This is a culmination of a lot of ideas I've had over the years that constitute my world view and understanding of our reality.
Some key realizations I've had are that there are many parallels between concepts of energy gradients driving evolution of dynamic systems, emergence, and self-organization with the core concepts of Dialectical Materialism rooted in contradictions, transformation of quantity into quality, and the negation of the negation.
Dialectical Materialism describes the cyclical process of development where an initial thesis is countered by an antithesis, leading to a synthesis that retains aspects of both but transcends them to a new level. This directly mirrors the idea of energy gradients driving systems towards higher levels of complexity and organization. In both cases, emergent properties arise from the interactions within the system driven by the selection pressures.
I see nature as having a fractal quality to it where environmental pressures to optimize space and energy use drive the emergence of similar patterns at different scales. I argue that our social structures are a direct extension of the physical reality and simply constitute a higher level of abstraction and organization that directly builds on the layers beneath.
If you're simply interested in a standalone introduction to dialectics can skip to chapter 8, which is largely self-contained. The preceding chapters build a foundation by illustrating how self-organization leads to the emergence of minds and social structures.
One of the goals I have here is to provide an introduction to diamat for people in STEM who may be coming from the liberal mainstream by demonstrating a clear connection between materialist understanding of physical reality and human societies.
Feedback and critique are both very welcome.
an audiobook here (it's LLM narrated so not perfect) https://theunconductedchorus.com/audio.html
Sorry to bother you again with this conversation after 3 months have passed, but this sentence has come back to me a couple of times during this period due to how poorly it was dealt with by me, and just how it crucial it was to our discussion, so I will now attempt to correct that.
Structuralism differs form Marxism in that it tries to take Marxist advancements on sociology and understanding of the structures of society while refuting the knowability of the internal contradictions within said society, therefore negating the existence of the internal contradiction that lead to capitalism's demise. They claim that the problems of capitalist society are consequences of poor implementation of the system, and consequently believe that with just a change in policies and general politics the problems can be fixed, therefore it is the philosophy which gives birth to reformists.
The way that structuralism achieves that separation from Marxist conclusions is by following the agnostic logic of compromising materialism with idealism, in its specific case, it is Marxist sociology with fichtean subjective idealism, it turns Fichte "thesis-antithesis-synthesis" into reality-ideas-structures.
Out of the top of wikipedia's page on structuralism: "Structuralism is "The belief that phenomena of human life are not intelligible except through their interrelations.". (Things are unknowable but their interrelations are knowable, classic agnostic muddle.)
Out of the top of wikipedia's page on Post-structuralism: "Structuralism proposes that human culture can be understood by means of a structure that is modeled on language. As a result, there is concrete reality on the one hand, abstract ideas about reality on the other hand, and a "third order" that mediates between the two." (reality-ideas-structures.)
Looking back in our discussion, you said "I’m not sure there’s much value separating external and internal conditions though as both ultimately feed into the system.", but to study a thing with Dialectical Materialism it is a necessary step to separate from its current context in order to discover its internal contradictions, which is why in his texts Marx himself does so many abstractions, to allow him to understand the internal movements of things.
The condition that materialism demands of every theory, that it must be put to the test of reality, does not mean that one shouldn't use abstractions when creating said theory, in fact it is quite the opposite if we look at Marxism.
Looking even further into our discussion, we can see that it went through this contradiction where I was attempting to simplify things in order to make more apparent the differences between philosophies, mentioning eggs, water, etc., while you kept complicating matters by bringing more complex and bigger things, such as society, environment, etc., making the discussion less clear and hiding misunderstandings behind big words.
While it did annoy me at the time, which lead to my last comment, I can now understand that it wasn't personal, it is of philosophical necessity that agnosticism muddles things, for when the matter being dealt with is clear and simple, the separation that it tries to create between knowable and unknowable loses all reasoning, which is why we can't just discuss over an egg hatching into a chicken, we must to consider how the "chicken will proceed to eat food, produce waste, and so on. It’s part of the environment, and it has a direct effect on the environment." and therefore we can only comprehend it as a structure and not its specific parts, as Lenin would say, pure muddle.
Having explained all this, it would be incoherent of me to leave the same books recommendations as I did last time, considering we can now see that the divergence comes before we get to dialectics, it is between materialism and agnosticism, I will then recommend a single book on the matter, Lenin's "Materialism and Empirio-Criticism". Even though it was written before Structuralism was a thing, it goes on such great detail on the differences between the logic of materialism and agnosticism in general (and idealism as well) that it provides the best method of understanding what separates those fields of philosophy.
May this help you to comprehend the differences between philosophies and the necessity that materialism has of objective knowledge and it's complete compromise with the truth, Good Luck comrade.
My key point here was that all the inputs matter, and we can't focus on just the internal inputs without considering the effects of the external ones. We can certainly identify internal contradictions, but we have to be aware of the fact that they are in turn influenced by external factors.
As an example, many of the contradictions within USSR were a result of the fact that USSR was under siege by the capitalist world. The phenomenon Parenti refers to as siege communism. The external factors necessarily affected the way USSR developed internally.
In fact, lack of accounting for external factors is precisely what leads to flawed analysis of USSR on the left where people decry it being authoritarian and abandoning original policies in favor of using a more centralized system. The actual reasons for these internal developments can only be understood when accounting for the surrounding context.
At first I was shocked of reading this, on a ML instance of all places, to take Parenti's siege socialism and attempt to make it as the result of some kind of struturalistc analysis feels unbelievable, but considering that our discussion has been around the fact that you'd rather use an agnostic analysis over a materialistic one, and that you don't follow Hegelian dialectics and therefore the term "contradiction" means whatever you want, it's then possible to see how one could claim such absurdities.
Let's then actually quote the man himself:
Parenti literally wrote that the external influences exacerbated the internal contradictions already present within the system, because he was using dialectical materialism and therefore saw first the existence of internal contradictions and then those being affected by the external influences, not the other way around as you claimed.
I need to say, having never had a discussion with a western "leftist" before, even though I somewhat knew what to expect, it is still impressive seeing it first hand how one can believe to make no mistakes and their arguments don't require any proof since they personally own the truth, thinking that repeated enough times anything they say will become real.
Leaving that aside, this recent discussion has left me with a question which I look forward to the answer. If you can dismiss dialectical materialism so easily in favor of a struturalistic analysis, and don't care about Hegelian dialectics, why were you writing about diamat in the first place?
You continue to put words in my mouth while ignoring what I'm actually saying. I am very much using materialistic analysis, but you keep labelling it as agnostic while failing to actually engage with what's being said to you.
Except I did not claim the other way around anywhere. What I said is that internal contradictions are influenced by external factors. Which is precisely what Parenti identifies.
Given that I grew up in USSR, this is the most hilarious thing I've been told in a while. I have to give you credit for the level of sophistication in your trolling. It took me a while to catch on.
Maybe you should spend a bit of time to actually understand what dialectical materialism is instead of writing pseudo intellectual comments.
Well, that explains a lot actually. One could argue that growing up in after 60's USSR, a person would be influenced by revisionist ideologies similar to those commonly associated with the infamous western "leftist", one could also argue that the fact that a person who grew up there can't differentiate between agnostic structuralism and dialectical materialism to be an example of a contradiction that played an important part in it's downfall. But here I will do neither for that would only make things more complex, and the if current simpler discussion is already this muddled, nothing would be clear in a more complex one.
What you actually said:
I am sorry that you dislike the taste of the words in your mouth, but you cannot blame me for they being there, if anything you are trying after the fact to change what you put there in the first place. But it doesn't matter if you try now to claim that "many of the contradictions within USSR were a result of the fact that USSR was under siege by the capitalist world." means the same as " the very real internal deficiencies within communist systems were exacerbated by unrelenting external attacks", the inverted philosophical logic in changing "the external affecting the contradictions" to "the external resulting in the contradictions" makes the difference between yours and Parentis philosophical standpoint pretty clear.
If anything I am the one who could be complaining about words being put in others mouths, for the only thing you could claim that I have been ignoring so far is your continuous attempt to pin on me an argument that the external doesn't influence the internal contradictions, something I've never said in any comment, since it would've been unmaterialistic of me. The only thing that I am ignoring are your attempts of putting words in my mouth, which I shall continue to do so.
As a matter of fact this discussion started with me saying that your (structuralistic) separation between the contradictions and their solutions, leaving the latter to an out of the system third order, due to the misuse of (Fichtean) dialectics was a mistake, which I'm still claiming, except that now I can name more clearly and correctly the source of your mistakes, for as a dialectical materialist I try to study and correct my mistakes about what I'm saying rather than just trying to create the truth.
For a dialectical materialist abstractions are only part of the process of the understanding in our minds, not the conclusion of the process in reality, so if anyone can be blamed for creating a separation that doesn't exist it is only the agnostic of us.
Considering that throughout this discussion I have already mentioned multiple times sources of Marxists writers on my points and your mistakes, while all you've brought so far is a misquoted Parenti quote (which I corrected) and your self-given ownership of the truth, I don't think I need to say who is being pseudo something and should spend more time reading rather than writing.
What I dislike is you misrepresenting what the words I wrote say. What I very clearly was saying is that internal contradictions CANNOT be viewed in isolation without considering external factors. The fact that you're unable to comprehend this simple fact is frankly phenomenal. In fact, it can be easily shown that contradictions can be broken down. The whole planet can be viewed as a set of materialist contradictions, and then each contradiction can be examined, and at ever smaller scale as a set of internal contradictions. Things don't just exist in a vacuum, and the notion of looking at any set of contradictions without considering the greater context is frankly infantile.
What you're doing here is known as sophistry. You provide no actual analysis or a counterpoint, and just use write a word salad that lacks any actual meaning.
Nowhere did I say that abstractions were conclusion of the process in reality. This is just a straw man you're making instead of engaging with what's actually being said to you.
The fact that you think the word salad you wrote corrected anything really says all I need to know. Simply regurgitating things you've read does not constitute genuine understanding of the subject you're attempting to debate. You are utterly incapable in engaging with an argument you're presented with in good faith and you use sophistry in lieu of argument. I've said all I have to say to you.
The quote
-- Michael Parenti, Blackshirts And Reds
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I wholeheartedly agree with this sentiment, so much so that it becomes very ironic that it came from you, so I will just give my last point, which was also my first one, but has been skillfully avoided so far.
Why do you use Fichtean dialectics in diamat? Why use contradictions as "thesis–antithesis–synthesis"? Where did you learn that? Have you found a Marxist author using it like I asked you to link me 3 months ago? Do you just replace Hegelian Dialectics or try to mesh both? If you claim that to you the abstraction of "third order" isn't the conclusion what is the "synthesis" then?
I made this point literally on my first comment on this thread, and yet it has never been responded by you. Personally, I think that your muddle might be plenty enough for other matters, but in this one your separation from Marxist Dialectical Materialism is so crystal clear that avoiding it entirely was the only way to maintain your ownership of the truth, so you just looked away and pretended it wasn't there.
So I will end my argumentation by bringing even more attention to what you have avoided the most: Why do you use Fichtean "thesis–antithesis–synthesis" in diamat?
It's absolutely hilarious to see somebody who fancies themselves a materialist think that the categories they created in their mind supersede material reality. Having created arbitrary boundaries around things so that your mind can comprehend them, you turn around and treat these as if they were real physical properties of the world. What you've made abundantly clear in this thread is that you have no concept of what materialism is.
Well, that is one way to attempt to avoid a question, but it's definitely not subtle.
I don't think it is necessary for me to add more to the "materialism" side of this discussion considering the amount of times I've pointed out your idealism or agnosticism in this thread, while also leaving a great source on the matter which was Lenin’s “Materialism and Empirio-Criticism”.
But what I am asking you now is about Dialectics and if you could possibly give an example of a Marxist source that actually uses Fichtean dialectics, another example of sophistry was not necessary, it's the other Greek word that you are lacking of.
Considering you continue to try to avoid a crucial part of this discussion, I will repeat the question once more: Why do you use Fichtean “thesis–antithesis–synthesis” in diamat?
Repeating something over and over isn't going to make it true. Throughout this discussion, you've consistently avoided engaging with what I've said to you and kept misrepresenting what I said. I did not avoid anything here. I simply rejected your misrepresentation of what I said. I do not use Fchtean dialectics in diamat, but you're clearly going to keep repeating that instead of engaging with what's actually been said to you. One thing I've learned is that some people enjoy arguing for the sake of arguing and don't actually care to understand what's being said to them. There is no point trying to have a good faith discussion with such characters. Bye.
Wow, this is literally what I was saying a couple of comments ago. You have "engaged" so much with what has been said to you that you can't even point out the flaws in my comments and can only attempt to reflect your own mistakes at me.
Well, I am only repeating that because you keep avoiding it. And you might say that you are not using Fichtean dialectics but there is a source that disproves you on that, your own post:
In case you didn't make a quick search (which would be on character), from the very first paragraph on Fichte in Wikipedia:
Back to you, on your text linked at the top of this post:
A mishmash of an attempt to explain Hegelian concepts using Fichtean logic, the fine work of a true muddler.
So even tough you might claim to not use Fichtean dialectics in diamat, your own writing proves otherwise, I wonder why that is.
And there it is, the ultimate way of avoiding your mistakes, blaming others and turning away, no surprises here.
If there is anything out of this discussion that I hope has become clear to you, it is that if you are going to write a text on a matter that you don't understand, only to stroke your own ego, be aware that there might be people out there that have actually studied it and will call you out on your mistakes.
The quote
-- Michael Parenti, Blackshirts And Reds
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