lpetrich

Can anyone explain what it is in reasonably simple terms? I've had a hard time working out what it is; can that be done, or is it as easy to do as explaining that Xian Trinity?

Celsus

Well since you couldn't be asked to read Lady Anoteros' link to Josef Stalin's 1001-page explanation of it, why should someone have to explain it for you

I have never read a short explanation of it, given the Marxist penchant for long-windedness (and perhaps you will see why). Dialectical materialism is the Marxist means of understanding history. Theoretically, it is mostly sound, but in practice, Marxists have amazingly selective memories.

The dialectic critique (the materialism bit simply means that we don't resort to supernatural explanations) involves three principles: Totality, change and contradiction. Totality simply means that all elements interact with each other, and none can be understood in isolation. Thus all features of society must be understood as part of this totality.

Change simply recognises that the totality is in a constant process of transformation. There is no true return to past equilibria, and enduring eternal truth.

Contradiction is the means of understanding change. If change occurs, it cannot be explained by simply cause and effect, but as an inherent contradiction or instability within the system. Contradiction, for Marxists, is how one class society succeeds the other, or how class conflict leads to the negation of the system.

Thus the dialectic form recognises an internally contradictory totality (society) in a constant process of change. Dialectical materialism might seem a bit like stating the obvious nowadays (just as reading the Wealth of Nations or The Social Contract is a bit disappointing), but it was radical and did change the understanding of history.

My quibbles (not that I would ever want to take on a Marxist who's read too much in a debate):
Marxists are long-winded because they have to account for everything (totality). Although the dialectic, in principle, should oppose reduction, Marxists become reductionistic because they can't handle all the information and thus pick and choose what suits their theories (and it usually has to do with finding contradiction in capitalism). Contradiction does not arise only from class conflict (and there is a whole branch of neo-Marxist theories relating to contradiction in the international system - "capitalists" and "workers" being replaced by "core" and "periphery" respectively).

Does that make sense? I can't stand Marxist material myself, because having come to terms with their jargon, reading 800 pages of them repeating themselves over and over is just too much to bear. It's all Marx's fault, really.

lpetrich

I'm asking about diamat separately, because "Lady Anoteros" does not seem very forthcoming about what it is, other than linking to that lengthy Joseph Stalin essay.

Reading tthat Stalin essay makes me wonder what's so special about diamat, what makes it different from the theorizing and methods common among non-diamatists. That description above seems awfully hand-waving.

I remember someone who said that she had learned "to think dialectically" -- and who seemed approving of Joseph Stalin(!)

I'm familiar with the work of some Soviet scientists, and they thought and worked just like scientists on our side of the Iron Curtain, as if they had never heard of diamat.

Note: "diamat" had been a common abbreviation for it in the xUSSR; I'm using it here for convenience.

[ November 21, 2002: Message edited by: lpetrich ]</p>

DigitalDruid

Hi lpetrich,

I think sometimes people use the term "dialectic" in confusing ways. I can think of at least three related but distinct meaning of "dialectic":

Investigation of truth by systematic reasoning of a particular kind as exemplified by Plato. I think the lady who said she was thinking dialectically used the term in this sense.

The "dialectic" of German philosophre Hegel - which is a metaphysical theory of historical change in nation states.

And finally, "dialectic" as in Marx's diamat.

Originally, the notion of "dalectic" in Marx’s diamat (dialectical materialism) came from influential German philosopher Hegel. Marx believed Hegel had found a general historical law, called the "dialectic" , but he thought that Hegel’s use of it was metaphysical rather than scientific, so he modified it which came to be known as diamat. But before we discuss diamat, let’s have a look at the meaning of the root term ("dialectic") itself.

Here we have to go back to Greek philosopher Plato, because Hegel borrowed the term "dialectic" from Plato and gave it a broader significance. For Plato, "dialectic" is simply a method of argumentation - what modern logicians call "method of the contrary case."

Here’s an example of the "dialectic" in Plato’s sense:
Suppose I propose a "thesis"(a proposition) : justice means telling the truth and paying one’s debt.
Suppose you then present an "antithesis" (a contrary case): you should not return a borrowed weapon to the owner if the owner wants to kill someone and demands it back. Justice, in such a case, demands that you don’t pay your debt.
Now the original thesis and the antithesis can be synthesized or combined to arrive at a better understanding of what justice is. This is the "synthesis."

So for Plato, dialectic is a logical process of verbal argumentation that proceeds through thesis-antithesis-synthesis stages. Even now it's used as a technique for teaching any subject matter in an interactive lively way. Basically by proposing antithesis to the student's thesis the teacher forces the student to synthesize his own understanding, which the teacher challenges again with another antithesis...thus progressively guiding him into deeper knowledge. This contrasts with the "lecturing down" method of teaching.

Hegel saw much broader application of Plato’s concept of dialectic. For him, it is an actual process that events in the world follow. Acc. to Hegel, all change, especially historical change in nations, takes place in accordance with the law of dialectic (Hegel’s version):
A thesis is produced (a nation is established)
It develops an opposition - its antithesis (another nation opposes it)
Conflict ensues and finally there emerges a new nation that is of a higher order in that it synthesizes what is of most value in each (the synthesis)

Again this new nation, in turn, develops opposition and the cycle continues - not aimlessly - but progressively creating higher order civilizations - ultimately towards the realization of, what Hegel called, the "spirit" or "the absolute idea" which is a metaphysical notion (quite abstruse if you ask me). Thus for Hegel, the dialectical process is a spiritual or metaphysical process. Hegel looked around the contemporary and past history of nations and thought he discovered a necessary law of historical change.

Marx accepted the Hegel’s analysis of historical change as proceeding in accordance with the dialectic (thesis-antithesis-synthesis). But he did not like the metaphysical explanation of this process. He preferred a materialist dialectic: he preferred to express the dialectical process of history in economic rather than metaphysical terms. The reason why nations change is that classes (socio-economic groups)within the nation begin to oppose each other. So acc. to Marx, the history of the world is more accurately described not as rivalry between nation states but, more fundamentally ,as rivalry between classes. So acc. to Marx diamat would play out as follows in a capitalistic society:

Capitalism presents a "thesis" - that one should work for a profit.
This thesis, if followed, leads to a state in which a few owns the means of production and everyone else is subject to the control of a few. The rich gets richer and the poor poorer.
This leads to antagonism between the large but poor class of workers (the proletariat) and the small capitalistic class (the bourgeoisie); - this is the "antithesis".
Finally, an open conflict breaks out and the capitalistic class is submerged. A new classless society arises in which means of production would be controlled by the workers (the "synthesis").

Marx saw diamat as a scientific theory in that there is no metaphysical element (the Hegelian "spirit") in diamat; rather it is grounded on materialistic considerations (such as economic factors). Hence the name - dialectical materialism. Since his economic theory is the cornerstone of diamat, he developed it extensively with elements such as : the labor theory of value, the theory of surplus value, the inevitable concentration of capital in the hands of a few, etc.

So Diamat is a theory of historical change grounded in Marx’s economic theory. Diamat can be criticized from many different angles. But that would be a whole thread by itself!

Calvan

Thank you DigitalDruid,

I very much appreciate your explanation.

Calvan

DigitalDruid

You are welcome, Calvan. The process of putting it down in words also helps me to clarify my own thinking.

[ November 22, 2002: Message edited by: DigitalDruid ]</p>

lpetrich

Thanx. I think I understand Marxist dialectical theorizing a little better. However, to me, Marxists often use "contradiction" as a synonym for "conflict".

According to Bertrand Russell in <a href="http://users.ev1.net/~holliser/Agora/text/Philosophy%20&%20Politics/Unpopular%20Essays/Philosophy%20and%20Politics.html" target="_blank">Philosophy and Politics</a>, after a description of Hegelianism,

Keith Russell

Greetings:

I am currently readind Karl Popper's The Open Society and Its Enemies, Part I: Plato. I haven't read much Plato, and thought this would be a good introduction.

The second part is Hegel and Marx. I haven't read much Marx, and only some Hegel, so--again--I hope that the book (which I'll read when I finish Part I) will be a good intro.

Popper isn't very fond of any of these gentlemen, so it'll be interesting to see if his views are accurate, when I read Plato, Hegel, and Marx, and compare their works with Popper's critique.

Keith.

Celsus

Heh. You're absolutely right. If you've ever read the journal Capital & Class, you'll find articles titled "Contradictions in 1990s Financial Liberalisation" or something similar, and then never again see the word "contradiction" in the article. As an undergrad, I spent hours trying to find these things, until I realised Marxists use the word in a completely different manner from just about everyone else.

That reminds me... One of the central "contradictions" that Marx identified in capitalism originated from the labour theory of surplus value. The idea is simply that labour is the only factor of production that can be purchased below its actual value, and firms are getting ever more capital-intensive - therefore, as they higher less workers, surplus value decreases (as a whole, within the capitalist system). I remember arguing with my lecturer that the premise was unsound - that labour need not be the only source of surplus value, and that the contradiction of diminishing surplus value was also irrelevant, since technology increases the "surplus" value of the inputs. He tried to argue that it was still labour that did it, and we never really got round to a compromise. He also tried to introduce diminishing returns from technology, which I just couldn't understand.

Mind you, he still parrots the line that science can't explain how bumblebees fly.

Joel

lpetrich

I will concede that some things do fit a Marxist dialectical schema fairly well, for example, Darwinism:

Thesis: Variation
Antithesis: Selection
Synthesis: Evolution

And I think that while Marxists are right in emphasizing the existence of different social classes and conflicts between them, they have an excessively-simplistic concept of social class that gives class analyses a bad name.