment'.
'Scientists study the evolution of sexual systems because it allows us to see
all the forces of evolution at once,' he explained. 'We
have very few model systems anywhere near as powerful as this one.'" [BBC
News, 15/11/2009. Emphases in the original; quotation marks altered to conform
with the conventions adopted at this site. Several paragraphs merged.]
Some might think hermaphrodites are perfect examples of the "unity of
opposites", but that can't
be so otherwise their male organs would turn into the female sex organs (and vice
versa) after "struggling" with them, if the
Dialectical
Classics are to be believed. Oddly enough, none of the above scientists
report observing this 'struggle', or anything remotely like it.
Human
Input
If it is
further complained that in many of the above examples human intervention must be taken into account, for,
plainly,
it is human labour that changes many of the processes that
already occur, or which might occur, naturally into the artificial products
mentioned earlier. Because of this, a
different set of principles
must apply since
human activity will have interfered with the normal operation of the 'natural
opposite' of things like iron ore, for example.
Or, so it might be
argued.
I have already dealt with the above 'objection',
here, but
what are we to say about substances that didn't exist (as far as we know) before human
beings made them? Once more, has
humanity made things that are above and beyond dialectical 'Law'?
Are plastics, for instance, governed by
dialectical 'Law'? What then is the natural/"unique" 'opposite' of,
say,
polyethylene?
Is that 'opposite' -- whatever it is -- the same
as the 'opposite' of Polypropylene,
polybutylene
terephthalate
(PBT),
polystyrene,
polyvinyl chloride (PVC), or
polymethylpentene (TPX)?
Again, if each of these plastics does indeed have a "unique" opposite (which
they must have or they couldn't change
-- if the
DM-classics are to be believed), how is it that human labour is
capable of
manufacturing or bringing into existence each of these (as-yet-un-named -- and before
we evolved --, non-existent) opposites
at the same time as making each new form of plastic? If we ignore the ancient
use of rubber and various shellacs, polystyrene was the very first plastic
invented (in 1839 by a German apothecary,
Eduard
Simon). Unless we assume this plastic was eternally changeless, this
invention must have also brought into existence its unique 'other', its
'dialectical opposite'. But how was that achieved? Or, was the extra creation
of this 'unique opposite' engineered by default, a side-effect, as it were, of making
the original material? Did the 'unique opposite' of, say, PVC come into
existence as a by-product when that material was first invented? Do these
'unique opposites' pop into existence by emerging from some sort of 'metaphysical antechamber'
the moment these materials are invented or manufactured on planet earth? If not, how are
such plastics ever going to change if there are no opposites with which they can
even begin to struggle?
[Incidentally, it is no use appealing to the inter-atomic, or
sub-atomic forces here as the cause of change in the above substances, since
that would leave the unique "other" of, say, PVC out of the picture. And,
as we
have seen it must have a unique "other" if it is to change -- at
least, according to the
DM-classics. Anyway, do these inter-atomic, or sub-atomic forces change into one
another? Once again: Do protons, for example, struggle with, and then change into, electrons?
(Or, is it
positrons?)
If so, a Nobel Prize awaits the first DM-fan to
publish on this.]
Furthermore, if human labour
is able to turn plastics into all manner of products (such
as bottles, shopping and food bags, cutlery, food containers, trays, guttering, drainpipes, insulation, toys,
model soldiers, car
parts, pens, chairs, suitcases, lenses, telescopes, handsets, keyboards, DVDs, cell phone casings, chess pieces,
clothes pegs, combs, brushes, etc.,
etc.), do they not
therefore have countless artificial (or is it natural?) 'opposites' themselves --
namely the things we turn them into?
[Do
they really have as
many 'opposites' as the things into which we can change these plastics? Recall, the
DM-classics
tell us that these 'opposites' are what every object or process both
struggles with and changes into.]
So, it is
worth asking: Were all of the
artificial 'opposites' mentioned above (and below) created the moment the original substances were
first invented? All of them? At present,
PVC can be made into the following: Plastic bottles,
refuse bags and shopping bags, bin liners, food containers, guttering, drainpipes,
insulation, toys, car parts, pens, keyboards, DVDs, cell phone casings, chess
pieces, tools, sheeting, etc., etc.
Did every single one of the latter come into existence when PVC was first
invented? But, that must be the case, since, according to the dialectical
classics, every object in the universe has an 'opposite', which it sooner or
later turns into after struggling with it. So, if PVC can be changed into the
above commodities, they must all be the
'opposites' the DM-classicists spoke about. Hence, if PVC is to change into any
or all of them (by
struggling with each), they too must have come into existence when PVC was first
produced, otherwise they couldn't struggle with it, and PVC would be
changeless. The DM-classics inform us that these opposites
co-exist with
whatever they are the opposites of. [How could it be otherwise if objects and
processes are to struggle with their opposites? They surely can't struggle all
by themselves.] In that case, when PVC was first invented (1838),
these opposites must also have been invented (by default) at the same time
-- otherwise PVC would be changeless, having no opposites with which it
could struggle. If so, where were all the hundreds of millions of ('default') PVC products
that have been made over the last century or so originally stored? Again, did they exist in
some sort of abstract 'dialectical'/'metaphysical' antechamber?
If not,
how can we believe a single thing the DM-classics have to say about change?
However,
there is an other awkward implication of this theory (which we have met already
-- in connection with some
wooden tables).
Plainly, the changes mentioned in the
last but one paragraph happen
because human beings work on plastics like PVC to create the sort of products
listed earlier. But,
according to the
DM-classics, objects and processes are changed as a result of a struggle
with their opposites, which they then change into. So, if human beings are the
cause of change in and to PVC, they must also be the opposite of the PVC they
were working on. And if objects change into that with which they struggle, PVC
must change into these workers! Has
anyone met one of these peculiar
shape-shifting human beings?
Again: if not, is there any point
our paying attention to what the DM-classics have to say about change?
On the other hand, and
once again, if these 'opposites' only popped into existence when the above plastics
were changed into them (meaning that human labour
can't have created these 'opposites' in the act of making the original
plastic substance/artefact), how is it possible for those
non-existent 'opposites' to 'contradict', or struggle with, the unchanged
plastic so that it could be changed into
them?
Even worse: if the 'opposite' of, say, PVC
is what causes it to change, how does human labour feature anywhere
in the action? What is the point of
building factories and studying
polymer chemistry,
for example, if
(according to the DM-classics) the 'opposite' of PVC
is what changes
lumps of PVC into plastic buckets or storage containers, all by itself? When human beings work on PVC to change
it into
all of the many things that they can and do change it into (using complex techniques and expensive machinery),
are they merely onlookers -- not part of the action, as it were --, just viewing things that
would have happened anyway, naturally?
[This appears to be the DM-equivalent of
Occasionalism. Once again, it is little use DM-fans complaining that the
above remarks are ridiculous since the conclusions I have drawn are a direct
consequence of what we find in the
DM-classics. Dialecticians may only advance this objection if they are prepared
to ignore their own classics. (I have dealt more fully with this
objection, alongside several others,
here.)]
Or, have the capitalists discovered a way of
by-passing
this dialectical 'Law'? Are all polymer scientists, therefore,
reactionaries?
Use Value And Exchange Value
We are also told that exchange value [EV]
represents "congealed labour
time" [LT]. That is, of course, a serious problem since use value [UV] is
supposed to 'contradict' EV -- but, UV and EV don't seem to "struggle" much
either, with one another or with anything else, for that matter. But, according to the
Dialectical
Classicists, UV must both struggle with
and change into EV if they 'contradict' one another. Has anyone
ever witnessed this 'abstract wrestling match'?
Here is Scott Meikle (who
might have):
"All the contradictions of capitalist
commodity-production have at their heart the contradiction between use-value and
exchange-value. Marx reveals this contradiction to lie at the heart of the
commodity-form as such, even in its simplest and most primitive form....
"The simple form of value itself contains
the polar opposition between, and the union of, use-value and exchange-value....
[Marx writes that] 'the relative form of value and the equivalent form are two
inseparable moments, which belong to and mutually condition each other...but at
the same time they are mutually exclusive and opposed extremes.' Concerning the
first he observes that the value of linen can't be expressed in linen; 20 yards
of linen = 20 yards of linen is not an expression of value. 'The value of linen
can therefore only be expressed relatively, that is in another commodity. The
relative form of the value of the linen therefore presupposes that some other
commodity confronts it in the equivalent form.' Concerning the second: 'on the
other hand, this other commodity which figures as the equivalent, can't
simultaneously be in the relative form of value.... The same commodity can't,
therefore, simultaneously appear in both forms in the same expression of value.
These forms rather exclude each other as polar opposites.'
"This polar opposition within the simple form is
an 'internal opposition' which as yet remains hidden within the
individual commodity in its simple form: 'The internal opposition between
use-value and exchange-value, hidden within the commodity, is therefore
represented on the surface by an external opposition,' that is the relation
between two commodities such that one (the equivalent form) counts only
as a use-value, while the other (the relative form) counts only as an
exchange-value. 'Hence, the simple form of value of the commodity is the simple
form of the opposition between use-value and value which is contained in the
commodity.'" [Meikle (1979), pp.16-17. Italic emphases in the original.]
Despite this, how does Meikle tackle the problem of
change? Indeed, how does he introduce opposition?
"The poles of an opposition are not just united.
They also repel one another. They are brought together in a unity, but within
that unity they are in tension. The real historical existence of the product of
labour in the commodity-form provides an analogue of the centripetal force that
contains the centrifugal forces of the mutual repulsion of use-value and
exchange-value within it." [Ibid., p.26.]
Well, the first point is that opposition here is simply asserted,
it isn't derived logically or conceptually. In which case, this is just another
brute fact
and not the least bit necessary, as we had been led to believe. [I have
developed this argument in much more detail in Essay Eight
Part
Two.]
Unfortunately, there are so many metaphors in the above passage it isn't easy to
make much sense of it. Anyway, it is reasonably clear that Meikle has
reified the products of social relations (UV and EV),
and in this reified state they have become the actual agents, with human beings (or,
perhaps, commodities themselves) the patients. How else are we to understand the
word "repel" here? Do they really repel each other (like magnets, or
electrical charges)? Or, do we do this 'repelling' because of the way we manufacture use values and
then exchange them?
[I am
using the word "patient" here in its older sense; that is, it relates to that
which is acted upon, not that which acts.]
And
do these "opposites" show any sign of turning into one another? Does
UV struggle with and then change into EV -- as the
DM-classics assure us
they must?
Independently of this,
it is worth asking: How can the forms that underpin UV and EV (equivalent and relative form) provide an analogue of
the forces Meikle requires? If forces are to act on other forces, or on other
bodies, they need to fulfil a handful of crucial conditions first -- the most important of which is
that they should at least
have the decency to exist. But, as we are about to see, these two forms can't
co-exist. So, other than conceptually, how then can they possibly repel -- or provide the wherewithal for other
objects and processes to repel -- anything?
"The relative
form and the equivalent form are two intimately connected, mutually dependent
and inseparable elements of the expression of value; but, at the same time, are
mutually exclusive, antagonistic extremes -- i.e., poles of the same expression.
They are allotted respectively to the two different commodities brought into
relation by that expression. It is not possible to express the value of linen in
linen. 20 yards of linen = 20 yards of linen is no expression of value. On the
contrary, such an equation merely says that 20 yards of linen are nothing else
than 20 yards of linen, a definite quantity of the use value linen. The value of
the linen can therefore be expressed only relatively -- i.e., in some other
commodity. The relative form of the value of the linen presupposes, therefore,
the presence of some other commodity -- here the coat -- under the form of an
equivalent. On the other hand, the commodity that figures as the equivalent
cannot at the same time assume the relative form. That second commodity is not
the one whose value is expressed. Its function is merely to serve as the
material in which the value of the first commodity is expressed.
"No doubt, the expression 20 yards of linen = 1 coat, or 20 yards of linen are
worth 1 coat, implies the opposite relation. 1 coat = 20 yards of linen, or 1
coat is worth 20 yards of linen. But, in that case, I must reverse the equation,
in order to express the value of the coat relatively; and, so soon as I do that
the linen becomes the equivalent instead of the coat. A single commodity
cannot, therefore, simultaneously assume, in the same expression of value, both
forms. The very polarity of these forms makes them mutually exclusive."
[Marx (1996),
pp.58-59. Bold emphases added.]
"We saw in a former chapter that the exchange of
commodities implies contradictory and mutually exclusive conditions. The
differentiation of commodities into commodities and money does not sweep away
these inconsistencies, but develops a modus vivendi, a form in which they can
exist side by side. This is generally the way in which real contradictions are
reconciled. For instance, it is a contradiction to depict one body as constantly
falling towards another, and as, at the same time, constantly flying away from
it. The ellipse is a form of motion which, while allowing this contradiction to
go on, at the same time reconciles it." [Ibid.,
p.113. Bold emphasis added.]
If these items "mutually exclude" one another, how can they both exist at
the same time? On the other hand, if they both do co-exist, so that
they can indeed 'contradict' one another, how can one of them "exclude" the other?
In fact, Marx says that
"A single commodity cannot, therefore,
simultaneously assume, in the same expression of value, both forms." So, they
can't co-exist, after all.
[Again, I have said much more about this in Essay Eight
Part
Two.]
So, other than conceptually, how then can they possibly repel -- or provide the wherewithal for other
objects and processes to repel -- anything?
That is, of course, the unyielding rock upon which we have
seen all such Idealist speculations founder.
It could be argued that these 'repulsions' occur in our thought
about the simple commodity form. But, even there, they can't co-exist,
for if they could, they wouldn't "mutually exclude" one another! On
the other hand, if they do genuinely "exclude" one another, we can't even think
of them acting on one another, for if we were so to think of them both at once,
we
would, of necessity, be misconceiving them.
Or, are we supposed to imagine there is some sort of wrestling
match taking place in our heads,
such that, when we think of the one it elbows out of the way (out of
existence?) the other? Perhaps then, depending on circumstances, we could declare equivalent form
the winner over relative form by two falls to a submission (UK
rules)?
Figure Two: Equivalent Form Slam Dunks
Relative Form
In A Skull Near You
It
could be objected that the fact that something is a relative form excludes it
from being an equivalent form. That is where the opposition
arises; the one is the opposite of the other.
But, "opposite" isn't the same as "oppositional", as I have
shown here.
Of
course, in Marxist economics we have (i) Labour Power [LP] and (ii) Capital [C] cycles, and the like, but does LP
really "struggle" against C? Not obviously so, it would seem.
As we have already noted, very
material workers most certainly struggle against their equally material bosses, but how is it
possible for LP to struggle against C?
Someone might argue that this misrepresents DM; it is the inherent dialectical
contradiction between capital and labour (or that between the relevant
classes) that foments struggle.
Perhaps so, but until we are told what a 'dialectical contradiction' is, that
response itself is devoid of sense (since it contains a meaningless phrase:
"dialectical contradiction"). [More on that in Essay Eight Parts
One,
Two and
Three. As far as social change in general is concerned, see
here,
here and here.]
Once
more, this isn't to deny change, merely to underline the fact that DM can't account for it.
The Real Source Of The Problem
Hegel's Hare-Brained 'Logic'
As we have seen, this 'theory' is an elaboration of this classic example of a priori
Superscience,
concocted by the Mystery Meister
Himself:
"Neither
in heaven nor in earth, neither in the world of mind nor nature, is there
anywhere an abstract 'either-or' as the understanding maintains. Whatever
exists is concrete, with difference and opposition in itself. The finitude of
things with 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 the acid persists quietly in the contrast: it is
always in effort to realize what it potentially is. Contradiction is the very
moving principle of the world." [Hegel (1975),
p.174. Bold emphases added.]
As the above quotation indicates, and as Essay Eight Part
Three will demonstrate, Hegel
made a quasi-'logical' attempt to 'derive' these 'opposites' from his
ill-advised criticism
of the LOI, where his reasoning was
defective from beginning to end -- and
demonstrably so. The bottom line
is that, far from
specifying that each object was paired with its unique dialectical "other", Hegel
inadvertently conceded that objects and processes were confronted on all sides by countless
"others", fatally compromising his 'theory of change'.
Putting such
technical niggles
to one side, and ignoring
for the moment the question of how Hegel, Engels, Lenin and Plekhanov
knew this 'Law' was true of everything in the entire universe, for all of time
-- that topic was examined in more detail in
Essay Two
-- when it is based solely on a ham-fisted and Idealist 'thought experiment', it is worth pointing out that
many things seem to have
no internally-interconnected opposites. For example,
electrons, which, while they
appear to have several external opposites (even though, as noted above, it isn't too clear what
the opposite of an electron is -- is it a
positron or
is it a proton?
--, it is clear electrons don't seem to turn into either of them, as they
should if the DM-classics are to be believed), they
appear to have no internal
opposites as far as can be ascertained (interpreting "internal" here in its
'spatial', not its 'conceptual', sense -- but in that case, they can't be
'dialectical' opposites). If so, they must be changeless -- or, if they do change, then that can't be a result of their "internal
contradictions".4
Admittedly, electrons had only just been discovered
in Lenin's day, but that makes his dogmatism all the more puzzling --
especially when it is recalled that it was
Lenin who insisted that all knowledge is
provisional and relative.
Conclusion
DM is supposed to be the philosophy of change. As we have
seen that description is about as accurate as describing George W Bush as a
"peace monger".
Indeed, as we have also seen: If DM were true,
change would be impossible.
Notes
1. There
are several possible escape routes that the beleaguered DM-fan might want to
take:
(1)
O* 'changes', not into not-O*,
but into not-O1*,
meaning that: (a) There are now two not-O*s
where once there was only one -- not-O1*
and not-O*
-- unless, of course, one of these not-O*s
just vanishes into thin air (but, see below), or: (b) O* will have changed,
not into its opposite, but into something that isn't its opposite,
and with which it hasn't struggled. But, according to the DM-classics, O*
should struggle with not-O*
-- its opposite -- not with not-O1*,
which isn't its opposite.
Or:
(2) (a) O* doesn't actually change,
and/or (b) O*
simply disappears.
Plainly,
O* can't change into
what already exists -- that is,
O* can't change into its opposite, not-O*,
without there now being two of the latter (see option (1), above) where there
was only one before. But, even then, one of these
won't be not-O*,
just a copy of it.
In that case, once more:
(i)
O* either disappears, (ii)
O* doesn't change at all, or, (iii) it changes into something
else (but, not by struggling with what it changes into, otherwise, the same
problems will simply re-emerge).
Or:
(3) Not-O*
itself disappears in order to allow a new (but which is now
a copy of) not-O*
to emerge that O* can and does change into. If so,
questions would naturally arise as to how the original not-O*
could possibly cause
O* to
change if it has just vanished. Of course, this option merely puts off
the evil day, for the same difficulties will afflict this new not-O*
that confronted the old. If this new not-O*
exists in order to allow O* to change, then
we are back where we were a few paragraphs back in the main body of this Essay.
Or:
(4) O* and not-O*
change into one another. But, as we will soon see, this option presents
DM-theorists with even more serious difficulties, since it implies, for example, that
capitalism must change into socialism,
and socialism must change into
capitalism!
But, worse: it isn't easy to see how
even this could happen if both of
these options already exist.
Anyway, as should seem obvious -- and among the other things already
mentioned --, alternative (2) plainly means that
O* doesn't in fact change into not-O*, it is just
replaced by it. Option (1), on the other hand, has the original not-O*
remaining the same (when it was supposed to turn into its own opposite -- i.e.,
into
O* --, according to the DM-classics), and options (2) and (3) will
only work if matter
and/or energy can either be destroyed or created out of thin air!
In addition, option (4) has O* and not-O*
changing into one another, meaning that either (i) there would be no net change, or, that (ii)
O* and not-O*
have just replaced one another.
So, if we
label, for instance, Capitalism, "C"
and socialism, "S", then these two must co-exist if they are to "struggle"
with one another (as, indeed,
Engels and Mao pointed out earlier), the net result being that in the
end S and C will still co-exist, only they will have now swapped places!
Of
course, if S already exists, C won't need to change into it, and
socialists needn't fight to bring it about!
Furthermore, in
relation to option (4) above, as already
noted: S
must already exist, or there couldn't be a struggle; but where did S come from? From C? And yet, it can't
have come from C; for C to change and produce S, S must
already exist (or, once more, there would be no struggle between opposites)!
But, where did C itself come from? Of course, C
came from F (Feudalism), but that in turn means that C and F
must have co-existed, too, so C can't have come from F (since, as
we have just seen, they must co-exist if one is to cause the other to change)!
Hence, this 'theory' implies that either:
(i) C, S and F must all co-exist,
or
(ii) All three sprang into existence, uncaused, from nowhere.
Of course, C,
S and F are all abstractions, and so can't possibly struggle with
one another, but the same problems emerge if we concentrate on things that can
and do struggle. Let W1
be any randomly-selected worker or section/group/union of workers in struggle, and let C1
be those capitalists, or sections of the capitalist class and their bully-boys
with which W1 struggles --
making C1 the 'dialectical opposite' of W1.
But, according to the DM-classics, W1
must change into C1
and vice versa. But, that can't happen since both of these already exist.
So, at best, all they can do is replace one another. Have we seen this anywhere on
the planet in connection with the class
struggle? In the entire history of modern capitalism, after any strike, have all
the bosses involved become workers and all the striking workers become bosses?
But they should if the
DM-classics
are to be believed.
Recall: if this theory were true, the
above would happen countless thousands of times a year across the planet as the capitalist class (or sections of it) struggled with workers! If this theory were
correct, it would happen every time bosses
struggled with workers; these two opposing social and economic entities must change into one another!
The same difficulties
arise if we project this scenario into the future and consider the final struggle to
overthrow capitalism (if and when that takes place). In that case, let W2
be that section of the workers' movement in actual struggle at that point (in
alliance with a revolutionary party), and let C2
be those capitalists (and/or those elements of the capitalist class and their
hangers-on/lackeys that fight their battles for them)
with which they are struggling. According to the DM-classics, W2
must change into C2,
and vice versa. Again: this can't happen since both of these already
exist. Once more: at best, all they can do here is replace one another. What is worse:
this must continue happening indefinitely -- because the capitalist class
and the working class will still exist and will therefore still struggle with one
another, endlessly changing into each other, back and forth, if the
DM-classics are
to be believed.
Are we really
all struggling just to become capitalists? And for them to replace us --
endlessly?
It could be objected that the working class does indeed become
its opposite, it becomes the ruling class. I have dealt with that objection,
here.
01a. Engels said this:
"For a stage in the outlook on nature where all
differences become merged in intermediate steps, and all opposites pass into
one another through intermediate links, the old metaphysical method of
thought no longer suffices. Dialectics, which likewise knows no hard and fast
lines, no unconditional, universally valid 'either-or' and which bridges
the fixed metaphysical differences, and besides 'either-or' recognises also in
the right place 'both this-and that' and reconciles the opposites, is the sole
method of thought appropriate in the highest degree to this stage. Of course,
for everyday use, for the small change of science, the metaphysical categories
retain their validity." [Engels (1954),
pp.212-13.]
The first
point to note is that the above passage makes little sense. If an object or
process passes through intermediate stages then it must be the case that it is
in a given state or it isn't. In which case, this means that
'dialectics' also draws "hard and fast lines" here, and has its
very own "either-or".
It could be
objected that this completely fails to understand even the basics of
'dialectics'. If an object or process passes through stages, A, B,
C, D, E,..., etc., then, as Engels pointed out, it will be
in two of these states at once, in one of them and not in it at the same time.
So, there are no "hard and fast" lines in DM:
"[S]o 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." [Engels (1976), p.152.
Bold added.]
"…life consists precisely and primarily in this
-- that
a living thing 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 asserts and resolves itself; and as soon as the
contradiction ceases, life, too, comes to and end, and death steps in." [Ibid.,
p.153.
Bold emphasis added.]
"Abstract identity
(a = a; and negatively, a cannot be
simultaneously equal and unequal to a) is likewise inapplicable in
organic nature. The plant, the animal, every cell is at every moment of its
life identical with itself and yet becoming distinct from itself, by absorption
and excretion of substances, by respiration, by cell formation and death of
cells, by the process of circulation taking place, in short, by a sum of
incessant molecular changes which make up life and the sum-total of whose
results is evident to our eyes in the phases of life -- embryonic life,
youth, sexual maturity, process of reproduction, old age, death. The further
physiology develops, the more important for it become these incessant,
infinitely small changes, and hence the more important for it also the
consideration of difference within identity, and the old abstract
standpoint of formal identity, that an organic being is to be treated as
something simply identical with itself, as something constant, becomes out of
date." [Engels
(1954), p.214. Bold emphases alone added.]
Henri
Lefebvre also expressed this idea rather more concisely:
"Formal Logic asserts:
'A is A'.
Dialectical Logic is not saying 'A is not-A'…. It says: A is indeed A, but A is
also not-A precisely so far as the proposition 'A is A' is not a tautology but
has real content. A tree is a tree only by being such and such a tree, by
bearing leaves, blossom and fruit, by passing through and preserving within
itself those moments of its becoming...." [Lefebvre (1968), p.41.]
Even if the
above made any sort of sense (which, as we saw in Essays
Four Part One,
Five, and Eight Parts
One and
Two, they don't) in no way do
they mean that 'dialectics' doesn't have its very own "hard and fast lines", or
that there isn't a DM-'either-or', here.
Assume
object/process, S, goes through intermediate stages, S1,
S2,
S3,...,
Si,...,
S(n-2),
S(n-1),
Sn
before it changes into its opposite, S*. Further, assume that it can be
in two of these intermediate stages at once, in one of them and not in it at the
same time.
To that end,
let us now suppose S can be in, say, S1
and S2,
in one of them and not in it, at the same time. Even then, it will still
be the case that S is in stages, S1
and S2,
or it is in stages, S2
and S3,
at the same time. S won't be in all three -- S1,
S2
and S3
--, at the same time. So there is a "hard and fast" distinction here,
just as there is an "either-or", too.
[I have said
much more about Hegel's unwise and ill-informed criticism of the LEM, as well as
DM-theorists' even more unwise appropriation of his ideas on this score,
here.]
[LEM = Law of Excluded Middle.]
1a.
Of course, the
theory that change is the result of some sort of relation, interplay or
'struggle' between 'opposites' encapsulates ideas that stretch back into the mists of time.
For example, it forms the basis of
Manichean
dualistic ontology, just as it underlies the
Daoist belief in yin and
yang. [In Appendix One
of Essay Two I have posted several more examples of ancient and modern mystical
systems that also bought into this 'world-view'.] This doctrine is also central to Aristotle's theory of
change; he credits the
Presocratic Philosophers,
Empedocles,
Anaxagoras,
Parmenides and
Democritus, with
different versions of it, although it is also present in
Heraclitus's
thought, albeit in a very obscure form:
"All thinkers then agree in making the contraries
principles, both those who describe the All as one and unmoved (for even
Parmenides treats hot and cold as principles under the names of fire and earth)
and those too who use the rare and the dense. The same is true of Democritus
also, with his plenum and void, both of which exist, be says, the one as being,
the other as not-being. Again he speaks of differences in position, shape, and
order, and these are genera of which the species are contraries, namely, of
position, above and below, before and behind; of shape, angular and angle-less,
straight and round.
"It is plain then that they all in one way or another identify the contraries
with the principles. And with good reason. For first principles must not be
derived from one another nor from anything else, while everything has to be
derived from them. But these conditions are fulfilled by the primary contraries,
which are not derived from anything else because they are primary, nor from each
other because they are contraries.
"But we must see how this can be arrived at as a reasoned result, as well as in
the way just indicated.
"Our first presupposition must be that in nature nothing
acts on, or is acted on by, any other thing at random, nor may anything come
from anything else, unless we mean that it does so in virtue of a concomitant
attribute. For how could 'white' come from 'musical', unless 'musical' happened
to be an attribute of the not-white or of the black? No, 'white' comes from
'not-white'-and not from any 'not-white', but from black or some intermediate
colour. Similarly, 'musical' comes to be from 'not-musical', but not from any
thing other than musical, but from 'unmusical' or any intermediate state there
may be.
"Nor again do things pass into the first chance thing; 'white' does not pass
into 'musical' (except, it may be, in virtue of a concomitant attribute), but
into 'not-white'-and not into any chance thing which is not white, but into
black or an intermediate colour; 'musical' passes into 'not-musical'-and not
into any chance thing other than musical, but into 'unmusical' or any
intermediate state there may be.
"The same holds of other things also: even things which
are not simple but complex follow the same principle, but the opposite state has
not received a name, so we fail to notice the fact. What is in tune must come
from what is not in tune, and vice versa; the tuned passes into
untunedness -- and not into any untunedness, but into the corresponding
opposite. It does not matter whether we take attunement, order, or composition
for our illustration; the principle is obviously the same in all, and in fact
applies equally to the production of a house, a statue, or any other complex. A
house comes from certain things in a certain state of separation instead of
conjunction, a statue (or any other thing that has been shaped) from
shapelessness-each of these objects being partly order and partly composition.
"If then this is true, everything that comes to be or passes away from, or
passes into, its contrary or an intermediate state. But the intermediates are
derived from the contraries-colours, for instance, from black and white.
Everything, therefore, that comes to be by a natural process is either a
contrary or a product of contraries." [Aristotle (1984b), pp.321-22.]
As we will see, this doctrine also forms the backbone of
Hegel's answer to Hume's
attack on rationalist theories of causation. Here is how two HCD theorists
summarised Hegel's version of this ancient, mystical theory -- after briefly
outlining and then rejecting
Lucio Colletti's criticism of Hegel [in Colletti
(1973)], they argued as follows:
"Now, if we examine more closely the
dialectic of the finite in Science of Logic, it becomes clear that,
pace Colletti, those pages do not develop a demonstration of the ideal
character of the sensuous material world and therefore do not provide the key
argument for the idealist nature of Hegel's system. The only thing that Hegel is
proving (sic) there is the fact that things are 'finite' means that they carry
within themselves the necessity of their own negation. Consequently, they cannot
be properly grasped if represented as self-subsistent entities or immediate (or
unmediated) affirmations. Instead, things or objects need to be grasped as
self-moving, that is, as subjects of their own qualitative
transformation into another 'finite' form. An object thus realises its own
qualitative determination by becoming another, that is, through
self-mediation. This is, in our view, all that Hegel is trying to expound in
those pages: real forms of 'being' affirm through self-negation. It is in that
specific sense that according to him reality is the movement of contradiction.
To put it differently, Hegel's point in these pages is just to say that the true
infinite is nothing but the immanent self-movement of the finite, which
it affirms through self-negation....
"Thus, Hegel's insight into the self-moving
nature of real forms, which constitutes his great scientific discovery (sic) and
thus that the rational kernel to be found in the Logic, is not inherently
tied to his absolute idealism.... [T]he rejection of that Hegelian
discovery...inevitably leads to an idealist representation of reality. In
effect, when real forms are represented as devoid of any immanent necessity
driving them to self-movement, forms of 'being' are reduced to lifeless
abstractions which can only be put into external relation with each other
by means of subjective reflection.... [O]nly when things are grasped as bearers
of an intrinsic objective potentiality for self-movement does it make sense to
raise the question of the ideal reproduction of the 'immanent life' of the
subject-matter." [Caligaris and Starosta (2015), pp.93-94. Italic
emphases in the original.]
This passage inadvertently confirms (yet again) the
allegation advanced in these Essays that from thought alone (or, rather, from
obscure jargon) 'scientific' conclusions have been derived, which are supposedly
true for all of space and time. Far from the above (a priori and
abstract) argument showing that Hegel's system isn't at heart Idealist, it only
succeeds in underlining that fact -- 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.]
[See also
Rosenthal (1998, 2001).]
The above two authors obviously have a rather odd
understanding of the nature of science. Apparently, unsupported speculation
(based on sub-Aristotelian 'logic' and philosophical gobbledygook) is the very
essence of the scientific method!
Of course, DM-fans fail to tell
their readers that their own theory of change owes much to Aristotle, probably
since that would undermine their ill-informed criticisms of his logic.
On
Aristotle's theory of change, see Bostock (2006). The writings of the
Presocratics mentioned above can be found in Kirk, Raven and Schofield
(1999). On the Presocratics in general, see Barnes (1982). I have also covered
this topic in Note 4 to
Essay Eight Part One
Finally, I
have shown just how crazy Spinoza's dictum is (i.e., that 'every
determination is also a negation'), which I have called "Spinoza's Greedy
Principle" [SGP],
here
and here, but mainly
here.
1b. Here are several
other DM-theorists (drawn from different wings of Marxism) who say more-or-less
the same sort of thing:
"Changes in
society are due chiefly to the development of the internal contradictions in
society, that is, the contradiction between the productive forces and the
relations of production, the contradiction between classes and the contradiction
between the old and the new; it is the development of these contradictions that
pushes society forward and gives the impetus for the supersession of the old
society by the new....
"When Marx and
Engels applied the law of contradiction in things to the study of the
socio-historical process, they discovered the contradiction between the
productive forces and the relations of production, they discovered the
contradiction between the exploiting and exploited classes and also the
resultant contradiction between the economic base and its superstructure
(politics, ideology, etc.), and they discovered how these contradictions
inevitably lead to different kinds of social revolution in different kinds of
class society.
"When Marx
applied this law to the study of the economic structure of capitalist society,
he discovered that the basic contradiction of this society is the contradiction
between the social character of production and the private character of
ownership. This contradiction manifests itself in the contradiction between the
organized character of production in individual enterprises and the anarchic
character of production in society as a whole. In terms of class relations, it
manifests itself in the contradiction between the bourgeoisie and the
proletariat." [Mao
(1961b), pp.314, 328-29.]
"A dialectical
materialist outlook and method, and its application to human society and its
development, historical materialism, reveals that the defining
contradictions of any society, and the motive force of change in society, is the
contradiction between the forces and relations of production, along with the
contradiction between the economic base (or the mode of production) and the
superstructure (of politics, ideology, and culture). Engaging with this, in its
more sweeping dimension, will establish a stronger foundation for grasping more
clearly and deeply the essential reality that, in this era, and in the world
right now, it is the fundamental contradiction of capitalism, and other decisive
contradictions which this continually gives rise to -- it is this, and the
motion and development this gives rise to, more than anything else -- that is
setting the overall framework of things and is compelling and driving change in
the world, even as we, the conscious and organized vanguard forces, are striving
to transform this motion and development from what it is to a course leading to
the realization of communism -- a possibility which itself lies within the
fundamental and defining contradictions of capitalism and can be achieved
through the revolutionary resolution of these contradictions, throughout the
world." [Bob Avakian, quoted from
here. Italic emphasis in the original.]
"At this point
one important confusion must be cleared up. Historical materialism has
frequently been subject to a mechanical materialist distortion in which the
dialectic of forces and relations of production is interpreted simply as an
antagonism between the technical instruments of production ('forces') and the
system of property ownership ('relations') which operates independently of human
activity, thus arriving at a theory of technological determinism. In this
interpretation both Marx's key concepts undergo a reduction in their meaning.
For Marx the forces of production signify not only the instruments in the sense
of tools, machines etc., but the total productive capacity of society including
the productive activity of the working class. 'Of all the instruments of
production, the greatest productive power is the revolutionary class itself.'...
Property ownership, on the other hand, is 'but a legal expression of relations
of production.' Thus the contradiction between the forces and relations of
production is not separate from the class struggle but is the very ground on
which the latter arises." [Molyneux
(1983), p.16. Quotation marks altered to conform with the conventions adopted
at this site.]
"The general
contradiction is that between the forces and relations of production, though
Marx doesn't come right out and make this point specifically. Instead he says
that capital must develop the productive forces to their maximum 'regardless of
the value and surplus-value it contains, and regardless of the social conditions
under which capitalist production takes place'. At the same time capital must
preserve the value of the existing capital and expand that value. The
development of the productivity of labor negates its ability to do this."
[Kapitalism 101, quoted from
here. Quotation marks altered to
conform with the
conventions adopted at this site.]
"Ultimately, then, the contradiction between forces and relations of production
can be best understood as a contradiction between two historical tendencies,
whose effects work against each other, at the same time that they are modified
by the totality of the other contradictions and processes at work under
capitalism." [Paul Costello, quoted from
here.]
"This leaves little room for notions such as the contradiction between forces
and relations of production or between capital (which Marx regards as a social
relation) and labour." [Joseph Choonara, quoted from
here.]
"Marx argued that the motor of historical change was the
contradiction between the forces of production and the relations of production.
If only the latter moment is regarded as social, the forces of production must
mean pure technology. As in the last analysis the development of the forces of
production produces a breakdown of existing relations of production and the
creation of new relations, technology becomes the determining factor in the
structure and change of all societies. This view has been widely debated and
much effort has gone into attempts to prove or disprove the importance of
technology with respect particularly to moral factors. Within American
sociology,
Alvin
Gouldner has attempted a wide-ranging quantified analysis in Notes on
Technology and the Moral Order. Whatever the results of such comparisons, it
must be asked whether the historical relevant question can be posed in terms of
this simple opposition. Lukács argues that it cannot; technology is only a
moment of the forces of production which are in themselves social phenomena. The
contradiction between forces and relations of production is that between the
real conditions of appropriation of nature -- all the social relations, cultural
and physical factors that go into the process of production -- and the
conditions of expropriation -- the relations determining the ownership and
distribution of the product." [Ben Brewster, quoted from
here. Link added.]
"We shall now turn to the main elements of Engels's work on
political economy, in order to show how his and Marx's analyses approached the
contradictions of the capitalist mode of production and highlight their insights
which are relevant for the analysis of contemporary processes and phenomena. To
begin with, Engels stressed the point that a critique of the capitalist mode of
production cannot be reduced to moral condemnation. The task of a socialist
critique of capitalism is the scientific exposition of its laws.... In other
words, the essence of the scientific analysis of capitalism is the exposition of
the contradictions inherent in this mode of production. These contradictions are
generally expressed in the form of the contradiction between productive forces
and relations of production. According to Engels, the socialist critique of
capitalism is tasked with proving that capitalist relations of production hinder
the development of productive forces. One can, for instance, consider how the
technological developments of automation and digitalisation in capitalism tend
to result in unemployment and a quantitative and qualitative devaluation of
labour power." [Dimitrios
Kivotidis, quoted from
here.]
2. Woods and Grant list several examples of
internal and external opposites -- not really distinguishing between the two --, perhaps basing this
prize example of sloppy thought on principles they learnt from far too little
exposure to FL (or, indeed, none at all), and rather too much to DL.
[FL = Formal Logic; DL=
Dialectical Logic.]
Since
RIRE is now being
championed all over the Internet as the book to read
on DM, a few words seem appropriate. To that end, the reader should consult my
comments on this book in Essay Four (the links can be found in
Note 7, of Essay Seven
Part One), and those written by a
supporter of this site, "LevD",
here. [To assist the reader, the latter has now been re-posted
here.]
3.
Spare a thought,
too, for the
Australian
Jewel Beetle -- or, rather the male of the species, which seem to have
developed an unhealthy fixation for
empty beer bottles:
"Beetles Die During Sex With Beer Bottles
"Jennifer Viegas
"Besotted beetles are dying while trying to get
it on with discarded brown beer bottles, according to research conducted by
Darryl Gwynne, a University of Toronto Mississauga professor. It's a case of mistaken attraction,
because the beer bottles happen to possess all of the features that drive male
Australian
jewel beetles wild.
They're big and orangey brown in color, with a slightly dimpled surface near the
bottom (designed to prevent the bottle from slipping out of one's grasp) that
reflects light in much the same way as female wing covers. Gwynne made these
observations with colleague David Rentz.
"As a result, the beer bottles are irresistible
to the male insects, which will die trying to mate with them in the hot
Australian sun.... Gwynne and Rentz were conducting fieldwork in
western Australia when they noticed something unusual along the side of the
road. He explained, 'We were walking along a dirt road
with the usual scattering of beer cans and bottles when we saw about six bottles
with beetles on top or crawling up the side. It was clear the beetles were
trying to mate with the bottles.'
"The bottles –- stubbies as they are known in
Australia, Canada and a few other countries –- resemble a 'super female' jewel
beetle. Male beetles are so captivated by the bottles that they will gird their
loins and go through the expected motions, refusing to leave until they fry to
death, are consumed by hungry ants, or are physically removed by researchers.
"The male beetles are very particular about the
bottles. Beer cans or wine bottles do nothing for them. It's all about the
shape, color and texture and has nothing to do with booze. As the researchers
wrote in their findings, 'Not only do western Australians never dispose of a
beer bottle with beer still in it, but many of the bottles had sand and detritus
accumulated over many months.'...
"Gwynne points out that the research supports a
theory of sexual selection: that males of certain species, in their eagerness to
mate, are often the ones making mating mistakes." [Quoted from the
Discovery Science News page; 03/10/2011. Quotations marks altered to
conform with the conventions adopted at this site; spelling changed to UK English.
Some paragraphs have been merged. Link in the original; some links
removed.]
Has evolution provided a new
'dialectical opposite' for these randy insects? If so, why has this development
-- in the forward march of the
NON -- only emerged
in Australia? Are European and US beer bottles not attractive enough?
I have given
details of several other rather confused organisms that don't appear to 'understand' dialectics,
here,
here and
here.
4.
We have already
seen that there are countless changeless objects in nature. [On this,
see a relatively recent Internet discussion I have had on this topic.]
Appendix A -- Mao On Change
The following material has been taken directly from
Mao (1961b):
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.
Engels said,
"Motion itself is a contradiction." Lenin defined the law of the unity of
opposites as "the recognition (discovery) of the contradictory, mutually
exclusive, opposite tendencies in all phenomena and processes of
nature (including mind and society)". Are these ideas correct? Yes, they
are. The interdependence of the contradictory aspects present in all things
and the struggle between these aspects determine the life of all things and push
their development forward. There is nothing that does not contain contradiction;
without contradiction nothing would exist. (p.316)
But this
situation is not static; the principal and the non-principal aspects of a
contradiction transform themselves into each other and the nature of the
thing changes accordingly. In a given process or at a given stage in the
development of a contradiction, A is the principal aspect and B is the
non-principal aspect; at another stage or in another process the roles are
reversed -- a change determined by the extent of the increase or decrease in the
force of each aspect in its struggle against the other in the course of the
development of a thing. [p.333.]
Identity,
unity, coincidence, interpenetration, interpermeation, interdependence (or
mutual dependence for existence), interconnection or mutual co-operation -- all
these different terms mean the same thing and refer to the following two
points: first, the existence of each of the two aspects of a contradiction in
the process of the development of a thing presupposes the existence of the other
aspect, and both aspects coexist in a single entity; second, in given
conditions, each of the two contradictory aspects transforms itself into its
opposite. This is the meaning of identity....
The
contradictory aspects in every process exclude each other, struggle with each
other and are in opposition to each other. Without exception, they are contained
in the process of development of all things and in all human thought. A
simple process contains only a single pair of opposites, while a complex process
contains more. And in turn, the pairs of opposites are in contradiction to
one another. That is how all things in the objective world and all human thought
are constituted and how they are set in motion.
This being so,
there is an utter lack of identity or unity. How then can one speak of identity
or unity?
The fact is
that no contradictory aspect can exist in isolation. Without its opposite
aspect, each loses the condition for its existence. Just think, can any one
contradictory aspect of a thing or of a concept in the human mind exist
independently? Without life, there would be no death; without death, there would
be no life. Without "above", there would be no "below"; without "below", there
would be no "above". Without misfortune, there would be no good fortune; without
good fortune, these would be no misfortune. Without facility, there would be no
difficulty; without difficulty, there would be no facility. Without landlords,
there would be no tenant-peasants; without tenant-peasants, there would be no
landlords. Without the bourgeoisie, there would be no proletariat; without the
proletariat, there would be no bourgeoisie. Without imperialist oppression of
nations, there would be no colonies or semi-colonies; without colonies or
semicolonies, there would be no imperialist oppression of nations. It is so with
all opposites; in given conditions, on the one hand they are opposed to each
other, and on the other they are interconnected, interpenetrating,
interpermeating and interdependent, and this character is described as identity.
In given conditions, all contradictory aspects possess the character of
non-identity and hence are described as being in contradiction. But they also
possess the character of identity and hence are interconnected. This is what
Lenin means when he says that dialectics studies "how opposites can be
and how they become identical". How then can they be identical? Because each is the
condition for the other's existence. This is the first meaning of identity.
But is it
enough to say merely that each of the contradictory aspects is the condition for
the other's existence, that there is identity between them and that consequently
they can coexist in a single entity? No, it is not. The matter does not end
with their dependence on each other for their existence; what is more important
is their transformation into each other. That is to say, in given conditions,
each of the contradictory aspects within a thing transforms itself into its
opposite, changes its position to that of its opposite. This is the second
meaning of the identity of contradiction.
Why is there
identity here, too? You see, by means of revolution the proletariat, at
one time the ruled, is transformed into the ruler, while the bourgeoisie, the
erstwhile ruler, is transformed into the ruled and changes its position to that
originally occupied by its opposite. This has already taken place in the Soviet
Union, as it will take place throughout the world. If there were no
interconnection and identity of opposites in given conditions, how could such a
change take place?
The Kuomintang,
which played a certain positive role at a certain stage in modern Chinese
history, became a counter-revolutionary party after 1927 because of its inherent
class nature and because of imperialist blandishments (these being the
conditions); but it has been compelled to agree to resist Japan because of the
sharpening of the contradiction between China and Japan and because of the
Communist Party's policy of the united front (these being the conditions).
Things in contradiction change into one another, and herein lies a definite
identity.
Our agrarian
revolution has been a process in which the landlord class owning the land is
transformed into a class that has lost its land, while the peasants who once
lost their land are transformed into small holders who have acquired land, and
it will be such a process once again. In given conditions having and not having,
acquiring and losing, are interconnected; there is identity of the two sides.
Under socialism, private peasant ownership is transformed into the public
ownership of socialist agriculture; this has already taken place in the Soviet
Union, as it will take place everywhere else. There is a bridge leading from
private property to public property, which in philosophy is called identity,
or transformation into each other, or interpenetration. [pp.337-39. Three minor typos corrected; missing
words "and how they become", found in the published version, added. I have
informed the MIA of these errors.]
War and peace,
as everybody knows, transform themselves into each other. War is transformed
into peace; for instance, the First World War was transformed into the post-war
peace, and the civil war in China has now stopped, giving place to internal
peace. Peace is transformed into war; for instance, the Kuomintang-Communist
co-operation was transformed into war in 1927, and today's situation of world
peace may be transformed into a second world war. Why is this so? Because in
class society such contradictory things as war and peace have an identity in
given conditions.
All
contradictory things are interconnected; not only do they coexist in a single
entity in given conditions, but in other given conditions, they also transform
themselves into each other. This is the full meaning of the identity of
opposites. This is what Lenin meant when he discussed "how they happen to be
(how they become) identical -- under what conditions they are identical,
transforming themselves into one another...".
Why is it that
"the human mind should take these opposites not as dead, rigid, but as living,
conditional, mobile, transforming themselves into one another"? Because that
is just how things are in objective reality. The fact is that the unity or
identity of opposites in objective things is not dead or rigid, but is living,
conditional, mobile, temporary and relative; in given conditions, every
contradictory aspect transforms itself into its opposite. Reflected in man's
thinking, this becomes the Marxist world outlook of materialist dialectics.
It is only the reactionary ruling classes of the past and present and the
metaphysicians in their service who regard opposites not as living, conditional,
mobile and transforming themselves into one another, but as dead and rigid,
and they propagate this fallacy everywhere to delude the masses of the people,
thus seeking to perpetuate their rule. The task of Communists is to expose the
fallacies of the reactionaries and metaphysicians, to propagate the dialectics
inherent in things, and so accelerate the transformation of things and achieve
the goal of revolution.
In speaking
of the identity of opposites in given conditions, what we are referring to is
real and concrete opposites and the real and concrete transformations of
opposites into one another. There are innumerable transformations in
mythology, for instance, Kua Fu's race with the sun in Shan Hai Ching,
Yi's shooting down of nine suns in Huai Nan Tzu, the Monkey King's
seventy-two metamorphoses in Hsi Yu Chi, the numerous episodes of ghosts
and foxes metamorphosed into human beings in the Strange Tales of Liao Chai,
etc. But these legendary transformations of opposites are not concrete
changes reflecting concrete contradictions. They are naive, imaginary,
subjectively conceived transformations conjured up in men's minds by innumerable
real and complex transformations of opposites into one another. Marx
said, "All mythology masters and dominates and shapes the forces of nature in
and through the imagination; hence it disappears as soon as man gains mastery
over the forces of nature." The myriads of changes in mythology (and also in
nursery tales) delight people because they imaginatively picture man's conquest
of the forces of nature, and the best myths possess "eternal charm", as Marx put
it; but myths are not built out of the concrete contradictions existing in given
conditions and therefore are not a scientific reflection of reality. That is to
say, in myths or nursery tales the aspects constituting a contradiction have
only an imaginary identity, not a concrete identity. The scientific reflection
of the identity in real transformations is Marxist dialectics.
Why can an egg
but not a stone be transformed into a chicken? Why is there identity between war
and peace and none between war and a stone? Why can human beings give birth only
to human beings and not to anything else? The sole reason is that the identity
of opposites exists only in necessary given conditions. Without these necessary
given conditions there can be no identity whatsoever.
Why is it that
in Russia in 1917 the bourgeois-democratic February Revolution was directly
linked with the proletarian socialist October Revolution, while in France the
bourgeois revolution was not directly linked with a socialist revolution and the
Paris Commune of 1871 ended in failure? Why is it, on the other hand, that the
nomadic system of Mongolia and Central Asia has been directly linked with
socialism? Why is it that the Chinese revolution can avoid a capitalist future
and be directly linked with socialism without taking the old historical road of
the Western countries, without passing through a period of bourgeois
dictatorship? The sole reason is the concrete conditions of the time. When
certain necessary conditions are present, certain contradictions arise in the
process of development of things and, moreover, the opposites contained in them
are interdependent and become transformed into one another; otherwise none of
this would be possible.
Such is the
problem of identity. What then is struggle? And what is the relation between
identity and struggle?...
All processes
have a beginning and an end, all processes transform themselves into their
opposites. The constancy of all processes is relative, but the mutability
manifested in the transformation of one process into another is absolute.
There are two
states of motion in all things, that of relative rest and that of conspicuous
change. Both are caused by the struggle between the two contradictory
elements contained in a thing. When the thing is in the first state of
motion, it is undergoing only quantitative and not qualitative change and
consequently presents the outward appearance of being at rest. When the thing is
in the second state of motion, the quantitative change of the first state has
already reached a culminating point and gives rise to the dissolution of the
thing as an entity and thereupon a qualitative change ensues, hence the
appearance of a conspicuous change. Such unity, solidarity, combination,
harmony, balance, stalemate, deadlock, rest, constancy, equilibrium, solidity,
attraction, etc., as we see in daily life, are all the appearances of things in
the state of quantitative change. On the other hand, the dissolution of unity,
that is, the destruction of this solidarity, combination, harmony, balance,
stalemate, deadlock, rest, constancy, equilibrium, solidity and attraction,
and the change of each into its opposite are all the appearances of things in
the state of qualitative change, the transformation of one process into another.
Things are constantly transforming themselves from the first into the second
state of motion; the struggle of opposites goes on in both states but the
contradiction is resolved through the second state. That is why we say that the
unity of opposites is conditional, temporary and relative, while the struggle of
mutually exclusive opposites is absolute.
When we said
above that two opposite things can coexist in a single entity and can transform
themselves into each other because there is identity between them, we were
speaking of conditionality, that is to say, in given conditions two
contradictory things can be united and can transform themselves into each other,
but in the absence of these conditions, they cannot constitute a contradiction,
cannot coexist in the same entity and cannot transform themselves into one
another. It is because the identity of opposites obtains only in given
conditions that we have said identity is conditional and relative. We may add
that the struggle between opposites permeates a process from beginning to end
and makes one process transform itself into another, that it is ubiquitous, and
that struggle is therefore unconditional and absolute.
The
combination of conditional, relative identity and unconditional, absolute
struggle constitutes the movement of opposites in all things. [pp.339-43.]
We may now say
a few words to sum up. The law of contradiction in things, that is, the law
of the unity of opposites, is the fundamental law of nature and of society and
therefore also the fundamental law of thought. It stands opposed to the
metaphysical world outlook. It represents a great revolution in the history of
human knowledge. According to dialectical materialism, contradiction is
present in all processes of objectively existing things and of subjective
thought and permeates all these processes from beginning to end; this is the
universality and absoluteness of contradiction. Each contradiction and each
of its aspects have their respective characteristics; this is the particularity
and relativity of contradiction. In given conditions, opposites possess
identity, and consequently can coexist in a single entity and can transform
themselves into each other; this again is the particularity and relativity
of contradiction. But the struggle of opposites is ceaseless, it goes on both
when the opposites are coexisting and when they are transforming themselves into
each other, and becomes especially conspicuous when they are transforming
themselves into one another; this again is the universality and absoluteness of
contradiction. In studying the particularity and relativity of
contradiction, we must give attention to the distinction between the principal
contradiction and the non-principal contradictions and to the distinction
between the principal aspect and the non-principal aspect of a contradiction; in
studying the universality of contradiction and the struggle of opposites in
contradiction, we must give attention to the distinction between the different
forms of struggle. Otherwise we shall make mistakes. If, through study, we
achieve a real understanding of the essentials explained above, we shall be able
to demolish dogmatist ideas which are contrary to the basic principles of
Marxism-Leninism and detrimental to our revolutionary cause, and our comrades
with practical experience will be able to organize their experience into
principles and avoid repeating empiricist errors. These are a few simple
conclusions from our study of the law of contradiction. [pp.345-46.
Throughout, bold emphases alone added.]
References
Several of Marx and Engels's works listed below have
been linked to the Marxist Internet Archive, but since Lawrence & Wishart
threatened legal action over copyright infringement many no
longer work.
However, all of their work can now be accessed
here.
Afanasyev, V. (1968), Marxist Philosophy
(Progress Publishers, 3rd ed.).
Aristotle, (1984a),
The Complete Works Of
Aristotle,
Two Volumes, edited by J.
Barnes (Princeton University Press).
--------, (1984b),
Physics, in Aristotle (1984a), pp.315-446.
Baghavan, R. (1987),
An Introduction To
The Philosophy Of Marxism Part One (Socialist Platform).
Barnes, J. (1982), The Presocratic Philosophers
(Routledge).
Bostock, D. (2006), 'Aristotle On The Principles Of Change In
Physics 1', in Schofield and Nussbaum, pp.179-96.
Bottomore, T. (1985) (ed.), A Dictionary Of Marxist Thought
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