On Dialectics

Engels:




"From that time forward [Economics as an objective measure of social motion and development] , Socialism was no longer an accidental discovery of this or that ingenious brain, but the necessary outcome of the struggle between two historically developed classes — the proletariat and the bourgeoisie. Its task was no longer to manufacture a system of society as perfect as possible, but to examine the historico-economic succession of events from which these classes and their antagonism had of necessity sprung, and to discover in the economic conditions thus created the means of ending the conflict. But the Socialism of earlier days was as incompatible with this materialist conception as the conception of Nature of the French materialists was with dialectics and modern natural science. The Socialism of earlier days certainly criticized the existing capitalistic mode of production and its consequences. But it could not explain them, and, therefore, could not get the mastery of them. It could only simply reject them as bad. The more strongly this earlier Socialism denounced the exploitations of the working-class, inevitable under Capitalism, the less able was it clearly to show in what this exploitation consisted and how it arose, but for this it was necessary —"







Lenin: from Notebooks

1) The determination of the concept out
of itself [the thing itself must be consid-
ered in its relations and in its develop-
ment];

2) the contradictory nature of the thing
itself (das Andere seiner[1]), the contra-
dictory forces and tendencies in each phe-
nomenon;

3) the union of analysis and synthesis.

Such apparently are the elements of
dialectics.

One could perhaps present these ele-
ments in greater detail as follows:




the objectivity of consideration
(not examples, not divergencies, but
the Thing-in-itself).
X
the entire totality of the manifold
relations of this thing to others.
the development of this thing,
(phenomenon, respectively), its own
movement, its own life.
the internally contradictory tenden-
cies (and sides) in this thing.
the thing (phenomenon, etc.) as the
sum and
#
unity of opposites.
the struggle, respectively unfold-
ing, of these opposites, contradictory
strivings, etc.
the union of analysis and synthesis—
the break-down of the separate parts
and the totality, the summation of
these parts.
the relations of each thing (phenome-
non, etc.) are not only manifold, but
general, universal. Each thing (phe-
nomenon, process, etc.) is connected
with every other. X
not only the unity of opposites, but
the transitions of every de-
termination, quality, feature, side,
property into every other [into its
opposite?].
the endless process of the discovery
of new sides, relations, etc.
the endless process of the deepening
of man’s knowledge of the thing, of
phenomena, processes, etc., from ap-
pearance to essence and from less pro-
found to more profound essence.
from co-existence to causality and from
one form of connection and reciprocal
dependence to another, deeper, more
general form.
the repetition at a higher stage of
certain features, properties, etc., of
the lower and
the apparent return to the old (nega-
tion of the negation).
the struggle of content with form and
conversely. The throwing off of the
form, the transformation of the con-
tent.
the transition of quantity into quality
and vice versa ((15 and 16 are examples of 9))






In brief, dialectics can be defined as the doctrine of
the unity of opposites. This embodies the essence
of dialectics, but it requires explanations and develop-
ment.

(The totality of all sides of the
phenomenon, of reality and their (re-
ciprocal) relations—that is what
truth is composed of. The relations
(= transitions = contradictions) of
notions = the main content of logic,
by which these concepts (and their
relations, transitions, contradictions)
are shown as reflections of the objec-
tive world. The dialectics of things
produces the dialectics of ideas, and
not vice versa.)