/edu/ - Education

Hey man, I think that's admirable that you continue educating yourself and trying despite how much frustration it has caused you. You are trying to understand a very difficult subject here that most people aren't even trying to understand.

I have only read a couple of essays and a few books on the matter, so anyone more knowledgable feel free to correct me. In general, dialectics is the interaction of antithetical forces which leads to a radical transformation of something. With that comes new emergent qualities and phenomena. Dialectics is applicable to all kinds of domains and subjects and depending on that changes its appearance, but boils down to being the same thing.
Positivism and logic conceive of existence in a manner that is static and devoid of contradictions and therefore produces concepts that merely stack upon one another in a linear fashion. Dialectics on the other hand conceives of existence as inherently contradictory and always in motion. That's not to say dialectics is arbitrary since there are still causal relationships and laws inferable from that. Advancement in dialectics doesn't look like a mere summation of conclusions that are eternally correct in a static form they were in but a development of transformations that harbor its prior anithetical composites in a new form.

This is all you need to know, as demonstrated by Marx in a single paragraph in the first volume of Capital, chapter 3, section 2:
> We saw in a former chapter that the exchange of commodities implies contradictory and mutually exclusive conditions. The differentiation of commodities into commodities and money does not sweep away these inconsistencies, but develops a modus vivendi, a form in which they can exist side by side. This is generally the way in which real contradictions are reconciled. For instance, it is a contradiction to depict one body as constantly falling towards another, and as, at the same time, constantly flying away from it. The ellipse is a form of motion which, while allowing this contradiction to go on, at the same time reconciles it.
The rest is bullshit.

It is extremely important that the question of methodology be raised, not to assert a philosophical introduction in abstraction, but to show the concrete relation between method and analysis or more specifically between dialiectical materialism and political economy. It is the fusion of the Marxist philosophical method and outlook with the political economic analysis which makes that analysis a Marxist-Leninist one. In other words the method of political economy must be dialectical materialism. In the Preface to Capital, Marx states:

whilst the writer pictures what he takes to be actually nxy method in this striking and (as far as concerns my own application of it) generous way, what else is he picturing but the dialectical method?

In respect to the importance of the diatectical method and its relation to political economy, V.I. Lenin stated:

It is impossible completely to understand Marx’s Capital, and especially its first chapter, without having thoroughly studied and understood the whole of Hegel’s Logic (dialectical logic). Consequently, half a century later none of the Marxists understood Marx/

In the same light, it can be stated that unfamiliarity with dialectical materialism can lead to an analysis that is not dialectical but metaphysical (i.e. one-sided, isolated and subjective). Hence there have been and still are “Marxist-Leninist” groups who parrot dialectics in isolation, but use the metaphysical method in analysis and practice.

What then explicitly is dialectical meterialism? Materialism, in the Marxist sense, states that matter i.e. the total, real objective world exists independent of the human will (mind). Dialectics is as, expressed by Engels as follows:

It is . . . from the history of nature and human society that the laws of dialectics are abstracted. For they are nothing but the most general laws of these two aspects of historical development, as well as of thought itself. And indeed they can be reduced in the main to three: The law of the transformation of quantity into quality and vice-versa; The law of the interpenetration of opposites; The law of the negation of the negation.

Dialectical materialism is diametrically opposed to the idealist world outlook and the metaphysical method (previously described), which are the ideological bases for the bourgeois forces the world over. Consequently, it can be seen that proletarian political economy differs from bourgeois political economy due to the true nature of the correct scientific method of dialectical materialism, this writer attempts to implement this proletarian (Marxist-Leninist) approach in this paper.

>>22038
Thanks for the encouraging words.
>the interaction of antithetical forces which leads to a radical transformation of something. With that comes new emergent qualities and phenomena.
Yes, that does sound like what I've read on dialectics before. Looking at my old notes, Lenin for example says dialectics is "the theory of knowledge of Hegel and Marxism"
and
>In brief, dialectics can be defined as the doctrine of the unity of opposites. This embodies the essence of dialectics, but it requires explanations and development
I guess my initial problem is that it all sounds so… abstract? I find it confusing and really abstract, like a sort of vague, extremely generalized statement. Do you just take this about opposite forces and apply it to whatever subject you want, like history or biology? I'm probably approaching this from the wrong angle, because my mind wants to find some kind of scientific backing behind the philosophy. I end up thinking that, since these men wrote philosophical theories related to the brain and physics, it should be the job of modern scientists to clarify and define what exactly the mind, human thought, reality, etc. are.

Also, allow me to recommend this video. I saw it recommended on /leftypol/ a couple years ago, I've been watching it and it's been helpful. It's quite theory dense so you might wanna take notes.

>>22059
>Do you just take this about opposite forces and apply it to whatever subject you want, like history or biology?
Yeah. Ever since I became enamored with Marxism I tried to translate dialectical materialism to science. I think complex system theory and some ideas in physics such as critical transition are a scientific expression of dialectical materialism, coincidentally so. Though they still harbor brainworms due to the philosophical grounding of capitalist society (e.g. mechanical materialism, idealisations)

>Also, allow me to recommend this video.
That was a very interesting watch. Are you German? If not then it must be quite difficult for you to understand the content, having to learn all of that in a different language. I'm German but I read almost everything in English, even German philosophers, and I think the English translations are harder to understand. They don't quite convey the ideas the same, after all the translator isn't just translating the language but is also delivering their interpretation of the text when they translate it.

>>22073
>Yeah. Ever since I became enamored with Marxism I tried to translate dialectical materialism to science. I think complex system theory and some ideas in physics such as critical transition are a scientific expression of dialectical materialism, coincidentally so. Though they still harbor brainworms due to the philosophical grounding of capitalist society (e.g. mechanical materialism, idealisations)
Ok then, good to know I'm going in the right direction. I get that having scientific knowledge is necessary to understand dialectics too. I've heard many times from marxist authors and soviet textbooks that dialectics has been vindicated by science. They mention dialectics in many scientific fields and in concepts like entropy, elementary particles, natural selection and so on. Karl Marx considered Darwin to be pretty important, he told Engels about Origin of the Species
>This is the book which, in the field of natural history, provides the basis for our views.
Have you ever read Dialectics of Nature? After studying a lot of science back in his day, Engels was convinced that nature is indeed dialectical and wrote this book with Marx's backing in an attempt to prove it:
>"To me there could be no question of building the laws of dialectics into nature, but of discovering them in it and evolving them from it."
>"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"

>That was a very interesting watch. Are you German? If not then it must be quite difficult for you to understand the content, having to learn all of that in a different language.
No. I should have mentioned that the video has English subtitles. Still, many of these words that the German philosophers used like substance, thing in itself, immanent, spirit, and the infamous Sublimate/Aufheben have been VERY confusing to me. I should make sure I understand them all before trying to step into German idealism.
>I'm German but I read almost everything in English, even German philosophers, and I think the English translations are harder to understand.
Really? So you don't prefer to read in German? I thought Marx and Hegel would be way easier in the original language.

>>22106
>Have you ever read Dialectics of Nature?
Yes, and I was quite disappointed by it because it wasn't what I was looking for. For most of the book, Engels meanders about scientific questions that are archaic today and when he spoke about what dialectical materialism means in scientific terms he did so relatively briefly.

>have been VERY confusing to me.
Bet. The terms are more intuitively understandable when you speak German.

>Really? So you don't prefer to read in German? I thought Marx and Hegel would be way easier in the original language.
I didn't explain that well. I do read them in German nowadays and also think it's easier to understand them when you read them in the original language. What I meant was that I used to read everything in English because most of the content I engage in is in English. Free English PDFs are much easier to find than German ones so I started reading German philosophers in English first.

>>22025
Traditionally, dialectics was a subdivision on of logic and was about the study of how arguments are derived. Hegel's dialectics (which is what Marxists are usually building on) refers to a particular kind of dialectical method used by Hegel. If you want a simple introduction read Hegel's Encyclopedia. Its a basic short summary of his whole philosophical system. Get a physical copy. grab a drink, put on some music, and just read and make notes as you move along. Its the only way to do it.