Elements of Dialectics

This is an article in Lenin’s Philosophical Notebooks. It was written between September and December 1914. The Chinese translation is included in Vol. 55 of the second revised edition of Complete Works of Lenin. This article is a part of “Conspectus of Hegel’s The Science of Logic”. It is Lenin’s summary of dialectics based on readings of Science of Logic.

The “Elements of Dialectics” as outlined by Lenin consists of 16 items, also known in Marxist academic circles as the "Sixteen Elements of Dialectics" as in the following: (1) objectivity of consideration (not examples, not divergencies, but the thing-in-itself); (2) the entire totality of the manifold relations of this thing to others; (3) the own movement of this thing, its own life; (4) the internally contradictory tendencies (and sides) in this thing; (5) the thing (phenomenon, etc.) as the sum and unity of opposites; (6) the struggle, respectively unfolding, of these opposites, contradictory strivings, etc.; (7) the union of analysis and synthesis; (8) the relations of each thing (phenomenon, etc.) are not only manifold, but general and universal; (9) the unity of opposites and the transitions into its opposites; (10) the endless process of discovery of new sides, relations, etc.; (11) the endless process from appearance to essence, from less profound to more profound essence; (12) from coexistence to causality and from one form of connection and reciprocal dependence to another, deeper, and more general form; (13) the repetition at a higher stage of certain features of the lower stage; (14) the apparent return to the old (negation of the negation); (15) the struggle of content with form and conversely; (16) the transition of quantity into quality and vice versa. According to Lenin dialectics should be briefly defined as the doctrine of the unity of opposites, which embodies the core essence of dialectics, but it requires deeper elaboration and demonstration.

These 16 elements Lenin expounded can be divided into five main points:

Element 1 is the objectivity of dialectics. It is the basic principle of materialist dialectics. Lenin pointed out that objectivity is not example nor trivial theory, but the thing itself.

Elements 2 and 8 are the principle of universal connection. Element 3 is the principle of development and the principle of self-movement. These are the basic two principles of dialectics.

Elements 4, 5, 6 and 9 show that unity of opposites is the core and essence of dialectics. They illustrate the unity, struggle and transition of opposites.

Elements 13 and 14 reveal the main content of the law of mutual change of quality, and negation of the negation.

Elements 7, 10 ,11, 12 reveal the important category of materialist dialectics, explaining the dialectics of cognition. The cognitive process is a process combining analysis and synthesis. It is an endless process from ignorance to knowledge, from ignorance to multi-knowledge, an endless process from appearance to essence, and the development and transition of categories in the cognitive process.

Finally, Lenin proposed that unity of opposites is the core of dialectics and pointed out that it should be further explained. This explanation can be found in Lenin’s article “On the Question of Dialectics” written in 1915. This article clarifies that the law of unity of opposites is the essence and core of dialectics. It is also the epistemology of Marxism, from the aspects of the law of unity of opposites, which is not only the law of the development of the objective world, but also the law of the development of human thinking.