Soviet Entropy
I also wanted to add that not Marx, Engels, Lenin, Stalin, nor Mao came up with dialectical materialism. It was actually a guy called Dietzgen. No one reads him anymore but you can if you want. Lenin and Stalin quote him heavily since he’s the first one to actually use the term.
You may also see similar things outside of Marxism which look quite a bit like dialectics. Structuralism does something really similar with it’s “inverses” concept. I’m not a fan of dialectics since it feels a bit too idealist for me. Mechanical Materialism is more my style but it’s nothing worth fighting over.
There might be a list someone made somewhere but I don’t think that’s how most people use dialectics.
Usually it’s clear what the internal conflict is in something. In the US there are the conflict between workers and owners, but in electoral politics/government many would say that the conflict is actually between one side of the capitalists and another (there isn’t a worker party in government in the US).
Anything where there is a tradeoff to be made and where human groups are involved will probably get called a “contradiction” or a “dialectic” by a Marxist at some point. Maoists tend to use the terms much more broadly, even describing the process of water boiling as a dialectic/contradiction. Next time you see a a hierarchy or a power structure or something, think about whether there are two sides competing over a limited resource. That’s a dialectic way of thinking. If you assume that the most important things controlling that conflict are physical, you’re a dialectical materialist.
There are many ways of modelling the same thing.
Imagine you have a limited amount of money to fence in your yard.
An economist would say “you have a budget”.
A cyberneticist or a linear programmer would say “you have a potentially binding constraint on your objective function”.
A marxist might say “there is a contradiction between the size of your enclosure and the amount of fence you can buy”.
A normal person would say “well there’s a tradeoff. I can fence in my whole yard or I can spend my money to go drinking on the weekends.”
All of these basically say the same thing. Marxists like to use dialectics which is a philosophical idea originally from idealist philosophers. When brought into the realm of materialist philosophy it gets called dialectical materialism.
Materialist philosophy is the idea that ultimately everything is matter and energy. Nowadays this gets called Physicalism sometimes. Idealist philosophy says that there are things which do exist but which are not material or energy. Ideas, gods, angels, conciousness, etc. Most people have a combination of these two ideas and so would accurately be called “Dualist” but internet leftists tend to use the term “Idealist”.
The simplest way to understand a “dialectic” is, I think, the following:
At the start of the industrial revolution in England there were the old lords and a new wealthy business class. There was a conflict between them over the limited resources. There are only so many people to control, luxury goods to purchase, government positions to hold, etc. And these people have different interests. So a Marxist would say, when speaking in terms of dialectics, that “there is a contradiction between the aristocracy (landowners) and the bourgeoisie (business owners, capitalists)”.
Now obviously the relative strength of either side in this conflict can change. Maybe the business class start organizing and take more seats in parliament, maybe the lords begin raising their own knights and armies again, etc. A marxist would say that this change is actually not unusual but a key part of the system. They say that modelling things using dialectics and materialist philosophy means we can understand how things change and not be so surprised when they do. And when something does change they might say “the dialectic is in motion” or “the contradictions are sharpening”.
Ultimately the entire thing is fancy language from the 1800s that should probably be replaced because it’s alienating and bad for propaganda. “Conflict”, “tradeoff”, and “change” are much more sensible in 21st century English than “contradiction”, “dialectic”, and “motion”.
do you have a link?
i found the one for Allende.
https://www.alibaba.com/product-detail/N109-116-Line-Infantry-Wehremacht-Micah_1600948742005.html
this is probably one of the least read works which is claimed to be read by everyone. the section on the post office alone is contrary to just about every internet leftist.
If you want to find out more (altho that’s the long and the short of it) the search term you want is “carry trade”.
