Dialectics: an Introduction

8/28/2023

- Foundations

6.5 Minute Read

by Ken Barrios

The second foundational concept in political education is “dialectics”. This is a tricky concept because it is essentially the complexity and contradictions of life. Especially because class society intentionally tries to obscure the dialectics of life in order to subjugate us. This means that learning dialectics also requires unlearning how we see the world.

In order to understand dialectics, we'll attempt to first define it. Then break it down into four concepts that we witness in daily life in order to better understand it: 1) life is in motion - not static, 2) it exists along spectrums - not just binaries, 3) it moves back and forth at varying speeds - not as a steady and straight line, 4) it combines the objective reality with subjective reality - not one or another.

Definition

Dialectics is the recognition that life is full of contradictions. In life, two things can be completely contradictory and yet simultaneously true. For organizers, the purpose of this recognition is to find a way to resolve the contradictions into something new through honest assessments, open debates, and class struggle.

Life is in Motion, Not Static

We are taught that “once a _______, always a _______”. Often, this is applied to negative personality traits, and most often to “criminality”. But it also gets applied to people’s politics. Everyone that voted for Trump is treated as hopelessly lost, incapable of shifting their ideas based on discussions, experiences, etc. Conversely, everyone that voted for Bernie is assumed to be close to socialist politics and it is taken for granted that they won’t backslide.

Unlike this static view of the world, remember that while life and ideas can be still, they are usually in motion. Individuals are constantly taking in lessons from life (from lived experiences, observations in world events, engaging in struggle), and applying those lessons to their lives. People are capable of being stagnant, many of us can think of a friend who hasn't changed since high school, but most of us are constantly learning over the course of our lives and developing in new directions.

For example, my initial reaction to Bernie Sanders in 2016 to dismiss him. But as I observed his electoral wins against Hilary Clinton, I realized that there was a political shift happening and I switched to supporting him because I knew it was critical to bring in the people he was activating. Similarly, I had not considered myself an abolitionist before the 2020 Uprising. But the Uprising made me realize that there was a new political shift happening, that this country can't have universal healthcare and education until it abolishes its racist prison and police system, and that the abolitionist movement is our modern revolutionary movement.

The point here to underline is that my own understanding of the world was in process, taking in the snapshots of life. Put another way, the snapshots make the most sense when we process them into a motion picture.

Beyond Good and Evil

Class society tries to teach us to view people in binaries. People are good or evil, successes or failures, men or women, law-abiding or criminal, straight or gay, etc. This binary view also gets applied to world events. A bit of news is treated as only being “good” or “bad”, instead of realizing that within any “good” piece of news, there is the danger of complacency, and in any “bad” news there are often opportunities.

In contrast to binary views, most things in life exist along a spectrum and they can stretch out across the spectrum. This makes it possible for something to simultaneously exist at two contradictory points on that spectrum. Life is full of contradictions. Everyone you know, including yourself, has been both charitable and greedy, helpful and hurtful, hardworking and lazy. All people also routinely cross the spectrum of gender norms, romantic norms, artistic and political norms — or are at least capable of doing so.

Again, this is also true of world events. For example, after the Capitol Riot, people debated if it had been productive or destructive for the far-right. The New York Times put out a surprisingly dialectical analysis: it was both. It had been destructive in that it got several individuals arrested, including many far-right leaders, causing groups to splinter. But it was also productive in that several people saw the riot as an inspiration to either become lone wolves or else build more resilient organizations that could engage local and electoral politics. The two contradictory positions were simultaneously true.

Beyond Straight Lines

We are taught that life follows a straight, gradual line from point A to point B. We are taught as children that if we study and work hard, we will progress to a steady job, small family, nice house, and eventually retirement. Similarly, we are told that history is naturally on a path to scientific and social progress, only taking time instead of requiring struggle.

Just as life is not strictly static and binary, it is also not strictly linear. In the life of any individual, there will be periods of “normalcy” (i.e. equilibrium) accompanied by moments of crisis and success. The joys of finding love accompanied by the pain of heartache. The triumph of starting a career followed by the terror of layoffs. The satisfaction of physical fitness accompanied by the devastation of illness and injury. In between all of these, are periods of equilibrium. In other words, the life of any individual will consist of a forward and backward motion. Combined, these contradictory periods produce the totality of our existence.

At the world scale, history follows similar patterns. Entire civilizations have risen and fallen, from ancient Egypt, to the Aztecs, to the feudal orders of Europe. Peppered between the rise and fall were periods of stability, success, and crisis. Similarly, political movements also follow non-linear paths. While the US legalized abortion in 1973, countries like Mexico, Argentina, and Ireland are only recently moving forward with abortion rights. However, now we see the US move backwards as the Supreme Court overturns Roe v Wade.

We also see that while there can be longer or shorter periods of social equilibrium, they can give way to abrupt crises like economic depression, wars, and pandemics. Similarly, those crises can trigger nested explosions of their own. World War I, for example, set the stage for the Russian Revolution of 1917. The 2020 pandemic triggered the uprising. In other words, life will involve gradual progress and regress, but it will also involve abrupt ruptures that quickly push movements further ahead or drag them behind.

When referencing these ruptures, Lenin stated: “there are decades where nothing happens; and there are weeks where decades happen.” Ruptures create a situation where “desperate times call for desperate measures” and the radical ideas that seemed fringe during “normal times” suddenly make sense, creating openings for both the far-left and the far-right. This means that crises can be both revolutionary and counter-revolutionary opportunities.

Objective and Subjective Reality

Modern society teaches us that understanding objective facts are all that matter, "facts don't care about your feelings". We see examples of this when militant atheists argue against religious believers by trying to disprove their faith, or when any leftist tries to use scientific facts to explain global warming to climate deniers.

While it is certainly important to be armed with facts and figures (objective reality) to explain or defend a position, it is also important to understand the mood of a given group at a given time (subjective reality).

As discussed in the previous article on materialism, many socialists participated in the campaigns for Bernie Sanders in 2016 and 2019, as well as in the Brandon Johnson campaign in 2023. However, many others tried to lean on objective facts to discourage socialists from lending either of them support. Objective facts like, "they are not perfect, they have political weaknesses, even if they win they will face the entire bourgeoisie and hostile governments", etc.

The difference between the socialists that lent support to Sanders and Johnson, and the ones that did not, was the difference between reading the objective reality of the moment and its subjective reality. Objectively, the criticisms of both politicians were true. But subjectively, the two campaigns inspired new people to join the struggle.

Each campaign raised expectations within a given layer of society. The Sanders campaign mobilized new and old socialists, though not enough to win the presidency. The Johnson campaign mobilized Chicago's entire political ecosystem, which in turn was able to mobilize enough voters to win. Both campaigns provided opportunities to recruit new organizers, shift the political debate to the left, and create/strengthen relationships between organizers and organizations.

While facts do not care about people's feelings, organizers should. Facts will always be important. But so is learning to read the mood of an organizer, an organization, a section of society, and of the masses in general. This is dialectics applied at mass scale to human psychology.

Pitfalls

While dialectics is essential, it can become idealistic. For dialectics to be effective, it does have to be grounded in materialism.

Again, let's look at the Bernie and Brandon campaigns. Both campaigns were massive mobilizations because of people’s subjective reading of the moment, and organizers that harnessed it. However, there were very serious objective (material) differences between the balance of forces for both campaigns.

Whereas Chicago, as a city, had developed a vibrant and wide political ecosystem, the same could not be said of the nation as a whole. In Chicago, the movement inspired by Brandon could convert into electoral success because the political ecosystem had the funding, organizations, shared experience, and boots-on-the-ground to hit as many doors as possible and till the soil for Brandon.

But at the national level, this infrastructure doesn’t exist in a cohesive way. So while various unions and political organizations have chapters around the country, they lack an experience of shared and coordinated struggle for a common goal. Much less do they have shared nation-wide victories that are recognized by the masses as associated with them. So while the material reality and dialectical potential worked in Brandon’s favor, the fact is that both of Bernie’s campaigns were fueled by subjective hopes without a material basis to realize them.

To be clear, I want to repeat that it was essential for all organizers to throw themselves into each of these campaigns. But understanding the balance of dialectical materialism, of the combined objective and subjective reality, would help organizers determine how much to temper their expectations, how much to focus on the victory over the organizing opportunities, and how to prepare for either victory or defeat.

The reality is that there were people that actually thought Bernie could win in 2016 and 2020 if we just fought hard enough to overcome the absence of a credible third party or the absence of a fighting union movement. A dialectical materialist reading could have prepared more people for his defeat. Instead, many were taken by surprise and experienced a very real sense of loss and demoralization. Again, facts don’t care about your feelings, but organizers should. Preparing people for what to expect can help organizations and movements to weather the inevitable ups and downs of struggle.

The Point is to Change It

If we tie these threads together, I would summarize dialectics as a way of viewing the world that understands that life:

  1. Can be still but also in motion
  2. Exists along a spectrum, which means it is possible for two contradictory things to be simultaneously true
  3. Moves forward, backward, and experiences rushes in either direction
  4. Combines objective and subjective realities in order to understand both facts on the ground and the mood of organizers, sections of society, and the masses

The overarching contradiction we face is capitalism. Capitalism is a class system that is destroying our lives and the world itself. But it is also a system that has produced the science and social classes that could end class society and create a new system of economic and political democracy that could save the world. So dialectics isn’t just about understanding the world for the sake of understanding. It is a tool to understand the world in order to resolve the contradictions and build up the revolutionary rupture from capitalism to socialism, and finally: into full abolitionism.

Further learning:

Updated 09/16/24: Added "Definition" section.