Dialectical Materialism - Marx' & Engels' Philosophy of Nature [Archive] - The Apricity Forum: A European Cultural Community

View Full Version : Dialectical Materialism - Marx' & Engels' Philosophy of Nature

Petros Agapetos

07-06-2018, 10:35 PM

Dialectical materialism (or diamat) is a philosophy of science and nature, and is the undergirding philosophy of the Marxist method of analysis of nature. Diamat is a philosophical system consisting of dialectical and materialist philosophical doctrines.

Materialism asserts that everything in nature can ultimately be explained only by one thing, 'matter'.
"Never has there been matter without motion nor motion without matter, nor ever can there be" - Friedrich Engels, Dialectics of Nature

Dialectics refers to the triadic structure of the flow of logic...

Thesis = A thought is affirmed, found contradictory...

Antithesis = ...the contradictory thesis propels the affirmation of its negation, the antithesis, which upon reflection also is contradictory (eg. an inadequate affirmation)....

Synthesis =....the contradictory antithesis then negates itself...reaching synthesis, a higher rational unity than merely the negations of thesis and the negation of antithesis added together. Instead, as a result of the process of dialectics, the Thesis is not simply reinstated. Rather the thesis and antithesis 'clash' and amalgamate into a higher rational unity, the Synthesis.

Syllogistic logic hinges upon the 'logical absolutes' or the 'laws of thought':
1.Identity: {A=A}
2.Non-contradiction: {A =/= non-A}
3.Excluded middle = Either A or not A, not neither, nor both.

1.Law of Identity = something is what it is
2.Law of Non-Contradiction = something is not what it is not
3.Law of Excluded Middle = something either is or is not, not neither, nor both.

Dialectical logic obeys the law of contradiction, which is also called the law of the unity and interpenetration/conflict of opposites, the 1st law of dialectical materialism.
Notice that the Law of Contradiction: {A --> A'} negates the Law of Non-Contradiction of Formal Logic.

In Dialectical Logic
Thesis {A = A}
Antithesis {A =/= A}
Synthesis {Synthesis[Thesis] =/= [A=A]} - The Synthesis does not simply resinstate Thesis. Rather, it sublates the 'moments' of the Thesis (status quo) and the antithesis (the driving force for change from status quo into its negative contradictory affirmation)

In dialectical logic A --> A' (A=A at an instant in time only, not during a period of time). Hence dialectics circumvents the ordinary formal logic of everyday life.

Petros Agapetos

07-07-2018, 12:55 AM

Dialectical materialism sets out to answer three questions:

1. What is the origin of energy or motion in nature?
2. What causes galaxies, solar systems, planets, and animal kingdoms of nature to constantly increase their numerical quantity?
3. What is the origin of life, the origin of species, and the origin of consciousness and mind

Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels answer these questions with the three laws of diamat:

1st Law: The Law of the Unity and Conflict of Opposites (The Law of Contradiction) (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marxist_philosophy_of_nature)

Marx and Engels first started with the observation that everything in existence is a combination or unity of opposites. For example, electricity is characterized by a positive and negative charge and atoms consist of protons and electrons which are unified but are ultimately contradictory forces. Even humans through introspection find that they are a unity of opposite qualities. Masculinity and femininity, selfishness and altruism, humbleness and pride, etc. The Marxist conclusion being that everything "contains two mutually incompatible and exclusive but nevertheless equally essential and indispensable parts or aspects."¹ The basic concept being that this unity of opposites in nature is the thing that makes each entity auto-dynamic and provides this constant motivation for movement and change. This idea was borrowed from Hegel who said: "Contradiction in nature is the root of all motion and of all life."

2nd Law: The Law of Negation

The Law of Negation was created to account for the tendency in nature to constantly increase the numerical quantity of all things. Marx and Engels decided that each entity tends to negate itself in order to reproduce itself in higher quantity. Engels often cited the case of the barley seed which, in its natural state, germinates and out of its own death or negation produces a plant. The plant in turn grows to maturity and is itself negated after bearing many barley seeds. Thus, all nature is constantly expanding through dying. The elements of opposition which produce conflict in each thing and give it motion also tend to negate the thing itself; but out of this dynamic process of dying the energy is released to expand and produce many more entities of the same kind.

3rd Law: The Law of Negation of Negation (The Law of Transformation)

This law states that a continuous quantitive development by a particular class often results in a leap in nature whereby a completely new form or entity is produced. This theory draws many parallels to the theory of Evolution. The Marxist philosophers concluded that matter is not only auto-dynamic and inclined to increase itself numerically, but through quantitative accumulations it is also inherently capable of "leaps" to new forms and levels of reality. Marx and Engels saw these laws as the discovery of the greatest mystery of all: What is life?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2B03z12nd_g

Petros Agapetos

07-07-2018, 12:59 AM

On the basis of these principles (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marxist_philosophy_of_nature) the Marxist Philosophers decided that the phenomenon of life was the product of one of these leaps. Engels stated that the complex chemical structure of matter evolved until albuminous substance was formed, and from this substance life emerged. He insisted that just as you cannot have matter without motion, so also you cannot have albumin without life. It is an inherent characteristic of albumin, a higher form of motion in nature. He also suggested that as soon as life emerged it would gradually grow in complexity.

Consistent with evolutionary theories of punctuated equilibrium, Marxists believe that new forms in nature are not the result of gradual change but that quantitative multiplication gradually builds up momentum for a "leap" in nature which produces a change or a new species. They believe that incidental to one of these leaps (and leap may be regarded as a set of genetic mutations) the phenomenon of consciousness emerged. The creature became aware of the forces which were playing on it. Then at an even higher level another form of life appeared with the capacity to work with these impressions and to arrange them in associations. Thus mind evolved as an intelligent, self-knowing, self-determining quality in matter.

However, matter is primary and mind is secondary. Therefore, there can be no soul and no God. They believe that everything in existence came as a result of objective tendencies (i.e. movement, negation, etc.) inherent in nature. There is no law, or design, or God. Only matter and force in nature. As for man, he is an accident like all other forms of life except he had the good fortune to possess the highest intelligence in existence. This is said to make man the real god of himself and the universe.

Petros Agapetos

07-07-2018, 09:46 AM

Two dialectical syntheses in a row lead to an even greater rational unity between the original thesis and antithesis, called the Neosynthesis. To illustrate these terminology consider their atomic meaning:

Thesis = affirmation
Anti = against, negation through contradiction, where the negation or contradiction is the driving force for change out of the status quo...
Syn = connected to, associated with
Neo(s) = New

Therefore in Dialectical Logic:

Thesis<---------------------Syn-Thesis--------------------->Anti-Thesis

Syn-Thesis<-------------------Neo-Syn-Thesis--------------->Anti-Syn-Thesis

1. Quantitative leap from Thesis to Synthesis
2. Quantitative leap from Synthesis to Neosynthesis

The above mentioned quantitative leaps add up to a greater qualitative sum than the quantitative sum of their parts.
The totality of the whole is greater than the sum of its parts.

Petros Agapetos

07-07-2018, 10:01 AM

Speculative thought consists of grasping of oppositions in their unity (the positive in the negative)

In Hegelian dialectics there are three kinds of contradictions:
1) Contradiction in Being (most concrete)
2) Contradiction in Essence (less concrete)
3) Contradiction in Notion (most abstract)

The Individuality is modulated by universality and the opposite thereof, particularity.

The Hegelian Dialectic obeys the Triadic Structure of Thesis, Antithesis, and Synthesis.

Thesis = A thought is affirmed, which on reflection proves itself unsatisfactory, incomplete, or contradictory...
Antithesis = ...which propels the affirmation of its negation, the Antithesis, which also (on reflection) proves inadequate....
Synthesis = ...and so is again negated

The double negation ("A =/= non-A) does NOT simply reinstate the Thesis!
The Synthesis has "overcome and preserved" (simultaneously) = "sublated" the stages of the Thesis & Antithesis to emerge as a higher Rational Unity

Methuselah

07-07-2018, 10:02 AM

Petros Agapetos

07-07-2018, 10:05 AM

In Marxist Dialectics of Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, a synthesis of materialism and the dialectical method of Hegel has been both "overcome and preserved" (sublated upward).

Friedrich Engels' Dialectics of Nature:

1. The Law of the Unity & Conflict of Opposites
2. The Law of the Passage of Quantitative Changes into Qualitative Changes
3. The Law of Negation of Negation = The Law of Transformation

For example, the atom consists of a nucleus and an electron cloud. The nucleus has a positive electrical charge, while the electron has a negative charge. The nucleus and the electron cloud are contradictory forces of nature, yet without this unity of opposites, there would be no basis for chemistry to arise, let alone conscious life.

" 'Matter disappears' means that the limit within which we have hitherto known matter disappears, and that our knowledge is penetrating deeper; properties of matter are disappearing that formerly seemed absolute, immutable, and primary, and which are now revealed to be relative and characteristic only of certain states of matter. For the sole 'property' of matter, with whose recognition philosophical materialism is bound up, is the property of being an objective reality, of existing outside the mind" -

- Vladimir Lenin, "Materialism & Empiriocriticism (1908)

The premise of dialectical materialism as applied to human society is.... It is not men's consciousness that determines their existence, but on the contrary, their social existence that determines their consciousness. Only when the core of existence stands revealed as a social process can existence be seen as the product, albeit hitherto unconscious product, of human activity. Existence - and thus the world - is the product of human activity; but this can be seen only by accepting the primacy of social processes on individual consciousness. This type of consciousness is an effect of ideological mystification

Petros Agapetos

07-07-2018, 10:11 AM

Dialectical Materialism is a way of understanding reality; whether thoughts, emotions, or the material world. Simply stated, this methodology is the combination of Dialectics and Materialism. The materialist dialectic is the theoretical foundation of Marxism (while being communist is the practice of Marxism).

"It is an eternal cycle in which matter moves, a cycle that certainly only completes its orbit in periods of time for which our terrestrial year is no adequate measure, a cycle in which the time of highest development, the time of organic life and still more that of the life of being conscious of nature and of themselves, is just as narrowly restricted as the space in which life and self-consciousness come into operation. A cycle in which every finite mode of existence of matter, whether it be sun or nebular vapour, single animal or genus of animals, chemical combination or dissociation, is equally transient, and wherein nothing is eternal but eternally changing, eternally moving matter and the laws according to which it moves and changes.

- Fredrick Engels
Dialectics of Nature (https://www.marxists.org/glossary/terms/d/i.htm)

"Motion is the mode of existence of matter. Never anywhere has there been matter without motion, or motion without matter, nor can there be."
"Change of form of motion is always a process that takes place between at least two bodies, of which one loses a definite quantity of motion of one quality (e.g. heat), while the other gains a corresponding quantity of motion of another quality (mechanical motion, electricity, chemical decomposition).
"Dialectics, so-called objective dialectics, prevails throughout nature, and so-called subjective dialectics (dialectical thought), is only the reflection of the motion through opposites which asserts itself everywhere in nature, and which by the continual conflict of the opposites and their final passage into one another, or into higher forms, determines the life of nature."

~Fredrick Engels
Dialectics of Nature (https://www.marxists.org/glossary/terms/d/i.htm)

But dialectical materialism insists on the approximate relative character of every scientific theory of the structure of matter and its properties; it insists on the absence of absolute boundaries in nature, on the transformation of moving matter from one state into another, that from our point of view [may be] apparently irreconcilable with it, and so forth.

~Vladimir Lenin
Materialism and Empirio-criticism (https://www.marxists.org/glossary/terms/d/i.htm)

Petros Agapetos

07-07-2018, 10:16 AM

Source: https://www.marxists.org/

Dialectics is the method of reasoning (https://www.marxists.org/glossary/terms/d/i.htm) which aims to understand things concretely in all their movement, change and interconnection, with their opposite and contradictory sides in unity.

Dialectics is opposed to the formal, metaphysical mode of thought of ordinary understanding which begins with a fixed definition of a thing according to its various attributes. For example formal thought would explain: ‘a fish is something with no legs which lives in the water’.

Darwin however, considered fish dialectically: some of the animals living in the water were not fish, and some of the fish had legs, but it was the genesis of all the animals as part of a whole interconnected process which explained the nature of a fish: they came from something and are evolving into something else.

Darwin went behind the appearance of fish to get to their essence. For ordinary understanding there is no difference between the appearance of a thing and its essence, but for dialectics the form and content of something can be quite contradictory – parliamentary democracy being the prime example: democracy in form, but dictatorship in content!

And for dialectics, things can be contradictory not just in appearance, but in essence. For formal thinking, light must be either a wave or a particle; but the truth turned out to be dialectical – light is both wave and particle. (See the principle of excluded middle)

We are aware of countless ways of understanding the world; each of which makes the claim to be the absolute truth, which leads us to think that, after all, “It’s all relative!”. For dialectics the truth is the whole picture, of which each view is a more or less one-sided, partial aspect.

At times, people complain in frustration that they lack the Means to achieve their Ends, or alternatively, that they can justify their corrupt methods of work by the lofty aims they pursue. For dialectics, Means and Ends are a unity of opposites and in the final analysis, there can be no contradiction between means and ends – when the objective is rightly understood, "the material conditions [means] for its solution are already present or at least in the course of formation" (Marx, Preface of Contribution to a Political Economy)

An example of dialectical reasoning can be seen in Lenin's slogan: “All Power to the Soviets” spoken when the Soviets were against the Bolsheviks. Lenin understood, however, that the impasse could only be resolved by workers’ power. Since the Soviets were organs of workers’ power, a revolutionary initiative by the Bolsheviks would inevitably bring the Soviets to their side: the form of the Soviets during the time (lead by Mensheviks and SRs) were at odds with the content of the Soviets as Workers’, Peasants’ and Soldiers’ Councils.

Formal thinking often has trouble understanding the causes of events – something has to be a cause and something else the effect – and people are surprised when they irrigate land and 20 years later – due to salination of the land, silting of the waterways, etc – they have a desert! Dialectics on the other hand understands that cause and effect are just one and another side of a whole network of relations such as we have in an ecosystem, and one thing cannot be changed without changing the whole system.

These are different aspect of Dialectics, and there are many others, because dialectics is the method of thinking in which concepts are flexible and mobile, constrained only by the imperative of comprehending the movement of the object itself, however contradictory, however transient.

History:
Dialectics has its origins in ancient society, both among the Chinese and the Greeks, where thinkers sought to understand Nature as a whole, and saw that everything is fluid, constantly changing, coming into being and passing away. It was only when the piecemeal method of observing Nature in bits and pieces, practiced in Western thinking in the 17th and 18th century, had accumulated enough positive knowledge for the interconnections, the transitions, the genesis of things to become comprehensible, that conditions became ripe for modern dialectics to make its appearance. It was Hegel who was able to sum up this picture of universal interconnection and mutability of things in a system of Logic which is the foundation of what we today call Dialectics.

As Engels put it:

“the whole world, natural, historical, intellectual, is represented as a process – i.e., as in constant motion, change, transformation, development; and the attempt is made to trace out the internal connection that makes a continuous whole of all this movement and development.” [Socialism: Utopian & Scientific]

It was in the decade after Hegel’s death – the 1840s – when Hegel’s popularity was at its peak in Germany, that Marx and Engels met and worked out the foundations of their critique of bourgeois society.

Hegel’s radical young followers had in their hands a powerful critical tool with which they ruthlessly criticised Christianity, the dominant doctrine of the day. However, one of these Young Hegelians, Ludwig Feuerbach, pointed out that Holy Family was after all only a Heavenly image of the Earthly family, and said that by criticising theology with philosophy, the Young Hegelians were only doing the same as the Christians – Hegel’s Absolute Idea was just another name for God! For Feuerbach, ideas were a reflection of the material world and he held it to be ridiculous that an Idea could determine the world. Feuerbach had declared himself a materialist.

Marx and Engels began as supporters of Feuerbach. However, very soon they took up an opposition to Feuerbach to restore the Hegelian dialectic which had been abandoned by Feuerbach, and to free it from the rigidity of the idealistic Hegelian system and place the method on a materialist basis:

“Hegel was an idealist. To him, the thoughts within his brain were not the more or less abstract pictures of actual things and processes, but, conversely, things and their evolution were only the realized pictures of the ‘Idea’, existing somewhere from eternity before the world was. This way of thinking turned everything upside down, and completely reversed the actual connection of things in the world. ” [Fredrick Engels, Socialism: Utopian and Scientific]

Thus, for Marx and Engels, thoughts were not passive and independent reflections of the material world, but products of human labour, and the contradictory nature of our thoughts had their origin in the contradictions within human society. This meant that Dialectics was not something imposed on to the world from outside which could be discovered by the activity of pure Reason, but was a product of human labour changing the world; its form was changed and developed by people, and could only be understood by the practical struggle to overcome these contradictions – not just in thought, but in practice.

Further Reading: [The Science of Dialectics], by Fredrick Engels, Dialectics of Nature, by Fredrick Engels, an example of dialectics in: The Metaphysics of Political Economy, by Karl Marx; The ABC of Materialist Dialectics, by Leon Trotsky; Lenin's Summary of Dialectics.

See also the Sampler for multiple definitions; Dialectics Subject Section. For examples of Dialectics: references to Examples from History and Society and Examples from Personal Life in Hegel’s Logic; and see the definition on Taoism for a look at an ancient process of dialectics.

Methuselah

07-07-2018, 10:24 AM

The evolution of elements required more matter than antimatter and the pushing force itself. Everything requires energy. The nucleus of atoms is hold by a strong nuclear force.

I personally tend to lean towards Jesus, Platon, Tolstoy, Heisenberg, Kierkegaard and Maxwell myself. I try to surround myself with energy that can't be destroyed.

Larali

07-07-2018, 12:04 PM

Great thread, subbing to read carefully later.

Odin

07-08-2018, 07:38 AM

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-ih7X9sPZbE

Petros Agapetos

07-08-2018, 07:49 AM

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HMywuUHy6y4

Petros Agapetos

07-08-2018, 07:57 AM

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tPWJX4ZsNa4

Leon Trotsky's ABC of Materialist Dialectics

Methuselah

07-08-2018, 02:09 PM

Marx had some prominent ideas, but Marxism itself didn't seem to produce any serious sympathy towards human rights. I don't think Lenin wanted to butcher millions of people, but even he ended being up a murderer.