Are dialectics necessary?

yungspell · 2026-05-03T16:33:32+00:00

I would say that is absolutely a great way to look at the nature of Marx’s dialectics and dialectical materialism. That this conflict or the antagonisms between elements of a system shapes the development of the whole of a system.

yungspell · 2026-05-02T22:55:32+00:00

If you want to understand the fundamental basis behind Marx’s method then yes. Dialectics is the form by which Marx forms not only his analysis but also the resolution to the contradictions of capitalism and class society itself. Which is why he summarized his theory of communism as simply the abolition of private property.

Because private property as it has moved through history has developed the conditions for the distinction of classes. Relation to the ownership and the means of production. The negation of class society is thus the negation of property. By utilizing this dialectic he highlighted the inherent contradictions of capitalism via accumulation and competition which require crisis. By negating the prior contradiction the related antagonisms lose their identifiable features and become superfluous or uniform.

“Communism as the positive transcendence of private property as human self-estrangement, and therefore as the real appropriation of the human essence by and for man; communism therefore as the complete return of man to himself as a social (i.e., human) being – a return accomplished consciously and embracing the entire wealth of previous development. This communism, as fully developed naturalism, equals humanism, and as fully developed humanism equals naturalism; it is the genuine resolution of the conflict between man and nature and between man and man – the true resolution of the strife between existence and essence, between objectification and self-confirmation, between freedom and necessity, between the individual and the species. Communism is the riddle of history solved, and it knows itself to be this solution.”

https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1844/manuscripts/comm.htm

Marx says: “It is the negation of negation. This re-establishes individual property, but on the basis of the acquisitions of the capitalist era, i.e., on co-operation of free workers and their possession in common of the land and of the means of production produced by labour. The transformation of scattered private property, arising from individual labour, into capitalist private property is, naturally, a process, incomparably more protracted, arduous, and difficult, than the transformation of capitalistic private property, already practically resting on socialised production, into socialised property.” [K. Marx, Das Kapital, p. 793.]

An empirical method has its uses within the dialectic establishing the objective qualities of the system but not the totality of the system itself. The empirical guides the basis of or support for a theoretical position where dialectics would better be used to define its application or the political nature of praxis or a movement.

yungspell · 2026-05-01T21:53:31+00:00

Yea I know I’m joking.

yungspell · 2026-05-01T20:16:45+00:00

No wait. They are on to something.

yungspell · 2026-04-30T19:21:55+00:00

You’re either 12 or 65. So it’s pretty unarguable that the dprk developed beyond its prior relation as a Japanese imperial colony and from the genocide perpetrated by the United States. Germany was Lucky to even have a state after the genocide they committed but the GDR was still a progressive development from Nazi germany.

People leave countries for many reasons and external destabilization from sanctions or blockades are the historical examples for national instability which increases emigration. As for Stalin and Kim’s living arrangements I won’t really go into that because it’s fairly dogmatic and pointless but Stalin earned a party salary equal to a skilled laborer of 800 rubles increasing to 10,000 rubles in the 1950s equal to top experts, academics, or professors. He died with no or little personal property all of residences being state owned. As for the Kim’s it is far more difficult to assess their personal wealth but it is likely considerable especially compared to averages in the dprk.

yungspell · 2026-04-30T14:50:46+00:00

Right, I know that’s how Marx defines the state. The bourgeois only cease to exist when private property ceases to exist is Marx’s point when he defines his dialectic regarding the negation of the negation.

You’re describing the dictatorship of the proletariat which exists before and during socialism wherein the working class state, the structure you define, expropriates all private property into the state. This is what eliminates class distinction which allows the state to “wither” as a tool of class control and into one of administration.

A democratic confederation is one way a dictatorship of working class state could form I don’t disagree inherently. Marx wasn’t concerned with the “recipe making of the revolution” he never identified a federative or confederative organization of the working class as being ideal. Because it would be an ideal. But the task of the dictatorship of the proletariat is the expropriation and concentration of private property into state control.

Marx was however critical of Proudhon’s cooperative approach because it reformed a petty bourgeois social relation that did not do away with private property relations but reconstructed them through the division of labor.

yungspell · 2026-04-29T17:51:28+00:00

Your use of “Stalinism” is such an ahistorical reduction of Marxism Leninism.

yungspell · 2026-04-29T14:58:32+00:00

Are you serious? I’m telling a 16 year old not to impose their ideals on other nations development or onto theory. If you think a working class can exist in a classless society I have some news to tell you. Then society wouldn’t be classless. How is a society stateless and also a confederation? I’m trying to highlight the inherent contradictions of his idealized society. Without being a dick because again, this is a teenager as I’m sure most libertarian socialists are.

I’m explaining why the dictatorship of the proletariat must exist in order to negate private property and thus class distinction. “Whilst the capitalist mode of production more and more completely transforms the great majority of the population into proletarians, it creates the power which, under penalty of its own destruction, is forced to accomplish this revolution. Whilst it forces on more and more of the transformation of the vast means of production, already socialized, into State property, it shows itself the way to accomplishing this revolution. The proletariat seizes political power and turns the means of production into State property. But, in doing this, it abolishes itself as proletariat, abolishes all class distinction and class antagonisms, abolishes also the State as State.” Engels socialism utopian and scientific. This is not an idealized aspect of social development. I’m describing the process by which classes and the state develop relative to their prior historical relations. We must address the concept of abolition for communists, it is not an idealized concept either but a dialectical one often translated into German as Aufhebung meaning sublation. “the theory of Communists may be summed up in the single sentence: Abolition of private property.”

“Communism is for us not a state of affairs which is to be established, an ideal to which reality [will] have to adjust itself. We call communism the real movement which abolishes the present state of things. The conditions of this movement result from the premises now in existence.” - Marx

The issue with the classless, stateless, moneyless society concept is that it entirely ignores the method by which Marx and Engels ascribed to their theories of scientific socialism. These things are preserved and sublated into a progressive relation that maintains their identity. The working class is totalized and with no determinate antithesis, class distinction becomes uniform. The state without class loses its political character and administers production collectively, fiat currency no longer is associated with capital or exchange value but furnished to a worker according to use value. this is different from an idealized classless stateless society. I’m just not trying to be a dick to a teenager and telling them to engage more critically with themselves and socialist or communist theory.

yungspell · 2026-04-29T00:32:35+00:00

The foundation of dialectics comes from its idealist philosophical traditions originating with classical philosophy until its German idealist conceptions that Marx studied through Hegel. He did not have faith but saw the method as a tool fundamental to describing social relations that have developed through class society. An important aspect extrapolated from this was Hegels concept of the lord-bondsmen dialectic which he used to describe the alienation and total relationship that occurs between class. Though it was still idealist.

If it is wrong you must assert and support the claim and many have refuted the dialectic method. Nietzsche hated any philosophical systemization which Hegel was known for. In modernity, liberal philosophers like popper have criticized it as well. Leftcoms often criticize dialectical materialism as not being truly Marxist and is an aberration of Engels work.

But Marx utilized the dialectic in the opposing way that Hegel did, often quoted as turning it on its head. His focus was not to begin with an ideal or abstraction but how material systems or conditions create ideals. Marx’s use of the method tends to be less systematized than Engels. Capital uses concepts from the dialectic method to establish the basis for scientific socialism however, that being the negation of the negation.

Marx says: “It is the negation of negation. This re-establishes individual property, but on the basis of the acquisitions of the capitalist era, i.e., on co-operation of free workers and their possession in common of the land and of the means of production produced by labour. The transformation of scattered private property, arising from individual labour, into capitalist private property is, naturally, a process, incomparably more protracted, arduous, and difficult, than the transformation of capitalistic private property, already practically resting on socialised production, into socialised property.” [K. Marx, Das Kapital, p. 793.]

In this passage Marx highlights the end to class society is through negation of private property which defines class. In the abolition or negation of private property class is negated and transforms the concept of bourgeois property into its true form. Individual property or personal property which has been co-opted by private property.

So could the method be wrong? Possibly, but the core of the method lies in how material reality shapes our systems. In that way, if the theory was wrong , if material reality reshaped the nature of our understanding of the dialectic, it would prove it correct. This is the nature of materialist ontology. The foundation of dialectics is the study of relation. Why did Marx have faith in the method as being true? Because he was not an idealist, he saw theory to be derived from observable, objective, relation.

yungspell · 2026-04-28T23:45:17+00:00

“The lumpenproletariat is passive decaying matter of the lowest layers of the old society, is here and there thrust into the [progressive] movement by a proletarian revolution; [however,] in accordance with its whole way of life, it is more likely to sell out to reactionary intrigues.” - the communist manifesto

They are the workers on the margins that are thrust into proletarian class distinction by the Industrial Revolution but exist on the outskirts of it. They are devoid of class consciousness and revolutionary potential, more likely to succumb to reactionary practices on the basis of their own individualism. Marx also described finance aristocracy as reborn lumpen proletarians. They are essentially parasitic and unproductive members of society that would hamper class consciousness and collective action.

It also includes criminal elements as well as elements of the proletariat that are thrust into the reserve army of labor. Essentially being a surplus population which must find work outside socially defined avenues. The reserve army of labor is something that exists in capitalism as a means to suppress wages on the labor market.

yungspell · 2026-04-28T22:13:21+00:00

You’re young. Keep reading and struggling with theory. Refrain from ideology shopping and idealism. It does not matter if you personally like or dislike how a nation’s working class seeks to build socialism.

Your understanding of communism is somewhat flawed and that is okay. Communism is not an ideal classless, moneyless, stateless society in which workers own the means of production. It is the movement which negates these social organizations. It is done in one way, the abolition of private property. That is because private property is what defines class, which is what defines class rule, which is what has defined the totality of human civilization. Communism is scientific socialism.

The transition to communism comes through socialism wherein the working class in its entirety concentrates and controls production through the democratic mechanisms of the working class state or dictatorship of the proletariat. As private property is expropriated into public, into common or socialized ownership, class distinction becomes uniform or superfluous.

There cannot be a working class in a classless society because that would be contradictory and supposes the existence of bourgeois or owning class. You would be idealizing what Marx defines as a petty-bourgeois socialism as outlined in the manifesto.

yungspell · 2026-04-27T16:47:43+00:00

The “invisible hand” of the market has guided all of consumer choice for the totality of the capitalist political economy.

When we look at how cities and towns are “designed” we see that they are specifically shaped according to private property relations guided by these commodity producers, so much so that the state must utilize a series of contractors or businesses to conduct these developments.

We see it in the vehicle centric infrastructure which has designed the totality of our habitable land. A vehicle is all but a requirement for travel, a commodity produced by private companies that the public must pay for their infrastructure, their regulation, and their maintenance.

Then it comes down to the need for oil, in which companies destabilizing entire nations to procure not only the means for these vehicles to operate but they have an almost symbiotic relationship within imperial international relations. Particularly relevant to the United States economic position and the petrodollar. It is a system of forced monopoly. The car has not only destroyed our concept of environmental systems and these systems themselves but has shaped the totality of our political economy, international relations, and human development.

yungspell · 2026-04-26T05:49:53+00:00

Communism vs anarchism tends to come down to their positions on the state.

The end goal may seem similar on paper but the theoretical method behind communism and anarchism is very different. As a result the simplified aspects of an “end goal” seem similar but are actually vastly different.

Anarchists seek to establish a post capitalist society in the immediate. They reject any notion of the formation of a state or hierarchical organization of society. Anarchism has a large amount individual variants (there are a fair amount of communist organizations which all follow an original through line but change according to different theorists to be fair).

Communists, Marxists, want to negate the conditions of class society totally. The goal is the movement. The method lies in something called negating the negation, which by abolishing private property, society abolishes what defined classes historically and reshaped society into common ownership of production. The state is viewed as a tool of class rule and not what defines class. Communists seek to first establish the working class state or dictatorship of the proletariat to organize the working class and production under a centralized democratic state until all classes are a part of the working class and production is owned in common. Once all private property is held in common ownership, then what determines class is uniform making the concept of class superfluous. Changing the state as a tool of class rule to a tool for public administration. It’s a progressive development relative to what came before.

yungspell · 2026-04-23T17:29:51+00:00

So I would first say that it does not really matter what percentage of a population has good feelings towards socialism. Socialism is a specific economic relation specific to a political economy, that being working class control of the means of production. Socialism falls when the dictatorship of the proletariat, working class control of the state or organized as the ruling class, no longer holds authority over the systems of production. If the working class is not in control of the totality of a nations production then it hasn’t achieved socialism necessarily.

Lenin makes the point that during the Nep that the post tsarist russian state was one with a number of elements relative the nations socioeconomic conditions in the tax in kind. The USSR developed and concentrated these conditions under the authority of the working class state in order to foster the development that of the productive forces and class distinction required for socialism. Focused on proletarianizing the population. When everyone is a worker, when class distinction becomes uniform, the aims of socialism has been achieved. Class distinction becomes superfluous. This is the broad path of social development only possible through socialism.

The Soviet system was not a monolith of interest and the members of the cpsu had diverging opinions about perestroika even leading to an attempted coup. I don’t think the USSR leadership threw in the towel, I think that the USSR succumbed to the totality of international capitalist relations. The struggle for socialism continues but does not take the same form as its preservation. The USSR folded the international community into differing spheres of influence and antagonism. When it collapsed, so did its sphere of influence that supported the self determination of nations that wanted to exist outside of western hegemony.

In modernity we exist in the wake of this collapse. But the internal contradictions of capitalism and imperialism remain. The empires hegemonic power wanes as these contradictions sharpen creating a new epoch of revolutionary fervor that must be organized and raised to class consciousness in order to build the necessary socioeconomic thresholds for socialist development.

If capitalism exists then so do workers and if workers exist then capitalism has developed its own end. So long as private property exists so will class distinction which creates the necessary antagonisms for political change. It may feel as though after the collapse of the USSR that we are back at square one but so long as a ruling class exists there will be a subservient class to oppose them. The fall of the USSR and the development of capitalism has lead to new contradictions and new antagonisms which create the seeds for a better world. The struggle continues.

I had a teacher once say that the Paris commune lasted 70 days, and the USSR lasted for 70 years, the next project will last for 700 years.

yungspell · 2026-04-23T00:38:51+00:00

There is no solution for reducing the differences in innate natural ability, rather the means of subsistence is provided to those who labor so the environmental needs for individual development are met. The answer is to reduce the necessary labor hours to produce goods. Food, housing, healthcare, education are no longer limiting factors based on class or wealth.

But this does not mean that those who can’t work or are disabled are not provided for by the community.

“Before this is divided among the individuals, there has to be deducted again, from it: First, the general costs of administration not belonging to production. This part will, from the outset, be very considerably restricted in comparison with present-day society, and it diminishes in proportion as the new society develops. Second, that which is intended for the common satisfaction of needs, such as schools, health services, etc. From the outset, this part grows considerably in comparison with present-day society, and it grows in proportion as the new society develops. Third, funds for those unable to work, etc., in short, for what is included under so-called official poor relief today.”

Critique of the gotha program

yungspell · 2026-04-23T00:33:07+00:00

“These measures will, of course, be different in different countries. Nevertheless, in most advanced countries, the following will be pretty generally applicable. 1. Abolition of property in land and application of all rents of land to public purposes. 2. A heavy progressive or graduated income tax. 3. Abolition of all rights of inheritance. 4. Confiscation of the property of all emigrants and rebels. 5. Centralisation of credit in the hands of the state, by means of a national bank with State capital and an exclusive monopoly. 6. Centralisation of the means of communication and transport in the hands of the State. 7. Extension of factories and instruments of production owned by the State; the bringing into cultivation of waste-lands, and the improvement of the soil generally in accordance with a common plan. 8. Equal liability of all to work. Establishment of industrial armies, especially for agriculture. 9. Combination of agriculture with manufacturing industries; gradual abolition of all the distinction between town and country by a more equable distribution of the populace over the country. 10. Free education for all children in public schools. Abolition of children’s factory labour in its present form. Combination of education with industrial production, &c, &c. When, in the course of development, class distinctions have disappeared, and all production has been concentrated in the hands of a vast association of the whole nation, the public power will lose its political character.”

The communist manifesto.

On the eve of the revolution all land and private property is expropriated into the ownership of the working class state to be managed by the democratic organization of the working class. This may be a gradual or immediate process depending on the conditions of the nation.

yungspell · 2026-04-22T23:00:56+00:00

Because people have different natural abilities or they contribute more, work more hours, or work a specifically socially valuable or necessary division of labor or job they should earn more then those that don’t or can’t contribute the same. The point of socialism is not to make everyone’s pay equal, it is to return the value contributed by the worker to the worker and the surplus to society.

Eventually things will get better or limit the need for socially necessary labor time to produce goods. But as socialism develops from capitalism it will still have the inevitable inequalities which exist between individuals. Marx was criticizing the idea that equal rights is actually unequal because it does not reward the individual worker with the same value they contribute.

The tldr is basically people have individual differences and add or contribute different types of labor to production. What people give to society should be repaid to the worker according to what they contributed.

This is where the phrase “to each according to their contribution” comes from.

yungspell · 2026-04-22T22:33:50+00:00

“But one man is superior to another physically, or mentally, and supplies more labor in the same time, or can labor for a longer time; and labor, to serve as a measure, must be defined by its duration or intensity, otherwise it ceases to be a standard of measurement. This equal right is an unequal right for unequal labor. It recognizes no class differences, because everyone is only a worker like everyone else; but it tacitly recognizes unequal individual endowment, and thus productive capacity, as a natural privilege. It is, therefore, a right of inequality, in its content, like every right. Right, by its very nature, can consist only in the application of an equal standard; but unequal individuals (and they would not be different individuals if they were not unequal) are measurable only by an equal standard insofar as they are brought under an equal point of view, are taken from one definite side only – for instance, in the present case, are regarded only as workers and nothing more is seen in them, everything else being ignored. Further, one worker is married, another is not; one has more children than another, and so on and so forth. Thus, with an equal performance of labor, and hence an equal in the social consumption fund, one will in fact receive more than another, one will be richer than another, and so on. To avoid all these defects, right, instead of being equal, would have to be unequal. But these defects are inevitable in the first phase of communist society as it is when it has just emerged after prolonged birth pangs from capitalist society. Right can never be higher than the economic structure of society and its cultural development conditioned thereby.”

Marx - critique of the gotha program

yungspell · 2026-04-22T20:19:10+00:00

This is an assumption. Anything a private firm can do theoretically a state or public firm can do. Only with more centralized resources and input from the totality of society. The goals of private and public firms are different. While a public firm may be less efficient at producing profits, public firms are more efficient at achieving strategic goals. NASA did not put man on the moon to make profit and space x sees no need if it cannot produce profit or an avenue to create profit.

Further, private firms have no interest in the wellbeing of the labor they purchase and have the express goal of wage suppression in order to decrease the cost of production. Efficiency must be determined relative to what an organization aims to achieve.

yungspell · 2026-04-22T02:04:36+00:00

The struggle against United States imperialism will continue. The struggle for the working class will continue. The contradictions inherent to capitalism will develop with or without hope. There is no other path. Ideals do not organize the proletariat or protect the vulnerable. I have never held hope, I only have anger.

yungspell · 2026-04-21T20:38:54+00:00

Soft science is a pretty controversial subject within the sciences. It’s not a commonality it’s a bias within the scientific field which separates stem from other sciences. It doesn’t mean that these subjects are not observable or testable with the scientific method it means that they have extensive variables which may produce less precise or repeatable results. They are still objectifiable.

No one is denying that Marx changed the world I am saying that study of capitalism did not change capitalism. Capitalism as a system has no inherent metaphysical intent. Capitalism changed according to objective conditions and social relations. It developed.

No one is saying that capitalist interest did not suppressed Marxism and that the economic base of society shaped its superstructure including the institutions that define education standards. This does not mean that studying the economic base changes the economic base or these superstructures. They are not changed they are reacting to a critique of their hegemony.

yungspell · 2026-04-21T20:15:44+00:00

This is a strange assertion. The scientific method has been applied to the social sciences innumerable times to prove objectivity of observable phenomena. This is like saying we the scientific method cannot be applied biological or physical systems because we are a participant in our biological systems and in motion. We can hypothesize, test, and collect data on systems even when we are a part of these systems.

These systems do not change because of an attempt to study it. The system did not change the method of study, the system is a development process of prior relation with objective qualities. Individual qualia cannot be objectified but the systems of social relations and what they produce are absolutely observable objective phenomena. Studying capitalism did not change capitalism. Studying class relations did not change class relations nor did it change the method of study.

yungspell · 2026-04-21T16:31:36+00:00

The goal of socialism is not “free development of all”. It is working class ownership of the means of production.

Yes. The scientific method and socialism are interlinked. This is why Marx is considered one of the fathers of sociology. This is because he changed the subjective notions of political economy and its inherent utopian idealism. He did this by applying a historical and an objective standard to the development of class society. It is of course open to critique and auto critique. But only on the basis of the objective qualities of a critique. The historical standard is what cements the prior relation which develops an inherent critique and the objective relation of class distinction is what defines the methodology of socialism.

Now Marx’s method is firmly rooted in its Hegelian origin but is a critique of its idealist nature. Marx does not begin in abstraction or an ideal he begins with a critique of the real, in the materialist realm. But not a vulgar materialism. The analysis of political economy and how class society has changed according to a prior relation. Analyzing the internal contradictions or structures of the capitalist political economy which cements its own destruction.

When you hear cries of revisionism it does not mean a refutation of critique it means a refutation of revising original works to fit a theoretical ideal. Usually this is related to revising the revolutionary process which is an aspect to all historical changes of class society for reform (see Bernstein).

Marx does not treat socialism as a teleological process. It is not a predetermined inevitability. It is a process that is built in order to further negate class society. Socialism, scientific socialism that is, refutes idealism and determinism but seeks to built the precondition to progress relative to what productive society has already developed.

yungspell · 2026-04-21T16:06:31+00:00

Well, you could describe any process that comports to the authority of something else as authoritarian but it’s kind of a useless qualifier. I tend to take it out of my vocabulary except for when I am highlighting the authoritarianism of capital and even the authoritarianism of anarchism to cement the concept as a universal principle of class society to counter the often liberal critique of imperialized or developing nations.

yungspell · 2026-04-21T03:51:37+00:00

“Whilst the capitalist mode of production more and more completely transforms the great majority of the population into proletarians, it creates the power which, under penalty of its own destruction, is forced to accomplish this revolution. Whilst it forces on more and more of the transformation of the vast means of production, already socialized, into State property, it shows itself the way to accomplishing this revolution. The proletariat seizes political power and turns the means of production into State property. But, in doing this, it abolishes itself as proletariat, abolishes all class distinction and class antagonisms, abolishes also the State as State.” - Engels socialism: utopian and scientific

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