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The cognition of dialectical “parts” contains many dangers of a bourgeois idealist origin. These arise particularly in the form of superficially plausible “left phraseology” used in arguments as a kind of shortcut in arriving at insufficiently worked-out dialectical concepts.
Not only are events in the class struggle taken out of context and lumped together in a kind of “sophisticated package deal”. It happens also in the misuse of the dialectical method through the transfer, both in theory and practice, of laws peculiar to one set of ideas to others of an entirely different origin. In the case of history, by confusing quotations derived from one historical period of events with another, entirely different period, without proof of their historical interconnection.
A typical example of this eclectic method is provided by Lenin in State and Revolution. For Marx and Engels, “Force” was “the midwife of every old society which is pregnant with the new”.
The history of German social democracy (1878–1894) eclectically combined the theory of revolutionary force with the theory of the “withering away” of the state to form a single theory.
Lenin most emphatically denounces this eclectic method as follows:
“Usually the two [‘force’ and ‘withering away’ – insertion GH] are combined by means of eclecticism, by an unprincipled or sophistic selection made arbitrarily (or to please the powers that be) of first one, and then another argument, and in ninety-nine cases out of a hundred, if not more, it is the idea of the ‘withering away’ that is placed in the forefront.
“Dialectics are replaced by eclecticism – this is the most usual, the most widespread practice to be met with in present-day official Social-Democratic literature in relation to Marxism.
“This sort of substitution is, of course, nothing new; it was observed even in the history of classical Greek philosophy [emphasis GH]. In falsifying Marxism in opportunist fashion, the substitution of eclecticism for dialectics is the easiest way of deceiving the people. It gives an illusory satisfaction; it seems to take into account all sides of the process, all trends of development, all the conflicting influences, and so forth, whereas in reality it provides no integral and revolutionary conception of the process of social development at all.” [1]
In a dialectical concept, the object at the source of sensation in the external world is reflected in a “particular” or one-sided “part” of the “object” at the external source.
As the Soviet philosopher E.V. Ilyenkov explains: “Each separate element of any dialectically divided whole, expresses one-sidedly, the universal nature of this whole precisely through its difference with other elements rather than abstract affinity to them.” [2]
Lenin refers to this dialectical process as follows:
“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, the concepts of necessity, of objective connection in nature, etc.” [3]
The IDENTITY of the objective source of our sensation in the “external world” is a quantitative infinite, law-governed process of dialectical nature, human society (the class struggle) and thought.
Its self-related negation into qualitative finite DIFFERENCE in subjective thought as a “particular” or “part” is the interpenetration of opposites (object into subject). The “antithesis” is the unity of negative infinity (IDENTITY) into finite (DIFFERENCE) and is a negative with a positive image, which as a result of the first negation contains contradiction. The “antithesis” whose unity of negative and positive is the essence of “something” whose source is in the external world.
Hegel explains that:
“Something, taken from the point of view of its immanent Limit – from the point of view of its self-contradiction [emphasis GH], a contradiction which drives it (this Something) and leads it beyond its limits, is the Finite.”
Hegel emphasises that:
“It is the nature of the finite to pass beyond itself, to negate its negation and to become infinite”
Lenin adds, “Not external power converts the finite into the infinite, but its (finite’s) nature.” [4]
Lenin comments approvingly in the box on the side-margin: “The dialectics of things themselves, of Nature itself, of the course of events itself.”
At the top of the same page Lenin writes “Ought or Should-be; and Bound or Boundary – Moments of the Finite” followed by a reference to Hegel who notes “… At Ought the transgression beyond finitude, Infinity, begins.” [5]
This is the manifestation through, as Lenin explains, [6] “the first universal concept (also = the first encountered, universal concept)” of the objective laws of (1) Quantity (infinite) into Quality (FINITE); (2) Interpenetration of opposites (object into subject); (3) Negation of Negation and vice versa which is now Quality into Quantity – to the external infinite source of sensation. Referring to this dialectical materialist process Lenin emphasises: “In fact, however they are (the finite and the infinite) inseparable. They are a unity.” [7] This is an objective law-governed process.
The development of the theory of knowledge here, through negation of negation, means the passage from one concept of a given object at the source of sensation to another concept at the same source. In this dialectical way, we deepen our knowledge of the essence of the original object, first as “opposites” or “parts” of the same external source of sensation, thus opening the way for the union of analysis and synthesis, through the determinations of Reflection.
“Dialectics”, wrote Lenin, “as living, many-sided knowledge (with the number of sides eternally increasing), with an infinite number of shades of every approach and approximation to reality (with a philosophical system growing into a whole out of each shade) – here we have an immeasurably rich content as compared with ‘metaphysical’ materialism, the fundamental misfortune of which is its inability to apply dialectics to the Bildertheorie (theory of reflection), to the process and development of knowledge.” [8]
The “infinite number of shades” [emphasis GH] are dialectical (antithesis) which, as Hegel wrote, go from “content to content”. In each content, the Infinite is “inseparable” from, and contained in the finite. As Hegel explains, “the universal is the foundation; the progress therefore must not be taken as a flow from Other to Other.” [9] [emphasis GH]
OTHER to OTHER is Infinity to Infinity or IDENTITY to IDENTITY, with self-related Qualitative finite Difference omitted, or incorporated into an eclectic “unity”.
“Speculative thought” is prepared to consider the “Infinite” as a “Unity” with the finite but ignores their inseparable self-related connection.
In Volume 4 of the Collected Works of Marx and Engels in the section on the Holy Family, they deal with the “Mystery of Speculative Construction” when they write:
“If from real apples, pears, strawberries and almonds I form the general idea ‘Fruit’, if I go further and imagine that my abstract idea ‘Fruit’, derived from real fruit, is an entity existing outside me, is indeed the true essence of the pear, the apple, etc., then in the language of speculative philosophy – I am declaring that ‘Fruit’ is the ‘Substance’ of the pear, the apple, the almond, etc. I am saying, therefore, that to be a pear is not essential to the pear, that to be an apple is not essential to the apple; that what is essential to these things is not their real existence, perceptible to the senses, but the essence that I have abstracted from them and then foisted on them, the essence of my idea ‘Fruit’.” [10]
By separating the FINITE pear from the finite apple or a finite almond and replacing them with the abstraction Fruit in general we fall “into the most irrational and unnatural bondage to the object.” [11]
Lenin comments on a lengthy paragraph from Hegel which we have already referred to (see page 15). “This extract,” he writes, “is not at all bad as a kind of summing up of dialectics.” He continues: “But expansion requires also deepening (‘going into itself’) ...” Lenin completes the sentence with a quotation from Hegel: “... and greater extension is also higher intensity.” [12]
On the top of the next page of his notebooks Lenin quotes Hegel:
“... The richest consequently is also the most concrete and subjective, and that which carries itself back into the simplest depth is also the most powerful and comprehensive.” Lenin comments: “This N.B.: the richest is the most concrete and most subjective.” [13]
Lenin proceeds to quote the next paragraph from Hegel with approval:
“In this manner it comes about that each step in the progress of further determination in advancing from the indeterminate beginning is also a rearward approach to it, so that two processes which may at first appear to be different (the regressive confirmation of the beginning and its progressive further determination) coincide and are the same.” [14]
Immediately underneath in a one-sentence paragraph Lenin emphasises: “It is impermissible to depreciate this indeterminate beginning.” The “indeterminate beginning” is the “antithesis” before it negates the negation that started at the external source of sensation.
Negation of negation is from the finite indeterminate beginning in “a rearward approach” to the infinite external source of the original sensation. A new “part” is negated and analysed (see box on page 143, Volume 38) through dialectical logic and is enriched by going more and more deeply as “part” and as an “opposite”.
As a new unity of opposites consisting of a variety of “parts” builds up, “the regressive, rearward confirmation of the beginning” “and its progressive further determination coincide and are the same”. A new “whole” consisting of new parts as a unity of opposites is ready to appear in the form of “Essence-in-Existence”.
1. Lenin: Collected Works, Volume 25, Progress Publishers, 1972, pp. 399/400.
2. E.V. Ilyenkov: The Dialectics of the Abstract and Concrete in Marx’s Capital, Progress Publishers, 1982, p. 98.
3. Volume 38, p. 361.
4. Ibid., pp. 110–111.
5. Ibid.
6. Ibid., p. 225.
7. Ibid., p. 112.
8. Ibid., p. 362.
9. Ibid., p. 231.
10. Marx & Engels: Collected Works, Volume 4, p. 57.
11. Ibid., p. 61.
12. Volume 38, p. 231.
13. Ibid., p. 232.
14. Ibid.
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Last updated: 26.10.2012