Why Marxist dialectics are bunk

The dialectic duo 

Some stray remarks on Marxist dialectics that came to me during a channeling session with a spirit named Max Hegel, OK, I´m joking, but here we go… Yes, this is pretty “esoterick”.

Many Marxists try to prove dialectics by pointing out that things always “change”, or by pointing to Darwin´s theory of evolution. But dialectics doesn´t simply mean “change”. Plato believed everything down below changed, and so did the Buddha. Nor is Darwinian evolutionary theory “unconsciously dialectical”. It´s the exact opposite! According to dialectics, phenomena change due to internal contradictions. According to Neo-Darwinism (and arguably Paleo-Darwinism), they change due to *outside pressure*, as in natural selection, not internal contradictions.

Originally, Marxism claimed that the entire cosmos developed according to the dialectic. Later, it seemed that the natural world does not. The universe is governed by static natural laws. Evolution is by random mutation and natural selection. So these Marxists declared that while the cosmos was non-dialectical, human history and society *is* dialectical. Ironically, it now seems as if the dialectic duo Marx-Engels were more right on *this* score than anyone imagined. There are new evolutionary paradigms which seem to suggest that organisms can “choose” when to evolve, an idea that could perhaps be squared with “internal contradictions”. In the same way, Lamarck is easier to reconcile with Marx than Darwin ever was. And there are attempts to create a synthesis of Neo-Darwinism and Neo-Lamarckism. Also, the Big Bang theory might be on its way out, suggesting that the cosmos is both eternal and ever-changing – while not dialectical sensu stricto, it´s certainly closer to Marxism than the idea of creatio ex nihilo, of which Big Bang is simply the “materialist” version. I suppose some particularly dogmatic Marxists will find some solace in the above.

They shouldn´t, since dialectics is bunk anyway.

It´s often claimed (even by fairly dogmatic Marxists) that dialectics is a “method”. Except that it isn´t. If *the result is part of the method*, then the method isn´t a method at all, but simply a dogma. Marxists claim that socialism is inevitable, and that the proletariat is the revolutionary class. But this “result” of the “method” of course can´t be questioned. Yet, it´s easy to prove *by using the dialectical method itself* that socialism isn´t inevitable at all. I could prove that the contradictions of capitalism won´t lead to socialism through a working class revolution, but to bureaucratic collectivism through a gradual bureaucratization of the world. Or I could prove that while the contradictions of capitalism will indeed inevitably destroy it, it won´t be replaced by socialism, but by barbarism. Indeed, I have so proven. Will the Marxists accept these results of the dialectical method? Of course not, they will accuse me of being a “pessimist”, a “reactionary”, a “defeatist”, a “subjectivist” and even, wait for it, “undialectical”!

During the factional battle within the SWP, Trotsky accused his opponents (including Shachtman) of not being “dialectical” in their view of the Soviet Union. Trotsky held that Stalinist Russia was in some sense still a “workers´ state”, a “degenerated workers´ state” which should still “unconditionally” be defended against “world imperialism” (while working for a political revolution to oust the Stalin regime and the bureaucratic governing stratum). Shachtman´s original position was that while the USSR was indeed a degenerated workers´ state, it could only be defended “conditionally”. This position is arguably *more* dialectical than Trotsky´s, taking the internal contradictions and direction of motion into account. What could be more contradictory and therefore dialectical than a counter-revolutionary workers´ state that shouldn´t always be defended against imperialism (despite nominally still being a “workers´ state”?) By contrast, Trotsky´s position sounds formalist: the Soviet Union is a workers´ state because the economy is nationalized! So? A funny detail: during the 1990´s, some Trotskyists did drew the conclusion that Yeltsin´s Russia was still a “workers´ state” since large chunks of the economy were still nationalized. I´m not sure if they defended Russia against Western attack, though, so perhaps they did have a slight inkling of dialectics in them somewhere, lol. 

Unless you believe in cheap magic and epistemological conjuring tricks, the only way to prove dialectics is empirically. Are the phenomena *actually* changing and evolving through clashes between opposites? And what is their direction of motion? But if so, you are an empiricist. Like everyone else. And that too makes “dialectics” as usually understood completely worthless.