Some weeks ago I was looking into the “The ABC of Materialist Dialectics” from Leon Trotsky for no particular reason. I then realized that the text had some interesting similar thoughts to the ones I had in my opening article, where I tried to deduce the difference between a big change and a small one, between revolution and reformation [1]. I asked: When everything is changing all the time what does it make the same object in the first place? Trotsky phrases this so:
Again one can object: but a pound of sugar is equal to itself. Neither is this true—all bodies change uninterruptedly in size, weight, colour, etc. They are never equal to themselves. A sophist will respond that a pound of sugar is equal to itself “at any given moment”.
Aside from the extremely dubious practical value of this “axiom”, it does not withstand theoretical criticism either. How should we really conceive the word “moment”? If it is an infinitesimal interval of time, then a pound of sugar is subjected during the course of that “moment” to inevitable changes. Or is the “moment” a purely mathematical abstraction, that is, a zero of time? But everything exists in time; and existence itself is an uninterrupted process of transformation; time is consequently a fundamental element of existence. Thus the axiom ‘A’ is equal to ‘A’ signifies that a thing is equal to itself if it does not change, that is, if it does not exist. [2]
Further on I stated, that it is people who consider a change as either small or big one, making it either still the same object or a different one. Again, Trotsky phrases this a bit differently since he comes from a different viewing angle:
To make use of the axiom of ‘A’ is equal to ‘A’ with impunity is possible only within certain limits. When quantitative changes in ‘A’ are negligible for the task at hand then we can presume that ‘A’ is equal to ‘A’. This is, for example, the manner in which a buyer and a seller consider a pound of sugar. [2]
For the buyer and seller a pound of sugar is the same even though it has quantitative changes, because it is “negligible” and not important for them. But Trotsky is not talking about small or big changes, but quantitative and qualitative ones:
Every worker knows that it is impossible to make two completely equal objects. In the elaboration of baring-brass into cone bearings, a certain deviation is allowed for the cones which should not, however, go beyond certain limits (this is called tolerance). By observing the norms of tolerance, the cones are considered as being equal. (‘A’ is equal to ‘A’). When the tolerance is exceeded the quantity goes over into quality; in other words, the cone bearings become inferior or completely worthless. [2]
This concept has some advantages, since you can talk about big and small quantitative changes and big and small qualitative changes: 1 pound sugar compared to 2 pound sugar or 20 pound sugar, white sugar compared to brown sugar or chocolate. The limit when quantitative change becomes qualitative – when sugar ceases to be sugar – is called tolerance.
In my earlier article I alleged that this tolerance for social concept is defined by the people, how they relate to it. If they perceive it as an important change, as significant one, it is one. Concluding that a revolution is a revolution when it is considered as a big change. Trotzky has another approach, a more scientific one:
Our scientific thinking is only a part of our general practice including techniques. For concepts there also exits “tolerance” which is established not by formal logic issuing from the axiom ‘A’ is equal to ‘A’, but by the dialectical logic issuing from the axiom that everything is always changing. “Common sense” is characterised by the fact that it systematically exceeds dialectical “tolerance”.
Vulgar thought operates with such concepts as capitalism, morals, freedom, workers’ state, etc as fixed abstractions, presuming that capitalism is equal to capitalism. Morals are equal to morals, etc. Dialectical thinking analyses all things and phenomena in their continuous change, while determining in the material conditions of those changes that critical limit beyond which ‘A’ ceases to be ‘A’, a workers’ state ceases to be a workers’ state. [2]
# Materialistic Dialectics
Here we have to leave Trotzky for a while and dive deep into dialectical thinking. The dialectical method originally comes from Greek philosophers (e.g. Aristotle), picked up again by Hegel in the beginning of the 19th century. Hegel created the “first systematic form of dialectical method” which then was transformed by Marx, Engels and Lenin into materialistic dialectics [3]. We won’t really look at the history of the term and directly go to the materialistic dialectics. Wikipedia simply states:
Dialectical methods demands the users to examine the objects in relation to other objects and to the whole system, and examine the objects within a dynamic, evolutionary environment. Dialectical method is usually contrasted with metaphysical method, which examine the objects in a separated, isolated and static environment. [3]
Or in the words of Engel, when he is talking about non-dialectical science:
But this method of work has also left us as legacy the habit of observing natural objects and processes in isolation, apart from their connection with the vast whole; of observing them in repose, not in motion; as constraints, not as essentially variables; in their death, not in their life. [4]
Dialectics has three notable laws, though they don’t explain the whole of dialectics [5]:
(1) The Law of the Unity of Opposites
(2) The Law of Transformation of Quality into Quantity and vice versa.
(3) The Law of the Negation of the Negation
# Unity of Opposites
Lets start with the “Unity of Opposites” and a very good introduction from the glossary on marxists.org:
The unity of opposites is a way of understanding something in its entirety. Instead of just taking one aspect, or one part of a certain thing, seeing something as a unity of opposites is recognizing the dialectical content of that thing. Because everything has its opposite, to understand it one must not only understand its present form and its opposite form, but the unity of those two forms, the unity of opposites. [6]
So far so good, but what does this actually mean and why do we need this? Maybe it gets clearer if we mix a bit Lenin into the recipe:
The identity of opposite […] is the recognition (discovery) of the contradictory, mutually exclusive, opposite tendencies in all phenomena and processes of nature (including mind and society). 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. [7]
Basically Lenin gives us here the context why we need to bother with the unity of opposites: to understand development.
Development is the “struggle” of opposites. The two basic […] conceptions of development (evolution) are: development as decrease and increase, as repetition, and development as a unity of opposites […].
In the first conception of motion, self – movement, its driving force, its source, its motive, remains in the shade (or this source is made external—God, subject, etc.). In the second conception the chief attention is directed precisely to knowledge of the source of “self” – movement.
The first conception is lifeless, pale and dry. The second is living. The second alone furnishes the key to the “self-movement” of everything existing; it alone furnishes the key to “leaps,” to the “break in continuity,” to the “transformation into the opposite,” to the destruction of the old and the emergence of the new. [7]
Through the unity of opposites we are able to understand a process as struggle of the opposites and we don’t need an external force anymore.
# Transformation of Quality into Quantity
Next on the list is the “Transformation of Quality into Quantity” and as you maybe have guessed already, this article started with Trotzky explaining this law. Here is a pretty good summary:
Quality is an aspect of something by which it is what it is and not something else; quality reflects that which is stable amidst change. Quantity is an aspect of something which may change (become more or less) without the thing thereby becoming something else; quantity reflects that which is constantly changing in the world (“the more things change, the more they remain the same”). The quality of an object pertains to the whole, not one or another part of an object, since without that quality it would not be what it is, whereas an object can lose a “part” and still be what it is, minus the part. Quantity on the other hand is aspect of a thing by which it can (mentally or really) be broken up into its parts (or degrees) and be re-assembled again. Thus, if something changes in such a way that has become something of a different kind, this is a “qualitative change”, whereas a change in something by which it still the same thing, though more or less, bigger or smaller, is a “quantitative change”. [2]
I did struggle with the difference between the quality of an object and the object itself, but came up with a simple example: A bicycle is an object which has multiple parts as two wheels, a frame, brakes, handlebars. If you take a wheel off a bicycle, you probably would still call this object a bicycle, but it loses the quality that makes it to a bicycle: allowing you to cycle from A to B. This quality itself is not attached to the wheel alone, but to the bicycle altogether. Now if you still have two wheels and only take off the brakes you maybe – with good luck – still get from A to B, but here it is debatable, if the bicycle lost its quality.
Engels provides us with an example in Chemistry:
[…] the change of the aggregate states of water, which under normal atmospheric pressure changes at 0° C from the liquid into the solid state, and at 100°C from the liquid into the gaseous state, so that at both these turning-points the merely quantitative change of temperature brings about a qualitative change in the condition of the water. [8]
And later on Engels gives us examples for the social realm:
As for example the fact that the co-operation of a number of people, the fusion of many forces into one single force, creates, to use Marx’s phrase, a “new power”, which is essentially different from the sum of its separate forces.
[…]
In conclusion we shall call one more witness for the transformation of quantity into quality, namely — Napoleon. He describes the combat between the French cavalry, who were bad riders but disciplined, and the Mamelukes, who were undoubtedly the best horsemen of their time for single combat, but lacked discipline, as follows:
“Two Mamelukes were undoubtedly more than a match for three Frenchmen; 100 Mamelukes were equal to 100 Frenchmen; 300 Frenchmen could generally beat 300 Mamelukes, and 1,000 Frenchmen invariably defeated 1,500 Mamelukes.” [8]
# Negation of the Negation
Let us take a grain of barley. Billions of such grains of barley are milled, boiled and brewed and then consumed. But if such a grain of barley meets with conditions which are normal for it, if it falls on suitable soil, then under the influence of heat and moisture it undergoes a specific change, it germinates; the grain as such ceases to exist, it is negated, and in its place appears the plant which has arisen from it, the negation of the grain. But what is the normal life-process of this plant? It grows, flowers, is fertilised and finally once more produces grains of barley, and as soon as these have ripened the stalk dies, is in its turn negated. As a result of this negation of the negation we have once again the original grain of barley, but not as a single unit, but ten-, twenty- or thirtyfold. [9]
The process Engels describes here is very general:
It is obvious that I do not say anything concerning the particular process of development of, for example, a grain of barley from germination to the death of the fruit-bearing plant, if I say it is a negation of the negation.
[…]
Negation in dialectics does not mean simply saying no, or declaring that something does not exist, or destroying it in any way one likes. […] And further: the kind of negation is here determined, firstly, by the general and, secondly, by the particular nature of the process. I must not only negate, but also sublate the negation. I must therefore so arrange the first negation that the second remains or becomes possible. How? This depends on the particular nature of each individual case. If I grind a grain of barley, or crush an insect, I have carried out the first part of the action, but have made the second part impossible. Every kind of thing therefore has a peculiar way of being negated in such manner that it gives rise to a development, and it is just the same with every kind of conception or idea. [9]
# Think Dialectic
Dialectics, however, is nothing more than the science of the general laws of motion and development of nature, human society and thought. [9]
And thus dialectics enables us to explain movement and development in the social sphere. This is exactly what Marx and Engels are doing.
We started with Trotzky who gave us an introduction into some basics of materialistic dialectics. He did this to explain something about the state of the USSR. I don’t want to focus on that in particular but note the approach he describes of a dialectical materialist:
The definition of the USSR given by comrade Burnham, “not a workers’ and not a bourgeois state”, is purely negative, wrenched from the chain of historical development, left dangling in mid-air, void of a single particle of sociology and represents simply a theoretical capitulation of pragmatism before a contradictory historical phenomenon.
If Burnham were a dialectical materialist, he would have probed the following three questions: (1) What was the historical origin of the USSR? (2) What changes has this state suffered during its existence? (3) Did these changes pass from the quantitative stage to the qualitative? That is, did they create a historically necessary domination by a new exploiting class? Answering these questions would have forced Burnham to draw the only possible conclusion the USSR is still a degenerated workers’ state.
The dialectic is not a magic master key for all questions. It does not replace concrete scientific analysis. But it directs this analysis along the correct road, securing it against sterile wanderings in the desert of subjectivism and scholasticism. [2]
Remember how I – in my first article – stated that the difference between revolution and reform is basically how people relate to it. Materialistic dialectics enables us to approach this social concept in a more scientific way.
Dialectical thinking analyses all things and phenomena in their continuous change, while determining in the material conditions of those changes that critical limit beyond which ‘A’ ceases to be ‘A’, a workers’ state ceases to be a workers’ state. [2]
—
Note: I have the feeling that I need to emphasize that I merely showed some aspects of materialistic dialectics and have only a rough understanding of it.
[2] https://www.marxists.org/archive/trotsky/1939/12/abc.htm
[3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dialectic
[4] https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1880/soc-utop/ch02.htm
[5] https://www.marxists.org/glossary/terms/l/a.htm#laws-dialectics
[6] https://www.marxists.org/glossary/terms/u/n.htm#unity-of-opposites
[7] https://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1914/cons-logic/summary.htm#LCW38_360
[8] https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1877/anti-duhring/ch10.htm
[9] https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1877/anti-duhring/ch11.htm