DM: Imposed On The World -- Or Read From It?
Readers need to make note of the fact that this Essay does not represent my final view on any of the issues raised. It is merely 'work in progress'.
However, the main thesis of this particular Essay is intended to set-up those of the rest of the Essays at this site, but particularly Essay Three Parts One to Five, and Essay Twelve Parts One to Six, where the most controversial allegations advanced below (that dialecticians have bought into a ruling-class view of the world), will be explained and substantiated. [That argument is summarised here.]
This Essay is over 44,000 words long; a summary of its main ideas can be found here.
One problem with the material I have amassed below (in order to demonstrate that despite what they say, dialecticians in fact impose their ideas on the world) is that even though I have included literally hundreds of quotations to show that they do indeed so this, comrades have argued in discussion that these are simply "passing remarks" taken out of context, or that they are merely "hypothetical, etc.
The question whether or not they are "hypothetical" is dealt with below (mainly, but not exclusively, here).
Concerning the other criticism: had I included every dogmatic passage there is in the DM-classics and other lesser works, this Essay would have been many hundreds of thousands of words longer than it is. To prove that this is not mere bluster on my part, I have added an Appendix to this Essay where I intend to post some of this material over the next few years. I have just now added examples taken from the first half of Engels's Anti-Dühring [AD]. This first block of quotations is over 5000 words long, confirming that Engels was a 23-carat dogmatist. [More will be added later.] So, these are not just "passing remarks", and the reader can check that they are quite in context.
Finally, It is also worth noting here that the truth or falsity of any and all of the DM-theses mentioned here is not the main issue in what follows, merely whether DM-theorists are consistent in their claim not to have imposed their ideas on reality. Of course, in other Essays posted at this site (especially Essays Four through Thirteen), the truth or falsehood of DM-theses will be the issue.
Quick Links
Anyone using these links must remember that they will be skipping past supporting argument and evidence set out in earlier sections:
(1) Radical Politics -- Conservative Philosophy
(a) Dialectics: Consistently Inconsistent
(2) Dialectics Not A Master Key -- Or So The Brochure Says
(a) Imposition Number One: Reality Is Dialectical After All
(3) Dialecticians Show Their True Colours
(a) Throwing Caution To The Wind
(4) The Dialectical Chorus Line
(a) Rees Imposes His Theory On Reality
(b) Dialectical Classicists Don Traditional Garb
(i) Engels Ignores His Own Declaration
(ii) Lenin Finds The Master-Key
(iii) Bukharin The Bold
(vi) Stalin Murders A Theory For A Change
(vii) Mao's Great Leap Backwards
(a) The Norm Not The Exception
(7) The Lesser Dialectical Chorus Line
(b) Dietzgen
(d) Edward Conze
(f) George Novack
(g) Woods And Grant
(h) Harry Nielsen
(i) Gerry Healy
(k) Ira Gollobin
(l) Paul McGarr
(m) Potpourri
(n) Sean Sayers
(8) Notes
(9) References
(10) Appendix
(a) Engels In Dogmatic Hyperdrive
Abbreviations Used At This Site
Dialecticians often insist that their theory has not been imposed on nature, simply read from it.1 But, it is far from clear how any theory could be read from nature -- at least, unambiguously. Not only have countless inconsistent theories been 'inferred' from reality, the idea itself trades on the misleading metaphor that the world is like a book, and that on it (or in it) have been inscribed countless secrets just waiting for humanity to uncover.
Of course, if it were true that the universe had such 'messages' encoded into it, that would imply that it was the product of Mind, and ultimately perhaps that it was just one 'Big Idea'. As the record clearly shows, traditional Philosophers found it difficult to resist such inferences. That fact is, of course, well-known; less widely appreciated perhaps are the class forces that have encouraged Idealist conclusions of this sort, even among dialecticians. These will be explored in more detail in other Essays posted here (particularly Nine Part One and Two, Twelve Parts One to Seven (summary here), and Fourteen Part One (summary here)).
Radical Politics -- Conservative Philosophy
For all their claims to be radical, when it comes to Philosophy, DM-theorists are surprisingly conservative (but worryingly incapable of seeing this, even after it has been pointed out to them). At a rhetorical level, this conservatism is camouflaged behind what at first appear to be a set of disarmingly modest denials --, which are then promptly ignored.
The quotations recorded below (and in Note 1) show that DM-theorists are anxious to deny that their system is wholly or even partly a priori, or that it has been imposed on the world and not merely read from it. However, the way that dialecticians actually phrase their ideas contradicts these superficially honest-looking claims, showing quite clearly that the opposite is in fact the case.
This inadvertent dialectical inversion -- wherein what DM-theorists say about what they do is the reverse of what they do with what they say -- neatly mirrors the distortion to which traditional philosophy has subjected language (outlined in Essay Three Parts One and Two, and in Essay Twelve Part One.
However, unlike dialecticians, traditional metaphysicians were quite open and candid about what they were doing; indeed, they brazenly imposed their a priori theories on reality and hung the consequences.
Because dialecticians have a novel (but nonetheless defective) view both of Metaphysics and FL (on the latter, see here), they seem oblivious of the fact that they are just as ready as traditional metaphysicians are to impose their ideas on the world, and equally blind to the fact that in so-doing they are aping the alienated thought-forms of those whose society they seek to abolish.
Naturally, this means that their 'radical' guns were spiked before they were loaded; with such weapons, it's small wonder then that DM-theorists fire nothing but philosophical blanks.
[FL = Formal Logic; DM = Dialectical Materialism.]
Dialectics is a conservative theory precisely because its adherents have adopted the distorted methods, a priori thought-forms and meaningless jargon of traditional Philosophy.
Now, these accusations might seem far easier to make than they are to substantiate. In fact, the reverse is true, as we shall now see.
Given the fact that DM-theorists see contradictions everywhere, one would be forgiven for thinking that they would welcome a few more to add to the list. However, if the past is anything to go by, it's a reasonably safe bet that dialecticians will not be overly happy with the many that will be brought to light in the Essays posted here -- especially if the majority of them show that their theory is not so much consistently inconsistent, as fatally so.
Dialecticians claim that even though their system has been derived from Hegel's AIDS, the materialist flip they say they have imposed on it means that their theory is not the least bit Idealist, but thoroughly materialist, having been refined and tested in practice for over 150 years.
[AIDS = Absolute Idealism.]
That is, of course, what the official brochure says.
But, is it an accurate picture of DM? As we shall soon see, this is as close to the truth as certain dodgy Iraq dossiers were.
The claim that abstract concepts underlie our knowledge of the world has obvious Idealist implications (on this, see below, and Essay Three Parts One and Two) -- those that an aspiring materialist has pressing need to defuse. The question is: How do DM-theorists manage to do this?
[TAR = The Algebra Of Revolution, i.e., Rees (1998).]
For one, John Rees argues that human knowledge grows because it has:
"[Brought] to it a framework composed of our past experiences; what we have learned of others' experience, both in the present and in the past; and of our later reflections on and theories about this experience…. Concepts and theories are necessary to interpret the world." [Rees (1998), p.63.]
These observations form part of a criticism of Hegel's belief that:
"[A]ll real knowledge of the world is theoretical knowledge… [and] the development of knowledge primarily depends on the further elaboration of concepts." [Ibid., p.63.]
However, Rees then argues that it would be a mistake to try to:
"[D]educe directly particular events from general rules or to assume that general laws can be directly inferred from specific, empirical observations." [Ibid., p.107.]
But, this further requires us to:
"[M]ake an abstraction from the inessential and accidental features of reality to grasp more clearly its key features." [Ibid., p.110.]
Rees also points out that the danger here is that this might reintroduce Hegel's own errors, luring Marxists into a familiar Idealist trap. This can be avoided by ensuring that:
"Testing by facts or by practice…is…found in each step of the analysis." [Ibid., p.113; quoting Lenin (1961), p.318 -- not p.320 as TAR suggests.]
In that case:
"Constant empirical work is therefore essential to renew both the concrete analyses and the dialectical concepts that are generalized from these analyses." [Ibid., p.110.]
Moreover, general concepts cannot be seen as:
"[A] substitute for the difficult empirical task of tracing the development of real contradictions, not as a suprahistorical master key whose only advantage is to turn up when no real historical knowledge is available." [Ibid., p.9.]
And later, in a discussion of Trotsky's views on DM, Rees reminds his readers that Trotsky himself warned that the dialectic is not:
"'[A] magic master key for all questions.' The dialectic is not a calculator into which it is possible to punch the problem and allow it to compute the solution. This would be an idealist method. A materialist dialectic must grow from a patient, empirical examination of the facts and not be imposed on them…." [Ibid., p.271; quoting Trotsky (1973), p.233. Quotation marks altered to conform to the conventions adopted here.]
Even though the metaphor of the garden has now replaced that of the book, it is clear that the author of TAR accepts the standard line that DM mustn't be imposed on nature, but derived from a scientific study of it, and that not only should it be checked at every stage, it must be thoroughly tested in practice.
The question is: Does this succeed in avoiding the Idealist trap mentioned above? Even more to the point: Is this an accurate picture of what DM-theorists actually do, as opposed to what they merely say they do? Is this even an accurate account of what Rees himself does?
Reality Is Dialectical After All
Clearly not, for just two lines later Rees added this revealing aside:
"A dialectical method is only possible because reality itself is dialectically structured." [Ibid., p.271.]
But, this is quite remarkable! One minute we are being soothed with reassuring words that DM must not be imposed on reality, merely derived from it, the very next we are told that reality itself is dialectically structured.
But, how on earth could Rees conceivably know this? Clearly, unless DM had already been imposed on reality, he couldn't possibly know that it is dialectically structured. What would be the point of stressing that DM must not be imposed on reality, just read from it, if nature is already dialectically structured? That would seem to be about as pointless as insisting that we shouldn't impose greenness on grass, or oddness on the number three. And yet, what else could Rees's claim amount to except an imposition onto reality of something we were told should only emerge as a result of a "patient empirical examination of the facts"?1a
Surely, the most that could legitimately be claimed here is that up to now the available evidence supports a dialectical view of reality. It plainly shouldn't be that this widely touted 'cautious approach' is only possible because "reality itself is dialectically structured." If that were the case, caution could be thrown to the wind.
Of course, it could be objected here that Rees's conclusion is quite reasonable since it is based on a careful consideration of the available scientific evidence.
But, Rees's claim goes much further; he asserts that "reality itself" (that is, not just a part of it, or even most of it, nor yet that of which we have any knowledge, but the entire universe, at every level, for all of time -- i.e., reality itself) is dialectically structured.
Even if we took into account all the available evidence (which evidence isn't conducive to DM, anyway, as we shall see in later Essays), the inference that "reality itself" is dialectically structured goes way beyond this. As seems plain, the claim that reality itself is dialectically structured could only ever amount to a reading into nature of something that it might not have. It certainly is not justified on the basis of the meagre evidence dialecticians have so far scraped-together.
This is all the more especially so if we take into account the fact that DM-theorists also claim that human knowledge is not only partial and relative, it will only ever remain such. In fact, since DM-theorists believe that the pursuit of knowledge is an infinite quest, and that the gap between Absolute and current knowledge will always be infinite, humanity will only be in a position to agree with dialecticians about "reality itself" at the end of an "infinite" epistemological trek. Now it is plain, I take it, that Rees has not yet completed such a task, nor is he ever likely to (and neither is humanity), so the conclusion that realty itself is dialectically structured cannot form part of human knowledge, now or ever. Which, means it must have been imposed on reality.
Again, it might be objected that Rees's claim is in fact a working hypothesis which has so far been reasonably well-confirmed. However, as we will see, this is not how Rees frames his ideas, nor is it the way that other DM-theorists have phrased their theses over the last 150 years. As this Essay unfolds, it will become abundantly clear that dialecticians adopt a thoroughly traditional approach to Philosophy, deriving a priori theses from laughably thin evidence, which they then happily impose on nature.1b
Impertinent claims like these are, as it turns out, quite easy to substantiate. Anyone who doubts this should read on.
'Materialists' In Traditional Clothing
So, this is not a reassuring way for Rees to demonstrate the "careful" application of the "dialectical method" -- aimed at, let us recall, persuading the rest of us that DM is not just another form of Idealism.
However, Rees's justification for the correct application of the dialectical method to reality is that it is in fact so structured. That is, he appeals to the alleged fact that reality is as he says it is to account for the applicability of the dialectical method:
"A dialectical method is only possible because reality itself is dialectically structured." [Ibid., p.271.]
But if, as we were told, this is merely an example of the cautious approach to knowledge (necessary to avoid accusations of Idealism), the direction of justification should proceed the other way. It would surely go something like this: "Because the dialectical method is so successful, we may conclude that those parts of nature and society to which it has so far been applied are dialectically structured." By no stretch of the imagination should we conclude that the method works because "reality itself" is dialectical. That inference is not cautious but dogmatic.
Now, the fact that Rees argues this way round strongly suggests that the legendary dialectical spin that DM-theorists are supposed to have inflicted on Hegel's system (allegedly putting it "back on its feet") was perhaps less successful than we have been given to believe -- either that, or Hegel's system remains Idealist in forward or reverse gear, the right way up or upside down.
If so, this might be enough to show that DM is not in fact a materialist doctrine after all, but an example of upside-down AIDS.
But is it?
The rest of this Essay, and several others posted at this site, are aimed at answering that very question and greatly strengthening this suspicion.
At this point, it might be objected that DM has in fact been tested in practice, which fact alone confirms that reality is dialectically structured. It also proves that DM is not at all an Idealist theory --, or so it could be alleged.
Unfortunately however, not only has practice not confirmed DM, the exact opposite is in fact the case. [Substantiation for that allegation can be found in Essay Ten Part One.] If the evidence of the last hundred and thirty odd years is anything to go by, it is clear that dialectics has been tested in practice and has so far been disproved. Indeed, history has delivered an almost unambiguously negative verdict on it.
Sad to say, but revolutionary socialism and success are almost total strangers. In that case, it would be unwise of DM-theorists to continue to appeal to practice as a test of their theory, or of its materialist credentials.
But, even if this were not the case, even a thousand years of revolutionary practice would be insufficient to show that "reality itself" is dialectically structured. At best, this would merely confirm that human history might be. It should not need pointing out, but the Bolshevik revolution of 1917 in no way confirms that the outer fringes of the Galaxy are dialectical or that photons suffer from a bad case of "internal contradictions".
Rees Imposes His Views On Reality
Again, in response to this, it could be argued that the above passage from TAR is atypical, or that it does not really represent its author's considered views, or that it does not imply what the above says it does, or that Rees is neither a leading nor a typical DM-theorist, etc., etc. But, as we shall soon see, not only is this rejoinder wrong in particular (in that this passage does indeed reflect Rees's view), it is incorrect in general. It is typical of DM authors to talk this way; they all do it, all the time!
Rees's comments are in fact part of a long tradition; DM-theorists regularly impose their a priori concepts on nature, just like the traditional thinkers from whom they inherited this Idealist method.
Lenin admitted as much when he said:
"The history of philosophy and the history of social science show with perfect clarity that there is nothing resembling 'sectarianism' in Marxism, in the sense of its being a hidebound, petrified doctrine, a doctrine which arose away from the high road of the development of world civilisation. On the contrary, the genius of Marx consists precisely in his having furnished answers to questions already raised by the foremost minds of mankind. His doctrine emerged as the direct and immediate continuation of the teachings of the greatest representatives of philosophy, political economy and socialism.
"The Marxist doctrine is omnipotent because it is true. It is comprehensive and harmonious, and provides men with an integral world outlook irreconcilable with any form of superstition, reaction, or defence of bourgeois oppression. It is the legitimate successor to the best that man produced in the nineteenth century, as represented by German philosophy, English political economy and French socialism." [Lenin, Three Sources and Component Parts of Marxism. Bold emphasis alone added.]
Of course, the influence of earlier thinkers is not something dialecticians deny, but it is quite clear they have failed to appreciate its profound consequences.
[However, Lenin's claims about sectarianism will be shown to be wildly inaccurate in Essay Nine Part One and Part Two.]
Nevertheless, the fact that Rees's claim was not a mere slip of the word-processor can be seen from several other things he says:
"Totality refers to the insistence that the various seemingly separate elements of which the world is composed are in fact related to one another." [Rees (1998), p.5. Emphasis added.]
Again, how is it possible for Rees to insist on something while claiming that he has not imposed on nature whatever it was he had just insisted upon? Of course, he and others might choose to believe such things -- he and they could even claim support for such a belief from the available data -- but, as should seem obvious, an "insistence" of this sort could only ever be justified if the pretence that dialectics has not been imposed on reality has been quietly forgotten.
And, there is more:
"[The] natural and social world [form] a single totality developing over time as a result of…internal contradictions…. [N]ature is an interconnected system that developed for millions of years before humans." [Ibid., pp.285-86.]
But, how could Rees possibly know that the natural and social world is a single Totality, as opposed to being, say, two Totalities, or ten thousand --, or perhaps none at all? And how could he possibly know that everything is interconnected, contradictory and changing all the time? Or that development is always and everywhere the result of "internal contradictions"?
To be sure, he could claim to know this if DM had indeed been imposed on nature, but that is the only way he could know this.
[What little evidence and/or argument DM-apologists have offered in support of such over-blown claims will be examined in Essays Five, Seven, Eight Parts One and Two, and Eleven Parts One and Two.]
As if this were not enough, Rees has several more things he wants to impose on reality:
"…[A] dialectical approach…presupposes the parts and the whole are not reducible to each other. The parts and the whole mutually condition, or mediate, each other." [Ibid., p.7.]
"In a dialectical system, the entire nature of the part is determined by its relationships with the other parts and so with the whole. The part makes the whole, and the whole makes the parts…. In this analysis, it is not just the case that the whole is more than the sum of the parts but also that the parts become more than they are individually by being part of a whole…. [F]or dialectical materialists the whole is more than the simple sum of its parts." [Rees (1998), pp.5, 77.]
But, is a presupposition any different from an imposition? And, where is all the "patiently collected" evidence that confirms that every single part of reality "mediates", and is "mediated" in return by everything else? How could Rees possibly know, for example, that the whole "mediates" each and every part? He may perhaps surmise this from the evidence to date (which he failed to produce anyway), but his hyper-ambitious claims cannot be part of current human knowledge (and if DM-epistemology is anything to go by, it never will be).
Indeed, it is not easy to see how anyone could confirm whether, say, a humble carrot is or is not mediated by Galaxy M100, or even Galaxy NGC1365, and vice versa. And what sort of spooky influence is a mediation for goodness sake? What would anyone be looking for in order to confirm that these ill-defined 'influences' (these "mediacies") actually exist? Is there any way for a single human being to detect, let alone study, these strange 'effects'? How could they possibly register on scientific instruments? And yet, if the existence and nature of such things are not capable of being confirmed (and if no one is able to say what their confirmation would even look like), then we surely only have Hegel's word for it that they exist.
Of course, this helps explain why Rees found he had to impose these things on nature.
And how does Rees know that every single whole in the entire history of the universe up until now is more than the sum of its parts? Or that the entire nature of any part is determined in the way he says?
Naturally, this introduces factors connected with the elusive DM-"Totality". As we will see in Essay Eleven Part One and Part Two (where it will be shown that the above claims are not even factually correct) the "Totality" is an impenetrable mystery, even to dialecticians!
[The argument Rees actually uses to counter objections like these (i.e., those based on his analysis of 'friendship' (pp.109-10)), will be examined in detail in Essay Three Part Four.]
More to the point, however, how does Rees know that parts and wholes are not reducible to each other? Can he say with total confidence that not a single whole (in the many thousands of millennia to come) will never be reduced to its parts? If he does so attest now -- and in advance of the evidence -- how is that different from imposing this view on reality?
Nevertheless, Rees is the one who wants to reduce all change to 'internal contradictions' -- which, for all the world, look like they are the 'logical atoms' of DM. [Those who doubt that assertion should consult this Essay.]
In fact, Rees's only apparent objection to reductionism is not that there is a mountain of evidence demanding its rejection, but that it would lead to something Hegel called a "bad infinity":
"Hegel described this kind of account as 'bad infinity', because it postulated an endless series of causes and effects regressing to 'who knows where?' The defect of all such approaches is that they leave the ultimate cause of events outside the events they describe. The cause is external to the system. A dialectical approach seeks to find the cause of change within the system. And if the explanation of change lies within the system, it cannot be conceived on the model of linear cause and effect, because this will simply reproduce the problem we are trying to solve. If change is internally generated, it must be a result of contradiction, of instability and development as inherent properties of the system itself." [Ibid., p.7.]
But, why should we accept Hegel's view here? Hegel was not a scientist; the record shows that he carried out no experiments -- but, perhaps to compensate for this, he probably holds the world record for the number of theses foisted onto nature by one human being in a single lifetime.
He is not, therefore, a terribly good witness for the defence.
Naturally, Hegel had his own Idealist reasons for rejecting such infinities, but is there any material evidence that "bad infinities" are quite as evil as he (or Rees) seems to think? If there is, they both unwisely failed to bring it to our attention.
This suggests that Rees accepted this rather odd Hegelian caveat for Idealist reasons himself -- that is, he acknowledged that such infinities should be rejected as "bad" even though that conclusion was not itself based on material evidence of any sort (and despite his earlier claim that that particular requirement was not merely an optional extra).
Clearly then, Rees seems quite happy to foist these Hegelian ideas on reality.
In addition, how could Rees possibly know that there isn't in fact an endless series of causes and effects responsible for any particular change in the natural world? Or that change cannot be externally-induced -- or even that all change is driven by "contradictions"? For all he knows, there could be parts of the universe where dialectics just does not apply. It might not apply at the centre of the earth, or it might not have worked for a few years during the Permian age, or before humanity evolved -- it might cease to work the other side of the Crab Nebula, or nearer to home in a million years time. How could Rees rule out any of these and countless other possibilities?
[UO = Unity of Opposites.]
Of course, when faced with this sort of objection, dialecticians often reach for other tried but not very well tested Hegelian concepts -- such as: all change occurs through "internal contradiction", because of the existence of UOs everywhere --, arguing that if all change is indeed a result of such things, then there is no way that DM could not have applied at all times and places -- in the Permian, for example, or at the centre of the earth.
But, that response merely confirms the main thesis if this Essay: that DM-fans are happy to impose their abstract schemas on reality, even when there is no conceivable way that such things could be confirmed.
Now, should any reader be tempted along similar lines, that too will confirm a claim made earlier in this Essay:
"For all their claims to be radical, when it comes to Philosophy, DM-theorists are surprisingly conservative (but worryingly incapable of seeing this, even after it has been pointed out to them). At a rhetorical level, such conservatism is camouflaged behind what appear to be a set of disarmingly modest denials --, which are then immediately ignored." [Bold emphasis added.]
As is the case with other traditionalists, DM-fans slip into a priori dogmatics impressively quickly.
[We will see, too, in Essays Five through Eight Part Two, these DM-principles do not even work closer to home with respect to such mundane things as bags of sugar and ambulatory felines, let alone in distant regions of space and time.]
Now, Rees may wish to believe the things he says, but if dialectics can only grow from a "patient" examination of the evidence (etc.), it is quite clear that he cannot know all of these things, given the present (or indeed any foreseeable) state of knowledge.
In fact, as it turns out, he will never know any of these; not only do "contradictions" not explain change, they cannot. Indeed, as is surprisingly easy to demonstrate, the idea that change can only arise from "internal contradictions" is itself inconsistent with other DM-principles, and with what we already know about nature and human society.2
There are many more suspiciously Idealist passages like this in TAR; here is another:
"If nature forms a totality, which it must unless we depart from materialism completely and become believers in the supernatural, and if this totality develops, as evolutionary theory indicates, then are we not obliged to picture this as self-development powered by internal contradiction?" [Ibid., p.78. Bold emphasis added.]
Once more, Rees's only argument in favour of the idea that nature forms a "totality" seems to be that to deny that it does would leave space for the supernatural. But that is not evidence. He certainly would not accept a converse argument for the existence of God: that to deny it would create a materialist 'bad infinity' (in that it would leave the physical world unaccounted for on purely rational grounds), one that is itself backed up with no evidence at all. In that case, and once again, Rees's claim certainly looks like an imposition.
But, what if evidence one day turned up to show that there are indeed things beyond this universe, which either are or are not causally dependent upon it? Dialecticians like Rees are just going to have to come to terms with that -- but they can only rule that possibility out now by imposing their current beliefs on nature (the latter perhaps justified or not by several more a priori, idealist 'arguments' lifted from Hegel, but plainly not based on "patiently" collected evidence).
Rees also claims that alternative approaches depart from materialism; indeed they stand in danger of lapsing into theism. But as we will see, DM-theorists' own understanding of what counts as matter actually allows place for the existence of 'God'. Hence, if "carefully" collected evidence one day turned up showing that 'God' does indeed exist, what could dialecticians like Rees say? Given their own defective understanding of the nature of the material world (on this, see Essay Thirteen Part One), and their weak gestures at the acceptance of evidence-based science, they could only rule this possibility out now by imposing DM on reality. [In fact, Rees's own use of the word "obliged" in the above passage inadvertently concedes this point, one feels.]3
DM-'Radicals' Impersonate Traditional Thinkers
Engels Ignores His Own Declaration
The projection of DM-theses onto nature is not just an aberration of modern-day dialecticians; every DM-classicist has indulged extensively in the sport. For example, this approach can be found right throughout Engels's writings; indeed, in his classic text Socialism: Utopian and Scientific, he had this to say:
"Nature works dialectically and not metaphysically." [Engels (1892), pp.407, repeated in Engels (1976), p.28.]
To this may be added the following comment:
"Dialectics…prevails throughout nature…. [T]he motion through opposites which asserts itself everywhere in nature, and which by the continual conflict of the opposites…determines the life of nature." [Engels (1954), p.211. Bold emphases added.]
But, how could Engels possibly have known all of this? How could he have known that nature does not operate "metaphysically", say, in distant regions of space and time, way beyond the edges of the known Universe of his day? Indeed, how could he have been so sure that, for example, there are no changeless objects anywhere in the entire universe?4 How could he have been so certain that the "life of nature" is indeed the result of a "conflict of opposites" -- or that some processes (in the whole of reality, for all of time) were/are not governed by non-dialectical factors? Where is his "carefully" collected evidence about every object and event in nature, past, present and future?5
Notice that Engels did not say that "all the evidence collected" up until his day supported these contentions, or that "those parts of the world of which scientists" of his day were aware behaved in the way he indicated; he just referred to nature tout court, without qualification (i.e., "throughout nature" and "everywhere in nature"). In line with other DM-theorists, Engels signally failed to inform his readers of the whereabouts of the large finite set of "careful observations" upon which these wild generalisations had been based. [On this see Note 1b, and the Appendix below.]
To be sure, he did say that nature itself confirms DM, but that looks more like a manifesto claim than a summary of the evidence -- especially if the 'evidence' he actually bothered to produce does not in fact support his theses, as we will see in later Essays (especially here).
And Engels didn't stop there; he made equally bold statements about other fundamental aspects of nature:
"Motion is the mode of existence of matter. Never anywhere has there been matter without motion, nor can there be…. Matter without motion is just as inconceivable as motion without matter. Motion is therefore as uncreatable and indestructible as matter itself; as the older philosophy (Descartes) expressed it, the quantity of motion existing in the world is always the same. Motion therefore cannot be created; it can only be transmitted….
"A motionless state of matter therefore proves to be one of the most empty and nonsensical of ideas…." [Engels (1976), p.74. Bold emphases added.]
"The great basic thought that the world is not to be comprehended as a complex of ready-made things, but a complex of processes, in which things apparently stable…, go through an uninterrupted change of coming into being and passing away…." [Engels (1892), p.609. Bold emphases added.]
"Dialectics is the science of universal interconnection….
"The law of the transformation of quantity into quality and vice versa…[operates] in nature, in a manner fixed for each individual case, qualitative changes can only occur by the quantitative addition or quantitative subtraction of matter or motion….
"Hence, it is impossible to alter the quality of a body without addition or subtraction of matter or motion…. In this form, therefore, Hegel's mysterious principle appears not only quite rational but even rather obvious.
"Motion in the most general sense, conceived as the mode of existence, the inherent attribute of matter, comprehends all changes and processes occurring in the universe….
"Dialectics, so called objective dialectics, prevails throughout nature…. [M]otion through opposites which asserts itself everywhere in nature, and which by the continual conflict of the opposites…determines the life of nature….
"The whole theory of gravity rests on saying that attraction is the essence of matter. This is necessarily false. Where there is attraction, it must be complemented by repulsion. Hence already Hegel was quite right in saying that the essence of matter is attraction and repulsion….
"The visible system of stars, the solar system, terrestrial masses, molecules and atoms, and finally ether particles, form each of them [a definite group]. It does not alter the case that intermediate links can be found between the separate groups…. These intermediate links prove only that there are no leaps in nature, precisely because nature is composed entirely of leaps." [Engels (1954), pp.17, 63, 69, 211, 244, 271. Bold emphases added.]
Once more, Engels forgot to say how he knew all these things were true. For example, how could he possibly have known that:
"Never anywhere has there been matter without motion, nor can there be…. Matter without motion is just as inconceivable as motion without matter. Motion is therefore as uncreatable and indestructible as matter itself…." [Engels (1976), p.74. Bold emphases added.]
Neither matter without motion nor motion without matter is inconceivable, contrary to what Engels says. [This allegation is substantiated in Essays Five and Twelve Part One.] In fact, the contrary doctrine that matter is naturally motionless was itself imposed on nature by Aristotle; Engels's obverse imposition is no less unimpressive, and no less Idealist.
Consider another passage, this time taken from a letter written by Engels:
"The identity of thinking and being, to use Hegelian language, everywhere coincides with your example of the circle and the polygon. Or the two of them, the concept of a thing and its reality, run side by side like two asymptotes, always approaching each other but never meeting. This difference between the two is the very difference which prevents the concept from being directly and immediately reality and reality from being immediately its own concept. Because a concept has the essential nature of the concept and does not therefore prima facie directly coincide with reality, from which it had to be abstracted in the first place, it is nevertheless more than a fiction, unless you declare that all the results of thought are fictions because reality corresponds to them only very circuitously, and even then approaching it only asymptotically…. In other words, the unity of concept and phenomenon manifests itself as an essentially infinite process, and that is what it is, in this case as in all others." [Engels to Schmidt (12/3/1895), in Marx and Engels (1975), pp.457-58.]
There are several puzzling things about this passage (which will have to be left until later), but how could Engels possibly have known that concepts and things interrelate in the way he alleges? In fact, if he were right, in order for him to conclude what he does about "things" (about which he admits that the knowledge of his (or perhaps any other) day never coincides), he must have extrapolated way beyond the state of knowledge in the late nineteenth century -- and, as the next quotation below indicates, way beyond any conceivable state of knowledge.
Worse still: if things never "coincide" with their own concepts, then on that basis alone Engels could not have known that even this much was the case. Plainly, if he did know this, then at least one concept -- namely the one Engels was using here -- would in fact have coincided with its object.
Clearly, such semi-divine confidence could only have arisen from: (1) Engels's own imposition of this a priori thesis on nature, and/or (2) from the a priori Idealist principles Engels admits he lifted from Hegel -- but not from perusing the 'book' of nature, or from collecting evidence, either "patiently" or impatiently.
As should seem obvious, if reality is permanently beyond our grasp then anything anyone says about 'it' must of necessity be imposed on 'it' (that is, if we insist on depicting things in such an obscure way).6
The next passage from Engels simply underlines this point:
"'Fundamentally, we can know only the infinite.' In fact all real exhaustive knowledge consists solely in raising the individual thing in thought from individuality into particularity and from this into universality, in seeking and establishing the infinite in the finite, the eternal in the transitory…. All true knowledge of nature is knowledge of the eternal, the infinite, and essentially absolute…. The cognition of the infinite…can only take place in an infinite asymptotic progress." [Engels (1954), pp.233-35.]
But, if no concept (ever) matches reality fully, how could Engels have known any of this? How could he possibly know that "All true knowledge of nature is knowledge of the eternal, the infinite, or that it is essentially absolute..."? Either he was in possession of such absolute knowledge when he wrote this (which would have meant, once again, that at least one concept matched reality, namely this one), or he was himself infinitely wrong.
Of course, we know the answer to this question already: Engels was able to foist all this on reality because that is exactly what Hegel did, and it is exactly what traditional Philosophers have always done; he simply copied them.
However, no doubt the infinite (or even extremely large finite) amount of evidence that Engels meant to include in Dialectics of Nature, which would have been necessary to justify these quasi-theological claims, and which has been mislaid in the meantime, will turn up one day.
There is a passage similar to this in Lenin's Notebooks:
"Cognition is the eternal, endless approximation of thought to the object." [Lenin (1961), p.195.]
But, how on earth could Lenin possibly have known this for a fact? Clearly, he can't have known that this process is endless -- since the claim to know that alleged fact could itself only have been based on the successful completion of an endless process, if what Lenin actually said were correct. Whatever we may think of Lenin, he was not, I take it, an eternal being. Certainly, no amount of evidence could show that this ambitious claim of his was true, or even approximately true. No finite body of data, no matter how large, even roughly approximates to an infinite amount.
Not only is the non-existent end this quotation postulates 'somewhere in the future' (and hence beyond the reach of any and all current evidence), if the length of time between now and then is itself endless, the search for the (missing) evidence which supports even the claim that it is endless must be endless, too.
Here are several more 'cautious' claims Lenin advanced incautiously:
"Dialectics requires an all-round consideration of relationships in their concrete development…. Dialectical logic demands that we go further…. [It] requires that an object should be taken in development, in 'self-movement' (as Hegel sometimes puts it)….
"[D]ialectical logic holds that 'truth' is always concrete, never abstract, as the late Plekhanov liked to say after Hegel." [Lenin (1921), pp.90, 93. Bold emphases added.]
"Flexibility, applied objectively, i.e., reflecting the all-sidedness of the material process and its unity, is dialectics, is the correct reflection of the eternal development of the world." [Lenin (1961), p.110. Bold emphasis added.]
"Thought proceeding from the concrete to the abstract -– provided it is correct (NB)… -- does not get away from the truth but comes closer to it. The abstraction of matter, the law of nature, the abstraction of value, etc., in short all scientific (correct, serious, not absurd) abstractions reflect nature more deeply, truly and completely." [Ibid., p.171. Emphases in the original.]
"The totality of all sides of the phenomenon of reality and their (reciprocal) relations -– that is what truth is composed of. The relations (= transitions = contradictions) of notions = the main content of logic, by which these concepts (and their relations, transitions, contradictions) are shown as reflections of the objective world. The dialectic of things produces the dialectic of ideas, and not vice versa." [Ibid., p.196. All emphases in the original.]
"Logical concepts are subjective so long as they remain 'abstract,' in their abstract form, but at the same time they express the Thing-in-themselves. Nature is both concrete and abstract, both phenomenon and essence, both moment and relation. Human concepts are subjective in their abstractness, separateness, but objective as a whole, in the process, in the sum-total, in the tendency, in the source." [Ibid., p.208. Emphases in the original.]
And here is another revealing passage:
"Nowadays, the ideas of development…as formulated by Marx and Engels on the basis of Hegel…[encompass a process] that seemingly repeats the stages already passed, but repeats them otherwise, on a higher basis ('negation of negation'), a development, so to speak, in spirals, not in a straight line; -- a development by leaps, catastrophes, revolutions; -- 'breaks in continuity'; the transformation of quantity into quality; -- the inner impulses to development, imparted by the contradiction and conflict of the various forces and tendencies acting on a given body, or within a given phenomenon, or within a given society; -- the interdependence and the closest, indissoluble connection of all sides of every phenomenon…, a connection that provides a uniform, law-governed, universal process of motion -– such are some of the features of dialectics as a richer (than the ordinary) doctrine of development." [Lenin (1914), pp.12-13. Bold emphases added.]
But, once again, how could Lenin possibly have known all of these things? How, for instance, could he have been so sure that "[T]he dialectic of things produces the dialectic of ideas", and not the other way round, or perhaps a bit of both (rejecting here, of course, the "either or of understanding" on 'sound' Hegelian lines)? He may choose to assume the validity of these and other things, but there could be no body of evidence large enough to justify the sorts of claims Lenin makes in the above passages, which he was quite happy to foist on nature anyway.
And why "require" or "demand" something if science is supposed to be based on evidence? Scientists do not normally require things of nature. When was the last time they "required" copper to conduct electricity, "demanded" that dogs bark, or "insisted" that humanity evolved from an ape-like ancestor?
And worse: How could Lenin possibly have known that dialectics reflected the "eternal development of the world"?
From whom did he receive the stone tablets upon which these semi-divine verities had been inscribed?
Even though Lenin inconsistently claimed both that "truth is always concrete never abstract", and that scientific abstractions are also somehow more true (or, which allow truth to be approached more fully), just like Engels, he omitted the "carefully collected" evidence that confirmed either of these universal theses -- which evidence would have been unhelpful anyway since it would have been concrete, and hence less scientifically true, if Lenin were correct.
And it is little use arguing that scientific evidence is both abstract and concrete, since that claim itself is abstract, and thus not true (since, according to Lenin, truth is always concrete):
"[D]ialectical logic holds that 'truth' is always concrete, never abstract, as the late Plekhanov liked to say after Hegel." [Lenin (1921), pp.90, 93. Bold emphases added.]
Moreover, the principles Lenin used to derive these conclusions are somewhat dubious, too. In light of the above assertion that "truth is always concrete never abstract", and since that claim is itself a non-concrete abstraction, we can go further: Lenin's principles could not therefore be true themselves.
So, the claim that all truth is concrete -- since it is an abstraction -- cannot itself be true -- just as the claim that all scientific abstractions reflect nature more deeply and "truly", cannot be true -- because it is not concrete.
At this point, we may console ourselves with the thought that at least here Engels was right: there is no way that the thesis that "truth is always concrete never abstract" will ever coincide with reality, and hence will ever be judged true itself. If this dialectical dogma ever does turn out to be true, it would be false on that basis, since we would then have at least one truth (namely this dialectical dogma) that wasn't concrete, but was eminently abstract.
And, could there be a body of "patiently" gathered data large enough to confirm Lenin's claim (above) that all objects are self-developing?
[Perhaps this is all to the good, given the next point.]
But, if all objects and processes in nature do in fact influence one another, and everything in reality is interconnected, then it seems that nothing in this DM-universe could be self-developing.
Clearly, Lenin's incautious atomism here -- which sees everything as developmentally autonomous, and each object as an isolated, self-propelled unit -- contradicts (rather fittingly one feels) his other belief that all things are interconnected. If all objects are indeed interrelated then surely they could only develop if they were influenced by (and influenced in return) other objects and processes external to themselves? On that basis, it would not be true that all objects underwent self-development.
[Doubters should take a look at this object, which clearly did not "self-develop".]
On the other hand, if objects are 'self-developing', they cannot be interconnected.
Perhaps then it is just as well that there is no evidence that all (or even any) objects in reality are "self-developing". To be sure, DM-theorists need to pray to the 'gods' of dialectics that it never turns up, either -- or they can kiss goodbye to their interconnected "Totality".
[These controversial observations and their problematic ramifications (for DM) form the main topic of Essays Eight Part One and Eleven Parts One and Two.]
Be this as it may, is it really all that inconceivable that in the entire universe, over many aeons of time, there might be (or might have been, or might one day be) a single object that doesn't (or didn't, or won't) undergo self-development? How could Lenin rule this possibility out? Again, as seems plain, he could only do so if that thesis itself had been imposed on nature, perhaps by "requiring" -- nay, "demanding" -- that all objects undergo self-development. [Oops, he already did that!]
Once more: Where is the "careful" empirical work that justifies all this "demanding" --, not to mention the shed loads of data that would be needed to justify the many other universal a priori claims Lenin made about reality (listed above and below) -- something we were told had to be undertaken by materialists if they were to avoid being branded as Idealists?
And why do we find no dialecticians "requiring" -- nay, "demanding" -- of Lenin (or his epigones) that he (they) produce this evidence, or withdraw such claims?
The a priori litany continues:
"[Among the elements of dialectics are the following:] [I]nternally contradictory tendencies…in [a thing]…as the sum and unity of opposites…. [E]ach thing (phenomenon, process, etc.)…is connected with every other…. [This involves] not only the unity of opposites, but the transitions of every determination, quality, feature, side, property into every other….
"In brief, dialectics can be defined as the doctrine of the unity of opposites. This embodies the essence of dialectics….
"The splitting of the whole and the cognition of its contradictory parts…is the essence (one of the 'essentials', one of the principal, if not the principal, characteristic features) of dialectics….
"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…. [This] alone furnishes the key to the self-movement of everything existing….
"The unity…of opposites is conditional, temporary, transitory, relative. The struggle of mutually exclusive opposites is absolute, just as development and motion are absolute….
"To begin with what is the simplest, most ordinary, common, etc., [sic] with any proposition...: [like] John is a man…. Here we already have dialectics (as Hegel's genius recognized): the individual is the universal…. Consequently, the opposites (the individual is opposed to the universal) are identical: the individual exists only in the connection that leads to the universal. The universal exists only in the individual and through the individual. Every individual is (in one way or another) a universal. Every universal is (a fragment, or an aspect, or the essence of) an individual. Every universal only approximately embraces all the individual objects. Every individual enters incompletely into the universal, etc., etc. Every individual is connected by thousands of transitions with other kinds of individuals (things, phenomena, processes), etc. Here already we have the elements, the germs of the concept of necessity, of objective connection in nature, etc. Here already we have the contingent and the necessary, the phenomenon and the essence; for when we say John is a man…we disregard a number of attributes as contingent; we separate the essence from the appearance, and counterpose the one to the other….
"Thus in any proposition we can (and must) disclose as a 'nucleus' ('cell') the germs of all the elements of dialectics, and thereby show that dialectics is a property of all human knowledge in general." [Lenin (1961), pp.221-22, 357-58, 359-60. Italic emphases in the original; bold emphases added.]
Lest we are tempted to search back through the archives to find the countless container-loads of missing evidence Lenin had "carefully" marshalled in support of these dramatic claims, a consideration of the next passage will at least relieve us of that onerous task. Here at last Lenin is disarmingly honest about where he obtained these sweeping generalisations:
"Hegel brilliantly divined the dialectics of things (phenomena, the world, nature) in the dialectics of concepts…. This aphorism should be expressed more popularly, without the word dialectics: approximately as follows: In the alternation, reciprocal dependence of all notions, in the identity of their opposites, in the transitions of one notion into another, in the eternal change, movement of notions, Hegel brilliantly divined precisely this relation of things to nature…. [W]hat constitutes dialectics?…. [M]utual dependence of notions all without exception…. Every notion occurs in a certain relation, in a certain connection with all the others." [Lenin (1961), pp.196-97. Emphases in the original.]
Lenin is quite open about his sources in these private notebooks; dialectics derives not from a "patient empirical examination of the facts", but from studying Hegel! As far as evidence goes, that is it; that's all there is! The search for evidence begins and ends with dialecticians leafing through Hegel's Logic. That is the extent of the 'evidence' Lenin offered in support of his assertions about "all notions" without exception, and about "all phenomena and processes in nature", and concerning nature's "eternal development", etc., etc.
As the rest of this Essay and other Essays posted here show, this approach to the 'science of dialectics' is shared by every other DM-theorist.
To be sure, Lenin did add the following comment:
"The correctness of this aspect of the content of dialectics must be tested by the history of science." [Lenin (1961), p.357.]
Many dialecticians make similar claims, or pay lip-service to them. However, as we have noted several times already, the other things they say flatly contradict this seemingly modest admission. The theses Lenin and others advance go way beyond the available evidence (and beyond any conceivable body of evidence); they transcend the listing of mere examples.
Indeed, since Lenin also claimed that human knowledge will only ever be partial and incomplete, neither he nor even the most pedantically thorough and "patient" of dialectical sleuths will ever be in a position to justify the sweeping a priori claims we find him (and others) regularly making -- like those about the "eternal development of the world", for instance.
How could anything from the entire history of science (past, present, and future) confirm something like that?
Moreover, Lenin himself admitted as much in the very next few sentences:
"This aspect of dialectics…usually receives inadequate attention: the identity of opposites is taken as the sum total of examples…and not as a law of cognition (and as a law of the objective world)." [Lenin (1961), p.357.]
Hence, the need to provide mere evidence is in fact a distraction, one that dedicated dialecticians should rightly eschew. In this particular case, the thesis that UOs exist everywhere in nature, and which govern every change right throughout reality, expresses a "law of cognition" and a "law of the objective world", and it is these laws themselves that legitimate the imposition of dialectical dogma on nature.
And, as we will see here and here, this "Law of cognition" is in fact no law, since it is based on a series of crass logical and argumentative errors committed by Hegel.
[UO = Unity of Opposites.]
Nevertheless, this DM-thesis is something Lenin went on to describe in the following terms in the next few sections of his Notebooks:
"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…. [This] alone furnishes the key to the self-movement of everything existing…." [Lenin (1961), pp.357-58. Bold emphasis added.]
Now, the uncommitted reader might be forgiven for thinking that the claim (recorded earlier) that DM does not provide a "master-key" to everything -- to which denial once again all aspiring dialecticians at least pay lip-service -- has here been rescinded by Lenin. In this passage, Lenin describes the struggle of opposites as "the key to the self-movement of everything existing" (and, note, it is not a key, but "the key"). This "everything" must surely have included the countless things that were way beyond the science of his day (or indeed of ours, and that of future generations), and which thus transcend any conceivable form of experience. If this concerns "everything existing", it must surely encompass, say, the behaviour of elementary particles at the outermost fringes of space and time, far beyond anything humanity will ever encounter, and much else besides.
Compare this with what John Rees had earlier claimed:
"The dialectic is not a ['magic master key for all questions'] [or a] calculator into which it is possible to punch the problem and allow it to compute the solution. This would be an idealist method. A materialist dialectic must grow from a patient, empirical examination of the facts and not be imposed on them…." [Rees (1998), p.271, slightly edited; quoting Trotsky (1973), p.233.]
But, we have just seen Lenin inform us that a belief in the universal existence of UOs is indeed "the key" to understanding everything in existence, flatly contradicting what Rees (and Trotsky) had said.
Now, if Lenin is right, it is perfectly clear why the need to provide evidence is indeed a distraction; the a priori approach to knowledge that DM-theorists have inherited from traditional Philosophy means that evidence is not only unnecessary, it is to be avoided wherever possible.6a
Clearly, in the minds of many dialecticians, the acceptance of an evidence-based science is a sop to 'crude materialism' (or even worse, it is a compromise with 'empiricism' -- shock horror!).
[In fact, when I demand of dialecticians evidence to justify their a priori claims, they accuse me of being an "empiricist", or a "positivist" -- or they special plead. This is, of course, an indirect admission that the above allegations are correct. In contrast, however, opponents of DM are given a hard time if they cannot supply evidence in support of their criticisms of dialectics. In that case, the demand for evidence itself cannot be sufficient to brand oneself an "empiricist" -- since dialecticians demand this of their opponents. It must be this: it is crime enough that critics have the temerity to hold dialecticians to account, and demand that they be consistent with their boast that their theory has not been forced onto nature, but has been derived from the evidence. In that case, the DM-expletive "empiricist" must be synonymous with "annoying critic who cannot see that there is no contradiction between the claim that dialectics has not been imposed on nature and actually imposing dialectics on nature".]
DM-theses are based on "objective" laws, on "laws of cognition" (and not on material evidence), on 'dialectical logic', on "axioms" (as Trotsky depicts things, recorded below), and on assorted "insistences", "demands" and "requirements". Hence, the request for evidence is dialectically demeaning.
In this way, therefore, we see Hegel's system, even when inverted, takes control. Indeed, rather like the capitalist system will tend to re-assert itself if it is not eradicated in its entirety, this alien class a priori theory does the same. Ruling-class thought cannot be reformed, just as their state forms cannot.
Plainly, therefore, DM/'Materialist Dialectics' is "objective" for believers since their world is Ideal (its logical form had in fact been laid down in thought by Hegel and his mystical forbears long before the required evidence was even available), and dialecticians possess the Ideal Master Key enabling them to unlock it. The aims of these erstwhile negators of ruling-class thought are thus negated; they end up adopting the traditional thought-forms of the class enemy in all but name alone. Reformism in Philosophy is just as misguided as it is in politics.6b
It seems perfectly obvious, therefore, that we have indeed located the Dialectical Master Key --, one that opens the "doors of perception"/cognition, and which explains why so few dialecticians ever bother to provide adequate, or any(!), evidence in support of their universal, omni-temporal theses.