Dialectics

[DOOM]

So I have a problem on understanding dialectics, can someone of you enlighted ones explain it to me?:grin:
I really don't know what it's about, so don't give me advanced stuff.
Thanks

[Sinister Intents]

So I have a problem on understanding dialectics, can someone of you enlighted ones explain it to me?:grin:
I really don't know what it's about, so don't give me advanced stuff.
Thanks

I was actually thinking of asking a similar question :)

[DOOM]

Haha, well it is indeed a good question, since understanding marxist dialectics is crucial for understanding marxism.

[Brutus]

This (https://www.marxists.org/archive/trotsky/1939/12/abc.htm) is a nice overview that I would definitely recommend reading.

[DOOM]

thanks, will take a look at it!:)

[Comrade #138672]

I also found Notes on Dialectics (http://www.marxists.org/archive/james-clr/works/dialecti/index.htm) by CLR James useful.

[Hit The North]

I think it is best to ignore the philosophical discussions of the dialectic found in the readings by CLR James and Trotsky and instead look at the passage that Marx quotes approvingly in his Afterward to the 2nd German edition of Das Kapital (https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1867-c1/p3.htm), as encapsulating his dialectical method:


“The one thing which is of moment to Marx, is to find the law of the phenomena with whose investigation he is concerned; and not only is that law of moment to him, which governs these phenomena, in so far as they have a definite form and mutual connexion within a given historical period. Of still greater moment to him is the law of their variation, of their development, i.e., of their transition from one form into another, from one series of connexions into a different one. This law once discovered, he investigates in detail the effects in which it manifests itself in social life. Consequently, Marx only troubles himself about one thing: to show, by rigid scientific investigation, the necessity of successive determinate orders of social conditions, and to establish, as impartially as possible, the facts that serve him for fundamental starting-points. For this it is quite enough, if he proves, at the same time, both the necessity of the present order of things, and the necessity of another order into which the first must inevitably pass over; and this all the same, whether men believe or do not believe it, whether they are conscious or unconscious of it. Marx treats the social movement as a process of natural history, governed by laws not only independent of human will, consciousness and intelligence, but rather, on the contrary, determining that will, consciousness and intelligence. ... If in the history of civilisation the conscious element plays a part so subordinate, then it is self-evident that a critical inquiry whose subject-matter is civilisation, can, less than anything else, have for its basis any form of, or any result of, consciousness. That is to say, that not the idea, but the material phenomenon alone can serve as its starting-point. Such an inquiry will confine itself to the confrontation and the comparison of a fact, not with ideas, but with another fact. For this inquiry, the one thing of moment is, that both facts be investigated as accurately as possible, and that they actually form, each with respect to the other, different momenta of an evolution; but most important of all is the rigid analysis of the series of successions, of the sequences and concatenations in which the different stages of such an evolution present themselves. But it will be said, the general laws of economic life are one and the same, no matter whether they are applied to the present or the past. This Marx directly denies. According to him, such abstract laws do not exist. On the contrary, in his opinion every historical period has laws of its own. ... As soon as society has outlived a given period of development, and is passing over from one given stage to another, it begins to be subject also to other laws. In a word, economic life offers us a phenomenon analogous to the history of evolution in other branches of biology. The old economists misunderstood the nature of economic laws when they likened them to the laws of physics and chemistry. A more thorough analysis of phenomena shows that social organisms differ among themselves as fundamentally as plants or animals. Nay, one and the same phenomenon falls under quite different laws in consequence of the different structure of those organisms as a whole, of the variations of their individual organs, of the different conditions in which those organs function, &c. Marx, e.g., denies that the law of population is the same at all times and in all places. He asserts, on the contrary, that every stage of development has its own law of population. ... With the varying degree of development of productive power, social conditions and the laws governing them vary too. Whilst Marx sets himself the task of following and explaining from this point of view the economic system established by the sway of capital, he is only formulating, in a strictly scientific manner, the aim that every accurate investigation into economic life must have. The scientific value of such an inquiry lies in the disclosing of the special laws that regulate the origin, existence, development, death of a given social organism and its replacement by another and higher one. And it is this value that, in point of fact, Marx’s book has.” Marx goes on to write:

Whilst the writer pictures what he takes to be actually my method, in this striking and [as far as concerns my own application of it] generous way, what else is he picturing but the dialectic method?

You can read the rest here (https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1867-c1/p3.htm). It has the advantage of clarifying the difference Marx saw between his dialectic and Hegel's, that the more philosophical discussions of the dialectic lack.

[Eleutheromaniac]

This (https://www.marxists.org/archive/trotsky/1939/12/abc.htm) is a nice overview that I would definitely recommend reading.

From the link:


Dialectical thinking is related to vulgar in the same way that a motion picture is related to a still photograph. The motion picture does not outlaw the still photograph but combines a series of them according to the laws of motion. Dialectics does not deny the syllogism, but teaches us to combine syllogisms in such a way as to bring our understanding closer to the eternally changing reality.

IDK why, but I found this quote extremely helpful.

[Remus Bleys]

I really like this (http://libcom.org/library/dialectical-method-amadeo-bordiga)piece on it.
Also its a pity that the anti-dialectics site got banned because it was actually enjoyable to read, and it brings up a lot of neat points.
The point, I think, of dialectics is not to describe every possible thing but to describe many things, and its important to remember that dialectics is a tool for understanding things. Dialectics can be useful, but in other instances it can be irrelevant.

[Ravn]

Dialectical Materialism ==> Everything is a unity of opposites. Everything is in motion. Change comes from the internal contradictions inherent in all things.


"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. Contradictoriness within a thing is the fundamental cause of its development, while its interrelations and interactions with other things are secondary causes. Thus materialist dialectics effectively combats the theory of external causes, or of an external motive force, advanced by metaphysical mechanical materialism and vulgar evolutionism. It is evident that purely external causes can only give rise to mechanical motion, that is, to changes in scale or quantity, but cannot explain why things differ qualitatively in thousands of ways and why one thing changes into another. As a matter of fact, even mechanical motion under external force occurs through the internal contradictoriness of things."
(Mao, from "On Contradictions")