I have decided that it has been too long since their has been a beginners guide to the main objections to dialectical material, so I am starting this thread. As such, this is not a comprehensive critique by any means. It is meant to be a basic and easy to understand criticism of this giant piece of non-sense that has come to dominate Marxist thinking.
I should also like to point out that this does not in anyway contest historical materialism. Historical materialism is a scientific theory that I completely support.
This critique will have three main parts to it: the three laws of dialectics, the origin of the notion of contradictions and the proof that dialectical materialism is idealist metaphysics.
The Three Laws of Dialectics
- The Change of Quantity into Quality
- The Unity and Interpretation of Opposites
- The Negation of the Negation
The Change of Quantity into Quality
The change of quantity into quality is defined by Engels as:
Originally Posted by Engels
The law of the transformation of quantity into quality and vice versa. For our purpose, we could express this by saying that in nature, in a manner exactly fixed for each individual case, qualitative changes can only occur by the quantitative addition or subtraction of matter or motion (so-called energy).
http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx...3/don/ch02.htm
What this means is that the changing of bodies occurs in nature only by an increase in quantity of some sort. This lends itself to a key objection.
While it is certainly true that in some cases this law holds, all that needs to be shown is that there is at least one case where it does not hold. Quality can be changed by the order of an action. If you pour sulfuric acid into water, then you are engaged in some nice safe fun. But if you pour water into sulfuric acid, then, well, ouch. Thus, we have an example of a change in quality that was not due to an increase in quantity.
Another aspect of this theory is the idea of nodal points. Nodal points are the point at which just enough quantity is added to change the quality.
To this I ask, what is the duration of a nodal point? If they cannot answer, then they fail to act as good scientists. Further, I would like to know about butter. Butter melts smoothly and over time. What is its nodal point? This smoothness of change is unaccounted for in dialectical literature.
Finally, I am interested in how the dialectician defines quality. Thus far, I have only seen them define quality by parroting Hegel:
Originally Posted by Hegel
Quality is, in the first place, the character identical with being: so identical that a thing ceases to be what it is, if it loses its quality. Quantity, on the contrary, is the character external to being, and does not affect the being at all. Thus, e.g. a house remains what it is, whether it be greater or smaller; and red remains red, whether it be brighter or darker.
http://www.marxists.org/reference/ar...eing.htm#SL85n
What this means is that a change in the quality of an object is a change that makes the object something new. But this definition is unsatisfactory. If we use the most famous example used by dialectical materialists, water boiling and use this definition of quality, then the example isn't an example at all. If you add heat (quantity) to water, when it boils it does not change qualitatively, because it is still H2O. It still is what it is, thus it has the same quality. Until a better definition of quality is found, dialectical materialists must reject the first law.
The Unity and Interpretation of Opposites
The unity and interpretation of opposites not explicitly defined by Engels. For this reason I have decided to quote two different theorist. The first is given by Plekhanov:
Originally Posted by Plekhanov
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.
http://www.marxists.org/archive/plek...onist/ch04.htm
The second is given by Lenin:
Originally Posted by Lenin
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... [The unity of opposites] alone furnishes the key to the “self-movement” of everything existing; it alone furnishes the key to “leaps,” to the “break in continuity,” to the “transformation into the opposite,” to the destruction of the old and the emergence of the new.
The unity... of opposites is conditional, temporary, transitory, relative. The struggle of mutually exclusive opposites is absolute, just as development and motion are absolute.
http://www.marxists.org/archive/leni...ic/summary.htm
Essentially, the unity opposites tells us that things are comprised to two contradictory elements and that all things eventually turn into their opposite and this results in change. Now this doesn't make sense. If all things are comprised of opposites, then how can something turn into its opposite since it already contains its opposite?
To make this more simple, an object is comprised of O* and its opposite O** and that change results from the struggle between these contradictory tendencies. This change supposedly results from O* turning into its opposite O**, which it can't since O** already exists. This means that O* would change to O**, while O** changes into O*, which is not a change. This means that change would be impossible in this situation.
Another objection would be that you don't see things turning into their opposites in reality. My cat has never transformed into a not cat. In fact, I would be very surprised if she suddenly turned into a rock. I've also never transformed into the owner of the business I work at. Strange, as that would be the opposite of proletariat.
From these objections we can draw two conclusions: if dialectical materialism were correct, things would be unable to change and my cat would no longer be a cat. Hence, the second law of dialectical materialism must be abandoned.
The Negation of the Negation
The negation of the negation is defined as:
Originally Posted by Engels
But what then is this fearful negation of the negation...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...let us take [an] example: The philosophy of antiquity was primitive, spontaneously evolved materialism. As such, it was incapable of clearing up the relation between mind and matter. But the need to get clarity on this question led to the doctrine of a soul separable from the body, then to the assertion of the immortality of this soul, and finally to monotheism. The old materialism was therefore negated by idealism. But in the course of the further development of philosophy, idealism, too, became untenable and was negated by modern materialism. This modern materialism, the negation of the negation, is not the mere re-establishment of the old, but adds to the permanent foundations of this old materialism the whole thought-content of two thousand years of development of philosophy and natural science, as well as of the history of these two thousand years...And so, what is the negation of the negation? An extremely general — and for this reason extremely far-reaching and important — law of development of nature, history, and thought.
http://marxists.org/archive/marx/wor...hring/ch11.htm
Essentially, this law is an extension of the last one. Change occurs because something changes into its opposite and then changes into another opposite. As such, it fails on the same grounds as the unity of opposites.
Another problem is that the negation of the negation is treated as progressive. In the example above, the negation of the negation (dialectical materialism) is a superior philosophy to the older philosophies. If that is the case, then is Zizek's idealist dialectics the NONON of dialectical materialism and even more superior? Will we later have a NONONON where we have dialectical super materialism?
What of the Soviet Union? The Russian Revolution is clearly the negation of Tsarist Russia, is then the Soviet Union under Stalin the NON or is it when the Soviet Union fell? Are either of these progress?
Ultimately the third law fails just as badly as the first two.
Contradictions
The notion of contradictions in dialectical materialism is central to the three laws listed above. Two of these laws were created by Hegel in his logical proof that all concepts contain contradictions. Formal logic is not very well understood by dialecticians, which means that they fail to understand Hegel's faulty logic.
Hegel began by using the proposition:
“The rose is red.” (Lenin used “John is a man.”)
He then used a theory created by Medieval Catholic logicians called the identity theory of predication, which meant that the word “is” always means “identical with”. This is the key mistake. He has confused the “is” of identity with the “is” of predication. Thus the proposition became:
“The rose is identical with redness.” (It should be more correctly analyzed as “Redness applies to the rose.”)
However, this cannot be correct. The rose is a particular and the property of being red is a general. A particular cannot be a general. Thus the proposition became:
“The rose is not identical with redness.”
And that is why all things contain opposites. The rose is both identical and not identical with redness. Taking the argument further, the proposition becomes:
“The rose is not not identical with redness.” (which means the rose is identical with redness)
And here is the negation of the negation. Both laws were created by being confused about the word “is”. Hence, we must reject them and the notion of contradictions being in all things.
The Idealism of Dialectical Materialism
Ultimately, dialectical materialism is both idealism and ruling class thought imported into revolutionary movements.
Dialectical materialism is idealist in that it derives itself from “pure reason” and is not read from reality. It is derived from Hegel's idealist perspective in which he abstracted from the words ordinary people use. Marx argued that:
Originally Posted by Marx
One of the most difficult tasks confronting philosophers is to descend from the world of thought to the actual world. Language is the immediate actuality of thought. Just as philosophers have given thought an independent existence, so they were bound to make language into an independent realm. This is the secret of philosophical language, in which thoughts in the form of words have their own content. The problem of descending from the world of thoughts to the actual world is turned into the problem of descending from language to life.
We have shown that thoughts and ideas acquire an independent existence in consequence of the personal circumstances and relations of individuals acquiring independent existence. We have shown that exclusive, systematic occupation with these thoughts on the part of ideologists and philosophers, and hence the systematisation of these thoughts, is a consequence of division of labour, and that, in particular, German philosophy is a consequence of German petty-bourgeois conditions. The philosophers have only to dissolve their language into the ordinary language, from which it is abstracted, in order to recognise it, as the distorted language of the actual world, and to realise that neither thoughts nor language in themselves form a realm of their own, that they are only manifestations of actual life.
http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx.../ch03p.htm#447
Philosophy, including dialectical materialism, is created by abstracting from ordinary language. It is this very process of abstraction that is idealist. By assuming that either thought or language has an existence independent of social life, we are engaging in idealism. We allow language and thought to create things independent of the real world. This is unacceptable for those who profess to accept any sort of materialism.
Dialectical materialism is ultimately ruling class thought. As Marx pointed out:
Originally Posted by Marx
The ideas of the ruling class are in every epoch the ruling ideas, i.e. the class which is the ruling material force of society, is at the same time its ruling intellectual force. The class which has the means of material production at its disposal, has control at the same time over the means of mental production, so that thereby, generally speaking, the ideas of those who lack the means of mental production are subject to it. The ruling ideas are nothing more than the ideal expression of the dominant material relationships, the dominant material relationships grasped as ideas; hence of the relationships which make the one class the ruling one, therefore, the ideas of its dominance. The individuals composing the ruling class possess among other things consciousness, and therefore think. Insofar, therefore, as they rule as a class and determine the extent and compass of an epoch, it is self-evident that they do this in its whole range, hence among other things rule also as thinkers, as producers of ideas, and regulate the production and distribution of the ideas of their age: thus their ideas are the ruling ideas of the epoch. For instance, in an age and in a country where royal power, aristocracy, and bourgeoisie are contending for mastery and where, therefore, mastery is shared, the doctrine of the separation of powers proves to be the dominant idea and is expressed as an “eternal law.”
http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx...logy/ch01b.htm
The people who created dialectical materialism were not workers. These were people raised on their philosophical classics. They were taught to find “reality” behind “appearances”. They looked for truths that are accessible to thought alone, that are more real that the world. This is dialectical materialism legacy. The sooner that it is excised from Marxist thought, the better.