Leon Trotsky
Dialectic is neither fiction nor mysticism, but a science of the forms of our
thinking insofar as it is not limited to the daily problems of life but
attempts to arrive at an understanding of more complicated and drawn-out
processes. The dialectic and formal logic bear a relationship similar to that
between higher and lower mathematics.
I will here attempt to sketch the substance of the problem in a very concrete
form. The Aristotelian logic of the simple syllogism starts from the
proposition that `A' is equal to `A'. This postulate is accepted as an axiom
for a multitude of practical human actions and elementary generalisations. But
in reality `A' is not equal to `A'. This is easy to prove if we observe these
two letters under a lensthey are quite different from each other. But, one can
object, the question is not of the size or the form of the letters, since they
are only symbols for equal quantities, for instance, a pound of sugar. The
objection is beside the point; in reality a pound of sugar is never equal to a
pound of sugara more delicate scale always discloses a difference. Again one
can object: but a pound of sugar is equal to itself. Neither is this trueall
bodies change uninterruptedly in size, weight, colour, etc. They are never
equal to themselves. A sophist will respond that a pound of sugar is equal to
itself "at any given moment".
Aside from the extremely dubious practical value of this "axiom", it does not
withstand theoretical criticism either. How should we really conceive the word
"moment"? If it is an infinitesimal interval of time, then a pound of sugar is
subjected during the course of that "moment" to inevitable changes. Or is the
"moment" a purely mathematical abstraction, that is, a zero of time? But
everything exists in time; and existence itself is an uninterrupted process of
transformation; time is consequently a fundamental element of existence. Thus
the axiom `A' is equal to `A' signifies that a thing is equal to itself if it
does not change, that is, if it does not exist.
At first glance it could seem that these "subtleties" are useless. In reality
they are of decisive significance. The axiom `A' is equal to `A' appears on one
hand to be the point of departure for all our knowledge, on the other hand the
point of departure for all the errors in our knowledge. To make use of the
axiom of `A' is equal to `A' with impunity is possible only within certain
limits. When quantitative changes in `A' are negligible for the task at hand
then we can presume that `A' is equal to `A'. This is, for example, the manner
in which a buyer and a seller consider a pound of sugar. We consider the
temperature of the sun likewise. Until recently we consider the buying power of
the dollar in the same way. But quantitative changes beyond certain limits
become converted into qualitative. A pound of sugar subjected to the action of
water or kerosene ceases to be a pound of sugar. A dollar in the embrace of a
president ceases to be a dollar. To determine at the right moment the critical
point where quantity changes into quality is one of the most important and
difficult tasks in all the spheres of knowledge including sociology.
Every worker knows that it is impossible to make two completely equal objects.
In the elaboration of baring-brass into cone bearings, a certain deviation is
allowed for the cones which should not, however, go beyond certain limits (this
is called tolerance). By observing the norms of tolerance, the cones are
considered as being equal. (`A' is equal to `A'). When the tolerance is
exceeded the quantity goes over into quality; in other words, the cone bearings
become inferior or completely worthless.
Our scientific thinking is only a part of our general practice including
techniques. For concepts there also exits "tolerance" which is established not
by formal logic issuing from the axiom `A' is equal to `A', but by the
dialectical logic issuing from the axiom that everything is always changing.
"Common sense" is characterised by the fact that it systematically exceeds
dialectical "tolerance".
Vulgar thought operates with such concepts as capitalism, morals, freedom,
workers' state, etc as fixed abstractions, presuming that capitalism is equal
to capitalism. Morals are equal to morals, etc. Dialectical thinking analyses
all things and phenomena in their continuous change, while determining in the
material conditions of those changes that critical limit beyond which `A'
ceases to be `A', a workers' state ceases to be a workers' state.
The fundamental flaw of vulgar thought lies in the fact that it wishes to
content itself with motionless imprints of a reality which consists of eternal
motion. Dialectical thinking gives to concepts, by means of closer
approximations, corrections, concretisation, a richness of content and
flexibility; I would even say "a succulence" which to a certain extent brings
them closer to living phenomena. Not capitalism in general, but a given
capitalism at a given stage of development. Not a workers' state in general,
but a given workers' state in a backward country in an imperialist
encirclement, etc.
Dialectical thinking is related to vulgar in the same way that a motion picture
is related to a still photograph. The motion picture does not outlaw the still
photograph but combines a series of them according to the laws of motion.
Dialectics does not deny the syllogism, but teaches us to combine syllogisms in
such a way as to bring our understanding closer to the eternally changing
reality. Hegel in his Logic established a series of laws: change of quantity
into quality, development through contradictions, conflict of content and form,
interruption of continuity, change of possibility into inevitability, etc.,
which are just as important for theoretical thought as is the simple syllogism
for more elementary tasks.
Hegel wrote before Darwin and before Marx. Thanks to the powerful impulse given
to thought by the French Revolution, Hegel anticipated the general movement of
science. But because it was only an anticipation, although by a genius, it
received from Hegel an idealistic character. Hegel operated with ideological
shadows as the ultimate reality. Marx demonstrated that the movement of these
ideological shadows reflected nothing but the movement of material bodies.
We call our dialectic materialist, since its roots are neither in heaven nor in
the depths of our "free will", but in objective reality, in nature.
Consciousness grew out of the unconscious, psychology out of physiology, the
organic world out of the inorganic, the solar system out of the nebulae. On all
the rungs of this ladder of development, the quantitative changes were
transformed into qualitative. Our thought, including dialectical thought, is
only one of the forms of the expression of changing matter. There is place
within this system for neither God nor Devil, nor immortal soul, nor eternal
norms of laws and morals. The dialectic of thinking, having grown out of the
dialectic of nature, possess consequently a thoroughly materialist character.
Darwinism, which explained the evolution of species through quantitative
transformations passing into qualitative, was the highest triumph of the
dialectic in the whole field of organic matter. Another great triumph was the
discovery of the table of atomic weights of chemical elements and further the
transformation of one element into another.
With these transformations (species, elements, etc.) is closely linked the
question of classification, equally important in the natural as in the social
sciences. Linnaeus' system (18th century), utilising as its starting point the
immutability of species, was limited to the description and classification of
plants according to their external characteristics. The infantile period of
botany is analogous to the infantile period of logic, since the forms of our
thought develop like everything that lives. Only decisive repudiation of the
idea of fixed species, only the study of the history of the evolution of plants
and their anatomy prepared the basis for a really scientific classification.
Marx, who in distinction from Darwin was a conscious dialectician, discovered a
basis for the scientific classification of human societies in the development
of their productive forces and the structure of the relations of ownership
which constitute the anatomy of society. Marxism substituted for the vulgar
descriptive classification of societies and states, which even up to now still
flourishes in the universities, a materialistic dialectical classification.
Only through using the method of Marx is it possible correctly to determine
both the concept of a workers' state and the moment of its downfall.
All this, as we see, contains nothing "metaphysical" or "scholastic", as
conceited ignorance affirms. Dialectic logic expresses the laws of motion in
contemporary scientific thought. The struggle against materialist dialectics on
the contrary expresses a distant past, conservatism of the petit-bourgeoisie,
the self-conceit of university routinists and ... a spark of hope for an
after-life.
The Nature of the USSR
The definition of the USSR given by comrade Burnham, "not a workers' and not a
bourgeois state", is purely negative, wrenched from the chain of historical
development, left dangling in mid-air, void of a single particle of sociology
and represents simply a theoretical capitulation of pragmatism before a
contradictory historical phenomenon.
If Burnham were a dialectical materialist, he would have probed the following
three questions: (1) What was the historical origin of the USSR? (2) What
changes has this state suffered during its existence? (3) Did these changes
pass from the quantitative stage to the qualitative? That is, did they create a
historically necessary domination by a new exploiting class? Answering these
questions would have forced Burnham to draw the only possible conclusion the
USSR is still a degenerated workers' state.
The dialectic is not a magic master key for all questions. It does not replace
concrete scientific analysis. But it directs this analysis along the correct
road, securing it against sterile wanderings in the desert of subjectivism and
scholasticism.
Bruno R. places both the Soviet and fascist regimes under the category of
"bureaucratic collectivism", because the USSR, Italy and Germany are all ruled
by bureaucracies; here and there are the principles of planning; in one case
private property is liquidated, in another limited, etc. Thus on the basis of
the relative similarity of certain external characteristics of different
origin, of different specific weight, of different class significance, a
fundamental identity of social regimes is constructed, completely in the spirit
of bourgeois professors who construct, categories of "controlled economy",
"centralised state", without taking into consideration whatsoever the class
nature of one or the other, Bruno R. and his followers, or semi-followers like
Burnham, at best remain in the sphere of social classification on the level of
Linnaeus in whose justification it should be remarked however that he lived
before Hegel, Darwin and Marx.
Even worse and more dangerous, perhaps, are those eclectics who express the
idea that the class character of the Soviet state "does not matter", and that
the direction of our policy is determined by the "character of the war". As if
the war were an independent super-social substance; as if the character of the
war were not determined by the character of the ruling class, that is, by the
same social factor that also determines the character of the state. Astonishing
how easily some comrades forget the ABCs of Marxism under the blows of events!
It is not surprising that the theoreticians of the opposition who reject
dialectic thought capitulate lamentably before the contradictory nature of the
USSR. However the contradiction between the social basis laid down by the
revolution, and the character of the caste which arose out of the degeneration
of the revolution is not only an irrefutable historical fact but also a motor
force. In our struggle for the overthrow of the bureaucracy we base ourselves
on this contradiction. Meanwhile some ultra-lefts have already reached the
ultimate absurdity by affirming that it is necessary to sacrifice the social
structure of the USSR in order to overthrow the Bonapartist oligarchy! They
have no suspicion that the USSR minus the social structure founded by the
October Revolution would be a fascist regime.
Evolution and Dialectics
Comrade Burnham will probably protest that as an evolutionist he is interested
in the development of society and state forms not less than we dialecticians.
We will not dispute this. Every educated person since Darwin has labelled
themself an "evolutionist". But a real evolutionist must apply the idea of
evolution to his own forms of thinking. Elementary logic founded in the period
when the idea of evolution itself did not yet exist, is evidently insufficient
for the analysis of evolutionary processes. Hegel's logic is the logic of
evolution. Only one must not forget that the concept of "evolution" itself has
been completely corrupted and emasculated by university and liberal writers to
mean peaceful "progress". Whoever has come to understand that evolution process
through the struggle of antagonistic forces; that a slow accumulation of
changes at a certain moment explodes the old shell and brings about a
catastrophe, revolution; whoever has learned finally to apply the general laws
of evolution to thinking itself, he is a dialectician, as distinguished from
vulgar evolutionists. Dialectic training of the mind, as necessary to a
revolutionary fighter as finger exercises to a pianist, demands approaching all
problems as processes and not as motionless categories. Whereas vulgar
evolutionists, who limit themselves generally to recognising evolution in only
certain spheres, content themselves in all other questions with the banalities
of "common sense".
Notes/Glossary
Syllogism: The historically first form of deduction, which consists of three
"terms": Individual, Universal and Particular, arranged in three propositions
forming two premises and a conclusion. Fido (Particular) is a dog (Individual).
All dogs are quadrupeds (Universal). Therefore, Fido is a quadruped
(Conclusion), and each of the statements is called a "Judgment". Hegel spent a
lot time in the Doctrine of the Notion, developing the relationships between
Individual, Universal and Particular, as part of his critique of formal logic.
See the section in the Science of Logic on the Syllogism. Hegel ridicules the
idea of a "logic" which is indifferent to the truth of its premises, but only
whether the conclusion follows from the premises: nothing could be deduced from
a notion which has no content.
Something being ` to itself' means that despite quantitative change, it still
remains what it is, i.e. there is no qualititative change. "Self-identical" in
Hegelian terminology means something totally lacking in internal contradictions
and vitality. See Self-Identical in Glossary.
Quality and Quantity: Quality is an aspect of something by which it is what it
is and not something else; quality reflects that which is stable amidst change.
Quantity is an aspect of something which may change (become more or less)
without the thing thereby becoming something else; quantity reflects that which
is constantly changing in the world ("the more things change, the more they
remain the same"). The quality of an object pertains to the whole, not one or
another part of an object, since without that quality it would not be what it
is, whereas an object can lose a "part" and still be what it is, minus the
part. Quantity on the other hand is aspect of a thing by which it can (mentally
or really) be broken up into its parts (or degrees) and be re-assembled again.
Thus, if something changes in such a way that has become something of a
different kind, this is a "qualitative change", whereas a change in something
by which it still the same thing, though more or less, bigger or smaller, is a
"quantitative change". In Hegel's Logic, quantity and quality belong to Being
... For Engels' explanation of the dialectics of Quantity and Quality,
especially in Nature, see the section from Anti-Dühring. See Quality and
Quantity in Glossary.
[From A Petit-bourgeois Opposition in the Socialist Workers Party, by Leon
Trotsky, December 15, 1939.]
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