What on earth is the dialectic?

Hegel developed a dialectical view of the world

Karl Marx wrote, “Philosophers have interpreted the world in various ways—the point is to change it.”

But interpreting the world is a crucial guide to effective action. It’s why Leon Trotsky argued, “Dialectic training of the mind is as necessary to a revolutionary fighter as finger exercises to a pianist.”

The dialectic is vital for showing how systems which appear to be fixed and unchanging can be transformed by human action.

Marx and Frederick Engels developed their understanding of the dialectic through the writings of German philosopher Georg Hegel. Hegel rejected the idea that society is fixed and unchanging. He argued that the world is a totality made up of interconnected parts that are in constant change and flux.

But he believed this change was driven by ideas. Marx absorbed Hegel’s insights, but turned him on his head. Rather than starting with “arbitrary ideas or dogmas”, he started with people’s action and production of what they needed to live.

Marx and Engels’ materialist conception of the dialectic was underpinned by five key concepts.

The first is the idea that everything is in the process of change. Marx blasted the economists who argued that capitalist relations are “fixed, immutable, eternal categories”.

Capitalism had replaced feudalism, meaning capitalism itself could be replaced. Capitalism itself is changing from a dynamic system of new possibilities into one which threatens the basis of human life. 

The second concept is totality. To understand different aspects of society we need to understand them in their wider context. People are not, as mainstream economists like to think, atomised individuals. We live in system dominated by the ruthless drive for profit that leads to crises, oppression, imperialist wars and climate catastrophe.

Making sense of these experiences, and grasping our capacity for resistance, requires understanding the whole system.

The third idea is contradiction—fundamental contradictions in the real world constantly destabilise the status quo. A key contradiction in capitalism is that between the bosses and working class. Capitalists depend on the wealth created by workers. Workers have to sell their labour power to survive. This exploitative relationship makes class struggle a core feature of capitalism.

Another contradiction lies in competition and the drive for profits. Competition compels capitalists to chase profits. This is rational for each capitalist, but becomes irrational when reproduced across the whole system. Living labour is squeezed out of the production process and rates of profit actually fall.

Fourth is the idea that small quantitative changes can lead to transformative qualitative changes. Change is not always gradual, predictable and controllable.

Molecular changes pile up and give way to sudden ruptures—upheavals, wars and revolutions. When such explosions do occur, the ideas that people have, the organisations they have built, can make a crucial difference to the outcome.

The final idea is the “negation of the negation”. Capitalism was the negation of feudalism—it grew out of feudal society and replaced it. Socialism would negate capitalism, replacing competition for profit with the drive to satisfy human needs.

But socialism necessarily uses aspects of capitalism to create the new. It is capitalism’s productive and technological advancements that make a socialist society possible.

Dialectics, Marx wrote, was “critical and revolutionary.” The dialectical approach helps socialists to avoid the idea that impersonal forces such as the growth of the working class, or the economic breakdown, will automatically lead to socialism.

Dialectical thinking shows us that capitalism is not inevitable. It is increasingly riven with contradictions which lead to catastrophe but the potential for resistance is constant.