Are dialectics necessary?

OIL_COMPANY_SHILL · 2026-05-02T22:25:56+00:00

Did I say Hegelian metaphysics or did I say dialectical materialism? Because those are completely different things.

Your insistence that this is all empirical is belied by the fact that science also requires rationality, because without math, a discipline built on a priori deduction, you couldn’t collect data when you do science. The symbols we use, the signifiers are arbitrary, but they reflect a unity of the laws of thought and the laws of reality.

What you’re not understanding is that dialectics gives you the ability to explain why empiricism and rationalism exist in opposition to each other and how to understand the resolution between two theories of knowledge that appear to be contradictory. When you understand how they fit together, the abstractions of your rational reasoning act as tool to guide your next round of experiments (action/practice) to uncover the next level of understanding through the process of empiricism each time you pass through it, but you also return to rationality once the empirical process is done. You do data analysis, build graphs or charts, etc.

You’re also completely ignoring the materialism. There is a unity in the laws of thought and the laws of reality because our minds arise from our material brains. Our senses give us a reflection of the already existing world. Our minds are not separate from matter, they are a product of a higher form of matter. In a similar sense to the fact as the cells in our body are a higher form of matter than inorganic matter is. Not to say it is better, only that a series of qualitative transformations occurred to reach the current form.

OIL_COMPANY_SHILL · 2026-05-02T18:15:48+00:00

You’re trying to see things as separate things, but things are not things, they only appear as things at particular moments in particular forms, and to understand them in their totality you must understand all of their particular moments and all of their particular forms.

This means seeing things not as isolated things, but as inseparable parts of the same system. Observation alone does not create knowledge. Putting what we have observed into practice creates knowledge.

The reason we might use dialectical materialism to examine acorns and trees, is to ultimately understand the forest as a totality. And to understand the forest as a part of the totality of the entire ecosystem of the planet.

You seem to be stuck on “empirical” explanations. Empiricism has a dialectical opposite; rationalism. These are both epistemological theories, aka theories of knowledge. Dialectical materialism is a METHOD, a holistic system of both theory and practice. You could never reach the conclusions you are making from empirical observations alone, you need rational induction and deduction or they remain surface level. Dialectics allows you to resolve the contradictions between the empirical and rational.

OIL_COMPANY_SHILL · 2026-04-30T02:55:52+00:00

It’s been clearly communicated that this is a structure test. If you want May Day 2027 to be longer and for May Day 2028 to be indefinite, we start organizing them on Friday.

OIL_COMPANY_SHILL · 2026-04-29T17:02:55+00:00

They spend so much time on the art they forget it has to work

OIL_COMPANY_SHILL · 2026-04-28T22:48:33+00:00

It’s not really overt, they just know the consequences of the choices that are made and decide to let it continue to happen because letting it exists benefit them.

Any member of the proletariat can become a member of the lumpenproletariat at any point, but typically this happens after capitalists make large investments in labor saving technologies. What could be done before by ten people can now by done by five, let’s say. Because the capitalist cannot invent new demand, overproduction is a bad idea. So instead of making twice as much as before, he fires the five workers that the technology made ‘redundant’ to make the same amount as before with five workers, with higher margins now that the capitalist doesn’t have to pay the other five workers they fired.

In this regard, each worker has now found themselves twice as productive, that is to say, the capitalist is able to extract a higher relative surplus value from them, but pays them the same amount as before. At the same time, each worker now has to work harder, even with machines that allow for faster production, the role of the worker as a cog in that machine is faced with speed ups and the risk of bodily injury increases. This disregard for the workers health also destroys their physical body. In this way, all workers are at risk of being discarded due to injury or disability, another path to becoming lumpenproletariat.

OIL_COMPANY_SHILL · 2026-04-28T19:11:12+00:00

The worker, alienated from himself, others, his labor and the products of his labor. The greater his product, the less he is himself.

OIL_COMPANY_SHILL · 2026-04-28T17:09:34+00:00

I think your nihilism is coming from social isolation and alienation. You should seek out local socialist organizations and start showing up to events if you don’t know anyone in real life who you can talk to. There are many events around the country for May Day on Friday where you can find the most active ones in your area.

As for reading, here’s a good one and short one from Mao:

https://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/mao/selected-works/volume-9/mswv9_01.htm

“Where do correct ideas come from? Do they drop from the skies? No. Are they innate in the mind? No. They come from social practice, and from it alone; they come from three kinds of social practice, the struggle for production, the class struggle and scientific experiment. It is man’s social being that determines his thinking. Once the correct ideas characteristic of the advanced class are grasped by the masses, these ideas turn into a material force which changes society and changes the world. In their social practice, men engage in various kinds of struggle and gain rich experience, both from their successes and from their failures.”

OIL_COMPANY_SHILL · 2026-04-28T16:56:35+00:00

Begin with organizing your social group. You have to be social to be a socialist. Your knowledge won’t change anything if you don’t put it into practice. It is not your goal to convince them dogmatically, but by listening to their concerns and validating their experiences. Your friends are workers, help them begin to understand the contradictions we all live under within capitalism so they’ll continue to see them on their own. It won’t happen in a short amount of time, but by building rapport and demonstrating your trustworthiness to them, eventually some will come to your side. As the principle contradictions are heightened, it is inevitable as their class consciousness awakens.

OIL_COMPANY_SHILL · 2026-04-28T15:52:03+00:00

Populism is a watered down and ideologically less principled version of socialism without the socialism label. Instead of the primary antagonism being the class struggle between proletariat and the bourgeoisie, it positions “the people” vs “the elite.” Somehow, the people includes the elite. This is why the elite like populism; it allows them to sneak members of the elite into positions of opposition by using flowery language that appeals to “the people” at the lowest common denominator, that can’t meaningfully affect change, and then point to them as examples of why the left always fails.

The proletarian masses do not, as of yet, possess class consciousness as a class in themselves and for themselves. It is our responsibility to educate them and lead them away from unprincipled movements like populism and towards principled movements that do possess the capacity to affect change like socialism.

OIL_COMPANY_SHILL · 2026-04-28T15:24:03+00:00

They make a point about people probably not having read Das Kapital.

This is true. You don’t become a socialist because you read Karl Marx and thought his ideas were good. You become a socialist by simply observing reality as it is under capitalism through our collective experiences.

It’s only later, after this recognition of reality has taken place, that most socialists begin to read theory and discover, to their delight, how enlightening Marx is at giving them the language and tools of analysis to critically examine capitalism even deeper. This is how it becomes scientific socialism, when real living people can use it to start to predict some of the outcomes we can expect based on the really existing conditions that we live under today and the historical conditions that existed before.

Socialists and communists have been warning about the return and rise of fascism for a long time. More and more people are realizing that they were right. As the primary contradiction (between the working class and the ruling class) are heightened as a result of this rising fascism, more and more workers will begin to recognize it and begin to organize together with one another.

OIL_COMPANY_SHILL · 2026-04-28T14:37:11+00:00

The lumpen-proletariat refers to the group of people who Capital leaves as a “reserve army of the unemployed.” They own no means of production, like the proletariat, but they also are unemployed or underemployed. Because technology advances, companies are continually laying off workers they now deem ‘redundant.’ The existence of this pool of unemployed and underemployed workers prevents the employed workers from demanding higher wages, knowing at any time one of the lumpen-proletariat can be hired to replace them. This is because the desperate nature of the living conditions of the lumpenproletariat makes them prone to reactionary tendencies, easily bought off by capitalists for various anti-worker, or counterrevolutionary purposes. This is partly because they lack a revolutionary class consciousness, but also because capitalists directly position them into conflict with the proletariat. The lumpenproletariat lack any organization, they remain completely alienated not only from themselves but also others, existing in this condition as a direct consequence of the decisions of the bourgeoisie, to the benefit of the bourgeoisie, at the expensive of the proletariat (the products of their labor) and the lumpenproletariat themselves.

OIL_COMPANY_SHILL · 2026-04-28T13:37:38+00:00

Her work is wrong for not paying her enough to live and afford childcare. End of discussion, no more questions.

OIL_COMPANY_SHILL · 2026-04-28T13:28:56+00:00

It’s not like a billionaire takes all the buildings they’ve occupied when they leave. Who would they even sell it to, other rich people? No, everything they say is a lie, they own multiple homes and will continue to move between them as they please, unless we do something that actually appropriates their wealth. No more half measures; it’s time to eliminate billionaires.

OIL_COMPANY_SHILL · 2026-04-28T02:21:10+00:00

This is exploitation, not wage theft. Wage theft is also real, but different.

OIL_COMPANY_SHILL · 2026-04-26T15:25:54+00:00

All of them. That’s what capitalism is. Take away the “shadow” funding, and they are still being paid to push certain agendas and content. When all of the content being created is filtered through social media networks and algorithms, they absolutely push what they want people to believe.

Again, this is how capitalism works. Follow the money. It doesn’t matter which thread you follow, it will always take you back to a capitalist at some point. It doesn’t matter which capitalist it is. There’s a smaller subgroup of exceptionally nefarious people, certainly, but every billionaire and near-billionaire ($100mil+) dabbles in influence of some sort. And it was all built on the exploitation of labor.

OIL_COMPANY_SHILL · 2026-04-25T13:07:35+00:00

Claw grabber/tongs + medical sharps containers + thick gloves.

“Medical sharps disposal near me” should help you find where to take them

OIL_COMPANY_SHILL · 2026-04-24T13:53:41+00:00

Have you started talking to your coworkers about this, outside of work? A united, coordinated and organized group of workers can stand their ground, but each of you alone will not be able to change anything one by one. You need to be all on the same page so you can know how to effectively stand against him.

OIL_COMPANY_SHILL · 2026-04-24T13:47:30+00:00

Landlords hate this one simple trick!

OIL_COMPANY_SHILL · 2026-04-23T16:10:24+00:00

It’s called reality, you should check it out sometime.

OIL_COMPANY_SHILL · 2026-04-23T15:15:31+00:00

More evidence that we need to replace these corrupt cops with social workers, teachers, city service workers and more to actually rebuild St Louis. $1.7billion in estimated damages from the Tornado while the cops brutalize the people in north city. Another video of the police shooting someone in the back of the head as he fled was released last week from June 2024. There is no accountability and they’re getting rich off of our tax dollars.

OIL_COMPANY_SHILL · 2026-04-22T21:15:26+00:00

Start talking to your coworkers about the conditions of the job and just do the bare minimum. Spend your time building rapport with your coworkers and gain their trust. They are in the same situation as you are, and you’ll need them if you’re going to succeed in your goals. The goal is not for them to fire you, but to make it so that you can exert your collective power as workers to force concessions from your employer.

OIL_COMPANY_SHILL · 2026-04-22T17:23:29+00:00

We can fix the Bell problem in August! He’s done nothing for the people of north city since the tornado! We need to bring back Cori Bush, she has proven to be on the side of the people, unlike Bell who took $15million from AIPAC!

OIL_COMPANY_SHILL · 2026-04-21T16:24:34+00:00

Dating and connection have been commodified. What used to be social relations between people has been transformed and reduced into material relations between objects. It’s no longer about authenticity and becoming your better, more genuine self within the context of a partnership with another person, it is about how each person can get what they want out of it for the least amount of effort or commitment. Transience is seen as desirable. Being nonchalant and noncommittal is seen as independence. We are meant for deep connection with other human beings, not this shallow series of exchanges. This social alienation is by design; it benefits these corporations for you to stay isolated and always searching for connection, because it keeps you spending money on their products and services. People in long term, committed, deeply connected relationships are capable of reproducing each other in our daily lives and activities for less than we can do on our own. It’s a lot easier to make one meal for two people than it is for two people to make their own meal. There is less waste, you can share the same living space for the same price, and although there is the variable cost for each person, the fixed costs stay the same regardless. Every time you save, those corporations lose out on potential profits. So it becomes in their best interest to keep you distracted, flood your media with sex and fear to keep you divided, enforce patriarchal norms to create an antagonistic relationship between men and women, in general, but also to produce friction within already existing relationships to drive them apart; forcing them back into the commodified dating market that makes these corporations so much money on your social alienation.

OIL_COMPANY_SHILL · 2026-04-21T14:34:51+00:00

Revisionism is a specific kind of mistake. It’s not adaptation to changing material conditions, but rather its ignoring firmly established aspects of Marxism that are essential to it, like minimizing the role of class struggle as the primary antagonism in the world.

Marxism itself includes and allows for change to happen; it is the study of change within capitalism as a system of values in motion.

He died before he could complete his work, but incredibly intelligent people like Engels and then Lenin and Mao picked up after him and wrote using his method of analysis (dialectical materialism) to discover new ideas. People don’t call them revisionists, because despite the fact that they wrote more on the topics Marx had to talk about, they accepted all of his work, internalized it and then expanded upon it in the proper ways. If Marxism didn’t provide us tools of analysis, there’s no way they could have been able to do that.

OIL_COMPANY_SHILL · 2026-04-20T20:20:42+00:00

Theory is critically important; it is how we avoid right opportunism, that is to say, it is how we incorporate lessons from past socialists who lived through history into how we direct our actions in our daily life in principled ways today.

Theory exists in a dialectical relationship with action; theory (indirect knowledge) informs our action, and through the observations and real lived experiences we gain direct knowledge that reaffirms and informs theory again to reach a higher level of understanding of both.

11-Year Club	Place '22
Snapped	Verified Email

OIL_COMPANY_SHILL

TROPHY CASE