DM/'Materialist Dialectics' was used by the Stalinised Bolshevik Party (after Lenin's death) to justify the imposition of an undemocratic (if not an openly anti-democratic and terror-based) structure on both the Communist Party and the population of the former USSR (and later elsewhere).
The catastrophic effect of this hardly needs underlining.
This new and vicious form of the 'dictatorship of the proletariat' was justified by Stalin on the grounds that, since Marxist theory sees everything as 'contradictory', intensified central control was compatible with greater democratic freedom. The "withering-away of the state" was in fact confirmed by moves in the opposite direction: ever-growing centralised power. So, paradoxically, less democracy was in fact more democracy!
Indeed, that very contradiction illustrated the truth of dialectics!
As Stalin himself put it:
"It may be said that such a presentation of the question is 'contradictory.' But is there not the same 'contradictoriness' in our presentation of the question of the state? We stand for the withering away of the state. At the same time we stand for the strengthening of the dictatorship of the proletariat, which is the mightiest and strongest state power that has ever existed. The highest development of state power with the object of preparing the conditions for the withering away of state power -- such is the Marxist formula. Is this 'contradictory'? Yes, it is 'contradictory.' But this contradiction us bound up with life, and it fully reflects Marx's dialectics." [Political Report of the Central Committee to the Sixteenth Congress of the CPSU(B), June 27,1930. Bold emphasis added; quotation marks altered to conform to the conventions adopted here.]
And he went on to add this rather ominous note:
"Anyone who fails to understand this peculiar feature and 'contradiction' of our transition period, anyone who fails to understand these dialectics of the historical processes, is dead as far as Marxism is concerned.
"The misfortune of our deviators is that they do not understand, and do not wish to understand, Marx's dialectics." [Ibid. Bold emphases added. Quotation marks altered to conform to the conventions adopted here.]
As many prominent comrades were later to find out, Stalin was not joking when he said this.
Indeed, this too was part of Stalin's justification of his line on the National Question, and he specifically linked these two issues in the previous quotation. About this, he then commented:
"Lenin sometimes depicted the thesis on national self-determination in the guise of the simple formula: "disunion for union". Think of it -- disunion for union. It even sounds like a paradox. And yet, this 'contradictory' formula reflects that living truth of Marx's dialectics which enables the Bolsheviks to capture the most impregnable fortresses in the sphere of the national question." [Ibid. Bold emphasis added.]
This allowed Stalin to claim that the merging of all national cultures (in the former USSR) into one was at the same time to show respect for, and to preserve their differences! I am sure the Chechens and the Cossacks could see his point.
Earlier he had argued as follows (against Trotsky's demand for "inner party democracy"):
"Consequently, we have here recognition of freedom for factional groupings in the Party right up to permitting political parties in the land of the dictatorship of the proletariat, disguised by phrases about 'inner party democracy', about 'improving the regime' in the Party. That freedom for factional squabbling of groups of intellectuals is not inner-party democracy, that the widely-developed self-criticism conducted by the Party and the colossal activity of the mass of the Party membership is real and genuine inner-party democracy -- Trotskyism cannot understand." [Ibid. Quotation marks altered to conform to the conventions adopted here.]
Greater democracy from less democracy; all eminently contradictory, all quintessentially 'dialectical'.
Moreover, it was possible to 'justify' the idea that socialism could be built in one country by, among other things, the dubious invention of 'internal' versus 'external' contradictions, later bolstered by an appeal to 'principal' and 'secondary' contradictions, along with the highly convenient idea that some contradictions were not 'antagonistic'. Hence, the obvious 'class differences' that soon emerged in the former USSR were in fact 'harmonious'; the real enemies (i.e., the source of all those nasty 'principal' contradictions) were the external, imperialist powers.
As Stalin argued:
"If the possibility of victory of socialism in a single country means the possibility of solving the internal contradictions which can be completely overcome in a single country (we are of course thinking about our own country), the possibility of the definitive victory of socialism means the possibility to overcome the external contradictions between the country of socialism and the countries of capitalism, and these contradictions can only be overcome thanks to the victory of the proletarian revolution in a certain number of countries". [15th XVth conference of the CPSU. Quoted from here.]
How 'contradictions' can be "overcome" is, of course, a deep mystery that we will have to pass over in silence.
[STD = Stalinist Dialectician.]
Nevertheless, a couple of generations later and STDs were still arguing the same line. Here is Cornforth:
"In general, social contradictions are antagonistic when they involve conflicts of economic interest. In such cases one group imposes its own interests on another, and one group suppresses another by forcible methods. But when conflicts of economic interest are not involved, there is no antagonism and therefore no need for the forcible suppression of any group by any other. Once class antagonisms are done away with in socialist society, all social questions can be settled by discussion and argument, by criticism and self-criticism, by persuasion, conviction and agreement....
"So Lenin remarked that 'antagonism and contradiction are utterly different. Under socialism antagonism disappears, but contradiction remains' (Critical Notes on Bukharin's 'Economics of the Transition Period')." [Cornforth (1974), pp.105-06.]
Hence, under 'socialism' strikes were unnecessary; in which case they should not happen and must be suppressed --, and so they were, with a level of violence rarely seen anywhere outside of openly fascist states.
Any attempts made by workers to rebel (e.g., Hungary 1956) were blamed on "external forces", or agents outside the working class (a familiar excuse used by ruling classes the world over to account for, and thus ignore, the significance of strikes and riots -- all caused, of course, by the ubiquitous "external agitator"), i.e., in this case, the "imperialist powers", "fascists", or even Tito (but not ordinary workers fighting for and on behalf of their own interests), once more.
We will merely note, with Cornforth, the calm way that the non-antagonistic 'contradictions' in Hungary (in 1956) were resolved by Russian tanks (i.e., using "discussion and argument...persuasion, conviction and agreement").
To be sure, howsoever hard one tries, it is difficult not to be "persuaded" by an armoured column....
And this is where DM came into its own: lunatic policies sold to party cadres (world-wide) by the use of dialectics, a 'method' that allows the justification of anything and its opposite, often in the same breath. And they are still being peddled to us on the same basis. Trotskyists, of course, argue the exact opposite, using equally 'dialectical' arguments to show how and why the revolution decayed. [On this, see below.]
Dialectics can thus be used to defend and rationalise anything you like.
Indeed, Stalinism and Trotskyism (rightly or wrongly) parted company largely because of their differing views on internationalism. Of course, this rift wasn't just about ideas! Hard-headed decisions were taken for political reasons, but in order to rationalise them, and sell them to the international communist movement, they were liberally coated in dialectical jargon.
Those who know the history of Bolshevism will also know of the incalculable damage this deep rift has inflicted on Marxism world-wide ever since.
Later, 'Materialist Dialectics' was used to justify/rationalise the catastrophic and reckless class-collaborationist tactics imposed on both the Chinese and Spanish revolutions, just as they were employed to rationalise/justify the ultra-left, "social fascist" post-1929 about-turn. This crippled the fight against the Nazis by suicidally splitting the left in Germany, pitting communist against socialist, while Hitler laughed all the way into power.
This 'theory' then helped excuse the rotation of the Communist Party through another 180 degrees in its next class-collaborationist phase, the "Popular Front" --, and then through another 180 (in order to 'justify' the unforgivable Hitler-Stalin pact) as part of the newly re-discovered 'revolutionary defeatist' stage --, and through yet another 180 two years later in the shape of 'The Great Patriotic War', following upon Hitler's predictable invasion of the "Mother Land" -- "Holy Russia".
In attempting to justify these overnight about-turns, and specifically the criminal Nazi-Soviet non-aggression pact of 1939, all that Ragani Palme Dutt, for example, could say was:
"We are told that the Soviet-German pact has also strengthened Nazi Germany. The process is of course dialectical, but fundamentally Nazi Germany has been weakened by the Soviet-German Non-Aggression Pact and is more weakened every day as this [dialectical -- RL] process is continuing and is beginning to become clearer to more and more people." [King and Mathews (1990), p.75. Bold emphasis added.]
Once more, it seems that to strengthen the Nazis dialectically is to weaken them! We can see how accurate that analysis was by the fact that the dialectically "weakened" Wehremacht was able to conquer most of Europe within two years, and large sections of the former USSR in six months! It was only Hitler's incompetent general-ship that saved the USSR from annihilation.
More dialectical 'contradictions' --, more dead workers.
Do you begin to see a pattern here...?
