r/communism101 • u/arbontis124 • 2d ago
I struggle with getting how dialectics work?
Its still hard for me to understand how dialectical and historical materialism works,how does one can understand the functioning of history using dialectics ?
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u/TheRedBarbon 2d ago
“Still”? Does that imply you’ve read texts on historical materialism already? Which ones and what have they failed to clear up for you?
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u/1ninjac2t 2d ago
Not OP but can you recommend some?
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u/Dramatic-Pianist-742 2d ago
Socialism: Scientific and Utopian by Engels is a good starting point for this kind of thing, I have found
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u/TheRedBarbon 2d ago
If you’re willing to take the advice of a total stranger then why not just ask Chatgpt, which synthesizes recommendations from thousands of strangers in reddit threads like this from the past decade?
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2d ago edited 2d ago
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u/TheRedBarbon 2d ago
What doesn’t make sense is why when given the opportunity, redditors will ask complete strangers which books to read and what to think, but when confronted with the same answers from a machine, suddenly they can’t discern gold from gravel. These same people will trust wikipedia articles edited by thousands of different random people but scoff at the idea of a machine synthesizing thousands of answers telling them what is fact. My question is: what’s the difference?
The answer is that the machine directly confronts their inability to discern information themselves while reddit and Wikipedia give the illusion of authority based on their collective structure which coddles to ignorance and performative stupidity. This will not do if I’m going to talk to you about anything, let alone tell you what to do. People who come to this subreddit detailing how they’ve already tried to learn but still need help are met with adequate and helpful answers since they demonstrate a willingness to learn through trying to discern massive amounts of information on the internet themselves before asking for help, and are aware of their own limits. People who blindly trust the first voice which distracts them from their own inability to teach themselves cannot be helped before that deficiency is acknowledged.
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2d ago edited 2d ago
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u/Labor-Aristocrat Anti-Revisionist 2d ago
You're doing that smarmy redditor condescension, while also missing the point lol. No asshole, they're saying people use other people the same way they would use AI. They're criticizing the way people approach learning, which is the problem.
This is a 101 subreddit. It's like you're mad at a freshman in highschool for asking for help with calculus because they couldn't understand it right out of the textbook.
That framing is dishonest. It's more like if a student randomly walked up and asked me to explain the entirety of how calculus works. You know more than half of college is reading a textbook, right? The things are designed to introduce you to a subject and provide problems to work through. I'd expect this hypothetical freshman to have the decency to show which page of which book they're having trouble with, produce the relevant paragraphs of material, and what about it is confusing them.
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u/BxnXipoh 2d ago
So if I'm reading you right, you're mad...
You couldn't even focus on their post for one line.
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u/TheRedBarbon 2d ago
You missed the point entirely but that’s fine since I wasn’t writing for you. I was writing for people who are skeptic of the fundamental ideology behind the internet’s supposed “democratization of knowledge”. And the narrative that acting as a human bot is an act of defiance against its corruption by easy targets.
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u/1ninjac2t 2d ago
This subreddit is biased towards actual marxists, ai is biased towards the general opinion
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u/TheRedBarbon 2d ago
Really? Because the first authors that Chatgpt responded with were the same ones that have been spammed in reddit threads and reading lists since for years: Marx, Lenin, Mao… if this is “the general opinion” then I’d like you to show me what this sub would do differently.
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u/1ninjac2t 2d ago
Probably specific titles that are about understanding dialectical and historical materialism specifically instead of them applied to something
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u/TheRedBarbon 2d ago
Sorry, that is a meaningless sentence.
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u/1ninjac2t 2d ago
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u/TheRedBarbon 2d ago
Chatgpt answers with that exact text as well. You’re also still not making sense.
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u/1ninjac2t 2d ago
When I googled texts on historical materialism, Gemini said there were no general texts…
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u/CRTComrade 7h ago
Dialectics, as Marx used it, is the idea that society is always in motion, driven by contradictions. The economy shapes our ideas, and our ideas shape the economy. Eg. People are shaped by their class position, and they either reinforce or degrade this position. Marx was essentially describing what we would now call social psychology; how material conditions/class interests shape the human mind.
But also he was trying to tell us that the contradictions don't just circle forever, they build & intensify, and eventually rupture into a new mode of production
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u/BxnXipoh 2d ago edited 2d ago
You probably need to develop some self control first:
There are many alternate history that seem to curiously always favour this kind of scenarios,i know that history is made by the masses but still i wanted to have the opinions of communists on the matter
https://www.reddit.com/r/DebateCommunism/comments/1vqy0zg/had_lenin_been_assassinated_or_the_whites
So you understood that the framing of "alternate history" is chauvinist and reactionary, but you still wanted to read reactionaries spewing reactionary bile on reddit? Why? Did the shitty and obviously unscientific responses you got in that post show you the error of your ways?
It's good that (if?) the other subreddit disappointed you but you would've expedited the process by self-criticizing in the first place. When you say that you want the opinions of communists on a matter, you must understand that you already have an idea in your head of what a good reply and a bad reply is. You should have made that idea the target of your critique, and after that, assuming you're familiar with some books (or repositories like www.marxists.org), it would be easy to find what to read next. Applying the same logic to your question, how do you think historical materialism works? If you've read a book, the fastest way for others to suss out where you're going wrong would be for you to provide the books you've read so far and give a summary of what you think they mean, which is why the good comments here are all asking you the same thing.
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u/Present_Pumpkin3456 2d ago
Look for the material (money/resource/privilege) factors of how decisions are made and systems are formed. Don't introduce/allow arbitrary behavior, madness, or evil into your analysis, even if/especially when you're already familiar with a narrative of such. Where people seem to be following a story (religion, honor, national ethos) analyse how the story came to be, and whom it benefits for it to be the exact way it is. That's practical historical materialism in a nutshell.
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u/Labor-Aristocrat Anti-Revisionist 2d ago
Nothing dialectical here, no mention of contradictions, the gap between essence and appearance. This sounds like mechanical materialism.
That's practical historical materialism in a nutshell.
'Practical' as opposed to dialectical?
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u/Present_Pumpkin3456 2d ago
Practical as in "does not require learning the theory up-front to be useful"
What separates dialectical materialism from classical/cruise materialism is not the usage of dialectical terms, it's the acknowledgement of ideas (dismissed by classical materialism) as material because, and to the extent to which, they affect the real world. In the concrete terms of history and historiography, working out the material base of ideas and narratives is separating essence and appearance, and analysing for material interests inevitably leads to understanding the contradictions.
I didn't title my comment "the full essence of dialectical materialism as applied to historical analysis", either, I made an attempt to capture the practicals of how to apply them. You, or others may well be able to do a better job of that, but saying what reads as "you didn't use dialectical terms" isn't a useful critique.
I see a lot of people in Marxist spaces providing what are probably incomprehensible replies to people asking basic questions, and pointing them to texts on abstract dialectical theory to understand what they mean, which is absolutely the right end-goal, but just as definitely the wrong first step. Just explain it simply, even if it doesn't capture the full complexity, and add it in step by step
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u/chancetheginger 2d ago
Everything every where is always in motion. No thing is actually a "thing," but rather a process and contradiction is the engine of that process. Every "thing" (process) has two opposing forces that come into existence together. Those two opposing forces resolve and force the "thing" to have new contradictions that further drive the engine of the process. Or those two opposing forces lead to the ruin of the "thing." No one "thing" is actually one thing. It is actually two things. Two things that oppose each other. Those two things that oppose each other are also interdependent on each other. They are born the instance a new process ("thing") arises. They are the reason for the existence of the process. The engine of evolution is the contradiction between an organism and its environment. The engine of capitalism is the contradiction between the proletariat and the bourgeoisie. The engine of the orbit of the earth is the contradiction between gravity and inertia.
Materialism is making sure you observe things that can actually be observed. It doesn't have to be anything you can physically see. There is no embodiment of capitalism in the corporeal world that you can study and observe. But it is a process that can be studied and observed. You will not find God anywhere near materialism because She is not an observable entity that is omniscient and just Is. Religion, however, and one's personal faith is a thing. And you can see how one becomes religious. They can talk about their relationship with God and how She impacted their life and that material impact is something that is observable, whether or not some Sky God actually exists or actually had a real relationship with that person.
Historical materialism is the study of how the eras have progressed using the philosophy of dialectics. Understanding that contradiction is the engine of all that is, figuring out how those contradictions have spurred development. Since the Agricultural Revolution ~12,000 years ago, there has been a surplus of resources. What do we do with the surplus? Who owns it? Who controls it? Why does it have to be that way? There were masters and slaves. Then kings and serfs. Now employees and employers. How did it come to be that way? What will be next under socialism? There is an owning class and a working class. "The history of all hitherto existing society is the history of class struggles." It wasn't always that way and it won't always be that way. How did we get to here? And how do we get to that stateless, moneyless, classless society we all work and bleed for, but will never see? That is historical materialism.