One of the standard (and much needed) correctives issued to those who study evolution is the old line about how natural selection has no foresight at all. It is true, of course. Evolution is the blind watchmaker, and we must never forget it. But we shouldn't ignore the fact that Mother Nature is well supplied with the wisdom of hindsight. Her motto might well be "If I'm so myopic, how come I'm so rich?" And while Mother Nature is herself lacking in foresight, she has managed to create things - us human beings, preeminently - who do have foresight, and are even beginning to put this foresight to use in guiding and abetting the very processes of natural selection on this planet. I occasionally encounter even quite sophisticated evolutionary theorists who find this paradoxical. How could a process with no foresight invent a process with foresight? One of the main goals of my book "Darwin's Dangerous Idea" was to show that this is not paradoxical at all. The process of natural selection, slowly and without foresight, invents processes or phenomena that speed up the evolutionary process itself - cranes, not skyhooks in my fanciful terminology - until the souped up evolutionary process finally reaches the point where explorations within the lifetime of individual organisms can affect the underlying slow process of genetic evolution, and even, in some circumstances, usurp it.
- Freedom Evolves, page 53

Bill, the only experience that I have with dialectics is a horrible essay that I had to write at university about Mozart and Beethoven of all things. I've never really understood what dialectics really means, except that it's a great word to use when pretending to be intellectual over a cup of coffee, as most other people don't really seem to understand the concept either, but would prefer not to admit it. I know this as I regularly drop it into conversations and no one has pulled me up on it yet.. see emperor's new clothes post!

On that note, a brief description of what you think dialectics means would be much appreciated and then I'll tell you if I've been managing to use the concept correctly without actually having studied it.

Think of all the people scared to speak in public, or scared to admit how they feel about something, or someone! I know for a fact that my private side is very different from my public face. So in my opinion this is a 'problem' that stretches right across the board, it's not just in intellectual circles. People in general are afraid to speak their minds! Me too, so afraid that I don't want to post this, but I will anyway.

Sally wrote:  I've never really understood what dialectics really means....., a brief description of what you thinkmeans would be much appreciated.

Below  are some links to material to rescued material our old site that is quite relevant to understanding dialectics .  I'll try to write something myself tomorrow.

keza

1. Things, processes, dialectics, individuals  (from our old forum)

2. Engels on Marx/Historical Method

3.  Hegel and the pseudo-left   

4. Engels on Hegel - all that is real is rational; and all that is rational is real.

Continuing Kerry's suggestions I would also add Lenin's Philisophical Notebooks and the bit in it on Hegel and Marcuse's Reason and Revolution.

Lenin is especially good because we get to see his brain chewing over Hegel's material and developing his thinking as he does so. The advantage/benefit I took from this was not only in trying to deepen my own understanding of dialectics but in the associations/links this enabled me to make to other areas of practical concern. These range from my work through to politics and the sorts of issues that Bill raised in his comments on Imperialism. This is a good example of What Hegel was getting at when he suggested that philosophy should always return to the concrete.

Marcuse's book is also excellent. It was written about 1940 and is an exposition on the development of Hegel's philosophy, particularly his dialectic. I've got no idea whether it's avail. on line 'cos I have a hard copy and have never had to look.

I hope to contribute more on this and other things but am going on hols and am not yet certain whether I'll have access to the web during this time.

BTW Sally, I'm very glad you've posted the above because the issues you raise are important particularly about how much froth and bubble can be spouted by people more interested in impressing or pretending than in understanding. If dialectics, or any theory or philisophical position for that matter, can't be made explicable and practically useful then we shouldn't be bothered.

Sally: On that note, a brief description of what you think dialectics means would be much appreciated and then I'll tell you if I've been managing to use the concept correctly without actually having studied it.

The beginnings of an answer Sally's question.....

I think the main thing about dialectics is that it focuses on change - on process and transformation rather than on static "things".

Engels' wrote:

"The great basic thought  (is) that the world is not to be comprehended as a complex of readymade things, but as a complex of processes, in which the things apparently stable no less than their mind images in our heads, the concepts, go through an uninterrupted change of coming into being and passing away, in which, in spite of all seeming accidentally and of all temporary retrogression, a progressive development asserts itself in the end"  (you can read this in context here )

I suppose the key thing is not so much that dialectics focuses on change as that it makes sense of change - thereby allowing us to see it. A dialectical view of the world (human history and nature) shows that what happens is not the result of accidental events (despite the fact that much of the messy detail of what happens is unintended and unexpected) but is driven by an inner dynamic which we can make sense of. This dynamic is the playing out of the contradiction between what is currently real and what that reality makes possible.  The old is always pregnant with the new.

The dialectical materialism of Marx and Engels had its direct origins in Hegelian dialectics. Hegel saw historical change as arising out of a dialectical opposition between what is actual and what is potential . He argued that the potential (or possible) is an inherent part of what is actual.  The playing out of the conflict between what is currently "real" (or "true", or "rational" ) and what is potentially so is the engine of history -  without this dialectical opposition nothing would happen, everything would wind down:

"This mere customary life (the watch wound up and going on of itself) is that which brings on natural death. Custom is activity without opposition, for which there remains only a formal duration; in which the fullness and zest that originally characterised the aim of life is out of the questions merely external sensuous existence which has ceased to throw itself enthusiastically into its object. Thus perish individuals, thus perish peoples by a natural death; and though the latter may continue in being, it is an existence without intellect or vitality; having no need of its institutions, because the need for them is satisfied, — a political nullity and tedium. In order that a truly universal interest may arise, the Spirit of a People must advance to the adoption of some new purpose: but whence can this new purpose originate? It would be a higher, more comprehensive conception of itself — a transcending of its principle — but this very act would involve a principle of a new order, a new National Spirit."

Unlike Marx and Engels who were materialists, Hegel was an idealist. He saw ideas (reason, rationality) as primary. Marx And Engels "turned this on its head" by maintaining that our ideas about the world arise from the current conditions of life rather than vice versa. ( See the forum thread on the relation between materialism and idealism)

So I think the key thing to grasp about dialectics is that all development and change arises from contradiction or conflict within things ( societies, individuals, the natural world). In the quote above, Hegel suggests that "activity without opposition" is a sort of death. He talks of "the watch wound up and going on by itself" but I think it would be more accurate to think of the watch winding down and stopping altogether.

A dialectical view is not merely that it's 'a good thing' to "develop", "grow", "move forward" but also that this movement forwards is an inherent characteristic of organised matter (as opposed to the disorder or randomness of atoms floating in a void). Each new state or configuration creates the possibility of a new one and this very possibility undermines the stability of the system and puts it under pressure to change. Such change is quantitative up to a point but if it reaches a certain threshold it is better described as a qualitative transformation. At this point something new has emerged.

Marx and Engels are most famous for having applied this to history - explaining how each successive form of social and economic organisation has created the conditions for its own replacement (or overthrow). But they also applied it to nature .... eg The Dialectics of Nature (Engels)

It’s very interesting that this basic idea has been confirmed relatively recently by scientists working in the area of nonequilibrium thermodynamics eg Prigogine and Stengers 

Here's an example of dialectics from amazon, about the book store part of their business.

I've got into the habit of buying books through amazon because they offer a better service than a "real world" bookstore. Before I buy a book I nearly always check out features of that book through amazon.

There are several features of the amazon service that I particularly like -

• readers reviews of a book I'm considering buying
• readers recommendations, listed with particular books, of other similar books that the reader thinks are either better or as good as the book under consideration
• amazon also lists and ranks books that were bought by their customers who bought the book I'm considering
• they also normally offer the opportunity to view selected pages and the contents and index of their books
• there are also lists of books created by enthusiasts of a particular topic (list-mania)

All these features (and there are more) taken together add up to a far better service than can obtained by going to town and looking in a regular, old fashioned bookstore.

So, how does this relate to dialectics? I've been reading a book about how the web has changed us by David Weinberger, 'Small Pieces Loosely Joined'. He was discussing how in the "real world" individual often become insignificant as the size of a group grows and how this creates all sorts of problems for both individuals and groups. For example, individuals begin to feel alienated and powerless, whilst groups feel they have to simplify what they stand for because complex messages can more easily be misunderstood. So, in the "real world" we often have a dumbing down all around in the transactions that occur between individuals and groups.

As part of his explanation Weinberger pointed out something about amazon that I was vaguely aware of but hadn't fully comprehended.

In the first place amazon allowed readers to post reviews of books. But then some best selling books, such as Harry Potter, prompted over 3 thousand reviews and this defeated the initial purpose, because there were too many reviews for anyone to read. What happened next is that amazon presented the average rating of the book, from one to 5 stars. This gave a mass summary of readers' opinions but also had a downside. It didn't take advantage of the explicit and often helpful comments contained in the readers' reviews. So amazon added another level of review: readers of the reviews can rate the reviews indicating whether a particular review is helpful or not. This move pushed things back towards meeting individual needs but not far enough. Amazon also began flagging the reader reviewers whose reviews were highly rated by other readers so that their reviews stood out, eg. with a "Top 50" reviewer graphic.. This also made individual reader reviewers more recognisable on amazon.

Weinberger concludes his description quite consciously with reference to the dialectics between the individual and the mass:

"This progression has an almost Hegelian logic to it, each step following from the others, each propelled by an internal contradiction: the web consists of hundreds of millions of individuals. They are a mass, but each member is unique. Individuals write reviews. The massness of the individuals makes the aggregate of reviews useless. So Amazon capture summary information, 1-5 stars, from the mass of individual reviews. But because those numeric rankings slight the individual side of the web, the site begins to star the individual reviewers - but by using the masses review of the reviewers as its criterion. And so on. One can almost feel the breeze of the pendulum as it swings this way and that: masses, individuality, masses, individuality. And most important, a new relationship between them: the Web consists of a mass that refuses to lose its individual face."
'Small Pieces Loosely Joined' , p. 115

This is part of a general theme that I'd like to write about more - all institutions are being challenged by the Web, forced to adapt in surprising ways, or die. The amazon example is just one instance of a general trend.

Ok, I've had a read of some of the links on dialectics and I'm interested.

So now I have some questions.

1) The best laid plans of mice and men.... if practically everything that we do results in something not intended then why do we plan, why do we struggle, why do we try to move the world in a certain direction? Apart from the obvious response that we definitely feel that we could be doing alot better than we are today. I don't know about you guys but I often feel like I'm running around the world wearing a blindfold and earplugs and causing havoc wherever I go despite very good intentions!

2) Ok, I've deviated from my questions now. I've had the good fortune to be travelling for the last ten months (Thailand, England, Mexico, Guatemala and now Peru) and I have had the opportunity to meet people from all walks of life. From peasants to PHD students. I would say that the majority of people that I have had involved conversations with (ie not how much would it cost to get to Australia by bus? or why don't you have a cow?) have a far better knowledge of history than me. Yet nearly everyone I have spoken to buys into the general doom and gloom stuff about the future. I come across as rather naieve if I try to point out the positive side of society and humanity in general. And it IS easy to be trapped into this way of thinking. Especially here in Latin America where there is alot of obvious bad stuff going on and on the surface it doesn't appear that much is changing. Though I must say that there are alot of internet cafes here and it ain't just the tourist using them.

What people seem to be most scared and cynical about is western cutural domination. They don't want to see all these beautiful cultures (languages, arts beliefs etc) wiped out by western imperialism. They look upon technology as basically a bad thing (even though they use it themselves and I doubt that most of them would give it up). They look at their own lives and feel discontent and unhappy even though they actually have alot of great stuff so they feel that 'progress' is not the right direction to follow. Interestingly most people though negative about the future of the world in general see their own lives as having positive futures. They simply have huge guilt complexes about the 'miserable' lives of people in developing nations...so they do things like volunteer in orphanages which in my opinion is a great conscience soother but basically just helps the governments here to shirk the responsiblity of looking after their own orphans (for example).

Without a strong belief that the future will be better than the past (yeah but for who? I here the cynical voices of my fellow educated, middle class travellers echo in my ears) It is difficult to accept the current path that the world is taking. Of course the majority of 'poor' people that I have met are incredibly eager to jump into the future. They love to talk and ask questions about the world and would jump at the chance to own a computer or an IPOD or whatever and I don't think would feel guilty or sad about these possesions. But it seems that we in the west know better and need to shield these poor innocents from development and protect them from the terrible misery of consumerism (sic). My next question comes down to two things. What makes us happy? And Is it possible for the world to change and yet to still hold on in some way to these less dominant cultures which have their own beauty, arts, languages, belief systems which have helped to shape the world in the past? Museums are great but kind of stale sometimes no?

I'd just like to add a disclaimer that my opinion on what people are thinking is purely subjective (obviously) and is shaped by my own perceptions of the world and by what I want to hear and thus should be taken with a grain of salt. Something I'm sure all of you dialectically minded people out there are sure to do! Can you use the word 'dialectically' in the way I just did?

Sally

Just trying to write something in response to  Sally's first question right now:

The best laid plans of mice and men.... if practically everything that we do results in something not intended then why do we plan, why do we struggle, why do we try to move the world in a certain direction?  

 

When Engels wrote that consciously willed actions often result in quite unintended consequences  I think he was disputing the Hegelian idea that history is "the gradual realisation of ideas".   His point was that what happens in history comes about not as a direct result of abstract ideas,  wishes, intentions (and so on)  but is governed by 'inner laws' - ie what is possible (and therefore real and rational) in a given epoch.  Movements don't arise just because someone comes up with a good  (or bad) idea and manages to convince lots of people to follow them.  Movements for change arise out of material conditions -  the possibility for change is present and that opportunity is seized.  The ideology in which the movement is clothed is (somewhat) secondary .

The distinction should always be made between the material transformation of the economic conditions of production ... and the legal, political, religious, aesthetic or philosophic — in short, ideological — forms in which men become conscious of this conflict and fight it out.

Marx: Contribution to the Critique of Political Philosophy (1859)

An example is the idea of "equality"  in the bourgeois democratic revolution.  The idea that "all men are created equal" stood in direct opposition to the feudal belief that all men are most definitely  not created equal.  The growth of capitalism made it not only possible  but also  necessary  for the idea that rulers are made rather than born to take hold.  Thus on a conscious level the motivation for bourgois revolution was belief in 'liberty, equality and fraternity'  but at a more fundamental level,  the revolution was driven by the necessity to liberate the productive forces from the constraints of feudalism.  That reason (or motivation) was only dimly appreciated however. 

Friedrich Engels wrote in 1893 that:

Ideology is a process accomplished by the so-called thinker. Consciously, it is true, but with a false consciousness. The real motive forces impelling him remain unknown to him; otherwise it simply would not be an ideological process. Hence he imagines false or seeming motive forces.

 

I don't think this means that bourgeois revolutionaries didn't really believe in liberty, equality, fraternity - or that the battles they fought weren't really for these things.  We all know (except perhaps for the pseudo left) that as a result of  the democratic revolution we have freedoms and rights that were hardly even dreamed of previously.  However the ideas themselves weren't the driving force - these ideas could only take hold because the material conditions were crying out for them (so to speak).

I think what bothers a lot of people is the feeling that perhaps this means that what they as individuals actually do doesn't really matter - that somehow we are all carried along by a tide of "underlying forces" , that we are seized by ideas rather than seizing them ourselves etc etc.  Engels refuted this when he said "freedom is the recognition of necessity" (Anti Duhring?) ... once we come to understand "how things work" - "the rules of the game" then we do have a real chance of using our understanding to influence   the course of history.   Engels' Letter to Franz Mehring in Berlin is interesting in this respect.  

He starts by pointing out that both he and Marx tended to neglect the role of ideas/ consciousness in bringing about change... 

Marx and I always failed to stress enough in our writings and in regard to which we are all equally guilty. That is to say, we all laid, and were bound to lay, the main emphasis, in the first place, on the derivation of political, juridical and other ideological notions, and of actions arising through the medium of these notions, from basic economic facts. But in so doing we neglected the formal side – the ways and means by which these notions, etc., come about – for the sake of the content. This has given our adversaries a welcome opportunity for misunderstandings and distortions.....

and later:

Hanging together with this is the fatuous notion of the ideologists that because we deny an independent historical development to the various ideological spheres which play a part in history we also deny them any effect upon history. The basis of this is the common undialectical conception of cause and effect as rigidly opposite poles, the total disregarding of interaction. These gentlemen often almost deliberately forget that once an historic element has been brought into the world by other, ultimately economic causes, it reacts, can react on its environment and even on the causes that have given rise to it.

 

No time to write any more now!!  I'll finish with a quote I quite like though:

"Men make their own history, but they do not make it just as they please; they do not make it under circumstances chosen by themselves, but under circumstances directly encountered, given and transmitted from the past.  The tradition of all dead generations weighs like an Alp on the brains of the living.... "  (Marx: The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Napolean 

Hi Sal,

I've been travelling since the last time I emailed you and still haven't got properly setup including email access. Here's some quick thoughts while passing by an internet cafe...

1) If everything we do only produced unintended results there WOULD be no point in either planning or struggling. The "blind" workings of economic forces and political struggles guided by ideologies do produce "unintended" results. But more primitive forms of life gradually evolved an ability to plan, and therefore the intelligence required for that, precisely because it DID assist them in their struggle to live and reproduce. Those that could plan better achieved results closer to their intentions. The same applies to social forces historically. The bourgeois revolution in Europe was largely fought out as an "ideological" religious struggle between Protestantism and Catholicism. An "unintended" consequence was the rise of a propertyless ("proletarian") class which had to think and plan much more than previous oppressed classes. Mostly they still don't think much politically but in order to achieve intended results they will HAVE to - hence "scientific" socialism as opposed to vague utopian dreams.

2) I find your description of the outlook of people you have been meeting a bit confusing. Do they really have the same "doom and gloom" outlook "From peasants to PHD students"? Do the peasants really have a better knowledge of history than you? Do the peasants really "have huge guilt complexes about the 'miserable' lives of people in developing nations...so they do things like volunteer in orphanages"?

This bit sounds more plausible to me: "Of course the majority of 'poor' people that I have met are incredibly eager to jump into the future. They love to talk and ask questions about the world and would jump at the chance to own a computer or an IPOD or whatever and I don't think would feel guilty or sad about these possesions."

It would be great to read descriptions of specific conversations with specific people and their CONTRASTING (and self-contradictory) views of things. That's also an additional response on the meaning of "dialectics". Its about viewing every "thing" as a struggle of opposing forces. The dialectic (conversation) or struggle is what they ARE - not the "summary" or surface appearance. Thus attempting to summarize the varying, opposing and self-contradictory views of people you have talked to with "nearly everyone I have spoken to buys into the general doom and gloom stuff about the future" is ... undialectical ;-)

One thought that brought a smile as I read that is these aren't "random" conversations you are reporting with people "from all walks of life". They are conversations with an interesting Australian traveller who gets into arguments about "doom and gloom" with people as she wanders through Thailand, England, Mexico, Guatemala and now Peru by expressing her "naive" confidence in the positive side of society and humanity.

Dialectics practically requires that there be some conflict between the views you are arguing with and your own. How else could you be having arguments with all these people ;-)

My guess is that those who are especially hooked on gloom and doom are often ACTUALLY doomed (a fate common to peasants and PhD students whose views therefore resonate with the official culture of doom and gloom spread by the BBC and the like). But others may be spreading confidence in the future in their own interactions with others, or may be more influenced by your views than you realise while arguing with them.

The ideas of the ruling class are always the ruling ideas - so its natural for most people to express the conventional wisdom about how things are going from bad to worse since after all the ruling class IS doomed. But that doesn't make it a deeply held view.

3?) a. Q. "What makes us happy?" A. Struggle.

b. "Can the world progress without just relegating older cultures to museums?" Yes. Its the reactionaries that want to preserve obsolete social conditions on the excuse that they provide large closed reserves as museums for minority cultures. World culture progresses by drawing on the positive side of the various minority cultures assimilated into it which become part of the whole and therefore influence far larger numbers for a far longer period than when they were exclusive to a minority culture. This goes TOGETHER with rejecting the negative aspects of those cultures.

Seeya, Albert

2) I find your description of the outlook of people you have been meeting a bit confusing. Do they really have the same "doom and gloom" outlook "From peasants to PHD students"? Do the peasants really have a better knowledge of history than you? Do the peasants really "have huge guilt complexes about the 'miserable' lives of people in developing nations...so they do things like volunteer in orphanages"?

Sorry, I should have been more clear. My comments were about other travellers not campesinos. I haven't met a single campesino who has a guilt complex about their own 'miserable' lives. I use quotation marks on miserable because I think it's arrogant to assume that just because people's living conditions are very low their lives are miserable.

BTW maybe we should move this discussion to another spot because it's not really about dialectics anymore......maybe you should send me a message or we should start another thread.

When talking to campesinos I find that they are usually very uneducated but very interested in the world. Hence questions like 'how long would it take to get to Australia by bus?' But news still gets through. I had a very poignant conversation with one woman about the number of people who had died in the tsunami....she brought it up and was incredibly empathetic about it.

As for reporting conversations I think it's too difficult and too biased (on my part) but I do have a project which I only just started whereby I'm asking people short questions about the world and or the future and recording their answers. Any suggestions for good questions would be appreciated.

Think of a sentence, says Smolin; it is not simply a container into which one puts words. Without any words, there would be no sentence; similarly, in Einstein's theory, space has no existence apart from the objects that move within it.
Mark Buchanan Guardian review of Three Roads to Quantum Gravity by Lee Smolin

".... Our world cannot be understood as a collection of independent entities living in a fixed, static background of space and time. Instead, it is a network of relationships the properties of every part of which are determined by its relationships to the other parts."

"if we look finely enough at our world the continuity of space and time will dissolve as surely as the smoothness of materials gives way to the discrete world of molecules and atoms."

Duwayne Anderson's Amazon review of Three Roads to Quantum Gravity by Lee Smolin (quotes from Smolin)

Journalism traditionally assumes that democracy is what we have, information is what we seek. Whereas in the weblog world, information is what we have—it’s all around us—and democracy is what we seek.

PressThink: What's Radical About the Weblog Form in Journalism?

Every two months, each province, city, and autonomous region must hold a meeting to make an investigation and sum up the results, a small meeting of from several people to a dozen or so. Coordinated regions must also hold a meeting every two or three months.

The changes in the course of the movement are very great, there must be exchange of information. The aim of the meetings is to coordinate the rhythm of production. While one wave has not yet fallen, another rises in turn; this is the unity of the opposites, fast and slow.


Under the general line of going all out and aiming high to achieve greater, faster, better and more economical results, a wave-like form of progress is the unity of the opposites, deliberation and haste, the unity of the opposites, toil and dreams.

 If we have only haste and toil, that is one-sided. To be concerned only with the intensity of labour — that won’t do, will it? In all of our work, we must use both deliberation and haste. (For example, the Party secretary in Wuchang hsien did not take account of the peasants’ sentiments, and wanted them to go on working on the reservoirs on the twenty-ninth day of the twelfthmonth, so half of the civilian workers just took off.)


This means also the unity of hard fighting with rest and consolidation. In the past, when we waged war, there had to be an interval between two campaigns for rest and consolidation, bringing our forces up to strength and training the soldiers. We could not keep fighting one battle after another — there is a rhythm in warfare, too. The one hundred per cent ‘Bolshevization’ carried out in the Central Soviet Area was opposed to rest and consolidation, and advocated: ‘Be audacious and resolute, follow up victories and pursue the foe immediately, crush Nanchang.’ How could that work? The unity of the opp posites, hard fighting, and rest and consolidation, is a law; moreover, they are transformed into one another.


 There is nothing which does not undergo such transformation. ‘Haste’ is transformed into ‘deliberation’, and ‘deliberation’ is transformed into ‘haste’. ‘Toil’ is transformed into ‘dreams’, and ‘dreams’ are transformed into ‘toil’. It is the same with rest and consolidation, and hard fighting. Toil and dreams, deliberation and haste, also haveidentity; rest and consolidation and hard fighting also have an element of identity.


Going to bed and getting up is also a unity of opposites. I ask you, for example, who can guarantee that after getting up he will not go to bed? On the contrary: ‘He who has been lying down for a long time thinks of getting up.’ Going to bed is transformed into getting up, and getting up is transformed into going to bed.


Convening a meeting moves towards its opposite, and is transformed into dismissing a meeting. As soon as a meeting is called, it bears within itself factors leading to its own dismissal. We can’t meet for 10,000 years here in Chengtu. Wang Hsi-feng says, ‘However grandiose the banquet, it must always come to an end.’ This is the truth.


 A statement cannot be rejected because of the speaker; our judgement must be based on whether it is true or not. After a meeting is dismissed, problems accumulate again, until there is once more a transformation into convening a meeting.

We unite, and then after we have carried out our work for a while, ideas diverge, and this is transformed into struggle; divergences arise, and once more there are splits. We can’t go on uniting day after day and year after year. As soon as we talk about unity, there is disunity; disunity is unconditional. At the very time we talk of unity, there still remains disunity — ! sp; this is why we have work to do.

To talk all the time about monolithic unity, and not to talk about struggle, is not Marxist-Leninist. Unity passes through struggle, only thus can unity be achieved. It is the same within the Party, as regards classes, and among the people. Unity is transformed into struggle, and then there is unity again. We cannot talk of monolithic unity alone, and not talk about struggle, about contradictions.

The Soviet Union does not talk about the contradictions between the leaders and the led. If there were no contradictions and no struggle, there would be no world, no progress, no life, there would be nothing at all. To talk all the time about unity is ‘a pool of stagnant water’; it can lead to coldness. We must destroy the old basis for unity, pass through a struggle, and unite on a new basis. Which is better — a stagnant pool, or ‘the inexhaustible Yangtse comes roaring past’? It’s like this with the Party, and it’s like this, too, with classes and the people.

Unity-struggle-unity: this means we have done our work. Production is transformed into consumption, consumption is transformed into production. Production is carried out for the sake of consumption; production is carried out not merely for the sake of other toilers, the producers themselves are also consumers.


 If a person doesn’t eat, he has no energy at all, and he can’t produce. If he eats hot meals, he can do more work. Marx says: production also includes consumption. Production and consumption, construction and destruction, are unities of opposites, they are transformed into one another.

The production of the Anshan Iron and Steel Works is done for the sake of consumption; in a few decades, the installations will be replaced. Sowing is transformed into reaping, reaping is transformed into sowing. Sowing consists in consuming seeds; after the seeds are sown, they move towards their opposite! , and are not called seeds, but rice plants, crops; after the crops are harvested, new seeds are once more obtained. We must cite abundant examples, put forward several dozen or a hundred examples in order to explain the concepts of the unity of opposites and their transformation into one another.

Only thus can we correct our ideology and raise our level of understanding.


Spring, summer, autumn and winter are also transformed into one another. Elements of spring and summer are contained in autumn and winter. Birth and death are also transformed into one another. Living is transformed into dying, lifeless matter is transformed into living beings.


I propose that when people over the age of fifty die, a party should be held to celebrate, for it is inevitable that men should die, this is a natural law.


 Grain is an annual plant, every year it is born once, and dies once; moreover, the more that dies, the more that is born. To takeexample, if pigs were not slaughtered, there would be fewer of them all the time; who would feed them?

The Concise Philosophical Dictionary makes a specialty of opposing me. It says the transformation of birth into death is metaphysical, and the transformation of war into peace is wrong.

In the last analysis, who is right? Let me ask: if living beings do not result from the transformation of inanimate matter, where do they come from? In the beginning, there was nothing but inorganic matter on earth; organic matter appeared only subsequently.

 All living substances result from changes in twelve elements such as nitrogen and hydrogen. All living beings result from the transformation of inanimate matter. Sons are transformed into fathers, fathers are transformed into sons; women are transformed into men, men are transformed into women. Such transformations cannot take place directly, but, after marriage, sons and daughters are born; is this not transformation?

The oppressors and the oppressed are transformed into one another, as in the relations between bourgeoisie and landlords on the one hand, and workers and peasants on the other. Naturally, when we talk about these oppressors, we are referring to the old ruling classes, it is a matter of class dictatorship and not of individual oppressors.


War is transformed into peace, peace is the opposite of war. When there had been no fighting, that was peace; as soon as the 38th Parallel was crossed, that was war, and as soon as the armistice was concluded, that was peace again.


Military affairs are politics under particular circumstances, they are the continuation of politics; politics is also a kind of war.


To sum up, quantitative changes are transformed into qualitative changes, and qualitative changes are transformed into quantitative changes. Europe is heavily infested with dogmatism, and the Soviet Union has some shortcomings, but all of this is bound to change, and if we don’t do our work well, we can become rigid again.

If, at such a time, our industry has become number one in the world, we might grow cocky, and then our thinking might ossify. The finite is transformed into the infinite, the infinite is transformed into the finite. The dialectics of ancient times was transformed into the metaphysics of the Middle Ages, and the metaphysics of the Middle Ages was transformed into the dialectics of modern times.

The universe, too, undergoes transformation, it is not eternal. Capitalism leads to socialism, socialism leads to communism, and communist society must still be transformed, it will also have a beginning and an end, it will certainly be divided into stages, or they will give it another name, it cannot remain constant.

If there were only quantitative changes and no qualitative changes, that would go against dialectics. There is nothing in the world that does not arise, develop, and disappear. Monkeys turned into men, mankind arose; in the end, the whole human race will disappear, it may turn into something else, at that time the earth itself will also cease to exist.

The earth must certainly be extinguished, the sun too will grow cold — it is already much cooler than it was in ancient times. During the ice age, there was one change in two million years. When the ice came, a large part of all living creatures perished.

Beneath the South Pole there is a great deal of coal, so you can see that in ancient times it was very warm there. In Yen-ch’ang hsien they have discovered petrified bamboo. (An author of the Sung dynasty said that bamboo grew in Yen-ch’ang in ancient times, but now it can’t.)

All things must have a beginning and an end. Only two things are infinite: time and space. The infinite is made up of the finite.

All things of whatever kind develop and change step by step.

I have talked about all this in order to extend and enliven our thinking. Whenever the mind becomes rigid, it is very dangerous. We must educate our cadres. The Central, provincial, regional, and hsien-level cadres are very important. Including all the various system, there are several hundred thousand of them.

In a word, we must do more thinking, we must not have constantly in mind the classic writings, but we must make use of our brains and enliven our thinking.

Comrades might like to know that I take apart this mystical 'theory' (and, believe it or not, from a Marxist angle) here:

http://www.anti-dialectics.org

...it is fundamental to my project that if I cannot explain myself in ordinary language, then not even I understand what I am attempting to say!** **And that is why this Essay will need to be re-written many, many times.

My answer to all your stuff is that the internal contradictions in any entity will be worked out by the usual dialectical processes. The nature of what is to be born from the internal struggle will be determined by the resolution of the internal contradictions. No amount of outside pressure nor outside influence will have any effect on that which is to emerge.

...if truth be told, some {Stalinist Dialecticians} (Russian or Chinese) display a far more nuanced and sophisticated understanding of "the dialectic" than do many {Orthodox Trotskyists} - Ilyenkov and Oizerman come to mind here. Another: Alexander Spirkin's analysis of the Part/Whole relation, here.

Nevertheless, for all their avowed love of "contradictions", DM-theorists do not like to be contradicted - especially "internally", as it were, by a comrade. In fact, they reject all attempts at doing this (which is rather odd given their commitment to the belief that progress can only occur this way).

So here is a nice conundrum: if all progress and change does indeed result from "internal contradictions", then the pages that follow, which uncover the many that lie at the heart of dialectics, should be warmly welcomed by the DM-faithful. Indeed, if improvement and development can come about in no other way, then these pages ought to be well-received by those committed to "dialectical" change.


That they won't be well-received should therefore count as one of the opening "contradictions" exposed at this site: DM stands refuted as much by its own unwillingness to be contradicted (internally or externally) as it is by the fact that this situation is not likely to change.

Arthur, thankyou for your comments, but you need to recall that the Essay you read is only about 3% of the material I have so far published at my site, and is solely aimed at beginners!

 "But I would say they have as little grasp of dialectical materialism as they do of anything else."

However, backed by extensive evidence, I claim that no one understands this mystical theory.

"But you would need to tackle the concrete issues we are discussing (eg Iraq) in ordinary language."

I am not sure what this has to do with anything I have said, but you need to know that I am, unlike those who post here, vehemently opposed to the criminal invasion of Ir