Dialectical Materialism as a Practical Method
Part 1: From the External World to Thought
(Like every other science, philosophy has its own scientific terminology.
As we introduce each new term we shall present it in bold type)
The Materialist Outlook
All that exists, all that is in being, can be divided into two categories, the objective material world, and the world of thought. The question then arises, how do these two things, these two sides of the totality of Being, relate to each other ? In general, there are only two possible answers to this question, and from the very beginning philosophers have been divided into two opposing camps, depending on which of these they took to be correct. These two opposing points of view are materialism, which holds that the objective material world, (matter), exists independently of man, and that human thought, consciousness, is a reflection of it, and idealism, which holds that human consciousness exists independently of the objective material world, and all that apparently exists is somehow a creation of thought. The battle between these two diametrically opposed points of view rages to this day. The reason for this antagonism is that each of the two philosophies represents, or serves, a particular class interest. Idealism serves the interests of the capitalist ruling class, while materialism serves the interest of the working class. Marxism is a materialist philosophy.
The conflict between Marxism as a materialist philosophy and all forms of idealism is best understood by way of a study of Lenin’s book, Materialism and Empirio-Criticism, which is contained in Volume 14 of his Collected Works. In this book, written in 1908, Lenin conducts a struggle against certain members of the Russian Social Democratic and Labour Party who made a dangerous attempt to undermine its guiding materialist outlook by smuggling in idealist tendencies, disguised as valid conclusions drawn from the latest discoveries made by physical science. The leader of this tendency was the famous physicist, Ernst Mach, and Lenin refers to the tendency he led a Machist. Science, particularly physics, was at that time in severe crisis due to the recent discovery of the electron, which appeared to have no mass. If the electron had no mass, the Machists concluded, then “matter disappeared”, all of the generally accepted scientific principles, such as Newtonian physics, were invalid, there could be no such thing as matter, and the materialist outlook must be incorrect. The Machists developed these conclusions into a theory they called Empirio-Criticism, which, they claimed, was neither materialism nor idealism, but a further philosophical development which rendered the difference between the two meaningless. In his analysis of Empirio-Criticism, Lenin shows that this method is reactionary because it is nothing but the old idealism in disguise, that the difference between materialism and idealism is as vital as ever, and that no theory other than materialism can guide the working class in the class struggle for its emancipation.
The Machist outlook, says Lenin, is in essence no different to that of the classical idealist philosopher, George Berkeley, (1685 to 1753). He quotes a passage from Berkeley’s main work, Treatise Concerning the Principles of Human Knowledge, published in 1710.
“It is indeed an opinion strangely prevailing amongst men, that houses, mountains, rivers, and in a word all sensible objects have an existence, natural or real, distinct from their being perceived by the understanding.” This opinion is a “manifest contradiction, for, what are the afore-mentioned objects but things we perceive by sense ? And what do we perceive besides our own ideas or sensations ? And is it not plainly repugnant that any one of these, or any combination of them, should exist unperceived ?” (Lenin’s Collected Works, Vol. 14, p.24). A little further on , ( page 27), Lenin quotes Berkeley as saying, “if so it shall seem good, use the word ‘matter’ in the same sense as other men use ‘nothing’”.
According to Berkeley, all we can know is our sensations, and the world that is contained in them is somehow created by them, and nothing outside them exists. Nothing can exist separately from the human perception of it, so that to be consistent Berkeley would have to claim that when he walks out of a room everything in it disappears. Such is the absurdity of idealism, but it gets worse. Taking it to its logical conclusion, Berkeley must conclude that if everything is the creation of his own sensations, then so is every other person, that only he exists, and that there is therefore no purpose in trying to communicate his ideas to others. Why, then, did he bother to write a book ? Such philosophy is known as solipsism.
In order to show that Empirio-Criticism is nothing but the old classical idealism wrapped up in new word forms, Lenin quotes from the writings of Mach, as follows :-
“The task of science,” wrote Mach in 1872, “can only be : 1). To determine the laws of connection of ideas. (Psychology). 2). To discover the laws of connection of sensations. (Physics). 3). To explain the laws of connection between sensations and ideas. (Phycho-Physics).”
Clearly, there is no mention of the objective world of matter here. For Mach it did not exist, which means that all we know of it must be a creation of the mind, and we are back to idealism and solipsism. Lenin gives the complete refutation of the idealist view on page 101 of Volume 14. First he quotes Engels :-
“The most telling refutation of this and all other philosophical crotchets is practice, namely, experiment and industry. If we are able to prove the correctness of our perception of natural processes by making it ourselves, bringing it into being out of its conditions and making it serve our purposes into the bargain, then there is an end to the Kantian incomprehensible ‘thing-in-itself’. The chemical substances produced in the bodies of plants and animals remained just such ‘things-in themselves’ until organic chemistry began to produce them one after another, whereupon the ‘thing-in-itself’ became a ’thing-for-us’, as, for instance, alizarin, the colouring matter of the madder, which we no longer trouble to grow in the madder roots in the field, but produce much more cheaply and simply from coal tar.”
The concept of the ‘thing-in-itself’ was introduced into philosophical discussion by the great German philosopher, Emmanuel Kant, (1724-1804). According to Kant, we can only know any thing which we perceive in the external world superficially, and that its inner truth is locked up inside it because it is not present to our senses. Things remain ‘in themselves’. The ‘thing-for-us’ is the ‘thing-in-itself’ once its inner truth, or Essence, is revealed through practice. Lenin goes on to explain this as follows :-
“What is the kernel of Engels’ objection ? Yesterday we did not know that coal tar contains alizarin. Today we know that it does. The question is, did coal tar contain alizarin yesterday ? Of course it did. To doubt it would be to make a mockery of modern science. And if that is so, three important epistemological conclusion follow:
1) Things exist independently of our sensations, outside of us, for it is beyond doubt that alizarin existed in coal tar yesterday and it is equally beyond doubt that yesterday we knew nothing of the existence of this alizarin and received no sensations from it.
2) There is definitely no difference in principle between the phenomenon and the thing-in-itself, and there can not be any such difference. The only difference is between what is known and what is not yet known. And philosophical inventions of specific boundaries between the one and the other, inventions to the effect that the thing-in-itself is ‘beyond’ phenomena, (Kant), or that we can and must fence ourselves off by some philosophical partition from the problem of a world which in one part or another is still unknown but which exists outside us (Hume) - all this is the sheerest nonsense, Schrule, crotchet, fantasy.
3) In the theory of knowledge, as in every other sphere of science, we must think dialectically, that is, we must not regard our knowledge as ready made and unalterable, but must determine how knowledge emerges from ignorance, how incomplete, inexact knowledge becomes more complete and more exact.”
[See below for an explanation of dialectics]
It was, of course, through experimentation and industry that several of the exact sciences, including geology, chemistry, and physics, proved long ago that the Earth existed long before there were humans, or even animals, to perceive it. Lenin summarizes the materialist outlook in three important passages in Volume 14. Explaining the connection between the external, material world and thought he writes :-
“For every scientist who has not been led astray by prophessorial philosophy, as well as for every materialist, sensation is indeed the direct connection between consciousness and the external world; it is the transformation of the energy of external excitation into the fact of consciousness. This transformation has been, and is, observed by each of us a million times on every hand. The sophism of idealist philosophy consists in the fact that it regards sensation as not being the connection between consciousness and the external world, but a fence, a wall, separating consciousness from the external world - not an image of the external phenomenon corresponding to sensation, but the ‘sole entity’”.
(p. 51)
The explanation is developed a little further on page 69 :-
“Our sensation, our consciousness is only an image of the external world, and it is obvious that an image cannot exist without the thing imaged, and that the latter exists independently of the former.”
Dealing with the concept of the external world of matter, which the Machists claimed had disappeared, and whether it is truly given to man in sensation Lenin writes on page 130:-
“If you hold that is given, [the existence of matter], a philosophical concept is needed for this objective reality, and this concept has been worked out long, long ago. This concept is matter. Matter is a philosophical category denoting the objective reality which is given to man by his sensations, and which is copied, photographed and reflected by our sensations, while existing independently of them.”
The discovery of the electron in the field of exact science led the Machists astray because they had failed to grasp correctly the concept of matter as a philosophical category. If the physicists had failed to measure the mass of the electron, they had merely discovered something unexpected about matter, which nonetheless exists. Matter, then, is a general philosophical category denoting all that exists external to, and independently of, the world of thought. All matter is interconnected and is in eternal motion and change. Motion is the fundamental attribute of matter, it is the mode of existence of matter. Through its infinite motion, matter is bound to take existence in an infinity of forms, which come into Being and pass away in time. The concept of Being will be examined later. The perception of the motion of matter, the coming into Being and passing away of the infinity of forms it takes, gives rise to logic, which is the science of cognition.
Dialectical Logic.
Since materialism is the practice of allowing the external world of matter to determine thought, and since matter is in constant motion, then it follows that to be truly materialistic thought must correctly reflect this motion. We have explained that Marxism is materialism, but it is materialism of a particular kind, materialism guided by dialectical logic, or dialectical materialism. The dialectical method proceeds by grasping everything in relation to its own opposite, how these opposites relate, and how the conflict between them causes them to change and develop. The best starting point for the study of this method is Volume 38 of Lenin’s Collected Works, which contains the notes he made while studying the work of previous philosophers, particularly Hegel, (1770-1831). On page 109 of this book we find the following:-
“Dialectics is the teaching which shows how opposites can be and how they happen to be (how they become) identical - under what conditions they are identical, becoming transformed into one another - why the human mind should grasp these opposites not as dead, rigid, but as living, conditional, mobile, becoming transformed into one another.”
Where there are opposites in connection, unity, each affecting the other, there is tension or conflict between them, like the terminals of a source of electric current. In order to grasp and follow the motion and transformations that take place it is necessary to identify each side separately, and we can do this in a purely conventional way by use of the twin concepts of positive and negative.
Now since we are discussing the question of how the human mind grasps, or cognizes, the external world, then the first relation of opposites we are concerned with is that between the external world which is the source or cause of sensation, and sensation itself. We do not perceive the whole world all at once, but only individual things which are parts of it. We see a thing, an identity of some kind, and this one thing is the cause of a sensation which reflects it. We refer to this thing as the Identity of the source of sensation, but it is an Identity only by virtue of its external Difference with the other Identities or forms in the external world with which it is related and connected. It has come into being as the result of the infinite motion of matter. But this Identity, although in the process of coming into Being, is at the same time, simultaneously, passing away. This passing away does not imply simple disappearance, perishing into nothing, but rather transformation into something different, hence the inner content of this Identity is its own internal Difference, the difference between what it is as an Identity, and what it is Becoming. Human physiology being what it is, we know that the image, which is an indeterminate mental image in our consciousness, is a true reflection of the Identity of the source of sensation, so that during this first moment of sensuous perception these opposites, the thing in the external world and its image in thought, are identical.
Now the question arises as to which of the two opposites, identity and difference, should be considered positive and which negative, and, since there is no such thing as a lasting perfect balance in nature, which should be considered as the active, changing side and which the resisting, conservative side. This has been done over a long period in a purely conventional way. We consider identity, the side that resists change, to be positive, and difference, the active, changing side, to be negative.
Now we have passed from the external world, the objective, to the world of thought, the subjective. Thoughts behave in exactly the same way as things in the external, material world. If we have a thought, that thought is just as much a thing, an identity, as anything else, and just like anything else it is changing, that is, it contains within itself its own internal difference. Now we come to a question of the greatest importance. If we choose, we can simply allow thoughts to stream in our heads, we can imagine all sorts of things and make all sorts of guesses about what the world is like. In this way one thought is the cause of the next, and so on, and this is the idealist way, but materialists do not proceed in this way, they consciously allow the things they see in the external world to be the direct causes of all their thoughts, but to do this consistently it takes training and practice and a degree of self discipline.
So when we proceed materialistically, the thing we perceive in the external world causes a new mental image in our consciousness, that is, it changes our consciousness. The thought we already had in our head at this moment of perception was just as much a thing as anything that exists, an identity, and the new thought caused by the thing we perceive changes it, and this change is the difference within the thought identity. Now we see how opposites become transformed into one another; the identity of the source of sensation in the external world has caused difference in thought and in this sense has been transformed into its opposite. This new thought is negative with respect to the thought we had before the change, which we now regard as being positive. The process of things becoming transformed into their opposites, of difference emerging within identity, we refer to as negation, because the new, (difference), negates in the sense of cancelling, the old, (identity). We say that identity has been negated into difference.
We now come to the crucial difference between dialectical thought and formal thought. Dialectical thought grasps both Identity and Difference simultaneously, what the thing is, and what it is becoming, holding these two sides together and grasping the contradictory relation between them and the motion that results from this contradiction. Formal thought does not do this, it perceives only the outer form of the identity of the source of sensation, and its inner content, its internal difference, what it is becoming, is either ignored or treated as something quite separate. As Lenin explains on page 139 of Volume 38, again quoting Hegel, formal thought does not grasp contradiction.
“Ordinarily Contradiction is removed, first of all from things, from the existent and the true in general; and it is asserted that there is nothing contradictory. Next it is shifted into subjective reflection, which is alone said to posit it by relating and comparing it. But really it does not exist even in this reflection, for it is impossible to imagine or think anything contradictory. Indeed, Contradiction, both in actuality and in thinking reflection, is considered an accident, a kind of abnormality or paroxysm of sickness which will soon pass away.”
On page 259 of Volume 38 Lenin begins to explain how we can overcome the difficulties of dealing with the contradictory nature of the world of things and thought in a scientifically methodical way. He quotes Hegel as saying the following :-
“What makes the difficulty is always thought alone, since it keeps apart the moments of an object which in their separation are really united.” In the margin, Lenin writes “correct !”, and then writes :-
“We cannot imagine, express, measure, depict movement, without interrupting continuity, without simplifying, coarsening, dismembering, strangling that which is living. The representation of movement by means of thought always makes coarse, kills, - and not only by means of thought, but also by sense perception, and not only of movement, but every concept. And in that lies the essence of dialectics. And precisely this essence is expressed by the formula: the unity, identity of opposites.”
These simple sentences are of the greatest historical importance. They represent a huge leap forward for mankind. They show that all previous philosophy is crude and unscientific, since formal thought remains trapped within the limitation of the human powers of sense perception and therefore kills the movement of the object in the external world and sees every thing as fixed and immutable. At the same time Lenin shows both the possibility and necessity of overcoming this limitation by use of the dialectical method, which has already been raised to the level of general science in the form of Marxism. But we must emphasize that grasping this method is not a matter of learning new things and acquiring new information, but of training ourselves to think in a new way. To describe how, by way of a training in the dialectical method, we can grasp and reflect in thought the movement of the external world faithfully and accurately, we shall have to examine the nature of motion more closely. We shall have to quote from Lenin at length. On page 259 of Volume 38 Lenin quotes Chernov, a Machist, who is objecting to the materialist understanding of the nature of motion as previously given by Engels. Chernov says :-
“If we speak of motion in general, we say that the body is in one place and then it goes to another; because it moves it is no longer in the first, but yet not in the second; were it in either it would be at rest. If we say that it is between both, this is to say nothing at all, for were it between both, it would be in a place, and this presents the same difficulty. But movement means to be in this place and not to be in it; this is the continuity of space and time - and it is this which first makes motion possible.”
Lenin says that although the last sentence in correct, Chernov’s objection to Engels as a whole is incorrect, and goes on to say:-
“Movement is the presence of a body in a definite place in a given moment and in another place at another, subsequent moment - such is the objection which Chernov now repeats .... This objection is incorrect: (1) it describes the result of motion, but not motion itself ; (2) it does not show, it does not contain in itself the possibility of motion ; (3) it depicts motion as a sum, as a concatenation of states of rest, that is to say, the (dialectical) contradiction is not removed by it, but concealed, shifted, screened, covered over.”
We may add to this the fact that in this context the concept of “rest” is in any case an empty abstraction, with no real meaning. If an object appears to be at rest, it is only so in relation to the observer, who, we know, is in motion. Rest is only a particular case of motion. So Lenin says that the secret of motion is contradiction, and this is explained with complete clarity on page 140 of the same book.
“Something moves, not because it is here at one point in time and there at another, but because at one and the same point in time it is here and not here, and in this here both is and is not. We must grant the old dialecticians the contradictions they prove in motion; but what follows is not that there is no motion, but rather that motion is existent Contradiction itself.” [The “old dialecticians” were the ancient Greeks, particularly Zeno.]
By way of the dialectical method we can grasp the motion of any thing in the external world because we can reflect in thought the contradiction it contains at any given moment of Identity, for at the same time this moment already contains its Difference. Identity and Difference are the two contradictory sides of the thing, its “here and not here”, and its “is and is not”, and this contradiction is the source, the origin, the driving force, of its motion. What is important here is not the simple fact that it is moving, coming into being and passing away, but how it moves, how it behaves, for it certainly has its own movement, its own life, and is not dependent at all on our own subjective thought processes. In this respect the science of Marxism has made a great deal of progress, and, by way of a study of the natural sciences, some general natural laws of motion have been established, that is, abstracted from nature. These laws hold good anywhere in the universe for all time, and the first may be formally stated as follows :-
All progress takes place through
the unity, conflict,
interpenetration,
and transformation of opposites.
The two opposites under consideration, the thing in the external world, (Identity containing Difference), and its image in sensation, (Difference containing Identity), form a unity, since the one reflects the other. They are in cause and effect relationship; the thing is cause and the image is effect. Let us remind ourselves of what was said above in this respect. The materialists insist that sensation is the direct connection between the external world and consciousness, and not, as the idealists would have it, a wall or barrier. These opposites are also in conflict, since that which unites them is contradiction. In this moment, the world has penetrated thought, but this is penetration in one direction only, and inter penetration is a two way process, a reciprocal penetration of the world by thought, and this has not yet taken place so that this first law is a yet only half complete. The second law of dialectics is as follows:-
All progress takes place through the transformation of quantity
into quality and vice versa.
Since it is real and physical, the thing in the external world is made of matter, encompassing a finite quantity of infinite matter at a given moment. The image in sensation is abstract, containing no matter. But it is a faithful image of the thing, and therefore contains its important qualities, size, shape, colour. In the movement from the objective, external world, to the subjective world of thought, quantity has been transformed into quality, another case of things being transformed into their opposites. As with the first law, this second law is so far only half complete. There is a third law, which we can state as follows:-
The law of the negation of the negation.
In the continual process of coming into being and passing away, the new is continually negating the old. However, it is most important to understand that negation is not simply a destructive force, cancelling the old, but at the same time the active, creative result of contradiction, and a moment of connection between the new and the old. We can find an explanation of this most important point in a quote from Hegel in Lenin’s philosophical notes.
“But the Other is not the empty negative or Nothing which is commonly taken as the result of dialectics, it is the Other of the first, the negative of the immediate; it is thus determined as mediated, - and altogether contains the determination of the first. The first is thus essentially contained and preserved in the Other. To hold fast the positive in its negative, and the content of the presupposition in the result, is the most important part of rational cognition; also only the simplest reflection is needed to furnish conviction of the absolute truth and necessity of this requirement, while with regard to the examples of proofs, the whole of Logic consists of these.” (p.226, Vol. 38, Collected Works)
We shall give further explanation concerning the concept of mediation later.
Since we have the “Other”, the negative, containing the “First”, the positive, in sensation, then we have at the same time the contradiction between them. Contradiction, we now know, is the driving force of all motion, and the image is next driven forward through a second negation, to a new unity, or synthesis, with the eternal world. But time has passed, consequently the result is a new moment of identity with the thing in the external world, and it has now changed. This moment Hegel described as the Third Term. These two moments, containing the contradiction between what the thing was at the first moment of identity and what it has now become, and the contradiction contained in the Indeterminate Beginning, now together impinge on consciousness once again as a unity of opposites, through a third negation from the external world to thought. We have now arrived at a new and most important moment in the reflection of the external world in consciousness, Semblance. We shall have to study this moment carefully because the second negation which bound up with Semblance has its own special importance and is not a simple repeat of the first. On page 230 of Volume 38 Lenin remarks :-
“The result of the negation of the negation, this third term is ‘not a quiescent third term, but, as this unity’ (of contradictions), ‘is self-mediating movement and activity’” (Words in single quotes are from Hegel.)
The unity of contradictions refers to the first contradiction between Identity and Difference, and the second contradiction between the first moment of Identity, now contained within Difference in sensation, and the third term. The first contradiction is carried forward. These two moments, taken in their unity, constitute the moment of Semblance. Lenin analyses the moment of Semblance on page 132 of the same book, once again quoting Hegel :-
“These two moments thus constitute Semblance: Nullity, which however persists, and being, which however is Moment ; or again negativity which is in itself, and reflected immediacy. Consequently these moments are the moments of Essence itself ... Semblance is Essence itself in the determinateness of Being ...” To sum it all up, Lenin makes a little note :-
"Semblance is (1) nothing, non-existent (Nichtigkeit) which exists.
(2) Being as a moment."
All this may seem a bit obscure, but it is really very simple. It is only a matter of becoming familiar with materialist concepts which are perhaps new to us. All dialectical categories and concepts must be grasped in living relationship with their opposites into which they become transformed during logical treatment of empirical data, the data of experience. Formal, non-dialectical thought always strives for fixed definitions of words and concepts, as if their inner truth can somehow be established from within their own self. Such enquiry is as fruitless as the search for the mythical holy grail, and can lead to nothing but confusion. In this context Being must be understood in relation to the concept Matter, as the infinity of forms into which matter passes, each form encompassing a changing quantity of infinite Matter as it comes into Being and passes away. Being “as moment” takes Being at a particular point in time, and at the same time a moment of connection and transition. Formal thought makes an abstraction of time, separating it from space, (matter). This is because we cannot directly perceive the passing of time. If we want to measure time, we have to construct some mechanical device and observe the motion of the matter it contains, such as the hands of a clock. Without the motion of matter, time would be meaningless, and for that matter, space also. In semblance, the moment of Being we are speaking of is the world as we perceived it at the Third Term.
Formal thinkers and idealist of all kinds will throw up their hands in horror at “nothing, non-existent which exists”. “That’s impossible, because it’s a contradiction !”, they will say. Exactly ! It is a contradiction, but we don’t have a problem with that any more. Their problem is that they have a hopelessly muddled and unscientific understanding of the concept “nothing”. To them, in so far as they think of such things, nothing means a universal absence of anything at all, but that is an impossibility. The universe does exist, the human mind does reflect it, and cannot avoid doing so as long as there is life. Let us repeat in part the quote from Hegel given above with respect to positive and negative :-
“But the Other is not the empty negative or Nothing which is commonly taken as the result of dialectics, it is the Other of the first, the negative of the immediate; ...”
Every nothing is a particular nothing which is connected with its own particular something, immediately, as that something passes away. That’s why Hegel emphasizes “positive in its negative”. This negative, (nothing), is altogether the property of this positive, and while the thing, (form), has gone into the past, and the quantity of matter it contained is no longer present, it’s quality lives on as a negative. Here perhaps we may succumb to the temptation to give an example. An object which stands on three legs, such as a stool, is completely stable; it cannot rock, like a stool with four legs. But take one leg away, and the whole situation is transformed. The stool falls over, and what is more it falls precisely in the direction of the “nothing” which is left by the leg which has gone, passed away. The quality of the quantity of matter in the leg is its position on the stool, and quantity is transformed into quality as the leg passes away. The stool falls in the direction of the missing leg, and in no other direction. It seems that a nothing is a very important thing. The nothing, non-existent, actually does exist, it has a reality as a quality, all be it a negative one. Nullity does persist. In Semblance, the nothing, non-existent which exists is the first moment of Identity, the Indeterminate Beginning, which has passed away and become Nothing, but which nonetheless determines the Form of Semblance as a thought process. Being as a moment is the thing as we perceived it at the Third Term, which is the inner content of this form. Semblance is at once objective and subjective. It is a moment in the life of the real material thing in the external world, and at the same time a corresponding moment in the conscious perception of it.
The moment of Semblance holds a particularly important place in the process of cognition. It might be described as a nodal point, for this reason, that in Semblance, the three laws of dialectical motion find their completion. Considering the first law, we began with two opposites in unity and conflict, the identity of the source of sensation in the external world and its image in sensation. The external world is penetrating sensation, giving rise to the image. The image, containing contradiction, is driven forward to the new identity at the third term, a penetration in the opposite direction, from thought to the external world. Penetration in both directions at once is inter-penetration, and this brings about the transformation to Semblance.
As regards the second law, we began with the thing, form, in the world, which encompasses a finite quantity of infinite matter, and this was negated into the image in sensation which of course contains none of this quantity, but does contain the quality of the thing, shape, size, colour, etc. Quantity is transformed into quality. At the completion of the second negation the conscious mind perceives the original form for a second time as a quantity of matter, at the Third Term, although in a changed state. Quality is now transformed back to quantity, and the second law is completed.
The completion of the third law, the law of the negation of the negation, requires more careful explanation. This law was well understood by the ancient Greek philosopher, Heraclitus, who said, “strife is the father of all things – the one, sundering itself, coalesces with itself, like the harmony of the bow and the lyre.” It is evident that two moments are involved in any process of negation, the thing, identity, which is negated, and its other, its own internal difference, which negates it, and this is what Heraclitus means by “the one sundering itself”. But the second negation is not a simple repeat of the same process. It is not the second moment, difference, which is now negated, but the negation itself, and this embraces both moments. Negation separates, but negation of negation restores the unity, although not exactly as it was because a development has taken place. To give an example from nature, when a seed germinates it ceases to exist, it is negated, and in its place appears the plant which has arisen from it, the negation of the grain. The plant grows and produces new seeds and dies at the end of its growing season and the process of the negation of the seed by the plant comes to an end, the negation is negated, and the result of this negation of the negation is once again the original seed, but not as a single unity but as a multiplicity, many seeds. The “sundering” of the plant and the seed has been bought to an end in a new “harmony” or synthesis of seed and plant.
The significance of the second negation is that the first moment is reproduced, not just as it was, but in a developed form, raised to a new and higher level. Let us now see how the reflection of the external world in thought, the process of cognition, unfolds according to the law of the negation of the negation. How is the first moment of sensuous perception, the Indeterminate Beginning, reproduced in Semblance in a developed form, at a higher level ? Returning to page 133 of Lenin’s Collected Works, we find another quote from Hegel :-
“Thus Semblance is Essence itself, but Essence in a determinateness, and this in such a manner that determinateness is only its moment: Essence is the showing of itself in itself.” And Lenin immediately remarks :-
“That which shows itself is essence in one of its determinations, in one of its aspects, in one of its moments. Essence seems to be just that. Semblance is the showing (Scheinen) of essence itself in itself.”
In order to analyze these quotes we must begin with the concept Essence. All the quotes we have given from Volume 38 are contained in the section which begins on page 129, entitled Essence as Reflection In Itself. The simplest and most fundamental relation between things is Reflection. All matter has the quality of reflection; it must reflect, and it must be reflected. Here it is important to note that formal, non-dialectical thought takes reflection in a one sided way, but it is always two sided. To give an example, when we look in a mirror it reflects our face, but we are rarely conscious of the fact that the mirror is reflecting light back onto our face, illuminating it, and in this sense our face reflects the mirror. There is no such thing as one-sided reflection.
Since matter, Being, is infinite so is reflection, and since infinity can have no limit or form but can only be conceived of as continuous universal motion of matter then neither matter not reflection has any form or determinate being when taken in this universal sense. On page 130 of Volume 38 Lenin quotes Hegel as saying “Essence ... is what it is ... by virtue of its own infinite movement of Being.” Essence taken at this objective, infinite level we call Absolute Essence. What does Lenin mean by Essence “in one of its determinations” ? Immediately after the quote we have just given, we find the following :-
“Absolute Essence has no Determinate Being. Into this, however, it must pass.”
Where two particular, finite things are in unity, in proximity, each reflects the other. The reflection of each thing contains all its qualities, shape, size, colour, texture, all its tiniest details. In other words, reflection is like a code or blueprint, containing all the essential information about the things reflected, the truth of the things, and therefore the truth of their relation. These two particular things come into Being as the result of the infinite movement of matter, receiving all their qualities as reflection from all the things with which they are interconnected, but they are finite things, and that which is finite is limited and therefore has definite form and quality, is determinate. In this way Absolute Essence, which has no Determinate being, passes into determinate Being. And it must do it, because motion is the mode of existence of matter, and everything is in a constant state of coming into being and passing away.
United in Semblance we have two moments of the infinite movement of Being reflected in thought, the first moment of identity, the Indeterminate Beginning, and the Third Term, Being as a moment, and since they reflect each other, we have a particular, finite moment of Essence, a determination of Essence. Two things are of importance here. First, until Essence came into being in Semblance the reflection of the thing in the external world in thought was incomplete, indeterminate. We now have a better understanding of the concept Indeterminate Beginning. But more important than this, we now see how this indeterminate beginning is reproduced at a higher level, in a developed form, in Semblance, now that the second negation has taken place, because with this second negation, Essence passes into determinate Being in Semblance. However, Lenin says that this determinateness is “only its moment”. It is the immediate mutual relation of the two sides of Semblance, taken in their moment of connection, containing the truth, the Essence, of the thing. But for as long as we consider this thing on its own, out of its context, out of its connection with the rest of Being, this truth remains locked up inside it, just as the alizarin was locked up in the coal tar before it was discovered. We “received no sensations” from this alizarin. This is what is meant by the thing “in itself”. This moment of Essence, containing contradiction, has its own movement and life, and it drives thought forward repeatedly to a series of new connections with the external world. Upon a little reflection the reader will realize that he or she does this quite naturally. Lenin describes this process scientifically:-
“First of all impressions flash by, then something emerges, - afterwards the concepts of quality
(the determination of the thing or phenomenon) and quantity are developed.” (Vol. 38, p.319)
These are impressions of the things in the external world with which the thing-in-itself is interconnected. In other words, in order to grasp this Essence of the thing, not just as a single moment, but as a living process of movement through time and space, we must consider the thing in its relations with the other things in the external world with which it is connected, and which it is bound to reflect. In this way, the moment of Semblance is filled with new content, enriching it with manifold contradiction. The moment of Semblance unfolds, like the petals of a flower, and the thing in itself comes out of itself, just as the stalk of barley came out of its seed, enabling us to grasp its Essence in a progressively more profound way. The thing-in-itself becomes a thing-for-us. This is how comprehensive knowledge of the world is built up in the mind, but this must be the subject of a further essay.
We said at the beginning that idealist formal thinking serves the interests of the ruling class, global capitalism, and that scientific, dialectical materialism serves the interests of the working class and all those who struggle for the revolutionary transformation of society along socialist lines. In the exposition we have given, we have said that the first moment of cognition is a moment of identity between the external world and human consciousness at which the thing in the external world causes its image to be reflected in sensation. This thought image, we have said, is the difference within the moment of identity, containing contradiction. However, this is to describe the process of cognition at the level of the individual, and the same process is continually taking place at the level of human society as a whole. The totality of human thought, the summation of all the thoughts of individual people, can be taken as a single whole, human consciousness in general, which we describe as social consciousness. In exactly the same way as the image in sensation is a reflection of the thing in the external world, (Being), and is difference within identity, so social consciousness is the reflection of Being in general, and therefore difference is contained within identity at the general, social level. But for historical reasons social consciousness presently takes the form, identity, of the ideology of the ruling class, formal subjective idealism, sometimes referred to as bourgeois ideology. This form, identity, carries within itself its own internal difference, what it is becoming, and this difference is the world scientific outlook of Marxism. The necessity posed for the human race is the struggle for the negation of the present form of social consciousness, formal subjective idealism, into objective scientific, (dialectical), materialism, Marxism.
However, society is split into classes with conflicting political and economic interests. The ruling class is bent on the use of modern technology on a massive scale in the unbridled pursuit of profit, condemning millions to war, starvation and disease, and at the same time placing a definite limit to the duration of life on this planet. The advent of scientific Marxism is a mortal threat to the ruling class, since it proves the necessity for the struggle for socialism in order to negate anarchic global capitalism into scientific, rational control over production, distribution, and consumption, and to do it in such a way that we do not at the same time poison our planet. Marxism is the necessary revolutionary theory as a guide to the struggle to bring about this revolutionary change, the transformation of the property relations of capitalist society along socialist lines, and it therefore threatens the very existence of the ruling class. It is for this reason that the ruling class, driven by its material interests and guided by its idealist formal philosophy, struggles might and main to bury Marxism under a plethora of lies and slanders, pouring out a deluge of false, abstract images of the world via the education system and the media, in order to cling to their position of power, wealth and privilege. A greater act of mindless vandalism would be impossible to imagine, since it threatens the whole human race with extinction. The struggle between materialism and idealism now rages sharper than ever, and our future now depends on the building and training of a political party based on the world scientific outlook of Marxism.
Terry Button, August 2006