I've looked at a number of places to find a good definition of them, but I still have no idea what they are. Could someone give me a clear explanation of what dialetics are, where they originated and why they are important to communism?

In the Hegelian sense of the word?

Well, like I said I don't know anything about them. So maybe the sense that Marxists use? Or somehow related to Marxism?

The dialectic is the ‘science of logic’. It is the analysis of the world. Essentialy dialectics states that a substance can transform into another substance throw a process. This process, called the laws of dialectics, are:

• The law of the unity and conflict of opposites;
  For there to be an identity of something, something that is same there must be something that is other than the identity of something. For instance, for there to be red things there must be non-red things. Another example would be for there to be capital there must be wage-labor.
  
• The law of the passage of quantitative changes into qualitative changes;
  Build ups in a quantity within something affect the quality of something. Therefore, when a quantitative change happens a qualitative change happens, and when a qualitative change happens a quantitative change happens. For instance, say water is increased from 0C to 100C by 1C every minute. In between 0C and 100C there would be no changes but the build up of quantitative changes creates the qualitative change.
  
• The law of the negation of the negation;
  Essentially, this states that beings moves forward and than p <> ~~p rather ~~p is something newer.

ahh so basically nothing is free. one thing costs another.


thanks

Look around in this forum for previous debates concerning it.

There's Dialectics for Kids if you want to look at a simplified def.; the link is in RevLeft Dictionary somewhere.

Hop, thanks for that 'definition', but as you have yet to find out yourself, these 'laws' are all systematically trashed at my site.

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Atlas, give this Idealist theory a miss; us materialists do not need it.

Or if you can't, then visist my site to see how easy they are to pull apart.

Link below.

Dialectics, in addition to what others have posted, is about the synthesis from thesis and antithesis. Think of it like two forces pulling and object (not literally) away from eachother while at the same time pulling it forward.

EDIT: THIS IS NOT CORRECT.

Well it does seem a little 'mystical'. But it is still an interesting theory.

BTW @ Janus, dialetics for kids was a very helpful link, thanks!

As practised by Marxism, dialectics is an attribute of that presumption of materialism upon which the Marxist criticism of dominant ideologies is based.

Marxims achieves this critique by counterposing summaries of what a materialist perspective would look like to the models put forward by dominant ideologies.

The attribute added to the self-conscious presumption of materialism by also adopting the attribute of dialectics is the following: those summaries are then based on recognising that conceptual terms do not remain stable throughout useful perspectives on complex realities. Given conceptual terms change their point of reference or their meaning and conceptual terms are constantly replaced those summaries point out how the conceptual terms are transformed by the process of elaborating more forceful explanations.

One benefit of this is that the anomalies in all elaborated conceptual frameworks which can easily be highlighted by analysis (and which sow a confusion which facilitates reversion to the dominant ideology) are managed.

A second benefit is that a conceptual model material reality can also be developed which openly refers to the processes of change intrinsic to reality which undermine conceptual stability. (This relatively minor aspect of dialectics, is what is being referred to in the laws of dialectics referred to above.)

Rouchambeau:

This is in fact a serious error; check this out:

http://www.revolutionaryleft.com/ind...howtopic=51512

Fifth post down

Gilhyle, it is in fact part of the dominant ideology that has been around since Greek times that philosophy can tell us anything about the world.

Indeed, this is one reason why I have systematically trashed this theory at RevLeft, and at my site.

It would be quite extraordinary if a single dominant ideology had continued from Greek times to the present day.

The dominant philosophical ideology which underpins capitalism (and which, of course, is subject to wide variation and is rendered weak by the limited requirement for any integrative philosophical domnant ideology in a society systematically based on the market) is Kantianism (broadly defined).

This dominant ideology has its own conception of dialectics as the contradictions of theoretical reason which achieve their resolution in practical reasoning.

It is also true that concepts of dialectics date back to Heraclitus and - at the most abstarct level - eternal philosophical issues can be devised to which heraclitean dialectics are one response and parmenidean metaphysics are the alternative response. But the perspective which sees such an apparent pattern of continuity across modes of production as capturing the key point in philosophical debate really misses the point of philosophy.

Whether that is your view, I dont know. But one thing I am fully convinced of: in the marxist tradition the attack on dialectics (properly conceived) has gone hand in hand with a pattern of politics which has led repeatedly (although contingently ) to regression in politics. This is not a necessary pattern - someone like Maurice Cornforth attempted to defend dialectics while standing for a quite reprehensible political position. But the pattern is real nevertheless.

Marx's political economy cannot be understood without, in the same process, learning the dialectics of political economy.

Encyclopedia of Marxism: Dialectics

See also: Encyclopedia of Marxism: Dialectical Materialism.

Gilhyle:

Which is, of course, not what I claim.

But, just as we have had class society since greek times, expressed in different modes of production, so we have a dominant form of thought expressed in different ways: there is an underlying oder to reality, ordained of god, or which is natural, so you cannot fight it, hidden from sight (but philosophers will tell you it is there, just like the gods of old), so get back to work, and be glad you have a job....

Do you ask of monotheists (who have been around for at least 3000 years), the same sort of thing?

Same with philosophy, which is a monomania: there is an underlying essence to reality, accessible only to thought, which has been used to rationalise and excuse power for only 2500 years.

Not so in my case: I did not believe this theory before I became a revolutionary over 20 years ago, and I do not believe it now, and yet I am more convinced of the truth of historical materialism now that I was 20 years ago.

And, there are plenty of anti-revolutionary dialecticians (other than Cornforth). In fact there are thousands.

So this is a scare story you can stop retailing: no one believes it any more.

One thing I know: if truth is tested in practice then history has refuted dialectics.

This is not surprising: it is a theory that does not arise out of the collective experience of working people, but out of the divisive experience of the ruling class.

Atlas, Rosa's "trashing" of dialectical theory is a bait-and-switch. Instead of taking on Marx, she beats on her idiotic cult leaders (in the Socialist Workers Party of Britain) and their attempts at "dialectical materialism", and a few well-placed (and well-worn) strawmen.

I recommend reading Marx on the question first and foremost. If you want to have a discussion about this free from vultures of bourgeois ideology like Rosa, then you're welcome to come and post over at our discussion board.

Miles

Really long thread on dialectics.

Miles:

Well, this shows, once again, how little you know. I quote all the Marxists classicists (extensively), and SWP theorists on the odd occasion (almost to a man and woman, they reject my ideas over-hastily like you -- so you have that in common with them!), and every writer who has ever written on the subject. So unless you know of a few Martians who have managed to make this Hermetic theory clear, I have missed no one out (as is very easy to confirm).

Now, in your case, you have proved totally incapable of responding to a single thing I have said both here and at my site (indeed, you spent a few minutes 6 months ago skim-reading one Essay, when approximately 20,000 words had been posted; now there are in excess of 600,000).

But like other dialectical mystics, you are happy to pontificate about my ideas in total ignorance.

That's OK, since it leaves the field open for me to continue to trash this incompehensible and useless 'theory'.

[You can't even use it to defend your regressive ideas over Lebanon on other threads on this board!]

Rosa

Attacking 'dialectics' in the works of the leaders of the British SWP (granting that that is not all you do) is a complete waste of time since that tradition is notoriously incapable understanding dialectics - the writings of Callinicos illuminate the point very well : he is completely anti-dialectical in his view.

John Rees Algebra of Revolution, trying to be orthodox, achieves little more than parroting Lukacs' Schellingian anti-dialectical position.

How you can even think you understand historical materialsim without the benefit of dialectics I dont know. But then, Bukharin thought he was a Marxist, thought he understood historical materialism and was no more than a sociologist in outlook. His recently published, pretentiously titled Philosophical Arabesques shows him engaged in useless parroting of Hegel.

(Just so as not to be completely negative : A book I quite liked many years ago, although not perfect by any means, was the wonderfully named Violence of Abstraction by Derek Sayers.)

I see you quote Max Eastman in your profile - his Marx lenin and the Science of Revolution is a typical anti-dialectical argument; but if those are the kind of arguments you use, its just not worth having the debate because a writer like that just doesnt understand what dialectics might be - might as well argue with Karl Popper.

http://www.marxists.org/reference/subject/...s/en/sayer1.htm

Gilhyle:

Not only is it 'not all I do', it is only about 5% of what I do -- as you would know if you determined to stop passing comment on my work in almost total ignorance.

What is it with you DM-fans? I check everything carefully, over and over again, in the writings of countless DM-theorists, before I allege anything. That does not stop me from making mistakes, but at least I have read the material I criticise.

You lot just pontificate.

And, it might seem easy for you to say that SWP-theorists do not 'understand dialectics', but I claim that (just like the Chritians do not understand their Trinity) none of you understand this Hermetic theory (and for the same reason).

Or, if you do you have kept that secret to yourselves pretty effectively for 130 years or more.

I have been reading this stuff for over 25 years, and have suffered my way through countless hundreds of books and articles on DM (most of which read virtually the same -- and were just paraphrases of Lenin or Engels), and not a one could explain a single dialectical concept.

So, the SWP-'leaders' are in good company.

Easy: historical materialism is a science and makes sense. Dialectical materialism is an idealist execrescence that does not.

Good in parts, but its major failing is that it relies on ruling-class idealist forms-of thought.

Plus it is full of incomprehensible jargon.

I suspect that this is all you have read of my work, so you won't know that I use that quote provocatively, and that is all. It is not an argument, so why you think it is, I do not know.

Now, you do not have to read my work, no one does; but may I suggest that you refrain from making such ill-informed remarks about what I do or do not argue/believe if you do not intend to check my work out?

What would you think of someone who dismissed Marx but who had read nothing he had written?

Or, if I had read no dialectics, but just said it was crap?

We both know what you'd say. It's what I said above.