Dialectical Materialism as a Practical Method
Part II – From Thought to Practice.
Part II – From Thought to Practice.
(Cognition Continued)
In Part I of this article we began by explaining that we do not perceive the whole world at once, but only individual things within it, and that any thing which impinges on our senses is reflected into sensation as an indeterminate thought image. The thing in the external world, the identity of the source of sensation, and the image it causes in thought, are dialectical opposites in cause and effect relation. Identity, (objective, external world), is cause and has been negated into Difference, (subjective, thought), which is effect. This indeterminate beginning is determinated by a second moment of perception of the same Identity which has now changed, is different, and by grasping this difference in relation to the image already in thought, the indeterminate beginning becomes determinate in the moment of Semblance which is a form taken by the inner truth of the thing, its Essence, which is not yet present to the senses.
We went on, in Part I, to explain that we are now fully conscious of the thing in the external world, and can now say definitely what it is, but we are not fully cognisant of its inner truth, its Essence. The reason for this is that we were obliged to take the thing in isolation from the rest of the world of which it is a part, torn out of its context and separate from all the other things with which it is interconnected and which it reflects. It is precisely this Reflection of the combined totality of the other things with which the thing is connected, in the thing itself, which is its truth, the Essence of the thing, so that in order to discover this Essence we must restore this reflection by placing the thing back in its context and interconnections in the world of which it is a part.
The Sum and Unity of Opposites
We have said that we cannot perceive the whole world all at once, that thought begins from some individual thing that impinges on our senses, the identity of the source of sensation. Since we start from a part, now determinated in Semblance, how, in the first instance, can we know anything more about the whole of which it is a part? Lenin notes as follows:-
“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.” (Collected Works, Vol. 38, p.319)
These impressions are indeterminate thought images of the other things in the external world to which the thing-in-itself, (in Semblance), is connected. Upon a little reflection the reader will realize that he or she does this quite naturally. We can best explain it by empirical example:-
We see in the paper that there is a battle in Afghanistan between UN troops and insurgents in a certain location. This is the Indeterminate Beginning. The next day we read that prior to the battle the place was bombed, houses destroyed and whole families wiped out, a common occurrence, and it was defended by the whole population. This is the Third Term. We synthesise these two moments into the moment of Semblance. We now know what this thing is – it is war of capitalist oppression of a people. The impressions begin to “flash by”: We make a connection between Iraq and Afghanistan, where the same things have happened. The next impression that flashes by is oil, because we know that both these wars are for control of deposits. Then another, the US dollar in which all trade in oil takes place. We Know all these things are related but as yet they exist in thought as generalised abstractions, hence in this way we proceed from the concrete, Semblance which was a two sided unity, to the abstract.
Lenin refers to the result of this process of accumulation of knowledge as a sum and unity of opposites, and there are different sides or aspects to this process which develop simultaneously, as it were in harmony, which must be understood. We shall deal with them one at a time.
Individual, Particular, Universal
As a unity we consider the whole picture we are building in thought from the point of view of its form, and the sum of its parts, (opposites), is its content. The individual thing-in-itself in Semblance is connected to these opposites according to the relations, (law), of the individual, the particular, and the universal. The individual thing-in-itself in Semblance and the parts, (opposites), find connection because each part, together with Semblance, have some qualities or features in common, and this was of course the reason why the impressions “flashed by”. Where we have a limited group of things which are interconnected through some common quality in this way, we speak of them as being a particular group of things. While this common quality is the basis of the unity of the group, it is also its limit, since the group as a whole, (unity), negates, (determines as “other”), all that lies beyond the group and which does not have this quality. The universal quality or qualities are those which go beyond the limit.
Analysis and Synthesis,
In this process we negated things, (forms), in the external world into thought one at a time as separate abstractions, and separating a thing into its constituent parts in this way is analysis; but we placed them into a unity in the sum and unity of opposites, and putting things together into a sum is synthesis. In this process analysis and synthesis found repeated moments of Identity and were continually transformed into each other, but in consideration of the process as a whole analysis is the outer form and synthesis is its inner content. We say it was analysis containing synthesis.
From Concrete to Abstract
In order to fully understand the whole process we must consider how the beginning is concrete, and how the concrete becomes transformed into its opposite, the abstract.
We must begin by clarifying the meaning of the twin concepts of the concrete and the abstract, since they are widely misunderstood due to the false understanding placed on them by formal, anti-dialectical logic. According to formal logic a concrete concept is one which relates to, (reflects), real existing things and phenomena, trains, planes, etc., while an abstract concept is one which reflects qualities or properties of such things considered apart from the things, in and for themselves, such as colour, shape etc. But this is a metaphysical separation of things and properties; that which has no properties or qualities at all does not exist, and can hardly be considered concrete, while no property or quality can exist without the thing it qualifies. Such relations, or rather lack of relation, are impossible and never occur. For dialectical logic the concrete is the real existing thing together with its qualities, an individual thing, while the abstract is the universal conception of the thing as such. To give an example, it is said that no one has yet eaten fruit – we can eat apples, oranges etc, but we cannot eat fruit as such. If we are eating fruit we are eating an apple or something. The apple is individual and concrete, fruit is abstract, the universal.
For dialectical materialism things in the external world are both concrete and abstract, depending on their degree of development. In so far as it helps to know it, the etymological root of the word concrete is the Latin concretus which means mixed, connected up in a system of parts, while abstract comes from abstractus, which means withdrawn or isolated. The abstract is the one-sided, incomplete, un-developed. Hegel refers to the acorn as being abstract relative to the oak tree which is considered concrete since it is a synthesis of the acorn and everything else, soil, water, etc., necessary to bring the oak tree into being. But the abstract cannot exist without the concrete, there would be no acorns if there were no oak trees. If we consider a thing in the external world in a one-sided way, as an outer form, just as we first sensuously perceive it, then our concept of it is abstract, but if we proceed to connect this outer form with its inner content and consider it in this two-sided way, as we did in Semblance, then our concept of this same thing in the external world is concrete. Thus while for formal logic any given concept is either an abstract or a concrete one, but cannot be both, for dialectical logic any concept can be either abstract or concrete according to the moment of cognition reached. Thus as we construct our sum and unity of opposites we proceed from Semblance, the concrete, to the abstract, since each of the opposites at this stage is a one-sided abstraction, a form.
Existence
The accumulation of the sum and unity of opposites is a process of first, quantitative negation. Our original conception of the thing-in-itself in Semblance is quantitatively negated as the picture as a whole is changed by the increasing content negated from the external world as opposites. In accordance with the law of the negation of the negation a limit is reached at which a leap takes place, the leap from the concept of Semblance to the concept of Existence, an important turning point in the process of cognition. We are now conscious of the whole as such, but the whole is nothing but the sum of the parts. All the parts are different, distinct from one-another, have separate being. Where two things are distinguished by difference between them, we describe their mutual reflection, (mediation), as reflection-into-other. Where two things have some common quality, are in some respect identical and there is no difference between them, each recognizes the other as itself and they collapse into unity, a thing-in-itself. The reflection between the parts as moments of the unity we call reflection-into-self. It is reflection-into-other, the difference between the parts, which supports them as parts, and it is reflection-into self, the identity of the parts, which unifies them into a whole. The whole contains both kinds of reflection, holds them in a unity, and the world understood in this way is Existence.
Clearly, every part of the world contains parts within itself and this differentiation into parts goes on to infinity. The physicists are still trying to find the last particle, and although we have no wish to disappoint them we have to say that they never will, because that which does not contain contradiction does not Exist. Contradiction is the cause of Existence. So what should be considered a part, and what a whole? The answer is that every Existence is both whole and part according to the relation in which it is taken. If we take the thing in relation to other parts, that is, in the relation of reflection-into-other, then it is a part. If we take the thing as an identity in its own right, as reflection-into-self, containing parts within itself, then it stands on its own, out of any relation to anything else. Such an Existence, Hegel calls Thing
There is often confusion between the concept of Being and the concept of Existence. Being and Existence relate as genus and species; all Existence is Being, but not all Being is Existence. All dogs are animals, but not all animals are dogs. Being is the immediate, a word which, with the attachment of the prefix “im”, reverses the meaning, mediated becoming not-mediated. Being as such is therefore the one-sided, abstract, indeterminate, while Existence is the many-sided, related to other, concrete, determinate, really existing thing. “We shall reserve for such Being as is mediated the term Existence”, says Hegel, and mediation is Reflection which is the same as Essence. “Reflection is the showing of Essence into itself”, Lenin remarks. (Vol. 38, page 134). Hence it is Essence itself which is in Existence.
Outer to Inner and Inner to Outer
It is for this reason that Lenin, following Hegel, describes the process we have explained so far as the path from the outer to the inner, the path of knowledge which begins from the outer form of the thing and penetrates to its inner content and truth, its Essence. But having penetrated to the inner truth of the world we perceive we hold it in consciousness as a universal abstraction. Existence must be likened to the acorn, not the oak tree - the fruit, not the apple. If we are to act on our understanding of the world, put our theory into practice, then we will, like it or not, have to deal with apples not fruit, oak trees not acorns. We must begin to posit our understanding of the world in the concept of Existence, on the material world in each and every aspect we find, our sum and unity of opposites as we find them in the world outside in the present. In other words, we must travel our path of cognition, from the outer to the inner, from form to content, in the reverse direction, the path from the inner to the outer, and we shall become fully conscious of the concrete reality corresponding the our abstract conception.
There is a difference between the path from the outer to the inner and the opposite process, the path from the inner to the outer. Whereas in the former we analysed the world into parts and synthesised these into a whole, with the latter we take the whole to the parts. We take our conception of the world as an abstract whole in Existence, and place it in relation with each part in the external world in turn, in a series of negations form thought to the external world and back. We synthesis the parts into the whole, but in order to do so we must take each part from the external world, and this is analysis. Now synthesis is the outer form and analysis is inner content – it is a process of synthesis containing analysis.
Ascent From Abstract to Concrete
The importance of the leap from the path from the outer to the inner, to the path from the inner to the outer, is explained by Professor E.V. Ilyenkov. Speaking of the former, in which we negate the parts of the world one at a time into the sum and unity of opposites as abstractions, he says:-
“The reduction of the concrete fullness of reality to its abridged (abstract) expression in consciousness is, self-obviously, a prerequisite and a condition without which no special theoretical research can either proceed or even begin. Moreover, this reduction is not only a prerequisite or historical condition of theoretical assimilation of the world but also an organic element of the process itself of constructing a system of scientific definitions, that is, of the mind’s synthesising activity.” (The Dialectics of the Concrete and the Abstract in Marx’s Capital, Page 137)
Ilyenkov then goes on to explain how we must proceed through the path from the inner to the outer in order to complete a concrete picture of the world from the abstractions we have made:-
“The definitions which the theoretician organises into a system are not, of course, borrowed ready made from the previous phase (or stage) of cognition. His task is by no means restricted to a purely formal synthesis of ready-made ‘meagre abstractions’ according to the familiar rules for such synthesis. In constructing a system out of ready-made, earlier obtained abstractions, a theoretician always critically analyses them, checks them with the facts and thus goes once again through the ascent from the concrete in reality to the abstract in thought. This ascent is thus not only and not so much a prerequisite of constructing a system of science as an organic element of the construction itself. [Our emphasis]
Separate abstract definitions, whose synthesis yields the ‘concrete in thought’, are formed in the course of ascent from the abstract to the concrete itself. Thus the theoretical process leading to the attainment of concrete knowledge is always, in each separate link as well as in the whole, also a process of reduction of the concrete to the abstract.” (Ibid.)
The separate abstractions we are dealing with are of course the other things which are connected with the thing in Semblance as “impressions” which flashed by, and which taken together as a sum and unity of opposites form a picture of the world as an Existence. Ilyenkov says we must “critically analyse them … check them with the facts.” We must place our sum and unity of opposites back in its connection in the external world so that we concretise the abstraction by filling it with real content from the external world, and at the same time see how each part related to the whole. We shall consider further how, in a general way, how parts within a whole relate.
Where two things are in connection, unity, each reflects the other. Each part is in unity with the whole, and therefore the whole reflects each part and vice versa. Since each part reflects the whole and the whole reflects all of its parts, then each part reflects all the other parts not by directly relating to them, but by relating to the whole which contains their respective reflections in a unified form. If we wish to find out how one individual part reflects the whole and how the whole reflects this individual part, then we must consider this part in isolation from the rest, that is, take it out of its context, and this is analysis. But in doing this we become conscious of how it relates to and reflects the whole, its connection with the whole, and this is synthesis. In this moment analysis and synthesis have become identical opposites and have collapsed into one concept that can be seen from two sides. To fully grasp the truth of the whole we must do this with each of its parts in turn, and as we proceed the quantity of knowledge of the relation of the parts to each other and between the whole and the parts builds up, becoming enriched with manifold contradiction.
Let us return to our hypothetical case. We negate the battle in Afghanistan and the defence by the people into Semblance as abstractions, and through mutual mediation they became a concrete unity in the thing-in-itself in Semblance which contained the Essence, capitalist war for oil. But this concept was only concrete with respect to the two abstractions of which it is a unity, it remained abstract with respect to the external world. We said above that a concept was either concrete or abstract according to the moment of cognition reached. We cannot, as Ilyenkov says, proceed with this ready made abstraction, because the real war for oil in the external world is not war as such, but war in a particular form, which in many ways is different to the wars we know from the past. So we negate our abstract conception of the war back to the external world and find the difference between the past and the present, we “check the facts” – we synthesis our abstract concept with what we find in the external world, (war between the UN and the insurgent forces), and negate this synthesis back into thought as a new concrete concept. This concept is again abstract with respect to the external world, because the war between the UN and the insurgent forces as such does not exist either, but only this war conducted by global capitalism in which unemployment is at a certain level, money exchange rates stand in a particular relation, the price of oil is at a particular level, and so on. In this way, through continual negations from thought to the external world and back, which involve the continual transformation of the abstract to the concrete and back, and similarly with respect to analysis and synthesis, we build up a scientific theory of the world.
From Existence to Appearance
It is apparent from what Hegel says that Existence is two sided. It’s outer side is Form and its inner side is Matter. Both are the whole, but the whole as seen from two different aspects. Seen in its inner aspect, Matter, it is reflection-into-self and its Existence does not depend on any other thing. Seen from its outer aspect, Form, it is reflection-into-other and it definitely is dependent, that is, mediated and determined by, that with which it is in unity and reflects. This is easy to understand if we reduce the notion of Form to that of simple shape. What lies beyond the boundary of a shape is another shape, for example a spherical bubble of air in water. Clearly, the shape and size of the bubble is the result of what is outside it just as much as what is inside it. Such Existence as this, which at once posits and contradicts itself, Hegel calls Appearance. Lenin, reading Hegel materialistically, clarifies the question empirically:-
“The latter, (thing-in-itself), is not supposed to contain in itself any determinate multiplicity, and consequently obtains this only when brought under external reflection, but remains indifferent to it. (The thing-in-itself has colour only in relation to the eye, smell in relation to the nose, and so forth.)” (Vol. 38, page 149)
One of the things with which any Existence is in connection, (external reflection), is human consciousness, itself an Existence. The outer form of the thing, Semblance containing the sum and unity of opposites, is present to consciousness but, due to the nature of sense perception its Essence, (internal reflections), remain hidden. In relation to the eye, a thing may be determined as coloured red, but in itself it is certainly not; it is simply reflecting light at a certain frequency. Similarly, the Form of motion of the sun is its circulation of the Earth. These are the outer Forms of Existence in which the inner Content, the Essence, appears to us, and we call Appearance.
From Appearance to Law, (Essential Relation).
We experience all individual things as Appearances, and the combined totality of such Appearances, interacting and reflecting each other, we call the World of Appearance
For all that Form and Matter contradict in Appearance, the former tells us at least something about the latter. Since the Form is finite so must be the quantity of Matter, and since the form has quality then so must the Matter contained it in, and the quality of the matter must determine the form in some way. Further to this, as in cases of organic matter, some relations between whole and part are necessary to the very existence of both. For example, in the case of the human organism, neither body nor hart would exist apart from the proper relation between both. Hegel refers to such relations as Essential Relations. So the Matter contained in the Form is not just any quantity of any quality, but in both aspects must be particular to this form and vice versa, since this particular content could not have given rise to any other form. Understood thus in the world of Appearance, the relation of Form and Matter becomes Form and Content. This concrete result of the unity of reflection-into-self and reflection-into-other is the leap from the moment, (concept), of Existence to that of Appearance, and at the same time, in a more general sense, it is the leap from the moment of Semblance to that of Appearance. Since the Content of the Thing is identical with its Outer Form then this inner truth, its Essence, must be externally expressed:-
“Appearance is Essence in its Existence … Appearance is the unity of Semblance and Existence …” (Vol 38, page 150)
To understand Appearance, then, we must grasp it as a particular manifestation of Essence which has now reached a higher and more developed form than it had at the moment of Semblance. In Semblance, Essence was in Being but was not mediated, remained in-itself, and did not yet Exist. In Appearance it does because Form and Content mediate each other. It is precisely Essence which appears. This is the development in the process of cognition which has taken place as a result of the leap. Hegel explains that in the process of cognition Essence manifests itself in three successive determinations which he refers to as the “moments of Essence”, Semblance, Appearance, and Actuality. We shall deal with the concept, (moment), of Actuality below.
Existence, we remember, is understood as the multiplicitous determinations of many things in their relations. Our original thing-in-itself in Semblance, which we took out of its context in the external world has now been placed back in its context, restoring the reflection of all the other things with which it is related. In this way, its Essence is now fully restored, is in Existence.
Appearance is the Outer Form taken by the external world, while Essence is the Inner Content of this form, and these two relate as Identity and Difference containing Contradiction. As we cognise the world in its infinite motion we quantitatively negate Appearance into Essence thus penetrating from the outer form to the inner content. During this quantitative process Essence continues to manifest itself in a number of forms which are sides and aspects of Essence itself. The penetration to ever deeper Essence is at the same time ever closer determination of Essence and therefore of the outer forms taken by this Essence. This penetration is the result of synthesis containing analysis, the relation to the whole of parts taken out of context from the external world. In this way the penetration to deeper Essence is at the same time the path from the inner to the outer, from inner Content and Essence to Outer Form. We may liken this process of successive negations of the external world to thought to the still frames which make up a moving film. Now we see the world of Appearance as a world of moving forms, and the motion we perceive gives rise to a leap in thought from the perception of the forms themselves to the perception of the forms of their motion.
With particular respect to Essential Relations we observe that the forms of their motion repeat themselves throughout nature, so that when we see the same conditions arise we know in advance what the result will be; in other words there are patterns in the movement of the world, Laws of Motion. Lenin quotes Hegel as follows:-
“Hence Law is not beyond Appearance, but is immediately present in it.” (Vol. 38. Page 151)
On the following page he continues:-
“The realm of Laws is the quiescent content of Appearance; Appearance is this same content, but presents itself in unquiet change and as reflection-into-other … Appearance, therefore, as against Law, is the totality, for it contains Law, but also more, namely the moment of self-moving form.”
Quiescent here means change which manifests the mutual behaviour of opposites, the way they move and change in a “quiescent” way. “Unquiet change” means not-quiescent, the form of Appearance which contains untruth, (colour in relation to the eye). Later Lenin characterizes Law as “Relation of essences or between essences”.
So we perceive the laws of motion in nature and make abstraction from them in order to build up a theory of nature. As an example, Isaac Newton perceived that bodies released from height moved towards the centre of the earth. This was Appearance and it was certainly a demonstration of the law of gravity, that is, Law was immediately present in the Appearance. By way of further negations from the external world to thought and back, and by practical experiment, he abstracted a law of motion from the world of Appearance, the Law which was "immediately present" in the Appearance was mediated by human consciousness, and Newton was able to express it in the form of a simple equation,
s = ut - ½gt²
where s is distance, u is initial velocity, t is time, and g the acceleration due to gravity, (32.2 feet/sec²). Further to this, it was by way of exhaustive study of the external world that Marx abstracted the laws of bourgeois society, laws such as the labour theory of value, the law of the declining rate of profit, and so on. Ultimately through further generalisation of the laws discovered by the positive sciences the laws of dialectics we gave in the first article were formulated in the first place by Engels.
From Law to Causality
Law manifests the mutual behaviour of opposites, the way they move and change in a “quiescent” way. The nature of the motion of Newton’s apple was entirely the same, was quiescent, with the nature of the motion of the Earth. The Earth moved towards the apple at the same time as the apple moved towards the Earth, but because the mass of the Earth is so much greater than that of the apple, only the motion of the apple “Appeared”. But Law was certainly present in that Appearance.
There is another side to the Appearance of the mutually determined motion of opposites in unity. Where there is an exact balance in the mutual reflection no change of motion occurs. This condition we know as equilibrium, and where there is no relative motion between the observer and the thing observed we say it is “stationary”. Motion always Appears as the domination of one opposite by the other, a condition we know as Cause and Effect relation. In our above example, the Earth Appeared as Cause and the apple as effect, but we know that this was only Appearance and that each opposite moved in a quiescent way according to its own nature. Lenin addresses this question:-
“When one reads Hegel on causality, it appears strange at first glance that he dwells so relatively lightly on this theme, beloved of the Kantians. Why? Because, indeed, for him causality is only one of the determinations of universal connection, which he had already covered earlier, in his entire exposition, much more deeply and all-sidedly; always and from the very outset emphasising this connection, the reciprocal transitions etc.” (Vol. 38, P162)
The explanation of Hegel’s depreciation of the Law of Causality is given very clearly by Engels:-
“The first thing that strikes us in considering matter in motion is the inter-connection of the individual motions of separate bodies, their being determined by one another. But not only do we find that a particular motion is followed by another, we find also that we can evoke a particular motion by setting up the conditions in which it takes place in nature, that we can even produce motions which do not occur at all in nature (industry), at least not in this way, and that we can give these motions a predetermined direction and extent. In this way, by the activity of human beings, the idea of causality becomes established, the idea that one motion is the cause of another. True, the regular sequence of certain natural phenomena can by itself give rise to the idea of causality: the heat and light that come from the sun; but this affords no proof, and to that extent Hume’s scepticism was correct in saying that a regular post hoc can never establish a propter hoc. But the activity of human beings forms the test of causality. If we bring the sun’s rays to a focus by means of a concave mirror and make them act like the rays of an ordinary fire, we thereby prove that heat comes from the sun.” (Dialectics of Nature, page 230). [The meaning of Hume’s remark is that though we may see one thing follow another countless times that does not mean the first is the cause of the second, it just means that it has happened that way every time so far.]
But Engels goes on :-
“Reciprocal action is the first thing we encounter when we consider matter in motion as a whole from the standpoint of modern natural science. We see a series of forms of motion, heat, light, electricity, magnetism, chemical union and decomposition … all of which pass into one another, mutually determine one another, are in one place cause and in another effect, the sum total of the motion in all its changing forms remaining the same (Spinoza: substance is causa sui strikingly expresses the reciprocal action). Mechanical motion becomes transformed into heat, electricity, magnetism, light etc., and vice versa. Thus natural science confirms what Hegel has said, that reciprocal action is the true causa finalis of things. We cannot go back further than to the knowledge of this reciprocal action, for the very reason that there is nothing behind to know. If we know the forms of motion of matter (for which it is true there is still very much lacking, in view of the short time that natural science has existed), then we know matter itself, and therewith our knowledge is complete … Only from this universal reciprocal action do we arrive at the real causal relation. In order to understand the separate phenomena, we have to tear them out of their general inter-connection and consider them in isolation, and then the changing motions appear, one as cause and the other as effect.” (Op. Cit., pp 231-2)
The all sided, mutually interconnected nature of the infinite world of matter in motion is only one-sidedly, fragmentarily and incompletely expressed by the concept of cause and effect. The separation of the Law of Causality into its two sides, Cause and effect, is therefore a determination of human thought, and belongs wholly to the world of Appearance. The reference to Spinoza is to his famous dictum, “substance is its own cause”.
From Causality to Substance
The concept of Substance to which Engels refers is an important moment in the process of cognition of the external world. Motion is the mode of existence of matter in its infinite Being, but considered in this way matter is an abstraction. We gave above the aphorism concerning fruit; you can eat apples or pears but you cannot eat fruit as such. “Matter itself cannot be seen of felt”, Hegel advises us, “what is seen or felt is some form of matter”. We began our analysis of the motion of matter by observing that motion as such, (the mode of existence of matter in general), takes definite, persisting forms which we designate laws of motion. Consideration of a quantity of such law governed motion in the external world over a period of time reveals a form which is common to them all, the relation of opposites as mutual cause and effect. A particular form of cause/effect relation, (law of motion), is therefore the mode of existence of a particular form of matter, a Substance. In general, substance is understood as the inner unity of the motion of matter, and a quantity of matter which is united in a common form of inner motion, comprises a substance. Substance as such, (Abstract), is the active cause of all its own forms, (Concrete particular forms), precisely because motion is the mode of existence of matter.
In our every-day life we take Substance to mean some form of matter which has its own distinct identity, is self-determined and does not depend on any other form of existence, such as iron, clay or water, but there is more to substance that this. Any identifiable form of existence is a substance the cause of which is the inner unity of the motion of the matter of which it is comprised. The inner unity of the motion of the working class is its organisations - parties and trade unions; hence these are the Substance of the working class.
At this point it is as well to pause and remind ourselves that the process of cognition we are describing moves according to the dialectical laws of motion. Each concept is negated into the next through the law of the negation of the negation, but this is only so because the development of the external world proceeds in this way. In a note Lenin remarks:-
“The totality of all sides of the phenomenon, of the reality and their (reciprocal) relations – that is what truth is composed of. The relations (=transitions = contradictions) of notions = the main content of logic, by which these concepts (and their relations, transitions, contradictions) are shown as reflections of the objective world. The dialectics of things produces the dialectics of ideas, and not vice versa.”
(Vol.38, page 196)
Reciprocity
To continue: Matter in motion according to the law of cause and effect takes the form of Substances which are themselves in unity and conflict and mutually negate each other, also according to the law of cause and effect. We generally think of Cause as active and Effect as passive. But where two Substances are in such relation both are active causes of their own forms. As an empirical example, the effect of a hot substance in contact with water will be to change the water into steam, but in the overall result water, (the affected substance), is just as much active cause as the hot substance, because it is its nature to turn into steam and nothing else. Here, the difference between cause and effect has vanished, they have found a moment of Identity, have been synthesised into a single concept, Reciprocity. In our dialectical elaboration of the process of cognition, we find that the Law of Cause and Effect, (Identity), is negated into Substance as Difference within Identity, and the negation of this negation, Synthesis, posits the concept of Reciprocity.
Actuality
In our struggle to grasp the world as political fighters, the particular Substances we are concerned with are such as the British government, the debt crisis, the American government, the European Community, the IMF, the war in Afghanistan, and so on. The inner unity of the motion of the whole is the unity of the inner motion of all these parts. This grasp of the inner motion of the whole is potentially present once we have negated knowledge of all the parts and their Reciprocal relations from the external world to thought, and such reflection of the external world in thought takes the form of the concept of Actuality.
Quoting Hegel, Lenin informs us that Actuality is the unity Essence and Existence. (Vol. 38. page 156). This must be understood according to the law of the negation of the negation. Essence is first affirmation, Thesis. Essence is Reflection, and Existence is Reflection between a quantity of Things, a more developed, unfolded form Reflection and therefore of Essence, a quantitative, first negation of Essence, Anti-thesis. As we build up a comprehensive knowledge of all the inter-relating, (Reciprocally reflecting), Substances in the world we reach a limit where the negation of this negation takes place, the leap to the new quality, Actuality, the Synthesis, (unity), of Essence and Existence.
The importance of this concept, (moment of cognition), is that in one way or another it determines all the parts. The Actuality of the world of our political struggle we have described above is the world crisis of global capitalism. There is no part or aspect of the Existence of humanity on the planet, absolutely nothing, which is not determined according to its own nature by this Actuality. Try to think of one. Therefore, every time we find it necessary to grasp the Essence of some thing or development, inflation, unemployment, war, starvation in under-developed countries, what ever it is, we must first understand it in the light of the world crisis of global capitalism.
We have mentioned above that during the process of cognition Essence unfolds through the moments of Semblance, Appearance, and Actuality. Again, this manifests the law of the negation of the negation. In Semblance Essence is posited “in-itself”. This is the moment of Identity, Thesis. Through the quantitative increase of Essence as reflection between the parts in the sum and unity of opposites, as Difference within Identity, Essence is negated into the moment of Appearance. In order to understand Essence in Appearance we must briefly revisit the concept of Existence. We explained that Existence was the unity of reflection-into-other and reflection-into-self. How does this unity come about? Hegel explains that when a thing is reflected in another, that other thing now contains the quality of what is reflected into it. The thing which is reflecting into it now reflects into its own quality, hence reflection-into-other is the same as reflection-into-self. The same condition applies in reciprocal fashion, and the two synthesise into unity. Lenin refers to this world of “intro-reflection”:-
“The intro-reflected self-existent world stands opposed to the world of Appearance”. (Vol. 38 page 148)
In Appearance it is Essence that appears, but it is the Essence of another, the intro-reflected world. In Semblance we had the outer form of the thing, which was in-itself and its Essence was not present to consciousness. In Appearance Essence is present to consciousness as an inner content in conflict with the form, negating the form. In Actuality, this negation is itself negated, because Form and Essence now coincide. It is the Essence which is formed, and the Form is the form of the Essence. Both Form and Essence encompass the whole as two sides or aspects. Actuality is the unity of Essence and Existence.
We now have a picture of the world in its movement and life. We know what is happening, and the Possibility in the situation presents itself. The concept of Possibility expresses the objective tendency of development inherent in existing phenomena, the presence of the conditions necessary for new things to happen, new forms to come into being. It is perhaps here, above all, that the scientific method of dialectical materialism is of such crucial importance. How can we tell what possibilities a situation contains? How many guesses will we have to make before we get it right? What might be the disastrous cost of our mistakes? Indeed, will we ever get it right? If we proceed on the old unscientific subjective idealist method there is no guarantee that we will ever get it right, ever, precisely because it is not a scientific method. Hegel gives us the scientific, dialectical nature of the concept of Possibility as follows:-
“Now, since any content can be brought to this form, [Possibility as an empty abstraction], providing only that it is separated from the relations in which it stands, even the most absurd and nonsensical suppositions can be considered possible. It is possible that the moon will fall into the earth this evening, for the moon is a body separate from the earth and therefore can fall downward just as easily as a stone that has been flung into the air … The more uneducated a person is, the less he knows about the determinate relations in which the objects that he is considering stand and the more he tends to indulge in all manner of empty possibilities …” (F. Hegel, The Encyclopaedia Logic, page 216, ISBN-13: 978-0-87220-071-5)
Necessity
In another place Hegel gives a more scientific determination of the concept of Possibility. It is, he says, a determination of the relation of reflection-into-self. If we consider Possibility as relation of reflection-into-other, that is, if we consider “the determinate relations in which the objects we are considering stand”, then we negate the concept of Possibility into the concept of Necessity. This would seem to be logically correct, but at this point it becomes difficult to have confidence in Hegel’s logic. Lenin quotes him as giving the sub-divisions of Actuality as follows:-
“1) The Absolute 2) Actuality proper. Actuality, Possibility and Necessity constitute the formal moments of the Absolute 3) Absolute Relation.” (Vol. 38 page 156).
Lenin then describes all this as involving “nonsense about the Absolute”. Clearly if Hegel’s logic fails at this point it is because he is an idealist. The Absolute, for Hegel, and for all idealism including religion, is the eternal, infinite Subject which is the creator of all that exists. For religion this Absolute is God, but for Hegel God was an idea, the “Absolute Idea”, and that is why he sees all becoming as a process of logical thought, the unfolding of the Idea, rather than a physical one, a process of matter in motion. At any rate it is extremely difficult to trace through Hegel’s logical negation of Possibility into Necessity at this point since it involves a hopelessly false concept, the Absolute Idea, so we shall do it the materialist way, empirically, abstracting the laws of motion from nature rather than trying to impose them upon it.
Let us take Hegel’s example of the moon and consider it as relation of reflection-into-other, that is, “place it in the determinate relations in which it stands.” Firstly, we consider its mass in relation to that of the earth, then the distance between the centres of the two bodies, and the angular velocity of the moon round the earth. With the help of a little knowledge of Newtonian mechanics we can negate Possibility into Necessity. While is seemed possible for the moon to fall to the earth this evening, we discover that this will never happen. In fact, the moon is very slowly moving away from the earth, and if nothing happens to interrupt the process then one day it must, of Necessity, leave earth orbit all together and take up orbit around the Sun.
In this way, by scientifically negating the possibilities which present themselves in the external world, in particular for us all the developments of the class struggle, into Necessity, it is possible to make reasonably accurate predictions of future events, and here is the enormous advantage the dialectical materialist has over the idealist and formal thinker, because they have no idea of the real truth of the world and can never tell correctly what the necessary outcome of any situation will be, they can only guess and base themselves on quite accidental circumstances. This is the secret of Lenin’s remarkable prescience; he accurately foresaw events and was always prepared to meet them in advance.
The Notion
Up to now our thought has been in direct connection with the external world in the present moment, reflecting and interacting with it through negations from the external world to thought and from thought back to the external world, and we have built up a picture of the world in its movement and truth. But there is more to consciousness than this, there is also our whole body of knowledge that we have built up in our previous lives, together with a comprehensive ideological outlook which is the result of social experience. Taken as the consciousness of society as a single whole in this general way this level of consciousness is the Notion, (Universal), but we also speak of the Notion as the consciousness of individuals, (Particular), and with respect to single things and phenomena, (Individual). It is the generalised thought image of an object or phenomena in the external world, retained in consciousness without immediate action of the objects or phenomena on the senses.
On page 167 of Volume 38 Lenin quotes Hegel as saying, with respect to the Notion, “Being and Essence are the moments of its becoming.” Then Lenin makes a critical note: “Should be inverted: concepts are the highest product of the brain, the highest product of matter.”
Here we see the conflict between Hegel’s idealism and Lenin’s materialism; let us describe Hegel’s method first. His Science of Logic is divided into three parts, The Doctrine of Being, The Doctrine of Essence, and The Doctrine of the Notion. It is easy to see that the whole logic manifests the law of the negation of the negation. Being is affirmation, something is, Essence is its inner truth, its motion, what it is becoming, and therefore the negation of Being, (not-Being). This negation is negated by the synthesis of Being and Essence into a new positive affirmation, the Notion, which is knowledge of Being mediated by knowledge of its Essence. For Hegel, this kind of logic had objective existence quite outside and independently of human consciousness, in the form of the Absolute Idea, which had existed from eternity and was the first creating principle of the universe. According to him the physical world of matter that we perceive through our senses is this Absolute Idea made real. This conception that logical thought has existence outside of human consciousness as a law giving cause of all existence is objective idealism. Lenin quotes Hegel again on page 169 of volume 38.
“The Notion must not here be considered as an act of self-conscious understanding, or as subjective understanding: what we have to do with is the Notion in and for itself, which constitutes a STAGE AS WELL OF NATURE AS OF SPIRIT. LIFE, OR ORGANIC NATURE, IS THAT STAGE OF NATURE AT WHICH THE NOTION EMERGES.” (Lenin’s capitals as emphasis).
Hegel’s meaning is that when the Absolute Idea has progressed the unfolding of the universe so far that organic life has come into being, then it is possible for the Notion to exist, because there are thinking brains in which it can arise. But Lenin corrects Hegel from the materialist standpoint. In the margin he makes a comment of the greatest importance. “The ‘eve’ of the transformation of objective idealism into materialism.” For materialism it is indeed true that the Notion emerges at that stage in the history of the universe at which thinking beings have evolved, but for materialism, logical thought, and therefore the Notion, have evolved as a result of the infinite movement of matter and they are not its cause; thought is the highest product of the motion of matter and not its first principle and cause. The “transformation of objective idealism into materialism” is accomplished by reading Hegel’s statement materialistically instead of idealistically. It is a moment of Identity between objective idealism and materialism, through which the former is negated into the latter. This is what Lenin means by “should be inverted”.
So now we have two things in connection, (unity), the picture of the external world, the objective, as it is and as we sense it in the present, which we have developed through the process of cognition, and our body of knowledge, the subjective, the Notion, which we have carried forward from the past. The present is a finite moment in time, the Individual, and the Notion is the Universal, the infinite movement of human thought. It is the direct connection between thought and the external world, but unlike the direct connection which occurred at the Indeterminate Beginning in which the movement was from the external world the thought, now the movement is in the opposite direction, from thought to the external world. In this movement, (negation), the empirical knowledge we have gained through the process of cognition is the Difference, (negation), within the Universal, the Notion, which is Identity. This negation is now negated through the synthesis of the Notion, (Subjective) and the Objective, (empirical knowledge), in a new concept, the Idea. On page 194 of Volume 38 Lenin explains the Idea thus:-
“The Idea (read: man’s knowledge) is the coincidence (conformity) of Notion and objectivity (the “universal”). This first. Secondly, the Idea is the relation of subjectivity (=man) which is for itself (=independent, as it were) to the objectivity which is distinct (from the Idea)…”
So the idea is the relation between two separate things, thought, (man), and the external world. This is the Theoretical Idea. Lenin goes on:-
“Subjectivity is the impulse to destroy this separation (of the Idea from the object).”
The “impulse”, often referred to as the subjective impulse, expresses mankind’s need to change nature to subordinate it to his needs, the instinctive struggle with nature in order to survive. All creatures have this need, but only man does it at this conscious level. The result of the destruction of the separation of the Idea from the object, the synthesis of the two, is the Practical Idea. For Marxism, the highest point of theory is practice, for two reasons: Firstly, it provides the only reliable proof that our Theoretical Idea is correct. Engels explains this in Dialectics of Nature:-
“If we are able to prove the correctness of our conception of a natural process by making it ourselves, bringing it into being out of its conditions and making it serve our own 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.”
Secondly, and just as importantly, our knowledge of the world we are trying to change through practice is never quite complete, hence the result of our practice is never quite what we expect, and this difference, between what we expect and what actually happens, is a source of new knowledge which enables us to quickly correct and adjust our practice to achieve a better result. Finally, our attitude to the result of our practice must be strictly objective and materialist. By our practice we change the world, negate out a new form or forms, but just because these are our own creations, that doesn’t mean we know all about them because while we may bring a new form into Being it is the external world that provides its content, and this cannot be fully known in advance. Nor can we predict what secondary changes will result from our immediate practice. Hence we must step back and perceive the change we have wrought as a new Identity of our source of sensation and negate in into thought as a new Indeterminate Beginning just as we did right at the beginning of the process of cognition, and begin the whole process again. And so on.
We have explained that the external world exists independently of human consciousness and thought is a reflection of it. The world is in constant movement and change, and it is obvious that a change must occur before thought can reflect it, so that thought always lags behind the changing external world. This is true at both the individual and universal level, the indeterminate beginning and the Notion. However, with our scientific method we can progressively reduce this lag, achieving ever closer approximations of the truth, the world-in-itself as opposed to the world of Appearance. We shall never quite close the gap, but we shall be far ahead of the idealists and formal thinkers who cannot distinguish the necessary from the accidental, and often proceed on the basis of empty abstraction and thought created ideas of the world. Here is the secret of the enormous successes that have been achieved by the scientific method of Marxism in the past, and it is the reason why Marxism is the only method by which all that is new in the world, global capitalism, global warming etc. can be understood, and the necessary practice to resolve the problems mankind is faced with be undertaken.
Terry Button, January 2012