Negation of Negation: 
 
A concept describing the shape and motion of change, wherein one  stage  of 
development replaces a previous stage and preserves the form of  its 
predecessor. Negation of the negation can be narrow or used as a wide  concept 
of 
the shape and motion of quantitative and qualitative change in nature  and 
society. In a wide meaning negation of negation is a return to a previous  
state - quality, at a higher level. Marx presents the  equation as thus: 
 
"The capitalist mode of appropriation, the result of the capitalist mode of 
 production, produces capitalist private property. This is the first 
negation of  individual private property, as founded on the labor of the 
proprietor. But  capitalist production begets, with the inexorability of a law 
of 
Nature, its own  negation. It is the negation of negation. This does not 
re-establish private  property for the producer, but gives him individual 
property 
based on the  acquisition of the capitalist era: i.e., on co-operation and 
the possession in  common of the land and of the means of production. 
 
The transformation of scattered private property, arising from individual  
labor, into capitalist private property is, naturally, a process, 
incomparably  more protracted, violent, and difficult, than the transformation 
of 
capitalistic  private property, already practically resting on socialized 
production, into  socialized property. In the former case, we had the 
expropriation of the mass of  the people by a few usurpers; in the latter, we 
have the 
expropriation of a few  usurpers by the mass of the people. [2] 
 
_http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1867-c1/ch32.htm_ 
(http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1867-c1/ch32.htm)  
 
In Marx description above, private property does not negate private  
property as a quality. Rather, the form of private property is negated in  
correspondence with qualitative changes in the means of production. Here,  
negation 
of the negation signifies the preservation of the specific quality of  the 
contradiction pinpointed as the point of departure -  the starting  point of 
a motion. One can make anything the negation and negation of the  negation. 
For instance, one mode of production negates the previously existing  mode 
of production. The new displacing mode of production contains within itself  
its unique quality begetting its own negation. Likewise, one quantitative 
stage  negates the stage from which it arises in an endless series of 
negations. 
 
Since life is specific, it is best to be specific and define the process in 
 question and how one quality leaps to another qualitative reformation. 
 
In the wide sense of the motion - direction, of society, primitive  
communism is our starting point. Private property negates the primitive public  
property relations. Private property passing through all its negating  
quantitative stages of development, which creates qualitatively different modes 
 of 
production, in meaning of new instruments of production. Various qualitative 
 stages of modes of production, founded on private property, rise and fall. 
 
Economic communism, founded on qualitatively new means of production, is  
called  "primitive communism" at a higher level or the negation of the  
negation or a description of the motion of a gigantic historical process,  
resulting in the reestablishment of public property.  Negation of the  negation 
is 
not a universal law of dialectical motion, but rather an expression  of the 
law dialectic of change. (see  Dialectics, quantity, quality, the  
antagonistic element.)   





_______________________________________________
Marxist-Leninist-List mailing list
Marxist-Leninist-List@lists.econ.utah.edu
To change your options or unsubscribe go to:
http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/listinfo/marxist-leninist-list

Reply via email to