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Diamat exercise: opposing forces in interdependence (lemmygrad.ml)
submitted 3 days ago by amemorablename@lemmygrad.ml to c/communism@lemmygrad.ml
26 comments fedilink hide all child comments
 

This excellent video on dialectical materialism got me thinking more about the pedagogy of practicing and learning it: https://lemmygrad.ml/post/10142756

Which is a fancy way of saying, I thought, "What if school-like exercises for practicing the components of it to grapple with comprehension and retention of it?" After all, quantitative engagement with its component parts could lead to qualitative change in understanding. :)

In Mao's essay On Contradiction, he gives examples such as:

In mechanics: action and reaction. In physics: positive and negative electricity. In chemistry: the combination and dissociation of atoms. In social science: the class struggle. In war, offence and defence, advance and retreat, victory and defeat are all mutually contradictory phenomena. One cannot exist without the other. The two aspects are at once in conflict and in interdependence, and this constitutes the totality of a war, pushes its development forward and solves its problems.

https://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/mao/selected-works/volume-1/mswv1_17.htm

The idea is to expand on that with what you can think of.

What I wrote down so far:

hot and cold; growth and decay; strength and weakness; noisy and quiet; action and rest; theory and practice; imagination and sensation; wet and dry; beginning and end; the forest and the trees (e.g. big picture and the details, collective and individual); spiritual and secular; venerated and vulgarized.

So now I put it to you: What are some more examples of this?

Bonus question: What's an example of something that can occur when opposing forces collide?

P.S. Feel free to correct with a why, if you believe something shared is not an example of opposing forces. Just remember to think of it as for teaching and learning.

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[–] CriticalResist8@lemmygrad.ml 19 points 2 days ago* (last edited 2 days ago) (2 children)

A very important part of a contradiction Mao touches on in that selected quote is

  1. a contradiction is formed by opposing forces (you can also think of it as a diametrical opposite),
  2. one cannot exist without the other,
  3. a contradiction is solved when it no longer fulfills rule 1 or rule 2 - because at this point the contradiction no longer exists.

You have to think of dialectics as like the engine of change. Change happens, we see it everywhere, but how does that change happen? How do we move from snapshot of instant A to snapshot of instant B? And why is change even possible in the first place? We take this for granted but a universe that is static and constant could just as well exist, we just wouldn't live in it because life would be impossible. But it could still objectively exist without anyone to witness it (and this is the essence of the materialism vs idealism debate).

Part of this how and why is that a contradiction must contain a 'little' of its opposite (I prefer to say it as the potential for its opposite), otherwise change would logically not be able to happen. How can a flower turn into fruit, if it does not somehow contain what makes fruit? This is how we realize we live in an 'interconnected' universe, as the video said, which is basically the material world. Everything around us, including concepts such as the universe or outer space, exist as part of this material world and obey its same rules.

So in this way the flower and fruit form a contradiction, and from here we can think of the negation of the negation. This sounds like a difficult or paradoxical topic but it's very simple. Before the fruit was a flower, the flower was a burgeoning bud on a branch. And yet this bud while not directly becoming fruit, becomes first a flower that then becomes fruit. The flower is the negation to the bud, and the fruit is the negation to the flower. This is the negation of the negation.

In the same way before the feudal nobility could create a proletariat there had to be created a bourgeoisie, and the bourgeoisie creates its own negation in the form of the proletariat.

Conversely we have to be careful of 'common sense' contradictions. We might easily say "well death is the contradiction to life since they are diametrically opposed (can't be both at the same time) and one can't exist without the other - otherwise we'd all be immortal!" but it is closer to say that while death is the negation of life, it doesn't solve the contradiction. What solves the contradiction is:

To live, an organism must constantly negate the external world (consume it) and constantly negate its own current state (metabolize, grow, age). This process of self-negation is the presence of death within life. Death is not the end of the process; it is the negative force in the process.

Hegel also said something about the genus or reproduction apparently but mind you this part is me stepping out of my comfort zone - I'm not versed at all in Hegel (edit: but basically the idea is apparently that you negate death not through life because death is already the negation of life, you negate death through reproduction for Hegel).

However by placing dialectics back right side up as Marx said (by analyzing dialectics materially instead of idealistically) we can look at the social. For Marx the contradiction to life is the social.

The Real Internal Contradiction: Under capitalism, human life-activity (labor) immediately contradicts itself. The worker's activity creates a product that becomes private property (capital), which then stands against the worker as an alien, hostile power. Life creates its own negation.

  • Thesis: Living Labor (creative power).

  • Negation/Contradiction: Dead Labor (capital, the frozen product of past labor) that dominates and exploits the living. This is the "living death" or alienation. The worker feels alive only in animal functions (eating, sleeping) and feels "dead" in their distinctly human function (creative work).

  • Synthesis: The revolutionary negation of this negation—overthrowing the system where dead labor rules living labor—to achieve true, free life-activity (communism).

Of course materialist dialectics don't contradict hegelian dialectics, they put it back "right side up on its feet" as Marx said. We can and should absolutely still apply dialectics outside of social production to fully understand them and avoid falling into the pitfall of "diamat only works in politics and nowhere else". So in that regard I'm not fully behind the above quote that starts from the position that for Marx there is only labor and social (re)production, but I felt it was a good explanation nonetheless into how dialectics apply to labor and the economy.

Years ago I remember seeing this website that teaches dialectics to kids in classrooms, with simple examples such as blowing air into a balloon. Then he pops the balloon, and shows quantitative transformation to qualitative change (and vice versa btw, I'm not sure they mentioned that in the video - qualitative transformation turns to quantitative change as well bc dialectics, and progress happens in leaps and bounds: things look to be at a standstill for a long time and suddenly everything topples and changes at once, like how your cat might inch the glass closer to the edge of the table until it falls to the floor). The balloon has always contained within it the negation of the negation, i.e. the potential to be popped, otherwise it literally could not be popped. It's just that you can't pop a deflated balloon. You can pierce it, but you can't really forcefully evacuate the overpressure within it before that overpressure has been realized, but the balloon still contains the potential to become a pressurized chamber.

Unfortunately don't remember the website but if you dive deep on google and find it feel free to share the link.

[–] Sanya@lemmygrad.ml 6 points 2 days ago (2 children)

That life and death example made it clear to me that Diamat is a bit more complex than I thought.

Would Stalin's Dialectical and Historical Materialism be a good place to start dissecting this? Mao's On Contradiction? Marx's The German Ideology?

[–] CriticalResist8@lemmygrad.ml 6 points 2 days ago (1 children)

I always recommend Politzer's Elementary Principles of Philosophy followed by Mao's On Contradiction. Politzer/the students who put this together was wrong in a couple places with internal contradictions (like autodynamism you can ignore that part tbh) but it's still a very solid entry overall.

We also have reworked pages on diamat on ProleWiki + the blue links but tbh I'm still not 100% happy with these pages.

[–] Sanya@lemmygrad.ml 1 points 2 days ago

Thank you for the reccomandations!

[–] Cowbee@lemmygrad.ml 4 points 2 days ago (1 children)

I like both Georges Politzer's Elementary Principles of Philosophy and Vladimir Adoratsky's Dialectical Materialism for beginners. On Contradiction (as well as On Practice) are essential.

For more depth, Anti-Dühring and Materialism and Empirio-Criticism are excellent.

[–] Sanya@lemmygrad.ml 3 points 2 days ago

Thank you for the reccomandation!

[–] amemorablename@lemmygrad.ml 6 points 2 days ago (1 children)

Thanks for this.

Conversely we have to be careful of ‘common sense’ contradictions. We might easily say “well death is the contradiction to life since they are diametrically opposed (can’t be both at the same time) and one can’t exist without the other - otherwise we’d all be immortal!” but it is closer to say that while death is the negation of life, it doesn’t solve the contradiction. What solves the contradiction is:

"To live, an organism must constantly negate the external world (consume it) and constantly negate its own current state (metabolize, grow, age). This process of self-negation is the presence of death within life. Death is not the end of the process; it is the negative force in the process."

So if I am following right, what you're getting at here and with the rest of your post is:

  • look at the relationships contained within an element

  • the potential of those relationships

  • the ways that these processes contradict themselves to lead from one state to another (not sure about the phrasing there entirely, but like... how if you sprint for a prolonged period, this will quickly lead to tiredness and exhaustion, which will then require rest and recovery)

  • be careful of trying to "gaze at concepts from outside" as in synonym and antonym without taking into account the relationships in motion

[–] CriticalResist8@lemmygrad.ml 10 points 2 days ago (1 children)

The potential is the negation. A thing must contain the conditions for its negation (or opposite), and this is what forms a contradiction and why we talk about internal contradictions.

The bourgeoisie for example creates a proletariat by necessity of their existence. They need people that work in their factories and businesses to appropriate surplus value from. So as the bourgeoisie expands, so does the proletariat. As a business expands it will employ more people therefore require workers therefore requires a proletariat to employ from.

Proudhon's idea was exactly 'vulgar' dialectics. He said, well, seems like it's desirable to be bourgeois and not desirable to be proletariat. So let's make everyone into a bourgeois - give everyone land, and let them work on it. then everyone will be rich and unalienated like the bourgeoisie!

But this isn't solving the contradiction because (the potential for) the negation still exists: if you have a bourgeoisie, it will necessarily create a proletariat because it needs a negation somewhere. We can't just pluck the negation out with tweezers.

So we have to find the actual contradiction taking these laws in mind, it may not be readily obvious and may not just be the 'common sense' answer, i.e. "oh dark is the contradiction to light obviously, because 1. they are diametrically opposed and 2. you can't have a concept of 'light' if you don't have concept for 'dark'" -- I believe this is a shortcut and also vulgar dialectics (but don't really have a better answer myself for the contradiction to light). Which is why I like that balloon example, because it shows a process and negation of the negation (uninflated balloon contains the potential to become inflated and that inflated balloon contains the potential to pop).

And this is the hard part lol, going from examples and explanations we read in books and into our own practice of dialectics and finding contradictions for ourselves instead of being told. Very difficult.

[–] amemorablename@lemmygrad.ml 7 points 2 days ago (2 children)

Hmm. Yeah, so, my aim is to get people thinking about the building blocks more so, so that they can gradually form a better understanding of dialectical materialism. But maybe focusing on opposites in isolation is too divorced from practical application of it (like too dictionary). I lack a thorough enough understanding to be formulating a whole ladder of learning progression through it myself.

So perhaps a helpful exercise would be asking people to name a thing with the conditions for its negation/opposite and how that arises within the scope of the thing. I think this is the step I was fumbling my way toward reaching for with the "bonus question".

[–] SugandeseDelegation@lemmygrad.ml 5 points 2 days ago (1 children)

I think an exercise set to smoothen the learning curve is sorely needed. Apart from finding contradictions like the examples you gave, I think it would be useful to also know how to identify the forces themselves in a given snapshot of a given system.

This is just my perspective, but since everything is interconnected, it feels difficult to know where to delimit what constitutes a force whose contradictions you want to analyze with other forces. A force is a system in itself, with its own contradictions. How far do we zoom in or out? Maybe the answer is to just pick whatever suits your current needs, but it was confusing for me when seeing examples like plus/minus and water/steam. I thought "ok, so does this framework only apply to certain categories of forces, and if so, what criteria define these forces? Why water/steam, why not a contradiction between water at 40°C and water at 90°C? If there are no criteria, can I apply this to literally anything in the universe as a sort of master framework for understanding the world? Should math and natural sciences be restructured around contradictions?".

I think we need to develop a sense for spotting contradictions that are useful to analyze for whatever problem we have at hand, and an exercise set could help build that. Or some heuristics for it, to make it even more explicit.

[–] amemorablename@lemmygrad.ml 4 points 2 days ago

Yes, definitely, and any help people can provide with that, even if it's a halfway attempt like my original post, I think could still lead to developing better exercises and thereby better understanding. In other words, I encourage people to go for it and see what they can come up with for discussion, and if it ends up receiving some correction from others better versed in dialectical materialism, that process alone can further learning and give us an overall better sense of how people are comprehending the theory.

[–] CriticalResist8@lemmygrad.ml 4 points 2 days ago (1 children)

It's a good exercise! The tough part in anything is always moving from theory to practice.

[–] amemorablename@lemmygrad.ml 4 points 2 days ago

True, true. That does give me an inkling of an idea. If it'd be possible to leverage a game-like simulation to help demonstrate diamat and involve the player in the process of something changing. Even if it's something as basic as an interactive balloon popping that explains things alongside, similar to the example you talked about. Although that would not be on the level of implementing theory in real world conditions, it would be one step closer than textbook and might help clarify for people, especially for people who struggle to engage with text alone.

Something I'll have to think about more (though if anyone else wants to look into it too, please do). I've been meaning to learn Godot engine for a while and this might give me a more pointed reason.

[–] SunsetFruitbat@lemmygrad.ml 8 points 3 days ago (1 children)

Would sleep and awake count? or do things like dreams muddy that?

I also remember this from Chapter 3 from Vol 1 of Capital, Marx brought up this to, which I also think fits here? I just like Marx bringing up this specific example involving motion and orbit.

We saw in a former chapter that the exchange of commodities implies contradictory and mutually exclusive conditions. The differentiation of commodities into commodities and money does not sweep away these inconsistencies, but develops a modus vivendi, a form in which they can exist side by side. This is generally the way in which real contradictions are reconciled. For instance, it is a contradiction to depict one body as constantly falling towards another, and as, at the same time, constantly flying away from it. The ellipse is a form of motion which, while allowing this contradiction to go on, at the same time reconciles it.

[–] amemorablename@lemmygrad.ml 4 points 3 days ago

Would sleep and awake count? or do things like dreams muddy that?

That's an interesting question. In how people tend to think of sleep, I'd say dreams count as a part of it. But I'm not sure what the science is on sleep. If dreams are a form of cognitive activity and sleep is thought of as a rest from activity, that would seem contradictory to say sleep is fully a respite from activity. But dreams are also only an unconscious activity (with the exception of lucid dreams, which at least appear to involve some amount of conscious intent). It might be more precise to say that (at least for human beings) sleep is the sensory mode when inactive and awake is the sensory mode when active. Though even then, dreams do seem to be able to draw from the senses to an extent, such as if you're sleeping and need to pee, and so you start dreaming of looking for a bathroom. So the sensory mode is not 100% shut down all the time throughout sleep. Which makes sense now I think about it because you kinda need some amount of it still active to look for threats, know when to wake up, etc.

Phenomenon like sleep paralysis might be an example of the opposing forces "sleep and awake" "colliding"? There's a sort of jolting crossover between the two states, rather than a smooth transition from the one to the other.

Also, thanks for sharing the passage. It's an important aspect of this for us to understand, is how the contradictions can exist alongside one another and what form that takes.

[–] PunkMonk@lemmygrad.ml 10 points 3 days ago* (last edited 3 days ago)

I wish I could learn Marxism-Leninism through a tutor, as ADHD makes it difficult to read theory by myself & my own will, and not just actually read it, but also memorise / internalise what I am reading. I don't have the money to go abroad and enrol in some communist university course in an AES country, and I imagine that would put me under government surveillance too, if I am not to some extent already on a list. And, I don't find online courses retain my attention anywhere near as well as in-person classes do. Anyway sorry for ranting, some of my examples:

Kindness & cruelty, dry & wet, loud & quiet, inside & outside, existence & inexistence, intact & damaged, fast & slow, progress & regress, chaos & tranquility, violence & peace, focus & blur, desire & aversion.

[–] bunbun@lemmygrad.ml 9 points 3 days ago

Yin and Yang

[–] thefreepenguinalt@lemmygrad.ml 7 points 3 days ago

1 and 0 in computing

[–] Malkhodr@lemmygrad.ml 9 points 3 days ago (1 children)

Fission and Fusion, Tension and Conmpression, Winding and Unwinding, Danger and Saftey, Current and Resistance, Positive limits and Negative limits, Wandering and Navigating, Roughness and Softness, Engagement and Boredom, Drowsiness and Wakefulness.

I might be mixing up states and internal forces for some of these, so if anyone could correct them I'd much appreciate it.

[–] amemorablename@lemmygrad.ml 3 points 2 days ago (1 children)

I might be mixing up states and internal forces for some of these, so if anyone could correct them I’d much appreciate it.

I'm not really sure myself. It might be largely semantic in this case. When I think of states, I usually think of something that has more than two states, such as a traffic light: red, yellow, green. We could say, these are all states, but red and green (stop and go) are the opposing forces. Yellow is the transition between the two and acts as a kind of pause/slow/caution for objects in motion (cars).

But also, you might find someone saying, for example, that 1 and 0 in computing are the states on and off. So I would distinguish it like this, maybe:

Opposing forces can also be thought of as dichotomous states for an entity or object to exist in at any given time, but not all sets of states are comprised only of a dichotomy.

Does that make sense? (Am open to correction/discussion/etc.)

[–] Malkhodr@lemmygrad.ml 3 points 2 days ago (1 children)

Thank you I think I understand what you mean. I guess my main way of determining an opposing force versus a state is that I view opposing forces as somehow quantifiable.

Like for water, the states of liquid, solid, and gas (water, ice, steam) the thing that changes them (assuming constant pressure, for the sake of this example) is temperature. The configuration of the H~2~O molecules is what determines its state. That configuration is determined by how much those molecules are moving around. How much they move around depends on how much energy in inputted into the molecule. The force that's keeping them together are hydrogen bonds and the force that causes them to move around is the energy of the molecules.

So the place I have issues with is now, what are the opposing forces between the state of solid water and the state of liquid water? Temperature is the quantifiable measure, but what drives temperature? Would it be strength of hydrogen bonds and kinetic energy of H~2~O molecules?

[–] amemorablename@lemmygrad.ml 3 points 2 days ago (1 children)

Maybe so. I guess I don't know enough about biology and physics to say much on that. 😅 I think you're on the right path with it though, trying to work out what drives it.

To try to tie it in to what CriticalResist was saying earlier (here: https://lemmygrad.ml/post/10149030/7490110 and here: https://lemmygrad.ml/post/10149030/7490240), in particular this:

A thing must contain the conditions for its negation (or opposite), and this is what forms a contradiction and why we talk about internal contradictions.

Maybe the question to ask is, what process/processes in the composition of liquid, solid, and gas contain a movement that can form the negation of the process?

I will do some layperson attempt to research into it. Here is a source on "phase transitions" in chemistry:

https://chem.libretexts.org/Courses/Southwestern_College/Chem_210%3A_Southwestern/10%3A_Solids_Liquids_and_Phase_Transitions/10.05%3A_Phase_Transitions

Phase changes are always accompanied by a change in the energy of a system. For example, converting a liquid, in which the molecules are close together, to a gas, in which the molecules are, on average, far apart, requires an input of energy (heat) to give the molecules enough kinetic energy to allow them to overcome the intermolecular attractive forces. The stronger the attractive forces, the more energy is needed to overcome them. Solids, which are highly ordered, have the strongest intermolecular interactions, whereas gases, which are very disordered, have the weakest. Thus any transition from a more ordered to a less ordered state (solid to liquid, liquid to gas, or solid to gas) requires an input of energy; it is endothermic. Conversely, any transition from a less ordered to a more ordered state (liquid to solid, gas to liquid, or gas to solid) releases energy; it is exothermic. The energy change associated with each common phase change is shown in Figure 10.5.1.

It sounds like broadly speaking, energy is the common factor in the motion between these particular states. Which in the case of input of energy (endothermic) is what we call "heat".

Though how any of this could/would translate to internal negation, I'm having a hard time with. But I am also a bit mush brain in general right now. Holiday season somehow manages to be extra stressful and to be fair to myself, this is straight up science we're getting into.

[–] Malkhodr@lemmygrad.ml 3 points 2 days ago (1 children)

Perhaps if energy is the common thread than the two forces would be, in the intermolecular context, kinetic energy and potential energy.

KE in physics basically just means the energy of in motion ( 1/2×(mass×velocity^2^)~object~). Wheras PE is the energy that can be turned into KE that's available due to an object's position (mass×acceleration×position, in most simple contexts its gravitational acceleration = mgh). Though PE can be used in a bunch of different configurations which are more complicated.

Regardless Kinetic and Potential Energy exist beyond the simplified examples I gave, such as in the intermolecular context, though I've not brushed up on my chemistry enough to give the exact form.

Without PE, KE can't exist as it's impossible for that energy for motion to be created from nothing.

[–] amemorablename@lemmygrad.ml 3 points 2 days ago

Fascinating. It sounds like it's a very low level (meaning close to the fundamentals of the universe) exploration of dialectical materialism.

[–] Cowbee@lemmygrad.ml 6 points 3 days ago

Self and other.

[–] Maeve1@lemmygrad.ml 5 points 3 days ago

Life/death, darkness and light, flow/stagnation, positive and negative, sadness/joy, anger/compassion, peace and war, feast or famine, love/hate, boredom/engagement...