On the Question of Dialectics

This is an important article in Lenin’s Philosophical Notebooks. This article was written in 1915 and was originally published in the Bolshevik magazine issue No. 5-6 of the year 1925. The Chinese translation is included in Vol. 55 of the second revised edition of the Complete Works of Lenin.

Lenin wrote this article during the World War I, when all kinds of contradictions in the world and in Russia intensified unprecedentedly. During this period, Lenin devoted much energy to studying materialist dialectics in order to further scientifically analyze the contradictions of imperialism, oppose the revisionism of the second international leaders, and make strategies for the proletarian revolution under the new situation. Combined with Lenin’s works of the same period, such as Imperialism, the Highest Stage of Capitalism and “On the Slogan of European Union”, the principles expounded in the “On the Question of Dialectics” are of great significance both in theory and in practice.

This article was written to review and discuss Lasalle’s work The Philosophy of Heraclitus—the Dark of Ephesus (Die Philosophie Herakleitos des Dunkeln von Ephesos) as well as Aristotle’s famous work Metaphysics. As there were quotations from Metaphysics, we have a good reason to believe that this article was written after Lenin read Aristotle’s Metaphysics and that it is the further elucidation and development of his work “Summary of Dialectics” which included Lenin’s ideas on Elements of Dialectics.

First of all, Lenin proposed and expounded that the law of unity of opposites is the essence and core of dialectics, and demonstrated it. Firstly, the law of unity of opposites is objective and universal. Lenin confirmed that the law of unity of opposites is the general law of nature, human society and thinking. Lenin listed the basic contradictions in mathematics, mechanics, physics, chemistry and social science to prove this argument. At the same time, he pointed out that examples are only for general explanation, and they cannot replace argumentation, let alone replace laws. Secondly, the interaction between opposites and unity of things is the internal source and motive force of the development of things. Whether to recognize this point is the key difference between the two development views. Lenin distinguished dialectics from metaphysics. In dialectics, development is the unity of opposites. The source of development is the internal contradictions of things. Development is the interruption of the transformation, leap and gradual process of opposites of old things. The latter denies the unity of opposites. In metaphysics, the reason for development lies in external things and external factors. Development is a simple repetition of the same kind of things, that is, development as a simple increase or decrease in quantity. Thirdly, Lenin pointed out that the law of unity of opposites is the fundamental method of understanding things. Lenin took the development of philosophy history as an example to illustrate that “human cognition is not a straight line (that is to say, it does not follow a straight line), but is infinitely similar to circles and a curve similar to a spiral”. Lenin listed the dialectics from Democritus to Plato and Heraclitus, from Feuerbach to Berkeley, Hume, Kant to Hegel and Hegel to Marx through Feuerbach. Lenin abandoned the external form of Hegel’s “negation of the negation”, which is a three-stage combination of positive and negative, and retained the reasonable parts in it. Lenin argued that human cognition is a process of contradictory movement, a process in which opposites transform each other. This contradictory process will inevitably be shown as a process where opposites go forward repeatedly, namely, the negation of negation. Therefore, Lenin often compared this process to circles or spiral curves. All these metaphors point to two features of dialectical movement of human cognition, namely, progressiveness and repetitiveness. This argument also reflects the internal consistency between the law of unity of opposites and the law of negation of negation.

Then, Lenin pointed out that dialectics is Marxist epistemology, which is an important argument. Marx’s Capital is a good example of consciously using dialectical understanding to analyze the objective world. From Lenin’s point of view, Marx, in Capital, starts with the analysis of the simplest, most common, most basic, most frequently seen, most ordinary relations in bourgeois society—commodity exchange. Marx first analyzes the internal contradiction or duality (use value and exchange value) of commodities, then transits to the duality of labor (concrete labor and abstract labor), figure out the contradiction between private labor and social labor. Then Marx analyzed the relationship between money and value, the contradictory movement of money into capital, discovered the secret of surplus value, revealed the contradiction between the proletariat and the bourgeoisie, and thus revealed the inevitability of economic crisis, the proletarian revolution and the destruction of the bourgeoisie, and the inevitable victory of socialism.

Lenin further pointed out that the law of unity of opposites is not only Marx’s law of cognition in Capital, but also the universal law of all human cognition, because the movement of the objective world is dialectical, which means the human cognition corresponding to the objective world should also be dialectical.

In addition, Lenin also analyzed the categories of general and individual, absolute and relative, abstract and concrete, logic and history, and revealed the dialectical nature of the cognitive process.

Finally, Lenin revealed the epistemological and class roots of idealism. He pointed out that philosophical idealism unilaterally exaggerates a certain feature, a certain aspect, and a certain side of cognition as absoluteness being divorced from matter, nature, and deification. Idealism is monasticism. “Linearity and one-sidedness, inflexibility and rigidity, subjectivism and subjective blindness are the epistemological roots of idealism”. Lenin also revealed the class root cause of idealism. Lenin pointed out that the reactionary ruling class needs idealism as their spiritual weapon to paralyze and deceive the working people in order to safeguard their class interests. Therefore, when philosophical idealism with systematic theory emerges, it will be consolidated by the ruling class in pursuit of their interests.

This article reflects Lenin’s inheritance and enrichment of Marx and Engels’ materialist dialectics. It plays an important role in the development of Marxism and is Lenin’s most important philosophical works.