Dialectics, Please explain it!

[Socialist18]

I'm pretty well read and usually understand most things quite easily but every time I try to learn what exactly Dialectics is and how to apply it, it seems like my head is going to explode. To me it seems like an idea that you can never actually understand. I've read "Dialectics for kids" but that doesn't really explain it in the depth that Marx uses it, its a very vague explanation.

Also, how the fuck can Dialectics have any relevance to modern Socialism and the proletariat?

I really don't get it and pretty soon, due to frustration, I'm going to write it off as shit that I don't understand, nor want to understand.

How can one expect the working class to unite when they cant even understand half the shit they are expected to understand?

Marx isn't the easiest to read and then something like Dialectics/Dialectic Materialism just makes it even fucking harder.


Help Please! I want to understand it but no one seems to really be able to explain it in depth in layman's terms or when they do try its a vague as fuck explanation that achieves nothing.

[Baconator]

Don't worry, its a philosophy based on... on... well nothing true. :rolleyes:

It claims that concepts and things have two opposing characteristics at the same time. A means A but A also means B which is the opposite of A. I can see why its confusing. This turd called dialectics in the philosophical world blurs the line between reality and fantasy and is another belief about metaphysics meant to distort reality to justify some idealism which has no correlation to truth. One might ask why would people promote such nonsensical things? To destroy independent thought and enslave the masses of course...:(

[Kami]

It's the idea that if you take a thesis, and the opposition that arises from it, the antithesis, the tension between the two ideas will eventually produce the "synthesis".

Yeah, it's a load of shite. Marx said a lot of smart stuff, but dialectics wasn't among that.

[Decolonize The Left]

I will third the opinion that it is a worthless bunch of nonsense. If you really want to understand dialectics (or rather why it is totally absurd), you ought to PM Rosa. She is extremely well-versed in this area and can help you. She is also kind and intelligent, and has made it a purpose of her own to dismantle the threads of dialectics which run through revolutionary theory. But I will stop speaking in her name, PM her if you want a real analysis (as her for a link to an easy text).

- August

[Cult of Reason]

Forget dialectics, join the cool kids and do Mathematics and then maybe look up mining and agricultural statistics like me!

*Turns back to FAOStat...

[Niccolò Rossi]

Sorry to be another jumping on the anti-dialectics bandwagon but I have to agree that as philosophy dialectics is nonsense. Whilst it's undeniable that Marx and his writings were heavily influenced and his thought based on the dialectic (although individual's such as Rosa will play it down) it has no use to modern socialists other than to understand the seeds of Marx's thought.

In short, don't waste your time.

[Socialist18]

Ok thanks, It seems as I thought, a load of shit!
But, I do want to grasp it so I know exactly how big a load of shit it is so I may PM rosa like one of you suggested.

[Bud Struggle]

Dialectics is the single most important idea ever to come out of Philosophy. It was invented by the Greeks, most likely Socrates and codified by Plato. It was the idea the "invented" Western society and technology. Before the dialectic people said--what they said and nothing ever went further. The pre-Socratic philosophers each had and "idea" of the universe but each idea was insular and stand alone--"Air" or "water." or other things.

Socrates came along and changed these solitary ideas into a method. Instead of being a concrete opinion, the concept of what was real became fluid dynamic of various ideas that may or may not be true all put together to a consensus was reached. reality ceased to be an "opinion" and became provable fact. Socrates devised the idea there there is a thesis--which is one person's opinion and the antithesis--which is another person's opinion an then, and this is the important part, the synthesis--which is NO ONE'S opinion, which became an independent idea based on what was best of both people's opinions.

That was the beginning of science as we know it. It's the reason that man had been bumbling around the earth for a couple of hundred thousand years, basically doing nothing more than any other animal--and then just a few thousand years later he was walking on the moon. The lack of dialectic is why there are lots of civilizations still running around in the rain forest and Western man is so technically advanced.

An interesting point is that Buddhist philosophy came to a similar conclusion and helped with the rise of Chinese culture.

Hegels dialetic is something further--he posits that all of history is a similar interaction. Something exists in the world, let's say, the king (thesis) and then something happens, revolution (antithesis) and then a third thing emerges--capitalism. He sees great sweeps happening all through the history of the world--I personally find it all a bit over the top and subjective.

[BurnTheOliveTree]

Tom - You need to explain why it's true, though.

-Alex

[Bud Struggle]

Tom - You need to explain why it's true, though.

-Alex

What part?

[trivas7]

Sorry to be another jumping on the anti-dialectics bandwagon but I have to agree that as philosophy dialectics is nonsense. Whilst it's undeniable that Marx and his writings were heavily influenced and his thought based on the dialectic (although individual's such as Rosa will play it down) it has no use to modern socialists other than to understand the seeds of Marx's thought.

In short, don't waste your time.
I disagree that dialectics is a waste of time. You can't begin to understand Marx if you have no "feel" for dialectics. It has been important to just about every Marxist theoretician from Engels to Mao. Granted, Stalin and the ideology he promulgated made it into something of a fetishistic minor deity. But historically, as TomK remarks, it is important. Also saying that Rosa "plays down" dialectics is putting it mildly. She is single-mindedly on a crusade against it, going so far as to explain the "failure" of Marxist practice because of the mere mention of dialectics in socialist theory.

[BurnTheOliveTree]

What part?


Dialectics itself. Why should I believe that reality arranges itself into the synthesis triad?

-Alex

[trivas7]

Dialectics itself. Why should I believe that reality arranges itself into the synthesis triad?

This, frankly, is a characature of dialectics. Have you read Plato? His Dialogues are what dialectics is all re.

[Bud Struggle]

Dialectics itself. Why should I believe that reality arranges itself into the synthesis triad?

-Alex

If you mean the in the Hegelian sense--I actually kind of think that the idealism is so thick and murky, I have a hard time believing in much of what he's saying--as to Plato, his dialectic need not necessarily be binary before the synthesis--Plato's point was that ideas can function by themselves based on fact outside the realm of human opinion.

The other main concern is the observable world for the Greeks--how do things change? What is the process for one thing becoming another? And how can we produce a concrete analysis of what actually happens? A widely based belief in most primitive societies is that the "gods" change thing. There is no causality and no reason--just devine fiat. But the second you posit the idea that things change from causes you begin the dialetic in nature. It's quantifyable and measurable.

[Baconator]

If you mean the in the Hegelian sense--I actually kind of think that the idealism is so thick and murky, I have a hard time believing in much of what he's saying--as to Plato, his dialectic need not necessarily be binary before the synthesis--Plato's point was that ideas can function by themselves based on fact outside the realm of human opinion.

Plato believed that concepts could trump sensual evidence and logic by asserting a realm of perfect forms ( concepts) exist. It isn't in any way rational and a plague to human thought which is unfortunately the most popular wing of philosophy these days.

Concepts based on reality go along Aristotelian lines. Reality always trumps concepts instead of vice versa.

The differences are present today. For example the Platonic view of metaphysics today would be more in support of religion as to where the Aristotelian view would be more like the scientific method. Its pretty clear which view is based more on truth.

[Niccolò Rossi]

I disagree that dialectics is a waste of time. You can't begin to understand Marx if you have no "feel" for dialectics. It has been important to just about every Marxist theoretician from Engels to Mao. Granted, Stalin and the ideology he promulgated made it into something of a fetishistic minor deity.

I understand where your coming from when you claim that to understand Marx you need a "feel" for dialectics. As I said before Marx and his thought where heavily influenced and based on the dialectic and if one wants to really understand it's genesis they need some grasp of the dialectic (no matter what it's validity).

However Dialectical Materialism is not, in my opinion, something that modern Marxists aught to "utilise" aside from in their study of Marx. Whenever I read an article written by a particular "Socialist" party and see the use of terms such as "Dialectical Relationship" in order to defend, advocate or explain a particular notion, all I feel like doing is slamming my head against the desk.


Also saying that Rosa "plays down" dialectics is putting it mildly.

I know that but I'd prefer to "put it mildly".

[Schrödinger's Cat]

Don't worry, its a philosophy based on... on... well nothing true. :rolleyes:



I think I clicked on the "anarcho-capitalist" thread on mistake.